137: Chapter 138 This is a one-way ticket, no change given.

Silo No. 1 on the perimeter of the base was cleared.

Li Cang didn't use those sophisticated launch pads newly built by the Priests.

Those things were too delicate to withstand a Warhammer-style rough takeoff.

He had someone place a spare Three-stage solid rocket booster from the base's lower-level power room directly at the bottom of the silo.

A rounded iron lump was welded to the top of the booster.

That was a Suborbital drop pod with its gravity recoil module removed and its outer layer crudely plastered with half-meter-thick anti-radiation armor plating.

Corvin's dreadnought mech was wedged tightly inside the pod, with four ultra-high-strength adamantium shock-absorbing springs connecting the four corners of the mecha to offset the G-force overload that could crush a person into pulp during liftoff.

"Ignition parameters uploaded," Li Cang said, looking at the launch panel in the control cabin, his finger poised over the red execution button.

"This rocket doesn't have an attitude control system. Once it leaves the stratosphere, it relies entirely on inertia to smash upward. The deviation rate is about three hundred meters."

"Enough," Corvin's cold, hard metallic voice came through the communicator.

Li Cang said no more and pressed the button directly.

A massive orange-red fireball erupted from the bottom of the silo.

The thick smoke from the low-grade solid Fuel instantly engulfed the entire launch gantry.

No countdown, no steady acceleration.

The booster smashed through the silo's top cover like a maddened bull, trailing a hundred-meter-long tail of flame as it pierced the sky.

Li Cang watched the altitude data on the screen jump frantically.

Thirty seconds later, static began to appear in the data stream.

The rocket penetrated the stratosphere.

The three-stage booster exhausted its Fuel and disintegrated, falling away in a series of explosive flares.

The iron shell carrying the dreadnought mech, propelled by immense initial velocity, plunged into the absolute silence of low Earth orbit.

Three hundred kilometers from the ground.

An equatorial inclination of forty-five degrees.

There was no gravity here, no air, and even the sunlight was sliced into sharp blocks of light and shadow by the Earth's silhouette.

The drop pod's hull silently burst into four petals in the vacuum.

Corvin was exposed to space.

The amniotic fluid in the life-support tank began to boil violently due to the sudden drop in air pressure, but the outer armor held the core pressure firmly.

He shut down the Plasma Cannon's preheating system and cut off all unnecessary energy cycles of the unit, leaving only the power supply for the right arm's Power Claw and the forward optical probe.

The entire mecha became a piece of cold iron floating among space debris.

The radar panel was dead silent.

The low-level Priest was right; the reconnaissance node of that High Data Monastery was optically cloaked, and its radar cross-section was smaller than even a micro-meteorite in space.

If one used conventional search methods to find it on this pitch-black orbit, it would be harder than finding a specific grain of sand in a desert.

But Corvin didn't need to search.

Li Cang had calculated the object's orbital period; it circled the Earth every thirty minutes.

It would come to him.

Corvin raised his thick right arm, and the heavy Power Claw slowly opened in zero gravity.

Three high-frequency cutting blades, each a meter long and glowing with a faint blue disruption field when powered, spread out like a wide net, positioned at the center of the three-hundred-meter error coordinate marked by Li Cang.

Fifteen minutes passed.

Twenty minutes passed.

There was nothing in the optical probe except for the distant starlight.

The twenty-ninth minute.

A small patch of background starlight directly in front of Corvin's vision suddenly underwent an extremely slight distortion.

It was like a piece of transparent glass quickly sliding past.

The thing was incredibly fast, at least Mach 6 or higher.

Corvin didn't turn the cannon to aim; a dreadnought mech couldn't turn at all in space.

He simply pushed the Power Claw's output power to its limit.

The impact occurred.

There was no sound.

Only a violent vibration conducted directly through the mecha's armor plates into Corvin's remaining spine.

The three cutting blades of the Power Claw dug deep into a mass of "air."

The cloaking field short-circuited instantly under the dual tearing of physical destruction and the high-frequency disruption field.

A diamond-shaped Monitoring Station, about thirty meters long and painted with three layers of gear emblems, was forced to reveal its true form in front of Corvin.

The massive kinetic energy sent Corvin tumbling along the orbit together with it.

The Monitoring Station's self-defense system activated.

Several point-defense lasers fired from the edges of the diamond hull, cutting into the dreadnought mech's frontal armor; molten iron solidified into hot metal beads in the vacuum, drifting away.

Corvin ignored those lasers.

His left arm snapped up.

The Plasma Cannon, which had been powered down, finished preheating instantly.

The barrel was pressed directly against the rupture in the Monitoring Station's armor torn open by the Power Claw.

Fire.

A blinding blue-white plasma ball exploded inside the Monitoring Station.

There was no thunderous boom, but the Monitoring Station's side armor was blown apart by the internal high pressure, and countless precision electronic components and shattered Servitor corpses were spewed into space.

The point-defense lasers went silent.

Corvin's Power Claw released the rupture and reached into the gap blown open by the Plasma Cannon.

He felt around inside for a few seconds.

Then he yanked it out.

A power pack, slightly larger than the dreadnought mech itself and flickering with the faint blue light of a gravity reaction, was torn out along with several thick energy conduits.

This was the core of the Monitoring Station—the advanced Gravity Engine capable of lifting a frigate-class dock.

Corvin glanced at the interfaces on the engine's surface.

Intact.

He clamped the engine tightly with his Power Claw, the hydraulic swivel of the mecha's waist twisting to an exaggerated angle.

Then he hurled this iron lump, which was heavier than himself, toward the blue silhouette of the Earth.

The engine left the orbit with great initial velocity, falling toward the atmosphere.

Li Cang would use anti-aircraft fire at the calculated crash site to knock off its outer shell and catch the core blueprints and parts inside.

Having done all this, Corvin's unit ceased all movement.

The Power Claw's battery was exhausted.

The battered dreadnought mech lost all power sources, becoming a true piece of space junk, drifting slowly toward the abyss along the orbit with the Monitoring Station he had dismantled.

This was the one-way ticket.

Throwing the most expensive combat asset up there to trade for an engine that could elevate a civilization, and then leaving the veteran in the sky.