Never Retreat!

"Team A, on me! Teams B and C, flank them! Keep your eyes glued to your targets—even if you only get one dive, you better drop your damn bombs before you die!" "For the Alliance!" "Charge!" Bellowing his final orders, Mosquito unlocked the open-mic permissions for all squad members. The comms channel instantly exploded with the players' manic cheering. "Awoooo!" Fifty W-2 ground-attack aircraft banked their fuselages. Splitting into three formations along three vectors, they began their screaming dive toward the ground. Their 10mm autocannons spat tongues of flame. Muzzle flashes strobing from their spinning propellers, the aircraft looked like sky-borne lancers raining down a deluge of death. Caught completely off guard by the hail of bullets, the marauders advancing behind the tanks scattered wildly, fleeing for their lives toward the tree line ahead. At the same time, the tank commander leading the push for the fourth and fifth echelons bellowed with near-insane fury. "Forward! Full speed ahead!" "If anyone dares to fall back—" "I'll shoot him myself!" It was the only right choice. Faced with dive-bombing planes, halting or reversing was absolute suicide. Only by harnessing the downhill momentum to plunge into the pine forest did they stand any chance of survival. The ten tanks racing toward the front revved their engines to maximum horsepower. The vanguard marauders who were first to reach the woods hurled smoke grenades to screen the armor behind them. Smoke billowed across the battlefield. Simultaneously, the fifty quad anti-aircraft trucks accompanying the armored column spewed fire toward the sky. The machine guns mounted on these anti-aircraft trucks were of varying calibers. Although Dillon had originally planned to fit all fifty trucks with linked 12mm heavy machine guns, the Burning Corps' airborne assault had smashed several retrofitting production lines, leaving a large portion of the quad mounts equipped with puny 7mm pea-shooters. Even so, with fifty times four barrels opening up at once, the sheer volume of fire was formidable. Tracers streaked upward like snow drifting in reverse. In the blink of an eye, two gliders caught fire and plunged into the forest after hastily dumping their payloads. "Holy crap... these dogs actually figured out tracer rounds!" Two bullet holes punched clean through the cockpit, one nearly grazing his thigh. Mosquito cursed as he rolled his plane, jinking to evade the anti-aircraft gun locked onto his tail while searching for an opening to dive. The marauders had evidently learned their lesson from last time. This time, they had doped a fraction of their bullet tips with copper salts! Every so often, an eerie green tracer would arc up from the dirt into the heavens. Though limited production capacity and crude workmanship made the tracers faint and sparse, they were enough to help the gunners walk their fire onto their targets. "Screw it, I'm taking you with me!" With his cockpit shredded by a machine-gun burst, Luo Yu screamed wildly. Abandoning all evasion, he slammed the throttle to max and plunged straight toward the nearest tank. Seeing a plane screaming straight for him, the tank commander nearly pissed himself on the spot. He dropped back into the turret and shrieked at the driver to evade. It was too late. The riddled aircraft erupted into flames, but a split second before its battery detonated, a bomb detached from the belly. That massive bomb struck the Conqueror No. 10's turret almost simultaneously with the plane's blazing wreckage. An ear-splitting roar tore through the air, hurling blasted debris and chunks of earth dozens of meters into the sky. A quad anti-aircraft truck caught too close had its engine wrecked instantly. The driver and passenger had their internal organs turned to mush by the shockwave, blood pouring from their mouths and noses as they died. As for the tank? The ring connecting the turret to the hull had crumpled inward. While it hadn't been blown off or caught fire, the crew inside was undeniably dead. [Congratulations to player "Luo Yu" for scoring the first tank kill of this battle.] [As the player chose to make this achievement public, it will be recorded under the "Battle of Pine Valley" entry...] "Good brother! See you in three days!" Watching the text float across his VM, Mosquito observed a few seconds of silent tribute for his young apprentice. Then, taking a deep breath, he flicked on the dive siren and jammed the control stick forward. "I'm going all in too!" One plane after another banked around, plunging straight down. Not shot down. Diving. The piercing wail was like a trumpet of doom. Tanks and infantry alike scrambled desperately to scatter and hide. In the eyes of the marauders, the flame-spitting planes no longer looked like aircraft; they were the scythes of the Grim Reaper. The anti-aircraft net simply couldn't stop them. As soon as one plane blew apart, a second would burst through the gaps in the tracer fire, hurling itself heedlessly toward them... "Are they insane?!" Watching the waves of attack planes throw themselves down one after another, Bear Fang stood on the northern ridge with sheer terror written across his face. In just a few short minutes, five tanks were wrecked, while the remaining five fled wildly into the pine woods. Though they had temporarily evaded the skyward threat, they had backed themselves into a grim stalemate. Casualties weren't limited to the Conqueror No. 10s; the quad anti-aircraft trucks suffered heavily as well. The blood-crazed pilots no longer cared only about tanks, diving on every target they could reach. Suicidal dives, down to the last man! Dillon's brow furrowed tightly. More than the enemy's reckless aggression, what troubled him was their utterly bizarre tactical choice. To be frank, when the rain had stopped earlier, his heart had skipped a beat. Because he had anticipated that the enemy pilots wouldn't sortie in a torrential storm, his anti-aircraft assets had been dispersed across the northern ridge to wait for opportunities. Had those planes targeted the seventeen tanks of the first, second, and third echelons, the anti-aircraft units stationed two kilometers away would have had a hard time mounting an effective deterrent, and his side would have suffered horrific losses. Dillon figured that if he were commanding their air force, he would have ordered them to hunt the immobilized tanks that had thrown tracks first, then withdraw before the anti-aircraft trucks arrived to prepare for a second wave. And yet... The New Alliance's aircraft had defied all common sense, recklessly concentrating all their firepower on the moving fourth and fifth echelons. They had practically flown straight into the teeth of the anti-aircraft trucks. This moth-to-a-flame charge had yielded minimal tactical return; many planes were shredded before they even finished their dives. Although Dillon had lost several anti-aircraft trucks, compared to his precious tanks, the trade was negligible. As long as the New Alliance's planes were wiped out, what did it matter if all his anti-aircraft trucks were destroyed? Those guns existed solely to kill planes in the first place... Dillon scowled. "What on earth are they planning?" Tumen had a rough idea of what his superior was thinking. After a moment of contemplation, he offered, "Perhaps they felt the disabled tanks posed no threat? Since the enemy spotted our deployment, they must have deduced our intent. Once our fourth and fifth echelons rendezvous with the first and focus on a single point, they'll inevitably punch a hole through their line." "That's plausible, but it still doesn't add up," Dillon said darkly. "Compared to the fourth and fifth echelons, the second and third echelons flanking the sides are clearly the bigger threat. Standing in their shoes, Pine Valley is doomed to fall. Whittling down as many of our tanks as possible is the optimal move." Unless... The New Alliance actually believed they could hold the line with a few lousy trenches. Dillon sneered. Greedy bastards. They're going to choke on what they bit off! Bear Fang stood nearby listening blankly, completely lost. Optimal move? What the hell was that? The enemy planes were almost completely wiped out! With so many men storming a single hill, they could drown the defenders in spit alone! Dillon raised his binoculars to observe the southern ridge. Although his assault forces were taking severe casualties under the defensive machine-gun fire, the enemy was clearly bleeding just as hard. Alliance defenders were constantly shredded by machine guns or blown to bits by the 100mm tank cannons. The New Alliance soldiers had dragged out recoilless rifles, but ordinary armor-piercing shells couldn't penetrate the frontal armor of a Conqueror No. 10; they couldn't even slow its advance for a second. Watching sparks spray off the tank's hull with only twenty meters separating it from the trench, Dillon's lips curled into a cold smirk. "It's over." Once his infantry swarmed into the trenches behind the armor, what awaited the defenders would be an absolute slaughter! Dillon was just about to lower his binoculars when a swarm of black silhouettes suddenly filled his field of vision. Not one silhouette—a cloud of them. Hexacopter drones shot straight up from the trenches, hovered for a fraction of a second, and then darted forward like arrows loosed from a bow. The moment he recognized what they were, Dillon's pupils shrank, an ominous dread sinking into his gut. As if validating his fears, the drones seemed to have eyes of their own, swarming down upon the tanks both on the slope and below it. The tank nearest the trench took the brunt of the assault. Its coaxial machine gun couldn't track the nimble drones in time, especially at such point-blank range. One of the drones ducked effortlessly under the belly of the tank. The crew inside hadn't even realized what was happening. Neither had the marauders advancing alongside it. Just as they crouched down to see what had scurried under the chassis, a blinding glare erupted before their eyes. Before anyone could react, a blistering shockwave slammed into them like a sledgehammer. Mutilated corpses and shreds of flesh were hurled through the air like broken kites amidst the billowing fire and smoke. Scalding blood sprayed all over the marauders crouching further down the slope. The men pinned to the dirt froze in sheer terror, forgetting entirely to advance. "What the hell is that thing?!" With his chin pressed hard against the mud, Wabu peered up the slope with one eye, his face pale with dread, not even flinching as clods of dirt and gravel peppered his scalp. All he had seen was a dark blur skimming the ground, darting straight under the chassis of the tank that had nearly reached the lip of the trench. Then came the deafening blast and a towering pillar of fire, swallowing the tank and the entire squad behind it whole... The blown turret and road wheels rolled down the slope together. A massive crater was blasted beneath where the tank had stood, exposing the reinforced wooden pilings of the defensive works. The drones didn't pause. A second, a third... each plunged toward the vulnerable underbellies of the Conqueror No. 10s. Within moments, three more tanks were disemboweled. Over a hundred multi-rotor drones buzzed through the air, the whine of their blades sounding like an enraged swarm of hornets. "Use the machine guns!" "Shoot those damn drones down!" "Shoot them or we're all dead!" Watching the armored spearhead on the right flank practically obliterated, Bagro, commanding from the first echelon, glared with eyes bloodshot to the bursting point. The coaxial machine guns of seven tanks fired simultaneously, joined by the marauders around them unleashing submachine guns, assault rifles, and light machine guns to knit a dense curtain of lead. Had they been quad anti-aircraft guns, they might have stood a chance of swatting the small drones out of the air. Expecting a few scattered rifles to intercept high-speed drones amid churning dust and whistling bullets, however, was pure fantasy. Not to mention that directly between them and the drones were their own comrades pinned down mid-slope... The right armored prong was pulverized. Next came the left. In the span of a few breaths, nearly ten tanks were reduced to burning scrap, and the infantry charging behind them suffered catastrophic casualties. In the blink of an eye, of the three armored spearheads thrusting at the New Alliance's line, only the center remained. And its legs had already been broken. Seeing the drone swarm descending upon him, Bagro wasted no time scrambling out of his tank, clawing and rolling toward the woods behind him. Almost at the same instant, a searing blast wave and shrapnel slammed into his back. Before he could even grunt, he blacked out... The seven tanks of the first echelon were wiped out in rapid succession, without even a chance to flee. Realizing disaster had struck, the tanks of the fourth and fifth echelons tried to pull back. But tracks could never outrun drones, especially when mired in the pine woods. The retreating armor was swiftly overtaken. Fireballs ripped through the forest, scattering the marauder infantry in utter panic. In the chaos, beside those torn apart by explosions, countless men were cut down by stray bullets from their own panicked comrades' wild firing... Far off on the northern ridge. The binoculars slipped from Dillon's grip. Staring out across the smoke-choked battlefield and the iron coffins reduced to burning scrap, the cold composure on his face gave way to creeping despair. Twenty-seven tanks... wiped out. More than half of the fifty anti-aircraft trucks destroyed, and the infantry advancing with the armor decimated beyond count. The losses in this battle had far exceeded his worst nightmares! The only silver lining was that all fifty enemy gliders had been destroyed, and the drone swarm appeared exhausted—assuming that was the full extent of the New Alliance's reserves. "...What do we do now?" Tumen asked nervously, staring at his commander. His Adam's apple bobbed as Dillon forced himself to regain his composure. "Have the artillery and the Third Thousand-Man Unit prepare... The New Alliance's resistance is on its last legs. We cannot let the sacrifices of our vanguard go to waste." Looked at another way, the enemy had played every card in their hand. Heavy as his casualties were, the defenders couldn't be faring much better! His voice trembled as he gave the order. "At the very least, we must take that ridge!" "Yes..." Tumen swallowed hard, stiffly nodding his head. Even when they had fought against the Great Rift Valley in the north, he had never seen such a terrifying expression on this man's face. Even then, when their situation had been far more desperate than it was today... ... Up on the New Alliance position. Looking down at the carnage strewn across the valley, Construction Site Youth and Brick, blood streaming from his forehead, slammed his fist excitedly onto the trench parapet. "Hahaha! Beautifully done!" With nearly twenty points of Strength, the blow nearly cracked the timber support. A shame, really. In an entrenched firefight under a torrential storm of lead, high Strength didn't count for much. Put him in an empty-handed brawl, and he could take down an entire squad by himself. Crouched beside him, Washing Machine Hairwash sighed with satisfaction. "Man, that felt amazing." Six months ago when they fought the Bone Chewers, the only heavy gear they had were Mosquito's Flying Cannons and the 20mm Lance anti-tank rifles from Factory 81. Their firepower had been totally outmatched by natives wielding Legion leftovers. The single tank they managed to destroy back then took the cover of a blizzard and the chain detonation of a metallic hydrogen battery to pull off by sheer luck. Now look at them—machine guns chattering nonstop, ground drone swarms surging en masse, propeller planes dive-bombing from the sky, and 100mm artillery pounding away in the rear... They had never fought such an affluent battle! "Damn it, you guys had fun, but I nearly passed out..." Indebted Big Eye muttered, crawling out of a bomb shelter with his headset on, shaking his throbbing head. Piloting five drones at once had placed a massive strain on his brain. He felt like he had grown five sets of eyes and thirty hands—and worst of all, they were all attached in different places. Controlling omnidirectional hexacopter drones was infinitely harder than operating four-legged Creepers. Even with the operating system Xiao Qi designed to streamline the controls, pulling it off without serious mental capacity was nearly impossible. At the moment, however, nobody noticed his grumbling. For one, everyone's ears were ringing from the artillery blasts; for another, the entire trench line was in a state of wild jubilation. Unless you shouted at the top of your lungs, no one could hear a word anyway. "All twenty-seven tanks destroyed, and the marauders below the ridge are basically wiped out..." Edge Slacker said, clutching his binoculars with excitement blazing across his face. "Holy crap, we just annihilated at least an entire thousand-man unit!" Plus half an armored battalion! At this point, whether they held the ridge no longer mattered. Even if the Fang clan took the southern height of Pine Valley, having lost all their armor, they were completely stripped of the capability to attack Qingshi County. Unless they were willing to throw in nearly ten thousand men and swallow casualties several or even a dozen times worse. And yet... Even if their chieftain had that kind of resolve, would those cowardly marauders have the guts to follow? High casualties inevitably bred high war-weariness. At the end of the day, they weren't mass-produced clones with three-year lifespans, nor had they undergone black-tech psychological neutering. Their only reason for fighting was plunder. The only glue holding a pack of undisciplined scum together was an unbroken string of victories and spoils. Once the momentum halted, that seemingly solid fortress would crumble into loose sand in no time... A prompt flashed across the VM screen strapped to his forearm. [Quest: Hold the Southern Position of Pine Valley (Completed)] [Briefing: Soldiers, with flesh and blood you have halted the Fang clan's armor and shattered their arrogant designs! Now our enemies have lost all their tanks; stripped of their armor, they are like jackals with their fangs pulled, powerless to reach for our lands again. You have gloriously fulfilled your mission. The New Alliance's counteroffensive will begin in two hours. Please fall back to the rear to rest and regroup...] [Side Quest 1 (Optional): Destroy supplies and proceed to the evacuation point to rest and regroup.] [Reward: "Silver Shield" Medal; war score determined by number of survivors.] [Side Quest 2 (Optional): Fight to the bitter end.] [Reward: "Gold Shield" Medal; war score determined by kill count.] Looking at the text pulsing on his VM screen, Edge Slacker cracked a dry grin. Come to think of it, he had already earned a Silver Shield. No one had unlocked the Gold Shield achievement yet. Battle lust ignited in his eyes. Edge Slacker switched his comms to the command channel and shouted, "All squads, report casualties!" A chorus of replies echoed through the earpiece. "Squad A1 has three left! Seven KIA!" "Squad A2 has four left, six down!" "..." Out of thirty squads across three groups, ten were wiped out completely, and most of the rest were far below strength. During the previous firefights, the ridge had been a meat grinder. When the front line fell, the men in the bomb shelters pushed forward immediately. The mortar crew had cycled through three shifts of operators alone, and mangled corpses littered the ground beside many of the machine-gun nests. Some were enemies; some were their own. "Only a hundred and two left..." After tallying the headcount, Edge Slacker clicked his tongue. The corps had started with three hundred men. A hundred and ninety-eight were gone—just two short of losing two-thirds of their strength. Many of the survivors were clinging on by a thread. Constitution-type players, for instance, wouldn't drop dead even with their guts spilling out; they could literally shove them back in and keep pulling the trigger. "This really did turn into a suicide squad..." Musing over their remaining supplies, Edge Slacker paused, switched to the global voice channel, and climbed onto the earthen mound above a bomb shelter. Facing his brothers across the corps, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Brothers! Our mission is accomplished!" "Headquarters gave us two options. One: abandon the position, blow the supplies, and fall back to the evac point to regroup." "Or—" He paused, sweeping his eyes over his comrades. "Fight to the bitter end!" The question was almost superfluous... The rear was ten kilometers away. Who would bother running all that way on two legs when dying was faster? Death penalty? Just three days in time-out. Genetic sequence progress? The EXP from one battle wouldn't be enough to level up anyway. Wasteland OL was fundamentally different from traditional MMORPGs; level wasn't everything. In fact, it was only a tiny fraction of the game. Contribution points, silver coins, regional reputation, profession tiers, skill proficiencies... even hidden NPC favorability could widen the gap in combat capability. Beyond raw character stats, this near-one-hundred-percent realistic virtual world offered far better things to chase. Players obsessed with survival rates wouldn't have stood here in the first place. And since they had chosen to stand on the same firing line, it was because they shared the exact same mindset. They held an identical understanding of this game: Death! That was the natural state of this world! "Retreat, my ass! Whoever wants to run can run!" Someone shouted it first, and within moments, the entire trench erupted in roaring agreement. Every pair of eyes burned with battle lust; not a single soul showed hesitation, much less fear. "Let's finish these bastards!" "Never retreat!" "To the death!" "Offer our loyalty to the Administrator!" "Wait, did you just say 'loyalty'?!" "Awoooo!" One after another, the players strapped on gas masks and fixed bayonets to their rifles. Those without rifles drew entrenching shovels, planting them within easy reach. The thunderous roar echoed across the ridge, sending a chill through the two thousand marauders advancing through the pine forest. Commanding from the front, Bear Fang looked up toward the battered height plowed by artillery fire, an inexplicable dread creeping into his heart. The enemy was clearly at the end of their rope. With two thousand men behind him, they could drown them in spit alone... Glancing at the wing fragment embedded in the mud, then at the burning tank hulks and mangled corpses scattered nearby, the burly man couldn't help muttering, "What the hell are those gophers screaming about..." The confidant at his side swallowed nervously. "I-I don't know..." He couldn't understand what they were shouting, and he had no doubt they would eventually overrun that scarred hill. Yet his gut told him those men would never let them take it easily... A hundred dead? Two hundred? Or far more corpses left behind... No matter what, this was going to be a bloodbath!