Although they had only taken down three bunkers for the moment, Anat believed that the hardest step of the battle had already been completed.
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Even though there were eight enemy bunkers remaining in the direction they faced, if they could take three out of eleven without much cost, what was so difficult about following the same tactic to take down another eight after the firepower had been reduced by nearly a third?
It was simply a matter of two to three more assaults with diminishing pressure.
And indeed, that’s exactly how it happened.
Not only did the squad led by Anat advance unstoppably, but similar situations were also unfolding at the other four battle locations.
…
While the squad led by Anat was making an unstoppable advance, breaking through one bunker after another, and heading toward the core area of the missile silo, inside their target location was Irong Fetches, seated amidst it all.
There, she only had the upper half of her body, head, and face that still resembled a human; the lower half, however, had completely become a mechanical monster, akin to an eight-legged mechanical spider.
Her lake-blue eyes flickered with electric light. Her logic brain wove one battle command after another, issuing them to the Modified Human Combat Troops on the front lines; at the same time, a stream of frontline battle messages were transmitted into her mind.
Her battle logic system quickly processed these pieces of information.
All of this should have been very methodical.
Logical computation, issuing commands, frontline action, feedback of information, and then back to logical computation…
This cycle should have been going on continuously, with the entire battle situation running in Irong Fetches’s mind like a cold yet oddly beautiful machine.
But the reality was completely different.
The information and the process of logic computation in her mind were filled with ‘chaos’ and ‘errors’.
“Hit detected, three Wind Falcon Rapid Attack Vessels spotted, anti-aircraft fire engaging…”
“Wind Falcon slowing down, suspected to be deploying ground forces. Prepare to strike with full force when they are stationary for deployment…”
“Feedback received, Wind Falcons not stationary! Ground forces have jumped from 13.2m in the air while the flyers were in motion, surpassing expectations!”
“Recalculating… Target confirmed as interstellar warriors, calculations for frontal bunker firepower distribution underway… Support troop movement calculations underway…”
“Expectation that the outer bunkers could hold for over 30 minutes, Modified Human Combat Troops’ movement route confirmed… Error, reinforcement troops eliminated!”
“Revising the firepower assessment of the interstellar warriors’ firearms… Error! Bunker lost in six minutes, unable to achieve expected defense effect! Recalculating reinforcement troops requirements. Redeploying firepower arrangement for the second layer of bunkers…”
“Error! The second layer of bunkers cannot hold! Revising evaluation of interstellar warriors’ shooting accuracy…”
Everything was in chaos, complete chaos!
In Irong Fetches’s mechanical brain, everything was quickly becoming a mess.
All plans, whether they had just been made or were only halfway executed, were encountering errors and were forced to be modified; after modification, errors would occur again; unexpected situations kept happening one after another.
She was already a mechanical being, and in her cold—oh, now quite overheated—thought process, the condition of ‘panic’ would no longer occur.
But another situation worse than that could arise: a system crash.
In a certain link of logical computing, perhaps due to some computational conflict or simply insufficient computational power, the eyes of Irong Fetches flickered rapidly but for quite some time, he transmitted not a single command.
Reflected on the frontline, Anat’s team suddenly felt that the firepower they were facing had become completely disorganized.
Although the enemy’s interdiction forces, whether light or heavy machine guns or small amounts of individual anti-armor weapons, had not posed any effective threat to them before, it had to be admitted that the enemy’s firepower, no matter how much it was hit, was rigid but overall orderly.
At this moment, even the advantage of ‘orderliness’ was lost.
Anat did not hesitate, he seized this opportunity and led his team to charge forward, capturing and destroying the third tier of bunker groups with relative ease compared to before.
By now, the core location of the missile launch site was within reach.
Anat did not intend to stop or rest; pressing on at once to complete the mission was the best course of action.
Four interstellar warriors, relying on two cleared bunkers, covered from both the left and the right with gunfire, inflicting heavy casualties on the disorientated and inexplicably exposed mechanical modified human soldiers.
Anat and two other brothers-in-arms were running towards the missile launch shaft at high speed, staying roughly two meters apart from each other.
Each of them was carrying a high-yield hot-melt explosive. A single one was enough to destroy a large area.
Anat estimated that he and his brothers-in-arms only needed to install two hot-melt explosives in the right locations to destroy the missile launch site.
And this was not difficult for them at all.
The enemy could no longer stop their advance, and Anat had also identified the most suitable installation sites, which he communicated to his two brothers through the communication system in their helmets.
What followed should have been simple: reach the destination, install the explosives, then retreat.
However, at that moment, a sound like swarming bees reached Anat’s ears.
He immediately became alert.
Yet, he did not slow down. After all, his mission target was ahead, and no matter what appeared, he had to go there. He merely heightened his vigilance and warned all his brothers-in-arms.
And in the next moment, swarms of flying drones emerged from the missile launch shaft!
A massive swarm of unmanned drones, each with a diameter of less than half a meter, and their black bodies did not even carry any reliable weapons.
Yet, a prolonged alarm sounded in Anat’s mind.
With his superhumanly modified vision, he could clearly see that almost every drone was strapped with a bomb.
Clearly, the attack method of these drones was not to utilize any sophisticated weaponry. All the fancy stuff was useless; a robust kamikaze drone attack was the most reliable.
Regular bullets indeed could not penetrate the power armor of the Phoenix warriors, but what about kamikaze drones?
If one didn’t do the trick, what about ten?
What appeared before them were far more than a hundred.
A grave challenge had finally arrived.