138: Chapter 139 A Brutal Solution to Gravity Capture

The giant parabolic antenna of the base's main control radar completed its final inclination correction in the cold wind.

The microwave signal penetrated the troposphere, which was obscured by thick clouds.

A continuous stream of data crashed into the defense matrix's processing hub along the underlying fiber optic cables.

A blinding red tracking box automatically popped up on the left screen of the Holographic Operations Cabin.

Target mass: 42.7 tons; current speed: Mach 4.5; surface temperature: 2800 degrees.

This was a solid meteorite carrying destructive kinetic energy.

If left unchecked, it would smash through the keel of the Orbital Shipyard in fifteen seconds, crushing the low-level Servitors still under construction, along with half the surface facilities, into dust.

Li Cang's fingers swiped rapidly across the anti-aircraft fire control interface.

The base's four close-in defense array towers simultaneously received a highest-priority override command.

Thick hydraulic outriggers popped out violently from the base of the towers, driving deep into the frozen, rock-hard concrete bedrock, locking the turret chassis firmly in place.

The muzzles of the six-barreled rotary solid-projectile anti-aircraft guns tilted upward in unison, pointing toward the pitch-black zenith.

The automatic ammunition feeder emitted a series of clicks.

The high-explosive warheads on the ammunition chain were forcibly ejected by the system, rolling onto the ground along the waste chute.

Rows of pure black, high-density tungsten-core armor-piercing shells were forcibly stuffed into the ammunition feed chute by servo-mechanical arms.

To catch this thing, you cannot blow it to pieces; you can only use pure kinetic energy to chip away at its outer shell bit by bit.

The clouds in the sky were sliced open by a bright white trail of fire.

The wreckage of the monitoring station, thrown from outer space, crashed into the base's air defense identification zone with a violent storm.

The four anti-aircraft towers opened fire simultaneously.

The firing rate of 6,000 rounds per minute caused the gun barrels to turn red-hot within a second.

The deafening roar drowned out the sound of the wind, as dozens of golden tracer trajectories wove into an impenetrable net of metal in mid-air.

The tungsten-core warheads slammed into the battered outer shell of the monitoring station at an extremely high initial velocity.

There was no violent explosion, only the teeth-gritting sound of metal tearing.

The high-kinetic-energy warheads punched directly through the surface armor softened by high heat, severing the internal structural keel.

The stress balance of the outer shell was broken instantly.

Huge wind resistance poured into the wreckage through the bullet holes, ripping off the already loose metal plates piece by piece.

Large chunks of the monitoring station's shell peeled off, burning and tumbling in mid-air, carrying a portion of the lethal kinetic energy as they deviated from the main trajectory and slammed into the wasteland outside the base, blasting out deep craters.

The fire from the anti-aircraft array did not stop.

The bullets continued to gnaw inward along the stripped gaps.

Useless electronic components, the charred remains of Servitors, and shattered solar panels were stripped clean layer by layer in this man-made metal storm.

Ten seconds passed.

The monitoring station's camouflage shell was completely stripped away.

The advanced gravity engine wrapped inside heavy impact-resistant armor revealed its true form.

The cooling pipes on the outer layer of the engine had been severed, and the leaking coolant turned into a cloud of white steam under the extreme heat, enveloping the iron lump—over three meters in diameter—as it continued to fall.

The anti-aircraft tower's ammunition feeder jammed; the gun barrels suffered irreversible deformation due to severe overheating, and the automatic lock-out procedure cut off the firing command.

The engine's falling speed had been forcibly reduced to less than Mach 1 by the dense barrage.

But it was only two hundred meters from the ground.

At this height and speed, combined with its own dead weight of over a dozen tons, the impact would still be like a small meteorite strike.

On the open ground directly in front of the Orbital Shipyard, fourteen tall, black figures formed two neat lines of defense.

There was no cover, nor was there any cushioning equipment.

Thirteen Astartes recruits who had just finished donning their gear, plus one reservist temporarily filled in from the remnants like TW-078 who had retreated from Manila Fortress, stood firmly planted at the engine's predicted landing point.

Heavy tactical boots crushed the ice on the ground, and their feet sank ten centimeters into the mud.

They had not received an order to retreat.

There was only one extremely brief tactical requirement in their bone-conduction headsets.

Catch it.

Fourteen gene glands at the back of their necks simultaneously emitted a faint hum.

Overclocking hormones were pumped into their blood vessels by their Secondary Heart with extremely violent pressure.

Blinding dark red light shone from the gaps in their pure black master-crafted power armor.

Overload mode fully engaged.

This batch of recruits, cultivated from gene seed found in nuclear blast wreckage, displayed for the first time to the outside world the obedience carved into their instincts.

They raised their arms in unison, palms facing upward, knees slightly bent, their broad chests emitting dull thumping sounds due to extreme blood congestion.

The air was frantically compressed by the rapidly falling engine, forming a visible white shockwave.

The shockwave hit the ground first, blowing away all the snow and gravel around the fourteen men.

Fifty meters.

Thirty meters.

Ten meters.

The dark red heat on the engine's surface was enough to scorch the anti-slip coating on the outer layer of the power armor.

Collision occurred.

Fourteen pairs of hands simultaneously caught the falling iron lump.

The terrifying kinetic energy poured directly into their arm bones through the palms of their master-crafted gauntlets.

The teeth-gritting sound of metal friction mixed with the dull thud of bones cracking exploded at the same time.

The shoulder servo-motors of the three recruits in the center burst on the spot, and electric sparks shot out along the seams of their armor.

Their forearm bones suffered minor dislocations under the immense pressure, with sharp bone spurs pressing against the inside of their skin, but they were locked firmly in place by thick muscle fibers and did not pierce through.

The kinetic energy continued to transfer downward.

The ceramic-reinforced matrix of their spines endured pressure beyond physical limits, emitting a faint, brittle cracking sound.

The hydraulic buffer shafts of the leg armor were compressed to the limit within a second, emitting a shrill pressure-release shriek.

Not one of the fourteen men bent their waists.

They bore the downward impact force with the muscles of their thighs and waists.

The massive energy had nowhere to dissipate and could only be channeled into the ground through their legs.

The ground within a radius of dozens of meters emitted a dull roar.

The permafrost layer was collapsed directly by this immense force; with the fourteen men as the center, the ground sank nearly a meter overall, forming a regular crater.

The engine stopped.

It rested steadily on the fourteen pairs of palms, the armor plate at its bottom pressed with deep indentations by the power gloves.

The extremely hot metal surface ignited the rubber coating on the gauntlets, and flames burned on their forearms.

The overload cut off all pain feedback.

The fourteen Astartes maintained their lifting posture; no one let out a scream, and no one collapsed from exhaustion.

They were like fourteen steel pillars nailed into the ground, using a mixture of flesh and machine to complete this counter-intuitive gravity capture.

Inside the Operations Cabin.

Li Cang looked at the intact gravity engine on the surveillance screen and swiped away the emergency backup plan window he had already half-opened.

He cut into the conference room's communication channel.

The holographic projection lit up again; the half-mechanical low-level Priest supervisor was still standing there.

"The item has arrived; it's outside." Li Cang's voice was steady, without any fluctuation.

The Priest supervisor's mechanical probe turned, seeing the scene outside the shipyard through the base's internal surveillance network.

Fourteen black iron towers emitting dark red light were holding up an engine emitting white smoke.

The iconic three-gear emblem on the engine's shell looked extremely striking in the reflection of the firelight.

The gears in the supervisor's cervical spine emitted another burst of uncontrollable clicking.

The core secret of the High Data Monastery, an Archmagos-level engine, had been caught by hand by a bunch of gene-mutants.

His logic matrix could not process this completely unreasonable method of physical acquisition.

"Connect it," Li Cang did not give the supervisor any time to crash. "Your blueprints, your interfaces; install it into the shipyard's keel right now."

The cooling pipes behind the supervisor spewed out a puff of white smoke.

The underlying survival protocol forcibly overrode the awe of high-level items.

He waved his mechanical tentacles and issued construction orders to the Servitors outside.

A large number of tracked transport Servitors slid out from inside the shipyard.

They tied thick towing cables to both sides of the engine and took the heavy object from the Astartes' hands.

The fourteen recruits lowered their arms simultaneously.

Flames were still burning on their gauntlets, and their bodies were trembling slightly from excessive overload.

The Servitors dragged the engine into the shipyard's core power room.

The low-level Priest supervisor dragged his red robes onto the construction platform, holding various models of welding tools and data connection cables.

He dared not look at the three-gear emblem, simply executing the docking procedure mechanically.

Thick energy conduction pipes were connected one by one to the engine's output terminal.

Quantum transmission cables were plugged into the gravity control module's data interface.

The high-temperature welding torch sprayed blinding blue light at the interface, completely melting and sealing the metal edges.

The entire process lasted nearly two hours.

Li Cang had been staring at the progress bar in the Operations Cabin the whole time.

The moment the last ground wire was welded shut, a string of green data flashed across the shipyard's main control panel.

That was the access code sent by the Cyber AI virus after confirming the hardware connection.

A huge golden prompt box popped up on the main screen of the Operations Cabin.

[Advanced gravity engine connection complete.]

[Power core matching degree: 100%.]

[Orbital Shipyard basic module activated.]

[Frigate-class starship construction authorization officially unlocked.]

Li Cang looked at these four lines of text and pulled his hand back from the console.

As long as he tilted the base's resources toward shipbuilding, he would possess a strike force capable of truly crossing the stars.

He finally had the leverage to challenge the mastermind deep within Mars from afar.

But the system did not leave him any time to plan for the future.

The very next second after the golden prompt box disappeared.

The external environment monitoring module of the Holographic Operations Cabin suddenly erupted with an extremely shrill, highest-level alarm.

The alarm did not last long; it stopped abruptly within half a second, as if its power had been cut off by some invisible force.

Li Cang jerked his head up and looked at the external panoramic surveillance on the screen.

The sky above the base had changed.

The green aurora, which normally shimmered year-round due to the polar high-latitude region, vanished completely in an instant.

There was no cloud cover, no gradual transition of day and night.

It was as if the sky had been smothered by someone using a gigantic black cloth.

It was a dead black, absolute, swallowing all starlight and reflections.

Outside the shipyard.

The low-level Priest supervisor had just put down his welding torch, preparing for the final data debugging.

The piece of metal scrap he had just cut off under his feet suddenly trembled without warning.

There was no roar of an earthquake, no explosion of air.

That solid piece of metal, weighing over a dozen jin, drifted lightly off the metal grid floor, floating toward mid-air at an extremely slow speed.

A string of red question marks flashed in the supervisor's optical probe.

Before he could perform a logical analysis of this phenomenon, the surrounding environment began to collapse completely.

On the construction platform, all the wrenches, cutting saws, and spare cables that were not bolted down broke free from the shackles of gravity, rising into mid-air like a swarm of disturbed insects.

A Servitor that had just had its tracks removed for maintenance began to tilt its heavy metal torso, then both feet left the ground, flailing its mechanical arms helplessly in the air.

A puddle of black machine oil leaking from its body gathered into perfect, spherical droplets in mid-air, drifting about.

The fourteen Astartes recruits standing in the crater drew their Bolters simultaneously.

But they discovered that their tactical boots were losing their grip on the ground.

Even power armor weighing half a ton could not resist this deprivation of the most basic physical laws.

The gravel, ice shards, and soil on the ground, along with their massive bodies, began to slowly lift off the surface.

Inside the Operations Cabin.

The water in the metal cup on Li Cang's desk turned into transparent beads, floating upward and scattering upon hitting the ceiling.

This was not an enemy attack.

No spaceships had descended, no energy weapons were bombarding them.

This was the Noctis Labyrinth, deep within Mars; after discovering its surveillance node had been destroyed, it had bypassed conventional troop deployment and used some unfathomable high-dimensional method to cross the galaxy and impose sanctions on this area.

Gravity had been completely stripped away.

The entire base, along with all the life and machinery within, had been cast into a weightless hell where there was no up, down, left, or right.