Seventeen human source energy airships had ultimately launched from the positions. Together with CA117, which had yet to rejoin the formation, and the space mothership Zenith Blade along with its two escort vessels—concealed in the rear long before the battle began against the threat of sudden annihilation—they totaled twenty-one craft.
This was the scale of the fleet with which the Expeditionary Force was about to embark on its journey home, or rather, begin its flight for survival. Compared to the grand armada of sixty-six ships that had arrived, forty-five human vessels were left behind on the Martian battlefield.
Then there was the total number of personnel aboard the homeward-bound ships: 5,238. Out of a hundred-thousand-strong Martian Expeditionary Force, only about one in twenty had ultimately set foot on the path home.
Without question, this was the campaign with the highest casualty rate humanity had suffered since entering the era of open warfare.
And the grim reality was that their flight had only just begun. No one knew how many ships or how many souls would actually complete this journey home.
Down on the Martian surface, as the human evacuation fleet finally finished its climb and accelerated away from the dead planet, an enormous cheer suddenly erupted from the brutal battlefield below.
The cheers surged like a tide across the entire front. Those men and women who could not leave shouted with fervor as though they had already won, raising their long blades high to wave farewell.
At the same time, an abnormal stir occurred. Amid Puta'er's berserk howl, nearly every Great Spike across the ground battlefield found a momentary gap in the fighting to raise its head toward the distant sky, looking toward the human fleet speeding away.
The few enemy craft remaining in the air were all moving, turning around. Down on the surface, the Great Spike airships that had dived to the ground earlier without being destroyed were stirring as well, preparing to launch.
"Terrible call! You made a wrong decision, Second Lieutenant Wen!" In the entire course of the Mars expedition, this was likely the first time General Yergana had stated so unequivocally that Wen Jifei was in the wrong.
His mistake lay in that final order of his, which had allowed Puta'er to see Han Qingyu and the others boarding the Doomsday Great Wall.
"I know," Wen Jifei replied through the communicator, his tone noticeably, unnervingly calm.
As they spoke, both commanders of the Expeditionary Force, aboard their respective flagships, mirrored each other almost perfectly, standing before their observation scopes and watching intently as developments shifted on the battlefield below.
"They're going to pursue at once," General Yergana said displeasedly.
"Yes. I see it," Wen Jifei replied.
"Look at that Puta'er! Its speed—it... it—!" General Yergana did not finish his sentence. Overwhelming shock and panic tempted him to abandon words and communicate directly through eye contact with Wen Jifei, but when he turned his head, the only eyes he could meet were those of the staff officer beside him.
Yet that staff officer, who could also see the view through the observation scope, gave no timely response to his superior. He stood rigid, his expression vacant with dread and his eyes stricken with horror, his entire body motionless save for the involuntary trembling of his fingertips.
It was fear—an undeniable fear striking straight into the heart and soul—along with an even greater shock, and the profound despair unfurling from it.
Because at this very moment, they were finally seeing for the first time just how terrifying and mighty a Great Spike Puta'er was when fully enraged, erupting into an all-out burst to launch an assault.
In other words, the hopelessly overwhelming power of Puta'er that everyone had witnessed on the battlefield earlier was still far from its limit, far from its true peak explosive combat strength.
It was giving chase. From the very second it saw the human fleet take flight, it had already begun moving. The monstrosity was actually using its legs to pursue a fleet already airborne and accelerating—chasing after a source energy space mothership on foot.
In this state of extreme exertion, layered energies transformed into arcs of searing lightning, erupting and coiling around Puta'er's nearly hundred-meter-tall colossal body.
Its straight-line sprint had ended. It actually... leapt.
Its immense frame shot diagonally upward through the air at an unimaginable speed. Mid-ascent, its entire body leaned back, both hands gripping a four-edged greatsword nearly a hundred meters long, drawing it from behind its head to slash forward and upward.
Slicing savagely toward the Doomsday Great Wall, which was already a thousand meters high in the sky.
At the same time, the super dreadnought—vast as a space fortress—was positioned not far behind it, already lifting its bow to join the pursuit.
"Second Lieutenant Wen! You may have made the greatest mistake in human history." When General Yergana spoke again, aside from his first few words, his tone was not particularly heated. It held only gloom, helplessness, and defeat.
Because by sight alone, General Yergana had already judged that the Doomsday Great Wall would be struck. Even if the four-edged greatsword missed, the mothership would still be struck by the energy detonating beyond the blade.
Could the Doomsday Great Wall evade or withstand it? The answer was absolutely not.
"I know," Wen Jifei replied once more with those same two words. By this point, the command he had given at the final moment—that decision—could beyond all doubt be deemed a mistake.
It had undoubtedly been an impulsive decision.
In that moment, Wen Jifei had suddenly wished for the Great Spike fleet to chase them, wished for Puta'er to chase them. That way, even if the number of Great Spikes left on Mars remained vast, as long as someone could fight desperately to slay the remaining Daie-class Great Spikes, a portion of the eighty thousand people left behind on Mars would have a chance to survive.
With no time to hesitate or deliberate, he had simply acted.
And then, Puta'er truly did pursue immediately, and the entire Great Spike fleet shifted into pursuit posture as well.
Truth be told, even if they hadn't let Puta'er see Han Qingyu and the others boarding, the aliens likely would have pursued the evacuation fleet anyway. It just wouldn't have happened so swiftly, or in such overwhelming numbers; Puta'er might not have personally pursued at once; an all-out pursuit might only have unfolded after they finished slaughtering the battlefield.
Had that been the case, the Expeditionary Fleet's odds of successfully escaping would undoubtedly have been much higher.
In this equation, time was everything.
What Wen Jifei had done amounted to voluntarily relinquishing the chance for the optimal scenario, refusing to take that "time"—time that would have to be purchased with the lives of the thirty to forty thousand people who might still be alive on the Martian battlefield.
Just moments ago, they had already traded lives for time. The deaths of another forty thousand had bought the withdrawal of humanity's peak combatants from the battlefield, bought Major Qing's boarding, bought the evacuation fleet's successful ascent.
So call it softheartedness, call it stupidity—Wen Jifei could not make that trade again.
And so, in that moment, when he realized he held the authority and the opportunity to choose, he had made that call.
Now, reality had proven him wrong. Wen Jifei had anticipated that Puta'er and its fleet would give chase immediately—he had even hoped for it. But he had never anticipated that Puta'er's peak explosive burst would be so terrifyingly powerful that it could leap straight from the ground into the sky to strike the Doomsday Great Wall.
Only at this moment did Wen Jifei suddenly recall the battle at the South Pole, where a heavily wounded Puta'er had stood suspended in the air for an extended time... The thing was so powerful it might as well be capable of flight.
"I was wrong," Wen Jifei admitted to himself.
Yet if you were to ask if he regretted it? Wen Jifei asked himself once. "Maybe. Hard to say."
"What?!" General Yergana had caught the sound of his muttering, but unable to make it out, he demanded loudly.
"I said, humans don't always make the right decision," Wen Jifei answered.
The words sounded like an excuse, yet the truth was perhaps just as Wen Jifei said.
Humans—this unique, peculiar animal—on one hand tended to weigh gains and losses meticulously, striving for what was correct, yet on the other hand, even after seeing gains and losses clearly, did not always make the most correct decision.
Chapter 950