The electromagnetic whine of Chen Feng's launched grenade had betrayed his position. The grenade arcing toward him in response, however, was off-target; its trajectory posed no immediate threat. He realized his own grenade had also missed—by mere meters—but the dense barrier of woody debris was more than enough to absorb most of its blast. He rose to his feet and opened fire on the enemy position.

  The in his hands was an Lp-95k pulse laser carbine, a product of VWD-29—the 29th People's Armament Design Bureau—also known as the Type-95k. Its principle was simple: supercharge a laser crystal via a high-energy capacitor, emitting a devastating microsecond pulse. Beyond thermal damage, the massive energy release created a plasma explosion at the impact point for additional lethality. A single shot could maim a person wearing light body armor—its stopping power was terrifying, capable of creating devastating temporary cavities and tearing limbs apart through plasma explosion. Even if not instantly fatal, a hit would immediately neutralize the target, making it and its cousins a standard infantry weapon for the People's Liberation Army. Its only drawback was a lower rate of fire, typically under three hundred rounds per minute.

  And the audio-visual effects of its discharge was anything but stealthy. Brief, bright blue flashes strobed rapidly, each accompanied by tendrils of purple arc-light from ionized air and vapor. In the humid rainforest, these flashes painted the originally dark, damp, and bioluminescent mutated jungle in a ghastly shade of blue. At close range, the laser arrived instantly, vaporizing dust and rain, boiling away leaves and vines before striking its target. On impact, its immense energy instantly plasmatized the surface material, producing a fist-sized, intensely bright white fireball, the resulting glare piercing in the dim jungle light. Moist trees, under its assault, produced explosive jets of steam, sending wood splinters flying.

  After hosing down the origin point of the enemy grenade, Chen Feng broke into a sprint. As he ran, his enemies returned fire.

  The enemy used firearms—a sound all too familiar to Chen Feng. As he maneuvered through the trees, his armor's tactical projection alerted him. After several near-imperceptible impacts, the APt-3's AI reported via a secondary projection.

  [Kinetic fire impact detected. Bearing 108. Analysis: Primitive firearm. Ammunition: Homemade buckshot, salt/iron rust mixture. Threat Level: Negligible.]

  Chen Feng was momentarily baffled.

  Still processing this, the sprinting Chen Feng yanked another grenade from his magnetic webbing. This time, he didn't use the built-in electromagnetic grenade launcher of his APt-3 armor. He threw it directly by hand, the power armor's strength augmentation extending his throwing range. As his grenade left his hand, he saw another one arcing toward him. Again, its trajectory indicated the thrower had launched it on the move.

  He was a safe distance from the blast, and the enemies remained unseen. Chen Feng dashed a few more steps before dropping to one knee. This time, if the enemy showed themselves, he was confident he could hit them.

  His confidence was misplaced. The distinct of a firearm sounded just after his grenade detonated, followed by the agonized scream of a dying man.

  Their timing and combat methods were almost identical to his own, the differences negligible. He fired, they fired. He threw a grenade, they threw a grenade. When he held position to seek a shot, the enemy had the same idea—and were caught in his grenade's blast. The symmetry was profoundly strange. It was like fighting a warped reflection of his own tactical training. Suddenly, Chen Feng realized something.

  Just as he was about to report, the "Red Vulture's" 3cm autocannon roared to life behind him. Alina, who preferred controlled bursts in simulations, was now holding the trigger down. Glancing left, Chen Feng saw the "Red Vulture," driven by Alina, had closed the distance to him and was hosing down the shadows of the damp, rotten rainforest. He yelled over the comms:

  "Alina, situation? The enemy is skilled, but we have a generational tech advantage!"

  There was no response. Although Alina had stopped the sustained fire, she was still putting controlled bursts into the seemingly empty jungle. Left with no choice, Chen Feng resumed trading fire with his unseen opponents. Then, the AI-driven autonomous heavy machine gun weapon station on the "Red Vulture" also reacted, initiating a stream of precise fire in the same direction. They were targeting the general vicinity where Chen Feng's opponents were hidden. While Alina suppressed the area, Chen Feng used the opportunity to advance.

  Only after twenty cannon rounds and seventy or eighty machine gun bullets did Alina finally cease fire. Chen Feng, who had remained standing, immediately dropped into a crouch. He refused to go prone because the enemy was too close; if a heavy grenade or IED came his way while he was prone, he wouldn't be able to move quickly enough.

  As the gunfire faded, Flora's urgent voice crackled in his helmet’s internal comms.

  "Enemies dispersing and advancing! Bearing... a 140-degree frontal arc! Highly dispersed! Range 40 to 100 meters! Numbers increasing! They have anti-gravity infantry! Be careful! "

  "Damn it! We've hit a main force. They're Scavs!" Chen Feng barked. "Flora, do not engage! Fall back now!" Even as he spoke, he was already moving, bending low and pushing forward to cover Flora's retreat to the IFV.

  Alina's voice was calm. "I have eliminated approximately seventeen combatants."

  Those few dozen meters felt like a year. Fueled by adrenaline, he pushed the power armor to its limits. Instead of backtracking along the path Flora had cleared, he slammed through rotten logs and tore through vines, effectively a direct path straight towards her location.

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  His armored feet churned the mud loudly, the APt-3's adamantine hydraulic systems groaning in protest. He sprinted onto a slanted giant tree and practically down beside Flora. What he saw made him laugh in exasperation.

  Flora had somehow managed to get herself tangled in a mess of noodle-like thick vines. She was face-down in the muck. According to the squad's shared biometrics readings, she was perfectly fine.

  Chen Feng wondered, having never noticed before.

  Chen Feng crouched, picking up the dropped adamantine axe from beside her—incidentally, this was the two-handed tool axe that came standard with the "Red Vulture." He'd never seen Alina use it for anything besides chopping nutrient bricks in the kitchen, never expecting it to find use clearing jungle paths. He hefted the axe. "Flora, are you trying to emulate our by taking a nap in the dirt? Planning to put down roots?"

  He continued: "A fine idea, now that I come to think about it. I'd plant you in the soil like a root vegetable. Come next harvest, we'd have ten times the warrant officers. Far more efficient than the standard... Perhaps I should consider it."

  Flora completely ignored his jab. She lifted her head slightly and shouted, "Behind you!"

  With a grating shriek of protesting actuators, Chen Feng swung the axe backward in a wide arc. The black, Adamantine blade tore through the air with a vicious whistle. He cleanly gutted a man who had just attempted to ambush him, leaping down from an intact section of the canopy using a grappling hook and wielding some kind of chainsaw weapon. Blood pattered noisily onto the filthy muck. He hacked left and right, cleaving another Scavenger—who tried to block with his own weapon—in two. Then a third man's head flew from his shoulders, arterial blood spraying into the air.

  Then a sharp, tearing sound ripped through the air. Chen Feng felt a dull , and his armored body was thrown forward, slamming hard into a tree trunk. His grip instinctively tightened on his weapon during the impact, triggering the hand armor's auto-lock and preventing him from dropping the axe.

  The tactical display inside his visor flickered with static before rapidly restabilizing. The APt-3 power armor initiated a self-diagnostic and reported its analysis of the impact.

  [Proximity detonation registered. Analysis: IED, mounted on a kinetic projectile. Yield: 5.5 kg TNT equivalent. Armor integrity: 97.2%. Minor stress fracture detected on outer ablative layers. Systems operational. Deeper scan recommended.]

  Chen Feng kipped up to his feet and leaped aside with an agility that defied his armored bulk. A net—an improvised capture device made from local vines, likely designed for some kind of rad-beast, but evidently effective against an armored infantry—descended upon the spot he had just occupied.

  Now he knew how Flora had gotten tangled.

  Another four or five figures emerged abruptly from the jungle. It was then that Chen Feng finally realized the truth about these so-called "anti-gravity infantry." These individuals had crude mechanical grappling hooks and rope launchers—cyberwares—grafted into their limbs. They weren't corporate products. These devices were clearly used for rapid movement through the dense canopy, a rainforest version of "anti-gravity."

  Two of them dropped in front of him, carried long spears. They wore corroded circuit boards over metal plates as armor, studded with glowing beast fangs and shattered idols of forgotten gods. Their faces were painted with homemade warpaint, their foreheads adorned with large bird feathers. They chanted a guttural war cry.

  Chen Feng felt a mix of absurdity and rage. "What the fuck kind of techno-barbarian shit is this?" His armor's AI, however, provided a useful analysis.

  [Primitive weapons observed. Spearheads: rare alloys, tipped with Melta-weapon cores. Significant armor-piercing capability confirmed. Threat Level: High. Recommend engagement at range.] The important words are highlighted in red.

  "You're right," Chen Feng muttered. "Only an idiot fights melee when you have a gun."

  He casually lobbed a grenade. The two "techno-barbarians" roared and scattered. Seizing the opening, Chen Feng drew his backup sidearm from his thigh armor—a medium-caliber high-explosive pistol. Several deafening reports of high-energy propellant echoed as, aided by AI-assisted targeting, one of the barbarians was instantly obliterated by the 10mm high-explosive rounds. The other spear-wielding techno-barbarian dodged frantically.

  But the grenade Chen Feng had thrown earlier behaved oddly. It halted in mid-air, its micro-rocket igniting and spitting several plumes of exhaust. Then, to the stunned and confused techno-barbarian's horror, it shot straight towards his head.

  Perhaps they wielded treasured tribal artifacts, powerful equipment meant for hunting large mutants. Perhaps they were respected warchiefs. Against the advanced might from New Terra, there was only one outcome: death, or not fighting at all. They had chosen the former, so they died.

  The hair-raising sensation of danger prickled again. Chen Feng jerked his head aside just as a steel projectile, resembling a sharpened rebar as long as his arm, whistled past his helmet. He looked up and spotted a group of figures perched in the trees, aiming heavy, ballista-like weapons that launched rebar the size of small harpoons. Unwilling to test his armor against such weapons, he dodged left and right, moving like a clumsy ballet apprentice to evade several steel spikes. He caught the final one mid-air and hurled his way and threw it back.

  The power armor once again massively augmented his throwing strength. A man draped in a vine cloak, wielding the heavy ballista, with a necklace of human skulls around his neck, was impaled through the chest by the returned rebar. He was pinned to the tree he stood on, dead. The rest of his companions scattered and withdrew into the canopies instantaneously.

  Chen Feng let out a long breath. Then, a distinct sounded from his side.

  [IFF system detects non-whitelisted personnel attempting to discharge weapon. Weapon lock engaged.]

  He turned to find a Scavenger who had somehow crept up beside him, holding his dropped Type-95k carbine. The Scavenger had just pulled the trigger. This Scavenger looked quite young, probably under seventeen, short but stocky. He looked down at the rifle in confusion, fiddled with what appeared to be the magazine (it was actually the heat sink), slapped it a couple of times, and pulled the trigger again.

  The rifle remained inert.

  He pulled the trigger again.

  Still nothing.

  Chen Feng slowly walked toward him. The young “Cyber Trash Picker's” expression grew increasingly terrified as he came nearer, his finger spasming on the trigger. The APt-3's hydraulics whined softly as Chen Feng came to a stop.

  "Hey, you retarded little shit. Ever heard of something called a 'gene-lock'?"

  It was a probe. Chen Feng said it in English—not the pre-cryostasis version he learned, but the 25th-century "Neo-English." He wanted to see if these "Scavs" understood it.

  They clearly did. The young Scavenger before him produced a look mingling sheer terror with a fawning attempt at appeasement, his face a mess of dirt, sweat, and moss. He looked up, his smile uglier than a grimace.

  "Um... can… can I

  surrender?"

  ...It was unmistakably the same language Chen Feng used, though the pronunciation was more guttural, laden with throaty vibrations, violent tremors, and rasping friction—though the speaker's emotional state might have been affecting his speech.

  The young Scavenger's body described a parabolic arc with an apex of about seven meters. His limbs flailed helplessly as he screamed in terror before crashing down into a thick patch of undergrowth. Chen Feng retracted his armored fist, then picked up the adamantine axe and began cutting Flora free from the entangling vines.