Shane Freak
patreon
Chapter 753: The Gathering Storm of War
🕑 Added 2023-10-20 14:11:10 +0000 UTCTransformers Begin : Table of Content/Chapter List
XXX-----XXX-----XXX-----XXX
Forerunner had returned to Base Two to prepare for a new mechanical body replacement.
Sun Cheng temporarily stayed on Terindad Island, tending to some trivial matters that had long been neglected.
The looming storm of war over Earth had never been so intense.
He felt this way not only because of the recent battle on the far side of the Moon, which had revealed the hidden military strength of the Decepticons to Sun Cheng.
The arrival of the Aerialbots had also deepened Autobot's strength, bringing back memories of the brutal Cybertron Civil War that had haunted Frenzy in his mind.
Moreover, conflicts among human nations on Earth were escalating.
The United States, as the only superpower on Earth since the end of the Cold War, had seldom hidden in the shadows.
Armed with the mighty military power of the CIA, the United States had frequently intervened in the internal affairs of other countries in regions such as North and South Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, Africa, and South America, supporting rebel groups and even terrorist organizations.
However, even the United States had now dug itself into a pit.
In late September of this year, the West Asian country of Georgia had launched a military operation to swiftly capture the capital of South Ossetia, an autonomous region seeking independence within its borders.
Moscow had subsequently declared an intervention in South Ossetia, ostensibly to protect its nationals, leading to a lightning-fast battle with Georgian forces.
In just two short days, the Russian Army had defeated all Georgian forces within South Ossetia and unilaterally declared a halt to military operations.
Subsequently, the reassembled Georgian forces began to regroup, leading to weeks of ongoing military friction between Russia and Georgia.
Russian media had even reported that a significant number of military experts, mercenaries, and even active-duty soldiers with NATO backgrounds had participated in the conflict under the guise of Georgian forces.
NATO seemed oblivious to the fact that a Decepticon with a soul from another world had already entered into a cooperation agreement with Moscow a year ago, continuously transferring a vast amount of advanced equipment and technology over the past year.
During the South Ossetia conflict, the Russian Army had displayed terrifying combat prowess. The conflict, lasting for over half a month, had cost Georgia over twelve thousand soldiers in casualties and captures, along with the destruction of numerous artillery pieces, tanks, and aircraft, numbering in the hundreds.
What shocked the entire world the most was a major revelation by Russian media: the total number of NATO soldiers and mercenaries killed or captured by Russian forces under the guise of Georgian forces exceeded six hundred.
Despite NATO nations vehemently denying these claims, over the past two to three months, diplomats from several Western European countries had been discovered making sudden visits to Moscow, and NATO had conducted three highly conspicuous military exercises in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Nordic regions.
Unfortunately, these military exercises had also exposed the vulnerability of the United States.
During the exercises, the U.S. military had deployed an amphibious assault ship, several Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, with reports of three nuclear submarines participating as well.
However, the pride of the United States, its aircraft carriers, which had once been proudly called "The United States' Carrier" by American politicians, were conspicuously absent from the exercises.
The United States, which had boasted of simultaneously equipping ten carrier strike groups, was now in its weakest period at sea, having lost three carriers from its Second and Fifth Fleets.
They indeed still have seven aircraft carriers, but among the remaining seven aircraft carriers, four are undergoing modernization, two have just completed their deployments earlier this year and are now in port for maintenance and phased upgrades.
The U.S. Navy currently possesses only one aircraft carrier, which has recently been refurbished and repainted and is now stationed domestically.
After the revelation of the weakness of their military power by the Polar Bear, the self-proclaimed world police, the United States, has left many nations and forces that have been harmed by the Americans for decades feeling uneasy.
In recent times, the Middle East region has attracted the most global attention, except for North Caucasus and Brazil.
The extremist forces in Afghanistan are rapidly expanding once again, and a splinter group from these extremist forces has started to gain notoriety.
Somali pirates have been launching frequent attacks in the Red Sea and the western Indian Ocean. Even some countries along the coast of North Africa and the Caribbean Sea have recently erupted in anti-American protests.
Looking around the world, there is a gathering storm, slowly taking shape.
The scent of war, it seems, is becoming increasingly prominent in the air.
Sun Cheng is well aware of his awkward position. He betrayed the Skytiger Legion and is not an Autobot. He is concerned that if a full-scale war were to break out, he might become a target of many. Therefore, he is intensifying his preparations.
Although he is stationed on Terindad Island, he has left behind many contingencies on Base Two. Even though the distance may affect his response time, it does not hinder his control over that side. He is just relatively slower in response.
In the past few months, Base Two has been preparing at a rapid pace. Under the leadership of Atlas, three Decepticon engineers in Sun Cheng's team have successfully been promoted to senior engineers.
Upon reaching the rank of senior engineer, they possess combat capabilities slightly inferior to senior warriors.
Furthermore, due to targeted optimization of their Cores, Sparks, and mechanical bodies, the advancement of Decepticon senior engineers in research and manufacturing is incomparable to the past.
The initial batch of Decepticon engineers who followed Sun Cheng will all be promoted to senior engineers, but there will be a sequence in time. After all, Base Two has assigned too many tasks, and relying solely on South America, a continent they have not fully mastered yet, is somewhat challenging.
Since he designed the new promotion system, Base Two has seen twenty-three Engineers directly promoted to engineers, over a hundred and ten promoted to technical officers, and twelve promoted to Doctors.
The number of regular soldiers promoted by Engineers has exceeded over two hundred and seventy. There are also more than fifty Spies.
Thanks to the valuable technology acquired from Scalpel, the bottleneck in the development of Engineers, which had been hindering Base Two's progress, is no longer a matter of chance.
The success rate of Sun Cheng's Decepticon engineers in cultivating the new generation of Engineers has increased from less than one-third to over eighty percent.
This nearly doubled improvement allows the cultivation center at Base Two to produce dozens of Engineers almost every week.
In order to form their army as quickly as possible, Sun Cheng abandoned the method commonly used by Starscream and the Skytiger Legion and directly cultivated soldiers.
Base Two began mass-producing lower-level Engineers and then, after a period of training, elevated their capabilities.
Applying this method, although it may involve some resource wastage, it reduces the time required for cultivation by more than half compared to directly cultivating one soldier.
[Read at www.patreon.com/shanefreak, without ads and support the work.]
XXX-----XXX-----XXX-----XXX
