Nevada's Rabid Wolves Heavy Armor Exercise Ground
Strong winds carried yellow sand, beating against the cold armor plates.
This was America's most desolate desert, the Mojave, and also where America's sharpest fangs were honed.
Rumble!
The earth trembled.
It wasn't an earthquake, but an entire heavy armored combined arms brigade conducting a night raid.
Hundreds of Abrams Main Battle Tanks, like a river of steel beasts, gleamed with a chilling light under the moonlight.
Suddenly, a piercing red flare ascended into the sky.
Through the communication channel, Brigade Commander Rudy Ford almost roaring voice came through.
"All brigade, listen up! Exercise terminated, repeat, exercise terminated!"
All the tanks braked abruptly, their tracks kicking up a sky full of dust.
The tank commanders emerged from their turrets, looking bewildered.
The exercise had just begun, so why did it stop?
But this was only the beginning.
The next second, Ford's voice became unprecedentedly serious, even with a hint of tremor.
"Receiving Fire Order No. 1, the entire brigade is to immediately enter Level 1 combat readiness."
"Target: Enemy HQ."
"Mission nature: Annihilation battle."
As this order was given, the previously somewhat noisy radio channel instantly fell silent.
Immediately after, logistics support vehicles rushed forward.
This time, what they unloaded were no longer blank rounds for exercises, nor training rounds with gunpowder but no warheads.
Instead, they were heavy boxes of fin-stabilized discarding sabot armor-piercing rounds, high-explosive fragmentation rounds, and even special incendiary rounds that hadn't been used for decades, all marked with striking black and yellow stripes.
A young loader held a cold artillery shell.
He looked at the company commander, his voice dry.
"Company Commander, we're loading live ammunition. Who are we fighting? Have the Russians attacked?"
The company commander, with a scar on his face, slammed the hatch shut, spat out the sand in his mouth, his eyes fierce like a hungry wolf.
"Who cares who we're fighting, if the higher-ups tell us to load live ammo, it means we're going all out."
"Listen up, all of you. Write your last wills, tuck them under your tank seats. This mission's secrecy level is SSS. If we don't come back, these will be our last words to our parents or children."
Zzzzz.
Thousands of men, using the faint light of the tank's internal instruments, were carving the most hasty yet fervent words with pens onto their helmet liners and the tank's inner walls.
"If I go and do not return, then I do not return. It is what it is."
Arlington Virginia, DARPA Research Institute
03:00 AM.
The white-haired Doctor Davidson had barely slept for two hours when he was awakened by an urgent knocking at the door.
Outside the door were two grim-faced CIA personnel.
"Doctor Davidson, apologies for disturbing you late at night. According to President Kennedy's Order No. 1, please come with us immediately."
Doctor Davidson, putting on his jacket, looked at the identification presented by the other party. He wasn't flustered, merely pushed up his glasses.
"Where to? My particle collider experiment is supposed to yield results tomorrow..."
"That experiment is suspended."
The CIA personnel's tone was firm.
"From now on, all your research projects are sealed. The place you are going to has a topic ten thousand times more important than that."
At the same time, in various corners of Washington.
Silicon Valley's materials science genius, Harvard's biology doctor, and even several national treasure-level weapon design experts who had lived in seclusion for years, were all secretly awakened that night.
They were not told their destination, nor their return date.
They were only told one sentence.
"The country needs you to decipher a brand new world."
In the armored vehicle heading to the airport, dozens of America's top brains gathered.
The atmosphere, which had initially been filled with complaints and confusion, instantly turned into a deathly silence after a document with no text, only a few blurry photos, was circulated.
Immediately after, there was heavy breathing, and those pairs of eyes that suddenly lit up in the darkness, filled with curiosity and madness.
NYC Vehicle Research Institute
03:45 AM.
The conference room door was roughly pushed open.
A group of old men in white lab coats with messy hair were arguing heatedly, with scattered blueprints all over the table.
Seated at the head was Secretary Daniels, the chief designer of America's Land Warfare, already seventy years old.
He was roaring into the phone, saliva flying:
"Nonsense, absolutely preposterous!"
"Who gave the order? To make me modify the 99A's cockpit? And to remove all the steering wheels and joysticks?"
"Change the fire control system's trigger to a pressure-sensitive plate? And expand the internal space of the turret by three times, to fit what?"
"You said to fit a two-meter-tall block person?"
Secretary Daniels angrily slammed the blueprint onto the table.
"I build tanks, not Transformers. What kind of creature has block hands? How can it operate complex fire control panels without fingers? This is an insult to mechanical engineering!"
However, the person on the other end of the phone only said one sentence.
Secretary Daniels, who had been furious, suddenly quieted down.
It was President Kennedy who called personally, and he only said one sentence.
"Daniels, do me a favor fol old times sake, this is for America to secure a foundation for the forseeable future and beyond."
"This tank is meant to drive into mythology and carve out America's future."
Secretary Daniels fell silent.
After a full minute, he abruptly hung up the phone, turned around, and an unprecedented glint burst forth from his previously cloudy old eyes.
"Stop arguing, all of you."
Secretary Daniels slapped the table, making the mugs jump.
"All project teams, listen up! The original lightweighting plan is completely void."
"Bring me new blueprints. Since the driver has no fingers, install a neural connection slot in the driver's seat."
"Since they have block hands, change the joysticks to embedded sockets, so their arms can directly plug into the tank to control it."
"And, since we don't need to consider the driver's physical endurance..."
Secretary Daniels' face showed a hint of mad laughter.
"Replace the engine with nuclear powered one, and thicken the armor by five times."
Secretary Daniels pointed to the removed radiation-shielding lead layer on the blueprint.
"On Earth, we didn't dare build nuclear-powered tanks because, to protect the fragile human body, we needed to carry 60 tons of radiation-shielding lead plates, which made the tank immobile."
"But now."
Secretary Daniels' eyes gleamed with fervor.
"Our drivers are not human; they don't need radiation shielding. We can replace all this 60-ton weight allowance with depleted uranium armor and electromagnetic reactive armor."
"Moreover, as long as the heat dissipation problem is solved, this miniature nuclear reactor can provide hundreds of thousands of horsepower. This means that even if this tank weighs 200 tons, it can still achieve the speed of a Ferrari car on a German highway."
"This isn't a tank, it's a land cruiser"
"We're building a Blaneblade, on god." said a younger employee.
Inside the armored car, Steve didn't know how many people were moving for him at this very moment.
The car smoothly passed through the heavily guarded gate.
General Randy looked at the rows of heavily armed guards outside the window, whose sentry posts had clearly tripled, then turned to Steve and spoke softly.