A Japanese Volunteer?

Inside a thirty-square-meter master bedroom, four monitors sat side by side on a folding table, their faint blue glow illuminating the faces of a man and a woman. The ashtray beside the table was overflowing, and the air was thick with the acrid stench of cigarette smoke. They were core members of KillNet: Lord and Mira. A chime rang through the speakers as an anonymous email landed in Mira's personal inbox. She clicked it open to check, only to find a guide detailing how to hack into the Ukrainian drone unit's control system in the industrial district of eastern Bakhmut, complete with data link addresses. Her expression shifted dramatically, a sharp surge of alarm erupting in her chest—because this meant their location had been compromised. Just as she prepared to trace the sender, another message popped up containing only a single sentence: *Don't get the wrong idea—I'm friendly!* *Friendly?* Mira's brow furrowed tightly. Her fingers danced across the keyboard as streams of green code flashed across the screen in an attempt to trace the IP address. Yet the sender's technical skills were visibly far superior to hers; she couldn't find a trace. "Damn it! Who the hell is this guy?" Mira slammed her fist onto the desk, cursing in humiliation and rage. Lord flinched beside her, tucking his head into his shoulders before turning to ask, "What's wrong, babe?" "Some hacker claiming to be on our side just sent me a tutorial on how to attack the Ukrainian drone control system in Bakhmut! See for yourself!" "A friendly hacker?" Lord froze for a few seconds, staring at the screen in disbelief. Once he finished reading, he was thoroughly stunned. The sender's technical prowess far outstripped his and Mira's combined, and the person truly was an ally—if they had wanted to compromise them, it wouldn't have taken any effort at all. Mira grumbled in frustration, "Is this guy out of his mind? Why didn't he just do it himself?" Lord scratched his head vigorously, equally baffled as to why the stranger hadn't carried it out personally. Adjusting his glasses—whose lenses were thick as beer bottles—he ventured a guess, "Maybe he just didn't want to take the heat! Let me test the method and see if we can hijack their drone control system." With that, Lord used the link addresses provided in the email and began infiltrating the Ukrainian drone control network. He smoothly intercepted packets, cracked the frequency-hopping patterns, altered the firmware, planted backdoors, and hijacked the Starlink data links. "Wait, it actually works? This... Mira, should we keep going?" He stared at the display in astonishment—a mix of pleasant surprise, anxiety, and rising anticipation. Mira pulled out a Marlboro, lit it, took two deep drags, thought for a dozen seconds, and said in a low voice, "Keep going!" Lord licked his lips and struck the Enter key with force. In the control center of the 4th FPV Strike Platoon in Bakhmut, every monitor flickered violently. The red icons marking the drones danced erratically across the screens as flight paths crisscrossed in total chaos. Mice locked up, keyboards refused to register a single keystroke, unfamiliar administrator windows popped up, and red warning banners flooded the screens, declaring that the system had been overridden. Immediately after, the main display was overtaken by the Russian flag, accompanied by flashing red text: *Ukrainian whelps, your drones belong to me now. Victory belongs to Russia! Glory to Russia!* At the very same moment, the control systems of three drone strike platoons and two drone detachments across Bakhmut's eastern industrial district were all hijacked by Lord. On the front line, over a hundred drones banked around and hurtled straight into Ukrainian positions. The bomb shelter fell deathly quiet. Everyone froze in place like wooden statues before collective hysteria detonated into a furious barrage of curses. "Fuck! Shameless Russian bastards! Cyka blyat!" "Damn it! Retaliation! We need to hit them back hard!" "Yob tvoyu mat'! It has to be Russian GRU! Those rotten sons of bitches! Sir, we have to retaliate—give them hell!" Vasily's face darkened. He raised a hand to signal for silence, then drew out his encrypted individual radio to report to the 93rd Brigade command. *** Inside the Laboratory Building. Chen Ge had no idea that the Ukrainian drone units in this industrial zone had just been wiped out. He was entirely focused on the deadly firefight at hand. A lion uses all its might even when hunting a rabbit. Tremendous as his strength was, he remained cautious and steady, reminding himself every single day never to grow careless. On the battlefield, there was no such thing as *probably dead*—only confirmed kills! Lightbulb pulled a magazine with a 5.45mm bullet embedded in it from his quick-draw chest pouch, tossed it aside, glanced out the window, and cursed viciously, "Motherfucker, drones are the most loathsome invention of modern times!" "Cut the chatter. I'll watch for drones—focus on the fight!" Chen Ge warned them from his crouch beside the breach in the wall. Listening intently, he leaned his rifle out and traded shots with the Ukrainian troops at the opening diagonally across from them. The Ukrainian defenders had clearly deduced there were only five attackers. They held their ground by the breached wall, suppressing them with heavy fire, hurling volleys of grenades, and attempting to finish them off with tandem and thermobaric warheads from RPGs. They couldn't afford a war of attrition. Dense gunfire and explosions echoed from Hacksaw and Wild Boar's direction; casualties over there were mounting. Chen Ge grabbed two RG-60TB grenades from his pouch, signaled to Big Bear and the others, pulled the pins, and hurled them across. *Boom!* Two Ukrainian machine gunners beside the breach were blasted into the air. Chen Ge leaned out and expertly pitched the second grenade directly through the opening. The dozen or so Ukrainian soldiers inside nearly leaped out of their skins, scrambling frantically in all directions. "Grenade! Scatter! Take cover!" The lethal power of the RG-60TB in an enclosed room was terrifying beyond question. Of the seventeen Ukrainian soldiers inside, only the seven huddled behind heavy machinery emerged unharmed; the other ten were killed or maimed on the spot. Before the survivors could even react, Chen Ge appeared at the edge of the breach and threw two more RGN grenades. The RGN offensive grenade had earned the nickname "impact popper." Fitted with an impact fuze, it armed 1.8 seconds after the pin was pulled, exploding upon striking ground, walls, or flesh, with a backup self-destruct timer set to 3.2 to 4.2 seconds. Spherical and roughly the size of an apple, it functioned like an oversized pop-snapper. It also had a heavier, more destructive defensive twin, the RGO, ideal for holding positions, blocking intersections, or dropping from drones to unleash a torrential storm of steel fragments with maximum area-denial effect. One of the grenades struck a Ukrainian soldier square on his helmet. The resulting scene was so gruesome Chen Ge could hardly bear to watch. *Boom!* The helmeted head blew apart as fragments shot out at speeds up to 1,200 meters per second. Three nearby Ukrainian soldiers were knocked off their feet. One had his carotid artery severed by shrapnel, crimson blood spurting forth like a fountain. Dropping his rifle, he clutched desperately at his throat, but the wound was impossible to stem; after a few convulsive jerks, he went still. The second RGN struck an iron table and detonated. A Ukrainian soldier crouching behind it had his forehead drilled through by fragments, brain matter splattering across the floor. Chen Ge fell back the moment the grenades left his hands. Moving in seamless coordination, Big Bear stepped up with his PKP to hose the interior with suppressive fire, while Lightbulb, Manhole Cover, and Night Cat simultaneously pulled the pins on their RGO grenades and hurled them through. The four pulled back into cover. *Boom! Boom! Boom!* In under ten seconds, all seventeen Ukrainian soldiers had been neutralized. This was the final room on the right side of the south corridor. Stepping past the corpses, Chen Ge moved briskly to the doorway and peered halfway around the frame toward the room across the hall. A Ukrainian soldier wearing MultiCam fatigues and a high-cut FAST helmet leaned his head out from the opposite doorframe at the exact same moment. One glance was all it took—this was an enemy marked for death! *Rat-tat-tat!* The enemy sprayed a burst across the hall. Chen Ge calmly drew his head back as shattered brick chips sprayed against his goggles. An abrasive, raspy curse reached his ears. "*Kuso yarō! Roketto ranchā o yokose!*" ??? Japanese? A foreign volunteer? Chen Ge's pupils contracted sharply. It was as if a switch had been flipped inside him; his blood surged to a boil in an instant, his gaze turning icy, ruthless, and intensely combative. "Rocket launcher! Give me the fucking rocket launcher!"