From Titan Corporation to the Empire of Man

Chapter 690 "Let's surrender."

From the air, the street network of UED's capital city resembles a lake with pebbles thrown in, with chaotic ripples spreading rapidly from several points.

Several veteran shark terminators, like red-hot icebreakers cutting through ice, tore open shocking cracks in the UED's defense system.

At a military checkpoint in the northwest corner of the city, four soldiers wearing mechanical exoskeletons are nervously looking around.

Their helmet displays were full of gibberish, and their communication channels were filled with jarring static—clearly the result of intelligent AI's electronic warfare capabilities.

Suddenly, the air distorted on the open ground three meters away, and a Terminator armor covered in blood appeared in the blue and white teleportation light.

"Fire! Fire now!"

The captain roared and pulled the trigger.

The rifle bullets formed a reddish-orange fire net at the muzzle, but were deflected by the energy field of the Storm Shield before hitting the target, "carving" dozens of shallow pits into the walls on both sides of the street.

The veteran shark that was attacked didn't even raise its weapon.

He took a half step back with his left leg, the hydraulic system of the power armor emitted a humming sound as it charged up, and then—

boom! boom!
The ground cracked under the immense force of the stomp, and the several-ton steel body unleashed a short-distance charge at subsonic speeds.

puff----!!

The soldiers in the front row were smashed into a bloody mess, their exoskeletons twisted into bizarre shapes and embedded in the wall.

Before the second soldier could even show a look of horror, the power claw had already pierced his chest, crushing his still-beating heart in its palm.

"Weird. Monster!"

Clang—Clang—!
The remaining two turned and ran, but their knees were shattered by a precise blast from a missile.

As they lay screaming in pools of blood, the Terminator had already turned and headed toward the next target, the thick blood from the soles of his armored boots leaving long trails on the road.

Similar scenes are playing out throughout the city.

In the air defense positions in the central square, a large number of elite soldiers organized their defenses using armored units and shield generators. They watched as the green dots representing friendly forces disappeared one after another on the tactical screen, their palms sweating as they gripped their weapons.

"Maintain formation!" the commander tried to bolster morale. "We—"

Boom——! !

Before he could finish speaking, the shield generator above his head suddenly exploded.

Bang—bang bang—!

Four Terminators appeared simultaneously from four different directions, and the crossfire formed by explosive projectiles instantly turned the position into a slaughterhouse.

Soldiers attempting to operate the rapid-fire cannon were blasted into pieces along with the cannon, while the "lucky ones" who hid in armored vehicles were shredded into pieces along with the vehicles by the power claws.

The entire massacre lasted no more than fifteen seconds. By the time the last survivor was huddled among the fragments of his comrade's internal organs, trembling in fear, the man-eating sharks had already swept away, leaving a trail of blood.

The fiercest resistance took place in the square in front of the presidential palace in the city.

Thirty members of the Presidential Guard, clad in the latest power armor, formed a circular formation. Their experimental plasma cannons did indeed cause trouble for the Terminators.

A veteran's left shoulder armor was melted through, leaving a hole the size of a thumb, because he failed to activate his shield.

This, in turn, fueled the man-eating sharks' ferocity.

He charged straight into the crowd, each swing of his power claws sending up a shower of blood.

A brave officer slashed at his back with a dagger, but it didn't even leave a shallow mark on his armor. The next second, the officer turned around and punched him, smashing his upper body to pieces.

When the reinforcements arrived, all they saw was a small mountain made of corpses standing in the center of the square.

“They…they don’t want to take over the city at all,” a slumped officer, lying in a pool of blood, muttered to himself. “They’re teaching us a lesson.”

This is true.

The physical damage caused by the two Astartes squads was limited, but the morale blow was devastating.

When ordinary soldiers discovered that the most elite special forces were being crushed like ants, and when officers realized that even the presidential palace was no longer safe, the will to resist melted away like snow under the sun.

In the city hall's underground shelter, a staff officer suddenly smashed the tactical screen.

On screen, a fully-fledged armored company is seen lining up to surrender under a white flag.

"It's over!" He gave a bitter smile to his colleagues who were sitting there dumbfounded. "We couldn't even stop a single reconnaissance squad. What kind of war are we fighting?"

At this moment, all surviving soldiers' tactical terminals received the same plaintext communication, signed by the Mar-Sara Command of the Imperium of Man:
"All UED soldiers who lay down their arms will be treated as prisoners of war; those who resist will be killed without exception."

The video included more than a dozen high-definition clips showing the surrendered soldiers being properly cared for.

However, this deterrent suppression is only temporary.

Without the deployment of a large-scale military force, a few Astartes squads alone are simply not enough to achieve actual control over the entire 18th Earth.

Meanwhile, the veteran shark squad's strategic focus is currently on the UED headquarters building—

This is a building complex that symbolizes the highest power of the Earth Federation.

Swish—swish—!
The figures of two veteran shark predators suddenly appeared in the center of the headquarters plaza.

Before the blue light from their teleportation had completely dissipated, they had already shot off like arrows towards different target buildings.

The veteran on the left is decorated with blood-stained golden shark fins on his shoulder armor, while the warrior on the right carries a battle flag with dried bloodstains on his back.

Their magnetic boots shattered the stone floor, leaving spiderweb-like cracks in the carefully polished tiles with every step.

"Enemy attack! Sector A!"

"Second target found in Sector B!"

The headquarters guards' reaction was also textbook-perfect.

Unlike the demoralized ordinary troops on the periphery, these elite guards clad in jet-black power armor were true suicide squads.

Their plasma rifles were instantly charged, and the blazing blue-white orbs of light blocked all paths of advance.

"For the Earth Federation!"

The captain of the guard's battle cry was deafening through the armored loudspeakers.

Hundreds of elite troops opened fire simultaneously, turning the center of the square into a death zone with a crossfire network. Plasma melted the fountain sculpture into a glassy molten flow, and the high temperature distorted the air into eerie ripples.

But the two veteran man-eating sharks had already foreseen all of this.

The Golden Fin Veteran suddenly spun around, and the energy field on the Storm Shield refracted the incoming plasma cluster into the sky.

Using the momentum, he leaped up and his power claw tore through three layers of explosion-proof glass curtain wall.

Broken glass poured down like a torrential rain, refracting a rainbow of colors in the sunlight. By the time the guards turned their guns around, he had already stormed into the third floor of the building. The last footage captured by the corridor surveillance cameras was the moment he cleaved open the blast door with a single claw.

On the other side, the veterans of the Battle Flag chose a more violent way to break through.

Clang—Clang—!
He charged straight ahead into the barrage of bullets, the roar of his bolter drowning out all the other shots.

The first salvo overturned the guards behind three bunkers. One shell hit someone's helmet visor precisely, and the guy's head exploded like a watermelon hit by a hammer, with red and white brain tissue radiating outwards onto the marble wall behind him.

"Stop him!"

The vice-captain roared as he activated the shoulder-mounted missile. Whoosh—whoosh—!
The miniature tracking missile streaked out in white smoke, but the veteran dodged it by sidestepping before it could hit.

Boom——! !

The missile crashed into the fountain pool behind it, and the explosion sent up a ten-meter-high column of water.

Taking advantage of this brief moment of obscured vision, the veteran had already rushed to the front lines, the cold glint of his power claws like the smile of death.

Pfft——!
The first obstacle's power armor was cleaved vertically like paper, and the broken vertebrae jutted out menacingly from the cut.

The second guard tried to fight him up close, but was kicked more than 20 meters away and crashed into the flagpole base, no longer recognizable as a human. When the veteran of the battle flag rushed into the B-section building through the pool of blood, he left behind a large number of mangled corpses.

The resistance inside the building became even more frenzied.

Automatic turrets descended from the ceiling, nerve gas spewed out from the vents, and suicide squads lay in ambush behind every safety door.

But all of these are child's play in front of Astartes.

The veteran soldier sped down the corridor, his bolter rifle firing in bursts to destroy all the defensive structures along the way.

A guard hiding behind a corner had just peeked out when he was shot in the upper body, the splattered blood drawing an exaggerated arc on the ceiling.

After the elevator shaft was destroyed, he tore open the maintenance passage with his bare hands, jumped down along the steel cable, and the shock wave from his landing shattered the glass curtain wall of the entire hall.

At the same time, the veterans of the battle flag are breaking through upwards with overwhelming force.

His power claws sent up a shower of blood with each swing, while the Storm Shield deflected all incoming bullets.

In the circular lobby on the eighteenth floor, he encountered the fiercest resistance—

More than a dozen elite guards wearing experimental power armor were armed with railguns capable of penetrating tanks.

"For the Federation!" The captain's battle cry echoed through the hall.

"."

The veteran didn't say anything, but suddenly activated the jetpack.

The flames from the thrusters burned the expensive carpet to ashes, sending him hurtling into the enemy ranks like a cannonball.

With a single sweep of the power claw, the three headless corpses remained in their firing positions.

The high-speed projectiles from the railgun grazed his shoulder armor, leaving a two-meter-diameter crater in the wall, but could not stop his subsequent slaughter.

Seconds later, only severed limbs and sparking fragments of armor remained in the hall.

When the two veterans arrived at the target's office, they smashed the bulletproof glass window almost simultaneously.

Shards of glass rained down like diamonds onto the expensive carpet, while their prey, two members of the UED Supreme Council, slumped in leather chairs, their faces ashen.

“Game over.” The Goldenfin veteran crushed the emergency call button on the desk with his power claw. “The Empire of Man sends its greetings.”

At that very moment, all the UED forces still resisting received the latest battle report.

On the holographic screen, the image of two "highly respected" councilors being carried like stray dogs by a steel giant became the last straw that broke the camel's back.

at the same time--

"The appetizers have been prepared for the next move. It's time to completely dismantle the UED and bring our fellow beings in this universe under the Empire's rule."

After a brief exchange between the two veteran shark warriors, an eerie silence fell over the entire battlefield.

Only the hissing of electricity remained on the communication channel, as if even the air had frozen.

The next second, the veil of the universe was ripped apart—

Within the gravitational pull of Earth, space is twisted and deformed like silk being crumpled by an invisible giant hand.

A golden vortex with a diameter of over 300 kilometers appeared out of thin air. The electric arcs of energy leaping at its edge instantly vaporized the nearby reconnaissance satellites. The light at the center of the vortex grew brighter and brighter until the entire night hemisphere of the Earth was illuminated as if it were daytime.

The first thing to emerge from the vortex was a golden ram that was a kilometer long, engraved with Chinese characters.

Next came the majestic bow, as imposing as a mountain—

This behemoth was far larger than a conventional Emperor-class battleship, and its main gun array alone was comparable to that of a space station.

The giant energy wings that unfold on both sides of the ship resemble the wings of angels. Each wing is composed of a miniature force field generator, rippled with a rainbow-like halo in the vacuum.

Jesus.

A radar operator on a UED destroyer muttered unconsciously after witnessing such a scene.

His screen showed that the giant ship was an astonishing 30 kilometers long, and even more frightening was that behind it, hundreds of warships were successively sailing out of the jump tunnel.

The Earth Federation's orbital defense system finally reacted, and its automated turrets spewed out tongues of fire in despair.

However, these attacks failed to even reach the giant ship's energy shield before being intercepted by the surrounding escort ships.

A UED cruiser attempted to launch a nuclear missile, but the missile was detonated in mid-air by a golden beam of light the instant it left the ship.

The ship's belly slowly opened, and thousands of airdrop pods poured down like a swarm of bees.

They broke through the atmosphere, trailing orange-red plumes of flame, and their impact covered all major military bases. What made the UED even more desperate was that each drop pod emitted the same energy signature as a man-eating shark—

This means that each cabin contains an Astartes.

On the ground, people looked up at this apocalyptic scene.

In a city square, a young mother tightly embraces her trembling child by a fountain.

In the underground shelter, an elderly man kneels and bows before a holographic projection.
Even the UED soldiers who were still resisting put down their weapons and stared blankly at the sky.

"Announcement to all inhabitants of Earth 18." A majestic voice suddenly rang out on all communication channels, even civilian broadcasts were forcibly interrupted, "The Human Empire's expeditionary fleet has arrived. Those who lay down their weapons will be pardoned, and those who resist will be purified."

On the bridge of the colossal ship, a giant clad in black and gold power armor gazed at the blue planet projected onto the screen.

Liquid gold flowed across his armor, leaving shimmering footprints on the deck with every step. When another Astartes, clad in golden armor and over three meters tall, inquired whether to launch an orbital bombardment, the giant simply shook his head.

"No need."

At this moment, the UED headquarters was in complete chaos.

The surviving generals discovered that all electronic systems had gone out of control, and the blue dots representing their side on the strategic hologram were disappearing at an alarming rate.

What drove them to despair the most was that even the strategic weapon silos buried deep underground were marked as "access locked," clearly indicating that the "damned" intelligent AI had taken over everything.

"Let's surrender."

One of the ministers finally collapsed into his chair in despair.

The surveillance footage in front of him showed that a large number of Astartes had broken through the last line of defense and were advancing toward the command center.

"For those who can survive"

As the first rays of sunlight swept across the Earth's morning line, the giant ship's main guns slowly turned, aiming at the last remaining UED fleet stubbornly resisting in lunar orbit.

The golden light emanating from the cannon muzzle eclipsed even the stars.

No firing was needed; this single action seemed to shatter the morale of the remaining enemy troops.
(End of this chapter)