Explosion after explosion spread little by little over most of the hull of this Drought-Fiend Ghost-King-class Heavy Strategic Interstellar Multirole Destroyer.
And the reach of these explosions even caught up the two Golden-Scarab-class Heavy Interstellar Dreadnoughts closest to it.
Great quantities of wreckage and fragments thrown up by the explosions could be seen flying off, scattering in every direction like "meteorites".
Unavoidably, the hulls of the two Golden-Scarab-class Heavy Interstellar Dreadnoughts were taking this battering as well.
The interstellar close-in guns still able to fire on the outside of the hulls were working at top speed now,
intercepting the starship wreckage and fragments flying at them without pause.
These were no shells, only starship wreckage and fragments,
but the speed of the explosions had sped these fragments up to the utmost in a moment, and the fragments themselves were high-strength metal.
After all, these were the raw materials that had built a quasi-T7-grade interstellar warship, and they were astonishingly strong.
Add the speed, and they hit no less hard than a solid "shell".
What was more, after the earlier fighting, the surfaces of these two Golden-Scarab-class Heavy Interstellar Dreadnoughts' hulls had long since been pocked like meteor craters, with wounds to be seen everywhere.
In some places the hull armor had even been torn open, showing the compartments inside; if enemy wreckage flying in struck these compartments directly, it might well do great damage.
And there was one more thing:
the compartment sections that had been opened to take in the heavy interstellar marines coming back.
Some had had no time to close, and if they were struck by this flying wreckage, not only would the compartment sections be wrecked, but the heavy interstellar marines inside, who had fought so hard to get back, would face mortal danger.
As luck would have it,
the heavy interstellar marines who had withdrawn from Song Keke's squad were facing just this at that moment.
For, very unluckily, a great deal of enemy wreckage thrown up by the explosions was flying straight at the place where they were.
And the close-in guns at their position did not have the firepower to clear it all away in a short time.
"Emergency. Wreckage threatening our position. Marines, every weapon that can move, aim outside. Fire!" the pilot of Unit Five roared, then struggled to prop up her mecha's frame, and its six autocannons started up at once.
A terrible barrage poured out.
But almost at the same moment, on the display in front of her, a prompt about her magazine stock popped up.
'Warning! Warning! Warning! Autocannon magazine low, autocannon magazine low.'
Looking at magazines about to run dry, and at the wreckage fragments coming closer and closer,
the pilot of Unit Five felt powerless.
But just then a voice came over the comms channel.
"Quick, open your magazine port!"
The pilot of Unit Five looked at a video window showing the back of her frame, and saw several logistics soldiers steering a spare magazine into place behind it.
The pilot of Unit Five opened the port at once, and as the external magazine finished connecting,
the alarm stopped too.
The pilot of Unit Five's gloom was swept away, and her eyes burned with fervor. This was their own ground,
with the mother ship at their backs; why worry about running out of ammunition?
"The whole lot of you, get the hell away from me!" the pilot of Unit Five roared, and pressed the autocannons' fire button.
The six autocannons spun up at once and, with saturation fire, destroyed the incoming starship wreckage one piece after another!
The pieces of starship wreckage burst apart very close by; big pieces of wreckage split apart when hit, some melting in the heat of the blasts, but more breaking into smaller pieces that either kept coming or scattered in all directions.
Even those that kept coming had slowed down a great deal.
Very soon these smaller fragments struck this compartment section.
"Take cover! Take cover!"
"Quick, raise your shields!"
These fragments were small, and striking hull armor might leave only dents a few centimeters deep,
but striking a human body, even one in personal exoskeleton combat armor, they would scatter it in pieces in an instant.
The soldiers in the compartment section either raised shields or used personal star shields, and those with neither could only duck quickly behind the mecha.
A mecha's frame armor was not so strong as hull armor, but it could take impacts of this kind with no trouble.
Ping, ping, bang, bang.
A logistics soldier, a girl who looked very young, huddled behind a mecha; she could hear the violent impacts all around.
She looked carefully to one side; many wreckage fragments had struck the floor of this compartment, leaving it pitted and dented.
One could imagine how much it would hurt if those things struck her directly.
She looked nervously at the mecha behind her; without the mecha here, her chances would truly have been grim.
Luckily the mecha had the cover of its autocannons' fire, so fewer fragments struck its frame, and the few that did only rocked the mecha a little.
"All mecha, listen up: our comrades are behind us. Whatever happens, don't move!" the pilot of Unit Five reminded them on the comms channel.
"Yes."
"Don't panic, the hatch is closing. Just a little longer!" a ground crew member's voice came over the comms channel.
And the hatch of this compartment was indeed extending from all four directions, top, bottom, left and right, making the hatch opening smaller and smaller.
That way, they would be hit by fewer and fewer fragments.
"Hssss… I… hssss…"
Just then the pilot of Unit Five, alert, heard what seemed to be some faint sound coming over the comms channel.
"I'm… Ke… we… here… are…"
The pilot of Unit Five heard the broken-up voice and knit her brows slightly.
But for some reason, the voice felt familiar to her.
"This is Song Keke; my unit is withdrawing. Requesting a landing site, requesting a landing site."
The captain!
The pilot of Unit Five heard the voice clearly at once. She looked out beyond the hatch at once, searching everywhere in a hurry, enlarging the images in every direction.
Effort pays off for those who seek; sure enough, she found a group!
There, four Phoenix-Guard mecha were clustered together, looking from afar like a meteorite as they rushed this way, and in the middle of their huddle, wrapped in layer on layer of protection, were interstellar marine soldiers!
"It's the captain! It's our captain. Don't close the door; don't close the door now!" the pilot of Unit Five shouted.
"But… if we don't close the door now, the people in our compartment will be in danger," the head of the ground crew team said with some worry.
"That's the captain of our Hammerstone Squad. Please give us a little time. They're almost back; we can't shut them out. They'll die! The captain… the captain has already been revived twice. If she falls again this time… she may never be able to go back to a front-line combat unit!" the pilot of Unit Five begged, choking back sobs.
Ordinary people might think combat personnel like them ranked higher than the ground crew,
but in real fighting they belonged to two separate systems; the ground crew would work with them but would not simply do as they said.
That is, if the ground crew judged that the hatch had to close, they had no power to stop it.
And what the pilot of Unit Five said was true.
Of all the posts in the Owl Dragon legion fleets, the most dangerous were, naturally, interstellar mecha pilots and interstellar fighter pilots, and the soldiers in these two posts also had the shortest "fighting lives".
Because of the nature of their fighting, they usually suffered the worst injuries before dying, which made them more likely to suffer rebirth trauma sequelae and be forced back to second-line duty, unable to return to the front line.
And the more times they were revived, the higher the chance naturally rose.
And the outstanding Captain Song Keke had fallen before, and had even had some revival-trauma sequelae after her last revival.
Had Song Keke not worked very hard at her rehabilitation, and had she not had her gifts and her post, she might well have been sent back to second-line duty by now.
So now that there was a chance to bring them back alive, they naturally wanted to fight for it.
"All right, we can wait," the head of the ground crew team decided at last.
The pilot of Unit Five let out her breath, then switched on a guidance device on her frame, which could shoot out a bright beam of light so that Captain Song Keke and the others would see it and know which way to land.
At the same time, the pilot of Unit Five kept saying on the comms channel, "Captain, it's us. We're in compartment section B211. Our hatch here hasn't closed; you can land here. I've switched on a guidance signal too; watch for it!"
In case the captain had not heard,
the pilot of Unit Five kept repeating it on the comms channel.
But very soon bad news followed.
"Oh no, we've stopped the hatch-closing routine, but it may have been damaged when the fragments hit just now. We can't stop the hatch from closing now!" the head of the ground crew team cried out.
Only then did the pilot of Unit Five see that the hatch was still closing, the opening getting smaller and smaller.
If this went on, the captain and the others would have no chance to come back, and out there, taking hit after hit from the fragments, they were sure to die.
"Hey, can you hear me? I'm going to move to the side now; move along with me. I'll cover you to a safe spot nearby." The pilot of Unit Five switched on her frame's external speaker, so that the ground crew and soldiers sheltering behind her frame could all hear her.
"Un… understood."
"Ready, start moving."
At the pilot of Unit Five's command, Unit Five began to move slowly to one side.
Because the hatch had partly closed, there were safe areas on both sides of the compartment, out of reach of the fragments.
Unit Five meant to cover these people safely over there.
Along the way, one slip and these soldiers might be torn apart by fragments in an instant.
Luckily, it all went smoothly.
"We're safe now. Hurry and go do what you have to do." A ground crew soldier patted the foot of the mecha in front of her.
Perhaps the other was too worried for their safety; even with them covered to the safe area, she dared not move rashly,
until she heard those words.
Only then did Unit Five dare to move.
She charged to one side of the hatch, two-thirds closed now, and gripped the edge of the hatch hard with both arms, trying to keep it from closing.
This did have some effect, slowing the hatch's closing.
But Unit Five could only hold one side of the hatch; the other side was still closing.
Just then another Phoenix-Guard mecha appeared on the other side.
"How could you do something like this without me?"
Unit Seven's voice rang out on the comms channel.
Unit Seven now stood at the other side of the hatch, holding on to it for dear life.
And by now Song Keke's mecha, drifting through space in the distance, were getting closer and closer to them.
The four Phoenix-Guard mecha could be seen working in close accord, using their foot thrusters to keep adjusting their course, making sure they could land in this compartment exactly.
"Wait for me a little longer!" the pilot of Unit Five shouted through gritted teeth, looking at the hatch still creeping shut,
as if it were she herself straining against it.
Just then more and more Phoenix-Guard mecha that had freed their hands hurried over too, holding the hatch fast to win time.
Very soon, with several crashes,
several figures slammed down hard onto the floor of the compartment.
"Let go; covering fire!" the pilot of Unit Five shouted, then let go at once and stood in the hatchway, firing steadily at the fragments outside,
until the hatch was fully closed.
They could still hear the clattering impacts outside the hatch, but for now, at least, they were safe.
"Captain? Captain!"
The pilot of Unit Five looked over in excitement, calling for the captain.
Twenty-odd interstellar marine soldiers lay sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath, all of them wounded more or less, but at least alive.
The ground crew team's medical staff went to treat them at once.
And the four Phoenix-Guard mecha were nearly all wrecks, sprawled every which way on the floor; one of them had even lost an arm and a leg, and who knew how such a mecha had made it back.
The cockpit hatches of three of the Phoenix-Guard mecha opened, and three mecha pilots staggered out, but before long they collapsed to the floor.
Piloting a mecha took a great toll on the body too.
The ground crew team at once lifted them onto medical stretchers.
But everyone noticed that one of the Phoenix-Guard mecha showed no sign of life for a long while.
"Captain! Captain!" The pilot of Unit Five kept calling, and still got no answer.
Something must have happened.
She shouted at once to the ground crew, "Quick, look at that Phoenix-Guard mecha; that's our captain's mecha. We can't reach her, and she hasn't come out; something must have happened."
At these words the ground crew gathered around at once and tried to open the cockpit canopy, but could not.
"The cockpit canopy seems to have been deformed by an impact; it can't be opened from outside," a ground crew member said.
"Report: we've got into this mecha's built-in systems; all we can detect is that the pilot's life signs inside are dropping fast!"
"Out of the way, let me do it!" The pilot of Unit Five at once drove her mecha forward.
With great care she took hold of the frame's cockpit canopy, then pulled a little, bending it further, and pried it open bit by bit until the opening beneath showed.
"That's enough! Our people can get in now." The ground crew began waving.
The pilot of Unit Five stopped at once.
Then she opened her own cockpit canopy and leapt straight out, landing by sheer strength of body on the frame of the mecha opposite.
Paying no heed to the numbing jolt in her legs from jumping down from such a height, she went straight forward, lay down over the deformed cockpit canopy and looked down inside.
She saw dim light inside, and also some blood and torn flesh.
Her heart leapt into her throat.
"Captain! Captain!" she called loudly.
After a long while, an answer came from below.
"Cough, cough… I'm… I'm fine. I just wanted a little rest, and you lot woke me up," came a weak voice from inside.
Just then the ground crew's searchlight shone in too.
She saw a truly ghastly sight.
Song Keke sat in the cockpit. Her left foot was bent and twisted out of shape, crushed where the foot well had been squeezed.
And worse was her belly: a charred black mass, and the smell of roasting meat could be caught, burned at that.
It was a fragment of wreckage, impossible to tell what, only the size of a baby's fist, but the wound it had done Song Keke was terrifying.
Only then did she notice a hole in the flank of Song Keke's mecha, where it had punched through the whole frame armor and smashed straight into the cockpit.
That fragment's impact was probably what had wounded Song Keke, made the frame's systems fail, and cut her off from the outside.
"Medic! Quick! Wounded here, wounded here!" she shouted at once.
Very soon the ground crew team's medical staff, with the help of some equipment, got Song Keke out of there, injected her with some medical tonics, and laid her on a medical stretcher.
"Look at you shouting; anyone would think I was really about to die." Song Keke looked at the girl in front of her, all teary.
This girl, Yang Xiaoxiao, was one Song Keke had brought along herself all the way, so the two had always got on well.
"I… I… I thought, Captain… Captain… that you wouldn't make it back." Yang Xiaoxiao could not hold her feelings in any longer, and burst out sobbing.
"No talking for now. This captain's wounds are under control with tonics, but she has to go to a medical pod right away; quick, make way." The medical staff hurried them along, and very soon Song Keke and the other badly wounded had been carried out.
All that was left here was a mess on the floor, and a crowd who could catch their breath at last.
Just then, people turned curiously to the interstellar marine soldiers who had come back safely with Captain Song Keke and, being only lightly wounded, were still there.
"Quick, tell us what happened. How did you make it back alive?"
"By the clock, you shouldn't have had nearly enough time to get out."
"Tell us! Tell us!"
Everyone crowded around those few, asking question after question.
In the end, from what they explained, the whole story could be pieced together.
Song Keke had led their part on with the task, and in the end had completed the task goals in the three compartment sections after that.
But by then there was less than a minute left, and getting out by the hole they came in by was out of the question.
So Captain Song Keke thought it over and came up with a risky plan:
they would go into the compartment next to a blast-point compartment, and there build cover from anything they could use to keep themselves safe,
and ride out whatever danger the first round of explosions might bring.
Song Keke was gambling. She was gambling that the explosion in the blast-point compartment would be enough to destroy the hull armor above it and open a breach.
Then, if they could survive that round of explosions, and go straight to the breach it made and burst out through it, they would still have a hope of surviving.
The plan sounded simple enough.
But every step of it was full of danger.
First, could they stand up to the blast of the very explosives they had planted?
For that, they had moved nearly everything they could use: wreckage of the enemy's weapons, wreckage of their own.
At last they huddled in a corner, with the Phoenix-Guard mecha that still had star-shield energy braced on the very outside to form a fan-shaped guard.
The interstellar marine soldiers, naturally, huddled at the very back.
And even if they got through that stage safely,
and the explosives did open a gap in the enemy's hull armor,
could they get out amid the chaos of the battlefield? That was a hard question too.
For they could foresee that between the Drought-Fiend Ghost-King-class Heavy Strategic Interstellar Multirole Destroyer and the Golden-Scarab-class Heavy Interstellar Dreadnought it would be utter chaos then.
The close-in guns of the Drought-Fiend Ghost-King-class Heavy Strategic Interstellar Multirole Destroyer would attack them, and even the Golden-Scarab-class Heavy Interstellar Dreadnought's close-in guns, firing at the wreckage fragments, might hit them by mistake.
And the last stage, whether they could reach the Golden-Scarab-class Heavy Interstellar Dreadnought's landing compartment safely, was another question.
Luckily, they had been lucky.
Danger had filled every step of the way, and still they had come out of it safely.
They had completed every combat task their superiors had given them!