“`
No pre-battle mobilization was needed, not a single extra word had to be spoken, just a simple command, and the interstellar warriors boarded their respective rapid assault crafts.
The reason mobilization wasn’t necessary was that the old soldiers didn’t need to be told; as for the new recruits, all conscripted from the Rage Owl Star Alliance, no one needed to fuel their rage toward enemies daring to harm their homeland; rather, it had to be slightly tempered to prevent the warriors from acting impulsively.
All the interstellar warriors were divided into five squads.
In fact, the current Phoenix Battle Group had well over fifty members. However, among them, quite a few had their superhuman organs still maturing; additionally, another group had matured organs but no sufficient power armor to wear.
In the end, those who donned power armor and were truly of use numbered only 27.
Commander Matins, Priest Rizzo, and two other veterans each led a team of five to a location, with the mission objective of destroying the missile silos there.
The squads with veterans at the helm were not a concern. But that left only four old-timers, including Commander Matins and Priest Rizzo, making it impossible to spare a fifth person to lead a team.
Thus, the fifth team had to be led by a new recruit.
Anat was the one selected as the temporary squad leader, and his squad had the most members of all five teams, numbering seven warriors.
Before departure, Commander Matins and Priest Rizzo took him aside for a serious talk.
Priest Rizzo was one thing, but Anat could clearly see that despite Commander Matins’s stern and indifferent facade, his scant words still betrayed the tension and worry within.
Although Anat hadn’t experienced the Battle Group’s glory days or the grueling penitential crusade, he had read the history of the Battle Group in the monastery’s library.
The Phoenix, at its smallest, had been just four people, nearly meeting true death. Even now, the Battle Group hadn’t recovered much vitality. A grand group with only 27 legitimate warriors was still very few and very vulnerable.
Hence, the commander would never wish for any loss to the Battle Group, which explained his nervousness.
With veterans leading the other four squads, there would be some oversight, but his own squad, composed entirely of new recruits, was the most likely to encounter problems.
Anat fully understood Commander Matin’s concerns, which is why he also knew the importance of the responsibility he bore on his shoulders.
He forced himself to calm down from the rage—not to suppress it, but to keep a clear head amid it. He assured the Commander and the Priest that he would surely bring every brother back safely upon mission completion.
He made that promise, and he was about to fulfill it.
He didn’t want to disappoint the Commander, nor did he want to let the Governor down.
At the same time, he was aware that if this battle were to succeed, it would establish his position within the Battle Group. In the future, the Group would surely continue to expand, and it always needed new officers, squad leaders, and even members of the Glory Guard or champions of the Battle Group. And he needed to secure more honors for his future, laying down a foundational career.
With this mentality, he and his brothers spent more than ten hours on the Wind Falcon.
During that time, he could see missiles trailing flames through the window, heading in the opposite direction, passing by them.
He knew those missiles were aimed at his homeland. With each passing missile, more rage accumulated in his heart, yet at the same time, he became even more composed.
Finally, they reached their destination.
The three Wind Falcons cast waves of ship-borne missiles from afar towards the target location, bombarding it; immediately following, the rapid assault crafts began to decelerate and decrease altitude.
Shortly after, when Anat could vaguely see the ground situation through the window, firepower from the machine guns and beam cannons on the Wind Falcons began to take effect.
But at this moment, some ground-based long-range firepower, such as anti-aircraft guns, began firing into the sky, albeit with relatively poor accuracy and density.
The three Wind Falcons were hit several times, but it wasn’t problematic. The calibers of these anti-aircraft guns were not that fierce,
As they fired, the entire craft began to drop sharply. Read new chapters at My Virtual Library Empire
Just over ten meters from the ground, the hatch opened and the interstellar warriors leaped out.
Mid-air, in the seconds before landing, Anat swiftly scanned the area, grasping the expected landing points of each teammate.
“`
Then, firmly grounding himself, he raised his grenade launcher and opened fire on a high-caliber firepower point approximately two hundred meters away, suppressing the threat to the Wind Falcons as they decelerated.
Meanwhile, he kept giving orders:
“Larson, Kuvas, at the 12 o’clock position, 300 meters out, that bunker is your target! Magnuson, Kritians, two of you move out to the 3 o’clock direction, 400 meters away! Everyone else, follow me at a walk, advancing straight ahead, ready to support the flanks at any time!”
He issued commands in an orderly fashion. The seven-person squad split into three groups, targeting the bunkers ahead.
This was the first challenge they would face.
Blackbird tightly guarded their missile silos.
Around the missile silos, the Phoenix warriors faced a cluster of bunkers.
Dozens of partly underground, partly exposed bunkers tightly sealed the core area around the missile launch silos.
In the direction of the Phoenix warriors’ assault, there were at least eleven bunkers.
These bunkers, scattered at intervals of about one to two hundred meters, were manned by modified humans.
These modified humans, with the help of solid defensive positions, offered stubborn resistance.
Initially, their attention was primarily drawn to the Wind Falcons in the sky, with machine guns and rifles firing rapidly at the Wind Falcons.
Slowing down the drop of the interstellar warriors made the Wind Falcons relatively easier to hit.
Bullets tinkled against the armor of the Wind Falcons. Although none were brought down, they dared not linger and had to immediately accelerate, gaining altitude and distance.
After driving away the Wind Falcons, they then turned their firepower on the interstellar warriors below.
But by this time, the Phoenix warriors had already made significant progress forward, taking advantage of the brief window when their adversaries’ attention had been drawn away by the Wind Falcons.
The running speed of the interstellar warriors was so fast that it exceeded their expectations—oh, these modified humans no longer possessed the concept of ‘imagination’; more accurately, it was outside the bounds of their programmed combat logic.
The two sides began to exchange fire at less than a hundred meters distance.
In theory, the modified humans should have had an absolute advantage. They outnumbered the opposition, they were holed up inside bunkers, exposing only their firing ports, while the interstellar warriors on the other side had to advance through open terrain with no cover.
However, the reality was the exact opposite.
When they resolved to concentrate their firepower to eliminate the three warriors coming directly at them, they found that their bullets were as ineffective as a water gun’s spray. A large volume of fire had been unleashed and many shots had hit their marks, but all they managed to do was slow down the advance of the three red-armored warriors.
And then the counterattack arrived.
Anat turned sideways, intentionally using the broad shoulder plates to block the bullets aiming for his upper body; he retracted his forearm to protect his armpits while also aiming his gun. Bullets tinkled against his armor, causing his body to tremble slightly. But he held firm against this force, taking steady steps forward while accurately aiming and pulling the trigger of his grenade launcher.
Despite the quivering of his body from the impacts because the firing ports of the enemy bunkers were quite small, he still managed to fire off thirteen grenades, with half of them blasting into the bunkers.
This silenced the bunker right away.
They no longer just foolishly stood taking hits, but quickly moved, using the silenced bunker to shield themselves from attacks from several other firing points, avoided the line of fire, and rapidly advanced to the position of the now vacated bunker.
And at that moment, after the attention was mainly drawn to them, the two pairs of soldiers on the flanks also successfully completed their missions.
The outer three bunkers had been captured just like that.
What followed was simply continuing to advance in the same manner as before.
Anat found this to be quite simple, like a drill, a sort of armed outing.
Caution was necessary, but under the Phoenix’s cold fury, Blackbird’s defenses posed no threat.