Battle on the Insect Planet (7): Upgrade

The camp was higher than the surrounding ground, and in order to rush into the camp, the insects piled up one on top of the other, forming a pile.

The insect pile was high enough, but its flexibility was a bit lacking. Faced with the humans who suddenly rushed out of the protective shield, the insects were trampled into a pile by the humans’ mechas before they could react.

The heavy mechas stepped over them one after another. The insects struggled hard but were unable to overturn the hateful humans on their backs.

According to Liu Wennian’s arrangement, the stronger the soldier, the farther the target insect was from the camp, so a group of mechas moved gracefully towards the periphery of the insects.

A new operating joystick appeared on Xia Ruize’s left hand side in the mecha cockpit. Facing the insects that reacted and surrounded him, he pulled the joystick upwards, and a propeller emerged from the top of the mecha. The power generated by the rotation pulled the mecha to a height of five or six meters above the ground.

This height was the lowest height that the insects could hardly reach. The insects’ forelimbs with bared fangs and claws were waving under the feet of the mecha, while Xia Ruize controlled the joystick with his left hand and the electromagnetic gun with his right hand, easily cutting the target insect below into two halves from head to tail.

Xia Ruize was not the only one. Many soldiers’ first reaction when they were surrounded was to take off into the air and try out the newly installed parts.

In this mission world, although the individual combat power of humans was not as good as that of insects, they had advanced technology and were completely helpless against flying human mechas.

In less than half an hour, all the insects besieging the camp were eliminated, and the humans suffered minimal losses with the help of the flying components.

The commanders of the pioneer team were very satisfied with the result and assigned new tasks to the soldiers.

A detailed topographic map appeared on the mecha screens of all the soldiers. The map showed that there was an oasis 5 kilometers southeast of the camp.

This oasis was discovered by the first team returning to the camp in the morning. There were giant insects blocking the way in the oasis. After finding the insects difficult to get rid of, the team exploring in the corresponding direction immediately returned to the camp to seek support, just in time to catch up with the camp being surrounded.

While the soldiers were resting, the command carefully studied the maps explored by the various teams in the morning, intending to explore other types of terrain and insect situations, so it issued a mission for all soldiers to go out and clear out the oasis.

The soldiers who received the order equipped their weapons and energy boxes, and went out in full force, manipulating the mechas to run towards the target area.

Above them, there were a large number of drones following and observing. These drones would set up communication channels to facilitate the timely transmission of the situation on the front line and new orders from the command center.

The distance of five kilometers was not far. Soon, fifteen teams lined up in a semicircle at the edge of the oasis. Then, each team sent out ten soldiers, who stood side by side in a line, wielding huge axes and vigorously cutting down the trees and vines at the edge of the oasis.

The soldiers who cut down the trees took turns every 20 minutes to ensure that everyone had enough energy and physical strength to deal with any unexpected accidents at any time.

Behind the soldier who was cutting down trees, there were five soldiers holding flamethrowers, who promptly burned away the stumps on the ground.

The remaining twenty or so soldiers stood around and kept alert, guarding against the sudden emergence of insects hiding in the sand and oasis.

The soldiers had a clear division of labor and were very efficient. In the face of the extremely destructive humans, the originally lush oasis was rapidly shrinking in size, revealing large areas of soil that had been scorched black by the raging fire.

A whole hour passed without any attack on the humans, as if there were no insects in the oasis.

This made many soldiers relax, and the command center promptly modified the instructions, increasing the number of soldiers in each team cutting down trees at the same time to fifteen.

In the area that Xia Ruize’s team was in charge of, Xia Ruize was holding a flamethrower and clearing away all the messy branches and leaves on the ground. Looking at a peaceful oasis, he couldn’t help but frown and reminded the soldiers in the team again:

“Everyone be alert. Take off immediately if there is an accident.”

The soldiers responded one after another. Being on this strange and bizarre planet, they would rather believe it than not. Even if some people felt that Xia Ruize was too nervous, they didn’t dare to say anything more when they thought of Xia Ruize’s sharp intuition in the previous few times.

Another hour passed, and just when humans were busy, suddenly, without any warning or prediction, a huge “rustling” sound was heard, and a large number of giant green and yellow insects emerged from the depths of the oasis in front of humans and from under the sand behind them.

These insects rushed into the crowd at the fastest speed. It only took two or three seconds from the time they appeared to the time they rushed to the front.

“Alert!”

Xia Ruize’s reminder echoed throughout the exploration team’s internal channels at the same time as the insect appeared. His soldiers, who had been repeatedly reminded by him, jumped up as if by reflex. Without even seeing the situation clearly, they had already manipulated the joystick to launch the mecha into the air.

When everyone really took off and saw the images of the surrounding insects on the mecha screen, they felt their hearts were gripped by invisible fear.

Because there were more than a thousand insects emerging from the oasis and the sand! They all gathered in this small area, densely packed, ferocious and terrifying!

The soldiers who were always alert and quick to react successfully controlled the mecha to take off under Xia Ruize’s reminder, but there were still some soldiers who relaxed their vigilance before and failed to react immediately. In almost an instant, their mechas were buried by countless insects, and others didn’t know how to start if they wanted to save them.

In the end, only about 500 fighters successfully took off and escaped from the ground. The mechas of the remaining dozens of people lost contact signals in a very short time, and no matter how the other fighters called out, there was no response.

The soldiers who took off had no time to pay attention to their lost companions. They found that they were not completely out of danger because the insects had developed new ways of fighting against human flying parts.

A large number of insects were seen rushing in the same direction, quickly forming a huge pile of insects. The insects that rushed to the highest point of the pile, stepping on their companions’ bodies, leaped towards the human mecha with all their might.

It only took two or three seconds for a pile of insects to appear from nothing. If not careful, a mecha that failed to dodge in time may be caught up by the flying insects.

The insects seemed to have no fear of pain and rammed their bodies into the propellers. Once the propellers were destroyed, the human mechas would lose balance and fall to the ground.

As for the humans, even though their weapons were powerful, there were simply too many enemies. The endless stream of insects meant that no matter how many enemies the humans killed, the number of enemies did not decrease, and the number of insects continued to increase.

Moreover, as the battle continued, the insects cooperated more and more tacitly, and the speed of piling up the insect piles became faster and faster. Countless insect piles were piled up around the human mechas. Looking around, the surrounding sky was filled with not only human mechas, but also insects flying all over the sky.

The human warriors were exhausted both physically and mentally as they had to attack and control their mechas to dodge the “flying insects” nimbly, and subconsciously moved towards the camp.

“Keep climbing! Retreat! Return to camp!”

The retreat order from the command center was finally transmitted through the information channel built with drones distributed along the way as relays.

The soldiers who were already struggling hard in the sea of ​​insects immediately raised the height of the mecha to ten meters, which was the maximum height that the temporarily installed flying parts could withstand.

The soldiers who had temporarily escaped the siege of insects pushed the control joystick to the front and flew towards the camp.

But the insects clearly weren’t going to let them go.

A huge number of insects were running wildly below the humans, and as they ran they did not forget to pile up huge and tall insect piles. Countless insects were recklessly stepping on their own kind and rushing towards the humans.

Even if it fell to the ground, it would become the cornerstone of the next insect pile, helping other companions to continue attacking.

The human soldiers struggled to manipulate the joysticks, desperately trying to avoid the insects flying from all directions.

Even worse, when humans finally evacuated the scorched earth area they had cleared, they discovered that on the sandy ground in the distance, thousands of insects had piled up high and long interception nets, like a city wall, blocking the humans’ way back to the camp.

“Fuck!”, “god!”, “Oh my god!”…

The internal channel was suddenly filled with angry curses. The soldiers looked at the insect wall in front of them, which was more than ten meters high and higher than the flying altitude of their mechas, and they were about to spit out blood.

“Call for support! Requesting for covering fire! Repeat! Requesting for covering fire!”

The captains of each team frantically sent distress signals back to the camp.

While waiting for the signal to be transmitted, the captains also needed to comfort their soldiers:

“Control your mechas well and don’t get dragged down by the insects. Don’t worry, the camp won’t abandon us.”

In less than a minute, dozens of shells were fired accurately at the insect wall, and with a “boom” sound, the insect wall collapsed and shattered.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry! Retreat now!”

Xia Ruize struggled to stabilize the mecha in the shock wave of the explosion, and rushed to the original location of the insect wall without caring that the smoke from the explosion had not yet dissipated.

The shock wave affected the team’s signal, and his words were transmitted intermittently to the mechas of other soldiers.

In the chaotic situation, the soldiers who were familiar with Xia Ruize followed him and rushed to the center of the explosion. The extremely high temperature around them made the metal mechas also burn hot. The temperature regulator in the cockpit worked hard, but the soldiers were immediately covered in sweat.

In the critical moment, no one bothered to wipe the sweat off even if it dripped into their eyes. They were all trying their best to control the mechas and rush towards the camp.

Finally, the dust broke out. The only good news was that in order to block the human mechas, the nearby insects built an insect wall. As a result, not many insects actually passed through the insect wall and chased after the mechas.

“Let’s run.”

Xia Ruize listened to the shrill alarm coming from the mecha’s central control. All parts of the mecha were damaged to varying degrees. In order to make the flying parts lighter for use at critical moments, Xia Ruize suggested landing and running back to the camp.

He looked at the ground below. Although there were many holes on the ground, no insects came out of the holes. It seemed that the insects underground had gone to build a bug wall.

“good!”

“Okay!” Cheng Huaiqian, who had been following Xia Ruize, responded immediately. Several mechas landed behind the two of them and ran towards the camp. The speed of controlling the mechas was no slower than flying.

While running, Xia Ruize couldn’t help but turn his head and look behind him.

In the back, the smoke from the explosion finally dissipated, revealing a new insect wall, which was quickly built by the surviving insects on the corpses of their own kind.