Ethan arrived in the Earth world of Starship Troopers. This world was quite interesting to him, and, limited by the era when the original novel and movie were created, he saw many strange things.
For example, despite already having various flying cars and the like, the monitors and control buttons were still very old-fashioned. Although the movie had modernized many outdated technologies from the original novel during filming, these advanced settings still seemed backward to someone from a more advanced era.
Finding it interesting to observe, he wandered the streets for a while before starting to look for his companions.
Ethan's crew members usually carried special amulets on them. These were custom-made by Ethan for each person, clearly marking their identity and location, making it convenient for Ethan to pinpoint them.
Of course, they could also choose to turn off this tracking function themselves. This meant they did not want to be found for the time being, or perhaps ever, which would then mean that person wanted to leave Ethan's team.
This design was intended for situations where some people were too embarrassed to speak up and decided to leave quietly, or perhaps just temporarily leave to be alone or something similar.
In such cases, it also made it convenient for Ethan to find everyone. Of course, even without this amulet, they could still communicate within the same plane using the special communication devices that had been distributed long ago, and their specific locations could still be pinpointed.
After wandering around and observing the environment of the Starship Troopers world, Ethan also confirmed the specific locations of his various companions.
Logan, Jonathan, and O'Connell were not on Earth. He could sense that everyone among them except Logan was on the move. Were they perhaps on a spaceship?
Ada had not turned on her tracking. This woman liked to act alone and not let others know what she was doing. She was probably up to something again.
Selene, Evelyn, and Annette were together. All three women were on Earth.
Imhotep and Anck-su-namun were still together. Their current location seemed to be in South America. Were these two perhaps having some private time together?
Betty was also moving in space and was relatively close to O'Connell's area. Could it be that these few had joined the military together?
Galahad and Mordred, whom he thought would definitely rush to the battlefield, unexpectedly remained on Earth. Then he remembered that Mordred was too young. Although many young people appeared when Johnny's unit received new recruits later in the Starship Troopers movie, the war probably had not escalated to that extent yet.
Although Ethan had spent a long time wandering outside, this time was nothing at all in the world of Starship Troopers, which had a considerable time span.
The few months he spent in the Batman world were probably only enough time for the protagonist of this world to complete recruit training, or at most, complete the first landing battle.
Adding the time spent in the Diablo world, Johnny should have joined the Roughnecks now. He just did not know if the original commander of the Roughnecks had already died in action.
While thinking, Ethan also turned on his signal. This was a one-way information broadcast, letting everyone know that he had arrived in this world. If they were willing, they could contact him directly.
To his surprise, the first person to contact him was Ada, who had hidden her whereabouts.
"I didn't expect you to be the first to contact me."
"Are you surprised? I just wanted to report my work results to Captain first."
"Oh?"
As an elite agent, Ada was completely in her element in such an environment. Even if this world's level of civilization was more advanced than the era she lived in, it still could not stop her infiltration, penetration, and information transmission. She knew the situation of all her companions and, when necessary, would coordinate things to ensure everyone did not fight separately and could cooperate when needed.
Through Ada's report, Ethan also gained a general understanding of the situation of his group of companions.
Ada was hidden in the shadows, maintaining contact for everyone as a free agent, with a pile of surface identities, including one as a military intelligence operative. When necessary, she personally obtained important intelligence and would even tell her companions, like O'Connell, Jonathan, and Logan, who had joined frontline combat units, the actual situation of missions that appeared normal on the surface but were actually suicide missions, allowing them to understand the situation in advance and prepare accordingly.
Furthermore, while O'Connell and Jonathan were just in regular Mobile Infantry units, Logan had joined the famous Roughnecks and had currently become the second-in-command of the Roughnecks. As for the commander of the Roughnecks, it was still the bald commander Rasczak with the robotic arm. This guy had not died in battle yet.
This meant that Logan was currently the protagonist Johnny Rico's superior. He wondered if Johnny would still have a chance to rise in rank after Rasczak sacrificed himself.
The situations of these few people were not outside Ethan's expectations, but the choices of a few others were quite surprising.
Annette and Evelyn naturally did not join the military. Instead, they set their sights on military equipment. Although Annette was a scientist, she had previously worked for a large corporation like Umbrella and, with her husband William, had even run a secret base independently, so she had some understanding of the operations of manufacturing-type companies.
She and Evelyn started a weapons company. Under normal circumstances, such a company with no connections or backing would quickly go bankrupt.
But the situation in this world was a bit special. The United Citizen Federation had been peaceful for many years. Although technology was advancing rapidly, because they had not experienced war for a long time, many weapons were only theoretically powerful. After war truly broke out, the Federation military awkwardly discovered that the effectiveness of almost all weapons was subpar.
Through Ada's account, Ethan finally understood why, in the movie Starship Troopers, humanity's technology was clearly very advanced, yet they still used less powerful kinetic weapons. It was because the Bugs' exoskeletons were largely immune to energy weapons, and they had to use kinetic rounds to break through the shell to truly wound the Bugs' vital points.
The original novel had a detailed description of this. Humanity suffered heavy casualties in the early stages of the war due to their weapons. In the movie, the protagonist Johnny was also severely wounded in the first landing battle and was listed among the dead. He was rescued by Roughnecks commander Rasczak after being severely wounded.
During this period, humanity had few ways to deal with the Bugs. The only weapons they relied on were basic firearms and small nuclear bombs. Besides these, even grenades could not harm the Bugs.
By the time the protagonist joined the Roughnecks, humanity had already carried out large-scale re-equipping of frontline units, mainly replacing a batch of new firearms. These firearms had greater power and could penetrate the Bugs' exoskeletons more effectively. This was the fundamental reason why the Mobile Infantry's performance began to improve later on.
"So that's how it is."
Many adapted movies, due to time constraints, cannot show all the extensive content from the original work, which leads to many situations that seem bizarre.
Because of the Federation's urgent need for new weapons, Annette's arms company was able to open smoothly. This was because they immediately presented weapon designs that satisfied the Federation, rifles that could effectively kill Bugs.
Using energy to propel tiny metal particles and firing them at ultra-high speeds to cause damage, not only was the power and accuracy astonishing, and the ammunition easy to carry, but the recoil was also very small. The biggest problem was that the barrel frequently overheated, requiring many additional components for heat dissipation and cooling, which resulted in the overall size of the rifle being quite large. It was essentially a weakened version of the main weapon on Tony's new armor, produced purely with technology.
However, the rifles currently used by the Earth military were also quite large. The size of this weapon was still within the Federation's acceptable range, so they initially purchased a small batch. Damage tests were conducted on captured Bugs in the laboratory, and then the procurement quantity was increased and delivered to some frontline units for practical combat testing.
Currently, Annette's company could be considered to have gained recognition because the Federation had already placed the first large-scale order. It was foreseeable that Annette's company had entered the fast lane of development. Some arms giants had already started preparing to acquire Annette's small company.
Among them, there were not a few who wanted to use some underhanded methods, and the fate of these people was very miserable. After all, Selene was not running around everywhere. She had been staying by Annette's side precisely to prevent such things from happening.
"So you can go directly to Annette now. They can arrange any suitable identity for you, and then we'll deal with our matters."
Afterwards, Ada also talked about the situation of Mordred and Galahad. These two knights could not directly join the military because they were too young, but they were currently working as weapons testers for Annette's Cherry Military Industries and could often go to the battlefield to kill Bugs. Because Mordred's performance was exceptionally fierce, sometimes, if her weapon malfunctioned or ran out of ammo, she would just grab a saber and fight the Bugs hand-to-hand. Therefore, she was very famous in the military and was given the nickname Mad Mordred.
"..."
That sounded exactly like something Mordred would do.
Besides these two, the situation of Imhotep and Anck-su-namun surprised Ethan the most. These two had not joined the military or helped Annette run the company. Instead, they had gone around preaching.
"Preaching? Preaching what? Haven't these two already betrayed the ancient Egyptian gods they once believed in?"
Ethan suddenly remembered that Imhotep was now single-mindedly serving him, meaning he was actually his follower now.
"This guy wouldn't be..."
"Yes, it's exactly what you're thinking."
Ethan rubbed his temples. He suddenly felt a bit of a headache, but he could not really stop Imhotep's situation anyway. It did not affect him much.
Just then, Ethan felt a surge of energy surrounding and gathering around him, seemingly wanting to enter his body.
"..."
(To be continued.)
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