Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 843 Electric Shock
"Deep-sea giant eels? Are they the creatures that the Pioneer icebreaker encountered before? Where did they come from?" After hearing the name "deep-sea giant eels", Yeager did not let down his guard - although the combat power of a single creature was not as strong as that of the "Zokog Kai", with such a large number, the threat level was still quite high.
The last time these creatures appeared in human vision, they almost sank the "Pioneer".
"Judging from the outlines of the creatures scanned by Yaguna Kator, they must be giant deep-sea eels," Layton responded. "These things seem to have drilled out from under the pyramids on the seafloor."
Undersea pyramid... Is there really something wrong with this place?
"The nearest giant deep-sea eel is only a hundred meters away from you, get ready to engage!" Layton shouted in the communication channel.
"Ready the 14th, 17th, 18th, and 22nd explosive harpoons." Yeager said as he opened the safety of the weapon, "Once the target enters the visual range, fire immediately!"
The searchlight equipped on the "Zokog Kai" has a maximum combat illumination range of thirty meters in this sea area. Considering the speed of the deep-sea giant eel, a distance of thirty meters is just a blink of an eye.
The attack window left for Yeager and Wilson was only the blink of an eye.
The maximum combat illumination range of a searchlight does not refer to the extreme illumination range - when the light is concentrated into a beam, the beam of the searchlight can penetrate about 100 meters of water, but it is difficult for a concentrated beam of light to capture a high-speed moving target. Based on the distribution and number of searchlights on the "Zokoko Kai", if you want to illuminate the surrounding waters without blind spots, each searchlight needs to adjust the illumination angle to at least 35 degrees. Under this diffusion, the light can only penetrate the sea water 30 meters away at most.
(The illumination angle should actually be expressed in solid angles, which involves the knowledge of steradian and square degrees. It may be difficult for non-optical readers to understand. It took me more than an hour to figure out the relationship and calculation method between these units when I looked up information myself, so I will simplify it here. It is assumed that the light of the searchlight is a right cone , and the vertex angle of the cross-sectional plane is taken as the illumination angle.)
Yeager was holding his breath, his thumb on the launch button, ready to press it at any time.
Although the explosive harpoon is a "fired" weapon , it should actually be classified as a melee weapon. Under the water pressure and density at this depth, the effective killing distance is about fifty meters. Considering the defense capabilities of the deep-sea giant eel, this distance has to be reduced by half, which is exactly the same as the visible distance of Yeger and others.
Considering the size of "Zokog Kai" and the giant deep-sea eel, this distance is already considered close combat distance.
However, the main killing power of the explosive harpoon does not come from puncture, but from the explosion caused in the target's body after puncture. For most of the indigenous creatures on Alpha, the internal defense of their bodies is far lower than the defense of their surface. Even for deep-sea creatures living under terrifying water pressure, the killing effect caused by an explosion inside their bodies is definitely better than an explosion outside their bodies.
"Here it comes!" A high-speed moving black shadow suddenly crashed into the edge of the illuminated water area, and Yeager pressed the red launch button without hesitation.
Accompanied by a dull explosion in the launch tube, four explosive harpoons shot out, dragging a long trail of bubbles, heading straight for the black shadow.
Relying on his extraordinary dynamic vision and rich combat experience, his brain had already automatically calculated the ballistic trajectory the moment the four explosive harpoons were fired. After overlapping this ballistic trajectory with the target's movement trajectory, he got the final result - two missed and two hit.
The situation was basically the same as expected. Yeager fired four explosive harpoons in one breath to ensure the hit rate as much as possible. As long as one explosive harpoon could hit the target, it would be considered a success.
If two can hit the target, that's double insurance.
But what happened in the next moment was completely beyond Yeger's expectations.
The two explosive harpoons did hit the target, but they did not pierce the target's body - the moment they came into contact with the target's body, the sharp explosive harpoons were bounced away, and the tip of the harpoon even turned into a bright red like molten iron due to the intense friction with the target's body.
It was not until the tail of this "deep-sea giant eel" hit the external armor of the "Zokog Kai" hard that Yeager could see the other party's appearance clearly.
The giant deep-sea eel is black all over and has no scales. Although it has mucous membrane on its body surface, the skin under the membrane is extremely tough and can withstand direct fire from a 25mm caliber machine gun at zero distance... The giant deep-sea eel that Yeager saw was also black, but in this black color, there was a bit more metallic texture.
Suffering such a heavy blow, the external armor plate in front of the "Zokog Kai" was directly torn apart, and a huge dent appeared in the internal buffer armor. The entire machine was directly lifted up under the action of the huge force and floated diagonally upwards.
"Land! Land quickly!" Layton said urgently in the communication channel, "Zokoko Kai's mobility is not as good as these deep-sea giant eels. Only by grasping the ground can we have a chance to counterattack!"
It is difficult to find a stable support point and leverage . If it is hit or whipped one after another, the whole body will most likely roll continuously in the sea water. In this way, the battle will fall into an extremely passive state.
"I know, I'm adjusting my attitude. I know we can't get entangled with these things in the water." Yeager said quickly. He held the joystick in one hand and swiped frantically on the touch screen with the other hand. He corrected all the angles of the jets above the fuselage, and then sprayed at maximum power at the same time, forcibly "pressing" the blown-off fuselage onto the seabed again.
The moment the legs of "Zokog Kai" touched the ground, twelve three-meter-long anchor nails were driven into the ground at the same time, fixing the body firmly to the ground.
Although doing so would cause the body to be unable to buffer external forces when being attacked, it was still better than being whipped into a rolling ball by this group of deep-sea giant eels.
From being unfamiliar at the beginning, Yeger has gradually become familiar with the feeling of controlling the body underwater in just a few minutes - this feeling is just like being in space, except that the vacuum outside has been replaced by high-density seawater.
As an experienced pilot, Yeager had about 1,500 hours of flying time in the space environment. After applying his experiences from that period into the operation, he began to feel at ease.
But this experience was far from enough for the following battle - just as the "Zokog Kai" had gained a foothold on the seabed, two giant deep-sea eels attacked it, and the alternating whipping from left to right directly destroyed the left arm and a quarter of the external armor on the right side of the machine. If the cockpit had not adopted a suspended structure, Yeager and Wilson would have been shaken to death by now.
"What's going on? Yeger? Why don't you fight back?" All Layton could see was the "line picture" presented by the environmental scanning equipment of the Yaguna Tor, and he could not see the real scene underwater. In his opinion, except for launching four explosive harpoons at the beginning, the "Zokok Kai" had been in a passive situation of taking a beating and not fighting back.
"Layton! These deep-sea giant eels... don't seem to be ordinary deep-sea giant eels!" Yeager raised the shield with the only remaining mechanical arm of the body to block the close attack of the fourth deep-sea eel - it blocked it, but the body still retreated more than ten meters, four of the twelve anchor bolts broke, and the remaining eight plowed eight deep grooves on the ground.
The external armor of the machine had been severely deformed, and many of the temporarily welded places showed signs of tearing. The large number of bubbles emerging from the gaps indicated that the outer structure of the Zokok had been severely damaged, and many parts had lost their airtightness.
Sitting in the cockpit, Yeager could even hear the inner shell of the fuselage groaning under the heavy load. Depressions ranging in size from coins to fists, caused by water pressure, kept appearing on the surface of the fuselage, just like the densely packed craters on the moon, one inside another.
"The explosive harpoon can't pierce their skin!" Yeager continued, "Not even at very close range! The surface of these deep-sea giant eels has a strange metallic texture. They are either a new subspecies or some unknown mutation has occurred."
"The surface of the body has a metallic texture?" Leighton was stunned for a moment, and someone immediately said, "Many indigenous creatures on Alpha Planet will absorb metal elements from food or minerals, and enrich these metal elements in parts such as teeth, horns or claws to enhance the attack power of these parts. There are also creatures that move metal elements to the stratum corneum on the surface of the body to enhance their own defense... These deep-sea giant eels live in the ruins of the underwater city. They may have absorbed a large amount of metal elements from the remains of the Alpha civilization, so they have become like this!"
The person who spoke was a young reserve hunter, and he was also an orphan left by the Hound's fallen subordinates. Before joining the God Hunter Group, this young man had just graduated from the biology department of a well-known college and was one of the few children that the Hound had noticed the most.
"The explosive harpoon can penetrate even a 20mm steel plate... The skin that can block the explosive harpoon, the metal eaten by these deep-sea giant eels is probably Nino alloy, right?" Layton murmured, "If it is really Nino alloy, then the weapons equipped on this 'Zokog Kai' will be a joke in front of them, right?"
"I don't know if it's Nino alloy! Anyway, explosive harpoons are ineffective against them! The only trump card we have left is the 'Tusk IV' torpedo! I have no better choice!" Yeager roared, turning to look at Wilson who was still calm, "How is the condition of the machine? Can it withstand a torpedo exploding at close range?"
Wilson just shook his head silently: "It can't hold on... Even if the deep-sea giant eel stops attacking now, this machine can only hold on for ten to fifteen minutes at most. The shock wave of the torpedo explosion will further accelerate the disintegration of the machine..."
"But doing nothing is the same as waiting to die!" Yeger said hatefully, "If I have a choice, I will choose to die together with these beasts!"
"I have no objection. The right to launch the torpedo is yours." Wilson said lightly.
His cyborg eye flashed with high-frequency, dense light, as if it was performing precise and massive calculations.
"Wait! Yeager, wait!" Hearing that the machine might disintegrate at any time, Layton couldn't help but stop it, "Don't rush to die with those monsters! Remove the foot anchors, adjust the direction of the thruster nozzle, and then fire torpedoes far away. Try to use the aftermath of the shock wave to get rid of these deep-sea giant eels, and then move towards the direction of Yaguna Kotor!"
"No, it's too late!" Yeger shook his head repeatedly. On another screen, he could see that more than a dozen giant deep-sea eels had rushed to a place less than a hundred meters away from the mecha. The speed of these deep-sea creatures in the water was far faster than the "Zokog Kai", and even faster than the fired torpedoes. They had no chance of escaping!
It would be better to take advantage of the fact that these giant deep-sea eels are gathered together, detonate the torpedoes directly nearby, and pull as many as possible to serve as scapegoats!
Although Yeger felt it was a loss to exchange his life for the lives of these beasts, this was the limit of what he could do.
"Hans..." Yeger silently recited his partner's name, "If you are watching, please bless me... I don't ask to stay alive, I just hope... I can kill a few more..."
Yeager resolutely pressed the torpedo launch button.
The detonation time of all torpedoes is set at 0.5 seconds, which means that they will explode as soon as they leave the launch port.
"Zokog Kai" and Yeager, who were at the center of the explosion, had no chance of survival.
But at this critical moment, a giant deep-sea eel seemed to have sensed Yeager's intention to die together with him, and did not use its body to hit "Zokog Kai", but instead put its head right on top of the mecha.
The next second, the screen in front of Yeager went completely black, and naturally no torpedo was launched.
"Damn, I forgot that these things can also release high voltage electricity!" Yeager stepped on the pedals twice angrily, but the machine did not respond at all - the previous attack had destroyed the insulation protection layer of the "Zokoku Kai", and the deep-sea giant eel only gave it an electric shock, causing the control system of the "Zokoku Kai" to crash.
"The main control computer has overload protection and should not be burned out, but it will take at least thirty seconds to restart automatically." Wilson said to Yeager.
