--3:45 AM, June 18, 2043--
Tang Yi had never dreamed he could pull off such an outstanding barrage.
This was his third joint operation with Dongting. Although this rookie had yet to kill a kaiju, the pair had performed exceptionally well during Operation Red Barrier near the Hawaiian waters in January. Tang Yi had a steady, cautious fighting style and always thought things through before acting. That was why the young man had made it through every trial and smoothly taken over Dongting.
"Two shots!" Tang Yi shouted excitedly into the communicator. "Both hit!"
Overwhelmed by nerves, Tang Yi panted heavily. The ion cannons in Dongting's hands were still cooling down after consecutive fire, but he had already raised both arms again, aiming unflinchingly at the smoke before him.
You'll be the first kaiju I kill...
You'll be the first kaiju I kill...
But... usually calm, Tang Yi had been dazzled by victory so close at hand. His eyes glowed red as he kept repeating those words in his mind and aloud—so much so that he forgot to watch his surroundings.
"Dongting!" Jiang Tianzheng's furious roar kept coming through the communicator. "Damn it! Tang Yi, you little bastard, can you hear me?!"
"Huh?" Tang Yi finally snapped back to his senses, his face draining of color.
"Left! Nine o'clock!" Jiang Tianzheng roared. "NINE O'CLOCK!!!"
Tang Yi hurriedly adjusted his stance and turned left—just in time to witness Viper burst from the sea!
Splash—
Viper's dramatic entrance sent countless sprays of water flying. Then its pitch-black, slender body immediately coiled up Dongting's left leg. Tang Yi had no time to react at all!
"Fuck!" Tang Yi cursed, immediately disengaging his hands' firing mode. By then, Viper had already reached Dongting's head. It opened its blood-soaked maw and bit straight toward Dongting's head cockpit!!
Fortunately, Tang Yi reacted quickly enough. Dongting's hands seized Viper by the neck and stopped its charge dead in its tracks—now, its ten-meter fangs were barely thirty meters away from Tang Yi. Through the holographic HUD, Tang Yi could even see the writhing venom glands inside Viper's mouth.
"I've got it!" Tang Yi roared into the communicator. "Destroy it, now—"
Tang Yi froze, the words dying in his throat.
He suddenly saw the section of Viper's throat clutched in his hands begin to swell. It also started making waves of nauseating retching sounds.
Tang Yi could not help recalling what he had learned at the Jaeger pilot academy: kaiju contained highly corrosive acidic fluids, which they could expel from their bodies in various ways to contaminate the land and corrode Jaegers.
Strands of Deep Blue mucus dripped from Viper's mouth. That was right—it was about to spray acid.
"I—"
The sound of a rushing torrent tearing through the air completely drowned out Tang Yi's curse. What followed was the piercing screech of something being corroded by strong acid.
Hiss-----
At the same time, alarms abruptly blared inside the cockpit. The combined noise nearly knocked Tang Yi unconscious.
When he came to again, smoke was rising inside the cockpit. Viper still loomed before him, like something out of a dream. But the holographic HUD that had once stood between them was gone. A helicopter's searchlight swept through the cockpit. Sea wind blew in through the breach, and rain pattered against Tang Yi's face. Tang Yi stared straight at the kaiju, and the kaiju stared right back at him.
Though Tang Yi tried to pull the kaiju away, he discovered that Dongting's cockpit circuits had already been completely corroded by Viper's acid. Every system had suffered varying degrees of short circuiting. All the lights on the control console had gone out. Aside from the breach ahead, everything around him was pitch-black.
"Come on!" Tang Yi finally regained his composure. He glared at the kaiju, his face filled with the determination of a man ready to die. "I'm not afraid of you—"
Tang Yi's expression froze in that instant. Then darkness swallowed his vision, and he knew nothing more.
The Command Center fell silent.
On the large screen, Viper first used strong acid to corrode Dongting's face and the front armor of its cockpit. Then it opened its blood-soaked maw and bit down on what remained.
Amid deafening metal-tearing shrieks and sparks from rupturing wires, Viper ripped Dongting's cockpit out of the Jaeger's head with its jaws. It proudly raised its head, then spat out the cockpit in its mouth.
The cockpit flew far across the ocean surface. Dongting, now without a pilot, slowly collapsed. Its navigation lights went out one after another, and its body gradually sank beneath the frigid sea.
In the Command Center, the communicator connected to Dongting lost its signal as the cockpit hit the water. Tang Yi's furious shouts were replaced by the crackling hiss of static.
"Dongting has been destroyed," Lin Yin reported regretfully. Beside her, Jiang Tianzheng nodded with a grim expression. Even without Lin Yin saying it, everyone understood.
"Should we deploy the remaining Jaegers?" Lin Yin pressed.
"Wait a moment." Jiang Tianzheng shouted into the communicator, "FL, watch Viper's movements! Don't let it ambush you again!"
Before Jiang Tianzheng's words had even faded, Viper swiftly abandoned the combat-incapable Dongting, changed direction, and charged straight at FL, the closest target!
Tang Jia's face was filled with fury at the sight of his brother suffering such a brutal fate. He swept his left arm at the Viper charging toward him, while the 609MM super cannon in his right hand finished loading at the same time. He intended to pin the kaiju down with a devastating barrage, but Viper's reaction speed far exceeded Tang Jia's expectations. It suddenly turned, whipping its thick snake tail through the air and smashing it violently into FL's abdomen. The astonishing force sent FL flying outright!
As a light Jaeger, FL simply could not withstand such immense force. Its abdominal armor was completely wrecked, and its body was hurled nearly a hundred meters through the air before crashing hard into the Pacific Ocean.
Rosen and Sun Zheng Tang had likewise witnessed the entire process of Dongting's destruction and FL being sent flying.
There was no need to say anything about Sun Zheng Tang. Watching his old partner slowly sink to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, he felt a wrenching pain in his heart. He was practically going insane!
"I'll XXXXXX you!!" Sun Zheng Tang shot up from his chair, grinding his teeth in rage. He cursed Tang Yi for his incompetence while complaining about Jiang Tianzheng's utterly flawed arrangements. "Why did that old fool only send five? Wouldn't it have been better to send all twelve at once?!"
"This isn't Jiang Tianzheng's or Tang Yi's fault." Rosen remained relatively calm. Staring at the television screen, he said quietly, "No one expected Viper's ambush."
"Tch, that piece-of-shit Viper?" Sun Zheng Tang sneered irrationally. "If it were me, I could kill ten of those little sixth-generation things in one minute!"
"No..." Rosen turned his head, fire blazing in his eyes.
"How can you be sure Viper is a sixth-generation kaiju?"
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