With every roar of her rifle, at least one BETA died.
There were simply too many of them. If she fired at random, she would still hit one.
But Cui Yifei was not actually firing at random. She was picking off the BETA closest to them.
Sometimes, when the angle was good, one bullet could take down two. It would punch through a weak point, pass clean through, and strike another BETA behind it.
She checked her ammunition. Half of it was already gone. Yet the BETA surrounding them on all sides showed no sign of having thinned out at all. There were too many.
Of course, she was not the only one firing. Bao-Feng Squadron had followed her down and joined the attack.
The Soviet squad was also clearing out BETA.
At first, she had thought they were attacking that unimaginable TSF. Now it seemed they were helping it.
Because Yifei had followed them down after misunderstanding the situation, she had no intention of flying back up now. She joined the cleanup instead.
Bao-Feng Squadron naturally followed her.
In truth, the captain had also told them something over an encrypted channel: watch out for the TSF squad called Idar. In other words, the other side really might have designs on that machine.
That meant Bao-Feng Squadron's mission was also to stop them from succeeding.
They had tried to contact the pilot as well, but the other party had only said one thing: leave. His tone made it clear that they should mind their own business, and that if something happened to them, they would have only themselves to blame.
From the corner of her vision, Yifei glanced at one of the machines from Idar's side. It should have been a newly developed third-generation TSF. Compared to the second-generation TSF she was piloting, the difference was truly obvious.
In terms of firepower, the gap was not that large. Weapons were still weapons. At most, the other side carried more ammunition. But in mobility and flexibility, their machines were far ahead.
So the enemy TSF squad was clearing out more BETA.
The sight of one shot killing two BETA appeared from time to time. That did not look like luck. They had found the angles precisely. Their shooting skill seemed extremely impressive.
Hmph.
Shooting skill?
It was the machine's performance, obviously.
If she were piloting a third-generation machine too, then she would also...
Yifei stopped the thought herself.
Still, no matter how impressive they were, could they compare to the machine at the center below them, the one around which all of them were circling?
That was the real monster machine.
If someone told Yifei it had been manufactured using technology from other aliens, she might actually believe it.
The reason Bao-Feng and Idar were circling above the machine, hovering overhead, was because if they landed, they would become a burden instead.
There were too many BETA surging in from every direction. Their ammunition could not keep up. If the BETA closed in, they would be dragged into melee combat, which would only interfere with that special TSF's terrifying slashes.
So they stayed overhead and provided support. The BETA almost completely ignored Bao-Feng and Idar, letting everyone fire as if they were at a shooting range.
Also, the BETA tentacle tube connected to that machine's back had come with a warning from the pilot: do not attack it. If anyone made a move to attack it, he would treat the attacker no differently from a BETA and eliminate them without hesitation.
That seemed to confirm it. This machine was indeed using that tentacle to reverse-absorb energy from the huge glowing object, thereby achieving what looked like unlimited firepower.
By "unlimited firepower," that mainly referred to the two beam weapons mounted at its waist. They could fire laserlike attacks, as well as bombardments resembling energy shells.
Aside from those, it still had three living shields and two long-handled greatswords.
The surface of each shield seemed to be covered by some kind of field. It could easily block Laser-class irradiation and stop any BETA attack.
The greatswords were frighteningly sharp as well. Even the shell of a Destroyer-class, with a Mohs hardness of fifteen, could be sliced open as easily as tofu.
So how many BETA had it killed so far?
She did not know. She did not even know how many Bao-Feng Squadron itself had killed.
But she was certain that the accumulated BETA corpses should have filled this enormous hall by now. In reality, however, nearly half of the hall's space remained clear, and it was a space on the scale of ten levels.
The reason was that one part of the hall seemed to be alive. The floor was drawing the BETA remains down into it, like corpses slowly sinking into a swamp.
Hm?
That absurd TSF's beam weapons seemed unable to attack now. It looked as if one of them had finally broken down after being worked beyond its limits.
Judging from that, the remaining one probably would not last much longer either.
Ah. That one broke too!
At that moment, before Yifei could react, the TSF suddenly reversed its grip on the long-handled greatsword in its hand and thrust the blade backward.
Crackle, crackle.
That was the sound of a TSF spitting electric arcs and sparks.
The next second, it exploded with a boom.
Bang, bang!
Two more TSFs pulled their triggers. What they fired were grenades, and they were not aimed at the BETA, but at the monster TSF's energy tube.
Boom, boom!
"What?"
Yifei froze.
The grenades had exploded, but what was strange was that the explosions seemed to be confined inside an invisible spherical space. Because of that, the energy tube was not affected.
The next second, the transparent sphere shrank. After compressing to at least one-tenth its original size, it suddenly cracked open. The compressed energy from the grenade explosions vented through the fissures, battering those two TSFs until they were half-wrecked and sending them flying into the BETA swarm.
The result was obvious.
BETA did not usually take the initiative to attack everyone flying overhead. But if something fell to the ground and blocked their way, of course they would tear it apart.
Amid the screams, the two TSFs were swallowed by the BETA and shredded to pieces.
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, three TSFs had been destroyed. The remaining four Idar machines no longer dared to move carelessly.
One thing was obvious: those three had disobeyed the warning and tried to attack the monster TSF's energy tube. The moment they were detected, they were eliminated without the slightest mercy.
As for why they wanted to attack the energy tube, Yifei was not stupid. If they destroyed it, that monster mech would probably stop functioning instantly. Then Idar would seize it and take it away.
What a pack of despicable bastards.
"One minute. That should be enough time for you to return to the surface. Get as far from here as you can."
The monster TSF's pilot spoke again, issuing that warning.
What did that mean?
At that moment, several indicator lights on his machine turned red and began flashing in a deeply ominous way.
It looked exactly like the classic countdown before an explosion.
"You... are you going to self-destruct?"
"Yes. Fifty-five seconds."
That was the other party's final sentence. After that, no matter what Yifei and the others said, he ignored them.
Even when members of Bao-Feng Squadron volunteered to stay behind and cover him while the others picked him up, he did not respond.
"Staff Sergeant Cui Yifei, withdraw immediately!"
The next second, Yifei's machine was grabbed by the captain and pulled straight upward toward the opening above.
Following the Main Shaft, which was also the launch shaft, they could fly unobstructed through the central launch port of the BETA Hive.
"What the hell is he doing? Why is he suddenly self-destructing? Why?"
She could not understand it. She could not accept it. Yifei shouted as she was dragged upward.
Her pupils shrank.
The moment she was pulled out by the captain, she saw that every member of Bao-Feng Squadron had also escaped from the Hive's nearly three-hundred-meter-tall central opening.
Then she saw that only three Idar machines had flown out.
Three?
Hadn't there been four?
They had probably attacked him again.
Damn it. It had to be Idar's interference. They must have ruined something for him and forced him to self-destruct.
A surge of fury made her want to open fire on them right then and there.
"All units, accelerate and disengage! Cui Yifei, push your thrusters to maximum too!"
At the captain's urging, she bit her lip and reluctantly pushed her thrust to full, pulling farther away and leaving the BETA Hive behind.
When the countdown had roughly five seconds left, all the machines almost flipped in flight, as if flying backward.
Every one of them stared at the BETA Hive.
The next instant, light bloomed from the Hive's launch port and from the drift-tunnel entrances leading to the surface around it.
Immediately afterward, the ground bulged and swelled.
Boom!
An earth-shaking explosion was born.
(End of Chapter)
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