174: Chapter 174 Operation Heavenly Punishment

Seven full days had passed since that wedding.

Black Tiger A-Fu, having finished his honeymoon, had long since returned to his base, full of energy.

As the Chapter Master of the [Hand of God] Legion, A-Fu had indeed been quite busy lately.

Because the Hand of God Legion and the Hellfire Legion had reached a strategic cooperation, they were currently jointly developing a rich meteorite belt in low orbit.

Therefore, the vast majority of the legion's main members were not at the surface camp, but were holed up in space mining ships all day, breaking rocks to earn points.

Fortunately, that mining belt was not far from the Outpost Planet base camp.

Just this morning.

Every player who had registered in the system backend for the [Mobius Campaign] saw a striking mission countdown box pop up in their PV!

[Campaign Mission: Operation Divine Punishment!]

[Mission Brief: The Imperial Governor is unjust, the Spark shall rise! Objective — Capture Mobius Prime!]

[All registered players, please immediately return to your respective legion bases or designated assembly coordinates to organize your weapons and equipment. The expedition fleet will ignite and depart in 4 hours! Countdown: 3:59:59!]

With the appearance of the countdown, the The Fourth Calamity, who had been scattered across various planetary sectors grinding mobs, began to swarm toward the assembly points like a school of sharks that had smelled blood.

...

Shelter, Fourth Defense Zone.

This was the exclusive legion base for the pure tough-guy guild [Brotherhood of Steel].

Legion Commander [Use Fire Punch] was standing in front of a mirror, preening as he adjusted his heavy Power Armor, which was painted with various exaggerated war patterns.

Because this kid had heaven-defying luck and was the first player on the entire server to awaken his psionic talent, he was currently far ahead of everyone else in his mastery of flame psionics.

Even more absurdly, the guy must have lost his mind, as he had actually started copying the practices of those weirdo boys in the Ork tribes.

He had forcefully welded a whole row of strange-looking psionic amplification coils, picked up from who knows where, onto the broad back armor of his Power Armor!

As for whether this thing actually had an amplification effect on a physical level, that depended entirely on whether his own Waaagh! Energy was strong enough.

Beside him, [Wang Shouyi 13-Spice] was struggling to attach high-explosive grenades to his set of Ranger Power Armor, which had been thickened with three layers of adamantine armor plates.

He looked at Flame Fist, who was still preening in front of the mirror, and rolled his eyes in annoyance.

"Stop looking in the mirror, bro! No matter how much you groom that face, it still looks like crap."

Wang Shouyi 13-Spice urged, "Hurry up and put on your helmet! The main force is about to finish assembling. If we're late, we'll lose battle merit points!"

Flame Fist unhurriedly adjusted the collar of his Power Armor's inner lining: "Don't panic. Before a great battle, one must maintain composure. Let me comb my hair again; the hairstyle cannot be ruined."

Wang Shouyi 13-Spice was completely speechless and went full sarcasm: "What is it? Seeing A-Fu get married to an NPC has made you jealous? Are you planning to find a girl in the Hive City and marry on the spot after we take down Mobius?"

"I think that little nurse Willow in Shelter's infirmary is quite nice." Flame Fist stroked his chin, looking serious.

"Be a decent human being!" Wang Shouyi cursed directly, "Willow is only fifteen! And in terms of figure or face, how does she compare to her big sister Rhine's long legs? This is purely a perverted loli-con mentality!"

Just as the two were rambling crazily about which NPC looked better, [Nicotine Truth] ran in from outside the base, covered in sweat, shouting excitedly as he ran: "Let's go, let's go! Stop dawdling! The spaceship Brother Kun sent to pick us up has arrived! Holy crap, the scale of it is absolutely insane!"

Nicotine Truth swallowed hard and sighed with envy, "By the way, when will our Brotherhood of Steel be able to pool money together to get a big spaceship of our own? Always hitching a ride like this isn't a long-term solution."

Flame Fist put on his heavy helmet and patted his shoulder nonchalantly: "What do you know? This is called strategic freeloading!"

Flame Fist righteously imparted his freeloading theory, "Think about it, how expensive is a spaceship? Maintenance, fuel, repairs—which one doesn't cost points? As long as our legion doesn't build its own ship, then every time we go to war, all of us can shamelessly ride on the best, most badass ship on the whole server! Isn't that way cheaper than building our own? Let's go!"

The group finished packing, pushed open the base gate, and arrived at the spacious assembly plaza.

As the server-recognized legion of tough guys, the average level of players in the Brotherhood of Steel was the highest in the game! And they were all muscle-bound beasts who had maxed out their Strength and Agility stats!

This was all thanks to them being rooted in the northern wilderness every day, fighting for territory and brawling with the Orks.

Moreover, with the increase in levels and the off-the-charts stats, these guys had even started to find Power Armor too heavy and detrimental to their performance.

They often wouldn't wear armor, baring their chests and daring to charge directly into the Ork camps to fight those Ork bosses hand-to-hand!

The legion even held daily perverse tournaments to see who could kill the most Orks with their bare hands.

But it was precisely because of this overly philosophical combat style that the total number of players in the Brotherhood of Steel never grew much, staying stuck at around 10,000 members.

At this moment, hovering silently above the base of this group of muscular tough guys was a massive spaceship that one couldn't even see the end of at a glance!

At first glance, this strange warship, pieced together and modified from countless modules, was over a kilometer long!

The tough-guy players in the plaza looked up one after another, letting out bursts of uncultured exclamations.

"Holy f*ck!"

"What the f*ck... why does this shape look so familiar?"

Pi She widened his eyes and pointed at the sky, "Isn't this f*cking the Star Destroyer from the movie Star Wars?!"

In mid-air, that magic-modified warship, with its exterior painted silver-white and shaped like a huge isosceles triangle, was spewing plasma exhaust as it slowly approached the 300-meter-high docking platform on the outskirts of Shelter.

As the heavy boarding ramp lowered, [ikun True Fan] walked off the ship arrogantly, looking like Doctor Octopus.

"Flame Fist! What are you staring at? Hurry up and bring your brothers on board! We're setting off!" ikun True Fan shouted.

Flame Fist had just been talking about how he liked strategic freeloading. But now, truly seeing that another legion had managed to hand-craft such a badass-looking triangular warship, he was still a bit jealous deep down.

Flame Fist walked up the ramp onto the ship, wrapped an arm around ikun's shoulder, and said sourly: "Business is good, buddy! This Star Destroyer design is something else! Our legion has just been focusing on melee, we don't have this kind of engineering technology. How about it, after this battle, will you take our legion's shipbuilding order?"

ikun True Fan raised his eyebrows triumphantly: "Duh, of course I'll take it! Otherwise, why do you think I wasted so much fuel to fly an empty ship all the way to your base just to show off? Isn't it to drum up business!"

"You guys go on board and check out the goods first. After we finish this Governor's assault battle, bring the battle merit points you've earned and come find me. I'll custom-make a pure melee ramming ship for you! I guarantee you tough guys will be satisfied!"

"Alright! That's exactly what I was waiting to hear!" Flame Fist waved his hand, "Brothers! Board the ship!"

It took nearly an hour just for the 10,000 heavy-duty tough guys, with an average weight of over 300 kilograms (including people and equipment), to line up and board.

As the last player finished boarding, dozens of giant nuclear fusion engines at the rear of this massive knock-off Star Destroyer let out a deafening roar simultaneously! A powerful anti-gravity thrust field instantly pushed this steel beast high into the sky!

Before long, the ship successfully broke through the atmosphere and arrived in low orbit above the Outpost Planet.

At this time, low orbit had already turned into a bustling steel jungle. It was packed densely with all sorts of chaotic, participating spaceships!

There were the dozen majestic-looking standard River-class ships belonging to the [Scourge Legion]; there was Lin Li's streamlined Golden Age yacht [sea breeze no. 9]; but more numerous were the Frankenstein warships pieced together by various large, medium, and small guild battle groups using defensive boats and armed merchant ships captured during previous boarding battles, with armor plates forcibly welded on.

Even on the outermost edge of the fleet, a large number of suicide flight squadrons composed of solo players were circling!

These players couldn't afford big ships, so they simply dismantled the cargo holds of civilian shuttles, keeping only the pilot seat and engine, and forcibly welded on a few laser cannons.

These pieces of junk, which completely abandoned defense in pursuit of extreme speed, were jokingly called "space firecrackers" by the players.

The expedition fleet had assembled, and the cold command of the supreme commander, Ushtan, came through the communication channel.

"All fleet units, attention! The first combat phase is commencing!"

"Brotherhood of Steel! As the melee assault group, you will take on the first-strike mission of the first phase!"

"Under the covering fire of the solo player flight squadrons, you will board rocket drop pods and be deployed at maximum speed directly onto the defensive platforms in the outer orbit of Mobius Prime!"

"Mission objective: Destroy the energy hubs and anti-aircraft artillery arrays inside the defensive platforms!"

"Once you have completely paralyzed the orbital defense network, the Galactic Empire Stormtroopers will immediately cut into orbit to conduct high-altitude surface bombardment! This will open up a safe landing zone for the subsequent ground landing legions!"

Hearing this mission arrangement, which could be called a suicide charge, Flame Fist, who was in the ship's standby cabin, was not afraid at all, but rather trembling with excitement.

"Click!" He let out a deafening battle cry over the legion communication channel: "Brothers! We've waited so long! It's finally our turn to fight this space boarding battle!"

"Nothing else needs to be said! Charge in! Tear them apart!"

"Fight! Awesome!"

"Fight!! Awesome!!" 10,000 muscular tough guys roared in unison.

Subsequently, in the dim drop zone at the bottom of the warship, 10,000 players wearing heavy Power Armor began to orderly squeeze into those iron shells that didn't even have shock-absorbing springs, buckling their seatbelts. They were making final preparations for the bloody battle on the defensive platforms that was about to come!

...

Mobius Prime, the Governor's Mansion on the top floor of the capital Hive City.

In the spacious and luxurious office, the air was suffocating. Governor Cromwell's hair was disheveled, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had long since lost that aloof aristocratic composure of the past.

Since the expedition fleet was wiped out as an organized force and the Sector Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites ruthlessly refused to deal with the Spark Alliance, Cromwell had become more irritable day by day.

Although he didn't understand warfare, he still had basic strategic common sense. Air superiority was lost.

This meant that before long, those country bumpkins entrenched in the junkyard would drive their captured fleet to force their way into the atmosphere and launch a ground landing battle directly on the surface of the Hive City!

And once they entered the ground urban warfare phase, even if the Defense Force ultimately held the Hive City, those heavy industrial production lines and refineries on the surface would definitely suffer devastating damage.

Factories destroyed, production capacity severed. When the Imperial Departmento Munitorum' tax fleet arrived at Mobius next year, if he couldn't pay the massive tithe, he and his whole family would all be hanged on the gallows of the Inquisition!

However, it never rains but it pours. The trouble didn't just come from outer space.

Due to the disastrous failure of the last expedition, many powerful nobles on Mobius Prime who had suffered heavy losses had already begun to waver in their support for Cromwell's rule, no longer backing him as strongly as before.

Fortunately, the political platform of that so-called rebel leader would deprive the nobles of their rights, so in order to preserve their own wealth and status, these nobles were currently barely tied to the same sinking ship as Cromwell.

But the most deadly part was internal.