Chapter 285: Chapter 208: Radium_2
Translator: 549690339
Like the young people of Harrison Clark and Nora Camp’s generation, they never had the chance to set foot on the Earth, which should have belonged to humanity, until they came to execute their mission.
The Hawk Armor has undergone several generations of improvements, forming its latest version today, but the model sequence has never changed.
Radium has not stood still either, constantly expanding its productive capacity and improving its technological level.
The intensity of the battles between the two sides has never decreased.
On Earth, it has long been devastated, and all cities have become ruins.
Apart from the large-scale industrial production bases with only machines, there are only huge craters blasted out by explosions and the pristine forests that have regrown due to the scarce human presence.
The human population has plummeted from 20 billion at its peak a hundred years ago to less than 7 billion today.
A loss of 130 billion people.
This is not a heartless number; these are battle comrades who should have fought alongside everyone against another enemy, but lost their lives in the brutal war that left scars all over the Earth.
Of the remaining 7 billion people, only nearly 3 billion can be considered truly alive.
Another 4 billion people on Earth are living a life worse than death.
Exploited, confined in steel structures, restricted in their actions, forced labor, even subjected to dissective research.
Radium, like the humans who once “enslaved” machines, enslaves humans in an even more indifferent manner.
Humans still have some value to it; after all, they can complete relatively complex tasks that artificial intelligence cannot do conveniently.
It also forcibly encloses newborn babies in nutrition pods, restricting their ability to move, communicate, and interact with the outside world.
Its goal in completely binding these human babies is to create empty brains and connect them through implanted brainwave interference networks, attempting to form intelligent avatars.
It wants to fully decipher the essence of life.
The remaining 3 billion people are scattered outside, located in Mercury, Venus, Mars, Ganymede 1234 Base, and Titan Base, existing in the form of guerrilla teams.
Millions of highly mobile guerrilla teams form the Human Freedom Front.
It’s not that everyone doesn’t want to unite as a whole, they can’t.
Humans have tried once fifty years ago to assemble forces on the Moon’s orbit and launch a major counterattack.
Now the Moon no longer exists, and even the Earth’s orbit has undergone subtle changes.
People in the Freedom Front are always thinking about coming back to save their fellow humans, but Earth has long been turned into impregnable fortifications by Radium and it is really impossible to do so.
Harrison Clark read these bloody historical materials in just 30 seconds.
But the shock he experienced was like being in purgatory for thirty years.
He could not imagine the kind of resistance humans had gone through to barely hold onto this desolate land under such a terrifying enemy threat. Although he boasted that his heart had been honed like iron, he still could not stop the tremor in his heart when he read about the “beautiful future” he had created with his own hands.
Unlike the disaster of S Bacteria, which was born due to the direct intervention of the invaders, his intuition told him that the Hundred Years’ War must have started because of himself.
He wanted to apologize to so many people.
130 billion plus 40 billion, a total of 170 billion times.
The unbearable sense of guilt almost made him breathless.
Confronting two enemies, one close at hand and the other approaching, Harrison Clark could hardly imagine how the human Freedom Front fights with such strong determination.
But Harrison found a sentence in this rather brief history.
A sentence of his own, also the dying words of “Master Harrison Clark.”
“No matter how strong the enemy is, I choose to fight until the end of the world. Never give up, until death.”
The straightforward 28-word testament was written so preciously and solemnly into the history of war, showing its weight.
He roughly understood the mindset of the contemporary warriors.
He also recalled a sentence said by an unnamed leader in the timeline when he first decided to become a real soldier.
“Humanity has no choice but to fight.”
Perhaps it’s nature or human brain structure that determines its uniqueness. Language can give power to people, even across a thousand years, it can still inspire people.
Harrison is not yet clear about the situation in which his original self uttered these dying words.
But strangely, his own words resonated with his motivation, spanning thousands of years.
If it had been anyone else in the world, perhaps they would have easily chosen to take their own lives as atonement for their sins.
But Harrison Clark ultimately withstood the burden, for aside from drowning in the remorse, he had an even greater responsibility.
He hadn’t completed his self-redemption.
Because he did not need redemption.
He was gradually forging his heart with the painful hammer of self-punishment.
Since witnessing the tragedy of the S Bacterial disaster, he had been mentally preparing himself.
Every time he looked back, he couldn’t let himself be swayed by what he had caused!
His current mission was the Liberation Army’s most widespread and significant offensive in a decade.
While it was a special operation, it was also a fierce ambush with no possibility of retreat.
It was led by Nora Camp’s elite guerrilla force and supported by ninety-nine other vertical teams, including the Long River Vertical Team.
The fleet that had descended from the sky, sealing their fate on arrival, was the Long River Vertically Team.
The goal of this mission was to seize the Gravitational Wave Field Technology and the accompanying Pseudo-Curvature Engine Technology that had just been completed at the Summit Underground Research Institute in Oxfordshire. Yes, in the end, the Summit Research Institute was controlled and absorbed by the radium forces.
Though the capabilities of this prototype Pseudo-Curvature Engine were far from reaching those described in Star Trek, only being able to slightly compress and expand space, it was already much more powerful than past particle propulsion engines.
If the radium forces managed to monopolize its development and equip all their forces with it, the Freedom Front would lose any chance of victory.
So, no matter the cost, success was crucial.
An hour ago, nearly a thousand warships from a hundred vertical teams gathered from all over Earth, descended from the sky, and launched surprise attacks on different targets.
The other ninety-nine were used as bait, while the relatively strongest and most elite, the Giant Wave Vertical Team, struck the target directly.
Upon landing, they abandoned their warships, and all ten thousand elite soldiers forged their way through the enemy defense lines, captured the data permissions, and completed the chip cloning.
Radium had absolute control over the Earth’s quantum network, so they had to forcibly take the chips out.
Now that they had obtained the data on the chips, held by Nora Camp, they needed to retreat.
Of the ten thousand strong Giant Wave Vertical Team, only six hundred odd members remained.
Since the warships they had arrived in were all destroyed, they had no choice but to flee on foot towards the East Sea.
Awaiting them there were the remaining ships of another vertical team. Among those, a special warship could burrow through the microwave transmission network of the Dyson membrane to avoid the pursuit of the Space-based Weapons in Earth’s orbit, escape into space, and head for the Mars Base.
The reason they didn’t arrange a rendezvous in Oxfordshire was the overwhelming defense forces that had been activated there. Warships were too conspicuous and impossible to hide. For each one that arrived, none would survive.
It was impossible to succeed.
Hidden Warships in the East Sea had shut down all power and were hiding within the bodies of mutated giant blue whales, an utterly failsafe approach and their only chance of survival.
At this point, whether it was the other vertical teams waiting to launch their diversionary attacks, or the fleets launching desperate assaults in space against Space-based Weapons, none of them ever planned on returning. As long as that single Hidden Warship could successfully take off, it would be considered a great victory.
But for now, they hadn’t headed directly towards the East Sea. Instead, they pretended to flee north, where a bait fleet pretending to be hidden awaited their sacrifice.
When facing an enemy like radium, no one could afford to take chances. Even a small surprise attack required their utmost effort.
“incoming battle report from the front! The Transcend Fleet, serving as bait, has engaged enemy forces. The enemy has deployed a considerable amount of military strength! Our chance has come! Turn, head for the East Sea! No one looks back!”
While on the run, Nora Camp gave another order.
The remaining six hundred soldiers pivoted instantly.
Ahead, the dark mass of Eagle Strike Warriors belonging to humans flew towards them.
These warriors were all marching against the tide, providing cover for the battered remnant of Giant Wave Vertical Team’s retreat.
As they passed each other, they didn’t even have time for their eyes to meet..