Chapter 482: The Tunnel
The tunnel leading to the surface stretched deep underground, spanning ten kilometers. For practical reasons, it was never designed as a spacious multi-lane highway. Instead, it was narrow, accommodating at most two vehicles side by side.
The Daqi commander’s decision to assign numbers for the war vehicles to enter the tunnel had been a calculated one. While there might have been minor flaws in his allocation strategy, the impulsive queue-jumping of one driver completely doomed their escape.
This reckless act triggered a chain reaction. As the rear vehicle’s engine roared, overtaking the others and surging into the tunnel, the rest of the convoy followed suit, reacting with similar haste.
But the tunnel was already packed to capacity, leaving no room for additional vehicles to squeeze in—let alone a third, fourth, or fifth.
Even in times of peace, queue-jumping was universally detested. In the face of a life-threatening situation, such behavior was utterly intolerable.
The result was chaos. Several war vehicles collided at the tunnel entrance, their drivers slamming on the gas in desperate attempts to force their way through. Profanities—ranging from ancient Daqi curses to modern and trendy expletives—erupted as they hurled insults at one another.
Yet, no matter how loudly they cursed or how hard they pressed their pedals, the vehicles—products of advanced interstellar engineering—remained largely unscathed. These were military-grade constructs, after all. The collisions amounted to little more than scratches on the paintwork.
The growing pileup only worsened as more vehicles joined the fray. This unintended bottleneck created the perfect opportunity for the Raiders. Jumping onto the last vehicles in the line, they rapidly scrambled across rooftops toward the front of the convoy.
The gunships, still hovering above, were losing control of the situation entirely. While some Raiders swarmed the ground vehicles, others climbed up the walls of the hangar, reaching a sufficient height before leaping toward the gunships.