Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 976: An Unprecedented Hard Battle
"Go to hell with me, damn monster!" The officer roared as he activated the fuses of all the bombs on the bomber - in theory, the fuses of the bombs were locked before the bomb bay was opened. But in the early days of the Ark's landing on Alpha, during the most difficult period of the war, human bombers often had to conduct "kamikaze" raids in actual combat to achieve their combat objectives. In order to ensure that the bombs on the bomber could still explode after the pilot ejected, a "backdoor" for self-destruction was left in the bombing program.
The prerequisite for initiating the self-destruction is very complicated. The pilot needs to enter the password three times in a row and then perform voice verification before it can be activated. However, before this combat operation, the commander of the aviation brigade found the person in charge of managing the operating procedures in the logistics department and asked them to remove all the verification conditions in the self-destruction program, making it a true "one-button self-destruction."
The reason is very simple - this is a life-threatening mission. Almost all pilots have written suicide notes before taking off. If they really cannot self-destruct due to the cumbersome verification procedures when it comes to the moment of fighting, they will die with regrets.
The thrusters at the tail of the bomber ejected a blue-purple tail flame, pushing the body to rush towards the thunder beast that was wreaking havoc among the heavy infantry. More than half of these heavy infantrymen wearing power armor were killed or wounded in just one minute. The remaining people had determined to die, and did not retreat to the exit with the others. Instead, they clung to the thunder beast and other monsters that rushed over, trying their best to buy time for their comrades to retreat.
The bomber slammed into the side of Thor. The nose was instantly flattened, and the officer in the cockpit exploded into a ball of blood mist without even a chance to eject. The next second, the bomb in the plane exploded, and the huge shock wave directly tore the surrounding heavy infantry and monsters into pieces!
The powerful shock wave spread out, directly blowing up those who ran slowly, and then throwing them heavily to the ground.
None of those affected by the shock wave were able to get up from the ground - their internal organs had been shattered into pulp before they even hit the ground.
Only less than twenty people escaped from Hangar No. 2. They could only grit their teeth to disconnect the connection between Hangar No. 2 and the Skadi and eject Hangar No. 2.
The ejected No. 2 hangar crashed into the inside of the energy shield, causing another violent explosion. Together with the detonation of the ammunition carried by the aircraft inside the hangar, a dazzling fireball with a diameter of more than 100 meters was formed on one side of the Skadi.
Although the loss of Hangar No. 2 was heartbreaking, this wave of "heroic self-sacrifice" also eliminated a large number of monsters that had invaded the hangar and attached to the outer walls of the hangar. Not only that, the subsequent explosions also cleared a lot of oval tumors adhered to the surface of the Skadi, which immediately reduced the defense pressure on this side.
On the bridge, Major General Alexander, who watched Hangar No. 2 being ejected and exploded, took a deep breath and stopped paying attention to these things. Instead, he focused all his attention on operating the warship.
The Skadi once again flew back over the Ark and lowered its altitude to almost close to the Ark's energy shield. The battleship's energy shield and the Ark's energy shield would collide from time to time. When the two shields came into contact, a series of shrill alarms would sound inside the bridge, and the red warning lights almost illuminated the entire bridge space in blood.
The "friction reaction" between energy shields is not as simple as Ke Lan described, where you only need to control the distance - it is actually a gamble: when an energy shield comes into contact with another shield with a different frequency, it is equivalent to being attacked by an energy weapon from the outside world. Compared with the Ark's shield, the power of Skadi's energy shield is not enough. Even a slight touch can easily cause Skadi's shield generator to overload and explode. Therefore, using the collision and friction between energy shields to remove the oval tumors and monsters attached to the surface of the ship is no different from dancing on the edge of a knife.
"Attention everyone on board! Our ship is about to perform a rolling maneuver. Please be prepared to respond in time!" Alexander said in a deep voice.
The adjutant at the side pulled out the seat belt and helped Alexander buckle it, then quickly ran back to his seat, sat down, fastened his seat belt, and grasped the armrests of the seat tightly with both hands.
Alexander glanced at the screen showing the battleship's various parameters. At the moment when a certain parameter jumped to a certain value, he suddenly pushed the joystick to one side, and at the same time, his other hand sent out a program instruction that had already been edited.
On one side of the Skadi, hundreds of hidden covers opened at the same time, and the jet nozzles hidden under the covers stretched out and turned to a pre-set angle, while spraying out long flames. Driven by this force, the Skadi slowly turned its body over like a giant whale in the water.
A blinding flame burst out from the place where the two energy shields, one large and one small, touched each other. This flame was hundreds of times brighter than the explosion of Hangar No. 2 just now. Only a blazing white could be seen inside the bridge. Then, many screens were left with only black and white snowflake stripes - those external monitors could not withstand such high temperatures and all melted!
Alexander controlled the Skadi to roll twice, and the ship was straightened again. Then, he pulled the bow to almost perpendicular to the ground, and let the warship rush straight into the sky to avoid the egg-shaped tumors that were constantly shooting at the warship.
At this time, the real-time screens in the bridge could only display the outside world normally. Moreover, because the friction between the shields produced a violent energy reaction, a huge, chaotic electromagnetic field was generated in this airspace, and all the drones deployed outside the battlefield were disturbed. Not only could the crew of the Skadi not observe the outside world through the images taken by the drones, but even the "live broadcast" of the Mukach Fortress was forced to be interrupted.
"Why is there no signal?" Hound jumped down from the sofa, walked to the projector, and patted the machine vigorously. "Is the machine broken? Or is the signal interfered with?"
"It was interfered with." Ke Lan said, "The reaction between the energy shields was far more intense than expected. Even though the drones were far away from the center of the explosion, they were also affected. The aftermath was no less than a giant EMP bomb..."
"How long will it take to recover?" Hound frowned. "Such a violent reaction, could the Skadi have exploded?"
"The drones with poor anti-interference capabilities are probably all destroyed. As for the remaining drones with strong anti-interference capabilities, even if they recover quickly, it will take at least ten minutes to restore communication." Ke Lan estimated, "But I can't come up with an accurate number... The situation was too sudden, and I couldn't collect any data at all."
"Then we can only wait?" The Hound spread his hands.
"We can only wait." Ke Lan nodded, "I believe they won't be shot down so easily."
…
Above the Ark, at an altitude of 15,000 meters, the Skadi.
Communications were disrupted and all images of the outside world were lost. Alexander had no choice but to make a risky move - raising the bridge that had sunk into the ship's hull and judging the outside situation directly by visual observation.
The armor plates in the middle of the Skadi slid open to both sides, and the tower-like bridge slowly rose from the bottom. At the same time, the armor plates that wrapped the bridge like an iron barrel also opened one after another, exposing the observation windows of the bridge.
As soon as the armor plate was lifted, a lizard-like monster with a body length of more than 20 meters not counting the tail suddenly pounced on the observation window, immediately frightening the officers and soldiers in the bridge into panic. An officer directly raised his pistol and pulled the trigger repeatedly through the observation window - the bullets hit the inside of the observation window, making a crisp sound, and the deformed bullets scattered all over the ground.
"Don't panic, it can't break the observation window glass for now!" another officer who was still calm shouted, "Don't shoot yet! The observation window is one-way glass, it can't see what's going on inside. Let's not stimulate it, maybe it will leave on its own !"
His words seemed to set a flag for himself. As soon as he finished saying "Maybe it will leave on its own", a sticky liquid began to secrete from the mouth of the big lizard. The liquid dripped onto the observation window glass, and the glass immediately began to melt.
"Damn it! Can it sense us?!" The fire control officer in charge of controlling the weapons cursed in a low voice, and turned to look at Alexander, "General, what should we do? I can't turn the muzzle to attack the bridge - the weapon that can kill this monster will also penetrate the bulletproof glass of the bridge!"
"How many marines can be mobilized?" Alexander asked, a look of fatigue flashing across his face - although the operation just now only took a few dozen seconds, the energy consumption was extremely huge.
"The First Battalion and the Fourth Battalion each have one squadron that can be mobilized. The rest of the troops are either out of contact or are caught in a fierce battle with the monsters that have broken into the ship." The adjutant said immediately.
"Let these two squadrons go up to the outer deck and deal with this monster." Alexander ordered.
Although most of the oval tumors and monsters attached to the surface of the Skadi have been cleared, a small number of monsters have survived - these monsters either hid in the grooves of the armor plates, or drilled under the protruding structures in the turrets or radars, thus escaping. The big lizard lying on the observation window of the bridge is one of these surviving monsters.
"They are on their way," the adjutant said, "but the situation is not optimistic... Many passages are blocked, and their location is too far from the entrance and exit of the outer deck. It will take at least fifteen minutes. Moreover, there are still many monsters entrenched on the outer deck. With the combat effectiveness of these two squadrons, it may be difficult to break through."
Hearing what the adjutant said, the officers and soldiers in the bridge turned their heads again and focused their attention on the big lizard - the observation window glass of the bridge is a composite structure, with an extremely thin forged alloy reinforcement layer sandwiched between six layers of special glass, and the outermost and innermost layers of the glass also have transparent metal coatings.
In terms of defensive performance, the observation window glass can fully withstand a direct hit from a 35mm caliber machine gun, and can last for a long time even from concentrated fire from close-in defense guns... But under the "spit" of this big lizard, these six layers of glass can't even last five minutes - in just a few dozen seconds, the first layer of glass has been corroded.
"It's too late." An officer took out two magazines from the equipment cabinet and stuffed them into his trouser waistband. "They won't be able to make it... Before the two squadrons reach the outer deck, this guy will break into the bridge... We... can only rely on ourselves."
"But there are no heavy weapons on the bridge!" another officer shouted anxiously, "The most powerful firepower is the 25mm caliber automatic defense machine guns and the heavy machine guns in the hands of the Marine Corps. Do you think these weapons can kill this monster?"
"Are you asking us to abandon the bridge?"
"We can only fight it to the death!"
Just as the officers in the bridge were arguing fiercely, another figure appeared on the other side of the observation window, but the appearance of this figure made everyone in the bridge breathe a sigh of relief.
This is a "ZB51 flying tactical mecha", a new type of flying tactical mecha that was developed in the year 951 of the new era. It is a direct successor to the "Guards type" and has not been officially equipped to the troops... or rather, this series of mechas has not even been successfully approved for mass production. There are only two technical verification aircraft, which were sealed up after a few test flights.
As a fan of equipment, Layton learned about the existence of this type of machine and used Ke Lan's authority to get one of the two technology verification machines on the Yaguna Kator. Later, this machine was sent to the Skadi as a combat force supplement.
"Isn't this aircraft parked in Hangar No. 2?" an officer whispered, "Did it manage to escape? Who is the pilot flying it?"
"I don't know. The electromagnetic interference is too severe and we can't get in touch." The communications officer shook his head repeatedly.
ZB51 flew into everyone's sight in the form of a fighter jet. Just when it was about to hit the bridge, the body transformed directly in the air and turned into a twelve-meter-high humanoid mecha. The four reverse thrusters on the front side of the body sprayed at the same time, causing the body to hover.
The next second, a blade of light shot out from ZB51's right hand and pierced into the back of the big lizard's head!
The big lizard did not die immediately because of the piercing of the vitals. The big tail, which was almost the same length as the body, instantly lashed towards ZB51. If hit by this tail, the ZB51 with very thin armor would definitely be cut in half, and the pilot in the cockpit at the waist would have no chance of survival!
