Chapter 136: Z-Skywatcher (Requesting Monthly Votes)

In the post-apocalyptic world, what is lacking is everywhere in modern times. Take the electromechanical group, for example: how many manufacturing plants of all sizes are there across the country? Now is an era of free economic competition; if you don't strive, you starve. Which factory does not pull out all the stops? Their sole purpose is to secure as many orders for their factory as possible. If an order is successfully completed, the factory's efficiency rises, and their own salaries and bonuses are thus secured.

Although Meng Nan still had several friends in the water conservancy sector who were all capable of designing hydropower stations and assembling their generator sets, they could not offer Xie Han much substantial help. In the end, they could only provide various data regarding the hydropower station so that Xie Han could let them help analyze what kind of generator sets should be used. Without on-site surveys, it was difficult to give exact figures, but within a few days, their responses were relayed back to Xie Han through Meng Nan.

The days seemed somewhat dull and monotonous. Xie Han tossed and finally managed to get these fifteen generator sets installed at the hydropower station after spending a whole week. In a moment of resolute determination, Xie Han even brought the high-voltage power lines required by the power grid over from the modern world. These generator sets had undergone significant modifications; specifically, any date-related numbers on them had to be completely removed, and their appearances were treated with corrosive agents to make their outer surfaces look heavily rusted.

Anyone who entered the hydropower station to work was strictly forbidden from leaving it, and the strict confidentiality protocols were enough to keep them tight-lipped forever. Meanwhile, the soldiers guarding the entire hydropower station were personally selected by Xie Han and answered solely to him. Under such measures, there was presumably no need to worry about the secrets inside leaking out in the short term.

Putting the hydropower station into operation would still take some time. Just as Xie Han finally had a brief moment of leisure and before he could even get a proper rest, Xu Qiang came looking for him with a mysterious air. Inside Xie Han's office, Xu Qiang said with an enigmatic smile, "Commander Xie, I heard before that you are a master of all trades?"

At this moment, Xu Qiang wore an expression as wretched as could be, completely unlike the cold and detached demeanor he usually displayed as a special forces soldier. Xie Han felt a bit depressed; what troublesome matter had Xu Qiang dug up this time? Besides, that phrase "master of all trades" sounded rather grating to the ears. He cast a suspicious, sideways glance at Xu Qiang and said, "Qiangzi, when I speak of being a master of all trades, I am referring to the operation of military equipment. Don't go imagining me wandering onto women's bellies."

Xu Qiang opened his mouth, looking somewhat aggrieved as he protested, "Commander Xie, I came running over here full of joy. How could you imagine me like that? Is my character really that bad?" Xie Han scrutinized Xu Qiang, let out a dry, chilling chuckle, and said, "Whether your character is bad or not, I don't know, but the moment you have any free time nowadays, you are always hovering around An Xiaowei. Tsk tsk. Winter is just about to arrive, yet someone's spring has already arrived."

"Alright, I surrender..." Xu Qiang raised both hands, putting away the bantering attitude he only ever revealed in front of Xie Han, and replaced it with a cold, taut expression. "Commander Xie, the mastery of all trades I mentioned refers strictly to military equipment. I just want to confirm once more: can you operate any kind of equipment?"

Xie Han thought back; when he was modified by the prime entity, he indeed seemed to have acquired a great deal of capabilities. For instance, he knew how to drive, how to use all kinds of firearms accurately, and how to fluently operate many high-tech weapons. He did not know how the prime entity managed to achieve this, but possessing so many skills was an undeniable reality. "I suppose so. Things that run on the ground, fly in the sky, swim in the water, and burrow underground—I know a little bit about all of them."

Xu Qiang gave Xie Han a somewhat strange look and remarked, "Why do I feel like you've become a sign-board advertisement for some restaurant?" However, he brushed this banter aside with a brief wave of his hand and turned serious. "Since you are so confident, Commander Xie, I will take you to see a few treasures in our testing base right now."

Xie Han's interest was piqued. "What treasures?" Xu Qiang had always kept the weapons and equipment housed within the testing base tightly under wraps, refusing to reveal them all at once simply because he wanted to dish out surprises one by one. Xie Han had no idea what kind of treasure could make Xu Qiang act so secretive, but anything capable of making him lose his composure to this extent certainly could not be ordinary.

They arrived before a massive, enclosed building complex situated at the very center of the testing base. The number of soldiers stationed here reached fifty, with patrols conducted every two minutes—enough to ensure that no one could approach this sprawling building complex across the open terrain without being discovered. This huge complex bore no markings whatsoever, featuring only a few medium-sized entrances and exits. Guided by Xu Qiang, Xie Han wound his way through the complex for a long time before finally arriving at a small corridor.

Xu Qiang smiled with a strange twist to his lips, pointing at a metal door along this small passage, and tossed a card to Xie Han. "If you want to know what the treasure is, open the door yourself and you'll understand completely. I had to exert a tremendous amount of effort and get Wu Donglin and the others to help spend a long time just to crack the verification system here. The verification card in your hand did not come easily!"

As soon as Xie Han caught the card tossed by Xu Qiang, he couldn't be bothered to entertain the smugly showing-off Xu Qiang. He walked straight up to the metal door in the corridor and swiped the card across a sensor located right beside it. A synthesized electronic voice rang out: "Welcome, Commander Xie Han!" With a crisp "shua" sound, the metal door parted to both sides. Xie Han looked back, smiled at Xu Qiang, and said, "You guys really know how to put in the effort, even rigging up this gadget."

The things inside the metal door truly brought Xie Han a sufficient level of shock. Upon entering, he saw a circular passage slanting upward, its sides densely wrapped with spiral rings of threading. Of course, this was not the main point; the most striking part was that right as one stepped past the metal door, it immediately opened into a single-unit pilot cockpit...

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"Z-Skywatcher fighter jet. The design proposal was submitted in 2023, the design completed in 2027, the maiden test flight successfully conducted in 2029, and officially commissioned into the military in 2033. It was one of the most advanced fighter jets in China at the time. It has a wingspan of 15.57 meters, a fuselage length of 20.99 meters, a height of 5.1 meters, and a wing area of 88.70 square meters. Its design prototype was based on the American fourth-generation supersonic fighter jet, but newly integrated technologies allowed it to barely reach the capabilities of an American fifth-generation fighter jet, with stealth being its most basic function!

Among the most significant technological additions was not its vertical takeoff and landing capability, but its folding function. The Z-Skywatcher is capable of folding and retracting its own wings. True to its name, the newly added magnetic-field auxiliary thrusters allow the Z-Skywatcher to cruise at a speed of Mach 0.7 with a range of 25,700 kilometers. Its main thruster has a maximum level flight speed of Mach 3.55, a service ceiling of 25,000 meters, and a combat radius of 2,500 kilometers.

The original design of the Z-Skywatcher was primarily tailored for China's lack of aircraft carriers. By installing magnetic-field thrusters onto the aircraft, its terrifying cruising speed and range posed a direct threat to the US mainland. The emergence of the Z-Skywatcher also turned the American aircraft carrier battle groups of that era into a pile of useless scrap metal. Although the Z-Skywatcher was not exceptionally outstanding in direct combat, its appearance set a epoch-making standard for fighter jets."

After finishing this introduction, Xu Qiang said helplessly, "These are all surface-level details that were accessible everywhere back then; there's nothing particularly strange about them. You must understand that by 2030, the technological gap between China and the United States was no longer very large, and many technologies even surpassed those of the US—take magnetic-field thruster technology, for example. As for the true performance data of the Skywatcher, I'm afraid you'll have to experience it slowly for yourself. After all, across all of New City, the only person who has any possibility of piloting it is you!"

The appearance of the Skywatcher truly came as an immense surprise to Xie Han. Looking at the empty single-unit pilot cockpit, Xie Han felt a wave of intense familiarity surge over him, as if he inherently should have known how to pilot it. Without hesitation, Xie Han jumped into the cockpit and gripped the flight control stick. With a somewhat perplexed expression, he asked Xu Qiang, who was standing nearby, "Qiangzi, how do you start this thing?"

"Damn..." Xu Qiang almost went berserk as he blurted out, "Boss, do you even know how to fly a fighter jet? Fighter jets made after 2020 all adopted full automation." Imagining Xie Han looking clueless inside the fighter jet, Xu Qiang immediately panicked. "Commander Xie, you better come down. It doesn't matter if you don't know how; we can figure it out slowly. Don't go crashing the plane and killing yourself—I wouldn't be able to answer to Brother Chen Liu and the others!"

Xie Han chuckled, swiped his card across a liquid crystal display panel, and instantly the entire cockpit lit up with soft lighting while the canopy slowly closed. Taking a deep breath, Xie Han said, "Start the engine, engage the launch track acceleration." These phrases, uttered so naturally, startled even Xie Han himself; it felt almost instinctive.

Following Xie Han's words, he felt the fighter jet vibrate slightly, accompanied by the powerful roar of the engine. The launch track encasing the fighter jet lit up with small green lights one by one, and the spiral rings spun at increasing speeds. Once the rotational inertia reached a certain threshold, the exit of the passage snapped open with a "shua" sound. Xie Han felt the entire fighter jet violently shudder; like a shell fired from a barrel, the 21-meter-long fuselage was shot out by the launch track.

What is speed? The fastest Xie Han had ever experienced was a few hundred kilometers per hour on a high-speed train; he hadn't even flown in an airplane before. Yet the ejection speed of the Skywatcher reached a staggering 800 kilometers per hour, causing Xie Han to feel instantly dizzy and nauseous. With its wings retracted, the Skywatcher looked more like a missile, shooting out from the testing base's launch track and rushing into the sky amidst a sharp, piercing roar.

It was just past nine o'clock in the morning. For the residents of New City who had to start a day of labor by eight, very few had the luxury of idling at home; everyone was busy working in the earthen kilns, forests, gravel fields, farmland, and other locations. The sudden, piercing roar erupting from the testing base naturally startled everyone profoundly, leaving them utterly clueless as to what had happened.

The testing base was a restricted zone within the entirety of New City, inaccessible to anyone without official approval. Likewise, everything inside it carried an aura of mystery for the populace, who had no way of knowing what transpired within. Because of this, the happenings inside the testing base had spawned countless versions of wild speculation. Yet one thing was certain: whatever the testing base brought the citizens, it provided a profound sense of security. The mysterious was unknown, and the unknown could often evolve into a stabilizing pressure.

The Skywatcher, launched like a missile, was naturally seen by everyone. Even though its wings had yet to unfold, everyone recognized the fighter jet, and cheers instantly became the sole melody echoing across New City. They cheered not only for this fighter jet, but even more so for the strength of New City. In the apocalypse, what could possibly be more popular than a base capable of granting absolute safety? This cheering was entirely spontaneous, welling up from the depths of their hearts.

Xie Han certainly had no mind to spare for these reactions. Being ejected like a cannonball, the high-speed spinning of the fuselage put Xie Han through the wringer. After just a few short seconds, the rate of ascent began to slow down—a reduction in ejection momentum that Xie Han didn't even need to think about. Ignoring his burgeoning urge to vomit, Xie Han commanded, "Deploy wings."

At Xie Han's command, the fuselage, which was still spinning, suddenly extended the folded wings from its belly. The moment these wings extended, they rapidly assembled and ultimately clicked into place as standard fighter jet wings. Amidst violent vibrations, Xie Han pulled back on the control stick, and after executing a few barrel rolls in the air, the fighter jet finally leveled off into horizontal flight. "Engage cruising speed. Set speed to 600 kilometers per hour."

The Skywatcher was also equipped with an autopilot function, and when necessary, it could even perform unmanned flight as a semi-automated fighter jet. Fighter jets prior to the apocalypse had become increasingly unmanned; after all, the expenses required to maintain a massive air force personnel roster were simply too astronomical and difficult to cultivate. Unmanned drones, on the other hand, were much simpler, requiring only an intelligent system to replace human labor. During wartime, the loss of human flight personnel was staggering, a concern that drones completely bypassed without the need to worry about the safety of an unmanned combat aircraft.

However, that was the American approach. In China, the primary focus remained on human pilots supplemented by drones. To put it simply, China had the largest population, and its required training expenses were less than one-third of America's. Do not assume that pilots cultivated with such small training budgets were substandard; one only needed to look at various aerial combat performance displays where Chinese teams frequently secured prominent spots to understand the capability of Chinese pilots.

More importantly, China always maintained that a drone was ultimately just a piece of machinery; its judgment of many situations fell far short of a human pilot. Furthermore, in handling sudden emergencies, drones performed the worst, merely executing pre-set programs. It was precisely this weakness that meant a broad-spectrum electromagnetic interference weapon—no matter how strong the drone's anti-interference capabilities were—would inevitably disrupt its programming to some extent, causing deviations in its target evaluation.

At this moment, Xie Han was like a child with a new toy, commanding the fighter jet to execute all sorts of maneuvers. The initial sense of discomfort had long since passed; the sky was like an endless playground, allowing Xie Han to pilot the fighter jet through various complex aerial acrobatics. Xie Han did not drive the fighter jet too far away from New City; instead, he roared through the airspace directly above it, circling repeatedly. Once he grew accustomed to the Skywatcher, Xie Han even briefly dipped the fighter jet down to skim just 25 meters above the ground—a perilously dangerous maneuver that naturally sent the people below screaming.

After playing around for a while, Xie Han pulled the fighter jet upward, flew in the direction of Wangtian City, and commanded, "Activate weapon systems." Beneath the belly of the aircraft, the opened weapon bay automatically slid out storage compartments containing missiles the thickness of an arm and 5 meters in length. These missiles were arranged by an automatic loader, loaded one by one onto the pylons beneath the wings, and locked into position. Before long, twenty medium-range air-to-air missiles and ten long-range air-to-air missiles were fully mounted.

Despite their slender appearance, these air-to-air missiles had lost none of their formidable capabilities. They possessed active radar homing and automatic guidance functions. Their warheads were compact yet high-explosive; just a single hit was enough to blast an entire enemy fighter jet mid-air into a ball of flame.

The Skywatcher's weapon system went far beyond these. Its triple weapon bay design allowed it to temporarily act as a bomber, raining down aerial bombs upon targets. Although its rear-firing air-to-air missiles were not a brand-new technology, they had been upgraded, significantly enhancing its combat effectiveness. Furthermore, its fire control radar system and other components far surpassed modern fighter jets, especially its radar system, which possessed a terrifying detection range of 600 kilometers against large aircraft.

All of the above served to illustrate the advanced nature of the Skywatcher. Yet what displeased Xie Han was that such an advanced fighter jet could only barely compare to American fifth-generation fighter jets. He truly wondered what an American sixth-generation fighter jet would be like. He seemed to recall Xu Qiang mentioning that American sixth-generation fighter jets had already adopted suspension systems, vaguely possessing baseline extraterrestrial combat capabilities.

Xie Han quickly brushed aside his concerns regarding American sixth-generation fighter jets, pondering instead: "America is over 20,000 kilometers away from here. No matter how formidable their fighter jets are, they won't be able to fly over—after all, aerial zombies aren't called that for nothing. Besides, with the outbreak of the XR virus, how many survivors could those Yankees possibly have left? Tsk tsk, I wonder if they still dare to tout their global hegemony in the apocalypse."

Thinking of aerial zombies caused Xie Han's heart to skip a beat. Previously, while operating on the ground, he had never considered such zombies; after all, everyone stayed in their own lanes and minded their own business. Aerial zombies constituted the smallest category among all types of zombies. Naturally, the population of birds was already small, and combined with their limited carrying capacity, only the most ferocious aerial apex predators could mutate into zombies. However, fierce apex predators like eagles were pitifully rare in the southern regions and extremely difficult to encounter.

At that moment, Xie Han almost felt a twinge of pity for the surviving humans in Africa. He had heard that Africa had the most animals, birds, and beasts—how were they holding up now? With things flying in the sky, running on land, and swimming in the water, wouldn't they all be wiped out? Who knew how many people could possibly survive?

Amidst Xie Han's rambling thoughts, the soft lighting inside the cockpit suddenly shifted to red, a piercing alarm sounded, and the synthetic voice announced: "An unidentified flying target detected 110 kilometers ahead. Quantity: thirty-seven. Maximum target locking capacity of the fighter jet: twenty-five. Maximum simultaneous attack capacity: nine. Target locked. Shall we engage?"

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