Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 932 Night Flight
"Come to think of it, why are you wrapped up so tightly? Aren't you feeling stuffy?" asked another mercenary.
The area where Mukach Fortress is located is adjacent to the Molten Mine Area and can be regarded as the place with the warmest average temperature on Alpha.
"Albino, have you heard of it?" The information dealer rolled up his sleeves, revealing a wrist that was morbidly white. "For people like me, not only can our skin not be exposed to the sun, but we will even go blind if we look directly at the sun... even if the sun is filtered by the radiation cloud."
"Hasn't this disease been conquered long ago? Through gene adjustment technology?" The mercenary obviously knew about this disease and asked.
"Human genes are constantly changing. If that's the case, there is no disease that can be completely cured." The information dealer said in an understated tone, "Besides, do you think I'm the kind of person who can afford gene adjustment surgery?"
"Not like that." The mercenary shook his head. "Then you are really miserable."
"You'll get used to it," the information dealer said, pulling the scarf up a little more.
"Uh...that's right." The mercenary was stunned for a moment and nodded. Compared to the doubts and threats he had made in the Trigger Bar before, his attitude changed 180 degrees after the information provided by this person was confirmed.
Regardless of whether the other party obtained this information through his own reasoning ability or other means, it means that this is a very capable person who is worth making friends with... What's more, the other party can actually get a "black card" and arrive at the Stone Forest Base before them. This alone can explain a lot of problems.
This intelligence dealer with albinism might be related to General Maginot!
"By the way, what's your name, brother?" the mercenary asked in a friendly way. "Oh, by the way, I forgot to introduce myself first. My name is Soap and his is Giraffe. We have been hanging around in Mukach for about half a year and we are quite famous. Last time the heretics attacked the Mukach base, we also participated in the defense of the base and fought off several waves of attacks together with those soldiers."
Since the other party might be General Maginot's man, if he wanted to get close to him, he had to describe himself as "great and glorious" - having been in the underworld for so long, Soap had already become very smooth, and he was very familiar with the trick of "speaking differently to different people and different things to different people".
If the other party is a free mercenary, then his speech will become complaints and spitting out the difficulty of the mission, and trying to win over the other party and tie him to the "same boat". On the contrary, he must show that he is loyal to the Ark and humans, and must not let the other party suspect him - maybe this guy is a pawn planted by General Maginot in the team to monitor them, the mercenaries.
Six hundred thousand has been obtained. If possible, Soap and Giraffe would like to spend all the money in the store of Mukach Base and then run away... Of course, it's just a thought.
"Joker, you can call me Joker." said the information dealer.
"Uh..." Mercenaries usually address each other by code names unless they are very close comrades. Even a name like "John" or "Jack" is basically a pseudonym. There is nothing wrong with this... But when normal people give themselves a nickname, they will still use some relatively "normal" words... The word "clown" always sounds like a very twisted psychological suggestion to people.
"Is this a nickname given to you by others?" The giraffe couldn't help asking, "I've never heard of anyone calling themselves a clown... Ah, brother, I don't mean to laugh at you, I just feel a little puzzled..."
Of course, I wouldn't give myself an insulting nickname. Moreover, the word "clown" has many not-so-good meanings on the Internet nowadays. It might be okay to use it occasionally to make fun of myself, but it's a bit too much to use it as a code name .
Even though it was "Old Dog", his code name was not "Dog" but "Hound". If someone he didn't know dared to call him "Old Dog", being scolded by him would be the least of his punishment.
"My name, Joker, comes from the Joker in playing cards," explained the Joker.
"Oh... so that's what you meant. Now that you mention it, I suddenly feel that this nickname is very domineering, hehe." Soap calmly nudged the giraffe who had said the wrong thing with his elbow and apologized with an awkward smile.
"The plane takes off." said the clown, and the next second, a vibration came from under their butts. The "Amran-class" transport plane rose vertically from the ground into the air, and soon climbed to an altitude of two thousand meters.
The "clown" pulled his scarf again to cover the small piece of exposed skin above his nose.
But what Soap and the Giraffe didn't realize was that it was almost night time and this hemisphere of Alpha would be completely shrouded in darkness. No sunlight would be able to shine through the radiation clouds to cause any harm to the Joker.
The "clown" lowered his head and glanced at the dial on the inside of his wrist. Below the grid that displayed the time, there was a customizable countdown. The countdown numbers jumped exactly from ten hours nine hours, fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds.
There was a barely perceptible hint of sadness in the Joker's eyes, but he was wearing dark sunglasses, so even Soap, who was sitting opposite him, could not see the change in his eyes.
There are many more dangers in flying at night than during the day, but it is also more covert... and compared to being discovered by the enemies attacking the Ark, these dangers become insignificant.
The transport plane was being piloted by a veteran. At this altitude and speed, the cabin was as stable as the first-class cabin of a passenger plane. Even the cup of instant coffee that had just been made with soap and was almost overflowing to the brim and placed on the armrest of the seat did not have the liquid inside shake out.
"I should have gotten a good night's sleep in the morning...ah..." The yawning giraffe stretched and complained, "From midnight the day before yesterday, I have slept less than four hours so far. I don't want to die suddenly before the battle even starts."
"Would you like one?" The captain of the "Spear" team, who was sitting closest to the hatch, took out two syringes from his pocket and shook them in the direction of the giraffe.
"Wow, military stimulants, and a special model for special forces. This is good stuff!" The giraffe said in surprise, and immediately stretched out his hand with a shameless face, but the other party directly took the syringe back.
"When we asked you to choose your equipment, these medicines were also included. Didn't you take them yourself?" asked the captain of the Spear Squad.
"I took it...but I'm reluctant to use it." The giraffe muttered.
"This thing is not for you to use now. The side effects after the effect of the drug wears off are enough to make people faint... or even go into shock." The captain of the Spear Squadron suddenly became serious. "If you feel sleepy now, you still have a chance to catch up on some sleep on the plane before arriving at the mission site."
"I know, I've been a soldier, too. Maybe I joined the army earlier than you." The giraffe pursed his lips and said, "I was just complaining, why did you take it so seriously?"
"I don't like joking with people, especially when we are on a mission." The captain of the Spear Squad said coldly. Not only him, but even the other soldiers of the Spear Squad looked at Giraffe and his group of mercenaries with a hint of disgust.
"Who am I showing this grim face to?" The giraffe said secretly in his heart, and turned his head to look out the window - they were now above the "South Corridor of the Ark". As the name suggests, the "South Corridor of the Ark" is a narrow strip of land located in the south of the Ark. On one side is an abandoned mine filled with high-concentration radiation, and on the other side is a dangerous swamp inhabited by a large number of indigenous creatures. This relatively "safe" corridor is less than one kilometer wide. Convoys traveling between the Mukach Base and the Ark will more often choose to take the flat western plains rather than this narrow corridor that looks uneasy.
After passing the southern corridor of the Ark, the Ark shrouded in darkness appeared in everyone's sight. The team members who were originally doing their own things turned around at the same time, leaned on the portholes, and looked in the direction of the Ark.
In the darkness, only a vague outline could be seen. Due to the great distance, nothing unusual could be seen from the outline...but the star-like lights on the Ark's superstructure that usually illuminated the sky had all been extinguished, and the airport light beacons used to guide aircraft and warships were nowhere to be seen.
The dark outline of the giant in the distance was shrouded in an inexplicable sense of death, as if it was the corpse of a giant beast lurking in the shadows, and it was a giant beast that could turn into a zombie and pounce on them at any time.
Soap felt his heartbeat quicken significantly and his breathing became much faster. He put his hands on his chest and took deep breaths continuously. In the face of a great war, adjusting one's state of mind was the most important thing. Not only him, but everyone else in the team was doing something similar.
Even though they had seen the more clear image of the captured Ark in the daytime from the photos taken by drones, when the Ark actually appeared before their eyes and the picture that seemed like a fairy tale became a fact that they could see directly, the impact was beyond words.
For a moment, Soap really wanted to grab the joystick from the pilot and change the direction of the plane.
The Amran-class transport aircraft did not turn on any lights , not even the navigation lights to ensure safety. All lighting equipment in the cabin, even the LCD screen of the altimeter, were turned off. All radio channels remained silent, and only the minimum operating panel was lit on the screen in the cockpit.
Even the crystal engine was turned off by the pilot, and the propellers on both sides of the wings were flattened. The entire transport plane was changed to gliding mode, gliding in the night sky like a silent ghost, gradually approaching the "corpse of the huge beast."
Everyone in the cabin couldn't help but hold their breath - according to the plan, the plane would glide around the Ark for a quarter of a circle, and after collecting enough data, it would use an anti-gravity device to briefly hover at a low altitude three kilometers away from the Ark. The members of the second team would rely on rappelling cables to descend to the ground and walk the last three kilometers on foot.
The first stage of the gliding flight went very smoothly. The infrared camera and the low-light camera took a lot of photos. Soap took out the telescope from the equipment library of the Mukah base and turned on the infrared mode. In the thermal infrared mode, the Ark showed a deep blue-green color as a whole... Although it was the first time for Soap to observe the Ark in the air with a thermal infrared imager, he knew that under normal circumstances, due to the large number of devices on the Ark that can emit heat, the hull should be orange-red, at least higher than the temperature of the surrounding environment. But now the entire Ark is almost integrated with the surrounding environment in the thermal infrared image, and only the tumorous hyperplasia on the surface retains heat. From a distance, it looks like dense red and yellow spots.
"These fungus-like creatures seem to be cold-blooded animals?" Soap muttered to himself, "In thermal infrared images, they are almost invisible."
"Whether they are animals or not has not yet been determined," the giraffe continued, "but the monsters hatched in those tumors look tough... There must be more than 100,000 of them, right? I wonder how many troops General Maginot can muster..."
"The first phase of reconnaissance has been completed." The leader of the spear team interrupted the conversation between the two men, "Everyone, prepare for rappelling."
