Chapter 486 - Counterattack

Translator: _Min_ Editor: Caron_

The battle left the area in shambles.

Right now, Fishbone base was filled with glass shards, exposed steel, and concrete debris. The apartments near the wall were half-destroyed by grenades and recoilless cannons. The community center was also damaged. Even half of a wall at Jiang Chen’s mansion was blown up by heavy machine gun bullets.

A series of steel scaffolds were set up around the buildings and walls that needed repair with Lu Huasheng leading the survivors to start the restoration project. Wang Qin led the logistics department to start evaluating the loss of supplies and overseeing the military factory to restart production.

70% of the recruits suffered casualties and 50% of the Hunter Corps was either injured or killed. It was a tragic battle.

Jiang Chen personally led the funeral of the deceased warriors and buried their bodies in the cemetery outside the base.

The scale of their loss wasn’t an exaggeration.

But it wasn’t without some rewards.

Right now, Jiang Chen’s storage dimension was filled with robots and drones that couldn’t move. Without commands from the terminal, the robots without intelligence could only move their limbs in the storage dimension while their engines roared and spent their remaining power to search for a non-existent enemy.

Once the robots lost power, Jiang Chen could take them and send to the Fallout Shelter for technology restoration and improvement work.

To coordinate the rebuilding effort, Jiang Chen found Jiang Lin. The guy’s arm was wounded by a bullet so it was covered by thick bandages and wasn’t in the best shape. Although he was sympathetic to his situation, there were still more urgent matters to take care of. Jiang Chen didn’t send too many condolences before getting to the main point.

“It was confirmed that NAC’s opposing force controls the God’s Cane. Dyou have any way of shooting it down?”

“The God’s Cane?” Jiang Lin looked troubled. “That’s going to be hard - that thing is known as the space fortress. With missiles, they might approach the orbit before being destroyed by the laser anti-missile system.”

“Is that so?” Jiang Chen frowned.

The God’s Cane was a sword hanging in the air. Without taking it out, it would be hard to sleep at night. Even if the tungsten rods were all used up, it was hard to prevent Lin Chaoen from acquiring another round from the synchronous orbit and reloading it.

“The key is: to what extent did he repair the God’s Cane? Even if the laser anti-missile system is repaired, our ability to do high damage is still limited.” Jiang Lin didn’t seem to have any better solutions.

Jiang Chen said, “The God’s Cane shouldn’t be fully repaired. If we use the Northwind-76, could it do damage?”

“In theory, the Northwind-76 could reach the synchronous orbit. But if it carried conventional ballistic missiles and they exploded in a vacuum environment, it would still be difficult for the resulting shockwaves to damage the shell of the God’s Cane,” Jiang Lin explained to Jiang Chen.

Since it was the weapon NATO refined for a century, it was too much to ask a forged version of Northwind-76 to take down this “space fortress.”

“What if we carried EMP instead?” Jiang Chen proposed.

“It’s hard for normal EMP to damage the electronic components of God’s Cane. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be so hard to take down.” Jiang Lin shook his head.

“We don’t need to damage the God’s Cane.” A smile surfaced on Jiang Lin’s face. “We just need to take out the robot hidden inside the God’s Cane.”

Jiang Chen took a moment to think as he stroked his chin.

“In theory, it’s possible. If the outer shell of the God’s Cane is damaged, wide-range EMP weapons should be able to damage the mechanical parts.”

Jiang Chen gave Jiang Lin the problem of solving the issue in the sky before heading to the community center and meeting the leaders of the Three Divisions as well as the leader of the Hunter Division to call for an emergency meeting.

Just half an hour ago, Yao Yao, who was working hard to break through the communication blockage, happened to intercept the communication coordinates between the God’s Cane and a ground facility. The target was inside Wanghai and Jiang Chen wouldn’t let this guy escape.

The target was on the edge of the east side of the city center, the right bank of the Huangpu River. Based on the issues with the relationship to Liuding, multiple rocket launchers didn’t have the right bank of the Huangpu River as a target area.

In simple war mobilization, Jiang Chen sent out the order with Han Junhua establishing a battle plan.

At the end of the ten-minute meeting, all three corps were prepared and ready to mobilize. With 1000 soldiers left to defend the camp, the three corps departed. At the same time, the eight “Fireball-1s” on the launching ground were fully locked and loaded to cover the area with combustion missiles to eliminate any mutants in the area.

At the same time, the helicopter transported all the researchers from the Aerospace Technology Research Institute to Shenxiang to change the module of the Northwind-76 deployed from combustible material to a wide-range EMP device.

Once the module was changed, it would be launched into the geosynchronous orbit to eliminate the robot in God’s Cane - Lin Chaoen.

…

It had been half an hour since the Northwind-76 was launched into the air.

At the Lin Fallout Shelter, three thousand meters underground:

The central computer in the middle of the room quietly hummed. Inside the silent space, the only sound was the buzzing of the processors.

The screen above the central computer flashed a faint light. The middle-aged man on the screen had his hand supporting his chin and he fell into silence inside the empty fallout shelter. He glanced at the nutrient vial underneath the screen. The life support device contained his brain.

After he abandoned his body twenty years ago, he hadn’t looked at it since. But now that he was looking at it, he felt wistful.

Of course, a heart is an abstract concept. He didn’t have a heart and aside from his brain, all his organs were replaced by mechanical parts. When he found a device that could allow mechanics to replace his brain, he could even ditch that last hindrance.

A cold light slowly illuminated the fallout shelter. It came from the bottom of a hibernation chamber. Suddenly, the inert gas leaked out and the chamber door opened. Ahandsome man walked out.

The convenience of being a robot was exactly this - even after countless destructions, as long as the backup data was there, they could reincarnate countless times.

“Father.” Lin Chaoen kneeled on the ground.

“Mhmm.” He replied and didn’t speak more.

This was a rare time when “father” didn’t give any instructions to his son. He only quietly looked at him. Whenever he looked at it, he felt like he was looking at a puppet.

But he understood the feeling. Due to the insufficiency of intermediate artificial intelligence in dealing with emotions, rather than saying they were individuals, they were more like tools without desires and needs.

After a long silence, he abruptly said, “What should we do?”

Lin Chaoen looked up and smiled.

“I was awaiting for your instructions.”

Father let out a sigh and shook his head. Although he was infinitely close to a God, ultimately, before he could digitalize his consciousness, he was a human after all. After he lost the God’s Cane, he lost everything. From the satellite image from the God’s Cane, the NAC force was moving in his direction. They not only sent an EMP missile to attack God’s Cane, but they were now using combustion missiles to wipe out the mutants in the area.

The original plan was for the robotic force he controlled to attack Fishbone base. Whether Jiang Chen surrendered or died, NAC would collapse. The entire Wanghai region would once again return to chaos, and all the survivors would become believers of the Supreme. He would have the opportunity again to restart the advanced artificial intelligence project and lead all his believers on the path to digitalization.

But reality and his plan were different.

Whether it was Lin Lin or Jiang Chen’s abilities, they were the variables that affected the outcome.

Right now, with their coordinates exposed, they had to face the wrath of the NAC.

“With the computation power of the quantum computer, we still can’t calculate the next move?” Father asked.

Lin Chaoen didn’t reply as he quietly waited for Father’s instructions.

The computer itself couldn’t think unless humans told them what to think.

[It’s so close?]

Father looked at Lin Chaoen kneeling on the ground and entered deep thought.

But just then, Lin Chaoen abruptly interrupted the silence in the fallout shelter.

“Speaking of which, in that base, I saw Lin Lin.”

The kind father on the screen paused then his pupils began to narrow.