14: The end of the US military base!

U.S. Military Darwin Air Force Base, night.

Colonel Phelps, the base commander, put down the phone, an unsettling feeling spreading in his heart.

Darwin had been turbulent these days, and the Air Force Base was at the center of the storm.

From the initial incident of a certain idiotic soldier, whose head was full of sperm, assaulting an Indigenous girl, to a certain brain-dead keyboard warrior actually putting his radical online rhetoric into reality and killing Moe Water, then to the same batch of soldiers on leave from the base breaking into the Aboriginal Party Headquarters and massacring people (those soldiers are still missing), and then to a city-wide parade of tens of thousands of people, led by Indigenous people.

Then, at the end of the parade, the base opened fire uncontrollably, massacring the trespassers.

This entire chain of events was like a snowball, growing larger and larger, becoming more tragic as it progressed.

Many aspects gave Colonel Phelps a sense of abruptness, as if an invisible hand was pushing and manipulating things from behind the scenes.

However, Colonel Phelps also felt that Australia was U.S. Military territory, and this was not an international hotspot. What was the point of stirring up trouble here?

He couldn't figure it out.

Colonel Phelps had no choice but to patiently wait for instructions from the Pentagon in the U.S. Military.

It was nighttime in Australia, but it should be daytime, early morning, on the East Coast of the U.S. Military's homeland.

It would take at least one or two hours for the people at the Pentagon to start work, hold a meeting, come up with countermeasures, and issue instructions.

Before that, the only thing Colonel Phelps could do was try to communicate with Darwin City's municipal agencies.

Initially, he could connect, but then communication was cut off. Now, he couldn't get through to any phone in the urban area, and online communication had also fallen silent.

At this point, Colonel Phelps couldn't sit still.

He ordered a drone operator to control a military drone to leave the military base and fly south to photograph the urban area.

He and his subordinates then watched the synchronized aerial footage on the computer.

Looking down from mid-air, the vast main urban area of Darwin City was almost pitch black, with no continuous light source anywhere.

This meant that all the streetlights in the city were off, all the vehicles on the streets had stalled, and either all the citizens' homes had power outages, or they were all afraid to turn on their lights.

Colonel Phelps suddenly understood what the previous communication interruption was about.

It was probably due to the power system, communication system, etc., being shut down and jammed.

This was completely illogical.

Darwin City was currently overrun with street hooligans and crime everywhere; the high-level officials of the city government would never issue such a foolish order as a city-wide power outage, let alone actively block external communications!

Something particularly bad must have happened!

Colonel Phelps had countless conjectures at once, and his sense of unease intensified.

He felt even more strongly that this whole matter reeked of a conspiracy!

The drone flew a circle, didn't capture anything valuable, and had to return due to battery life.

After this, Colonel Phelps and his high-ranking subordinates had a small disagreement.

Some believed that troops should be sent into the city to quell the rebellion, while others suggested staying put within the base, making fewer mistakes by doing less.

Before they could reach a conclusion, the people in the command room suddenly felt a slight tremor in the ground.

It felt as if countless large-tonnage vehicles were driving on the road together.

Colonel Phelps was about to send someone out to scout.

A soldier rushed in, his face full of fear and dread.

“No, it's bad, Colonel, the American military is attacking—”

Colonel Phelps frowned and asked, “What American military is attacking?”

The soldier could only stammer out one word: “Gate, the gate—”

Colonel Phelps quickly switched the monitor to the base's main gate.

Then all the high-ranking base officials were dumbfounded.

Under the lights of the base's main gate, a group of massive objects, larger than tanks, were rumbling towards the main gate.

The commotion was so great that even the surveillance camera was shaking.

Clearly, this was also the cause of the earlier tremor.

But how was it possible?

On Australia's territory, how could a large armored force attack a U.S. military base?

Then, as the enemy group rapidly approached, Colonel Phelps identified them.

Those things, even larger than tanks, were not war machines at all, but rather some super-sized engineering vehicles.

They either had huge tires and high suspension systems, or super-sized iron shovels, or large iron balls hanging, or were simply super-large semi-trailer transport trucks, the kind with their cargo compartments full of goods.

Colonel Phelps quickly realized where these vehicles came from.

—Not far south of the base, there was a regional branch of a large mining and transport company.

There were many large engineering vehicles used for road construction, building, transportation, and blasting.

But how could these large vehicles suddenly drive to the base without prior notification?

Considering the previous eerie darkness throughout the city, Colonel Phelps dared not delay and immediately shouted:

“Prepare for battle, quickly bring out the tanks—”

Against such large engineering vehicles, ordinary firearms were no longer very effective; only vehicle-to-vehicle combat, with large-caliber artillery, was the right approach.

And just as the people in the command room began to move, on the screen, those large engineering vehicles had already burst through the base's main gate with a roar.

Countless large iron beasts stormed into the base.