Compared to that irascible old man Chen Buer, Zhe Qiuhong was far more rational and calm, and her outcome was vastly more fortunate.
The airship carrying her and her medical team had waited on the perimeter the entire time. Only after the tractor field collapsed and all the Great Spike craft sent to intercept them had scattered and fled did they enter Antarctic airspace at the earliest opportunity—swift, smooth, heading straight for the battlefield.
Due to comms clearance levels, Zhe Qiuhong did not yet know that Pegament had already set off, embarking upon a grand voyage of cosmic exploration.
The dream of the stars that Voyage had bitterly pursued over its seventy-odd years of history, including Project Fireseed which they still doggedly maintained to this day, had already been realized ahead of them by someone... Except that person had gone alone, aboard a Great Spike ship, with Great Spikes as his pilots, and Great Spikes as his food.
Zhe Qiuhong contacted Wen Jifei directly.
In the end, amid the sky-filling explosions of the polar tractor field's collapse, the airship landed first on the outer perimeter, right where the remnants of Stream Vanguard were gathered.
Stepping down from the craft, Zhe Qiuhong saw the scene before her, those faces once so familiar to her... and froze unconsciously for two seconds.
She had thought that, looking at it from a doctor's perspective, she had already imagined the battlefield and Stream Vanguard's situation to be tragic enough.
Yet fewer than three thousand remnants remained, every single one of them wounded, and the injuries of nearly half the soldiers would prove fatal if rescue were delayed by even a moment...
"Get ready!" She ought to have said something, or at least offered a greeting, but she didn't. Turning around, Zhe Qiuhong barked orders directly to the team she had brought.
Three medical tents and three sets of surgical equipment were quickly set up across the ice sheet of Antarctica.
Zhe Qiuhong walked alone into the crowd of soldiers, just as she used to when she stayed with Stream Vanguard, without the slightest hint of the tenderness or compassion expected of a physician. Her gaze swept over them, finally settling first upon Gu Zhazha.
Gu Zhazha lay on the ground, his breath faint as gossamer. One hand clutched the wound on his chest as he looked up at her, yet his eyes did not reveal the excitement, pleading, or anticipation one might have expected.
"Forget it. No need." When Gu Zhazha finally forced out those few words, his body struggled to draw back.
One had to know that this man had always been wretched, craven, and terrified of dying. Zhe Qiuhong's hand, reaching down to help him, froze for an instant before she slowly straightened up and looked around.
Every wounded soldier present was looking at her with cold detachment.
In the past, she had always been the cold one, while they were shameless scoundrels who brazenly tried to get close to her. Those uncouth bandits had even known to bring her flowers just to curry favor; on every holiday, wild mountain blossoms they had picked filled the inside and outside of her room.
All because they knew full well just how formidable their foul-tempered fat doctor was, and how important it was to stay on her good side.
Yet now, when they were truly in desperate need of rescue and Zhe Qiuhong had rushed to their side, these bastards wore an entirely different face.
Given their usual temperament, they should have been weeping tears of joy, cheering, and hugging her legs.
Yet none of that happened.
"You... don't need to do this," Zhe Qiuhong said weakly in English.
She knew why.
That previous assassination attempt on Han Qingyu and the web of conspiracies surrounding it—though lacking concrete proof from the standpoint of Azure and the wider world, and not entirely believed by everyone—were something every single person in Stream Vanguard knew all too well.
*She actually sent people to assassinate Qingzi. Qingzi, who only had the memories of an eighteen-year-old, whose combat prowess had plummeted, who was lost and timid... She arranged to have him killed!*
The soldiers even deeply suspected that Major Qing's prolonged amnesia and diminished strength had been premeditated by Zhe Qiuhong all along, that she had tampered with him while Qingzi was comatose and receiving treatment under her care.
*If not for Qingzi's amnesia and frail state lasting until the latter half of the Redemption Offensive—and recovering only when backed into a corner, forcing him into a death-defying burst that left him gravely wounded and barely able to carry on—so many people in Stream Vanguard wouldn't have had to die today. Because he is Han Qingyu!*
*And the root of all these consequences was their former trust in her, the steadfast trust of all those years.*
Stream Vanguard could accept the existence of enemies. Conflicting allegiances, mutual hatred—you just fight it out. They had even been able to calmly accept that Zhe Qiuhong's biological brother was the very man who had once hunted down Stream Vanguard's core team, their greatest enemy since the first-generation Starlight.
They separated the two very clearly.
What they could not accept was that a friend they had once trusted so deeply had later turned into a shadowy, venomous enemy.
"Thanks, but no thanks."
"No need."
"..."
The stretchers of the medical team approached one wounded soldier after another. They weren't angry; they merely smiled bleakly, refused, and dragged their heavily injured bodies backward.
Stream Vanguard never put on airs or indulged in melodrama; in memory, this was the very first time. Only because they laid so much of the grief, helplessness, and fury of the past and present at Zhe Qiuhong's door.
"..." Zhe Qiuhong wanted to say something—to explain, for instance, that Qingzi's amnesia and loss of combat strength hadn't been directly caused by her; she had merely been glad to see it happen and had done a few things to make that state last longer. Or that, from her standpoint, she did not regret what she had done, and given another chance, she would make the exact same choice. Just as she hadn't chosen to stay away today because of her brother's death.
Such explanations obviously wouldn't help. Fortunately, Zhe Qiuhong knew she was terrible at explaining herself. Hesitating for a moment, her gaze found Little Prince.
"Me?... What the hell good would it do if I spoke!" Little Prince muttered in annoyance. He dialed a call, briefly explained the situation to Wen Jifei, and then held up the communicator and switched on the speaker.
"Fuck you all! What are you being stubborn for? Do you think not enough of our people have died already?" Wen Jifei cursed harshly from the other end, his voice tinged with agony, before softening slightly. "Remember, the person standing in front of you right now is Stream Vanguard's fat doctor. She isn't some Helmsman of Voyage."
"..." Zhe Qiuhong gritted her teeth. In the end, she didn't object, accepting the title of fat doctor head-on for the first time in her life.
"And don't forget, Han Qingyu has always been sickened most by pointless melodrama on the battlefield," Wen Jifei continued. "Since he's already recovered, and since he's still alive right now, you lot had better clear your heads and remember not to piss him off. Otherwise, you're going to suffer."
*Click!* With that, Wen Jifei snapped the call off.
By the time Zhe Qiuhong looked back, Gu Zhazha had behaved himself. Though he remained sullenly silent, he had already positioned himself to be lifted onto a stretcher.
The soldiers no longer resisted either.
Wen Jifei's order and threat were undeniably effective. Han Qingyu's utter detestation of melodramatics had shown itself as early as Death Canyon, where he first made his name. Back then, he had walked into the depths of the canyon alone to trade for Rusty Sister, Tangtang, Caixin, and the others, ordering them to run, just run, and never look back...
The soldiers all came to learn of these things later on, just as they knew that Major Qing had always been exceptionally petty.
***
Three tents and three operating tables began working simultaneously on the ice sheet.
This was far from enough. People were still quietly slipping away, or perhaps they had already died moments earlier.
Wearing a grim face, Zhe Qiuhong jogged back and forth between the three tents...
Regiment Commander Gu Zhazha survived, though from now on, he would no longer be a top-tier combat power.
A-Ye survived, though he was down a hand for the rest of his days.
As for that bastard Guimarães, if he couldn't learn to hop fast enough on one leg, he'd only be able to help out cooking meals in the base's logistics division from now on... Fortunately, he was a decent cook, especially skilled with stir-fried tomatoes and eggs.
This was good. Surviving was enough. As Major Qing had once put it: in war, who cares about all that grand meaning? It's just about winning, and about staying alive.
Chapter 849