Age of Cosmic Exploration, 4

by Zhttty

  There was a hint of viciousness that entered Haweza’s voice when he continued. "I hope you remember the tale that I’ve told you about when Major Guang Zhen personally executed a Black Star Trooper. I was just standing behind him then. If Major Guang Zhen didn’t do what he did, the Barracks would be greatly disappointed. Thankfully, Major Guang Zhen did what he did. It was better than I expected, it was wonderful. That is how humanity’s last line of defense should act! You’ve been warned. I can stand for any mistake except abandoning the team during battle. Don’t ever be a deserter.

  "Or else don’t blame my sawblade!"

  His words gave the troopers quite a shock. They were silent the whole afternoon. They lied on a grass field cocooned in their own thoughts. A young trooper by the name of Peter sidled up to Jerry. He whispered, "Jerry, I heard your father is a scientist."

  Jerry nodded. "You heard right. He is working on something related to new raw materials."

  Peter commented, "My father is just a regular government servant, currently employed by the House of Representatives. But I guess I should count myself lucky. Every night when my father came back from work, he would bring myself, my mother, and my sister to the late night cinema. He would always complain about the film being shown, like how they were always the selected few, but he would sit through them just the same. Right, my sister is 5 years old now, and she was born on the Hope…"

  Jerry replied enviously, "That’s wonderful. I wish I had a sister myself, but I can’t say I have it worse than you. Yes, my parents are a bit set in their ways, so much so that I couldn’t stand living under the same roof as them, but now that I think about it, I wouldn’t swap them for anyone else…"

  "Yes, the Hope is a very good place now…"

  Peter suddenly sat up straight, and he said seriously, "I want to be a qualified Black Star Trooper, I want to protect my family, so Jerry, will you be my witness. If the day comes when I falter from this ideal, I want you to cut me down with a slash!" He extended his balled fist at Jerry.

  Jerry was silent before he too raised his fist and bumped it with Jerry’s. The clash created a tingling metallic sound that attracted everyone’s attention.

  "I promise you, but I hope you will do the same for me as well."

  "Okay!"

  "We are steel! We are mankind’s enemies’ biggest nightmare! We will fight for humanity! We are fearless!"

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  Chapter194 Super Species!

  This was the sixth day of the troopers’ training. They were preparing to return from the jungle. The training was quite useful since some of the newer troopers already had the steely gazes of actual soldiers. Haweza, who noticed, this was very satisfied, so he decided to have one week of such training every month to further improve the troopers’ ability.

  When they arrived at the forest fringe during dusk, they received a SOS message from the sixth Black Star Trooper unit. They were 5 hours away, but due to the treacherous path of the forest, they would need at least several hours to reach them.

  What to do?

  This was a question that was faced by every member of the ninth unit.

  It was not that they didn’t want to lend their hands, but the training was arranged to be one week long, and the power supply in their space armor was purposely calculated to only last that long.

  Initially, they could be operated for 24 hours to ease the new cadets into training, but 2 to 3 days later, they had to be shut down during sleep and be only used during specific hours during the day. 6 days later, the battery levels of their suits of space armor was almost reaching rock bottom.

  If they spent another 5 hours to rush to the scene, it would be one thing to just meet up, but another if there was combat involved. This meant that the space armors would run out of energy when they returned. The space armor weighed about 200 kilograms! Even putting it on needed help from 2 other workers. If the energy was spent, one had to be cut out from within. Without the protection of the space armor, the jungle would be a very dangerous place even for Homo Evolutis. Should they stumble into a dinosaur-like creature, the member count of their unit would most likely decrease.

  This time even Haweza hesitated. Suddenly Jerry suggested, "Leader, if my memory serves me well, the 6th unit has 16 members, right? One of them is a female, and they have a bigger unit, so what kind of threat would force them to issue an SOS message? It must be quite serious, like the discovery of alien monsters planning to ambush our new capital or the tour crafts."

  Haweza nodded in agreement. "What you’re saying is highly possible. After all, we have no idea whether the alien monsters have been completely cleared. That’s why the surveillance teams haven’t stopped working… So, in your opinion, we should go?"

  Another trooper piped up. "Of course. Fighting alien threat is the troopers’ vocation. The issue of energy deficiency has a simple solution as well. Since the 6th unit has already sent the SOS message, I’m pretty sure the Hope will dispatch support shuttles as well. We’ll just take those home."

  Haweza gave it some thought and nodded firmly. "Then it’s decided. We’ll hurry to the scene. Everyone, check your equipment carefully, and remember, this is no longer training! It might even be an actual fight with alien monsters! So be alert!"

  The 14 men around him yelled loudly, "Yes, Sir!"

  Haweza waved his sawblade forward. "Let’s move out!"

  Therefore, the 9th ninth rushed to the 6th unit’s location. After 3 hours of silent trekking, they finally reached the battlefield where a bunch of trees had been fallen. It felt like a giant creature had stampeded through the area. "Alien," someone said under his breath.

  Haweza didn’t think so; he had combated the alien monsters before. There was a layer of slimy goop that covered the aliens’ body, and their blood wasn’t red. Incidentally, most of the animals on the planet had red-colored blood, so that made for an easy demarcation between the though. The place didn’t have any alien carcasses nor slimy goop; what it had, though, were patches of bloody red spots.

  Haweza signed a signal to his back, then the troopers surrounded him in a circle, their guns pointing outwards. He squatted down to inspect the liquid on the ground. He touched the liquid and spread it on a metallic slab on a part of his space armor. Very quickly, a window of numbers and words appeared before him. It was the blood’s composition. Obviously, it wasn’t human.

  "It’s a native animal." Haweza sighed as he stood up, but at that moment, he felt a sudden wave of malice assaulting him from the top of his head. He kicked the floor and leaped back, carrying a few troopers with him. Like a small asteroid, something hit the spot he was squatting over with a resounding boom. All of the troopers were thrown out of formation. What followed next was a series of gunfire. A dark shadow weaved through the bullet trajectory before disappearing with a speed that couldn’t possibly be caught by the naked eye.

  Haweza stood up and stared at the spot he was previously at with a complicated expression. There was a small hole about half a meter deep. Some of the new cadets were still shooting, so he yelled, "Stop shooting! Stop shooting!"

  Everyone stopped and the troopers regained their formation, but this time they paid extra attention to the sky.

  Haweza’s expression dimmed as he said, "It’s a super species. The 6th unit crossed paths with this thing; no wonder they issued the SOS message."

  The 14 troopers were confused, so one of them asked, "Leader, the super species isn’t something you made up to scare us?"

  Haweza answered with a straight face, "No, I didn’t lie to you; this planet does have its own unique super species. They can even rival the alien monsters. No, they’re more dangerous than the monsters because they have been shown to be able to take down a whole group of alien monsters. These super species are little in number and small in size; the biggest we’ve captured on video so far was only 1 to 2 meters tall, but their main food sources are the dino-si
zed creatures, and they are highly territorial. They will use their lives to chase away trespassers."

  Fear was written on the troopers’ faces, but Jerry asked, "Leader, this means that the story about how the first, second, and third units being assigned to kill these super species is true as well? How many did they kill or capture? What did the Academy say about them?"

  Haweza shook his head. "Unfortunately, so far we haven’t been able to take down even one of these super species. They are like natural killers of the forest, and they're very sneaky to boot. Some of the scientists even believe that they have some form of rudimentary intelligence, because when they realize that the possibility of winning is low, they are clever enough to abandon their territory. This has made the capture effort incredibly difficult. The dense forest also nullifies a lot of our surveillance devices, and we, the Black Star Troopers, are hampered by that as well. So thus far, we are only able to chase them away and not capture them."

  The new troopers were silent. Peter asked, "Leader, then what shall we do now?"

  "…We move on," Haweza answered. "That super species must be keeping a close eye on us, waiting for us to make a mistake and then give us a fatal strike like how it did just now. However, I believe it is already wounded; the blood we saw should be its. Do not fear, because we are the Black Star Troopers. How can we be afraid of some beasts? Unit 6, let’s carry on!"

  "Yes, Sir!" the 14 men replied in unison.

  As they marched on, Haweza used an isolated channel to communicate with Jerry. "Jerry, we are both perceptors so I want you to stay at the back of the group and I’ll lead at the front. Keep your feelers up for the sting of malice. Can you do that?"

  Jerry quickly replied, "Don’t worry, I will get the job done, Sir!’

  "… Be very careful, the claws of the super species are proven to be able to break through the space armor." Haweza dropped the advice as he moved to the front.

  The unit moved forward carefully towards the 6th unit’s signal's location. They sighed in relief when they saw the sheen of the space armor in front of them. Their footsteps fell faster. Suddenly, a cloud of malice surrounded them. It was acutely felt by both Haweza and Jerry. They lifted their rifles and aimed at the source of the malice.

  To their consternation, a second spot of malice appeared right underneath them in the middle of their unit. Before the two of them could react, they saw a shadow clamp onto a trooper’s ankle and drag him deeper into the jungle with lightning speed. Haweza was too far in front of the group to react, so it was Jerry who leaped onto the trooper’s body to stop him from moving. Unexpectedly, the dragging force was so strong that the two troopers were pulled into the deeper recesses of the jungle. This whole event lasted for only 2 seconds; that was how fast the super species was. The forest was a cacophony of rushing footsteps and screams…

  "I am steel! I am mankind’s enemies’ biggest nightmare! I will fight for humanity! I am fearless!"

  Jerry yelled at the top of his lungs. He tried his best to pull himself upwards. He aimed at the shadow in front of him and pulled the trigger!

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  Chapter195 Red Armor

  When Jerry lifted his gun, he was given an unobstructed view of the super species that was chowing down on the trooper’s leg. It was a scaly creature with a fusiform head and an elongated body not unlike that of a snake, only slightly wider in diameter. Underneath its body were six limbs that were used to move through the forest floor with unimaginable speed. It wasn’t big, only 1.4 meters long, about the size of a small panther.

  However, it had a strength that was not proportional to its small size. Two suits of space armor stacked upon one another had a total weight that was over one ton. It was not something a creature as small as a baby panther could drag around like a rag doll. But this super species not only dragged it around, it did it all with ease. With just few seconds, the two troopers were pulled away from the rest of the unit.

  The creature seemed to sense that Jerry had lifted his gun. It suddenly bit down hard on the trooper’s leg, and that sent a strong tremor down the trooper’s body that had even Jerry shook. The muzzle of his gun moved and the shots were emptied into the air.

  The trooper underneath him let out a blood-curdling scream. Jerry could see with his naked eye the blood pouring out of the wound on his leg. He was assaulted by both fear and shock, as he wasn’t expecting the super species to be so strong. The space armor was the pinnacle of mankind’s technology. Its shell alone could withstand focus fire of the Gaussian rifle for several minutes, and even the sawblade needed a few seconds to get through it. The fact that this creature managed to break through it with just its bite… Was the creature’s bite powered by a polymerized reactor of some kind? Were its teeth harder than diamonds? Its mouth muscle pure, hardened steel fibers?

  Jerry’s mind was addled. Even though Haweza had mentioned the presence of such super species, he didn’t think they would be anything special; at most they would be like Earth’s prehistoric dinosaurs but perhaps bigger in size. The alien monster massacre they came across… was probably a coincidence and luck on the super species’ part.

  Now, with the truth posed before him, Jerry had to admit to the scary threat of the super species. A killer instinct that was condensed within an unassuming small body; no wonder the few elite Black Star Trooper units were only able to chase them away and not exterminate them…

  "Jerry! Saw my leg off! Just saw it off!"

  Someone yelled. Jerry was rattled. He knew this voice. It was Peter’s. As fate would have it, the trooper that was ambushed by the super species was Peter.

  Jerry hesitated for a moment before tossing his gun away. He lifted his sawblade with one arm. Then came the buzzing of the vibrating saw as it was activated. Instead of aiming it at Peter’s leg, Jerry yelled, "Peter! Try to sit up, and help me grab a chokehold on this thing! I’ll try to kill it!"

  Peter was stunned into silence before replying, "That’s impossible, it’s moving too fast. Plus, I’m feeling weak from the waves of pain as I’m being dragged through the ground. I can’t do this…"

  Jerry interrupted him with a shout. "You freaking can! Believe me, you can! Don’t you remember what you swore to me? You’re not even afraid of death, but you’re going to be beaten down by pain? Peter, sit up straight, you can do it!"

  Jerry felt the man underneath him moving, and the struggle gradually increased. The power of his space armor activated accompanying his movement. The supermagnetic field heightened Peter’s reaction time. With a loud roar, Peters sprang up into a sitting position and lunged at the super species with both hands.

  The creature and Peter rolled into a ball of chaos. Jerry could feel the ground under his body moving. He had no suspicion that this creature could easily tear through Earth’s old tanks, because just his tussle with Peter had leveled the trees in their surrounding area. 70 to 80 meters wide tree trunks were knocked down like dominoes. It was the battlefield that they saw when they approached the 9th unit’s help signal. So that was what happened…

  Jerry didn’t join in the fight between Peter and the super species. He held onto his sawblade and stood his ground. He stared at a spot in the jungle with high alert, yelling, "Show yourself! I know you’re in there, your malice can’t be hidden from me. I know you can hear me. Even though you might not understand me, you certainly can see me. I’m standing alone here waiting for you! Come on! Show me your pride of being a super species and duel me!"

  Deeper in the forest came the sound of trees falling. Slowly, a creature about two meters tall, also fully covered with black scales, looking like a black rhombus, materialized from within the forest. It had six legs, and on what appeared to be its head were four triangular eyes. They stared at Jerry piercingly.

  The creature was exceptionally cautious. After it showed itself, it quickly scanned the surrounding to ensure that there was really only Jerry around. A
fter it made certain of that fact, it tore open its spindly mouth that was filled with razor sharp teeth at Jerry, then a drum-like echo originated from within.

  "Come get me, you beast!"

  Jerry roared as he leaped at the creature, brandishing his sawblade. His speed increased as he jogged towards it since the space armor would automatically adjust itself based on its owner’s physical condition. Jerry was a perceptor, the most combat ready Homo Evolutis, so when he charged forward, his speed was 180 meters per second because that was the speed the space armor calculated his body could support.

  Alas, the super species was even faster. Jerry charged at it in a straight line, but with the collective force of its six legs, the creature leaped back into the deep forest’s covers. With a speed that was unbelievable, it appeared on Jerry’s side, knocking him away. As Jerry slammed into a tree, the creature charged at Jerry, trying to bulldoze him down. It slammed its entire weight into Jerry’s body. Jerry felt his breath give. The creature wasn’t finished. It clamped down hard on Jerry’s hand that held the sawblade. The crushing teeth cracked the space armor with ease and its teeth pierced into Jerry’s bare hand.

  Jerry screamed and he could feel his hand going weak as the sawblade dropped to the floor with a clink. While Jerry tried to grab hold of the creature’s neck with his other hand, the creature sensed it and sidestepped out of the way cunningly. It then flung Jerry more than 10 meters away and stepped on the sawblade until it was merely metallic pieces, flaunting its victory.

  In such a short battle, Jerry, who had the honor of being a Black Star Trooper, part of the strongest unit in the Hope, was handily bested by the creature. His hand was completely mutilated, and it had blood coming out it like a fountain. His Gaussian gun was lost in the middle of the jungle and his sawblade was completely shattered. In conclusion, he had no energy or resources left to combat the super species… The planet’s super species were uncannily strong. How was it possible that a beast could manage to gain such impressive combat ability?