The days on Weiya Star are very short. At only four o'clock in the afternoon, the light gradually disappears and it becomes dark everywhere.
Lu Rankong and Lan Yu went to inspect the rooms where their soldiers were respectively, and then returned to the house. On the way, they met Lin Zhu and Chen Yuqin who were also inspecting the other two battalions.
"There shouldn't be any problem. Go to bed early." Chen Yuqin said.
Lu Rankong nodded and said, "Okay, be alert at night."
"It's okay. We take turns on duty."
Lu Rankong walked out and asked the two soldiers standing at the entrance of the dormitory building: "How many people are on duty outside?"
"There are ten more outside, stationed in four directions and at the entrance of the main control room."
Lu Rankong patted his shoulder and said, "Thank you for your hard work..."
"It's not hard..." the soldier replied.
Back in the room, Lan Yu took out the nutritional supplements and asked Lu Rankong, "What flavor do you like?"
"It doesn't matter, any flavor is fine."
Lan Yu compared them, handed him the strawberry flavored one, and said, "Here, the pineapple one."
Lu Rankong took the nutrient solution, poured it into his mouth without even looking at it, and drank it all in a few gulps.
"How is it? The one with pineapple flavor?" Lan Yu asked him.
Lu Rankong said: "Yeah, it tastes good."
After he finished speaking, Lan Yu did not respond. She just squinted at him and asked, "What's wrong?"
Lan Yu snatched the empty bottle from his hand and said, "You can't taste anything I give you to drink, and you still say it tastes good."
Lu Rankong said hurriedly, "It tastes good. It tastes really good." He smacked his lips again and said suddenly, "It tastes like strawberry."
"It's rare that you can tell it's a strawberry." Lan Yu put the empty bottle back into a small bag in her backpack.
Lu Rankong smiled and said, "What are you talking about? It's not like I don't have a sense of taste."
"I really think you have no sense of taste."
Lu Rankong leaned close to his ear and whispered, "Why don't you have a sense of taste? I know your mouth is sweet, especially sweet."
The two drank the nutrient solution and got into the sleeping bags. Lan Yu twisted and turned in the sleeping bag, trying to get closer to Lu Rankong. But the sleeping bag was so bulgy that we couldn't just lean together.
"Leopard..." He called softly to the person next to him.
"Um?"
"I want to sleep in the same sleeping bag with you." Lan Yu said.
Lu Rankong closed his eyes and asked, "Do you miss your brother hugging you?"
"No, I just feel warmer next to you." Lan Yu denied it.
Lu Rankong smiled silently and said, "Not today..."
"Why?"
"I have to go on patrol at any time and I'm afraid to disturb you," he said.
Lan Yu didn't say anything. Lu Rankong heard a rustling sound coming from his side. Just as he opened his eyes, his sleeping bag was opened and a warm body crawled in.
The sleeping bag was not big, but because the special fabric had a certain degree of elasticity, two people could be squeezed in, but there was no space between them.
"You will go on patrol later, and I want to go with you." Lan Yu said.
"It's cold outside..."
"I'm not afraid of the cold. I have winter clothes."
"How can winter clothes be as warm as a sleeping bag?" Lu Rankong opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling.
"No, I have to patrol too."
Lu Rankong paused and asked, "Are you worried that I might encounter an interstellar beast outside?"
Lan Yu didn't say anything, just snuggled into his arms. Lu Rankong turned over to face him, letting him rest his head on his arm, and said, "If you really want to go, then go ahead. Go to sleep and get enough rest. It may not be quiet at night."
The lighting system intelligently recognized the situation and slowly dimmed the lights in the room, leaving only a small light in the corner.
Everyone was resting and the entire dormitory building was silent except for the rustling sound of snowflakes falling to the ground outside the window.
After a while, Lan Yu suddenly said, "You pushed me..."
"Just bear with it. This sleeping bag is a bit short. You can only curl up your legs. It's inevitable that your knees will hit you."
"Do you take me for a fool? Can your knee reach that?"
"But I can't move. There's nothing I can do even if I push against it...hiss...don't twist it, don't twist it."
"The key point is, how can you think of this in such a harsh environment?" Lan Yu whispered.
"This thing can't recognize the environment, it only recognizes you."
Lan Yu closed her eyes and chatted with Lu Rankong. Although they both said they wanted to rest, it was only a little after five in the afternoon, so there was no way they could sleep.
What's more, hugging each other so tightly, Lu Rankong soon became distracted, and would kiss for a while after saying a few words.
About an hour later, Lu Rankong got out of his sleeping bag and said, "You lie down first. I'll go for a check and be back soon."
Lan Yu also followed and went outside, "We said we would go on patrol together."
“It’s really cold outside.”
"It's cold even if I go..."
Seeing that Lan Yu had already stood up and put on the cold-proof helmet, Lu Rankong had to give up. The two of them picked up the ion guns and left the house together.
As soon as she stepped out of the door, she heard the whistling of the wind. She suddenly went from the warm room to the freezing cold snow. Even though she was wearing winter clothes, Lan Yu felt suddenly cold all over.
Lu Rankong raised his hand and looked at the terminal, and asked, "The temperature is minus 50 degrees Celsius now. Can you bear it?"
"I can bear it..." Lan Yu said.
Both of them turned on the overhead lighting and walked towards the gate of the jump station, preparing to circle the jump station.
It had snowed heavily at night, and dense snowflakes soon accumulated into a soft layer on the ice. Lan Yu sank into the snow with every step she took, and was buried up to her calves.
Two soldiers stood at the gate and saluted them both, "Colonel K, Colonel Lu."
"How long have you been standing there?" Lu Rankong asked.
“Just arrived…”
"A change of guard every hour?"
"Yes……"
"That's fine. We can get in if we hold on for a while." Lu Rankong and the others continued to walk out, asking as they walked, "Did you find anything?"
"No, everything is fine."
It was pitch black outside. The light from the overhead lighting was blocked by the snow and I could only see one or two meters in front of me. The two men were holding ion guns and walking in the snow with a click.
"How long has this jump station been closed?" Lan Yu asked as they walked.
“It closed many years ago.”
Lan Yu thought for a while and said, "When the interstellar channel of Qichu Star was opened half a year ago, was this jump station also closed?"
Lu Rankong knew what he wanted to ask and explained, "The jump point on Weiya Star not only leads to Qichu Star, but is also the only way to another planet. At first, only the jump route to Qichu Star was closed, and the other one was not closed. As a result, the data was secretly changed half a year ago, and someone went from here to Qichu Star and opened the interstellar channel. Since then, the entire jump station has been closed."
"What if someone else comes to Weiya Star to open a jump station?" Lan Yu asked.
Lu Rankong shook his head: "Although Viya Star seems to be unprotected, the entire planet is actually under strict surveillance. Any non-starship approaching will be identified, and the automatic weapon system will attack. It's just that interstellar beasts are different from starships and cannot be identified, so they can reach Viya Star."
Before they knew it, they had reached the back of the jump station, which was a relatively flat open area with a few small ice hillocks only a few hundred meters away.
The heavy snow slowly stopped and the wind started to blow, but without the snow blocking my view, I could finally see farther.
Lan Yu looked around and said, "Actually, this Wei Yaxing is pretty, but she's too cold."
"If you like, I can take you to Cili Star. It's not as cold there, but the scenery is similar." Lu Rankong kicked away a small mound of snow and found that there was nothing underneath, so he continued walking forward.
After taking two steps, he realized that Lan Yu had not followed him and was still standing there without moving.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Wait, wait, I seem to hear some sound." Lan Yu said.
Upon hearing this, Lu Rankong also turned his head and listened carefully.
"Just now there seemed to be some movement, a snapping sound, like the sound of a branch breaking."
Lu Rankong looked around and said, "There are no trees on this planet. Which direction did you hear the sound from?"
Lan Yu concentrated for a moment and then said, "The sound has stopped. Wait a little longer."
Both of them stood still, holding up the ion guns in their hands, capturing the unusual sounds in the wind and snow.
Snap...
There was another slight sound, almost imperceptible, mixed in with the whistling of the wind.
The two men simultaneously held their guns horizontally in front of their eyes and walked quickly towards the ice mound to the right rear. When they were almost close to the ice mound, they separated to the left and right and went around to the rear.
Lan Yu quickly went around the ice mound, but found nothing behind it. He looked left and right and slowly put down his gun. Lu Rankong on the opposite side also put away his gun and walked towards him in a relaxed manner.
Lan Yu was just about to say that maybe she had heard it wrong, when she saw Lu Rankong's expression suddenly change under the cold hood, and his steps suddenly stopped.
He was startled and immediately realized what was going on!
"Get down!" Before Lu Rankong finished shouting, he had already fallen to the ground.
Just as his body threw up a soft snowflake, a gunshot rang out, and there was the sound of objects being embedded in by bullets beside him. Before he could react, his foot was grabbed by a hand and quickly dragged away, and a huge monster fell from the place where he had just fallen, splashing snow all over the sky.
All this happened in a short moment. After being dragged a few meters away by Lu Rankong, Lan Yu turned over and got up. Before he could look at what was hit, he heard a long howl coming from the front.
It sounded like a wild animal, very close at hand.
He and Lu Rankong looked over at the same time and paused.
At some point, a group of animals had gathered in the open space ahead. They looked similar to wolves, but were several times larger than ordinary wolves. Like a wolf, it has sharp fangs and a long tongue, with saliva dripping from the corners of its mouth onto the snow.
They looked at Lan Yu and Lu Rankong quietly, their eyes glowing green in the snow.
On the ice hills farther away, there were giant wolves slowly approaching. Despite their huge bodies, they moved silently, like a group of ghosts on the snowy plain.
Lan Yu and Lu Rankong did not move, and the giant wolf pack stopped dozens of meters away from them. The leading wolf did not move either, and the two sides just confronted each other in silence.
Lan Yu's legs felt weak and he almost wanted to run away, but when he saw that Lu Rankong didn't move, he resisted the urge to run away.
Lu Rankong heard his rapid breathing and whispered without moving his lips: "Don't move, see what they mean."
"Isn't their intention to eat us?" Lan Yu said stiffly.
"The thorn beasts are brutal and ferocious, but they have a certain level of intelligence. They know that there are many of us, so they dare not act rashly."
The leader of the thorny beasts looked at Lu Rankong with ferocious eyes. Although Lu Rankong was wearing a cold-proof hood, his eyes were even more ferocious. He stared at the beast intently without backing down.
One minute, two minutes...
The beasts on the opposite side began to get restless, digging the snow with their hind legs, wanting to rush towards the two men and bite them fiercely, but without orders from the leader, they could only stay where they were, baring their cold fangs from time to time.
Lan Yu felt that time was so long, just one or two minutes felt like several centuries. He had been holding the ion gun the whole time, and his hands and feet had lost feeling, and no longer felt like his own. Only the beating of his heart in his chest reminded him that time was passing.
During the confrontation between the leader beast and Lu Rankong, the look in its eyes gradually changed, becoming more scrutinizing. Perhaps its target was not this group of people, so after hesitating for a while, it finally chose to back off.
It turned its head away and growled softly behind it, and some of the thorn beasts turned around and walked back in the direction they came from.
Lan Yu and Lu Rankong both breathed a sigh of relief.
A few of them were reluctant to leave, and they kept moving towards the position next to Lan Yu, where the corpse of the thorny beast that had been killed was lying.
Lu Rankong pulled Lan Yu carefully back a few steps, signaling them to take the body away.
A thorn beast walked slowly over, looking at the two people warily as it walked. Lan Yu held her breath and did not move, fearing that any movement at this moment would scare it.
"What is this?" A scream suddenly came from not far behind.
Lan Yu and Lu Rankong looked at the same time, and saw two patrolling soldiers standing there, holding ion guns in their hands and pointing them at the thorn beast walking towards them.
Before anyone could utter a word to stop it, a gunshot rang out. Although the thorn beast was not hit, it was still startled. It roared angrily, opened its mouth, showing its fangs, and pounced on the two soldiers.
The soldiers retreated while firing continuously, but the thorny beast leaped left and right and nimbly dodged the bullets.
"not good……"
As soon as Lu Rankong finished speaking, he heard the beast king let out a long howl, and all the thorny beasts that were crossing the ice hill stopped and turned their heads.
Lan Yu saw their front legs tensed and their hind legs slightly bent, and knew they were about to pounce. At this time, Lu Rankong decisively shouted: "Use the mecha..."
Both of them turned the mecha rings on their wrists, and two huge black mechas instantly stood in the wind and snow, with 666 and 999 on their backs clearly visible.
As Lan Yu entered the mecha cabin, she saw the two patrolmen also dispatched their mechas.
The thorn beast had quickly rolled up in front of him, with a cloud of snow and powder all over it, and pounced on him ferociously. Lan Yu fired decisively, and 999's mechanical arm aimed forward, spewing out two tongues of fire.
Although those thorn beasts were huge in size, they were extremely agile. They dodged bullets by moving left and right and tried to get close to the mecha and jump on it.
Lu Rankong used his left arm to pull off a thorn beast that was crawling on Lan Yu's mecha, lifted it in the air, and put his right arm directly against the beast's head and fired a shot. Red and white objects splattered everywhere and were thrown on the ground.
"Fly up and fight, there are too many of them." Lu Rankong ordered.
With a loud bang, four mechas flew off the ground, and the thorn beasts jumped up and pounced on them. One of them grabbed Lan Yu's foot and swung its front paws in the air, leaving a scratch on the surface of the mecha before falling down.
Lan Yu saw that the leader beast did not move, but just stood at the end of the herd. After seeing their four mechas fly up, it raised its neck and howled long towards the sky.
In just a dozen seconds, the sound of flapping wings was heard in the air, as if a large bird was flying towards this side.
"The thorn beasts are summoning their servant birds, trying to fly up and fight us. Pay attention to the air." Lu Rankong shouted.
The sound of summoning mechas was also heard from the dormitory area in the distance. Those were the soldiers who rushed over after hearing the noise.
The servant birds should be waiting nearby, and they flew in front of Lan Yu in an instant. Lan Yu saw that each of them was as big as a small airplane, and their huge wings flapped up gusts of wind.
They landed on the ground, waited for the thorny beast to stand on the bird's back, and then quickly took off.
Lan Yu kept shooting, shooting in 360 degrees, but even so, there were still flapping wings from all directions and harsh scratching sounds coming from the mecha.
The mecha group also arrived in an instant and joined the battlefield. The sky was full of wings and gunshots were everywhere.
Lan Yu had just killed a thorn beast when he saw that a soldier's mecha had its right leg torn off and the body of the mecha was also severely damaged, falling uncontrollably to the ground.
There were still many thorn beasts on the ground that had not yet flown into the sky. They surrounded the leader beast and looked at the sky. If the soldier fell down, he would surely die.
Lan Yu knocked away the wings blocking his way, quickly rushed to the falling mecha, and carried him on his back before flying again.
He couldn't stand up straight with the immobile mecha on his back, for fear that it would fall off. But servant birds were rushing towards him from the left, right and front, and on the back of each bird stood a thorn beast with its claws and fangs bared.
Lan Yu raised his mechanical arm and fired towards the front and the right, repelling the two servant birds, but the servant bird on the left had already rushed to his side, and the thorn beast on its back also stood up its upper body and raised its sharp claws.
Bang bang bang! There were continuous gunshots above the head. The thorn beast was hit and its body trembled with the continuous bullets. A black shadow blocked Lan Yu's way, and a giant iron fist fell down, hitting the servant bird's head hard.
The servant bird let out a hiss, and fell straight to the ground with the corpse of the thorn beast on its back.
The 666 mecha stood in front of Lan Yu and said calmly: "Leave him to me..." After that, he took the mecha off Lan Yu's back and carried it on his shoulders like a sack.
The battle continued, and the dark sky was filled with flames and the roars of the servant birds and thorn beasts echoed.
Just as Lan Yu hit a servant bird, she heard an alarm sound from the mecha and a red light indicating insufficient energy began to flash.
His heart tightened, knowing that this was a continuous battle in the air, so the mecha's energy consumption was particularly high. The energy in the energy box and the backup box had been used up, and the little bit left would not last long.
Lan Yu looked at the other mechas and found that some of them were starting to land, and those that had already landed were fighting the Thorn Beasts on the ground. It was obvious that they were running out of energy.
"Report, my mecha is on alarm, it's running out of energy."
"Report, my energy bar is also alarming."
But at this moment, the leader of the beasts suddenly let out a long roar towards the sky. Hearing the roar, all the servant birds stopped fighting, turned around with the thorn beasts on their backs, rushed out of the battle circle, quickly evacuated, and flew into the vast night sky.
The soldiers wanted to chase after them, but Lu Rankong shouted, "Don't chase them, let them go."
In less than a minute, the servant birds and thorn beasts retreated completely. If there were not some corpses of birds and beasts lying on the ground, it would be impossible to tell that a great battle had just taken place here.
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