Because of this sentence, the spirits of everyone on the entire frequency band were lifted.
Yet, no one was in a rush to voice a follow-up opinion.
Once a deduction found support—even just a sliver of it—what this meeting had to discuss next was a decision. A decision that, if wrong, would ruin everything.
It was only after an interval of some ten to twenty seconds that Chairman Kemore ventured to speak: "Then..."
"We proceed in this direction of deduction, act as covertly as possible, withdraw all available search forces from the air, and commit every last one of them to the lunar surface... Dig!"
The leader of the Rejectors spoke, voicing what was, in truth, the strategic decision forming in the minds of nearly all core human leaders on the frequency band.
"Agreed. Dig," Xu Xiaohong said.
"Agreed," Wen Jifei said.
With that, humanity made a gamble of a bet, hands off the table.
This Azure core high-level conference soon came to an end.
Up until the very end, the meeting had not touched much on the specific tactical arrangements for the battlefield around the Moon, let alone concrete combat command.
Because those matters were no longer something a high-level conference could arrange and deploy, much less something the Elder Council could subsequently direct and control.
In the time that followed, it would be entrusted entirely to Wen Jifei, who was about to enter the battlefield, and Blue Star's twenty-four-hour Azure General Staff.
It was a wait filled with anxiety yet demanding patience, a wait inevitably rife with unease and doubt yet requiring unconditional trust.
About three hours later.
The Blue Star General Staff was waiting.
Flying at full speed under Yang Qingbai's piloting, the source energy airship CA117 finally drew near the outer perimeter of the lunar battlefield.
The warship halted momentarily in space, taking no action.
At close range, Wen Jifei listened to all the battlefield intelligence he could pick up, virtually without regard to communication clearance. Among the chatter were factual reports of combat situations, the sounds of source energy airships being ripped apart in various sectors, and the resolute roars and agonized groans of dying human soldiers...
"Has Chief of Staff Wen begun taking over the battlefield?" Chairman Kemore finally asked over the channel, unable to hold back any longer.
"Not yet..." a comms soldier standing before a large communications console turned his head and answered.
"We have it!" another comms soldier working before an adjacent console suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs. "Report! Chief of Staff Wen has cut into the lunar theater's supreme command frequency!"
"......!!!" A stir swept through the Azure General Staff, yet the commotion and shock were held inside; for the moment, no one made a sound.
Unlike the supreme command frequencies of past major battlefields, the supreme command frequency for this lunar campaign was a one-way broadcast channel.
Because this battlespace was simply too vast, the situation too complex, and there were far too many voices, Azure had deliberately established such a frequency for the supreme commander to issue decisive battlefield orders down to subordinate officers of every tier, and even to every single warship and soldier on the field.
Those who heard the orders had only to execute them, not respond.
If any of them truly had an exceptionally critical situation that had to be reported to the commander in a timely manner, it could be done on a secondary frequency.
"Chief of Staff Wen is issuing battlefield directives..."
The comms soldier began relaying Wen Jifei's transmission.
"First, starting from this moment, completely abandon the strategy currently prepared by our forces to intercept in clustered fleet formations."
"Second, disperse formations. In small clusters, pairs, or even as single ships, choose your own vector and timing to take the initiative and charge the Great Spike fleet..."
"An aggressive attack?!" This time, a high-ranking staff officer inside the Azure General Staff finally could not hold back his skepticism.
"If we do that, we completely lose our interception capability. If we want to reorganize later, it'll probably be very difficult to pull together again."
Inside the Azure staff room, someone raised the question with utmost caution.
However, the big shots present and on the classified channel remained silently listening; no one paid him any heed or gave him an answer.
The comms soldier continued to relay Wen Jifei's battlefield orders.
"Do not engage," the comms soldier recited. "All aggressive attacks are primarily aimed at demonstrating offensive intent and drawing the Great Spike ships' attention. Avoid actual combat as much as possible. For follow-up maneuvers, disperse on your own and initiate guerrilla tactics, taking self-preservation as the highest principle for autonomous flight across the battlefield."
"As long as Great Spike ships are pursuing you from behind or attempting to intercept you, you may choose any route and head anywhere. By that, I mean you may fly toward the edge of the universe, or flee and break away from the battlefield, and if there are no other viable routes available, you may even turn around and fly back over the Moon."
With that, Wen Jifei's first wave of directives had likely come to an end. The comms soldier paused momentarily, turning his head to look at the senior figures present.
"But if we do this, some of the Great Spikes' ships will definitely still push forward, breaking into the search zone and even reaching the airspace directly above the Moon..." the newly appointed chief of staff of the ANZAC Front said anxiously.
"Yes. What Chief of Staff Wen means is that we simply let them in. That is an unavoidable risk we must bear. Besides, this matter is inherently unavoidable—we have no ability to hold back Puta'er and its colossal dreadnought for long anyway," Xu Xiaohong said.
"Even if we don't give it up, we'll lose it all the same," Kemore, who was not present at the General Staff in person, said over the classified channel. "In truth, we have no capability for a frontal interception at all. No matter how resolutely we try, we won't last long in the end. Chief of Staff Wen's decision actually amounts to trading away a bit of delay time to preserve more of our living forces, while creating more complications for the Great Spike fleet."
"Yes. Furthermore, I suspect he has another consideration," the leader of the Rejectors, who was present in the room, added. "He is attempting to prevent that fully matured Puta'er from stepping in and launching wide-area attacks that could cause catastrophic mass casualties."
Among them, Wen Jifei was the only one who had witnessed that Puta'er unleash its power with his own eyes on Mars. He knew full well just how terrifying that thing's all-out attack was—not only to people, but equally destructive to source energy airships.
"Let me put it this way," Xu Xiaohong said. "A chaotic, perilous battlefield that is constantly shifting, extending, and expanding is, in Chief of Staff Wen's eyes, the only true situation that can buy humanity time and allow the search to continue. Under these helpless and powerless circumstances, it is already the most advantageous state of warfare for us."
"Choosing aggressive charges and guerrilla maneuvers is meant to disrupt and confuse the Great Spike fleet. After all, we actually hold the numerical advantage. At the same time, having friend and foe ships chaotically intertwined across the entire airspace helps prevent Puta'er from unleashing wide-area attacks that cause mass casualties, thereby preserving as much of our living forces as possible."
"Previously, our Azure mindset and strategy was to keep the enemy out at all costs, ensuring the search area for the remains remained absolutely 'clean' and safe, hoping against hope that we could find the remains before exhausting everything we had."
"Chief of Staff Wen's thinking, however, starts from one default premise: it is impossible for us to hold the entire search zone as we originally envisioned. Therefore, what he wants is not cleanliness and safety. He has taken the opposite tack—what he wants is chaos and danger across the entire battlefield."
"And the foundation and premise for all these decisions and choices is precisely the judgment we made earlier."
"Chief of Staff Wen is gambling. He is gambling that the Great Spike fleet is still looking for that satellite, and that Nikola is still looking for that satellite... We are the only ones who have deduced that the satellite crashed onto the lunar surface long ago, and that the sacred remains are already buried."
After speaking, Xu Xiaohong waited for a moment for feedback from the other end of the channel... None came. Left with no choice, the old man rephrased his thoughts into even simpler, more direct terms, explaining the logic and situation once again.
Yet before his voice had even faded—
"Right!" Kemore expressed his agreement.
Chapter 975