A thing with absolutely no sense of aesthetics, utterly at odds with aerodynamics.
It looked like someone had chiseled a cockpit out of a metal brick, then bolted on a pair of wings, a tail assembly, and an absurdly high-thrust propulsion system, and called it an aircraft.
And now, the instant its thrust was pushed to maximum, the forty-meter metal fuselage felt as though it might tear itself apart.
From the cockpit window, the blue planet ahead was visibly growing larger.
A distance of nearly four hundred thousand kilometers was shrinking toward zero at astonishing speed.
One more check confirmed that the defensive field system, the one capable of raising a single pseudo-void shield, was still unusable.
Clearly, that shield also relied on warp-based technology, which meant it could not be activated here.
The other systems were checked as well. Some of the weapon systems could still be used.
Then it was time to decelerate.
Otherwise, if he kept charging toward Earth at this speed, the instant he struck the atmosphere, the craft would disintegrate on the spot.
After all, this fighter was not designed for atmospheric combat.
It was a starfighter.
At this kind of speed, hitting the atmosphere was basically the same as smashing into a wall.
And precisely because it was a starfighter, something built for weightless space, for regions without planetary gravity, for places without air resistance, it had no need whatsoever for aerodynamic design.
This forty-meter craft was only a little smaller than a 21st-century C-17 transport plane, yet it had been fitted with engines producing sixty thousand tons of thrust.
To put that into perspective, the Saturn V launch vehicle had only a little over three thousand four hundred tons of total thrust.
That was what true absurdity looked like.
Then again, plenty of the Imperium's atmospheric fighter designs did not exactly follow aerodynamic logic either.
As he began to slow down, the crushing pressure on his body also started to ease.
If this had been an ordinary human, their internal organs would probably have burst already.
Their body might well have ended up like an overripe watermelon, one light tap away from exploding, juice spraying everywhere.
Of course, he was wearing armor while piloting this thing.
Not Mark X power armor. That set was already ruined.
Correction. This did not really count as power armor either. It was simply the anti-G suit of this Fury Interceptor.
And this Fury Interceptor was something he had gone back and brought over again himself.
Since its length exceeded forty meters, his original ten-by-ten-by-ten-meter storage space naturally could not hold it, so he had expanded it into a one-hundred-by-one-hundred-by-one-hundred-meter space, at a cost of one hundred coins and one hundred hours.
And this craft could also be counted as his third true awakening.
Because if he wanted to travel through interstellar space, he could just use that quantum ship directly.
"Still too fast?"
The system warnings in the fighter indicated that he needed to reduce speed even further, or else the craft might start breaking apart from the planet's gravitational pull before it even reached the atmosphere.
Then activate the reverse-thrust system.
The instant it kicked in, it felt as though, in the body of an ordinary person, he had just been hit by a car. It was like his entire body was being flattened.
Only after the speed dropped into the safe range did the alarm finally stop.
And by then, the atmosphere was already right in front of him.
The next second, another sensation like a violent impact struck him, and the view beyond the window turned completely red.
…
"This is Bunker Operator 21O! Attention all units! Lord Kain has already broken through the middle layer of the atmosphere!"
Not all of YoRHa had gone to the moon to take part in that grand event. Half of them had remained on duty in the Bunker.
To prepare for emergencies, they had already entered a state of immediate combat readiness.
So the moment they received the intelligence, all fighter craft were deployed and sent toward the skies above the super-extremely giant machine lifeform, ready to begin an airborne assault at once.
But because the thing had spread an electronic virus field across a certain range, any airborne assault would only end in viral infection and enemy control.
That meant the drop operation had to be halted immediately, and the units instead held position suspended high in the thermosphere, relatively close to the outermost exosphere.
In other words, at an altitude of seven hundred kilometers.
To guard against any further expansion of the machine lifeforms' intrusion field, they added an extra two hundred kilometers of safety margin on top of the original five-hundred-kilometer zone.
Then came Commander White's emergency notification, which left every YoRHa member there deeply anxious.
All they could do was watch a strangely fast aircraft tear past them at a speed none of them could catch, plunging toward the world below.
They desperately wanted to follow after it, but the order they had received was to wait, to wait for Lord Kain to open a breach for YoRHa and the surrounding forces.
If they rushed down after him in their panic, they would only create trouble, become dead weight, or even end up as unwilling accomplices of the machine lifeforms.
"He's broken through the stratosphere?!"
Not only had he broken through the stratosphere, he had already come into contact with the enemy's flying machine lifeforms.
Countless heat rays and energy spheres rushed to greet him, so densely packed that there was barely enough room for a bird to slip through.
A huge burst of light erupted, and for a moment even the surveillance satellites lost sight of his aircraft.
"Hah…"
Relieved breaths sounded across the comms channel, because the satellites soon reacquired the craft.
It had not been hit.
On the contrary, a hole had been burned straight through the dense black cloud.
Before the gap could close again, a melta bomb detonated and expanded it further.
But after the third expansion, the opening was finally filled in again.
The reason was simple: Lord Kain's aircraft had already plunged much deeper below. The enemies he had thrown behind him were no longer in front of him, so there was no need to keep firing at them.
And because the machine lifeforms behind him had continued the pursuit downward, they ended up blocking off the path behind him themselves.
"All units, weapons free!"
They had been waiting for exactly that command.
In an instant, every Ho 229 fighter in the YoRHa force opened the honeycomb missile pods mounted on their backs, and the missiles swarmed out like a violently disturbed beehive.
At the same time, the android forces aboard the other satellite bases also began dumping vast quantities of ammunition.
In that instant, a rain of thousands upon thousands of warheads plunged at high speed toward the surface below, meant to destroy the machine lifeforms Lord Kain had left behind.
At the same time, beams that looked like lasers, even faster than the falling warheads, punched through the atmosphere first.
In reality, those attacks were massive electromagnetic cannon shots fired by the Ho 229 craft after they had transformed.
The primary targets of those electromagnetic cannons were the large flying machine lifeforms, the motherships that carried the swarms of small flying machine units.
Those motherships were not at the center of the zone. They were coming in from all directions, so there was no need to worry about the electromagnetic cannon fire accidentally striking Lord Kain.
They had not attacked at first because their view had been completely covered by the endless mass of small flying machine lifeforms overhead, making the motherships impossible to spot.
Now, however, thanks to Lord Kain's breakthrough, all the smaller, highly maneuverable flying machine lifeforms had gone after him, exposing the motherships behind them.
"He's broken through the troposphere?!"
That report instantly made everyone's hearts lurch.
Breaking through the troposphere meant he was now less than eight kilometers from the surface.
At his current speed, that meant he would arrive in only a few seconds.
(End of Chapter)
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