After finishing his words, Wang Zhong gave Vasily the walkie-talkie, and pondered before stuffing the device to him, “I don’t understand Prosen, you do the persuading to surrender!”
Vasily, “Me? No no no, I don’t have the confidence to persuade the proud Prussians.”
After a moment of thought, Wang Zhong said, “In that case, I will ride the white horse around in front of the enemy, speaking loudly. You won’t need to care about what I’m saying; just translate whenever I start talking.”
Vasily was shocked, “The tanks are still in battle, bombarding us with their cannons, and you want to appear within their line of sight? No, I cannot let you take that risk!”
Wang Zhong smiled faintly.
Indeed, appearing on horseback within the firing range of the enemy’s tanks was very dangerous. However, Wang Zhong had a cheat, which allowed him to clearly see the orientation of the enemy’s hull and turret.
The main gun of a tank and the coaxial machine gun can only target objects in the direction of the gun barrel, and the firing range of the hull machine gun is at the front of the vehicle.
To tell the truth, knowing the enemy’s position, dodging the lines of a tank was much simpler than dodging an infantry’s gunfire.
After all, even with a powered turret, the rotation speed is only so fast, much slower than a human turning their gun muzzle.
What Wang Zhong needed was just the courage to face a Tiger Tank alone, to face the possibility of unexpected death.
And right now, what Wang Zhong had in abundance was courage.
There are two kinds of courage. One stems from ignorance, as with the Zulu people who charged at Maxim; the other comes from advancing with your head held high even after knowing the terror and brutality ahead.
Wang Zhong’s courage was the latter; he had seen storms of bullets, he had danced with the Grim Reaper himself.
He whistled, and sure enough, the neighing of Bucephalus echoed from afar—perhaps the horse thought the noise of battle was disturbing its grazing and had hidden away, and now it joyously galloped over.
Wang Zhong mounted his horse, and as usual, picked up the red flag, inserting its tail into the support point on the saddle, and held the flag aloft with one hand as he charged forward.
Vasily looked at his retreating figure, then at Sergeant Major Grigori.
The sergeant major signaled the driver to start moving.
Vasily asked, “Are we following behind him?”
Grigori shrugged, “No, we’ll stop at a distance where you can hear his shouting, probably about two kilometers away from the enemy.”
Vasily questioned further, “Aren’t you fulfilling your duty as a guard anymore?”
Grigori replied, “It makes no difference whether he has a guard or not, when he does things like this. Better leave his safety to those angels watching over the generals.”
“You’re right,” Vasily conceded.
He then picked up the walkie-talkie and tuned it to a frequency commonly used by the Prussian Army.
Grigori queried, “Can you manage it?”
“I’ve already got an idea. Actually, the key to this act of persuasion is not what I say, but in the general’s aura of authority,” Vasily shrugged, “so I’ll cook up something fierce!”
————-
While monitoring the movements of the last tank, tank number 217, Wang Zhong also planned his route.
The front of the tank hull was off-limits, luckily, the hull had been immobilized in yesterday’s air raid, so all he needed to worry about was the direction the turret faced.
Of course, due to the limited firing range of the hull machine guns, Wang Zhong couldn’t keep circling indefinitely; after three-quarters of a circle, he had to turn back. The moment of turning back was the most dangerous; he might be blown to smithereens by the tank gun.
But as long as his movements were sudden enough, the enemy wouldn’t be able to react in time.
The sense of crisis from dancing with death stimulated Wang Zhong’s adrenaline production, putting his entire body into an excited state, which in turn made his thoughts leap.
So right now, his mind was occupied with the thought: If I just perform a slide tackle, dive under the hull of the Tiger Tank, and throw in a couple of grenades, the battle would be over, and I could capture the Tiger Tank intact!
With that thought, Wang Zhong pressed on.
The place he had just been was five kilometers away from the actual battlefield, so he still had to advance more than three kilometers to enter the enemy’s field of vision.
Grigori commanded the jeep carrying Vasily to follow two hundred meters behind him.
The group thus passed through the area occupied by the vanguard troops.
Many people must have seen the red flag held by Wang Zhong, but unfortunately, he had no walkie-talkie at hand to hear their conversations.
Finally, passing by the first tank with its tracks broken indicated that the distance to the enemy was only 1800 meters.
Several Armored Troops stood up from the underbrush, shouting to Wang Zhong, “General! What are you doing? It’s dangerous ahead! Stop!”
Wang Zhong turned back to look at the jeep commanded by Grigori and pointed towards the tank men.
Immediately, Grigori directed the jeep towards the tank troops to check on their condition.
Wang Zhong continued to move forward.
Soon, he passed the front line formed by the Whirlwinds, who had ceased firing based on Wang Zhong’s earlier order. Their tank commanders, possibly having received the information via radio, all opened their hatches and emerged from their command turrets.
As Wang Zhong passed by the line of Whirlwinds, he did so to draw the attention of tank number six; after all, the tank was shooting at these Whirlwinds, and its gunner couldn’t have missed the white horse and red flag passing by in the gunsight.
Sure enough, the main gun of tank number 217 turned in Wang Zhong’s direction!
Without a word, he led his horse to turn; as he turned the horse, he kicked its belly, making Bucephalus break into a run and immediately gaining a large distance from the Prosen gunners’ aim.
Wang Zhong thus circled the enemy tank, shouting as he ran, “Prosen Tank Operators, give up! We can puncture your hull at any moment, but you have no way to effectively penetrate the frontal armor of our new tank destroyers! Plus, your accompanying infantry are finished! Stubborn resistance won’t get you anywhere!”
————
Vasily held the walkie-talkie and shouted loudly, “If you don’t surrender, I will personally climb onto your tanks and blow each of your heads off with my pistol! Your families and friends will receive a letter, saying you perished due to stupidity and overestimating yourselves!”
Grigori looked at Vasily, “Although I don’t understand Prosen, I feel like you didn’t translate the original intention.”
“I told you, it’s the general’s intimidating presence that’s key. To the Prussians, we are beings with mystical powers, all that praying hands and sound arrays, they really believe the general could be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, tearing apart tanks with his bare hands.”
Vasily paused for a moment, then added, “We are from the Secular faction, so of course we know that’s impossible. Look at our doctrine; the doctrine rewritten by Saint Andrew believes that all miracles are scientific phenomena, we just haven’t discovered their rules yet. It’s like in the old days we thought fire was a divine Sacred Object bestowed by gods, only later to find out it was just intense oxidation.”
“But the Prosen are different, look at what they promote, ‘The grace of technology will eventually replace the light of God’. They admit that things like Divine Arrows, sound arrays, and prayers are the light of God, in legitimate contention with the grace of technology.”
Grigori raised an eyebrow, “Sounds like that could be the case.”
“That’s the thing. So trust me, the enemy will be scared witless by my words.”
————
Lieutenant Linden was the first to notice the turret rotating — the turret had been maintaining a fixed angle from the beginning, because the No. 217 experimental heavy tank was now paralyzed, and the enemy was a stopped assault gun focused on shooting, so the engagement had entered a point-to-point phase.
The sudden movement of the turret meant that the target had been destroyed.
Lieutenant Linden immediately turned to face the front — he had been observing the surrounding situation up until now.
Because the turret was rotating, for a moment Lieutenant Linden couldn’t see the thick smoke from the destruction of the enemy’s assault gun, so while searching he said, “Indeed, the enemy armor is of poor quality, sustained hits will eventually induce armor fatigue! Eh, the enemy seems fine?”
The gunner, shivering, said, “Commander! Lieutenant! Forget about the enemy’s assault gun, it’s coming, he’s coming!”
The gunner switched pronouns twice before settling on a term that had been banned, “It’s coming! Bringing death and destruction! It’s riding that grey horse!”
Lieutenant Linden heard the sound of a horse neighing.
He turned his head to look and saw a knight charging across the grassland, holding aloft a red flag.
“That’s a white horse,” Lieutenant Linden corrected, not knowing why he felt compelled to correct such a trivial matter at a time like this.
Just then, Ante’s heavily accented Prosen came through the headset, “If you don’t surrender, I will personally climb onto your tanks and blow each of your heads off with my pistol! Your families and friends will receive a letter, saying you perished due to stupidity and overestimating yourselves!”
Because Prosen’s tank radios and internal communications used the same lines, everyone in the tank could hear what was picked up by the vehicle radio — but only the commander’s microphone could transmit via the radio, while the others could only use it for internal communication.
The gunner was extremely nervous, “I can’t keep up with him! The engine RPM is too low, there’s not enough power for the turret rotation. Driver! Boost the RPM!”
Driver: “Right away!”
What followed was a roar from the engine, then the turret rotation speed remained the same.
“The engine can’t change gears, probably damaged by yesterday’s bombing. Hand crank it!” shouted the driver.
The gunner immediately pulled out the hand crank and started to furiously wind it. Every station in the tank, except for the commander’s position, was equipped with a crank handle, allowing the crew to cooperatively rotate the turret.
While cranking furiously with everyone, the gunner yelled, “He’s out of my sights! I can’t keep up with him! He’s going to chop us up!”
“Stay calm, we’re inside a tank! We’re protected by 56 tons of steel!” Lieutenant Linden scolded, “When he comes around to the front, shoot him dead with the hull machine gun! These things are no big deal, even a god would die if hit by an MG34!”
At the same time, Lieutenant Linden tracked the knight with his gaze. Read new adventures at empire
Suddenly, Lieutenant Linden felt a bit envious of the knight, carrying his own banner, riding a white horse across the battlefield—that was exactly the scene depicted in knight novels, wasn’t it?
On the cruel battlefield, filled with blood and fire, Linden felt the damned romance!
He even thought that if he could gallop like that just once, even dying would be worth the ticket price!
At that moment, the knight had already run a circle around the tank and was about to enter the firing line of the front hull machine gun! Lieutenant Linden raised his hand, “Ready!”
However, the enemy suddenly changed direction, nonchalantly crossing the firing line of the main cannon and the coaxial machine gun.
Lieutenant Linden cursed, “He’s turning! Look, the guy is scared of the frontal machine gun firing line! Stop turning this way, rotate the turret back around!”
Linden suddenly stopped, noticing that the gunner had somehow gotten hold of the MP40 provided to the commander, his safety off.
He silently recited, “A pale horse appeared in the clouds, its name was Death, and the multitude on earth felt the apocalypse coming—whoever worships the beast and its image, they will…”
Linden: “This is treason! You are an honorable member of the Asgard Knights!”
The gunner burst into laughter, “Haven’t you seen the truth yet? The invincible war machine of the Prosen Empire has just entered the battlefield and been destroyed already!”
Linden: “We also destroyed two of the enemy’s assault guns! (From the Prosen perspective, it was not evident that those were stopped by track damage, they only saw the crew bail out.)
“It just shows that the enemy has the upper hand on this battlefield, and we’re all stuck. If we could’ve moved, the enemy wouldn’t have won so easily! As long as we report back the data, the production models of the tanks will have better armor, superior penetration!”
The gunner laughed out loud again.
Struggling to ignore the muzzle of the submachine gun, Linden said, “You won’t shoot me, think about the party at my house before we headed to the front line. Weren’t you getting on very well with my sister? You wouldn’t leave her heartbroken! Calm down, give me the submachine gun—”
The gunner said, “After killing that general, you really wouldn’t be able to go back.”
The next moment, the gunner opened his own hatch and poked his upper body out.
Lieutenant Linden had no time to stop him.
“We surrender!” the gunner shouted, holding up the submachine gun, “We surrender!”