The guards at the gate fled after their comrades shouted at them from the walls: “get out of the way!” and the next moment the gate is knocked down with a roar by an armored personnel carrier, scattering dust and fragments of huge steel hinges around. People fled in fear in different directions, seeing a column of growling iron monsters rushing through the streets of the city straight to the castle, leaving behind deep furrows and clouds of dust.
The natives were in shock and did not understand what they had just seen, either real monsters that they had never seen, or strange magical self-propelled carriages from fairy tales. In any case, they were scared and hurried to hide somewhere while a column of dozens of cars drove in a column through the narrow streets of the city.
Inside the leading vehicle in the landing compartment, General Zeonid sat and looked at the tablet screen on which the view of the city from the drone’s camera was displayed. In some areas of the city, small battles were fought with swords and spears. Groups of people in black attacked everyone, and the guards barely had time to save everyone and respond to the threat.
"We're on time."
General Zeonid reported to himself and plunged into short thoughts, drawing up a plan of action.
The car bounced on bumps and the wreckage of wheelbarrows and carts left on the way, and possibly also on people who did not have time to get out of the way. The noise of the engine drowned out all sounds outside, and the soldiers inside were preparing for an immediate landing in the middle of residential streets.
Soon the general finished drawing up a plan and, turning on the radio, gave an order over the main channel:
"Velen, support the natives and go to the large concentration of cultists in the east. Is the order clear?"
The answer was immediate.
"That's right, sir. I've already received the data. I'm starting the task."
The third armored personnel carrier separated from the column and, having demolished the corner of the house, moved off the path heading towards that same large concentration of cultists. Now the general was only interested in what was happening in the palace and judging by the installed video surveillance cameras, the same nightmare was happening there as on the streets of the city, only much more confusing.
There were fights inside the palace, but it was difficult to identify the enemies among them due to the fact that they were all palace guards and, moreover, were dressed in the same robes. Most likely, the cultists infiltrated the guards immediately after the battle and were waiting for the right moment to rebel. But it was not clear how they even identified their allies and enemies among the other guards,
Switching from one camera to another, the general searched within the palace for Queen Ilifreeta and immediately found her.
"Fuck!"
The general swore when he saw a man in a black robe running down the spiral staircase in the tower and holding the immobilized queen in his arms.
She was kidnapped, and who knows who really needed it. In any case, our task is to prevent the collapse of the state for which the general flew to save us. I decided for myself that I definitely would not allow Ilifreeta to be kidnapped and used as a ransom item or something else.
Moreover, Sigrun would be very upset if something happened to her friend, and I don’t need an engineer who has his head in the clouds because of a tragic incident.
Hang in there, Your Majesty, we're coming.
Holding the clip in my teeth, I hurried to prepare my assault rifle and prepare as much ammunition and grenades as possible on my belt. My squad consisting of Itami, Will, Forn, Esko and Ashwani was ready for battle. Except that I entrusted the last of them with a sword instead of a normal firearm so that in case of emergency it would protect us if the opponents got too close.
Still, this Ashwani is better at swinging a blade than shooting from a rifle, so I think giving him a sword is a good decision. It seems that he himself was not against this, just watching with curiosity as we fiddled with our weapons. The native is clearly interested in how our weapons work, but it’s too early for him to think about it. When the time comes, we will train him to use firearms.
We were all wearing the same green camouflage police uniform, and our heads were covered by dark blue helmets. We also had body armor, walkie-talkies, visors and bladed weapons. Until we establish energy production, we will have to wear such equipment and abandon combat suits in favor of mobility.
But we also had a problem: the available ammunition was not enough for a long battle, however, I hope that we will not fight for days and days and will complete the task in a few hours, if not less.
Zeonid decided not to waste time preparing combat suits and packed the rapid response squad as modestly as possible, hoping that the existing ammunition in the vehicle would be enough to suppress this attack.
It's a pity that Granid left us.
I clicked my tongue, remembering our last conversation.
We could use his help. He could well have dealt with all the enemies alone, but he hurried to return to his home and left us here. At our last meeting in the empty throne room, he said that he had done everything that was dictated by fate, after which he called his student Incartia and left. I didn’t even say goodbye to him properly or thank him for helping us. I feel very lousy after this.
I'd rather not think about it.
Having scattered all the shops and street obstacles like a battering ram, our armored personnel carrier reached the castle gates where a life-and-death battle was being fought. The ringing of swords intersected with painful cries, and the battle was not going to subside. The guards killed each other and it was difficult to determine who was an ally and who was an enemy.
Meanwhile, the general gave the order:
"Feilen, parachute and wait for orders."
Having received the order, the second armored personnel carrier opened the hatches from which the second detachment of fighters from the assault platoon landed. They pointed their weapons towards the guards and also could not identify the enemy, wagging the barrels of their weapons from one guard to another. The general looked at the tablet and carefully watched the battle, and the next moment, noticing something, he gave a new order:
“Feilen, shoot those who have a bracelet on their wrist.”
"Understood."
A response was heard in the earpiece and the street was instantly covered in a flurry of fire.
Half of the guards were immediately killed by bullets, spattering blood on the stone tiles, and the other half froze in fear and looked at the arriving earthlings with a shocked look. They muttered something in their own language and fell to their knees, as if they were begging us for mercy or maybe simply in this way they expressed their gratitude for salvation. It was difficult to determine for sure what exactly they wanted to say, without the ring it was difficult to determine.
But then, after some kneeling, a guard ran out from behind the gate and shouted something, after which the rescued natives instantly rose to their feet and rushed through the gate into the castle, looking around. It seems that inside the castle, in the courtyards and corridors of the palace, the battle was still going on, and therefore they were most likely ordered to join as soon as possible.
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"I don't like all this."
Esko commented as he loaded his sniper rifle.
"Those bastards couldn't have gathered so quickly and attacked the palace. Someone helped them."
"Now is not the time to think about it."
I answered the sniper.
"We'll deal with everything after we put down this... uprising."
Will chuckled at my last hesitant word.
"Hah! Obviously this is a rebellion, not some kind of rebellion."
"You'd better keep quiet."
And Will immediately shut up. He always listens to me when required of him. Another thing is Esko’s assumption, with which I agreed one hundred percent. All these people were loyal to Draun Rudrin, which means they should have been loyal to the queen, but for some reason they pointed their blades towards her majesty. Without someone's help from within, the enemies certainly would not have been able to pull this off.
Someone actually helped them.
Meanwhile, Zeonid gave new orders and sent all the other fighters either to the castle or to the city, while he himself watched the battlefield from drones, or rather local battles inside the city. I watched with my own eyes how the general skillfully took control of the situation and indicated on the general map the positions of the enemy forces and their landmarks.
I, also watching the battle from drones, saw on the tablet screen how dozens of cars drove around the city streets and poured lead on buildings, destroying enemy units in batches. There were corpses everywhere and even bloody streams began to flow. This sight was so terrifying. Now the natives have seen with their own eyes a particle of the power of the 127th Army and a tiny spark of the human Republic of Earth.
In one of the sections of the city there were so many cultists that they blocked an entire street, causing an armored personnel carrier sent there to fire a rocket into the crowd, subsequently blowing up all nearby buildings. The shock wave demolished all fragile structures, destroying doors and windows hundreds of meters from the explosion.
It was worth recalling, of course, that the buildings of this era were made by human hands and were not a stronghold of strength and reliability, and therefore it is not known exactly how many ordinary people died from a fired rocket. Even the general, seeing the explosion and subsequent destruction, gave appropriate orders.
"Chavin, refrain from using high explosive charges and rockets!"
"Sorry, sir!"
The commander of the armored personnel carrier that fired the rocket exclaimed on air and left the battle helping the natives clear away the rubble where wounded natives could be found.
The capital's uprising subsided as quickly as it flared up, and therefore the general turned his attention to a more important target, namely the man who kidnapped the queen. He somehow found the blind spot of our video cameras and had already left the castle, being a couple of tens of meters from the huge city temple, where large forces of cultists also began to gather.
But what's even worse is that the cultists, guards and men in white were dragging civilians inside the building and using them as hostages. They have already begun to execute some people in the square and hang them over the temple gates. To our surprise, they were in a hurry to build barricades on all sides, which is why the armored personnel carriers could not break into the square and land fire groups. If armored personnel carriers ran into these barricades, they would immediately get stuck in them, and therefore the option of a frontal attack is unlikely to work.
Our guys will have to dismount outside the very temple square and begin a comprehensive assault on this sector. The plot was quite impressive in size and clearly belonged to the clergy. It is strange that the cultists decided to use this particular place for a general battle for the city. The rest of the city fell silent.
The alerted soldiers of the city garrison were already beginning to gather around the temple square, while civilians were hiding in panic in their houses and running out of the city with whatever they had. All remaining vehicles rushed in that direction and gradually surrounded the sector.
"We're going to the square."
The general ordered the driver of our armored personnel carrier, and we began to move from the spot heading towards the temple, and then the general turned to me.
"What do you think is going on?"
I carefully examined the battlefield from the tablet, looking at the bodies of killed opponents and civilians. I didn’t really understand what could have provoked this uprising and where the cultists came from. After their retreat from the city a couple of weeks ago, they headed south and encountered Duke Fellrick's army, where they are still fighting. Zeonid even sent one shuttle as support and a battalion of soldiers. By now the cultists should already be surrounded and practically destroyed, but the operation has taken a little longer.
At the request of the queen, our fighters decided to side with Fellrick, expecting a favor from him, and apparently we received it. But the cultists turned out to be more persistent and skillfully waged guerrilla warfare, hiding in the depths of the forest and caves in the middle of the hilly terrain. Even with a bioscan, it was difficult to determine their exact location; or rather, something prevented our devices from scanning the area and we had to navigate “by touch,” that is, with our eyes and ears.
Since the cultists were here, they were probably those who managed to hide among the city population or were holed up in some hidden areas of the city, such as the sewers. I cannot see any other explanation for their appearance. This is unlikely to be the same army that retreated from the city and somehow found its way back to Ran.
Another thing was to understand why they raised an obviously failed uprising? Is it really just to kidnap the queen? And how did it happen that the uprising happened a couple of days after Granid and his student left? Did someone know about this and plan everything well? Who could have organized this anyway?
In general, it was difficult to answer all these questions and therefore I was able to voice only the most obvious to the general’s question:
"I think they're trying to lure us in."
Zeonid nodded also thinking about it. The enemy knew about our presence and also knew that we would quickly begin to act. They have gathered all their remaining forces at the temple, which means something could happen there that will cause us serious damage, for example, a powerful explosion. Fortunately, out of a thousand soldiers, the general in a hurry gathered only a hundred, so the enemy’s plan was a failure here too.
Still, we valued the life of every Republican fighter and for the sake of our safety, it would have been best to demolish the entire building, despite the fact that there could have been thousands of hostages there. One accurate missile salvo and the uprising would be crushed, but we could not do this otherwise we risked destroying our relations with the kingdom of Lacuus, and in particular could kill Queen Ilifreeta and plunge this country into chaos, from which we are trying to pull her out.
It is necessary to free the queen and at the same time suffer the minimum possible losses, and it is better to do without them at all. Looking at the face of the old general, I saw how his heterochromic eyes ran from side to side, he was clearly thinking, making a plan and finally completing it.
“To all fighters, begin the assault on the temple square, do not enter the building and keep the entrances and exits at gunpoint. Keep a distance from the building and scan everything with all devices. If unnatural thermal energy arises, retreat immediately.”
Soon the drones showed how detachments of earthlings began to move like snakes along the city streets, aiming their firearms forward. They began to fire smoke bombs ahead, guided only by a thermal imager. Following them were the soldiers of the city garrison with spears and swords. The natives also took part in suppressing the uprising; it was clear from their faces that they were furious, but still stayed behind the earthlings, maintaining an even formation.
On the tablet screen, I noticed how bullet tracers appeared and the cultists in the square, one after another, fell from the hits. Spilled with the blood of hundreds of bodies of cultists, the temple square was captured. The capture went smoothly and quickly, and most importantly, without losses. All that remained was the temple, in which there were people and which was completely barricaded.
The general received bioscan data on the tablet and was convinced that there were thousands of hostages inside the building. Some signatures were already cooling, indicating that they were dead. People had already begun to be killed, and the queen herself might soon be among those killed.
"jun-lieut Kipito,"
Zeonid contacted me.
“With your squad, block the back exit from the temple. Don’t let anyone escape from there. Is the order clear?”
"Yes, sir."
I saluted and immediately left the armored personnel carrier along with the soldiers, just finding myself a couple of dozen steps from the captured square.
From here one could already see a temple with high spiers of Gothic and Arabic styles. The general followed us out, already giving other orders. He organized a special forces detachment, and he himself decided to come closer to directly observe the progress of the assault. On the one hand, this might seem reckless, but it is worth remembering that most of our fighters were in the temple square, and remaining in the car alone with the driver would have been a much more reckless idea.
While we were trying to get our bearings, a squad with black diagonal stripes on their faces ran out from around the corner of a stone house. Most likely these were members of the "nightmare" squad, which was chosen by the general as an assault squad. It was necessary to launch a swift attack and immediately eliminate all hostile targets without any delay and, of course, save Queen Ilifreeta.
Only the Nightmare Squad could cope with this task, mainly due to the fact that they were the elite of the 127th Army. If rumors are to be believed, they were recruited from the department for combating alien sabotage, so they could have enormous experience in such a matter. Their faces showed confidence and determination in their craft. Any civilian would be horrified to look at them.
The soldiers stood in front of the boarded up double doors, preparing for the assault, and we headed towards the back exit from the temple, on the opposite side. There were no battles in this area, as well as cultists, and therefore it was quite calm here, which was even suspicious. Perhaps after the start of the assault the enemy will try to escape here, and therefore we must prevent this.
What happened next depended on the “nightmare” squad.
"Boris, is there anything you want to say?"
Will, as always, decided to make a joke at the wrong time.
And I, as always, rolled my eyes and said encouragingly:
"Guys... get to work."