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Chapter 89 Ambush and Counter-Ambush

On the dry riverbed on the west side of the basin, Political Commissar Aldan was leading a raiding squad along the bottom of the river.

This river dried up many years ago. The riverbed is covered with cracked silt that crunches when you step on it. The riverbanks on both sides are about three meters higher than the riverbed, and the rock walls are covered with fungi and moss, giving off a musty smell.

The advantage of this route is that it has natural cover on both sides, but the disadvantages are also obvious:

The view was completely cut off by the riverbank, with only a sliver of sunlight overhead.

Aldan walked in the middle of the column, slightly ahead, with a messenger and a technician carrying a thermal scanner beside him. The old scars on his face looked particularly deep in the shadow of the river.

"How far are we from the outer edge of the target area?"

"3.7 kilometers, sir. At the current speed, we expect to reach the rendezvous point in 40 minutes."

Aldan hummed in agreement and said nothing more.

He didn't like this road. Any recruit who had spent six months at the Cadia training camp knew that this kind of terrain was standard ambush terrain according to the tactics manual.

But the judge's order was to flank from the side, and there was only one river channel on the side. Unless they went around to another valley more than ten kilometers away, they would miss the window of opportunity for the three routes to converge.

The vanguard of the formation was a ten-man infantry squad, followed by two full infantry platoons, and finally the heavy weapons team.

Aldan's gaze swept back and forth along the edges of the riverbanks on both sides, his fingers resting on the holster of his pistol. After walking about 800 meters, the scout ahead reported that the river had forked ahead, and there were signs of a landslide on the bank of the left tributary. It would take the main force a few more minutes to go around it.

"Slow down, go ahead and scout ahead—"

Before Aldan could finish speaking, a muffled thud came from the rock face on the right side of the riverbank.

The soldier at the front is holding a laser rifle and keeping watch ahead.

With a soft pop, a hole appeared on the side of his helmet.

The soldier stood still for about half a second, then his knees buckled and he fell into the cracked mud of the riverbed. The laser rifle slipped from his hand and bounced twice on the mud. There was no warning between the time he fired and when he fell.

Aldan's pupils contracted sharply.

Silent sniping.

"Everyone lie down!"

The second soldier's neck exploded in a cloud of blood; the bullet pierced his carotid artery, tearing a hole in his uniform collar on the side from which it emerged. The soldier collapsed to the ground, his finger still on the rifle trigger, but he no longer had the strength to pull it.

"There are snipers above the riverbank at the two points."

"The left wing also has it, at the nine o'clock position."

The soldiers lay down behind their bunkers, some crouching behind rubble, others huddled in the depressions in the bank. The heavy weapons team mounted their mortars on the mud slabs, knelt on one knee, and adjusted their firing angles in the direction of the report.

But they didn't even have a chance to fire.

The third muffled thud rang out, and as a gunner fell backward, his hand was still on the adjustment knob.

Three shots, three targets, all fatal with a single hit, with a firing interval of less than four seconds.

Aldan pressed his body into the crevice below the shore, his back pressed against the rock surface. He drew his pistol, but didn't know which way to point the muzzle.

He couldn't see the shooter at all. There was no one on the edge of the rock wall above the riverbank, no sniper scope flash, and no sound of spent shell casings hitting the ground. The shooter could be right above them or two hundred meters away.

Under such terrain conditions, even a seasoned political commissar would be unable to make a judgment.

"Use thermal scanning to scan both sides of the riverbank."

The technician climbed over to him, turned on the scanner, and the scanning fan unfolded from the top of the instrument, scanning across the right bank of the river. The screen was clean, with no heat source.

The technician swept the left side again, but it was still completely clean.

"Sir, there are no targets on either side."

Aldan gritted his teeth. He didn't know what technology the other side was using, but the result was clear: no matter who the other side was, their thermal radiation characteristics were completely blocked.

More gunfire erupted, bullets landing behind the forward infantry squad's cover, forcing the Astrai soldiers who had crouched down to lie flat again.

Firing in bursts, shifting positions, then firing again in bursts—each round of fire lasts no more than two seconds before the firing position changes.

Aldan understood the point.

These archers would immediately move to a new position after firing, giving the Imperial heavy firepower no opportunity to lock on; they would fire and leave, then move on to another location to fire again.

Standard guerrilla tactics.

This is indeed a tactic that the Bloodaxe Orcs would use, in Ardan's understanding.

"Sir," the messenger knelt beside him, "the vanguard platoon reports that they have spotted the outline of a marksman across the rubble."

"What outline?"

Two more muffled thuds followed, this time closer. The bullets struck the rock wall in front of Aldan, sending up rubble and forcing him to instinctively pull his head back. The enemy was probing his position.

"Signal Soldier".

"exist."

"Calling the Inquisitor, we have been ambushed. The enemy is using silenced weapons and stealth technology. Thermal scanning cannot lock onto the target. Requesting backup."

The communications soldier turned on the channel knob of the communicator and tuned it to the designated encrypted frequency band.

The frequency band was full of noise; something was constantly radiating electromagnetic noise, disrupting the communication signals throughout the area. The communications soldier tried several times and switched to several backup frequencies, but it was all the same.

"Sir," the communications officer turned around, "communications are being jammed, on all frequencies."

Electromagnetic pulse—Aldan repeatedly pondered this conclusion in his mind.

Suppressed sniper rifle, heat radiation shielding, electromagnetic pulse communication jamming.

None of these items should appear on the other side's equipment list. If it were a native Bloodaxe Clan special forces soldier who had never encountered the same opponent, even if he knew ambush tactics, the equipment on the other side should not be so well-suited to their tactics. Yet they all appeared, and they were perfectly coordinated.

Aldan lay prone in the crevice, staring intently at the edge of the riverbank ahead. After about five seconds, he finally saw something.

Behind a protruding rock on the riverbank, the air patterns looked slightly unnatural, as if a membrane covered the rock's surface, with the edges of the membrane shimmering as the light changed.

Bloodaxe orcs crawled along the riverbank, their silhouettes moving a dozen meters before disappearing behind another rock. Then, a fifth silenced gunshot rang out from that direction.

The soldier at the rear of the column was shot through the shoulder; the bullet tore through his armor and muscle, and blood splattered onto his comrade's trouser leg.

The wounded man gritted his teeth and didn't cry out; his face was deathly pale.

With his back pressed against the rock wall, Aldan finally understood what the mutant Bloodaxe in the briefing really meant.

Temporary command post.

When Judge Saen received the last communication from the Western Route Squad, the messenger's voice was fragmented by static, and he could only piece together a few keywords: ambush, silence, communication interference, request for support.

Then the communication was completely cut off.

Saien switched the communicator to another channel without changing his facial expression.

"Tyburn, how are things going on your end?"

After a few seconds of static on the communication channel, Tayburn's voice came through, deep but clear.

"No contact has been made on the north flank yet. Ten minutes ago, Veridian's scanners detected intermittent electromagnetic pulse signals on the flank."

Sain tapped his fingers lightly twice on the folding table.

"They know our plans," he said calmly, "and they intend to launch a preemptive strike, cutting off our search teams one by one in batches and from different directions."

The Astral Army officers inside the tent exchanged bewildered glances. One lieutenant couldn't help but speak up: "Your Honor, do orcs also employ this kind of coordinated attack?"

Sion didn't answer directly. He took out a data panel from inside his trench coat and pulled out the screenshots he had shown to Rhodes on the flagship's bridge. The screenshots showed orcs wearing replica psionic blades and light shield armor of unknown origin.

"These special orcs do indeed use this tactic."

Sion's gaze fell on the Bloodaxe orc in the screenshot, his thumb pressing on the timestamp at the bottom of the screen.

"But the equipment they're wearing certainly wasn't something they came up with themselves."

He didn't want his encirclement to be breached.

"Calling for orbital formation."

Saien straightened up.

"All Predator bombers have taken off."

Twenty minutes later, the sky was torn apart by the sound of engines.

Three Marauder heavy bombers were launched from the cruiser deck above the orbit. The Marauders looked enormous in the sky, each with a wingspan of nearly 2,500 meters.

Each Marauder requires at least six crew members to operate: pilot/captain, communications/navigator, bombardier, plus one each of nose gunner, dorsal gunner, and tail gunner. The six people sit in the bomber and each perform their respective duties.

The navigator's captain, a veteran bomber with twenty years of experience, named Heitman, pushed the control stick forward halfway, the nose of the aircraft dropped, and the Predator's body cut into the airflow over the basin.

"The bombing formation has entered the mission airspace," Heitman's voice came through the communications channel. "Target area coordinates have been locked. Requesting clearance to drop bombs."

"Approved," Sain replied.

"Received, formation entering attack path."

"The bombardier releases the safety lock, and the first round consists of four 500-pound bombs, covering the area from the north bank of the river to the rubble pile."

""

"Safety lock released, bomb bay door open, bombing calculation complete."

"bomb."

The two hatches at the bottom of the bomb compartment flip open to the sides.

Compressed air propelled the first 500-pound high-explosive bomb off the rack.

The moment the bomb separated from the fuselage, the tail fins opened, emitting a sharp whistle in the airflow, and it plummeted to the ground. The four bombs fell in sequence, leaving four parallel descent paths in the air.

It was hit.

The rock wall on the north side of the river was blown away in the explosion. The debris, soil, fungal spores and rock fragments mixed together and formed a mushroom cloud that rose thirty or forty meters high from the ground.

The shockwave spread to both sides along the course of the river, creating air currents on the riverbed and lifting up the cracked silt slabs.

The second Marauder followed closely into the attack path.

The pile of rubble was flattened, replaced by a crater more than 20 meters in diameter. The bedrock at the bottom of the crater was exposed by the blast, and the surface was heated to a vitrified shell by the high temperature.

Then came the third Marauder —

Heitman glanced down at the bombing effects from the cockpit.

Satisfied nodded.

"First round of bombing completed. Moving to the second flight path, preparing to cover the southern part of the target area."

The lead Predator pulled up its nose and began to turn, its fuselage drawing an arc in the air. The thrust of its two engines allowed it to maintain sufficient speed while turning.

The tail gunner of the second aircraft glanced back through the observation window and confirmed that there was nothing unusual.

It seems the orcs on this desolate planet don't have anti-air capabilities, so this mission will be easy.

He turned his head, his eyes glancing at the right-hand porthole. Outside the porthole, something seemed to be flashing at the edge of the atmosphere.

He squinted.

That wasn't sunlight reflecting off the clouds; the flash was blue-white and moving at an extremely fast speed.

In the very second that he spotted the light source with his naked eye, the light source had already moved from the three o'clock position to the one-and-a-half position.

"Number One, this is the tail section of Number Two. Unidentified flying object detected at a 120-degree angle. Speed—"

His report was interrupted when the blue-white light suddenly disappeared, but it didn't fly away; it simply changed direction instantly.

From a point of light three kilometers away, the distance was reduced by more than half in the blink of an eye.

The tail gunner's pupils dilated to their limit at that moment, and he finally saw what it was.

The streamlined fuselage is long and narrow, with golden energy veins covering the wing surface that pulsate with light during high-speed flight.

The air around the aircraft was distorted, and light was bent and stretched as it passed through its fuselage, forming a shimmering spatial force field outline, like a golden-blue comet tail.

Below and in front of its wings, the muzzles of two weapons were pointed directly at it.

The tail gunner's finger was still on the trigger of the twin heavy-explosive bolter when his body made a movement completely beyond his conscious control, jerking to the side. This subconscious action saved his life.

Two blue beams of light shot out from the opponent's cannon barrels.

The light stream is silent, unlike the kind of silence where gunfire is drowned out by engine noise; it is truly silent.

When two scorching ion beams streak across the air, the air itself is instantly ionized and penetrates it before a sonic boom can be generated.

The beam struck the right wing root of the second aircraft in the formation, melting through the upper structure armor of the Marauder. The edges of the molten armor glowed red, and the liquid metal was flung backward by the airflow, leaving several metal threads in the air.

Two-thirds of the main spar on the right wing was cut off, causing the entire Marauder to tilt sharply to the right. The bomber, having lost most of its lift from the right wing, began to roll uncontrollably.

Heitmann heard the second pilot's scream over the communications channel: "Right wing hit, power lost—"

Then came a sharp whistling sound of metal breaking. The remaining right wing was completely torn apart by the centrifugal force generated by the roll. The bomber, having lost its right wing, spiraled down toward the ground. The enormous pressure generated by the spinning fuselage shattered the rivets inside the cabin.

The captain pulled the control stick with all his might, trying to stabilize the fuselage with the remaining left wing and tail, but it was no use. The No. 2 crashed into the gravelly wasteland at the edge of the basin at an almost vertical angle, plowing a trench more than 200 meters long in the ground, and churning up a lot of soil and gravel on both sides.

When it reached the end of the taxiing, the fuselage finally came to a stop. The entire front section was twisted into a metal ball, the reinforced glass of the cockpit was shattered all over the ground, and the tail section was relatively intact.

However, the fighter jet's structure was not severely damaged, so the crew members inside, though covered in blood, were still alive.

Judge Sion stood in the makeshift command post, watching as the icon of the Marauder bomber on the holographic map turned gray.

The muscles on his face finally showed a slight change, enough for everyone in the tent to feel the sudden drop in temperature.

"There was an unidentified flying object," he forced out from deep in his throat, "which shot down a Marauder."

The sergeant's hand trembled slightly on the scanner.

"Yes, Your Honor, the optical tracking system only captured a fraction of a second of the image, so the speed is impossible to estimate. Furthermore, it made a near 90-degree turn in an instant while flying at high speed without slowing down."

Exceeding the speed of Imperial fighters, it makes a 90-degree turn without slowing down.

Sion wasn't an expert in aeronautical engineering, but he knew one thing: any active-duty fighter jet in the Empire's atmosphere, if it made a 90-degree turn at that speed, would crush an ordinary human pilot into a pulp by centrifugal force.

"Calling orbital formation," Sain grabbed the communicator, "scrambling the Lightning squadrons."

.