The Creators: From Night City

The reason why they want to intercept Arasaka's freighter is because [Anti-Entropy] needs such a ship to deal with the upcoming "Unification War" in the Red Dead Redemption world.

The ocean is calm and peaceful under the night sky.

Making a living on the sea these days is as dangerous as it was in ancient times.

Although the impact of natural disasters has been significantly weakened with the help of technology, the pirates that can be seen everywhere in the coastal waters and the unpredictable "man-made disasters" - a large number of wild underwater autonomous defense torpedoes - have made working at sea much more dangerous.

However, many logistics companies and large enterprises still abandon the safer air transport and still use this more primitive freight method, mainly because of its low cost.

This is particularly important for capital. After all, the probability of an accident at sea is extremely low, while the cost of employee lives and lost cargo is far lower than the cost of switching to air transport.

If someone dies, you can find another one, but if you spend too much money, it’s gone forever.

There have been no major storms on the west coast of San Luis Obispo recently. At this moment, the wind and the sea are calm, the water is still, and the sky is filled with low stars. Amid the sound of gentle waves, the armed ocean-going freighter "Umibozu" is breaking through the wind and waves in the sea and moving forward.

On the sides of the cargo ship, the trefoil logo of Arasaka was faintly visible in the moonlight, allowing Jiang Bing, who was high in the sky, to immediately confirm that he had found the right target.

Boarding is a technical job. This combat method, which was commonly used in ancient naval battles, has long disappeared in modern times. The warring parties often use the method of feeding the enemy with artillery shells to directly send the opponent's ships into the water.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not useful.

In the clouds composed of cold white mist, tiny flames were spewing from the bottom of the [Mithril Throne], lifting this huge throne high into the sky.

The shield, which was improved by integrating many runes with the Quen Seal, blocked the cold wind from the high altitude, while the signal and optical refraction components added by Jiang Bingxin achieved physical invisibility.

The huge "Umibozu" seemed as small as an ant under Jiang Bing's eyes, but under the influence of the mental power blessed by the [Mithril Throne], the entire hull and even every move of the garrison personnel on it were under Jiang Bing's control.

The other party is still sailing forward in ignorance, completely unaware of the impending disaster.

Although the "Umibozu" is just an ocean-going freighter, this is just an excuse for external declaration. In fact, this huge freighter has a double bottom tank (for storing ballast water/fuel), a main cargo hold (containers/bulk cargo) and deck racks (oversized cargo), and is equipped with a fully automatic slide rail loading and unloading system. It has four MK-38 Mod3 25mm remote-controlled machine guns equipped with thermal imaging tracking. There are also four groups of 6-mounted universal vertical launch systems for anti-ship missiles/air defense missiles installed at the bow and stern. The deck is also equipped with 6 Arasaka "Sea Yasha" large reconnaissance and strike integrated rotary-wing drones. It can be said that it is armed to the teeth.

Although it is not as good as the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers of major countries, it can still leave those shabby ships of the peasant pirates far behind.

In fact, the "Umibozu" had just fought with a group of Vancouver pirates known as the "Sea Locusts". This group of sea beggars, who were created by the acidification of seawater in parts of the North Pacific, frequently harassed passing sea transport fleets because of their excellent offshore geographical advantages, trying to get some living expenses.

This is also one of the main reasons why some small freight companies have a hard time surviving.

Of course, for an armed freighter of the level of "Umibozu", a few dilapidated ships would only require two salvos of anti-ship missiles.

The captain was discussing with the armed commander in the luxurious captain's room how to write a report on the recent firefight in order to better highlight the contributions of both of them. Suddenly, a message popped up on the communication channel by the forecaster in the cockpit who was responsible for monitoring the weather.

Weather Forecaster: Captain, a sudden Category 3 weather anomaly has occurred. Of course, there could also be an issue with the sensor array. Sea fog has suddenly surged within a 2-nautical-mile radius, now covering 72% of the ship's observation windows. However, thermal imaging shows no temperature difference, and laser ranging indicates the fog is nonexistent. Again, this fog appears to be a purely optical phenomenon. Please quickly check porthole visibility and provide further instructions as soon as possible.

The captain instinctively sensed something was wrong from the report, and hurried to the window and raised the metal grille.

The captain's room is in the best position in the entire ship. Through the nearly 360-degree surround observation glass, the captain and the armed commander can clearly see the situation outside.

Sure enough, a sudden thick fog enveloped the entire ocean freighter. Under the cover of the thick fog, everything on the deck turned into vague silhouettes. Only a few indicator lights with extremely strong penetrating power were still flashing stubbornly in the fog, showing their existence.

"There's something wrong with this fog!" The armed commander also noticed something unusual.

But before he could signal the combatants on duty to be on high alert through the communication channel, alarms suddenly rang throughout the ship.

Four six-barrel vertical launch systems with automatic air defense functions automatically adjusted their directions and began to pour missiles madly into the thick fog at high altitudes.

The dense anti-aircraft missiles blew the fog above the hull up and down and rolled endlessly. But before the captain could tell the people on duty in the bridge why the sudden firing was made, several airborne drop capsules that were shaped like capsules but made of metal and painted with the iconic '∞' symbol of [Anti-Entropy] directly smashed onto the deck.

"The enemy is coming!"

As the shrill red alarm sounded throughout the ship, more airborne drop capsules fell like raindrops.

The heavy launch capsule often directly digs a shallow pit in the thick deck. The moment it lands, the stress excitation device at the bottom is instantly activated, and then a circle of sharp hooks pop out and sink deeply into the metal deck, firmly fixing the launch capsule.

Compared with the traditional boarding method, this boarding method is much more efficient!

Chapter 484: Firefight on Deck

The outer bulkheads, painted black, still bore charred marks from the recent bombing by anti-aircraft missiles. The outer metal panels of some unlucky airborne capsules had been blown to pieces, leaving the thick, high-strength metal walls exposed to the emergency-lit deck searchlights, flashing a cold white light.

As the two people in the captain's room watched in astonishment, the door of the airdrop cabin suddenly flew open, and four fully armed "Black King Apostles" rushed out from it. With their high-powered firearms, they beat the Arasaka armed personnel who arrived nearby first into a pulp.

Afterwards, more airdrop hatches were opened, and the "Black King's Apostles" dressed in "Heat Death No. 1" and all black poured out like a tide, occupying most of the deck.

The sound of gunfire instantly filled the deck.

The security personnel equipped on the ocean-going armed freighter "Umibozu" are definitely not weak. Of the 98 people on the ship, 45 are individual combat personnel, which is half of the total number of personnel on the ship. It is also equipped with a large number of automatic machine gun posts and suspended defense machine gun towers.

But the overall battle still showed a crushing situation.

The 'Apostles of the Black King' faced the enemy's organized fire suppression without dodging or evading. Relying on the excellent defensive power of their heavy armor, they continued to advance despite the fire suppression. The high-powered firearms in their hands continuously poured out firepower, and often only one shot was needed to directly blow the enemy to pieces in the bunker.

Because the airdrop pod landed directly on the deck under enemy fire, most of the heavy firepower on the deck was directly wasted, and it only relied on other defensive equipment, which obviously posed no threat to the invaders.

The armed commander acted decisively and immediately called the operator in the cockpit on the communication channel, asking him to directly activate the two MK-38 Mod3 25mm remote-controlled machine guns located at the rear of the ship. Even if it meant reducing the front half of the deck to ruins, the enemy must be annihilated here.

The two machine guns flexibly turned their muzzles in sync with the operator's prosthetic body, pouring out terrifying firepower at the fog-shrouded front deck. Even though the thick fog seriously affected the shooting accuracy, under the dense firepower coverage, even if it was covered, it was still easy to cause large-scale casualties.

The regular firing rate of 200 rounds per minute instantly poured out a terrifying barrage of death, enveloping many of the 'Black King's Apostles'.

It has to be said that the armed commander is indeed worthy of this position. The 25mm caliber machine gun is generally used to attack lightly armored targets and simply fortified fire points, and is naturally a professional match for dealing with power armor.

[Heat Death-1 Type] The 3 cm thick composite armor has no problem dealing with bullets from light weapons, but it is still not enough to face the enemy's heavy machine guns.

Unfortunately, an apostle standing in the front was directly hit by the rain of bullets, and his thigh and armor exploded into a bloody mist. Fortunately, the hard training he had received was not in vain. He instantly jumped to the side, avoiding the bullet that swept towards his head. He paid the price of a big hole in his waist and abdomen, and barely survived.

However, under the control of the operator, the machine gun still spewed out deadly flames, covering the enemy from top to bottom and left to right.

Something unexpected happened to everyone. Before the rain of bullets arrived, a pale yellow energy shield suddenly rose in front of the 'Black King Apostles'.

The dense bullets hit the shield heavily, causing ripples, but in the end they could only use up all the kinetic energy in vain and fell on the deck with a clanging sound.

"The Black King is above!!" The morale of all the 'Black King's Apostles' instantly increased.

"Antelope, destroy those two firing points!" Eagle shouted in the communication channel. In order to prevent the situation from happening again, he gritted his teeth and submitted a request for support from the Destroyer to the 'Black King' in the combat channel.

High in the sky, the 'Black King' Jiang Bing sat on the [Mithril Throne], enduring the discomfort caused by the rapid consumption of his mental power. He used part of his mental power to mark a space in the sky, and used it as an anchor point in the world. He cooperated with Heimer to open a small entrance to the world and transferred an airdrop warehouse in the war preparation warehouse from 'Heimer' to the sky in this world.

Under the dual effects of gravity and vector burst jets, the airdrop chamber fell rapidly towards the deck of "Umibozu", and relied on the small vector jet nozzles around it to continuously fine-tune its position.

Boom~!

The sound of the airdrop pod landing mixed with the sound of the oryx firing.

The battering ram directly pushed the oryx in a standing shooting position back several meters, but the result of this shot was equally gratifying. Guided by the muzzle fire of the machine gun, the battering ram's deep-penetrating explosive shells accurately hit the target, causing an explosion and directly destroying a machine gun.

Ignoring the injuries caused by the huge recoil, he continued to aim his gun at the other machine gun. After paying the price of a muffled groan, he successfully destroyed the other machine gun.

The fire suppression was lifted, and the 'Apostles' who were inspired by the 'Black King's' miracles shouted 'Black King is above' one after another. They rushed out of the energy barrier like tigers coming down the mountain, shooting madly towards the cabin entrance.

As the commander, Feiying did not follow the main force forward. He came to the combat brother who was seriously injured by the machine gun to check his condition.

The apostle in charge of medical treatment is treating the other party.

If the missing leg could be considered an indirect amputation, and the life could be saved by simply stopping the bleeding, then the wound on the waist and abdomen where a large piece of flesh and blood had disappeared could definitely be considered a fatal injury.

Of course, this is for ordinary people.

"Quan Gui, how do you feel?" From the name, we can tell that the injured apostle is from the Qing Dynasty Chinese workers in Red Dead Redemption.

He moved his lips, wanting to say something, but the imbalance of air pressure in his abdomen made it difficult for him to do so, and he could only vaguely squeeze out a word.

"pain!"

"How can it not hurt? Your fucking kidneys have been beaten off. Now you need to change a piece of iron." The 'apostle' in charge of the treatment is Quan Gui's fellow villager. The two have always had a good relationship, so he joked like this.

However, facing such serious injuries to his battle brothers, he was still in such a mood to make fun of them. This was all thanks to the second "upgrade and transformation" based on the "Sun Stairs". This transformation gave the "Apostles" physical healing abilities and vitality far beyond that of ordinary people.

So even though Quan Gui looks out of breath and dying now, his injuries are actually not life-threatening. In this short period of time, his wounds have been rapidly stopping bleeding and healing on their own. With the simple medical treatment performed by the medical "Apostle", there will be no problem in saving his life. Once he returns to the medical center and gets new prosthetic parts, he will definitely be a brave man again.

This is for the sake of stability. Florence weakened most of its effectiveness. According to the effectiveness of the original 'Stairway to the Sun', I'm afraid the broken leg has already begun to grow. Of course, low effectiveness brings high stability. At least there is no such high mortality rate in the transformation process.

Every peck and every drink has its gains and its losses.

Chapter 485 Global EMP Impact

After confirming that the team members' injuries were not serious, Feiying did not waste any more time and stood up to lead his team to continue advancing towards the cabin.

The team at the back of the team sent out several people to stand guard, while the remaining two "Apostles" found the airdrop cabin marked with a wrench, smashed the door open with their fists, dragged out some large equipment stored inside, and placed it heavily on the deck to secure it.

As the device started up, a large number of micro magnetron groups arranged in a honeycomb pattern began to gradually unfold like wings, and gradually lit up with a blue light as they were charged.

The light became brighter and brighter until it reached its peak, and in the next second it turned into a violent phase-reversed electromagnetic wave that spread out in all directions.

The armed commander was frantically urging all combat-capable personnel on the combat channel to go to the nearest weapon station to collect weapons and put up a desperate resistance. A violent pulse of electromagnetic waves swept across the entire hull, directly blocking all communication equipment on the ship. At the same time, it blew the captain's head, which was in the process of establishing a deep prosthetic connection with the ship's signal amplification antenna, into a ball of sparks, forcibly interrupting the other party's attempt to seek external help.

The armed commander's eyes blurred, and his brain was hit by a strong electromagnetic shock, which instantly triggered the emergency avoidance protocol and forced a restart.

Amidst the snowflakes that filled his prosthetic eye's field of vision and the buzzing sound of electricity in his ears, the armed commander endured the dull pain in his brain and shouted at the top of his lungs into the communication channel: "EMP impact, avoid it, avoid it!"

But the communication channel was already filled with electrical noise, so there was no response at all.

"It's over!" This was the only thought in the armed commander's mind.

He dragged his still sore body to the window and looked out. Sure enough, the invaders wearing unidentified power armor had already broken through his men's fire blockade with the help of the wide-area impact of the EMP.

These attackers, who looked like religious fanatics, used their high-powered firearms in a cold-blooded and efficient manner to beat all the living people in their sight into pieces of meat, and then quickly advanced on the bloody ground.

Obviously, the other party had no intention of leaving anyone alive from the beginning.

The armed commander shook his head and rushed to the door. Instead of trying to go out, he locked the warehouse door directly.

What a joke! Where can you escape to in the vast ocean? Your only hope now is to use the heavy hatch of the captain's cabin to fight the enemy and wait for the arrival of reinforcements from Night City.

The ship's current location is less than 40 nautical miles from Night City, and the aftermath of the EMP wide-area impact just now took less than 1 second to reach the Arasaka Night City branch. As long as the personnel on duty are alert enough, they are very likely to discover the loss of contact with the "Umibozu" in the first place and send reinforcements.

Of course, the armed commander also knew that he might not be able to wait for the arrival of reinforcements. After all, the EMP electromagnetic shock wave spreads at the speed of light, but the reinforcements could not arrive that fast.

As he had predicted, the EMP electromagnetic shockwave, capable of temporarily crippling a massive vessel measuring 398m x 58m x 16.2m, with a gross tonnage of 220,000 DWT, a cargo capacity of 18,500 TEUs (or 85 tons of bulk cargo), and equipped with a full-band electromagnetic pulse shield (a multi-layer graphene-superconducting composite material) for external communications, was almost instantly detected by the vast majority of forces in Night City. The personnel at Arasaka Beach were also the first to discover that the source of the shockwave's spread closely coincided with the current location of the Umibozu, and they immediately responded with a call.

The result, of course, was nothing.

Arasaka immediately demonstrated the powerful strength of the world-class capital company it corresponds to. The corresponding rapid response plan was activated. Three armored hovercrafts carrying a large number of armed personnel took off immediately and headed to the target sea area to investigate the situation. Two light armed destroyers followed closely behind.

Of course, subject to the Night City Heavy Weapons Treaty, these two armed destroyers are registered as light freighters in the Night City official system.

Although the first half of the situation developed as the armed commander expected, the second half of the situation developed completely differently.

After the group of 'Black King's Apostles' rushed into the cabin, they were as unstoppable as dragons entering the sea. There was not much room to dodge in the narrow cabin, and there was not enough space to organize firepower to suppress the position. What's more, the entire ship had just been hit by a full EMP, and all communication channels were still filled with harsh electrical noise. How could the crew members fighting alone withstand the tide-like attack of the 'Black King's Apostles' who were like little supermen?

In less than two minutes, the cab was declared occupied.

According to Arasaka's corresponding 'Emergency Processing Protocol Four', the staff in the bridge should urgently paralyze all operating systems, forcibly abandon the ship in place, and wait for subsequent company support and recovery.

However, they didn't have to do anything themselves for this attack. That EMP had already destroyed a lot of equipment. Without waiting for the people in the cab to destroy other equipment, the "Black King's Apostles" who were running all the way were able to directly break through the warehouse door and use the high-powered shotguns and grenade launchers in their hands to kill everyone on the control panel. As for whether this would damage the control system, they acted as if they didn't care at all.

Anyway, His Majesty the Black King had instructed us before the battle not to worry about damage, as time was of the essence.

Even if it turns into a pile of scrap metal, for the "craftsman", repairing it will just take a little more effort.

In the third minute, the elite team led by Feiying rushed straight into the captain's room as if they had opened their third eye.

The armed commander inside was trying to wake up the captain who was half burned when a loud noise suddenly came from the locked hatch behind him. He was so scared that he shuddered all over and immediately grabbed the Arasaka HJKE-11 Yukimura smart pistol he was carrying.

Boom!

The heavy metal hatch was shaking violently, as if an elephant was kicking it outside, but fortunately the door of the captain's room held firm.

But before the armed commander could breathe a sigh of relief, the metal hatch was cut by the hot plasma flow, leaving a dazzling red spot.

Then came two, three, and four.

Within a few seconds, a door within a door was cut out on the hatch.

The armed commander's heart suddenly sank to the bottom. He tightly gripped the black and red smart pistol, pointing the muzzle firmly at the hatch, waiting for the verdict, waiting for the arrival of the final moment.

Bang!

The door within the door was kicked open by someone from the outside. The armed commander did not wait for the target locking prompt from the gun, but pulled the trigger to the bottom, and the smart bullet flew out immediately.

However, these smart bullets, which were designed to be able to make fine adjustments and changes of direction in the air, sacrificed too much power for the sake of accuracy. Although they made a clanging sound when hitting the Black Bear's assault version armor, which was thicker than the ordinary model, they did not even make a shallow dent.

"you……"

Before the armed commander could finish his words, he was shot into a ball of blood by a bomb equipped with a proximity fuse by Black Bear.

Chapter 486 Guarma Island

"Ha, the new thing is awesome." Grizzly sighed as he stroked the new explosive weapon of the [Clause III] model in his hand.

"Stop showing off and clear this place quickly. We have to clear the entire ship before the enemy reinforcements arrive." After this period of training, Eagle has grown into a qualified combat commander. He stopped Grizzly's narcissistic behavior and once again emphasized the importance of the mission.

"Understood, understood." Grizzly didn't delay any longer. Without even planning to take a step, he raised his gun and fired a bomb, blowing the captain, who didn't know how to live or die, along with his desk and chair, into pieces.