NOVEL WEB Chapter 961: The Rescue Operation
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Amidst the explosions and shaking inside the space station as the active shields were bombarded, a wormhole opened in one of the walls. People streamed in, screaming and running as fast as possible, not wanting to waste a single second inside the station after the horrors they had experienced.
Once the people in the room were all on the other side, a team of fully kitted soldiers entered and moved toward the barricaded door, the only exit in the room. The glass section of the door was covered in blood and scratches on the other side.
One of the soldiers pointed a torch-like object, which immediately released a tractor beam, causing the barricade objects to rise and move. This fully revealed the door, which opened automatically to show human bodies in puddles of blood, some of them with their limbs bent in weird directions.
Thanks to their combat mode being active, the anger they would have felt was suppressed, so they didn't react as they immediately started the recovery process. They pressed a smartphone-sized piece onto each of the killed humans' chests, which immediately spread and started covering the bodies in cocoon-like coverings before they started floating and heading toward the wormhole. The soldiers continued moving toward their next objective, on the way recovering the dead or the rare, still-alive but heavily injured humans as the space station continued to shake.
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Hideo looked at the bodies that were now floating toward the nearest wormhole with no reaction on his face, which made him feel very weird.
Though he knew that not feeling angry was due to the inhibitors in his headgear, the dissonance between what he was feeling and what he knew he should feel upon seeing his fellow humans was quite big, but he didn't let that hinder him as he continued his operation.
He was among the few teams sent to participate in the rescue operations on the Nexus space station, with thirty teams being deployed to the single station alone as they initiated the rescue in different areas at once.
{Shield integrity is at thirty-five percent. It is expected to last fifteen minutes,} Hideo's combat AI informed him, as the same information was spread to all the soldiers in his group.
But even with that warning, neither he nor the rest of the team members changed anything, as they were already doing everything as fast as possible.
As they were walking, they weren't clearing the areas they were entering; they all had a visual representation of the whole space station showing where everyone and everything was, and at the moment, they were in one of the densely populated parts.
Turning left, Hideo raised his gun and shot immediately without aiming, as a man holding a bat was about to hit a human on the floor.
The moment the Hurai worker had a bullet through his chest, leaving a gaping hole, all of the other Conclave citizens turned to look in the direction the attack came from. Finding a team of armed humans pointing at them, they instinctively raised their hands, but none of that mattered as the team just fired, leaving gaping holes in their chests as well as they went to the ground.
He took another rectangular piece and threw it to both the Conclave citizens with gaping holes, while someone else in his group also threw them to different people. One was thrown to the injured human, who was immediately induced into a coma due to the severe damage he had received. The shot people had the rectangular object move to their heads, covering only the head before cutting the neck and taking only the head, which was now put in stasis and sent to where the wormhole was, to be received by the empire as they wait for thier punishment.
{Shield at twenty-seven percent,} another warning came, but they continued moving.
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Hurai#gate2951029
Tak, tak, tak. Heavy footsteps could be heard inside the space station as soldiers were currently running, each of them carrying two people before throwing them into the wormhole gates as if they were sacks of potatoes, before returning to pick up the remaining people.
{Thirty seconds remaining before the shields deactivate,} the AI announced through the earpieces of the soldiers who were jumping meters with each step.
This was one of the still-under-construction space stations, created just after a new wormhole was opened about three weeks ago, so at this moment, its energy resources were minimal, and the shield integrity was very compromised due to an incomplete array. All of those factors were now biting them as the ships outside were on the verge of breaching the shields.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhh," the last human shouted as she was sent flying through the corridor like a shot put before entering the wormhole.
The soldiers who did the throwing stopped running, as the distance was something they couldn't cover. They only had about three seconds to go, and trying to rush now would result in the wormhole not being closed in time and the explosion going through it toward the rescued individuals. So all they did was turn to the large, clear window that was showing the ships attacking the shield. Moments later, the shield was breached and the whole space station……………
BOOOOOOOOOOOM
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Hurai#gate10298
When the wormhole was opened in this space station, no soldier came through; only an announcement through the station's intercom was sent.
{To all imperial citizens, a wormhole has been opened in section C. Please head there in an orderly fashion to proceed with your return to the empire. Thank you for your patience,} it repeated as the floor lighting panels changed color, carving a clear path.
It seems the wormhole was opened in an adjacent area, as all of the humans in the space station came out of one room and walked to the next before entering the wormhole, with a single person walking behind all of them a short distance away with confidence.
He was the reason they were all collected in one place, and none of them were harmed, while all of those who attempted to attack them were now pasted on the walls.
The moment he walked through the wormhole, it was as if the place he was keeping together finally lost its connection with him. The instant the wormhole closed, the ships that were unsuccessfully trying to attack the space station finally managed to breach the shields and immediately obliterate it.
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Zelvora#gate54123
The space station was completely silent, and the empire didn't even attempt to open a wormhole gate here, as all the humans in this station were already killed due to not wearing their headgear, leaving them vulnerable to psychic attacks.
The only consolation was that they died a very fast death, as the psychic attack went through the space station's shields as if they didn't exist and just shattered their minds, killing them before they could register it.
Nearly all of the humans in the space stations in the Zelvora area were killed through this means, and the few who had their headgear on during this period were either rescued in time or killed by the Conclave citizens inside the stations.
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Trinarian#gate514786
The space station was non-existent. In the area where it was supposed to be, a direct result of a spatial attack connecting the station with the core of a star, instantly obliterating it before the wormhole collapsed. The gravity from the star was currently bending space as the ripple of it was still traveling in all directions at the speed of light, acting as the only evidence of the space station having existed in this location.
The largest number of casualties the empire experienced was within the top ten civilizations, as they either had the personal abilities or the technological weaponry to make sure an unprepared imperial space station was not capable of holding on long enough.
Thirty-seven million of the one hundred and twenty-seven million humans who were held hostage inside the space stations were killed, with the remaining ninety million being rescued. All of that happened in a five-minute span as the empire suffered the largest casualty count ever experienced in a five-minute period, while at the same time accomplishing the largest rescue operation in the history of mankind within the same period of time.