Veterans, Mobilization Order

"Perhaps he's actually already dead." With still no follow-up news about Pegmont, this was a suspicion many could not suppress in their hearts. Pessimism began to spread quietly within Azure, though for the moment, no one dared to voice it publicly. As for the civilian world, the people's joy and excitement gradually faded, and soon, voices of doubt began to surface. Media outlets began doing what they did best—wild speculation and "citing sources close to the matter"—ceaselessly catering to the shifting mood of the public. "There are actually people claiming Azure might be hiding things because they don't want to risk sending anyone to Mars to pick up Pegmont! What kind of brain and logic is that?!" At the Stream Blades base, Yang Qingbai tossed down the newspaper in his hands, speaking in outrage. "Some might have actually guessed right. Well, or maybe it wasn't a guess. That Azure Council isn't much different from a vegetable market." Wen Jifei set down his newspaper as well, then lowered his head and took a sip of coffee. He had been quarreling with a certain Han over the past couple of days, so he didn't even look at him while speaking. "Hello?" Nearby, Han Qingyu was on the phone. After saying hello twice, he said, "Oh, Mom. Why are you suddenly calling me from Captain Lao's communicator? Did he come to our house to sponge meals again?... All right, what's going on? Go ahead." "It's about that Little Pink. Mom wanted to secretly check with you—how is he doing right now?" Zhang Jiexia asked from the other end, cautious and earnest. "He..." Han Qingyu hesitated. Once his mother knew, the entire village, township, county, and surrounding area would probably find out soon enough. "He's fine." "What do you mean, fine? Is he still alive?" Zhang Jiexia asked. "Of course. Of course he's still alive," Han Qingyu said. "That's good, that's good. Then Azure will definitely send someone to fetch him, right?" "Of course they will." "That's wonderful. Such a fun little pink-haired kid, and brave too." Zhang Jiexia thought for a moment, then added, "When he gets back, don't get into fights with him anymore, okay? He went all the way to Planet Mars—all baked out there, he must have suffered terribly." Han Qingyu: "...All right." Hanging up the call, Han Qingyu turned and asked, "So, it's already the seventh day. Isn't Azure ready yet? Any word on when we depart?" Major Qing asked a question that was not difficult in the slightest... yet a strange, awkward silence fell over the room. No one answered. Not a sound was made. Usually, questions like this were answered by Wen Jifei. But right now, Plague Chicken was sulking. The reason was simple: without asking him or leaving room for discussion, Han Qingyu had directly excluded him from the roster for Mars. "Well?" Han Qingyu had to prompt again. "Not yet. Word is they haven't even made a decision." Resigned, the Little Prince, Zhu Jiaming, answered in Wen Jifei's stead, adding angrily, "With the Azure Council's efficiency, if the Great Spike army truly arrived one day, they wouldn't manage to squeeze out a fart before they died. How about we just head over next time and take over the whole show?" ............ On the eighth day, a massive brawl broke out at the Azure Council's special session. The disputes over the Mars expedition were simply too numerous, too grand. Humanity still understood far too little about that distant planet. Lacking information, they had virtually no grasp of the specific conditions there—how many Great Spikes were currently present, what tiers they were, how fighters were to adapt to the combat environment, and so forth. Under such circumstances, If Azure planned a small-scale expedition with few troops, council members would argue: "So you intend to send those people to their deaths? Or do you plan to let the Great Spike civilization establish an offensive base on Mars unchecked?" Yet if the planned force was large and the recruitment standards high (given oxygen and environmental issues, warriors capable of sensing life source energy were undeniably best suited for combat on Mars), other council members would demand: "So you intend to gamble humanity's entire future on the unknown and bury it there, all over a single message lacking explanation or reply?!" The debates and shouting matches eventually escalated into a full-blown brawl among over a hundred council members. Of course, Azure Council brawls were a regular occurrence. (Throughout Azure's history, nearly every effort had been aimed at restricting and constraining power to prevent the rise of a dictatorship; in truth, it had always been an organization that lacked order and decisive strength.) Typically, military council members from the battlefront disdained participating in such scuffles between "ordinary weaklings" (in fact, they rarely joined in the debates and speeches either)... Most of the time, they would stand in a row at the elevated rear of the chamber, leaning against the wall with arms crossed, just watching. As for Speaker Kemore and the presidium members... they generally chose to quietly slip away amidst the chaos. "Hey, every one of you claims to support the expedition in principle, but have you considered another possibility?!" Amidst the chaos, an Indidu council member suddenly shouted. The council members around him gradually turned. "What is it?" "What are you trying to say?" "Are you opposed to the expedition itself?" "What possibility, Singh?!" "Perhaps... Major General Pegmont isn't actually away from the communicator. Perhaps he deliberately chose not to reply," said the council member named Singh. "Why?!" Many were stunned and bewildered. "Because he's afraid that once we find out the truth, Azure will decide not to rescue him." Singh adopted the posture of a sage who had seen through it all, hunching his shoulders and craning his neck as he glanced around. "Because the tractor field wasn't stopped! He accomplished nothing, and the place is already teeming with Great Spikes! He is struggling to survive in hell, desperate for someone to reach out a hand, unaware that doing so will drag even more people into hell—or even pull the entire world into hell all the sooner! He—" Singh's voice cut off abruptly. A hand shot forward, grabbed him by the collar of his suit jacket, hauled him over, and flung him into the air... Then, the person responsible stepped in front, catching Singh by the throat midair. *Bang!* He pinned Singh against the back wall, feet dangling. The military council members had joined the fray. The one who had acted was a retired, disabled general of the Eastern Europa Coalition, already sixty years old. With that crash and that spectacle, the weaklings brawling across the chamber fell silent, and tension gripped the room. *Huuu!* The old general took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, seemingly struggling to suppress the urge to choke Singh to death on the spot. Pain twisted Singh's face, his thick mustache twitching like agitated brows. Starved of breath, his eyes bulged behind his gold-rimmed glasses, on the verge of popping out. The old general's grip loosened slightly. "Lawyer? Judge? Sociologist, or some other upper-class elite? Don't tell me about your right to speak and offer counsel, and don't lecture me about how the council needs a spirit of skepticism. I've heard it all far too many times." "My demand is simple: stop using your clever brains, your wisdom, and your imaginations to casually judge and suspect a warrior shedding blood and fighting for humanity on the battlefield. Can you do that?" "...Can you?" "I'm asking you, can you?!" The old general asked three times. In truth, Singh had been more than willing to answer affirmatively on the very first ask; he had simply been choked too hard to manage it. "Mgh... yes, all right, yes." Struggling, Singh nodded frantically, several times in succession. At last, the old general let him slide down the wall until he sat crumpled on the floor, head lowered, panting heavily with eyes full of resentment and terror. Ignoring him completely, not even sparing him another glance, the old general turned slowly, adjusted his uniform, and called out, "Speaker Kemore! Please hold on right there, Speaker Kemore. And the members of the presidium, please stop as well." Having seen the severe altercation end, the Speaker and the presidium members had been about to sneak away. Now frozen at the front doors, they turned back with awkward, slightly confused looks toward the old general and the military council members lined up in the back row. The old general withdrew his gaze, no longer looking at them. Instead, he unhurriedly swept his eyes across the council members in the chamber before speaking again: "Actually, regarding the questions you've been arguing over—how many to send, and whom to send—there is a simple and optimal solution. Send us old bastards, who still possess decent combat capability but have run out of time and potential. "We represent the lowest cost and the most suitable choice. "Those of us here, those in the army group councils, those in logistics, and those who have retired home or returned to work in ordinary society... added together, there are actually quite a lot of us. "Just issue a mobilization order. They will all return." The old general finished speaking. In the entire chamber, including Speaker Kemore, not a single council member spoke up to voice an opinion. They merely stood there in a daze, keeping themselves in check, their expressions blank yet their eyes deep in thought. Because, from a purely rational standpoint, this truly was the most fitting choice possible. Yet who in that hall had the courage and the sheer audacity to speak up in support of such a proposal—let alone make the decision themselves? "Let's do an anonymous vote, then. First of all, I vote in favor, and I answer the mobilization." An anonymous vote would definitely pass. The old general knew this very well. Having spoken his final piece, he raised his hand in a salute, then turned his back straight and walked with a steady, limp-and-step gait down the rear aisle, exiting the chamber through the back door. That leg of his had been crippled in the Mount Xilang Flag War all those years ago. It felt like an eternity ago. That had also been the battle where Major Qing first rose to prominence in the source energy world. *It will be an honor to fight alongside you again, Major Qing. It's just a shame you'll have to lead a bunch of old and broken wrecks like us into this war,* the old general thought as he walked. Then, "I vote in favor. And I answer the mobilization," said another old general from South America, who departed in the same manner after speaking. He had only one arm left—his left. His right arm, which once wielded a blade, had been lost three years ago on Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of the Americas, where they had fought side by side with the people from the City of Sin. For three years, this retired veteran had long since learned and grown accustomed to holding his blade with his left hand. "I vote in favor. And I answer the mobilization." "I vote in favor. And I answer the mobilization." "..." One after another, the veteran military council members from the battlefront left the chamber. There were not many of them—only seven. They had cast the first seven votes of the session. Currently, the Azure Council's vote on the "Veteran Mobilization Order" stood at 7 in favor, 0 opposed. The council members below had not moved yet, for the choice was not particularly difficult for most of them. The ones having the hardest time right now were not them, but the military council members who were still in their prime and did not meet the criteria for the veteran mobilization order. As their juniors in the truest sense, they naturally knew what the old generals wanted them to do. Yet they could not bring themselves to do it. Until, turning their heads inadvertently, they suddenly saw the seven old generals standing together outside the back door, watching them in silence. Seven pairs of veteran eyes, seven gazes from old soldiers, carrying... Eyes full of earnest yearning to return to the battlefield. Eyes full of fierce threats and intimidation. Eyes full of smiles, joyful at going to war. ............ October 21, 1996. On the ninth day after Blue Star received Pegmont's distress signal from Mars, the Azure Council and the Coalition High Command jointly issued a proclamation to the entire world. The document was titled: *Mars Expedition—Veteran Mobilization Order*.