“All right, Blackie, we’ll rest here today.” Qin Hao patted Blackie’s back and said.
Kriikk! Blackie was intelligent, and at this moment, it can already understand some simple human language, and so it stood still obediently.
Qin Hao leaped down from Blackie’s back, and then tossed it two pieces of roast meat. After this bugger had eaten cooked food, it no longer had any interest in raw meat anymore.
After looking around, Qin Hao chose a big tree that would need two people to circle it. He planned to rest on it for the night. Firstly, he was still not completely at ease with Blackie, and secondly, it was to prevent some insects or pests in the forest from disturbing him.
Chop chop… With just a few cuts, Qin Hao had trimmed a branch into a place suitable for sleeping. He then took a rope out from his backpack and fixed himself onto the branch.
“Blackie, you find a place to rest. We’ll move out again tomorrow!” Qin Hao shouted toward the bottom of the tree.
Krik! Blackie answered him, and then directly took cover under the tree, no one knew whether it was sleeping or standing guard for Qin Hao.
No one would be able to sleep securely overnight in a jungle, especially alone, and Qin Hao was no exception. Even when the sky turned dark very early, and Qin Hao was exhausted, he could not sleep at all.
“Sigh, I don’t know what’s going on at Coales Valley…” Qin Hao sighed. He was just a footslogger, and his battlefield recorder had limited functions, and could not connect to the battlefield network, and naturally would not know the real-time information of the theater.
“Forget it, I should be able to reach Coales Valley before noon tomorrow. With Blackie, the speed of my journey was indeed much faster.” Qin Hao shook his head and tried to not let himself think about those annoying things.
No one knew how long had passed, and Qin Hao fell asleep in a daze. The rainforest was extremely quiet, there were no cries of insects or birds, and it was unbelievably peaceful.
Booom!!! Suddenly, a loud bang rang out from afar, and instantly woke Qin Hao from his sleep.
“What’s going on?!” Qin Hao looked in the direction of the noise. As the tree he was on was very high up, he could see what was going on in the distance.
Flames were burning at the tail of a transport ship, and it was tumbling toward Qin Hao. While Qin Hao only had a high school education and was only the lowest mechanized infantry, he could see that this transport ship could not fly far. Its tail was spewing black smoke, and its body was already tilting sideways extremely. It was clear that the engine on one side had stopped.
Buzzzz… Booom!!! The transport ship brought billowing smoke in its wake, and crashed in Qin Hao’s direction, and landed about ten kilometers away from Qin Hao’s location.
“Blackie! Wake up! Come with me to rescue people!” Qin Hao untied the rope and jumped off the tree branch.
Kriik! Blackie too was awakened by the explosion just now. So, as soon as Qin Hao, it picked up Qin Hao and hurried toward the location of the crash.
“Tap tap tap….” Blackie’s four legs moved fast, traversing the dense jungle as if it was walking on flat ground. After getting rid of the parasite, its speed was even faster.
“Faster! Faster!” Qin Hao urged. While he never considered himself a hero, as a social creature, it was almost an instinct for human beings to rescue their companions.
Furthermore, Qin Hao was struggling to survive on this alien battleground alone. Deep down, he would especially hope to meet his own kind. While Blackie’s appearance made him less lonely, but Blackie was not human, and Qin Hao could not accord it complete trust.
In a few minutes’ time, Blackie had brought Qin Hao to the place where the transport ship had crashed.
“Thank goodness!” Qin Hao nodded to himself. When the transport ship crashed, it was not going down very fast, and it was already close to the ground, so the main fuselage of the ship was still intact. If that was the case, the probability of the crew and passengers surviving was still quite high. If the transport ship had fallen into pieces, then the people inside it would have no hope of surviving.
“Blackie, wait for me here.” Qin Hao told Blackie. He dared not bring Blackie along with him to search. While Blackie would not attack Qin Hao, who knows if it would attack other humans? Plus, when humans saw a bug, they would definitely shoot by reflex. If Blackie were to retaliate, then Qin Hao could forget about rescuing anyone and just collect their dog tags instead.
After all, the entire planet Alpha was the battlefield between humans and the Insectoid. The people inside the shot down transport ship would definitely be hostile toward Blackie, so Qin Hao wisely left it outside.
“Hey! Is anyone there?” Qin Hao shouted loudly as he approached the wreckage.
“Is anyone alive?” Qin Hao came to the door of the transport ship. A large hole was ripped apart there, and he could directly see the situation inside.
Creakk… At that moment, Qin Hao keenly caught a faint noise.
Following the sound, Qin Hao saw a hand under an overturned seat. The hand was still twitching slightly, and clearly, the person was not dead!
After finding survivors, Qin Hao walked a few steps to her side. As he pulled the seat away, he saw the girl below.
“Heh… our fates sure are intertwined…” Qin Hao could not help but sigh. Under the seat was a medic, with blond hair and a cute face. It was the same Lucia he had met earlier!
“Hey! Lucia, wake up! Wake up!” Qin Hao briefly checked Lucia’s condition, and she was not badly injured. While the chair had collapsed on her during the crash, luckily she had a powered exoskeleton on to support her, so she only fainted.
“Ah? Where am I?” Lucia gradually woke up, as she looked around blankly.
“Check yourself and see if you have any fractures on you,” Qin Hao said to Lucia. She had medical equipment on her and would be more accurate in her assessment than Qin Hao.
“Eh? Qin Hao, why are you here?” Lucia obviously did not know of the loss of High Ground Z3.
“All right, let’s keep this short. How many people were there on the transport plane?” Qin Hao asked. While he had rescued Lucia, but there may be other survivors.
“A total of eight. Aside from the two crew members, there were me and five other passengers.” Lucia said.
“All right.” Qin Hao nodded and started searching.
“Wait, use this!” Lucia handed a small pocket watch-like item to Qin Hao. This was a life-detection radar that a medic used to search for wounded soldiers on the battlefield. The radar had a function, it had the ability to locate nearby battlefield recorders. After all, medics not only have to rescue the wounded, they would have to take the dead back for burial if conditions permit.