Chapter 148: Repair (Seeking Monthly Tickets!)

“Group Leader Bai, Captain Lin’s side has successfully repaired the maintenance robots. The estimated repair time for the ascension elevator has been shortened to within an hour.”

*Bang, bang, bang!*

The entire periphery of the airport platform was engaged in fierce combat, like a large-scale battlefield.

In each area, hundreds of thousands of zombies frantically climbed upwards. Flames soared into the sky, and explosions were constant. The barrels of the fully automatic cannons were now red-hot. Each burst of fire illuminated the dense tide of zombies swarming in from the city roads.

Various strange insects, ghouls, tall white giant monsters, and black insects were mixed in. A sweep of the 1130’s line of fire would turn a section into a rain of flesh and blood. The Iron Guard below, responsible for supplying ammunition, had to use trucks to deliver ammunition chains from the airport’s military warehouse.

Inside the control tower, Bai Shuang was discussing the evacuation plan with the emergency team. When she heard Wei Kexue’s voice on the walkie-talkie, her expression immediately tensed.

“Good! The radar has detected a huge anomaly in the sky. It should be that S-class atmospheric mica. It hasn’t shown itself yet. You all need to be careful!”

*BOOM!*

A dazzling blue beam of light exploded. The electromagnetic railgun tore through the night sky, directly blasting a sky jellyfish that was drifting closer. It instantly pierced its center, and a dozen of the jellyfish’s tentacles fell in response.

*BWOOOM~~!!*

A strange humming sound was heard. Many of the resisting soldiers and survivors saw the giant shadow in the sky, and their hair stood on end!

“Night Falcon 12 anti-aircraft missile launch elements ready!”

*Swoosh! Swoosh!*

The Iron Guard’s anti-aircraft missile launchers slowly rose. Two small air-to-air missiles shot out, leaving a rapid white trail as they exploded on the sky jellyfish’s bell.

*Clang, clang, clang.* On the ground, an Iron Guard unit was moving quickly. The leader was a middle-aged man in his forties, wearing a military uniform. His face was sharp and his features were regular, and his whole body exuded the aura of a seasoned veteran.

“General, Group Leader Bai just notified that the ascension elevator repair time is one hour.”

An aide followed beside him, giving an urgent report.

“Have the convoys in the plaza contract towards the inner harbor. The threat can already reach inside,” Zhang Dingzhong said without stopping, pointing to the track platform. “Have Bai Shuang coordinate and move everyone to the track platform.”

Most of the survivors had taken up arms and begun to help the Iron Guard resist. The majority of the people remaining in the thousands of survivor vehicles were the old, weak, women, and children.

“Where are the Guard Regiment people? Still not coming to support?”

“That group from the Federation Investigation Team hasn’t left yet. They even contacted us, saying they would only leave after we provided them with airspace escort.”

“What? Escort?!” *Smack.* Zhang Dingzhong stopped, snorted coldly, and said, “Ma Xiaotang, go tell that Taylor, I don’t care if her plane is carrying the father of some former councilman or the son of some president. I’m only giving her 20 minutes to get the hell out of here. Otherwise, she can stay here forever!”

“Yes, sir!” the aide immediately responded.

“General, a small-scale earthquake has been detected in the southwest direction. It may be related to an anomaly,” another officer ran up and reported urgently.

“How much time is left for evacuation?”

“According to the emergency team’s estimate, after the ascension elevator is repaired, it will take about 5 hours for all personnel at the current airport to complete the transfer.”

“5 hours…”

Zhang Dingzhong looked up at the sky. The dark night sky pressed down on the entire airport, making it feel suffocating, as if a huge net was gradually converging here.

Inside the port, more and more survivor vehicles were being destroyed by anomalies. Many survivors participating in the resistance died. The howls of zombies and the cries of women were constantly heard. Many survivors had lost their vehicles and support.

Seeing this, Zhang Dingzhong said decisively, “Listen to my orders! Unload the equipment of the artillery battalion and the air defense battalion. Have the logistics team transfer the wounded and stragglers in the port to the Iron Guard’s transport train! Notify all battalions and units to prepare for a full-scale defense. All remaining aircraft of Airship Teams 1 and 3 are to take off and guard against high-altitude creatures destroying the ascension elevator!”

“Yes, sir!” the NCOs of the Iron Guard 52nd responded in unison.

…

On the other side, in the maintenance area of the ascension elevator, under Lin Xian’s repair, one maintenance robot after another began to ascend. Under Wei Kexue’s operation, they joined the maintenance sequence and flew towards the ascension elevator channel above.

As fault messages were continuously cleared from the system, Wei Kexue’s expression relaxed considerably.

“According to the current sequence statistics, if the repairs are completed, what is the fastest time to complete all ascension transfers?” In the quiet space of the maintenance area, without the sound of cannons and guns, Lin Xian asked Wei Kexue while repairing the robots.

“The fastest?” Wei Kexue took a deep breath. “It will take at least 5 hours. This is already the limit of what we can dispatch.”

After speaking, he seemed to have guessed Lin Xian’s thoughts and lowered his head. “You are a train group. You want to use the Horizon Gateway to rush up directly, right?”

Lin Xian didn’t speak, but KIKI next to him said, “Is that not possible?”

“The risk is very high,” Wei Kexue said. “Not just your train. A total of 9 train groups have entered the ascension sequence in the past few days. Without a traction platform, the current measures can hardly guarantee the safety within the high-altitude corridor.”

The traction platform Wei Kexue mentioned referred to a device similar to a flatbed trailer, but with more complex safety features. This device connected directly to the track, acting like a shuttle on the rails. It was centrally dispatched by the system and implemented electromagnetic catapulting. Therefore, cars and trains were prepared on this traction platform during the ascension process and later accelerated in the negative-pressure high-altitude corridor. They didn’t need to move on their own. This allowed for extremely high transport efficiency and automated dispatch.

It was like a fleet of ferries flying at high altitude. Cars and trains didn’t need to worry about driving, and at the same time, electromagnetic acceleration technology could be directly applied to the most basic means of transport, achieving long-distance vehicle delivery.

However, if a train didn’t use a traction platform and rushed up directly using the Horizon Gateway, then the train would be driving directly on the tracks of the high-altitude corridor. Without the traction platform, it couldn’t achieve electromagnetic acceleration and could only drive on its own at high altitude.

In the early days of operation, this was achievable through track information dispatch, and the speed could be increased to about 500 km/h, exceeding the speed of most high-speed rails.

But the problem was that in the current situation, if these doomsday trains were allowed to rush up, and there were other vehicles with electromagnetic acceleration behind them, if an accident occurred in the high-altitude corridor, it would cause a terrifying chain reaction, and the extent of the disaster would be unimaginable.

“Actually, we also thought about increasing the number of transports at one time to improve transfer efficiency, but it’s still the same problem…”

“Lack of electricity?” Lin Xian replied.

Wei Kexue nodded. “Besides the ascension elevator and the electromagnetic acceleration system, we also have to ensure the air defense system of the high-altitude corridor, so the transport capacity of the ascension channel is affected.”

“In the dark of night, there may be fewer anomalies in the sky than on the ground, but they are often more terrifying. Since the apocalypse, most aircraft, including even orbital satellites, have been destroyed. The sky is not safe. Our sky city, Qingluan, crashed into the deep sea of the Western Pacific the day before yesterday. There were 150,000 people on it. The Phoenix Society is still trying to rescue them. It is said that something terrible appeared in the deep sea…”

“What?” KIKI frowned upon hearing this. “What you’re saying is so strange. You were talking about anomalies in the sky, but now it’s about things in the deep sea.”

“Is there a difference?” Wei Kexue lifted his glasses and pointed to the sky. “Some things that should exist in the sea have also appeared in the sky. In the ten-thousand-meter-deep abyss of the sea, there must be terrifying existences that we humans currently cannot deal with.”