Chapter 780: Fierce Battle
The troops immediately marched out, heading toward the evacuation point.
As this silent, orderly, and preternaturally efficient force entered the compound, they inevitably drew the gazes of the other defenders.
Their aura was different from the fierce, untamed nature of the Raiders, honed through the fires of war. It was also completely unlike the unconcealable exhaustion and tension of the local garrison. They looked more like a set of perfectly interlocking, high-precision systems operating smoothly.
Raynor stood on a reinforced section of the wall, watching this unit silently move into their designated positions. He lowered his voice and spoke to Valerie, who had walked up beside him: "Your company's people... their style is certainly consistent."
"Efficiency and discipline are the most reliable guarantees of survival in hostile environments," Valerie replied calmly.
The very moment her words fell, the last sliver of daylight was completely swallowed by the earth.
A heavy, almost suffocating darkness descended completely, as if a freezing, ink-black velvet cloth had been wrapped around the entire ice field.
Immediately following, a bone-chilling change occurred. From all directions, from far to near, overlapping layers of twisted, inhuman roars pierced the freezing air.
The sounds were chaotic at first, but quickly coalesced into an unsettling wave of noise—like the grinding of countless stones, or the crashing of a tide against a reef—surging from the edge of the horizon, growing closer and clearer.
Darkness stained the ice field like ink.
On the perimeter of the evacuation point, several thick beams from searchlights suddenly tore through the night, sweeping back and forth across the pale, desolate ice field, carving out swaying, unsettling fan-shaped zones.
Right on the edge where the light and darkness clashed violently, shadowy, twisted figures began to gather.
Initially, they were just slowly writhing silhouettes in the dark, but their numbers grew rapidly. Like foul slime seeping from cracks in hell, they gradually merged into a scalp-numbing mass.
The eastern defensive line. The sector Valerie was responsible for.
Along the three-hundred-meter-wide line, there had originally only been thirty somewhat nervous local troops and fifteen grim-faced Raiders running back and forth, reinforcing the fortifications.
Now, with the silent integration of the hundred Skitarii reinforcements and the ten Team B security warriors, the entire aura of the defensive line shifted drastically.
The defensive density had increased significantly, bringing with it a cold, coiled sense of order.
The Skitarii soldiers, operating in tactical squads of ten, slotted into the pre-established cover like precision gears.
With unified movements, they checked their gear and mounted their modified lasguns on the sandbags or gaps in the walls.
The muzzles of the fully charged weapons emitted an almost imperceptible, dark red glow in the freezing air, like the eyes of beasts lying in wait.
While the instantaneous stopping power of a single lasgun shot might not match the Terran Dominion's C-14 Impaler, its incredibly high rate of fire, nearly limitless energy supply, and virtually zero recoil made them exceptional tools for establishing a sustained net of suppressing fire.
Security Team B vanished like ghosts onto two vantage points deep within the defensive line—the top of a rusted steel water tower and the flat roof of a warehouse. They would become the cold eyes and lethal trigger fingers of the defense.
Valerie herself was situated in an observation post in the middle of the line, reinforced with thick steel plates and concrete. The screen of the data-slate before her glowed faintly, connected to thermal sensors, motion trackers, and the encrypted comms channels of all squads, feeding the pulse of the entire defensive line to her in real-time.
"All units, report final deployment status." Her voice was steady, transmitting clearly to every combat node through the tactical network.
"First Squad, in position. Fire sectors locked."
"Second Squad, in position. Ammunition and energy reserves checked."
"Security Team B, in position. Vantage points offer clear visibility; firing arcs unobstructed."
The defensive line was like a bowstring being gradually drawn taut; a freezing, hair-trigger silence permeated the air.
Just then, Raynor's comms forcefully cut in. The background noise was filled with distorted explosions and relentless gunfire. His voice was heavy with panting from stress and rapid movement: "Valerie! The west and north sides are engaged! The numbers are terrifying, crashing in like a damn tsunami! But their formation is a mess. Watch your front; thermal scans show a 'big boy' moving toward you, and it's a sizable one!"
"Copy that." Valerie's response was instantaneous, her fingertips already flying across the data-slate, bringing up the full-spectrum thermal imaging of the eastern front.
The scene displayed on the screen was enough to make any experienced warrior's heart pound. Massive, viscous patches of crimson light—representing biological heat signatures—were constantly "precipitating" and "emerging" from the absolute darkness beyond the scanning range. They were madly converging and fusing together, like boiling magma that had been suppressed deep within the earth's crust for too long, finally finding a crack to spew from. It was rolling and surging toward the defensive line with a slow but unstoppable momentum. It was not merely "numbers," but the expansion of a highly erosive and oppressive "presence."
Preliminary estimates put the vanguard of the first wave at over eight hundred. And behind that crimson "magma," at the edge of the scanning range, even more dense red lights writhed and intertwined in the darkness, seemingly endless.
Within this unsettling crimson tide, dozens of larger, brighter, almost orange-yellow heat signatures stood out glaringly. They moved slightly slower, but the intensity of the heat they emitted was several times that of ordinary individuals. On the thermal spectrum, they looked like glowing branding irons—these were the spitter variants with ranged corrosive capabilities, the "nails" that needed to be pulled first.
Almost the exact second Valerie completed her assessment, the cold, emotionless synthesized voice of the electronic system in the observation post began to broadcast the chilling distance data: "Enemy cluster entering 500-meter identification range."
"400 meters. Speed unreduced."
"300 meters. Ranged variant units exhibiting characteristic deceleration and clustering posture; anticipating entry into pre-launch phase."
Valerie's gaze swept over the data-slate, and she immediately issued her cold commands over the command channel: "All units, fire at will. Clear your respective sectors. Repeat, priority targets: all identified ranged variants."
"Skitarii squads, establish interlocking fire; sustain suppression on the standard melee clusters. Security Team B, precision elimination of high-value targets."
The moment the order was given, it was as if a silent switch had been flipped.
The entire eastern defensive line roared to life!
From the Skitarii positions, the previously dim muzzles of the lasguns suddenly erupted with dense beams of crimson light!
Countless straight beams tore through the darkness, emitting a low, continuous vzz-tss-tss-tss sound, weaving a devastating net of fire in the freezing night sky.
Where the beams struck the writhing black shapes in the distance, pungent white smoke instantly vaporized, leaving rapidly dimming and vanishing red dots on the thermal screens.
In almost the exact same millisecond, from the high ground behind the defensive line, two distinctly different, sharper, and brighter blue-white beams flashed!
Those were the high-energy particle beams fired by the snipers of Security Team B. The beams accurately sank into the exceptionally bright orange-red spots in the distance.
A second later, violent flashes of biological explosions erupted within the enemy horde. Green slime and shattered carapace sprayed in all directions under the searchlights—the corrosive sacs within the ranged variants had been prematurely detonated.
The silence was utterly shattered, replaced by the screech of lasers, the distant, inhuman roars of agony, and the heavy, rain-like thud of footsteps echoing across the ice field.
The gates of hell were thrown wide open.