Chapter 795: Chapter 568: Alarm from Black! (Double Chapter)
(Two chapters combined)
“What’s the situation?”
Major Jerome asked in the command bunker.
“Reporting, Major, the frequency of enemy attacks has indeed decreased, but based on previous observations, the fire support from the Empire’s forces has not diminished.”
A Captain stood up and responded.
“Pay attention to artillery defense, increase patrol efforts, a cycle every three days. During the last two cycles, supply external exoskeleton armor with full battery packs, and ensure the mechas are prepared for combat.”
Feeling the shockwaves from the shelling around, Major Jerome finally issued the recent defense order.
No matter what, the situation in the Fire Hills area has stabilized. Their sole task is to hold the position until further orders arrive from the headquarters and the division.
It was also from the fourth day of Mu Fan’s arrival at Planet E75 that the Empire’s Frontier Army troops at the 33rd Battle Zone launched a sudden and fierce attack on the Fire Hills.
Mu Fan’s original daily task was to patrol twice a day, but starting from the second day of his arrival, the patrol task remained the same, while Mu Fan took on a long-term task of garrisoning the highland defensive fortifications.
Amidst the rustle of gravel and sand, Mu Fan followed Bob and Bench to his new stronghold.
Daytime engagements were hard to be as covert and stealthy as night raids, largely becoming showdowns of firepower.
In this aspect, the 27th Infantry Company was at a disadvantage.
In the dust-laden, dilapidated fortifications, Mu Fan and eleven others settled in to defend.
This was just one of the countless defense points in the Fire Hills area, and Mu Fan was unremarkable here.
However, it was amusing to others and extremely embarrassing for Bench that the two military robots, initially drivers of supply vehicles, also joined this fortification.
Fortunately, no one knew about Bench’s embarrassing moment with Black.
The arrival of these two robots was welcomed by others, which significantly improved the speed of reconstructing the fortification defenses with their aid.
As days passed, the amount of information gathered from daily reconnaissance increased, and more abnormal intelligence regarding the Empire’s Frontier Army 33rd Battle Zone emerged.
More traces of support troops were detected, yet they had not manifested in the recent attacks.
Mu Fan did not stand out among the others. He patrolled, ate with them daily, and showed no particularity.
Instead, he occasionally pulled out some compressed biscuits from his backpack, making him seem out of place with his self-supplied rations.
It wasn’t until the ninth day of Mu Fan’s arrival at this planet that the Empire’s attack finally commenced.
A penetrating missile drilled accurately into the fortification beside them, and the massive explosion shocked everyone awake.
Heavy weapons!
The enemy had finally deployed heavy weapons exceeding howitzers.
Is this the prelude to a full-scale war with the Federation again?
Moreover, that attack seemed just the beginning. Sharp whistling sounds came from the sky, followed by terrifying explosions erupting in the Fire Hills area.
The Empire’s forces resorted to massive missile coverage bombardments.
Even without satellite assistance or high-altitude laser guidance, these primitive missiles relying solely on infrared guidance achieved astonishing results.
Some fortifications on ordinary hills were obliterated in an instant.
As for Mu Fan’s location, it’s indeed lucky that the Red Rock Fire Stone effectively interfered with infrared imaging.
The fortification nearby was just unlucky.
Mu Fan shook his head, as he even experienced a momentary ringing in his ears just now.
The sensation of a penetrating missile exploding nearby was truly unbearable for ordinary people.
Within his sight, nearly half the people were clutching their heads in pain.
Mu Fan was the first to recover!
The sound of painful, suppressed breathing surrounded him.
At this moment, a hand suddenly grabbed his clothes, “Move!”
Turning back, it was Junior Sergeant Bob, who had previously brought him back on a jet motorcycle.
This black-skinned soldier, with eyes red, looked at him, revealing his formidable physique. He recovered swiftly from consciousness. He grabbed the closest person to him, Mu Fan, “Evacuate from the fortification, hurry, hurry! Move into the tunnel for counterattack.”
He yanked Mu Fan fiercely to his rear, then dashed to the other side to try to awaken his fellow soldiers.
Mu Fan finally witnessed the excellent military discipline of these border troops. The first thing they did upon regaining consciousness wasn’t to utter meaningless groans or ask what was happening.
Instead, they quickly assembled for orders and carried out a swift retreat!
“Retreat to the third layer below the rock strata.”
A Sergeant nicknamed Oil Tank shook his head and cursed, “Is this the damn apocalypse?”
Then, seeing Mu Fan standing there, not moving, he got anxious, “Rookie, hurry up and move underground, didn’t you understand what I said?”
Mu Fan snapped back after hearing his name, glancing at the Sergeant yelling at him, nodded, and then suddenly rushed towards the Sergeant.
During the Sergeant’s moment of bewilderment, Mu Fan brushed past him, quickly grabbing the backpack on the ground, and kicked each of the two black robots beside him: “Go!”
The two robots controlled by Black and the marching backpack were taken by Mu Fan.
As he escaped the fortification, Mu Fan saw those who hugged their knees and rolled towards the rock layers, and then with forceful legs, he flattened his body in midair, pulling two robots along as he slid into the fault layer.
During the slide, Mu Fan’s peripheral vision caught sight of a soldier from another fortification who, while running, was directly shot in the head.
Under the grim sky, the burst of blood just added another speck of embellishment to the earth.
When the missile-dominated cover strikes finally ended, small groups of the Empire’s Frontier Army emerged on the defensive line.
The enemy finally launched a real assault!
From this day forward, the place Mu Fan stayed shifted from above ground to underground.
If not for the specific terrain structure of the Fire Hills area, the Empire’s forces probably would have already penetrated deep.
On the tenth day, Mu Fan’s firepower team lost three members.
One was directly blown to pieces by a howitzer while on highland reconnaissance, and two others were directly killed by stray bullets during the mountain combat against the Empire’s forces.
Next came countless mechanical spiders covering the area…
On the thirteenth day, the Empire’s troops seemed to have gotten serious this time.
From the crevices of the rocks, Mu Fan and the remaining soldiers saw the endless stream of Empire troops entering the battlefield, filling the air with a stifling atmosphere.
Their defense line was pushed back over half a kilometer.
Now Mu Fan no longer looked like a rookie at all, his face was full of soot marks from the smoke and fire, and his clothes became tattered from repeated extreme crawling and rolling.
Even one of the robots beside Mu Fan had its face half-destroyed.
Now Black could very well be called the “faceless” robot.
The team, which initially had twelve members for task execution, had now been reduced to six…
“Major Jerome’s message: abandon the third line of defense, abandon the outer hills.”
This was a helpless move, a good way to force the opponent to give up the fire suppression of heavy howitzers and tanks. Shifting from the plain valley to the staggered hilly terrain, those heavy machinery and equipment would inevitably have to be abandoned.
The entire Fire Hills area had five stationed units, with over a thousand personnel in total.
The 27th Infantry Company was just one of them.
However, in this attack, the 27th Infantry Company suffered the most severe losses, as the Empire’s army had targeted their stationed area.
So when Mu Fan met Major Jerome again, the highest commander of the infantry company had bloodshot eyes.
In ten days, the 27th Infantry Company lost over fifty percent of its members, with only forty-two soldiers surviving now.
Apart from the twenty soldiers still on reconnaissance missions, the remaining twenty-two had all gathered in an extremely concealed underground cave.
As a representative of the 149th Division’s support unit, Mu Fan had the qualification to participate in the 27th Infantry Company’s wartime meeting.
Major Jerome silently scanned the room, seeing that everyone’s attention was on him, and then slowly spoke:
“Rescue was requested from allied forces three days ago, and the pressure on the 104th Division is immense, so support might be slightly delayed, but fortunately, our ally, the 149th Division, has agreed to assist, and will arrive in at most two days!”
Upon hearing this, everyone felt a weight lifted off their shoulders, finally hearing news of allied support.
“But let me make this clear beforehand!”
Major Jerome didn’t give them time to digest the news, instead, his face turned grim, and his voice hoarse, he said: “We only need to hold out for two days to see the arrival of our allies. Within these two days… anyone who dares to be a deserter, I’ll shoot you dead first!”
“We in the 104th Division have no cowards, only heroes who die standing!”
“Heroes!”
“Heroes!”
Everyone responded loudly.
Two days, to hold the Fire Hills with their lives!
In the corner of the cave, Mu Fan felt the unprecedented unified will and determination around him, and he was deeply shocked.
These soldiers were continually practicing the promises they once made under the military flag with their lives, defending the land beneath them with their blood.
Among humans, when war breaks out for survival resources, it is no different from the brutal scenes he once faced against the Zegs.
It’s a fight to the death, a do-or-die situation.
Mu Fan’s eyes showed the silhouette of these soldiers, but when he heard the sudden message from Black, Mu Fan’s face froze, then gradually cooled.
…
“Hahahaha, Major Gerry, your analysis is really insightful. The 104th Division is just a bunch of hard-heads from top to bottom. Fighting to the death without retreat, do they really think I will let my unit be thrown in to help them?”
Colonel Quinton cheerfully poured himself a glass of red wine, then poured another for his adjutant.
“Report, Colonel, according to Major Jerome of the 27th Infantry Company’s news, their unit now has less than 50 soldiers remaining, and this number is rapidly decreasing. When he sent the rescue request, the front line had already been compressed by half. All signs indicate that the 27th Infantry Company is on the verge of collapse,” Major Gerry said, smiling.
“Then you stabilized them with the news of agreed support and came to request my blessing to refute the rumors previously spread? Oh, you’re really too cunning, like a fox,” Quinton laughed aloud again and casually waved his hand, saying, “You’ve done a beautiful job, proceed as you’ve said.”
“Right, Colonel, what about the Private sent from the higher Military Department?” Major Gerry suddenly asked.
“That Private? What’s his name, well, I can’t remember, just let him be the sacrifice. From now on, keep in constant contact with the 27th Infantry Company. On the day they collapse, we officially enter the Fire Hills.”
The swirling wine glass showed a greedy glint in Colonel Quinton’s eyes.
Receiving his superior’s instructions, Major Gerry immediately stood up and prepared to issue orders.
“Drink up the wine I gave you before you leave.”
Colonel Quinton said with a smile, pointing at the full glass of red wine.
At last, Major Gerry began to execute Colonel Quinton’s orders.
And had already prepared the narrative for the Military Department in the Light Computer regarding the unfortunate news of Private Mu Fan’s entrapment in the combat area, but he had not sent it out.
It seemed everything was going smoothly.
But, there are always exceptions to everything!
The only, and largest, exception in this matter was the separated lodging program by Black, existing in a nearly bizarre God mode within the internal network of the 149th Division.
Since it was a passively triggered monitoring mode, it never activated the alarms of the 149th Division.
However, the document logged by Major Gerry, when stored in the Light Computer, was picked up by Black’s subprogram during routine scanning and precisely triggered the keyword of Mu Fan.
At the first moment, it activated the Trojan program within the headquarters’ medium wave transmission channel, and Lord Black’s main program, hundreds of kilometers away, completed the switch between the main and subprogram in an unbelievable speed.
Locking onto the key words…
Performing pre and post variable analysis, communication analysis for the recent two days.
In front of the omnipresent Lord Black.
What everyone thought was a secure near-field transmission network was flipped inside out by Black!
With intelligence analysis capabilities, Black is of course not comparable to rigid lodging programs; after collating and directing the sorted information.
Lord Black discovered the conspiracy designed by the 149th Division.
And was utterly enraged…
And when it conveyed everything to Mu Fan, Mu Fan just happened to finish listening to Major Jerome’s motivational speech.
“Dismissed!”
Major Jerome cried with an uplifted arm, and the soldiers scattered.
But in the end, Major Jerome saw Mu Fan in a corner with a cold expression.
“Rookie, what’s wrong?”
Mu Fan stepped forward, looking at the determined eyes of the major in front of him and uttered a sentence: “Major, the support information is fake…”
…
“I will never retreat, not when this is the place where over a hundred lives of the 27th Company were lost to hold it. Now you’re asking me to abandon it?! You bastard.”
Major Jerome shouted in anger, his disheveled hair shaking with his fury.
Mu Fan shook his head at the sight of this bloodshot-eye major in front of him.
“The 149th Division designed a scam from start to finish.”
“In these two days, I won’t believe any talk of retreat.”
Major Jerome sneered and ignored Mu Fan, picking up the intercom.
“Joe, prepare the five Mechas of the unit.”
The sixth-generation military-standard Mechas, produced by Vipu Demon Dragon Weapon Company from the First Star District, as one of the designated suppliers for the Federation Military Department, Vipu Demon Dragon Company’s products can absolutely be worthy of the praise of being high quality.
To Mu Fan’s surprise, Sergeant Joe Pate was also a Mechanical Master.
Being able to withstand two days of assault, these five Mechas were his trump card!