“An unknown source was found on Ceres.”
“What do you think it could be?”
“… I don’t know.”
The commander frowned. He controlled the holographic image on the table and slightly narrowed his eyes.
Suddenly, he raised his right hand and slowly pushed it toward the holographic image, pushing a starship towards Ceres.
“… We’ll go there and see!”
A cruiser was separated from the fleet and moved closer in the direction of Ceres.
At the same time, all of the magazines located in the belly of the ship opened. The defensive machine guns were standing by, ready to pour fierce firepower towards suspected or potential threats.
“Gusu is 120 kilometers away from Ceres… It has reached the closest possible distance. No abnormalities have been found.”
“Send out the drones!”
“Roger that.”
Two silver-white bright spots were launched from the belly of the Gusu cruiser, dragging a plume of smoke behind. When they reached within one kilometer of Ceres, the drones were released from the sides of the missiles like locusts.
Unlike ship-based drones on aircraft carriers, this missile-launched drone was a special ground-based drone, which was usually used to perform intrusive attacks on space stations and other space facilities to reduce the offensive resistance of landing forces.
As the drones got closer and closer to the ground, the commander couldn’t help but frown.
However, something suddenly happened.
An electromagnetic shell suddenly ejected from the surface of Ceres, forming a dense firepower net.
Twenty drones were torn into pieces in an instant, turning into space junk.
The faces of everyone on the ship were unanimous.
“… How could there be such a strong firepower on Ceres?”
“Could it be the army of another country?”
“Impossible… The deployment of heavy weapons on the asteroid belt must be carried out under the framework of the United Nations, and the location must be disclosed and marked; otherwise, it will be regarded as pirate activities.”
“Is there any point in deploying so many arms in such a place? It’s not like Ceres is in a strategic location.”
“Maybe to protect something that’s hidden inside.”
The commander ordered in a decisive tone, “Let Gusu prepare to cooperate with the third orbit airborne brigade to launch a raid!”
“Yes, sir!”
Although they didn’t know which force the armed forces entrenched on Ceres belonged to, in terms of the combat power it demonstrated, it was obviously not enough to send ground forces with the fire support of a cruiser.
In order to ensure a foolproof operation, the Pan-Asian First Fleet sent a Type 05 ground attack ship from the Lagrange Space Base.
This starship was not designed for attacking a space station. It was a ship designed for ground operations.
Its terrifying ammunition capacity allowed it to produce a strategic strike capability comparable to 200 small nuclear warheads. It was precisely because of this that the ship had been widely criticized by the international community since it was launched.
Its strength was beyond doubt.
On the transport ship of the Third Orbital Airborne Brigade, orbital paratroopers dressed in mechanical exoskeletons boarded the heavy landing craft and were undergoing final inspections of their weapons and equipment.
Watching the missiles from the Type 05 ground attack ship outside the porthole, a soldier who completed the equipment inspection whispered, “An uninhabited asteroid, a point defense array deployed on the asteroid… I feel like I am living in a science fiction movie.”
“It’s more like a copy of the Calan Empire… Who are we fighting with? I still don’t have a clue.”
“I don’t know… Apparently, it’s a group of space pirates, but, so far, we have not seen anyone.”
“Do you think… it’s aliens? We are actually facing an alien outpost—”
“Quiet, keep your mouth shut!”
After Li Gaoliang scolded his subordinates, he walked into the heavy landing craft with a serious expression, glanced around at the soldiers, and continued, “After 10 minutes, the landing operation will begin. Everyone will act according to the plan. The enemy’s firepower is very fierce. If you want to come back alive, remember to lower your head and move quickly!
“Do you understand?!”
They answered Li Gaoliang in a uniform fashion.
“Yes, sir!”
Li Gaoliang nodded in satisfaction, waved his hand, and said, “Let’s go!”
After the opening shelling of the first and second rounds ended, a layer of bumpy bullet marks was printed on the surface of Ceres.
The defensive facilities painted with lunar gray camouflage were completely destroyed; countless defensive arrays were also destroyed.
After the strategic strike bombing ended, the first wave of the landing craft had begun airdrops.
As a long shuttle-like spacecraft hit the surface of the planet, automated all-terrain attack vehicles and suspended aerodynamic drones rushed out of the landing craft and went towards the base in the valley.
As expected by the command tower of the First Fleet, the enemy’s defense was more than just the opening defense arrays. Pneumatic drones and four-legged robots were launched from the base.
The sparks fired by the guns dotted the surface of the asteroid with a brilliant starlight. Behind every orange-yellow flash, there was a corresponding demise of a certain intelligent life.
Standing on the bridge and staring at the battle, the commander suddenly spoke.
“When was the last time such a large-scale battle happened?”
Yang Wu: “About half a century ago.”
“Half a century ago…” The commander sighed softly and said, “That’s how long the peace has lasted.”
At the same time, on the third-orbit airborne transport ship, two long shuttle-type heavy landing crafts slowly separated from the ship’s belly.
As the plasma engine ignited, the two heavy landing craft fell towards the ground of the asteroid.
The resistance on the ground had almost collapsed, and the remaining smart devices had begun to gather towards the fortress of the enemy’s defense center.
There was a valley, so the terrain was easy to defend and difficult to attack. Even though the Type 05 ground attack ship had carried out a round of covering attacks on it, a small amount of resistance still existed inside the fortress.
However, for the elite of Pan-Asian Cooperation, the Third Orbital Airborne Brigade, this last line of defense was nothing.
As the two heavy landing crafts went straight into the inside of the bunker, the metal jet device at the front blasted outward, directly freezing through the shell of the fort.
Under the cover of drones and all-terrain assault vehicles, soldiers wearing exoskeletons quickly penetrated into the fortress. Under the command of each team leader, they followed the course of action planned by the AI battlefield analysis system to attack the interior.
When the two sides broke out in fierce conflict in the corridors, bursts of sparks lit up the dark spaces.
The gunfire went on for two hours before it weakened sporadically.
Li Gaoliang killed the robot soldier who fell on the ground with a pistol. He wiped a handful of dust off his helmet and visor, then looked towards the door in front of him.
The battle was actually settled half an hour ago, but when the front line advanced from the outer corridor to this door, all the resistance forces in the entire base, whether it was the robots or the machine guns in the corridor, suddenly launched a desperate counterattack against these orbital paratroopers.
Li Gaoliang didn’t know what was behind the door, but he was very curious about what the secret was.
With this curiosity in his heart, he issued an order through the all-terrain vehicle next to him, which drove forward to cut the entire door from the wall with a plasma cutter.
The heavy alloy door collapsed. Under the escort of two orbital paratroopers, Li Gaoliang cautiously stepped into the door with a rifle, but when he saw everything inside the door, he was completely stunned.
“What is this… What?”
It was a fan-shaped space like an ancient Roman theater. The spacious space formed a sharp contrast with the previously narrow battlefield. The stacked servers were lined up like blades, pushing outward in the shape of a domino.
Li Gaoliang’s muzzle slightly lowered as he looked up at the spectacle made of metal in front of him. His eyes were full of shock.
Although he had not carefully counted how many servers there were, everything in front of him subverted his understanding of computers.
This was a quantum computer.
As for its computing power…
It might be even more powerful than Pan-Asian Cooperation’s strongest supercomputing center…