Keep It Here

The battleground for their standoff was a slope extending downward from high on the mountain, relatively open and wide. The shrubs only reached calf-height, and the autumn weeds were sparse and short. Beneath the moonlight, the ground showed black, with exposed boulders and bare rock faces gleaming faintly. Only moments ago, the appearance of the instructors had brought a halt to some of the recruits fleeing across the mountain. Filled with relief at surviving a calamity, lingering weakness born of terror, and perhaps a flicker of hatred, they stood in place, looking back. Liu Shiheng was among them. In the earlier chaos of the gorge, he had been separated first from Han Qingyu and then from He Tangtang. When the retreat began, he had tried to find them, only to be grabbed and dragged along by an instructor from Regiment 491. As awful luck would have it, out of the six evacuating columns of recruits, he had ended up in the exact one that encountered the Great Spike. And so, he had spent nearly the entire night running for his life. Liu Shiheng's dead iron straight sword was currently in Zhang Dao'an's possession. Earlier in the truck, Zhang Dao'an had asked to borrow it, and Liu Shiheng had handed it over. *Perhaps Instructor Zhang also figured I was the least likely person to ever use a blade...* Hailing from Gangcheng with a family fortune exceeding a hundred million, Liu Shiheng had never made much effort to conceal his determination to stay alive by any means necessary. Yet now he held a sword in his grip. During the desperate flight, he had scooped it up from a pool of blood beside a fallen comrade. He was plainly just running away, yet he had still picked it up, unable to explain even to himself why he had done so. Liu Shiheng had not known the recruit, but the blade in his hands was still smeared with the boy's blood. He lowered his gaze to inspect the serial number engraved upon the metal: 9-771248. "Sorry, brother. I don't have the strength to avenge you... but maybe my blade can." Liu Shiheng murmured the words silently, then lifted his head to look back toward the line of figures standing between the recruits and the Great Spike. His eyes soon found Zhang Dao'an, wielding twin blades. His own sword was still in Head Instructor Zhang's hands—perhaps the one in the left, perhaps the one in the right. Either way, it was bound to strike the Great Spike shortly. Panting heavily, another recruit from Regiment 425 dashed past nearby, then turned back and yanked his arm. "What are you standing here for? Run!" "But..." Liu Shiheng didn't budge. He thought to himself: *Won't the instructors hack it to death? They will. One, two, three, four... there are seventeen of them.* "Instructor Zhang told us to run!" the recruit urged, pulling him along as he took off. Perplexed, Liu Shiheng ran with him, still glancing back from time to time. Many others were doing the exact same thing. In their receding vision, the line of figures standing firm grew less distinct. The moonlight merged their bodies with the shadows cast upon the ground—men and their shadows, the dead iron straight swords in their hands and the silhouettes of the steel. It made the formation appear denser, thick enough to form an unbroken wall. Behind that wall, they shielded nearly a hundred recruits currently fleeing for their lives. And forty to fifty meters in front of the wall... The machine-like Great Spike stood in place, the mountain rising behind it. It had descended from the heights and stepped out of the woods, coming to a halt at the edge of the shattered trees. At its side, the column sword with its turned, chipped blade still dragged along the earth. From the sword's tip stretched a long, gouged furrow carved into the ground. Enveloped in black dead iron armor, its motionless figure resembled a statue, though beneath the moonlight it gave off an almost imperceptible blue sheen. It stirred, lowering its head to regard the ground, then lifting its gaze toward the scattering crowd in the distance, before finally fixing its eyes upon the seventeen men standing before it. This was an unusually human reaction, seldom seen in an ordinary Great Spike. "...It's that kind, all right," Zhang Dao'an said flatly. "Yeah, that's it. The one that ambushed us later and carried the craft away... This thing is terrifyingly strong. Our Squad Leader Liang... died by its hand." The second lieutenant from Squad 1123 spoke up as well. A severely wounded soldier beside him asked for a cigarette, and the lieutenant handed one over. The soldier's right arm was useless; unable to strike a match after putting the cigarette between his lips, he had to lean over so another comrade could light it for him. "So what's the call now?" an instructor asked. The Great Spike's craft was no longer at its side. It had most likely already set up the signal beacon and was awaiting activation... almost certainly on the mountain behind it. None of the men present understood how the device functioned, but they had heard that completing the startup sequence took a considerable amount of time. "We just do our best. If there's an opening to push through later, two men head up the mountain and smash that contraption," Lao Cao from Regiment 491 said. As he spoke, his three-dimensional apparatus—having rested briefly in dormancy—hummed with a sharp vibration, and a blue glow flared to life. That was all there was to it: fight with everything they had. If their best still fell short, there was nothing more to be done. "Should we wait for the recruits to get further away? I'm afraid... we won't hold out very long," another instructor asked, even as his apparatus hummed to life in response. A wash of blue light spread across the line. Their predicament was dire: ahead on the mountain lay the signal beacon that might already be deployed, while behind them were the recruits who could still be overtaken. "Come on, why the long faces? Look at you all..." Amid the grim air of imminent death, the coughing, smoking soldier from Squad 1123 chuckled. "Who knows, maybe we'll hack the bastard to death! Wouldn't that be a hell of a bargain?!" "Haha, am I right? Hey, you dead iron lump, how many of you did your mother drop?!" he yelled toward the Great Spike with a grin. A heartbeat later, everyone broke into laughter, as though they were about to score a massive triumph. Reckless laughter on the brink of a fight to the death... Everyone laughed except Zhang Dao'an, though at this moment, the impending last stand and the receding silhouettes of the recruits brought him an inexplicable sense of relief and ease. Yet he had gone without smiling for so long... that trying to laugh proved difficult. Then he casually glanced up, his eyes catching something on the slope. *What... is that?!* Zhang Dao'an froze. Not far up the mountainside, creeping upward between rock faces and trees, was a figure sneaking stealthily toward the summit. *How... why is it that brat again?! Why hasn't he evacuated? Where is he going...* With a moment's thought, Zhang Dao'an understood: the boy must have overheard them earlier, saying they had to destroy that device at all costs. *He really doesn't know fear, does he?* *Sneaky bastard... brazen courage... a damn fine soldier.* *That kid is going to be the next colored Eraser squad leader for 425... Squad Leader Wang, are you seeing this?* Pulling his thoughts back, Zhang Dao'an hastily tore his gaze away. A moment later, he lowered his head and broke into a sudden, boisterous burst of laughter. "Hahaha..." Looking up, he roared with fierce satisfaction, "Get ready to charge, boys! Today we don't advance and we don't retreat—we nail it dead right here!" "Just that simple?" The soldiers and instructors laughed. Most of them had noticed the silhouette by now, and Zhang Dao'an's words made everything instantly clear. ...They could not allow the Great Spike any chance to look back. Just keep it here... Simple enough... They only had to pay with their lives. *Screeech.* The grinding sound of the column sword echoed as its heavy blade plowed through soil and stone. It was the spark to the powder keg—the Great Spike was about to move. "Heh, who do you think you're scaring?! Fuck your mother! Pay back Squad Leader Liang's life!" The eyes of the cigarette-smoking soldier from Squad 1123 suddenly turned bloodshot, tears glistening within them. He flicked his cigarette butt toward the Great Spike, drew his sword with his left hand, and charged forward before the ember even struck the ground.