Under the cover of naval bombardment, four Viper transports rapidly breached the coastal defense perimeter of North Island, deploying twenty-five suits of power armor at the airfield.
Faced with these fiends armed to the teeth, the guard company responsible for airfield security was thrown into utter disarray almost as soon as shots were exchanged, collapsing upon first contact.
Muzzle flashes flickered continuously around the airfield's perimeter, tracers crisscrossing the runway in an impenetrable web of fire.
Crouched behind a square sandbag wall, a flak-jacketed platoon leader pressed his helmet tightly against the bags, not daring to poke his rifle out to return fire.
Not far from him, a combat medic scrambled to treat a wounded soldier lying on a stretcher.
Half of the man's leg had been blown away; beads of sweat rolled down his pale face, and he gasped for breath like a beached goldfish.
The platoon leader gritted his teeth and roared into his walkie-talkie, "The outer perimeter has collapsed! Their firepower is too heavy! We need reinforcements!"
The other end was drowned in static and chaos. He waited for what felt like an eternity with no answer, hearing only a string of violent explosions.
"Damn it!"
Cursing under his breath, he shoved the radio back onto his shoulder strap, ducked low, jabbed his rifle over the barricade, and let loose a wild burst toward the source of the incoming fire.
Yet before he could fire more than a couple of rounds, two thick tracers whipped past his barrel and slammed into the dirt directly in front of him.
The rounds were at least twenty millimeters thick. Though they ricocheted into the sky upon impact, the concussive boom of their strikes left his ears ringing violently.
Gravel and debris kicked up by the impacts pelted his face. Crying out in pain, he collapsed backward onto the ground.
"Aaargh!"
The Alliance forces did not let up.
One suit of power armor shouldering a 20mm Lance cannon fired in measured bursts to suppress the barricade, while three others advanced in lockstep, their barrels swiftly centering on the guards behind cover.
The outcome was never in doubt.
The guard platoon leader threw down his rifle immediately, squatting against the wall with his hands behind his head before the intruders even said a word.
"I surrender!"
Lao Bai signaled to his teammate, gesturing for him to take out zip ties to secure the prisoners.
Then he raised his right hand, flicking his index finger across the floating display inside his tactical visor to assign the next phase of attack objectives on the map.
The Y-2 drone operating alongside them had already finished a comprehensive scan of the battlefield terrain, marking identified enemy units in red across the map.
The entire process felt just like a video game.
Granted, it was a game to begin with.
Assisted by quadcopter drones, the six squads reached their designated areas according to plan, securing over eighty percent of the airfield facilities and the crucial runways.
"Guard post suppressed!"
"Hangar secured!"
"Enemy reinforcements spotted! Sighted 317 hostiles, ten police armored vehicles, and two suspected heavy armored units! Suspected Federation Marines!"
Over the comms, Killing Dagger nearly snorted with laughter, quipping, "That's all they've got?"
Glancing around the smoke-choked airfield, Kidney Fighter replied in a teasing tone, "You have to remember there are only tens of thousands of people on this whole island, and they have to support a navy. It's a miracle their army can muster a battalion at all."
This place was the polar opposite of Bolo Province. The entire North Island was smaller than Golden Gallon Port, and its military could not even field a thousand-man regiment.
Of course, even if they couldn't scrape together a thousand troops, throwing this airfield's guard company into Bolo Province would easily allow them to roll over a thousand-man regiment.
After all, the Xilan Empire only scavenged scraps cast off by the Legion, whereas the Federation's armed forces were designed with the Legion as their hypothetical enemy.
Their productivity and education levels were on completely different planes; even an ordinary soldier here had vastly better military training than many junior officers in the Xilan Empire.
While the two were shooting the breeze, Lao Bai's voice cut through the comms.
"...Stay sharp, the battle isn't over yet! Dagger, the Federation Marines are to your northwest. Contact expected within three minutes. I'm handing command of the two nearby squads over to you—hold them off! Don't let them near the runway!"
"Understood!"
Dagger acknowledged immediately and shouted back to the players behind him, "Boys! Work's here!"
"Ohhh yeah!"
Howling with excitement, Kidney Fighter slammed a fresh drum magazine into his light machine gun and racked the bolt with a sharp clack.
Meanwhile, Lao Bai had already secured the airfield's communications room and made contact with the headquarters at Port French Fries via a local radio tower.
"We have secured the airfield ten minutes ahead of schedule. How far out are the reinforcements?"
After a brief crackle of static, the operator's voice came through.
"The reinforcements have departed. They are fifteen minutes out."
"Tell them to step on it. I'm worried the Torch might send reinforcements to North Island. If we can't wrap up ground combat quickly, we'll be in for a rough fight... and it'll be hard to avoid civilian casualties."
"Understood. We are coordinating with the transport flight crews."
Once the communication ended, Lao Bai left one squad behind to hold the position and led the rest of the players to reinforce the airfield's northwest perimeter.
The three squads led by Dagger would engage the Federation Marines head-on, while Lao Bai's team would flank the enemy once contact was made, coordinating with the Alliance's air units to take out the trickier armored vehicles.
Just as the vanguard of the Burning Corps braced for battle, the Federation Marines reached the entrance on the airfield's northwest side.
A rifle grenade exploded, instantly igniting the battle.
The airfield, quiet for barely a few minutes, was swallowed once more by the deafening roar of gunfire.
The Federation Marines had mobilized a battalion to mount a counterattack, even deploying police riot vehicles from the precinct and two prototype Alligator amphibious armored vehicles that had not yet entered mass production.
The latter were amphibious combat vehicles North Island Heavy Industries had developed under Zhalas's orders, originally intended for amphibious assaults on Anle Island and Ring Island.
However, before the vehicles could be put to use, the Southern Sea Alliance had beaten them to the punch and landed on North Island.
Although the light armor packed far more firepower than individual power armor suits, their numbers were simply too meager.
Furthermore, because the vehicles were still under development and had never been formally fielded, the Federation Navy had virtually no experience in mechanized infantry coordination.
Almost as soon as the two Alligators rolled onto the front line, they fell out of sync with their supporting infantry and ended up bottled up in an alley near the airfield.
Seizing the fleeting window of opportunity, Killing Dagger unslung the Dove missile launcher from his back without hesitation. Tossing a quick "Cover me!" to the squadmate beside him, he vaulted over a half-crumbled low wall and climbed onto the roof beside the alley.
Both armored vehicles lay fully exposed to his sight. The lead vehicle pointed its 30mm autocannon toward the airfield, pouring out fire in an attempt to drive off the Viper transports circling above to provide air support for the ground troops.
Killing Dagger drew a deep breath and skillfully activated the launcher's optical targeting system, snapping a lock onto the vehicle barely 150 meters away. The seeker in the missile's nose immediately locked onto the target.
With all preparations complete, he pulled the trigger without hesitation, yelling enthusiastically, "RPG!"
Even though it was not an RPG at all, he still shouted it out of pure habit.
A thick plume of white smoke shot forward like an arrow released from a bow, striking directly beneath the armored vehicle's turret. The vehicle erupted like a lighter, detonating into a dazzling burst of fireworks amidst a deafening blast.
The Dove missile's metallic hydrogen warhead delivered destructive power that far exceeded a standard RPG shaped charge, even if its cost was over ten times higher.
The surrounding Federation Marines were completely dazed by the blazing explosion. Snapping back to their senses, they swiveled their rifles and concentrated their fire toward where the smoke had originated.
Killing Dagger was about to reload another missile when he noticed the second armored vehicle turning its cannon toward him. Startled, he hurriedly dropped off the roof.
He soon realized it was a false alarm, however.
Seeing the vehicle ahead blown to bits, the crew of the trailing armored vehicle had clearly panicked. Reversing wildly, it sprayed suppressive fire onto the rooftop.
The thunderous muzzle blast concussed the Marines flanking the vehicle, leaving their ears ringing and their vision swimming. Forget aiming at him—they could barely hold onto their weapons.
"Holy crap, friendly fire like pros!" Killing Dagger watched in disbelief from below. Had he known their coordination was this atrocious, he would have stayed up on the roof.
While he stood there stunned, whistling shrieks tore through the air above his head, immediately followed by the synchronized roar of autocannons and the tearing screech of shrapnel!
The armored vehicle retreating and firing in panic had evidently been tagged by friendly forces, and the flashes from its cannon had given away its position. The flyboys in the sky didn't even bother wasting an air-to-ground missile, peeling it open like a tin can with a single burst of autocannon fire.
Its relatively thin top armor crumpled like paper before the aircraft's 20mm armor-piercing incendiary rounds, and the turret was launched straight into the air.
The soldiers hunkered down beside the vehicle suffered the same fate, buried in dust and flying fragments. In an instant, the alley fell dead silent.
Watching the fireworks bloom and the P-2 Lightning attack aircraft streak low over the ruins, the players leaning against cover cheered in excitement.
"Nice shot!"
Having just finished locking on, Killing Dagger lowered his missile launcher and clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction. "Damn it! Stole my kill!"
Still, autocannon rounds were cheaper than missiles, so he let it slide.
In stark contrast to the Burning Corps, the morale of the Federation Marines had plunged into the abyss.
Staring at the burning alley, Commander Lundy's eyes bulged with despair, his face ashen.
Those two Alligators were practically their only trump card, yet they hadn't lasted ten minutes against the Alliance's airborne troops.
Although their equipment and training were far superior to the airfield guard company—and they even possessed remnants from the Era of Prosperity—they were still hopelessly outclassed by these seasoned professionals.
At that moment, the silhouettes of two Overlord transports emerged on the horizon, their massive airframes and trailing plasma plumes blazing as conspicuously as shooting stars against the sky.
The colossal aircraft touched down heavily on the airfield runway, sliding forward to a smooth stop before lowering their wide, heavy cargo ramps.
Eight menacing armored vehicles rolled down the ramps—the Alliance's Chimeras!
Descending with them were nearly five hundred troops armed to the teeth with exoskeletons.
They held compact assault rifles, and their polished ballistic chest plates gleamed with a chilling edge.
"It's over..."
Continuing to fight would achieve nothing except sending the boys of North Island to their deaths.
If the Alliance's planes could come once, they could come a second time, and it was impossible to retake the airfield with their remaining forces.
Even if the battleship returned, it would be useless; a fleet without a port was an orphan of the sea.
Seeing those two transports land extinguished any lingering will to resist in Lundy's heart.
Looking at his equally pale adjutant, his Adam's apple bobbed before he finally choked out the helpless words.
"...We've lost."
***
Having realized resistance was futile, the Federation Marines ultimately chose to surrender.
Apart from Zhalas's personal guard stubbornly holding out at the presidential palace, all organized resistance across North Island had vanished.
Zhalas's refusal to allow mutants onto the island was the only decent thing he had ever done.
Otherwise, things would have been vastly more troublesome.
After consulting with the Southern Sea Alliance Naval Command, the command post at the Port French Fries military base decided against bombing the presidential palace, choosing instead to deploy ground forces to capture Zhalas and his clique.
Upon rendezvousing, Lao Bai and Fang Chang quickly drew up an assault plan for the presidential palace, agreeing to fly in another transport full of players from Port French Fries to let the new recruits cut their teeth on the breach-and-clear operation.
As for Zhalas himself, while he might hold significant value for the Southern Sea Alliance, he was largely irrelevant to the players and the Alliance.
By contrast, safeguarding local survivors, preserving industrial facilities, and above all, preventing the Church of the Torch's mutant forces from landing were their foremost priorities.
As for local affairs, they had never made a habit of meddling.
At the exact same time the Burning Corps secured North Island, the Federation fleet and the Southern Sea Alliance fleet finally made contact.
Each fleet appeared on the other's radar, ratcheting tensions to the breaking point in an instant.
Aboard the cruiser Harpoon, fleet commander Wu Meng stared coldly at the blips on his radar screen, preparing to order an attack.
Just then, an incoming transmission request arrived from the command post on Anle Island.
"...Can your station patch through to the Haiya's communication channel?"
Hearing Commander Li Minghui's voice, Wu Meng paused slightly and frowned.
"We can... but is that necessary?"
"Contact them!"
Wu Meng weighed it for a couple of seconds before nodding.
"Very well."
Once the order was given, the communications officer began attempting to hail the battleship Haiya.
However, Wu Meng did not waste precious time waiting.
He knew full well what kind of man Captain Wick was on the other side. The man was a warmonger through and through, as well as Zhalas's staunchest fanatic.
The word surrender didn't even exist in his dictionary; expecting him to capitulate was less likely than expecting Zhalas to step down on his own.
In all likelihood, the enemy's railgun was already charging, and might even be dialed straight onto his ship.
Wu Meng calmly ordered Condition One battle readiness, placing all ship weapon and defense systems on standby.
The adjutant standing beside him watched him nervously.
"Do you believe he won't surrender?"
Wu Meng said indifferently, "I'd actually prefer it if he didn't."
"Why?" The adjutant blinked, looking at the captain in surprise.
Wu Meng's expression remained completely unchanged as he stated succinctly, "The Southern Sea needs to recover. We cannot bear another war... A modest reduction of armaments isn't a bad thing for us; in fact, it's beneficial. Otherwise, we risk being dragged by our allies into a war that isn't ours, even if they fight for a righteous cause."
"If they really want that ship, they can buy one from our shipyards. As long as they provide the money and the materials, our workers and engineers can build them another, and the boys from the Alliance can sail it themselves."
More importantly, Zhalas and his followers had to be rooted out completely.
If the Alliance interfered in their judicial process for strategic reasons, letting the Haiya's crew escape postwar trials or even continue serving on that battleship, it would sow the seeds for far greater disaster in the future.
Of course, that was merely his personal assessment.
If the Southern Sea Alliance high command thought differently, he could only keep his reservations to himself.
At the very same time, far away in the naval command post on Anle Island, Commander Li Minghui paced back and forth before the nautical chart.
Victory was within grasp!
His palms were slick with sweat, half from excitement and half from anxiety.
Zhalas was finished, leaving only one final naval mine to be defused.
The Federation fleet!
Those vessels were the property of the Southern Sea Alliance's survivors. They had poured immense toil and blood into them; losing a single ship would be an excruciating loss!
If possible, he wanted to avoid a final exchange of fire.
As long as those boys were willing to turn back, there was still room to make amends.
To secure bargaining chips for dividing postwar spoils and negotiating with the Alliance, he needed the Haiya. The people of the Southern Sea Alliance needed her too!
Besides, fighting on made no sense now. Zhalas had already lost this decisive battle! The pathetic wretch was shivering in his bunker!
When contact was finally established with the bridge of the battleship Haiya, Li Minghui strode to the terminal, leaned his hands on the console, and stared at the face on the screen.
"Surrender, Wick! The Burning Corps has already landed on North Island! You've lost!"
Wick stared back coldly, his eyes showing no trace of panic, only disdain.
"Cowardly traitor."
"Traitor?" Li Minghui froze, then let out an exasperated laugh. "You helped Zhalas oppress the people of the Federation's islands, threatening them with the cannons and shells they built for you just to make them serve your master! How dare you utter the word traitor?"
"And what about you?" Wick narrowed his eyes. "How are your actions any different from mine?"
"I have fought for them from beginning to end." Li Minghui held his gaze without flinching.
Regardless of whether greed had ever crossed his mind, he could search his conscience and say that up until now, he had never crossed that line.
Yet upon hearing his reply, Wick suddenly burst into uproarious laughter, as though he had just heard the funniest joke in the world.
"Save your grandstanding! How are you any nobler than Zhalas? At least he could have brought us a brighter future! But you—you're leading the boys of the Southern Sea to become puppets of the Alliance, conquering new lands on their behalf!"
A brighter future?
In the hellhole North Island had turned into?
Li Minghui looked at the unrepentant man with pity and clicked his tongue.
"So to your mind, anyone who refuses to be a dog for Zhalas or the Torch is a puppet? How pathetic. To a dog, everything looks like another dog."
Yet the moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
He remembered with a start that he had come to negotiate a surrender, not to trade insults.
Sure enough, the man on the screen remained entirely unmoved, paying no heed to his words.
Wick gently straightened his captain's cap and spoke expressionlessly.
"Wagging tongues is what you politicians do best. You have the talent to call white black and black white. That's your job, but it isn't mine."
"...Words are pointless. Let the battlefield decide."
Li Minghui's eyes widened.
"Are you out of your mind?! Can't you see that even if you win, it means nothing?!"
The man was a captain; he should understand better than anyone what the current situation meant!
"Means nothing?" Seeing Li Minghui's stunned expression, Wick smiled coldly with utter indifference. "Does turning you all into rubble count as meaning something?"
His face twisted into a vicious snarl, like a beast trapped in a snare.
"Don't think you can persuade me with your mouth! Either we go to heaven together, or every damn one of you is going to hell with me! Before I let you vermin rule the Southern Sea, I'd rather tear it down with my own two hands!"
It was nothing more than trading bases!
If he could wipe out the Southern Sea Alliance fleet and push straight to Anle Island to take Li Minghui and his officers hostage, he might yet save North Island!
At the very least, he could use the man as a bargaining chip!
With the war reaching this point, the Alliance shouldn't dream of remaining unscathed either. If they didn't want to see their settlements along the Baiyue Strait turned to ash, they had better withdraw from North Island immediately!
As for expecting him to surrender—
Not a chance in hell!
Staring at the darkened screen, Li Minghui was left dumbfounded.
The communications operator sitting beside him was equally stunned, mixed with a hint of exasperation.
With diplomacy this bad, you might as well have let me try to talk him down!
Silence blanketed the command post.
Li Minghui's throat tightened. It took him a long while to squeeze out words through dry lips.
"Madmen..."
From Zhalas himself to those who followed him, every last one of them had lost their minds...
He stepped back, slumped into the chair before the command table, and pinched the bridge of his nose without saying another word.
The outcome that followed would hold no suspense.
Before this campaign began, they had rehearsed it countless times across nautical charts, reducing any chance of error to the absolute minimum.
Yet the thought of that battleship still brought a sharp pang of heartache to Li Minghui.
That was a battleship...
What an utter waste!
***
A dazzling flash of white light streaked across the sea, spanning the rolling waves like a bridge thrown from the battleship Haiya to the cruiser Harpoon.
Ballistics was an intricate science, consisting not merely of simple projectile calculations, but of end-to-end design over the entire projectile's trajectory.
Treating a railgun simply as a brute-force cannon demonstrated a severe lack of imagination. Even back in classical eras preceding the Era of Prosperity, people had learned to fit projectiles with variable-timing fins or other intelligent guidance components.
For the Era of Prosperity, such feats were second nature.
A bolt fitted inside the base of a kinetic slug exploited material memory properties to record timing parameters, deploying flexible fins retracted in the tail once the shell reached a predetermined altitude. This allowed a shell traveling along an upward incline to trace a sharp arc through the air... creating the macro-level appearance of a shell bending around a corner in mid-flight.
From aerodynamic designs to the launching mechanisms and the kinetic slugs themselves, every component was a marvel of the Era of Prosperity.
And only another creation of the Era of Prosperity could stand against it.
The battleship Haiya fired three kinetic slugs in succession. A drone flying along the cloudline tracked their trajectories, its lens zooming in on the cruiser Harpoon.
Yet what unfolded left everyone aboard the Haiya dumbfounded.
The Harpoon did not deploy a deflector shield to intercept the attack as expected; instead, it took the hit squarely with its hull.
They had intended to overload the shield capacitors with the railgun, not expecting to score a direct hit on the armor itself.
Incomprehensibly, when the meteor-like kinetic slug slammed dead center into the bow, it did not punch a gaping hole through the wide prow; instead, it ricocheted off the surface and plunged into the ocean!
A water spout dozens of meters high erupted into the sky. The massive kinetic energy carved out a cavernous void beneath the surface, rocking the imposing cruiser on its heels.
Inside the bridge, Wu Meng steadied himself against the railing with his right hand, his eyes quickly sweeping over the display. That shot had only depleted twelve percent of the Meissner effect armor's capacitor bank.
Perhaps thanks to the armor slope, most of the kinetic energy had deflected into the sea. In actual combat, the system performed even more impressively than theoretical models suggested. At this rate, he could likely cruise within visual range without suffering serious harm.
After all, in the few moments he had spent in surprise, the ship's reactor was already slowly recharging the armor capacitors.
Refusing to believe it, the Haiya fired another three-round salvo.
This time their luck was surprisingly good—two rounds hit, and only one went wide.
Seeing that the enemy could do nothing to his ship, Wu Meng was completely at ease.
While the Haiya focused all its fury on pounding the Harpoon, an anti-ship missile skimming the wave crests slipped through a blind spot in the destroyer Flying Fish's point-defense grid, tearing a massive hole through its hull.
A gaping breach opened on the Federation fleet's left flank. The sole remaining destroyer, the Defender, could barely protect itself, let alone shield the Haiya beside it.
The towering steel behemoth was now like a wounded lion, surrounded by hyenas circling and snarling low.
Lying in wait nearby, the submarine Shark Tooth seized the opening first, launching a torpedo armed with a metallic hydrogen warhead toward the arrogant sea monster without hesitation.
A roaring pillar of fire erupted from the sea.
Although that torpedo was detonated prematurely by an acoustic decoy, the Shark Tooth quickly fired a second, and then a third.
As did the other two nuclear attack submarines.
They were built for this very moment, and they lived up to their purpose, sending the traitors of the Federation—or rather, the Southern Sea Alliance—to the ocean floor.
The lone surviving destroyer, the Defender, sensibly hoisted a white flag. Harpoon captain Wu Meng ordered a ceasefire, accepting the surrender of his former comrades.
Watching the ripples fade on the radar screen while growing stronger on the sonar display, he let out a sigh of relief. Removing his captain's cap, he placed it gently over the screen before him.
"It's finally over."
Though the war to purge the Church of the Torch had not yet ended, at least he would no longer have to face those familiar faces...
Chapter 774