195: Savage Invasion

On Genoq Star, within the Earth Federation Space Monitoring Center, the monitor's voice echoed through the control room.

"Target spacecraft has entered low Earth orbit! Attempting to establish communication!"

On the holographic projection, the rugged Brood spaceship was approaching Genoq Star at an astonishing speed. Its hull was covered in repair patches, and its thrusters flickered with unstable blue light, clearly pushed to their limits.

"Communication established!" the communications officer shouted, "Sending standard greeting signal!"

The Earth Federation Space Center sent a universal-frequency peace greeting to the wanderer, along with a language translation template based on basic mathematical formulas, as a gesture of goodwill.

However, their response was not diplomatic rhetoric, but a blinding beam of energy.

"Warning! Enemy weapon lock!" the alarm blared suddenly, "Space-based defense satellite under attack!"

Boom—

Dozens of satellites in orbit were instantly destroyed, including a space-based weapon platform. Explosions flickered in Genoq Star's orbit, and debris rained down into the atmosphere.

"They fired!" the monitor's voice was almost a shriek, "They just fired!"

At the Earth Federation Parliament Building, an emergency meeting went online ten seconds after the satellites were destroyed.

Emma slammed a button, and the explosion displayed on the holographic projection plunged the entire Parliament Hall into a brief silence.

"What the hell is going on?!" Viktor's roar broke the silence, "They just attacked without even a greeting?! What kind of space barbarians are these?!"

"It seems we overestimated their level of civilization." The Frost Song Clan Elder's tentacles quivered slightly, "They are the embodiment of savagery."

"Activate the global defense system immediately!" Emma's voice was as cold as ice, "All military bases to Level One alert!"

"Half of the orbital defense system is already paralyzed!" the Minister of Defense reported urgently, "Their spaceship is forcefully entering the atmosphere!"

"Estimated target is New Haven."

In the projection, the wanderer, trailing thick smoke and flames, plunged towards Genoq Star's surface in a near-suicidal dive. Its hull peeled away in the intense heat, but it stubbornly maintained its flight path.

"Are they crazy?!" Xilin exclaimed in shock, "Forcing a landing at that speed, the spaceship will disintegrate!"

"No, they're not crazy." Viktor stared at the projection, his eyes sharp, "They never intended to negotiate; they came to plunder."

New Haven, a port city in Genoq Star's northern hemisphere.

The wanderer, like a burning meteor, slammed heavily into the tidal flats on the outskirts of the harbor. The immense impact kicked up a sand wave nearly a hundred meters high, and the shockwave shattered the windows of nearby buildings.

The hatch blasted open amidst thick smoke, and Sara Krein was the first to rush out, his grayish-green skin smeared with oil and grayish-green blood. He raised the pistol in his hand and roared at the sky: "This planet is ours, the Brood's!"

Thousands of Brood soldiers surged out of the spaceship like a tide. They carried antiquated energy weapons and even close-combat weapons cobbled together from spaceship parts. Their eyes held no reason, only the madness of plunder.

"Kill them all! Plunder them all!" Sara roared, "Everything on this planet is our spoils of war!"

The Brood soldiers let out bestial howls and charged towards the unsuspecting port.

Port worker Alvin Hawks was pushing a cart of food just unloaded from a freighter, sweat dripping down his forehead. Today's sea breeze was unusually humid, carrying a salty scent, and the cries of seagulls echoed in the distance, no different from usual.

Until the first explosion.

Boom—

Alvin looked up sharply, only to see a fireball erupt from the warehouse district on the east side of the port, black smoke billowing into the sky. A piercing alarm tore through the air, but before he could react, the second and third explosions followed in quick succession.

"Enemy attack! Enemy attack!" The port's broadcast system blared a harsh warning, "All civilians evacuate immediately! All civilians evacuate immediately!"

Alvin stood frozen until he saw the grayish-green figures emerge from the thick smoke.

The Brood.

Their figures were like standing black bears, howling like beasts, wielding various weapons as they charged into the dock.

The first few Brood soldiers in the front row carried rusty firearms, their barrels wrapped in rags, and their stocks even cobbled together from metal pipes and wooden planks. Their armor was even more rudimentary, a few welded metal plates barely protecting their chests and shoulders, with the rest of their grayish-green skin exposed, covered in scars and tattoos.

"Run! Run!" Alvin grabbed a terrified porter next to him and turned to flee towards the city.

But it was too late.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The Brood's gunshots rang out, and a scorching beam of light whistled across the dock. Alvin watched with his own eyes as a Forest Dweller Clan dockworker was hit in the back by the beam, his blue scales sublimating in an instant, his body immediately stained red with blood.

The worker stumbled and fell, and before he could get up, a Brood soldier had already rushed to him, raising a rusty machete and bringing it down fiercely.

"Ah—!"

The scream abruptly stopped, and the Forest Dweller Clan worker's head rolled to the ground, his eyes still open, the terror in his pupils frozen for eternity.

Alvin's stomach churned, but he had no time to vomit. He pulled a terrified human child and desperately fled towards the city.

"Don't look back! Run!" Alvin roared.

But the dock was already in chaos. The Brood scattered like wolves, killing everyone they saw.

A Frost Song Clan merchant tried to defend himself but was blown apart by a Brood soldier's crude shotgun. Another Featherwind Clan dock manager had just spread his wings to fly away when he was ensnared by an iron chain hook lock around his ankle by a Brood, brutally dragged down, and then hacked to death with multiple blades.

Alvin heard the Brood's wild laughter behind him, mixed with the screams of Earth Federation civilians. He dared not look back, but out of the corner of his eye, he still glimpsed a Brood soldier dragging a human female by her hair towards an abandoned freighter.

The woman struggled desperately but was smashed in the face with a rifle butt by another Brood, blood gushing out instantly.

"Mommy!" The child Alvin was dragging cried out, wanting to run back.

"Don't go!" Alvin held him tightly, "You can't save her!"

But the next second, a bullet grazed Alvin's shoulder, the searing pain almost making him let go. He looked back to see a scarred Brood veteran aiming an old bolt-action rifle at them.

The gun looked like something from early 20th century Blue Star, its barrel even covered in reddish-brown spots, but in Alvin's eyes at that moment, it was more terrifying than any weapon.

Bang!

The bullet hit the ground next to Alvin's feet, and the scattered gravel cut his pants leg.

"Hahaha! Run! Run more!" The Brood veteran laughed wildly, speaking a language Alvin didn't understand, slowly pulling the bolt, ejecting the casing, and inserting a new bullet.

Alvin knew he wouldn't be able to dodge the next shot.

At this moment, the Earth Federation Military Command Center was in utter chaos.

"New Haven is under attack!" The communications officer's voice was urgent, "Heavy civilian casualties! The Brood are massacring in the port area!"

"Immediately dispatch rapid response units!" Viktor slammed his fist on the console, "All mechanized infantry divisions converge on New Haven!"

"What about their individual equipment?" Emma asked calmly.

Real-time footage from the front lines showed that the Brood soldiers' weapons were a motley assortment. There were old electromagnetic guns, primitive gunpowder rifles, and some even carried homemade axes.

"That's it?" A human officer was incredulous, "Their spaceship can cross interstellar distances, but their individual weapons are worse than Blue Star's World War II level?"

"Their technology tree is severely lopsided." Emma narrowed her eyes as she finished reviewing the reconnaissance results and analyzed, "Simply put, all their technology has been invested in aerospace, with almost no development in ground combat equipment."

"Or rather, they once had development, but the energy weapons that look like scrap metal already tell the story."

"They can no longer manufacture those advanced weapons; they have 'degenerated'."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Viktor sneered, "Let these barbarians see what modern warfare is."

"No, it's future warfare!"

On Genoq Star, on the outskirts of New Haven, hundreds of hovering armored vehicles roared in from the direction of the city, their engine hum vibrating the air.

These armored vehicles, all painted black, stopped in neat formation five hundred meters from the port, forming a steel defense line.

The vehicle doors slid open, and Earth Federation soldiers emerged in formation.

They wore lightweight tactical exoskeletons, their joints gleaming with faint light, every movement precise and swift. Their eyes gleamed coldly under their tactical visors, a testament to the superhuman abilities granted by genetic editing, allowing them to clearly lock onto every target even in darkness and bright light.

"First Mechanized Infantry Division, deployment complete!" The Commander's voice rang out in the communication channel, "All units, proceed according to the established combat plan, open fire at will!"

Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—

A barrage of electromagnetic rifle fire instantly covered the entire port. Bullets tore through the air at ten times the speed of sound, precisely hitting every exposed Brood soldier.

The Brood's nightmare had begun.

A Brood veteran had just raised his rusty bolt-action rifle, before he could even aim, an electromagnetic bullet pierced his brow. His head exploded like a watermelon, grayish-green brain matter splattering onto the container behind him.

Another Brood soldier, wielding a homemade axe, charged towards the Earth Federation defense line, maneuvering behind containers and vehicles, but his movements were comically slow in the eyes of the Earth Federation soldiers' tactical AI.

A human soldier moved to a blind spot behind a cover, raised his arm, and the hydraulic system of his mechanical prosthetic instantly erupted, a heavy punch directly shattering the chest cavity of a Brood who appeared next to the cover the next second.

The human soldier shook his arm, tossing the chunk of flesh impaled on his arm to the ground, his mouth twitching with annoyance: "FXXK, these beasts are quite tough, didn't even shatter."

"What the hell is that monster?!" A distant Brood soldier watched in horror as his comrade was punched through, turning to flee.

But the next second, his legs were shot off by an electromagnetic bullet, and he fell to the ground. He struggled to crawl away, but saw a mixed-race Earth Federation soldier slowly approaching, scales faintly visible under his skin in the sunlight.

"You shouldn't have come here." The mixed-race soldier said coldly, then stomped on his head, crushing it.

Sara Krein hid behind a stack of cargo, watching helplessly as his soldiers were slaughtered.

Screams and cries for help constantly came from his communicator:

"Commander! Their bullets can penetrate our armor!"

"Ah—! My leg! My leg!"

"Help! They're too fast! We can't even hit them!"

Sara's finger was clamped tightly on the trigger, but he didn't even dare to show his head. He watched with his own eyes as a Brood soldier tried to counterattack with a grenade, but as soon as he pulled the pin, an Earth Federation sniper shot off his wrist. The grenade fell to the ground, killing three of the Brood's own men.

"Retreat! Retreat to the spaceship!" Sara roared into the communicator, "Activate defense systems! Quick!"

The remaining Brood soldiers fled towards the wanderer like stray dogs. But the Earth Federation soldiers gave them no chance.

A Frost Song Clan Earth Federation officer snatched a sniper grenade launcher from a soldier, and a massive bullet flew from the barrel, evenly distributing two fleeing Brood across the ground.

Another human soldier activated his exoskeleton's sprint mode, instantly catching up to three Brood deserters, and with a swing of his high-frequency vibrating blade, three heads simultaneously fell to the ground.

This was a one-sided slaughter.

The brute force that the Brood prided themselves on was meaningless in the face of Earth Federation technology. Most of their weapons couldn't penetrate the Earth Federation soldiers' armor, their speed couldn't match the burst power of the mechanical prosthetics, and their tactics were comically naive in front of the Earth Federation's battlefield AI.

Sara finally realized he had made a fatal mistake.

They thought the Earth Federation was a lamb to the slaughter. But in reality, they were the prey.