Instead of staying comfortably in the sheltered and heated bridge of the nine-o'clock morning salty sea breeze ruffled Astrid Fast's sideburns, she clung to the railing of the patrol boat, the water bursting into foam from the bow of the waves, staining her visor from time to time, and the silhouette of the Balaton Lake freighter was enhanced by her eyesight.

"Bang!" The patrol boat faced the waves, the bow was slightly raised, in this sea condition, in fact, people were not allowed to stand outside the cabin, especially on the deck, they were swept into the sea, and they were put in good shape before the war and maybe they could swim back to land, but now? Pray that you don't get swallowed by the cavity dragon when you snore and be dissolved by stomach acid. But Astrid didn't move, and the "Sea Knight" exoskeleton activated the magnetic attachment, causing her feet to take root, and she was even able to pull her hand back into her blonde hair.

"A short autumn." Major Conway walked with heavy steps, and Astrid glanced at the half-sized boy who had fought so fiercely the previous night, at least his mouth was powerful. She thought, it was a good match for the truth.

"In another month, around mid-November, the sea will freeze and stretch almost to the freighter we're going to." Major Conway wears the Army's version of the "Raider" exoskeleton, with the difference that the combat engineers are equipped with tough blast plates to ensure that they are immune to sudden heavy fire from unknown enemies in their cramped cabins.

Astrid was a little surprised, she had observed the freighter with a large fleet-sized telescope at the Mayport base, and at a distance of thirty kilometers, it was still a small black dot in the Navy's most powerful telescope, barely able to make out the basic outline, and it was determined to be a non-combat ship according to the identification manual. With such a severe freeze in the South Bay at about 30 degrees north latitude, Astrid could hardly imagine a winter on the Boston line at 40 degrees north latitude. Will it be colder than in the territory of the old empire? She is accustomed to using the old empire to refer to the seven-pointed star empire in her memory sixty years ago, and the new empire is a ridiculous force with New York as its capital and calling itself the New Jersey Empire.

The progress of military science and technology does not mean that soldiers do not need low-end materials such as cotton clothes and quilts, which have been used for thousands of years, and in Napoleon's war of aggression against Russia, the warm clothing of the French army is not fundamentally different from that of the soldiers of the Allied Eastern Front. After all, not everyone is qualified to assemble exoskeletons and mechs, and millions of people march on the most desolate and barren frozen soil on the mainland, a porcelain bowl with a hot cabbage soup and a storm pulse rifle for scouts who have just returned from knee-deep snow to pick and choose, and fools don't choose hot soup. Astrid spends the night in the wilderness in a mech with an airlock, and can sleep warmly in short sleeves. But she has also heard some gossip, such as the third-line troops armed with Cold War-era stocks of the last century, breaking into the forest to clear the guerrillas, only to be found to be a popsicle, and even the cerebrospinal fluid was frozen hard when the test piece was tested, like a bowl of smoothie, which broke with a bang.

The old man's air force, the young master's navy, the stepmother's army, and the dog/mother's marines. Astrid let out a cloudy breath that couldn't be condensed in the visor as the freighter drew closer, she turned on the public channel, headsets catching her voice.

"Reach the target, everyone, move!" She held the M47A4 caseless rifle hanging from her waist, a stripped-down version of the M47 strategic caseless rifle, with the slightly cumbersome grenade launcher behind the muzzle side and replaced it with an information augmentation system. The clock-like cumbersome bolt is further simplified, and in addition to being too expensive, it is an advantage.

In front of the 100,000-ton freighter, the 300-ton "Typhoon" patrol boat was a complete child, close to the side of the ship, and Astrid had to look up to see the paint-eroded superstructure under the sea breeze. The patrol boat maintains a relative speed with the freighter. "Team Alpha, follow me." Astrid adjusts the master control panel at her arm, activating the magnetic restraint and sensing the glove's unfolding tentacles. How many points did I get in the anti-terrorism subject? Ninth? It seems that West Point will never give full marks, after all, the perfect student only exists in the eyes of the tutor. Astrid took a few steps back and leaped toward the side of the ship, steadily climbing the wall dozens of times high.

"Bang ......" fell like hail on the sea, and the special operators and combat engineers followed, and the crew unleashed the Elf drones, and several M2HB machine guns provided cover. Close defense guns vigilantly monitor the deck fence, and the captain will open fire at the slightest movement. Explain that the stormy 30mm cannon is not divided between man and animal, and it is recommended that the enemy should not come out at this time.

"Drone connection." Astrid climbed over the fence, rifle in hand, follow-up personnel followed, quickly built a defensive line, and Cabrella, a technical sergeant in the special operations team, took over the reconnaissance drone, this kind of rugby-sized light drone will be the first to penetrate the freighter, and the mapping information will be transmitted to each soldier's hyperspectral goggles in real time.

Astrid stretched her arms forward, jogged in small steps, and headed for the bridge, which was their first goal. Major Conway's combat engineer team, together with the special operations team, opened a fire net and gradually advanced, while the Sparrowhawk attack drones controlled by the crew repeatedly circled to ensure that the first strike killed the enemy who dared to play a surprise attack from the container tower.

The special operators pressed against the hatch, and Astrid kicked open the hatch that had been chiseled by the Marines not long ago, and kicked the hatch directly away with an exoskeleton steel kick. "Safety!" Corporal Ryan shouted.

"All safe!" Second Lieutenant Sessions lowered his gun, the windshield was muddy, and the control seat was covered with a layer of dust. "It's still floating, God knows how long this thing has been floating?" The lieutenant muttered to himself.

Astrid found several skeletons in the control room, the clothes on the bones fading and rotting much faster than on land, as the hatch was sometimes hidden and sometimes blown open by the wind, and it was impossible to distinguish the remains of the crew or anyone else on board. "Torture ......" Astrid pinched the powder on his fingertips, and said Major Conway in the team's communications squadron, "Habitation cabin? ”

"Nothing, exactly the same as the Marine Corps' report before his death." Conway said. The Marines reported to the base in Maypot before they were killed that there was no one on deck, but there were at least dozens of corpses of varying degrees of decomposition, some suspected to be fishermen on the coast, but many more were completely decomposed.

"We should have stopped the freighter before it approached." Astrid opened the hatch, she would rather smell the sea breeze than the oppressive smell of corruption in the cabin, a disgusting smell that could not be purified.

"Our current largest tonnage warships are the two destroyers of the Beshop and the Baslon, and they are basically lying on their stomachs, unless there is a giant sea monster, they all have to lie in the harbor, yes, we have sealed a large number of ships that were intact before the war, but the fuel reserves have been maintained near the warning line, like this ship that drifts to the vicinity of the base circle with the currents and currents, I have seen at least double digits in ten years, the most ruthless one A 200,000-ton liquefied gas carrier floated in, which exploded when the workers boarded the ship for inspection, dozens of kilometers away, I saw a mushroom cloud at the base that looked like a nuclear warhead, and I thought it was another nuclear attack. Major Conway was clearly taking the action lightly.

"If you want me to say, there's some invisible man hiding at the bottom of the cabin, either crazy or insane......" Maybe it was a night of fun that made the non-mainstream kid start chattering again, and Astrid shook him off and walked to the captain's room.

The goggles automatically switch to night vision mode with the intensity of the light, and the cabin corridor is eerie, but Astrid doesn't think she'll encounter the reported invisible enemy. The eyepiece minimap identifies the locations of the Marines attacked, all of them in the deep cabin, and within ten seconds, Group A was killed, and three minutes later, the nearby Group B was largely killed, leaving only the last member of the team to be killed as they fled to the exit. Dog/mother-in-law. Astrid's blue eyes glow with a glimmer of light, which is the detection light of a hyperspectral scanner, and the limitations of the human eye make it easy to deceive, but the eyepiece can purposefully convert invisible light such as ultraviolet and infrared light into visible light, so enemies wearing invisibility camouflage are no different from large dolls.

The laws of physics, walking on this planet, must follow the basic laws. She thought.

The captain's room was naturally much more spacious than the cramped rooms of the ordinary crew, and Astrid caught a glimpse of the wine cabinet, and the glass slag on the solid wood floor, and the captain's room contained multiple skeletons, including crew uniforms, and rags sewn from countless rags by the Wastelanders. The safe was empty, which the Marines had broken through, and all the documents were taken away. Disturbing ...... Astrid rummaged through the drawers to find a pocket watch with a broken case, and several decayed books. All the meaningful information is in the hands of the Marines, and the worst thing is that they are unbelievably inferior in equipment, so that the headquarters knows about the deck, but does not know the underdeck, and the profile is still to take the number of freighters of similar models for reference...... She thought speechlessly, she waved her hand and said, "Go back." ”

A search of the superstructure was carried out, and nothing was found, except for the copying of the conclusions of the marines. The two groups counted more than 30 corpses, far more than the crew of this modern ocean-going freighter. But they could be the last to board the ship.

"Your group, start from here, take control of the power cabin, my people, go from here, confirm the locations of the Marines killed one by one, and in an hour, we'll see you in Area 5C." Astrid pulled out the map, the steel cabin was a little interfering with the Elven drone's signal, they still hadn't finished exploring the lower cabin of the freighter, but they were finally not blinded. Suddenly, an elven drone loses contact, and the hyperspectrometer catches a faint green. "You've all seen it, pay attention to corners, crevices, and anything suspicious." Astrid's eyes were awe-inspiring.

"Whatever each other finds, in an hour in Area 5C, meet." Astrid opened the hatch that led to the deep cabin and was the first to step in.