The veterans had already charged in, and the fleet of airships embarking on their suicidal blocking maneuver had plunged forward as well. Fewer than five thousand evacuees—predominantly commanders, mechanics, Rejectors, and medical personnel—had completed their boarding.
At the same time, the seventeen human airships that would ultimately embark on the journey home—or rather, the path of flight—were all fully booted up. Hovering near the ground with the engines of their source energy compartments idling continuously, they waited out the final moments, braced and ready to launch at a moment's notice.
"In truth, whether commanders, mechanics, Rejectors, or medical staff, some people from every department ultimately chose not to board," a staff officer beside him reported in a low voice.
"I know." Wen Jifei nodded with a heavy expression, for he himself had been watching it all unfold.
"No matter what, they refused to come aboard. They insisted on staying. Nothing we said could persuade them, and some even cut off communications entirely..." the staff officer tried to explain.
Before he could finish, however, Wen Jifei cut him off. "I know." The same words were repeated once more by Second Lieutenant Wen.
For Wen Jifei understood them. Deep down, he knew what they were thinking and why they were adamant about staying behind. They... couldn't bear to leave, and even less could they accept it.
So many people, so many airships, and so many supplies had to be left behind here.
And Mars was so vast.
And so they refused to believe—refused to accept—that among all the veterans and other combat logistics personnel staying behind, not a single one would survive in the end.
That was why they wanted to stay as well.
Staying behind meant an overwhelming probability of death, but that didn't matter. What if someone lived?
If they did, perhaps they could treat an injured soldier. Perhaps they could repair a crippled airship. Perhaps they could direct an escape and go into hiding. Perhaps one day in the future, they could re-establish contact and tell the Blue Star: there are still people alive here.
The staff officer seemed to want to say something more.
Wen Jifei raised a hand and cut him off.
Then, Wen Jifei forced himself to straighten up. Grabbing the communicator at his chest, he switched to the battlefield command frequency and did his best to keep his voice clear and steady as he began issuing evacuation-related orders.
Now that the situation on the Martian battlefield had deteriorated to this point, the order for the high-end combat power to evacuate had to be given. Otherwise, all the sacrifices and struggles would lose their value and meaning.
It was difficult. The difficulty lay in the fact that this time, humanity's stronger warriors would have to abandon their comparatively weaker comrades-in-arms—the venerable seniors decorated with distinguished merits—leaving them to use their lives to hold off an irresistible, mighty enemy while they themselves fled to survive.
Wen Jifei did not know if this was the first time such a thing had happened in Azure's history, but for him, Han Qingyu, and the others, they had never seen it, and there had never been a precedent.
Due to the unique nature of source energy warfare, everything they had witnessed and done themselves over the years had seen the allied human forces led by high-end combat power, shouldering the burden of every brutal battlefield and carrying the destiny and hope of all mankind.
Therefore, today's order for the high-end combatants to evacuate would undoubtedly be the most difficult, humiliating, and agonizing battlefield directive Wen Jifei had ever issued since enlisting.
This agony would perhaps accompany him for the rest of his life.
"...Arrangements complete. Execute." Wen Jifei concluded the broadcast of orders and finalized the battlefield dispositions. His hand loosened numbly and limply, letting the communicator drop back against his chest.
He paused to think, then took hold of the communicator once more and slowly added, "The veterans said: please do not let their sacrifice be in vain. Also, you must find the remnant bone and recover humanity's hope. This vengeance for Mars—you must be the ones to avenge it. You must."
Silence.
Silence.
There should have been a succession of acknowledgments over the communicator, but the silence dragged on, until...
"Hahaha! That's right! You must!" a veteran commander replied with hearty laughter, before snarling savagely, "We're not afraid of waiting a little longer, but you must come back! When you make offerings, make them in blood! I want enough Great Spike blood poured out here to farm the damn dirt... Tell Han Qingyu to remember: take Puta'er's head as the offering!"
...
Nothing on the battlefield paused; the brutal slaughter raged on without interruption. All Wen Jifei could do now, aside from monitoring the airships' power readouts, was wait.
While he waited, he kept watch over the battlefield, flinching not from the carnage and the purgatorial scenes, keeping his communicator open so that every sound from the fighting could be clearly transmitted and seared into his mind.
Boom! The crash of the four-sided column sword—that was the sound of death. Death, as it turned out, could have a sound. Down on the surface battlefield, virtually every second saw dozens, even hundreds of human soldiers fall.
It seemed Puta'er had indeed lost its target amid the chaos, yet it continued searching. As it advanced, each seemingly casual strike wiped out an entire zone, leaving behind ground littered with broken corpses.
Even though the energy shield around its body was gone, there was still no force on the entire battlefield that could threaten it.
No human airship pilot could manage to ram it under the threat of that giant four-sided column sword.
In the sky, the airship fleet's collisions and desperate skirmishes continued unabated.
Within Wen Jifei's line of sight, a human airship suddenly swung its bow around and surged straight toward the Great Spike super dreadnought.
Throughout the battle, that monstrosity had been continuously launching drop pods, airdropping Great Spikes onto the field while maintaining a steady forward cruise. Its speed didn't appear especially fast, but because it met with absolutely no obstruction, it was now on the verge of bearing down directly over the Expeditionary Force's positions.
Hum! The doomed human airship slammed into the flank of the Great Spike dreadnought. Surprisingly, no sound of crash or splintering emerged, only a ripple of energy fluctuations.
Immediately afterward, the human airship broke apart, snapping into two halves that plummeted straight toward the ground.
Clearly, the Great Spike super dreadnought possessed an outer perimeter of source energy shielding. Wen Jifei had no choice but to order an immediate halt to all ramming and attacks directed at it.
This meant it would soon loom over the Expeditionary Force's positions.
By this time, a portion of humanity's Super-tier combatants had successfully withdrawn to the perimeter of the battlefield and closed in toward the airship position. Yet Han Qingyu and the others had still not emerged.
From Wen Jifei's open communicator, faint weeping suddenly filtered through. In truth, perhaps the sound was not sudden at all, but had been there all along, simply unnoticed until now.
Someone was crying—choked-back sobs and whimpers, not just from one or two people...
Perhaps they were leaders of medical teams, perhaps a Super who had retreated to the battlefield's edge, perhaps high-ranking Rejector officers, or staff officers and commanders.
For an army and its soldiers, this was exceedingly rare—something that shouldn't even occur in the midst of battle. But Wen Jifei did not stop it. He listened, saying nothing.
Then, Wen Jifei heard an agonizing, choked-back roar laced with weeping... That was unmistakably Yang Qingbai's voice.
Yang Qingbai and CA117 were still in the airspace above the battlefield.
Because he bore the mission of carrying Major Qing away, he could not make a ramming run now. Yet he had never pulled back either; he remained engaged in the aerial dogfight, piloting CA117 and straining to disrupt the formation and positioning of the Great Spike swarm, drawing their attention.
And so he was effectively watching with his own eyes as, one after another, human airships carrying pilots he had personally trained hurled themselves into enemy vessels, perishing in the endless sky.
Chapter 947