Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 249 Avalanche!!!
Ke Lan did not say anything, but answered with practical actions - he checked his equipment one last time, then walked to the edge of the cliff and jumped into the bottomless sinkhole!
Not only does he have to go down, but he also serves as the most important pioneer in the entire team!
The rocket thrusters on the back and legs simultaneously ejected blazing tail flames, helping Ke Lan to adjust his posture in the air and fly towards the pit wall on one side.
With a "swish", the Nino alloy claws at the end of the limbs popped out at the same time and cut into the hard ice layer without any hindrance. Then, the mechanism in front of the claws was triggered, and four barbs with thorns unfolded on each claw. With a teeth-grinding friction sound, twenty grooves of varying depths were plowed out on the wall of the pit.
Ke Lan's position finally stabilized at a depth of thirty-five meters - his entire body was firmly attached to the ice surface of the pit wall, just like an earth creature called a "gecko".
Ke Lan looked around and said in the team channel using the throat microphone: "Descending depth, 35.4 meters, safe, no trace of 'Siren' has been found yet, communication over."
The word "Siren" comes from a kind of sea monster in ancient Greek mythology that can confuse humans with its singing. Here, it is used to refer to the Alpha language that only Ke Lan can hear, as well as the mental attacks hidden in it.
Looking down from Ke Lan's position, he could also see the hunters who were suspended by steel cables and carrying out mining operations at deeper depths. They held the adjustment lock at the end of the steel cable with one hand and the small laser cutting machine on their shoulders with the other hand. Their feet were on the cutting frame that was driven into the ice. The strong wind flowing in the tiankeng kept whipping these people, making a rustling sound... From time to time, some chopped ice chips would fall in front of them and fall into the dark abyss.
Soon, Hound and others also jumped down from above. They used their grappling claws to hang themselves at a depth of about twenty meters, forming a fan-shaped "advance formation" with Ke Lan's position as the apex.
"To be honest... we've used the fan-shaped advancement formation many times when encircling and suppressing indigenous creatures, but this is the first time we've used it on a vertical plane." The Hound's voice sounded in the team channel.
"Anyway, our equipment has three-dimensional maneuverability. There is not much difference between vertical and water surface..." Ke Lan said, "Each unit should confirm its own status. If there is no problem, I will continue to descend."
"Number two, Hound, no problem."
"Number three, Asano Akira, no problem."
…
Everyone responded one by one according to the sequence of the preset positions. After confirmation, Ke Lan pulled out the hooks on his right hand and right foot, leaned down with the entire right half of his body, and inserted the hooks into the ice after finding a new foothold. Then, he pulled out the hooks on his left hand and left foot and repeated the process.
Compared with the "leapfrog" descent, this rock-climbing-like descent is much slower, but it is more stable and does not consume precious fuel in the rocket thrusters.
Anyway, the goal set for the first exploration operation was to reach a depth of fifty meters. Even if it took half an hour to climb like this, Ke Lan's physical strength was more than enough to handle it.
But just as Ke Lan was about to continue climbing down, there was a sudden loud explosion above his head! Suddenly, a large amount of broken snow and ice rolled down from above!
"Damn it! What's going on? What happened up there?" the Hound yelled loudly. He was hit by a piece of ice the size of a washbasin while climbing just now. One side of his exoskeleton was seriously damaged, and the rocket thrusters on his back and waist fell down along with the brackets... Fortunately, the hook on his other hand was inserted deep enough, allowing the Hound to hang on the wall of the pit and not fall into the abyss.
"Asano Akira! Layton! Go help the old dog!" Ke Lan shouted in the microphone, "Don't fly up now! In addition to the explosion, I also heard gunshots!"
"I heard it too! Damn, it was the sound of gunfire from the modified Type 01 assault rifle and the Mozambique shotgun, as well as some crude semi-automatic weapons... Damn! Could it be the Exiles?!" Layton exclaimed.
Ke Lan immediately switched to the communication channel of the "Greece" and asked, "Captain, what is the current situation above the tiankeng?"
The captain of the "Greece" is a middle-aged man in his forties. He used to be the first mate of a heavy assault ship of the Second Fleet. After retiring, he was hired by the Soma Consortium and was transferred to this Phantom-class high-speed airship not long ago.
As a retired soldier who had experienced many battles, the captain's reaction was very calm: "The relic hunters above the tiankeng were attacked. The attackers were a convoy of eleven unidentified modified vehicles coming from the southwest. They were five hundred meters away from the temporary observation station and the hunter camp. They were using rocket launchers and individual missiles to carry out long-range strikes on the camp. Based on the current speed of the convoy, it is expected to rush into the camp in thirty seconds."
"Didn't the ship's early warning radar detect this group of attackers?" Ke Lan couldn't help but ask.
"There should be stealth devices in the convoy that can block radar detection, so it was not discovered in advance." The captain replied.
“…Can we infer the identity of the attackers from the characteristics of these vehicles?”
"The attackers should be the exiles in the wilderness, but I can't tell which force they are." The captain paused and said, "The Polaris Hunter Group in the camp below sent a distress signal to our ship. Do you want to provide fire support?"
"Allow assistance, but please be mindful of the attack range and try to reduce accidental casualties... Also, send out ship-borne drones to cover our return."
"Received. Prepare to provide fire support. Attack target: Exile convoy."
There is a screen directly connected to the small command system installed in Ke Lan's goggles. From this screen, he can clearly see the images taken by the drone: flames more than ten meters long were seen spurting out from the rear left side and the front right side of the "Greece" at the same time. The entire airship slowly turned sideways, and the weapon compartments on the side facing the attacker opened one after another, and four rapid-fire railguns and two honeycomb missile launchers protruded from them.
This is the most powerful firepower a civilian aircraft can carry. Although this amount of firepower is barely enough to scratch an itch in front of a warship, it is more than enough to deal with a convoy of exiles.
From the camera of another drone, Ke Lan finally saw the true face of the attackers - they were eleven off-road vehicles that had been modified like tanks, with a large number of rusty rivets welded on the front of the vehicle, three pairs of wheels with a diameter of two meters wrapped in thick metal tracks, and the rear cargo box was filled with a variety of long-range weapons.
This is indeed the style of the Exiles, but even among the Exiles, this convoy can definitely be considered luxuriously armed. Many large settlements cannot even afford one such armored vehicle even if they give their all, let alone eleven.
Ke Lan shared the drone footage with the rest of the team, and Hound immediately cursed: "Fuck, these bastards, are they crazy?"
"No, they are not crazy... They are here to steal the stone tablet." Ke Lan suddenly thought of a possibility and shuddered.
"A stone tablet? What's the point of them snatching it? Do they think the people from the institute will spend a lot of money to buy it from a bunch of exiles?"
"They robbed this not to sell it for money, but for research... This group of people are not ordinary exiles." Ke Lan said word by word.
"Research, just based on them--" The Hound got stuck in the middle of his words. After a while, he said with some difficulty, "Are you saying that this group of people were sent by that heretical sect?"
In addition to Ke Lan, the relic hunter who founded the heretical sect could also read the characters of the Alpha civilization. These stone tablets were just difficult-to-decipher alien documents at the research institute, but in his hands, they immediately became valuable research materials!
Judging from the heretical sect's level of research on the Seeds of Erosion, Ke Lan had no doubt that guy would be able to replicate the biological weapons recorded on these stone tablets, and even improve them!
That man escaped from the Ark a long time ago. He has been hiding in an unknown place in the wilderness. These exiles active in the wilderness are the real foundation of the heretical sect!
No one knew to what extent the heretical sects had developed among the exiles, but one thing was certain: the military force they possessed was enough to conquer every settlement of exiles and absorb the population as their own followers.
Although the total population of the exiles is not as large as that of the humans on the Ark, the total population of so many settlements, large and small, is also a number that cannot be underestimated. If all these people were... no, not all of them, as long as one tenth of them were transformed into biological weapons by the heretical sects, that would be a very terrifying force.
They don't even need to rush to attack the Ark. They just need to keep attacking the relic hunters in various places and plunder the spoils these hunters have excavated from the ruins. With the existence of that person, the heretic sects will digest the spoils much faster than the Ark. With the help of the technology of the Alpha civilization, within a few years, the gap in technological level between the two sides will be completely overturned.
There are only two ways to change this situation: the first is to capture or kill the founder of the heretical sect. Without his heretical sect, there is no threat to the Ark. The second is for Ke Lan to make his abilities public to the Ark's top leaders, and an arms race like the "Cold War" of the old era will begin between the two sides.
…
"Open fire!" The captain's order came from the channel, and hundreds of small guided missiles poured out from the launch nests, dragging white trails towards the Exiles' convoy. However, when these missiles were about a hundred meters away from the convoy, they all lost their accuracy - some fell to the ground and exploded, some flew crookedly into the distance as if they were drunk, and the most outrageous one directly changed its angle and crashed into a temporary barracks built by the Polaris Hunting Group!
"Fuck! These armored vehicles have anti-guided jammers! Their appearance is just camouflage. The equipment on these vehicles is no less than that of the regular army in the field!" Seeing this scene, Layton said anxiously, "We can't use missiles, just use rail guns to bombard them! I don't believe they have shield generators on their vehicles!"
A stream of blue light descended from the sky and headed straight for the modified car at the front of the convoy. Just as the blue light was about to touch the vehicle, a gorgeous light shield suddenly lit up in front of the car.
The hound immediately cursed, "Layton, you are such a bad mouth! Say less next time!"
"boom!!"
The electromagnetic bullet, as thick as an arm, slammed hard into the energy shield. Nearly two-thirds of the bullet was vaporized in an instant, while the remaining one-third deviated from the predetermined trajectory and penetrated the ground.
Although the modified car was not destroyed directly, the huge kinetic energy of the projectile still blew the car away instantly and hit another car at the rear of the convoy!
The two cars that collided with each other suddenly experienced a more violent explosion - the onboard ammunition that exploded affected most of the convoy. In the continuous explosions, nearly half of the modified cars turned into blazing fireballs, and the vehicles at the rear had to step on the brakes.
"Well done!" the hound shouted, but in an instant, he suddenly felt something was wrong. "Did you... did hear any...rumbling sound?"
"Explosion?" Layton asked on the communication channel.
"No... it's not the sound of an explosion, it's... the sound of something collapsing... from far away and getting closer..." Ke Lan also heard it, and he shuddered suddenly, "Oh no, it's an avalanche! The vibrations from the exchange of fire and the explosion triggered the avalanche!"
Before they finished their words, countless cracks suddenly appeared on the ice in front of them - the next second, the ice surface they were clinging to was shattered!
"Fuck! Run! Use the thrusters to fly out!" Layton cursed, and with a strong pull of his robotic arm, he picked up the Hound with a damaged exoskeleton and activated the rocket thrusters behind him. But before he could adjust the angle, a large piece of heavy object that was not sure whether it was ice or broken rock hit him hard, pushing both of them into the abyss!
“Layton! Old dog!” Ke Lan turned around and shouted, but soon he felt as if someone had hit him hard on the back. The force that had kept him suspended in the air suddenly disappeared, and he instantly lost his balance and fell into the depths of the tiankeng…
While falling, Ke Lan managed to raise his head, and saw mighty snow waves sweeping across the broken glacier like a tsunami. They carried broken rocks with them, rushing to the edge of the tiankeng, and then rolling down with a loud bang - no matter whether it was Ke Lan and others, or the hunters working on the wall of the pit, they had no way to avoid it!
