Landing, Betrayal (Part 1)

Two eighty-meter-long heavy patrol boats and three three-hundred-and-fifty-meter-long Class One transport ships slowly climbed away from the Hell Angels Mercenary Group base.

Nine pitch-black Earth Federation patrol ships cruised more than ten kilometers away. After symbolically verifying the passcodes, they allowed the small fleet led by Gu Xiechen to enter space.

The two barracuda-shaped heavy patrol boats possessed above-average combat power. The Bearded Commander had spent a hefty sum acquiring these two home-defense vessels from retired Earth Federation Army ships. After being modified with parts scavenged from the black market, the two heavy patrol boats had firepower and mobility comparable to active-duty Earth Federation third-class warships, though their defenses were slightly weaker.

As for the three Class One transport ships, due to the inherent limitations of transport vessels, even though the Bearded Commander had also spent a great deal on them, he had only managed to make them a little faster than ordinary civilian ships. A bit of armor had been added around vital areas, while three small-caliber light cannons had been installed at both the bow and stern. Those minor modifications gave the three transport ships a certain degree of self-defense capability.

Gu Xiechen was unfamiliar with ship-handling procedures, so the professional sailors of the Hell Angels Mercenary Group handled everything.

The onboard computers calculated the optimal route. Using the Moon's gravity to alter their trajectory, the five fully loaded ships gradually increased engine power. After accelerating for five days and four nights, they approached two-thirds the speed of light. At the command of the captain of the heavy patrol boat Cerberus, aboard which Gu Xiechen was stationed, the warp engines of all five ships simultaneously erupted with blazing blue plasma streams. The five ships instantly broke through the speed of light and entered Subspace Warp Light-Speed Cruise.

Subspace Warp Light-Speed Cruise technology had been provided by the Roman people. It was precisely this technology that had given Earthlings the qualification to leave Earth and step into the universe. During subspace travel, ships moved at standard light speed, but relative to normal space, where Earth was located, their relative velocity reached a hundred times that speed or even greater.

After half a month of subspace travel, the small fleet led by Gu Xiechen emerged from subspace into a new stretch of stars. A chaotic asteroid belt surrounded a massive giant star.

The Alpha Starfield, located in the Milky Way's Third Spiral Arm, was the first resource starfield developed by the Earth Federation.

The Alpha Starfield possessed more than a hundred resource planets and was rich in all kinds of rare metal ores desperately needed by Earth. Yet only three resource planets had currently been developed. Only one asteroid in the Alpha Starfield, roughly the size of the Moon, possessed a thin atmosphere and an extremely primitive biosphere. Its underground caverns teemed with powerful beasts based on carbon-silicon coupled genes. This planet, named Alpha One, was the core planet of the Alpha Starfield, and the headquarters of Danube Heavy Metal Company was located there.

Alpha One's excessively harsh natural environment made large-scale immigration impossible. The entire planet was home only to more than thirty thousand miners from Danube Heavy Metal Company and a guard force of over a thousand men. Some time ago, the beasts in the underground caverns had suddenly formed a beast tide and attacked the mining area. The guard force had suffered severe casualties, so Grand Rhine, commander of the Hell Angels Mercenary Group's Seventh Regiment, had led more than two thousand four hundred mercenaries there to provide protection.

Gu Xiechen stood in the patrol boat's command cabin, reviewing all the information on the Alpha Starfield. One could easily imagine the significance of discovering a new wormhole in the Alpha Starfield. A new planet suitable for large-scale immigration would inevitably set off a frenzy of development throughout the Alpha Starfield. Under Earth Federation regulations, once the Hell Angels Mercenary Group obtained one-tenth of the mining rights to the new planet, it would be able to claim mining rights to one-tenth of the resource planets in the Alpha Starfield!

Danube Heavy Metal Company had merely begun preliminary extraction on three resource planets, yet that alone had placed it among the Federation's three largest mining companies!

Gu Xiechen clasped his hands behind his back and ordered, "Have Grand Rhine find an excuse to bring half the brothers here to join us. Don't let those people from Danube Heavy Metal Company grow suspicious."

The five ships hid behind a barren asteroid, and the detectors on Alpha One could not detect Gu Xiechen's arrival. Less than two hours after Gu Xiechen issued his order, a giant transport ship unique to the mining company, more than five hundred meters long, arrived under the escort of one heavy patrol boat, three light patrol boats, and six fast assault craft.

The patrol boat carrying Gu Xiechen docked with the patrol boat carrying Grand Rhine. Grand Rhine brought several officers from the Seventh Regiment over to meet Gu Xiechen.

"Deputy Commander!" Grand Rhine, a short but powerfully built man like a lion, saluted Gu Xiechen. The two deputy commanders of the Seventh Regiment behind him merely looked at Gu Xiechen with indifference.

Gu Xiechen sized Grand Rhine up for a moment, then said coldly, "Bearded Uncle put me in charge of everything here. Our mercenary group will conduct a preliminary survey of this planet and establish a forward base there. As long as we are the first to establish our own base and send the survey data back to Earth immediately, we will own one-tenth of this planet and the surrounding starfield! Any objections?"

Grand Rhine abruptly straightened. "No objections!"

One of Grand Rhine's adjutants spoke in an indifferent tone, "With just over three thousand of us, can we survey a new planet? Don't forget how many lives were lost during the initial surveys of the Federation's current colony planets! I insist that we report this news to the Federation immediately. The Federation's reward would be enough for all the brothers to retire in comfort."

The other adjutant sneered. "Of course, we admit that if we successfully survey this planet, the brothers will receive even greater rewards. But the risk is too great!"

Gu Xiechen stared at the two adjutants, and they stared coldly back at him. Gu Xiechen shook his head and asked Grand Rhine, "Grand Rhine, you're the head of the Seventh Regiment. Are you afraid of danger?"

Grand Rhine took several deep breaths and shook his head somewhat nervously. "Fortune is found in danger, Deputy Commander. We're mercenaries. We stake our lives against others' lives. That's our nature."

"Then I'll make the decision!" Gu Xiechen declared decisively. "Everyone follows my command. We'll go take a look at that planet, strive to establish a forward base, and conduct a preliminary survey. Caution comes first in all actions. If we discover native aliens on the planet's surface, do our best to get along with them peacefully!"

Gu Xiechen pursed his lips and smiled faintly. "I hope they're still in a primitive society. That way, we can appear before them as Heavenly Gods."

Grand Rhine and the officers behind him burst into laughter. That truly was the ideal situation during interstellar development. If a planet had an excellent natural environment and a large native population, and those natives were still in the primitive civilization stage, the Earth Federation could easily control them. That would even solve the problem of early-stage manpower. Moreover, natives were not Earth Federation citizens. No matter how much work they did, there would be no need to pay them wages!

The two adjutants who had opposed the plan also laughed, though their laughter was somewhat strange.

Gu Xiechen could understand their feelings. Their opinions had been rejected by him, yet they could still laugh. That proved their mental resilience was already quite good.

"Then the people from Danube Company don't know about your movements?" Gu Xiechen asked Grand Rhine the most important question.

"They can't possibly know. I told them we were heading out to wipe out the beasts in the underground caverns. They couldn't be happier about it." Grand Rhine answered with complete confidence.

"Very well, we move out!" Gu Xiechen ordered. "Reinforcements from the Third and Fifth Regiments will arrive in seven days at the earliest. We have enough manpower."

The two small groups merged into one. Under Grand Rhine's guidance, the small fleet flew for three days before arriving at the most chaotic asteroid belt in the Alpha Starfield. Vast numbers of meteors howled past at any moment, while interstellar dust rubbed against itself in the void, igniting countless flashes of fire. The lowest temperature here was minus two hundred and ten degrees Celsius, while in certain active meteor regions, the friction between meteor streams and interstellar dust produced temperatures exceeding thirty thousand degrees Celsius. Every meteor streaking past at high speed dragged a dazzling trail of fire through the endless darkness of space.

This was a forbidden zone for life, a hellish place. It was impossible to imagine how Grand Rhine, with nothing better to do, had discovered a new wormhole in such a place while piloting a patrol boat.

Carefully avoiding dozens of fiery trails thrown up by meteors and countless fragments produced by the collision of two small meteors, the small fleet slowly approached the core of the asteroid belt.

There was an unusually open elliptical region here, more than fifty kilometers in diameter. At the center of this space, only thirty-odd meteors of varying sizes floated sparsely. In the middle of those rocks was a pitch-black hole that occasionally erupted with vast quantities of far-infrared radiation. This hole was one of the universe's most miraculous phenomena: a wormhole, a shortcut that could instantly carry people to another starfield.

Gu Xiechen ordered several small armed satellites and magnetic levitation explosive mines launched around the area. He also suspended three positioning signal transmitters near the wormhole. Then the small fleet resolutely entered it.

The instant the ship plunged into the wormhole, Gu Xiechen suddenly felt that something around him was extremely familiar. But he cast aside that strange feeling. In the vast universe, too many things seemed familiar. Stars, planets, small meteors—he had seen such things in too many places.

Everyone aboard the ships felt dizzy and disoriented. Then intense light shone through the high-strength bulletproof glass at the front of the command cabin.

In the starfield ahead stood a star similar in size to the Sun, with seven planets of different sizes orbiting it. Of those seven planets, the other six were all gray, worthless rocky worlds. Only the second planet was a vast expanse of green and deep blue. The green was forests and grasslands, while the blue was oceans and lakes. From afar, this planet, twice Earth's diameter, appeared to have oceans covering more than sixty percent of its surface and land covering just over thirty percent.

The planet's atmosphere was extremely thick, at least three times as dense as Earth's. Satellite remote sensing showed turbulent air currents filling the space above its atmosphere. Visible white waves of air raced across the upper atmosphere, and the remote sensing data indicated that several dozen major currents were moving at nearly the speed of sound!

Gu Xiechen, Grand Rhine, and everyone in the command cabin could not help drawing sharp breaths at the terrifying data.

Comrades, a string of exhilarating climaxes is about to begin...

Uh, where are the recommendation votes? Where are the recommendation votes?

And clicks and book reviews too. After voting every day, everyone should go leave a book review if you have nothing else to do...

The livelier the atmosphere, the more passionate this Pighead will be... (To be continued)