Counterfeit Hero

Chapter 1310: Chapter 58: Towering Mountains and Lofty Ridges (Part 2)

PS: In this battle of March, our bandit army is just like the current Suicide Camp—there is no way out. White Goose is catching up fast; in just one day the gap has shrunk by three hundred votes. Seventy-Two will make an agreement with everyone here: we fight a battle with no way back! I update, you vote. Shake him off. Defend the chrysanthemum to the death!

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”Sir, the enemy suddenly turned northeast and is fleeing toward the mountains.”

”Got it. Everyone speed up and keep up the pursuit.” Vego’s voice was calm and firm.

”Yes, sir.”

He pushed the control stick, making the Mecha keep running in that mechanical posture. Watching countless Mecha rumble past him, Vego leaned back against the metal tube-shaped seat and suddenly felt all the strength drain from his body.

His mind was a complete blank. It was as if there was a broken section in his memory. Every decision he had made earlier, now that he thought about it, felt like he’d been sleepwalking.

How could he have fallen for it?

That muddled, foggy memory made him hate himself, and hate this moment in time, with a savage intensity.

For the first time, Vego wished time could flow backward, back to the moment before he issued the order for the entire division to pursue.

But nothing could be undone anymore.

Time had passed, the decision had been made, and there was no taking it back. These few hours were enough for those two Chuckna divisions at Shuangxi Bridge Town to build a solid defensive system. It would be a massive fortified belt, stretching from the heights of Shuangxi Bridge Town between the ridges down along the slopes, then spreading to every spot in the area that could be used for defense.

There would be countless trenches, countless emplacements.

The Chuckna people would throw everything that could possibly be used for combat onto that line. If necessary, they would even dismantle their Transport Mecha, embedding the Mecha hulls together with their external armor into the blast-proof frameworks of their positions. With the support of innumerable air-based fighters, they could rely on those fortifications to hold off the successive assaults of ten divisions.

There wouldn’t be ten divisions. Most likely, the bulk of the Jiepeng Forces desperately heading north in the mountains would be annihilated before they even saw Shuangxi Bridge Town, cut to pieces by the Fei Alliance Army Armored Division’s multi-point airborne penetrations. With heaven’s timing, terrain advantage, and human factors all on their side, the Alliance forces had already assembled the winning hand. This battle no longer held any suspense.

And all of this could have been avoided!

Everything had originally been in his hands! He could have become the youngest Hero of the Jiepeng Empire, could have brought his declining family back to the very top rank of the Imperial Nobles... Yet a single misjudgment, a wrong turn taken at a fateful crossroads, had cast him down from heaven into hell.

Nothing could be salvaged now!

A violent stab of heartache and rage swept over Vego. He mechanically piloted the Mecha forward, his mind looping over and over the same gut-twisting regret, like being eaten alive by ten thousand ants.

Even as Prince Bobett’s trusted protégé, Vego knew there was no escape for him this time.

A defeat this catastrophic could not possibly be shouldered by the Prince. The only one who could serve as scapegoat was him. Looking back: at sixteen, he was noticed by the Prince for a military paper and was recommended directly into the top-tier Royal First Military Academy of Jiepeng; at eighteen, he graduated with the rank of Major; at twenty, he became division commander of the Royal First Guard Second Armored Division.

This Brilliance, this glorious career, had been destroyed in a single day! And the chief culprit was that Leray person named Tian Xingjian!

It was this man who had led him step by step into this trap.

The bright future he had just begun to pave for himself, and even his own life, at this moment were already doomed to be cut short. However, before all the dust settled, this man had to die!

He had already fled into the mountains. That would be a deathtrap. Towering mountain ranges all around would restrict their escape routes and inevitably slow their flight to a crawl. As long as he kept them in sight, it wouldn’t take long before he could avenge himself!

Catch him, and turn his own pain into a thousand forms of torture to inflict on that man!

Vego shoved the control stick forward, and the Mecha suddenly lunged ahead with a burst of speed. The young, hitherto smooth-sailing military prodigy wore a twisted expression, consumed by irrepressible regret and despair.

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”The Suicide Camp has entered the southeastern mountain region of Beiguan City!”

The news swept through the Command Room at Akasa Fortress like a blast of cold wind.

The Generals stared at the report from the front line in utter silence. Many of them shifted their gaze away, unable to bear looking at Bernadotte’s face.

Anyone could see clearly that, under the pursuit of the Second Armored Division, being driven into that mountain region was like being herded into an iron cage. The Suicide Camp’s chances of survival were infinitesimal!

The mountainous area southeast of Beiguan City belonged to the northern part of the Northern Mountain Region, and its average elevation ranked among the highest in the entire vast Northern Mountain Region. Portions of the east–west Tangtai Mountain Range and the Tiklar Mountains intersected here; the towering peaks were snow-capped all year round. The terrain was treacherous: below the mountains surged torrents of rivers, with swamps, primeval forests, and bottomless chasms everywhere.

Even with the mobility of Mecha, every step would be fraught with thorns. A single wrong turn could land them in a dead end. Not to mention, the Jiepeng Armored Forces were still pursuing from behind.

Seeing Margaret’s somewhat pale face, Hastings lightly patted her hand and said in a low voice, ”He’s piloting a Twelfth Generation Mecha. With his skills, if he wants to leave, he can get out at any time.”

Margaret looked into Hastings’s eyes without speaking. She knew that her grandfather understood the truth perfectly well.

That stubborn guy who had run casualty-free simulations against the program countless times, who would rather restart the exercises over and over even when pitting himself against his own wargaming models, who would repeatedly recalculate and reconsider, shamelessly cheat and struggle with everything he had, just to avoid paying even one extra percentage point in casualties—how could he possibly abandon the comrades at his side at a time like this.

Especially when these comrades had followed him here.

The Command Room was dead silent; the Generals from the various Fei Alliance Member Countries no longer knew what words to use to express what they felt.

Just an hour or two ago, they had still been excited over the Suicide Camp’s brilliant performance, almost giddy at the looming great victory on Canglang Star. But now, they could only stare in silence at the reports and footage coming back from the front.

Everyone present had been soldiers their entire lives, had fought countless battles, and lived through innumerable partings of life and death. The life or death of one small unit, in many cases, no longer even fell within their field of vision. Pots are bound to crack at the well’s mouth; Generals are bound to die on the battlefield. War means people will die, that there will be sacrifice. They had seen through this truth many years ago.

Call it hearts of iron and stone, call it cold-blooded and ruthless. As soldiers, none of them saw anything wrong with it. War is cruel by nature. The duty of a soldier is to use every means to obtain victory. Even their own lives must be set aside, let alone those of others. In a war that swept all of humanity into its flames, the survival or destruction of a single Armored Camp wasn’t even worth a second glance on a situation report.

They had no time to grieve, to weep, or to wallow in sentimentality. They had more important things that needed doing. But right now, everyone was standing quietly before the SkyNet display, genuinely heartsick over the fate of the unit on the screen.

The Jiepeng people, having been played, had clearly thrown all restraint to the wind. The Jiepeng 2nd Armored Division was disregarding all cost, determined to annihilate this unit that no longer had any real impact on the overall situation.

At present, aside from one regiment lagging behind, one battalion on their rear flank, and two battalions swinging around from the west, the Jiepeng 2nd Armored Division elements pursuing into the mountains with the Suicide Camp numbered a full two regiments and six battalions. Two of those battalions were practically nose-to-tail with the Suicide Camp, while the remaining four battalions followed behind like the massive body of a giant python, pressing inexorably forward.

It could be said the Suicide Camp had no chance of victory and no path to survival.

No one could bear to watch this freshly minted Hero unit go dark after their most brilliant performance. They were supposed to receive a Hero’s welcome, to be awarded the highest medals of Honor, to be greeted with the cheers of all the Leray people and the salutes of all Fei Alliance Army soldiers. Yet now, they could only march toward a dead end in that damned maze of towering peaks and ridges.

”Where is our fighter group?” Admiral Rabinowski of Chuckna growled in a low Roar over the channel.

The Generals kept silent. They all knew that in that rugged mountain terrain, fighters not only were of little use, they would become living targets for the ground armored forces. The forward command had clearly already dispatched many more aircraft, but that did nothing to change the Suicide Camp’s predicament.

It wasn’t that Rabinowski didn’t know this; he just refused to think about it. Those were his men! The ones who had just wiped out the 2nd Armored Division’s elite Blade Special Camp and tilted the balance of victory toward the Fei Alliance!

”It’s time to prepare for the next phase of the campaign...” In the silence, Hastings turned his wheelchair away from the SkyNet display. His voice was calm and flat, without the slightest emotional fluctuation.

Bernadotte smiled faintly, turned around first, and followed behind Hastings.

He had never worried.

He had more confidence in that Fatty than in himself.

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”General, these mountains are a real bitch to climb.”

On the comm channel, Anthony spoke between panting breaths, laughing as he did.

Even though they were piloting Mecha instead of climbing on their own, it still took effort on the control sticks to steady the Mecha through all the jolting and swaying up and down, side to side.

”Next time the bandit army holds a training camp, you should sign up.” Fatty chuckled as he reached out and gave Anthony’s [Taixing] a pull.

Steel Mecha arms locked together; with a heave, Taixing scrambled up onto the ridgeline.

”Lieutenant Colonel, how did you pass the test for Level 7 Mecha Warrior back in the day?” a Chuckna Warrior asked with a grin.

”Level 7 my ass, I’m Level 8!” Anthony said lazily. ”My forte is close-quarters killing, not running the damn track.”

Snickers and laughter came over the channel.

By the time they reached these mountains, everyone already knew how this was going to end for them. Yet compared to the earlier silence, the warriors now actually seemed much more relaxed.

Down below, the Jiepeng Mecha were packed like ants, dense and swarming.

Fuck it, in the end it’s just death!

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. Bandit army brothers who still have tickets left, open fire!

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.(To be continued. To find out what happens next, please log on to www.qidian.com. More Chapters are available there. Support the author, support authorized reading!)