A retreat order was given to all armored units stationed on the second defensive line for mobile defense. The soldiers ignored the principle of units moving in tandem, completely abandoning the first defensive line. However, with the combat zone full of deserters, they couldn’t offer any cover anyway, and if the disorderly swarm of soldiers were to reach the second defensive line, they would end up blocking the armored units’ retreat, too.
And so rather than reducing their expensive armored units to nothing more than stationary turrets that would be lost in combat, the armored units prioritized a retreat that would allow them to at least fortify and maintain the second defensive line.
At the same time, a retreat order was also given to all artillery forces and combat engineers. This left the first defensive line with nothing but abandoned infantrymen. Artillery fire on the enemy ceased; instead, focus switched to bombing any crucial facilities and collapsing bridges the Löwe could cross.
The infantry weren’t pleased with this development. Precious Feldreß and heavy artillery, along with the regular artillery and armored personnel with the technical skills to operate them, were worth more than a rank-and-file infantryman, so their survival was prioritized. They knew this as basic logic, but now that they were all full of chagrin and mistrust, the logic did nothing to convince them.
The fact that those with technical skills—in other words, artillerymen, engineers, and armored personnel who’d been given more advanced education and training—were mostly former nobility and their subordinates only further fueled their anger.
The armored division that never came to their aid, the cowardly artillery unit, the engineers who were never really combatants. Why were those weaklings prioritized over the ones who put their lives on the line in combat?
We were the ones who paid all the sacrifices so far, who should have the right to return alive.
The order sapped what morale the troops who just barely held their ground in the defensive battle had left. More and more decided to flee rather than die as disposable pawns for the nobles.
Not that making that decision at this point meant they would actually manage to escape.
These were units that still remained on the front lines, preventing the breakthrough points from expanding and keeping the invading Legion at bay. Units that were still in the middle of intense combat. With the enemy right in front of them, they would immediately be devoured. They couldn’t run.
So no matter how disgruntled they got or how much of their will to fight they lost, the troops who remained to intercept the enemy had to stand their ground if they didn’t want to die.
And so under the cover of this cold calculation, the armored divisions, artillery, and combat engineer units retreated with what few infantry they were able to recover.
✦ ✦ ✦
In the end, the people of the Republic were nothing more than oppressors for the Eighty-Six. They didn’t want to shoot them to death or needlessly hurt them, but they had no reason to treat them with any semblance of mercy.
They kicked away their barricades, aimed their laser sights at them, and when the insurgents fled into buildings, they unleashed a barrage of machine-gun fire to drive them out. They did aim above their heads, meaning their shots only resulted in raining them with rubble from the walls.
As one group frantically hurried out of a building, Shin ordered them to get on their knees and cross their arms behind their heads before setting out for the next block. Vargus troops followed him, performing body checks on the surrendered Republic insurgents before taking them away.
He kept his high-frequency blades on, their shrill screech scaring insurgents away, but they only ended up running to where the Vargus were waiting, whom they clung to, begging for help. Yes—he tried, with all his might, to make it so Grethe didn’t have to order them to open fire.
They arranged the order with which they would seize the different blocks and when the Vargus would appear, making it so the insurgents would flee to where the Vargus were waiting even without the Eighty-Six actively herding them there. They used large speakers they were able to prepare for this operation to transmit messages all across the city, ordering the insurgents to surrender at high volume. The tone of the announcements was imposing and overbearing, intended to spur a panicked person to reflexively obey.
The task of recovering those who surrendered was relegated not to the visibly combative military police, but the unit made up of Vargus women, which lulled the insurgents into thinking they wouldn’t be mistreated and kept hidden the fact that, once out of the city, they would be roughly forced into transport vehicles by stern MPs.
Shin took a turn, and his optical sensor detected a young man carrying a recoilless gun on his shoulder. Undertaker instantly turned to face him, only for the young man to hold up not his large gun but instead a child. Perhaps this wasn’t his intent, but it looked like he was using the child as a human shield as he begged:
“Wait, I have a child! A little boy!”
“Throw down your weapon and surrender! You won’t be harmed so long as you don’t resist!” Shin shouted through his external speaker.
The man threw down his recoilless gun and fell to his knees. If he was going to bring up at this moment that he had a child with him, he should have evacuated to begin with. The fact that he was so adamant about resisting that he brought a child to a combat zone, that he was trying to resist armed soldiers despite being a powerless civilian, that he joined this reckless revolt had all slipped from his mind now.
It wasn’t just reckless and meaningless; it was outright harmful. This, coupled with the realization that the Republic finally displayed clear intent to defend itself, was a headache and a half.
Shin could only grumble to himself and exhale deeply, trying to lower the pressure building in his mind.