Counterfeit Hero

Chapter 1216: Chapter 3-24: Desperate Battle 3 (Part 2)

With the electronic capabilities of an electronic mecha, it’s absolutely impossible to suppress the powerful output of a Base Electronic Interference Tower! The only thing to hope for is that Position 415, once it sees the battle, can make a swift decision.

”General, can we take a break?” A Spirit Cat ran up beside Fatty; the one speaking was Major Anthony. As deputy regiment commander of the 3rd Group of the 13th Armored Division, he was the highest-ranking officer in this Chuckna unit.

”The warriors are too weak. Those Jiepeng mixed bloods haven’t given them a single bite to eat.” Anthony’s voice was hoarse and dry.

”No.” Fatty steeled his heart. He knew that by now they had covered nearly five kilometers. These warriors were moving purely on willpower. Once they relaxed, the entire column might never be able to complete the remaining five kilometers.

”But...” Anthony couldn’t bear it and looked down at the warriors on the mountainside. Their short, quick run had already turned their faces deathly pale. Five kilometers might be nothing to them on a normal day, but in their current state, it was pure torment in hell. The entire valley was filled with their ragged breathing, as if their lungs were burning.

”No buts...” Fatty gritted his teeth. ”If they want to live, they can’t stop. We’re racing against time. Maybe in the very next minute, the enemy will catch up from behind. Maybe the battalion in front of them already knows that their hundred mecha have been...”

Before Fatty finished, his expression suddenly changed.

The valley opened up sharply after a bend ahead.

What appeared before them was a small basin on the mountainside, at an altitude of one hundred and ninety meters. Around the basin, the mountains were jagged and steep, staggered peaks stretching in all directions, endlessly.

Fatty stood blankly on a small slope, staring at the base beyond the Jiepeng people’s assault position, encircled by metal walls, where hundreds of Jiepeng Mecha were drilling out like a giant dragon. Their vanguard was Pentium toward them. The steel torrent rolled up billowing dust, covering the sky and blotting out the sun.

A roar came from the sky. Fatty looked back; in the long-range viewer, three Jiepeng Fighters were howling toward them, growing from three tiny dots larger and larger. The aircrafts’ metal skins reflected the sunlight; the Energy Cannons on the wings, the missile racks under the fuselage, were like the talons of a vicious vulture!

And at the other end of the basin, the 415 High Ground wedged between two small hills was still deathly quiet, without a sound.

Jinx! Fatty suddenly slapped himself across the face and roared, ”Enemy attack!!!!!!!”

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The fighters screamed as they swept over the head of the orange Spirit Cat Mecha sprinting at full speed.

Zhongshan Yi’s face was ashen; he could even see the missiles dropping off the fighters’ racks, sagging slightly before suddenly darting forward. Nine air-to-ground missiles fired simultaneously from the three Silver Guard Land-based Fighters shot out like nine swift birds plunging into a forest, dragging long tails of light as they streaked toward the mountains in the distance.

At the same time, ten missiles vaulted into the sky from the far side of the mountain. Seven of them detonated at low altitude, countless metal decoys spiraling out, turning into a billowing black cloud. The other three mecha anti-air missiles kept climbing, shooting into the heavens and lunging at the fighters.

In the blink of an eye, sky and ground had already exchanged a round.

Only two or three missiles managed to punch through the decoy cloud, and not a single one hit a fighter. The fighters, already prepared, quickly dumped Decoy Missiles and rolled into a climbing turn.

However, the ground clearly had a follow-up.

Six streaks of Flowing Light suddenly shot up, black dots stabbing into the sky at extreme speed.

The three fighters, caught off guard, scattered like startled birds, rolling away and dumping another wave of Decoy Missiles. But the enemy’s calculations were obviously more precise. The gap between the two volleys had been timed to perfection; the anti-air missiles had already climbed to a higher altitude before the decoys exploded. The clouds of interference blooming one after another could only watch as the missiles chased the fighters.

Moments later, aside from one fighter that barely escaped, the other two were hit because they were too close and time was too tight. The fragile frames of the Land-based Fighters instantly disintegrated into scattered wreckage in two balls of fire.

In modern warfare, air power plays its role outside the atmosphere. Inside the atmosphere, it’s mecha that rule.

For a Land-based Fighter to fly at high speeds in the atmosphere, it must have wings—and the wings are the weakest part of the aircraft. At high speed, even a bird can bring down a fighter, let alone a missile.

On top of that, fighters are expensive to build, with limited energy and weapons payloads, far less practical than mecha. Once the fighter’s sharp sword—long-range missiles—lose their Absolute Kill capability because of electronic interference, Decoy Missiles, and energy shields, fighters forced to strike from shorter and shorter ranges degrade into mere supporting roles used to bully infantry and conduct reconnaissance.

After dominating human warfare for thousands of years, the modern Land-based Fighter is indescribably forlorn. It can only evolve toward the vaster expanse of space. Mecha rule not only the land, but also the planet’s atmosphere.

Watching the last fighter retreat into the distance, Zhongshan Yi pushed his mecha’s speed even higher.

A blazing Fierce Fire burned in his chest. His eyes were bloodshot, all his thoughts focused solely on the distant mountain ranges. He had never imagined that after scheming the entire night, he would be the one to fall into a trap.

Those damned Chuckna people didn’t have anything close to a full regiment. The so-called ambush that 1st Regiment 1st Battalion ran into had been nothing more than a crazed jamming effort by a few electronic mecha and the illusion created by ten War Elephant Medium Mecha firing with everything they had!

After reestablishing contact with 1st Regiment 1st Battalion, Zhongshan Yi simply couldn’t believe his ears.

His first reaction was that this was yet another enemy plot! Maybe their main force was somewhere else, lying in wait to ambush his other battalions.

But the reports from each battalion shattered his guess.

It wasn’t until he discovered that the hundred mecha of the Special Forces Camp, who should long since have annihilated the enemy, dispelled the electronic interference, and reestablished contact with him, had completely vanished, that he finally understood: the real opponent was swaggering right under his nose, rescuing POWs!

Now that was a crisp, ringing slap to the face!

He had actually stupidly led his entire division farther and farther away from them. The wasted time plus the distance covered by this redeployment was nearly an hour round trip!

And what’s more, his other battalions would not even be able to reach the 415 High Ground at the first possible moment.

”Zhongshan Yi, you’ve been had.”

Just thinking of the pitying and contemptuous look on 59th Division Commander Major General Oono Hayato’s face made Zhongshan Yi’s head swim.

Oono Hayato had never believed that his battle plan could actually snare the enemy.

Right now, the focal point of the campaign was the 415 High Ground. It was the key passage to the west. If 415 couldn’t be cracked, the seven attack thrusts of Jiepeng would be blocked east of the Chuckna line of defense. To detour around, they would have to run the risk of being ambushed and defeated in detail, and they would have to spend at least six hours winding through the mountains.

And once any of the columns was beaten back by an ambush, that time would only increase!

For Magi, this was absolutely unacceptable.

So when an entire night of sweeping searches failed to discover any trace of the enemy, and after reading his plan to use POWs as bait, Oono Hayato made the decision to split his forces.

He personally led two regiments to cooperate with Zhongshan Yi’s operation, while detaching two battalions to march rapidly on the 415 High Ground from the left and right. This move wasn’t because he had seen through the enemy, but rather his habit of planning ahead. As long as they planted themselves in front of the 415 High Ground, that mysterious Chuckna Armored Forces unit might very well run headlong into them.

Now, those two battalions might be parallel with his current position—or even ahead of him.

Thinking of this, Zhongshan Yi clenched his steel teeth in fury.

Oono Hayato had never even considered what would happen to Zhongshan Yi if he ended up being the one who won this battle.

He still had a chance.

The enemy was merely an armored company. They had to escort two thousand infantry.

And in front of them was a full-strength armored battalion of his own!

The mecha engines let out a shrill scream. The mecha shot through the jungle at meteor speed!

Zhongshan Yi swore he would personally capture the enemy Commander and skin him alive with his own hands!

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