The Alliance's Pilots Bring Bodyguards?!

Falcon City. Atop the hundred-meter-tall "river embankment," soldiers of the Falcon Kingdom were crouched behind bunkers on high alert. Several days earlier, the Alliance had announced that they would bomb Falcon City tonight, yet they had not disclosed which direction the air raid would come from. In the entire Falcon City, there were only thirty-two anti-aircraft guns. Eight of them had been redeployed to the royal palace in the center of the city, leaving just twenty-four to cover the continuous, tens-of-kilometers-long colossal alloy wall. One could easily imagine how thin the firepower was spread. The officer in charge of defending the southeastern sector was Horete. Just a month ago, he had still been a decurion in the King's Royal Guard. However, with the dire situation on the front lines, a large number of Retinue Army officers had been transferred into the ranks of the Legion's regulars. Within a single month, he had been promoted three ranks in rapid succession to become a centurion in the city defense force. A smooth, meteoric rise through the ranks should have been something to celebrate, yet not a shred of optimism stirred in his heart; instead, he was filled with heavy apprehension. Until last month, his salary had been enough to feed and clothe his two wives and their families. Now that he had become a centurion and his pay had more than doubled, his large household could barely manage to keep from starving. And Falcon City was an oasis, no less. Even if every wastelander in the world went hungry, the people here should never have had to worry about food and drink. It was all because of this goddamn war. To dispel his gloom and steel his own nerves, he stepped onto the rampart and bellowed at the top of his lungs: "Everyone, stay alert! Keep your eyes peeled! The Alliance planes will use the cloud cover to approach us! Keep the searchlights trained on the edges and gaps between the clouds, and don't blink! Under no circumstances is a single plane to breach the royal capital!" "Long live the Falcon Kingdom!" "Long live!" The soldiers shouted back in unison, but their ringing cries could not banish the bitterness and bewilderment in their eyes. Along a three-kilometer-wide stretch of line, there were only one hundred and twenty men, two light machine guns, and a single anti-aircraft gun. Not to mention it was night. Expecting the weapons in their hands to shoot down Alliance planes was like hoping the Alliance pilots would misread their maps and fly straight into their faces. Horete knew he was asking the impossible, but right now, he had no choice but to inject what bravado he could into his men. Just then, a pale white flash flickered across the distant horizon, accompanied by a dull rumble of thunder rolling in from afar. Was it going to rain? Perhaps tonight's air raid would be called off... No! Staring into the distance, Horete's face twisted in horror, and he roared at the top of his lungs: "Take cover!" Almost the moment the words left his mouth, a column of fiery-red smoke plunged from the sky, slamming brutally into the farmland several hundred meters in front of the embankment. The roar of the explosion drowned out the brief shriek of displaced air as orange-red flames soared a hundred meters high, pushing out shockwave after shockwave of scorching heat. Charred ears of wheat, burning wood splinters, earth, gravel, roof tiles—everything was swept into the sky by the blistering smoke. The first shot had missed. Yet no one dared let their guard down. Soon, another flash of white lit up the distant clouds, and a deafening roar arrived almost simultaneously with the rolling thunder of the blast near the embankment. Though the 400mm main gun possessed little accuracy at such extreme range, its colossal destructive power painted sheer terror onto the face of nearly every defending soldier. It could miss countless times. For them, a single hit was all it would take... The friendly troops on an adjacent position seemed to have exhausted their luck. The third heavy shell came crashing down directly in front of them. The scorching shockwave instantly punched a huge dent into the smooth alloy plating. Even if the relics of the pre-war civilization could not be destroyed by conventional weaponry, that horrific blast was more than enough to wipe away every bunker erected upon the embankment... The roar of the explosion rang in his ears. Horete felt his internal organs shuddering, and the adjutant beside him was no different—hands and feet ice-cold, eyes wide with terror. Just now— that single heavy shell had wiped out at least a hundred-man century. "Spirit of the Sand Sea above... They're more than seventy kilometers away! How can they still hit us?!" The adjutant's voice trembled, everything in him wanting to turn and flee. "Rocket-assisted projectiles..." Standard shells certainly couldn't travel that far. Rocket-assisted projectiles were another story. Horete swallowed hard, his eyes bulging as he stared at the sun-blotting smoke three kilometers away. Fortunately, the 400mm main gun hadn't blasted the embankment apart. The dented yet unbreached alloy hull brought a glimmer of comfort to many hearts. At least the spirits were still on their side. However— Before they even had time to celebrate, black specks emerging from beneath the clouds caused looks of dread to erupt across the defenders along the embankment. "Look over there!" "Alliance planes!" The incoming dark silhouettes drew closer, like vultures soaring through the sky. Horete could practically see the bared fangs and claws of those beasts. "Damn it... Just how many do they have?!" With no time to hesitate, ignoring the clamor of artillery in the distance, he roared at the top of his lungs: "Man the guns!" "Stop them!" ... With over a hundred planes swooping down on them, the defenders of the Falcon Kingdom panicked like crazy. Yet they were not the only ones terrified out of their minds. Sitting behind Ye Shi, Lao Bai's heart was lodged firmly in his throat. He clenched his teeth tightly, terrified that opening his mouth even a fraction would let the rushing wind blow his soul right out of his body. Unpowered gliders. As the name implied, they were aircraft without engines. For a glider to gain horizontal velocity, it had to rely on a dive. Once its speed exceeded the optimal lift-to-drag ratio range, the pilot had to pull up the nose to convert speed back into altitude and potential energy. Consequently, the flight path was as wild as a roller coaster, bobbing up and down in rolling swoops as it glided forward. In some distant time and space, these machines were called assault gliders. Like barrage balloons, they were hardly some radical, mind-bending sci-fi technology; from the disaster of Operation Market Garden to the raid of Operation Oak, they had made their mark in history. Compared to parachutes that left soldiers dangling in the sky for a prolonged descent, unpowered gliders stayed airborne for only a brief period. Their gliding speed could reach around three hundred kilometers per hour, matching a Harmony high-speed train. Moreover, compared to a paratrooper's rucksack, the glider's larger fuselage allowed airborne troops to haul far more equipment and ammunition. However, despite all those advantages, the craft came with a major flaw: a staggering accident rate that took a brutal toll on men. In the early days, these gliders had been towed into the air by automobiles, winch trucks, or other airplanes, flung forward like paper planes. Their casualty rates rivaled those of the ventral ball turrets on heavy bombers. For that very reason, following World War II, both innovations were discarded into the dustbin of history, with gliders surviving only in extreme sports. Presumably inspired by the Heart of Steel's extraordinary altitude advantage, Mosquito had fished this contraption out of history's trash heap, swapping the boosters for two rockets stripped of their warheads. Seeing the distant tracers flicker in the dark actually brought a sliver of relief to Lao Bai's heart. Whether they could stick the landing or not, they were finally reaching their destination. "Ye Shi! Line up your aim!" Gripping the control stick with both hands, Kuang Feng looked taut, a rare glimmer of excitement and madness in his eyes. "You got it! Give me some pitch down!" Ye Shi chuckled, wrapping both hands around the heavy machine gun's grip. The barrel thrust sideways out of the cabin, the sights pre-aligned over the embankment. The instant the glider pitched nose-down, he pulled the trigger. The chattering gunfire and scorching brass were left trailing in the glider's wake as streams of orange-yellow tracers rained down upon the embankment. One hundred and fifty gliders opened fire in unison, and the descending net of fire pinned the ground anti-aircraft crews down so hard they couldn't even raise their heads. Yet constrained by flight angles, the gliders' strafing run lasted barely half a minute, and the suppressed Falcon City defenders soon scrambled back onto their anti-aircraft guns. However, they quickly realized that the previous strafe was merely the prelude to the tempest—the real nightmare had just begun. Twenty escorting W-2 attack planes broke away from formation and swooped down toward the embankment below. After a diving strafe, they released the aerial bombs slung beneath their wings. Explosive blossoms of fire bloomed instantly across the embankment. Along a ten-kilometer front, the only four anti-aircraft guns were blasted into scrap metal. Staring at the blazing fires, the twisted iron, and the soldiers raising their Ripper rifles to cycle bolts and shoot into the sky, despair filled Horete's face. At that moment, a decurion covered in blood and grime came limping over from nearby, gasping for breath as he reported to his superior: "Reporting, Commander! The Alliance destroyed our anti-aircraft guns! We... we have no anti-aircraft weapons left!" "I'm not blind. I have eyes." Cutting the decurion short, Horete adjusted his officer's cap and turned to look northwest toward the royal palace. From any section of the embankment, the direct distance to the palace was ten kilometers. For an aircraft, that distance was a matter of minutes. He closed his eyes in agony and muttered under his breath, "It's over..." ... The southeastern line had already been breached by Alliance planes, while anti-aircraft guns on adjacent positions continued to fire into the sky. Yet at such distance, that pathetic barrage was nothing more than futile struggling. Tracers danced across the night sky like sparks rising from a bonfire. Under the glare of searchlights, Midal, captain of the Royal Guard stationed atop the central castle's watchtower, finally saw the incoming silhouettes. In that instant, his face drained of color. Fifty?! No— at least a hundred! Hadn't the 1st Air Squadron severely battered the Alliance air force over Oasis 3?! How were there still so many?! These planes clearly hadn't taken off from Bister Town; they had to have come from the Heart of Steel, which was ensnared by the barrage balloons. Just minutes ago, he had received word from headquarters that the 1st Air Squadron under Baron Acante had engaged an Alliance flight formation. Both sides had committed over a hundred propeller planes, clashing fiercely on the edge of Oasis 2. Just how many planes did the Alliance possess?! No— rather, how many pilots did they have?! According to traveling merchants from the east, Qingquan City had only five to six hundred thousand survivors in total, yet he had the bizarre illusion that these people could never be fully wiped out! Just as Midal had feared, the anti-aircraft guns scattered along the embankment were utterly incapable of stopping the Alliance aircraft. The Alliance had peeled off just a few planes from their formation to wipe out the anti-aircraft positions along the route, and the rest of the swarm crossed the embankment without pausing for a heartbeat, plunging straight into the city and bearing down on His Majesty's castle. Watching the incoming swarm close the remaining three or four kilometers, Midal roared an immediate order: "Open fire!" The eight quadruple-mount anti-aircraft guns deployed on the castle opened fire in unison, thick tongues of flame reaching toward the Alliance swarm and instantly illuminating the silhouettes of the planes. However— This dense barrage did not last long. Shadows fast as lightning detached from the airframes, hurtling forward like arrows loosed from bows and slamming unerringly into the towers housing the anti-aircraft guns. "Fuck!" Watching the towers and anti-aircraft guns engulfed in flames and smoke, Midal's eyes turned bloodshot in an instant, and he cursed furiously. "What the hell was that?!" Beside him, Beaufort, the city defense commander, was equally bewildered. Aerial bombs? Impossible... For aerial bombs released from one or two kilometers away to strike their anti-aircraft positions with pinpoint precision was absurd. Yet missiles made no sense either—he hadn't seen a single trail of rocket exhaust! Watching the distant inferno, several Intelligence-type players sitting inside the gliders high-fived the teammates beside them in jubilation. Naturally, those were no missiles. They were six-rotor kamikaze drones stowed aboard the gliders—"Switchblades." These weapons didn't require specialized bombers to drop them; they could simply be pushed out of the cabin, and Intelligence-type players equipped with neural link devices could switch to the drone's first-person view to provide precision guidance. A fifteen-kilogram warhead was more than enough to blow an anti-aircraft gun on a tower to smithereens. "Hahaha! Beautifully done!" From the machine gunner's seat, Ye Shi threw an excited fist into the air. Seizing the moment before landing, he raised his machine gun and sprayed a burst toward the castle. Feeling the airframe violently shudder and watching the rooftops rush past below, Lao Bai was terrified out of his mind, but he knew that right now, all he could do was trust his teammates. "Brace for landing!" "Got it." Glancing calmly out the cabin, Kuang Feng deployed the adjustable airbrakes on the fuselage while drogue chutes deployed from the tail. The glider decelerated violently, its upward-tilted belly slamming hard onto the roof of a residential house. "Shit!" "Fuck you! Give us a heads-up next time!" Seeing the rooftop rushing toward them, Ye Shi frantically hauled the machine gun back inside. A hail of roof tiles went flying. Both wings sheared away instantaneously—not torn off by accident, but deliberately blown off by explosive bolts to keep the fuselage from rolling during the crash-landing. The violent impact nearly knocked Lao Bai unconscious. Yet as a hardened Strength-type, he remained conscious right until the plane finished skidding to a halt on the street. Retrieving his rifle from inside, he cursed under his breath as he crawled out of the mangled cabin, working a round into the chamber. Spotting a few laborers nearby whose skin was baked dark as coal, he fired two shots into the air and shouted in the Human Alliance language: "If you don't want to die, beat it!" Hearing the gunfire, the laborers moving barricades nearly leaped out of their skins. Dropping their tools immediately, they scattered into the adjacent alleyways. Confirming the direction of the castle, Lao Bai instinctively reached up to press the side of his helmet to tune into the squad-wide channel and check on casualties across the squads, only to get no response. Only then did he remember that Kuang Feng was commanding this operation. "Cough, cough... Don't worry. I just checked. Everyone landed safely. We're good." Coughing as he crawled out of the wreckage, Kuang Feng wiped the dust from his helmet visor and took the LD-50 submachine gun Ye Shi handed him. Lao Bai looked at him, caught between tears and laughter. "Are you... all right?" "Never better." Giving a thumbs-up, Kuang Feng grabbed Ye Shi's arm and hauled him out of the fuselage. Cradling the still-scalding 12mm heavy machine gun in his arms, his face caked in soot and dust, Ye Shi showed no lingering dread whatsoever; if anything, he looked like he wanted more. "Holy crap... That was way more thrilling than parachuting!" Lao Bai: "..." "Don't worry," Kuang Feng said, catching the lingering concern in Lao Bai's eyes and giving him a reassuring look. "We're not just fooling around." Meeting that steady gaze, Lao Bai paused slightly, suddenly realizing that he might indeed have been overly cautious—or rather, overprotective. Unlike Fang Chang, who was a top-tier player with all his gaming talent maxed out, Kuang Feng and Ye Shi possessed strong game sense, but not to the point where it left him speechless in admiration. Because of that, Lao Bai had always unconsciously fallen into the role of the big brother, feeling he needed to look out for them, while overlooking their growth. In truth, such worry was entirely unnecessary. His buddies were ordinary people in reality who had never received professional military training, but after enduring so many battles and trials of life and death, their combat experience had long surpassed what his had been when he first entered the game. Whether in intensity or brutality, this harsh wasteland was in no way inferior to any dark era in human history. This was a world destroyed by the Great War. An apocalypse more savage than any chaotic age. Having weathered ordeal after ordeal in such a world, they were no weaker than anyone else, and they certainly didn't need anyone coddling them. Every player in the Burning Corps was a warrior capable of holding their own! Perhaps he really should place more trust in his teammates. "Yeah, I can see that..." Seeing that earnest gaze, Lao Bai suddenly let out an easy smile, his furrowed brow relaxing. "I leave it to you, then!" He had to admit the glider ride had sent his blood pressure through the roof. Yet looking at them now... they truly weren't just messing around. Giving him a grateful look, Kuang Feng turned to Ye Shi with a serious expression. "Pass the heavy machine gun to Lao Bai. Find a high vantage point nearby to cover us... Our objective is Entrance C. Make sure the defenders don't plant explosives at the gates." Slapping the sniper rifle captured from the Academy onto his back, Ye Shi flashed an OK gesture, the same irreverent smirk returning to his face. "Copy that!" ... Compared to parachutes, where landing locations were left to fate, gliders had another advantage: no one had to spend half the night scouring the streets to find their teammates. The five hundred Burning Corps soldiers who landed in the urban district quickly reorganized, advancing methodically toward the castle in three-man fireteams, three fireteams to a squad, and three squads to a platoon. The streets were eerily quiet, save for sporadic gunshots and explosions. Most of the city defense troops and militia were concentrated on the embankment ten kilometers away. Furthermore, this area was the Alliance's announced bombing zone, so only a handful of guards were risking their lives patrolling the inner city; finding another living soul was rare. Some guards noticed the crash-landed aircraft. Even without orders from higher-ups, they dutifully went to investigate. And then— there was no "and then." Against these guards armed with Ripper rifles, the players barely even needed to fire a shot. The guards' equipment was even more pathetic than they had imagined. Aside from the guard squad leader carrying a 10mm Decurion pistol, the vast majority of soldiers wielded either a slender saber or a bolt-action Ripper rifle. That rifle, long enough to double as a spear, was useful enough in trenches, and its full-power 7mm rounds hit hard. Yet in the complex terrain of urban street fighting, it was an absolute nightmare for the user. No matter how familiar they were with the terrain, it meant nothing against sweeps of automatic fire from LD-47 assault rifles and LD-50 submachine guns. Facing Awakened fully equipped with automatic weapons and Light Cavalry exoskeletons, the patrol teams that investigated first became nothing more than sitting ducks, routed and fleeing for their lives in under half a minute. ... At the same time, atop a watchtower that had survived the blasts, Midal stared dumbfounded at the smoke-shrouded district before him, unable to comprehend what had just happened. Minutes earlier, several dark shadows had obliterated his anti-aircraft positions. Just as he stared hopelessly into the sky, bracing for those planes to pull up their noses and circle around for another pass, the unexpected occurred. Instead of pulling up to regain altitude, more than a hundred planes had plunged straight into the city district before the castle like dumplings dropping into boiling water. Beside him, Beaufort, the city defense commander, stared in disbelief and muttered, "What are they doing?" An adjutant said blankly, "...A flight accident?" "Over a hundred planes crashing simultaneously? How could such a thing be possible?!" Snapping out of his momentary daze, Midal's face showed not the slightest relief at the apparent end of the air raid. Instinct told him the true raid was only just beginning. He turned immediately to the adjutant beside him and barked, "Who is in charge of the district in front of the castle?!" The adjutant responded at once: "Reporting! Centurion Ademu!" Midal remembered that name. The man was a capable veteran whom Midal had personally promoted from the militia into the Royal Guard. Not only did he possess sharp tactical leadership, but he was also a formidable Awakened himself. Without a moment's hesitation, Midal commanded: "Reinforce him with another century! Have him sweep the district immediately for those pilots! Bring me captives alive at all costs!" The adjutant snapped to attention and saluted. "Sir!" ... At Midal's command, Ademu immediately led his century and over a hundred reinforcements into the city district, intent on capturing the Alliance pilots alive. However— To everyone's utter shock, the instant these two centuries charged into the district, cracking and popping erupted like dozens of strings of firecrackers going off at once. Muzzle flashes flickered across the pitch-black streets in rapid succession, as dense as the starry sky overhead. Almost the moment his men set foot on the street, Ademu's century was raked with automatic gunfire. Caught completely off guard, they suffered catastrophic casualties in their very first contact. Pilots of the Falcon Kingdom were typically issued only a pistol; standard cockpits had no room to stow spare ammunition and heavier weapons. To encounter automatic weapons was bad enough. Nobody had dreamed that these pilots, far from scattering and hiding throughout the city, would organize themselves and open fire on them! Stationed atop the tower, Midal gazed dumbfounded at the sparks of gunfire dancing across the night-shrouded district, completely struck speechless. That volume of fire matched the firepower of at least two entire cohorts! Did Alliance pilots not only carry assault rifles, but cram two fucking bodyguards into the cockpit as well?! While Midal was still reeling in disbelief, Ademu, who had charged into the streets with two hundred men, was already clutching his walkie-talkie and cursing his lungs out: "Enemy fire is too heavy! We need reinforcements!" Harsh static screeching filled his earpiece. The enemy was likely using some sort of electronic jamming, making it impossible for him to contact the rear or report on the situation. Bullets whistled wildly down the street. It was as if the enemy didn't care about burning through ammunition in the slightest. His great physical strength was useless here. Ademu could only pray that his superiors might glean what was happening from the gunfire and dispatch more troops. Yet the enemy had no intention of entering a protracted standoff. Gunfire erupting from all directions rapidly closed around the street where he stood. Ademu's heart plummeted into an icy abyss. Although he could not confirm the fate of his two subordinate decurions, he could tell from the direction of the gunfire that both flanks of his line had already collapsed! In less than half a minute, the enemy had wiped out at least four of his ten-man squads and completed an encirclement around both of his centuries. There was no way a few dozen pilots could accomplish this! At the bare minimum, there had to be a thousand men out there! Staring at the severed limbs littering the street and the walls riddled with bullet holes, the bloodthirsty bravado Ademu had worn minutes earlier had vanished, replaced entirely by pure terror. Hearing the footsteps and gunfire drawing inexorably closer, he gripped his static-filled radio and screamed in utter despair: "Fuck! These people... they're not pilots at all!" "We're surrounded!"