Chapter 1516

In the boundless deep air, a black painted starship is sailing towards the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars along a nearly straight path.

The end of the voyage is Ceres.

The target is a pirate space base about 0.03 astronomical units away from Ceres!

When it comes to space thieves active in the asteroid belt, it has a long history.

As early as in the 1950s, after the first cargo ship attack on starlight, the term "air thief" came into people's view through the news media.

With the continuous expansion of the aerospace industry, asteroid belt mining has gradually become a low-cost and huge revenue industry, resulting in a large number of spacecraft moving from the Earth Moon system to the asteroid belt.

All of us are looking forward to getting rich overnight. From 500000 asteroids and hundreds of millions of meteorite fragments, we can find a large lump of gold or precious metals that are more expensive than gold. Driven by this extreme desire for wealth, naturally, a group of lawbreakers are born who are eager to obtain without effort and at the same time are willing to take risks.

With the legal gap on the asteroid belt and the limited binding force of each country on this area, they have become a headache for governments and regional alliances by refitting purchased or leased spacecraft and attacking other civilian mining ships or stations.

The complex meteorite environment makes it difficult for large starships to stay in this area for a long time, and if it is only a small ship or space base, it is difficult to ensure the scale advantage of regular forces in the battlefield.

If deployed separately, those military facilities will easily become the targets of those air thieves. If we deploy them centrally, we can ensure the combat effectiveness, but in the face of a billion kilometers of battlefield width and limited visibility, it is basically equal to furnishing.

After all, we can't expect the empty thieves to hit the steel plate with their heads and drill into the cage by themselves.

By contrast, the pirates who are drifting between the asteroid belt and Mars are able to make a living with small ships and smuggled weapons.

On the one hand, the complex social environment of Mars provides the breeding soil for the air thieves active in the asteroid belt; on the other hand, it is the connivance of some regimes or regional alliances.

After all, the goods snatched from competitors are always cheaper than the goods that flow into the market through normal channels. Moreover, they can restrict the development of competitors and digest the surplus arms in their own homes.

Although every once in a while, the Pan Asian cooperation will send out fleets to carry out a centralized eradication of asteroid belts in a certain area, the results are not great.

For one thing, there are always news leaked ahead of time. For another, the cost of sending the fleet to the asteroid belt is too expensive.

Take this operation as an example. As a command ship, Huashan is the lightest aircraft carrier in the Pan Asian space force. The two cruisers and five destroyers escorted by Huashan belong to the same type of lighter tonnage.

But even so, as long as it enters the asteroid belt. The cost of this war is bound to be an expensive number

"Send the carrier aircraft to investigate the nearby airspace, guard the outer area of the destroyer, open the cruiser magazine, use the EMP bomb, and find that the abnormal target is close to the direct lock attack."

"Yes!"

The edge of the asteroid belt is getting closer.

On the bridge.

With the command of the commander, 12 ship-based UAVs took off from the Huashan aircraft carrier, like silver bullets, plunging into the interior of the asteroid belt.

Although most of the air thieves are backward in their armed forces, it is difficult to pose a substantial threat to the regular army of any regional alliance on the front battlefield, they usually use the terrain advantage wisely to fight with the regular army.

For example, install nuclear warheads in some asteroids with relatively stable orbits and small size, and then detonate them when the warships of the regular army are close to each other, damaging the warships through the high-temperature meteorites.

For example, some cruise missiles hidden behind meteorites, drones carrying explosives or anti armor weapons, and even small attack boats with bulk weapons.

While threatening nearby mining stations, these air thieves always cause trouble to regular army ships in unexpected places.

The work of these carrier based aircrafts is to check the nearby battlefield environment, clear the traps left by the air thieves, and lock the potential threats

Inside the bridge.

Staring at the three-dimensional hologram suspended on the command desk, the commander's eyebrows behind his hands were slightly wrinkled.

It's almost half an hour since we sent out the carrier plane, but there are still no traces of mines or automatic weapons in this area.

Many years of experience in fighting with air thieves told him that this group of air thieves might be a little unusual.

"Report, from the reconnaissance ship ahead, we found an unknown space station near the 0.03 astronomical unit of Ceres."

Hearing the report from his subordinates, the commander immediately ordered."Modeling scan data."

"Yes!"

The pale blue image appeared on the command desk, and a space station constructed of three-dimensional holographic grid soon emerged in front of the public.

Like most civilian mining stations, the space station is embedded in a small asteroid and occupies a quarter of its size.

Due to the high content of metal deposits in the nearby area, a natural "electromagnetic wave black hole" has been formed. If you don't look closely, you can't find the existence of this space station at all.

Staring at the space station, the military adviser standing at the command desk frowned and said.

"It's strange."

Usually when their carrier aircraft came close to this position, not to mention the fierce fighting between the two sides, at least the air thief hiding in the space station could not react at all.

However, the situation is that the whole space station and the nearby airspace are quiet, and only one base is located there alone.

"It's quite strange," he said to himself, nodding his head, with a solemn expression in the commander's eyes. "They can't have no response when we set out such a large fleet. Even if the radar is broken, visual observation alone will not be completely unaware. "

"Will they just go hunting?"

"Not quite. My intuition tells me that the hidden things are not easy."

After saying this, the commander pondered for a while and ordered.

"Ready to send ground forces."

"No matter what's inside, just go in and have a look."

Land war adviser: "do you want to launch the infrasonic missile?"

"No, there are no weapons on the surface of the space station. The armed forces inside should not be very strong. This operation is different from the past. We need several captives. "Looking at the hologram on the command desk, the commander calmed down and said in a serious way," prepare for the third orbital Airborne Brigade! Send out three groups of commandos to prepare for a strong attack! "

As soon as the command was given, six long shuttle landing craft were launched from the aircraft carrier. They formed two parallel triangles one before and one after, and went straight to the direction of the space station along the straight track.

Although it's a strong attack, it doesn't mean to fill it with flesh and blood.

The first three landing boats hit the outer shell of the space station. With a burst of sparks flying, the metal jet from the front poured into the space station, releasing a round of suppression fire to the internal facilities and personnel.

Dozens of air powered UAVs were released from the three landing boats, and they burst into the interior along the outer gap of the space station, quickly occupying the favorable terrain of the space station, and fed back the situation of the battlefield to the commandos on the later three landing boats and the AI battlefield analysis system on the aircraft carrier.

Next came a collision of steel.

The latter three landing craft, from three different angles, just like three nails, directly hit the space station. With the opening of the hatch, three groups of commandos entered the space station from three directions respectively, and launched an attack towards the space station in cooperation with the UAV released first.

However

Something unexpected happened.

Facing the empty space station, the team leader, who burst into the core area of the station with a rifle, looked around vigilantly, and finally lowered the muzzle of his gun, complaining angrily.

"What is the headquarters doing..."

The control room is quiet. Except for the current sound of the chassis running, there is no extra noise. From the perspective of the air exchange system at work, the space station should have been inhabited by some people, and from the perspective of the balance of living material reserves, those people should have lived here for a long time.

However, don't say it's an air thief.

I can't even see a living person here