Chapter 3, Correct Use of Welding Torches

The captain who led the Marines this time was named Clark, who wore sunglasses and a military hat all day, and kept his mouth in his mouth forever, as if everyone owed him money.

Seeing that the miners were ready for work, he nodded slightly, and then turned to look at the engineers who were installing improvised fortifications and the five squads of marines digging trenches and foxholes.

"I don't think it feels good, it's like digging a hole and jumping on your own." While a Marine dug his own foxhole, he complained.

"The pit should be dug deeper, but the slope behind it should be gentle, otherwise those insects will run over, and you will not be able to jump out of the pit you dug, then you will really dig a grave for yourself." Clark said fiercely, but suddenly there was some bad feeling in his heart.

After a while, these dozens of people had already prepared a temporary line of defense. With the crystal mine and the hillside in the back, there are more than two dozen foxholes, in which all kinds of weapons are erected. There are also improvised bunkers built by the engineers, although they cannot resist the explosion of the blaster, but they can still play a good role in protecting against general impacts.

At present, one engineer is reinforcing the improvised fortress, another is adjusting the fire system, and another is establishing contact with the base.

Li De was operating the miner robot next to the crystal block, using a welding torch to cut a crystal that glowed with a light blue color. The flame sprayed by the welding torch is also blue, and the sparks flying in the air give it a wonderful feeling.

"I heard that this was a battlefield before? What was the situation at that time? A voice came out of the communicator. In a boring job, everyone chats with team communication.

"It was a terrible battle! Our defenses are almost crumbling. A voice replied.

"I just didn't happen to be on duty that day, I slept in the barracks on the front line, and when I was pulled up, there was already a firefight, and those TM bugs rushed this way for their lives. TM's never seen anything like that. Another voice said.

"That battle was much worse than you think." A middle-aged man's voice rang out through the loudspeaker. "At that time, the Zerg sent at least a few thousand giant mantis to frantically charge our defenses. Our defense line was not defended in time for a while, and they broke through a hole. ”

"When we fought that day, was this mine full of bugs?" Li De asked.

"Yes, it was only later when we were cleaning up the bug corpses that we found out that there was a mine here." Every time the army defends against an attack by the Zerg, it will immediately clear the battlefield. After all, with corpses strewn all over the ground, sentries and scouts were unable to spot new enemies in time.

Li De didn't continue to listen, and after skillfully cutting off the crystal with a welding torch, he turned in another direction.

Li De's muscles were like a conditioned reflex of a mechanical operator miner, and the welding torch flew across the surface of the crystal pillar, cutting in a special rhythm and manner, and the efficiency seemed to be about twice as high as that of the rest of the miners.

Kliman came to the mine to see how it was going, and he was surprised to see it. Together with the sentries beside him, he looked at the blue sparks like dragons and phoenixes, and shouted loudly, "This TM is the correct use of the welding gun."

After four hours of hard work, when it was time for the first rest, Li De squatted on the edge of the machine, casually ate some rations distributed by the army, and drank a sip of the ale wine he had secretly brought with him.

Looking at the blue crystal mine with both eyes, Li De suddenly felt cold, dropped the lunch box, quickly jumped on the machine, opened the communication channel, and shouted into the microphone: "This is a conspiracy of bugs, there is an ambush here!" ”

Just as he shouted the first syllable, there was a roaring sound in the distance, which was the sound of the convoy that had collected all the fruits of the labor of the shift and was heading for the base.

Clark pressed the call button in question, ready to question the voice that came out of nowhere.

At this time, the earth suddenly trembled. Countless hard giant thorns emerged from the ground, more than one meter long giant thorns annoyed the vehicles of the transport convoy, pierced the wheels of the vehicles, more than a dozen cars were all paralyzed in a few seconds, the drivers on the car were directly pierced through the cockpit of the giant thorns through the body, and some fell into the jungle of giant thorns as soon as they got off the car.

In less than half a minute, a few hundred meters or so away from the mine, as soon as the transport convoy started, there was a scene of hell on earth, and everyone was shocked.

"Fuck! All ready to fight! Clarke's yelling came from the communication system, "Karin, cover the Kliman and miners advanced fort, Hobbs, fire cover." Kirb, go and take care of the engineers, Matata, foxholes. The order was swiftly given.

At the same time that Clark gave the order like a cannon, the ground around the makeshift fortress began to crack, and countless huge insects crawled out of it. These bugs are the lowest level of attack creatures of the Zerg, and humans call them "giant mantises".

Their bodies do not resemble those of praying mantises, and their flattened bellies are supported by four large, crab-like feet. The whole body was covered in a hard carapace, and the four giant feet were like giant stabs. Their mouthparts are huge, resembling two large pincers, and are said to be able to bite off armored soldiers in one bite.

Kliman and those miners had never seen this kind of formation in their lives, and they stood in the mine one by one. If it weren't for the shouting of Karin's team, who was in charge of guarding the mine, pulling Kliman's arm and running forward, Kliman would definitely not even be able to step away.

The first few giant mantis to jump out of the ground were suppressed by the heavy machine gunners and two machine gunners in Karin's team, but they still hit a mining machine and dragged the miners inside out. In an instant, human flesh and stumps were scattered on the ground, mixed with the corpses of giant mantis mantises that had been machine-gunned into a pair of rotten flesh.

There were more and more bugs, and there were only six people in Karin's team and the captain Karin. One of the stout black men was their main firepower, holding a high-rate 945 rotating machine gun as he swept away the bugs that were swarming at them, and retreated, and behind him covered four miners, the wolf running back with a look of horror on his face.

The other two golden-haired soldiers, armed with semi-automatic rifles, formed a point of fire together, firing at the swarm, covering the steady retreat of the five miners behind them.

The Marine who was originally beside Li De also took out his semi-automatic rifle and opened fire at the swarm, and at the same time began to move towards the two golden-haired team members.

Li De did not leave the cockpit, driving the SCV robot of mining, holding a welding torch to join the evacuation team.

Karin herself is a sniper, and another member of Karin's squad is her sniper partner, so he is only armed with light submachine guns, taking care of the miners who come together, and serving as the last point of fire for the team.

Karin had already raised her one-meter-and-a-half long sniper rifle, and a bullet struck the head of a giant mantis that was about to pounce on the stout black man, and suddenly the white brain and green body fluids of the bug exploded.

In this way, a total of six members of Karin's team, the ten surviving miners plus Kliman, had already organized themselves and ran towards the temporary fortress a few dozen meters away.

But the good times didn't last long, and just as they were running back, the bugs on both sides also rushed up.

Li De ran at the front of the line because he was in the SCV mining machine, and he was shocked when he saw the insects rushing up on both sides. Looking to the left and right, there seemed to be no one who could help stop these insects, so he made a gesture to the soldier with a light submachine gun and rushed to the left.

Karin's assistant, Heinrich, was a beautiful young man, probably in his twenties, and when he saw Lide driving the miner towards the swarm, he swallowed a mouthful of saliva and fired in the other direction, hoping to delay the fire support of his other companions. Kriman also calmed down at this time, and took out the pistol he carried with him, although it was a 9mm caliber pistol, but he also desperately pulled the trigger.

Karin also saw this, and hesitated to shoot at the left side of Li De's run, killing the giant mantis closest to Li De, thinking that this miner was going to use his own flesh and blood to delay those bugs, so he had to help himself. But the next moment, her beautiful eyes widened.

The welding torch used by the SCV to cut the crystal can reach a flame of up to half a meter at its highest output. Now, in the hands of the machine piloted by Li De, this blue flame was like a sword, cutting through the body of a giant mantis. The extremely high temperature destroyed the carapace of the giant mantis, roasting its internal organs, and when the torch left, the high-temperature charred wound did not shed a drop of liquid, because the water around the wound had evaporated instantly. A giant mantis collapsed to the ground after this seemingly light stroke, its four long legs twitched, and died.

In the next time, Li De himself didn't know how to do it, and the SCV miner he drove kept waving welding torches at the insects around him. The mining SCV mech was originally designed to allow miners to pick up bulky welding guns and huge fuel tanks, so the focus was on its load-carrying performance rather than flexibility, but this bulky-looking creature was slow but always able to dodge the long legs and serrated mouthparts under the siege of a dozen giant mantises.

After killing a few of their companions, those giant mantis also knew the power of the welding torch in Li De's hand, and they didn't dare to get too close. The long feet that occasionally stretched out to attack also cut off a few for Li De. The cut bugs screamed violently, and for a moment a stalemate was formed.

On the other side, everyone looked at this strange scene in amazement. A huge mecha more than three meters tall wielded a welding torch, surrounded by a dozen giant mantis more than two meters high, like a god descending to intimidate those insects. The giant mantis let out a low roar, dodging the hot flames left and right. Kliman remembered what he had said earlier, "This TM is the correct way to use the welding gun." ”