Chapter 10 Chapter nine

"I can shoot one," said Watson, looking over the boulder in front of him. "I can hit one." "No," said Vivoros, our corporal. "They have their shields on. Shooting now is just a waste of ammunition." "What the hell," Watson said, "we've been here for hours. We're sitting here, they're sitting there. When they drop their shields, what are we going to do? Go over there and shoot 'em ?It’s not the damn fourteenth century, there’s no need to make an appointment to kill people.” Vivoros got angry, "Watson, paying your salary is not for you to think, so shut up and get ready. Besides, it won't be long, there is one more thing in their ceremony, and then we will do it .”

"Oh? What's the last item?" Watson asked. "They're going to sing," Vivoros said. Watson grinned, "What are you singing? A battle song?" "No," said Vivoros, "they sing of our death." As if giving a signal, the hemispherical protective shield surrounding the Kangsu base began to emit bursts of light.I adjusted my vision and looked several hundred meters away.A Consu stepped out of their position; his massive carapace brushed against the shield, which wobbled until he was out of range of the static field. He is the third and last Consu to appear before the battle begins.The first came about twenty hours ago, and the lowly, muttering guy yelled at us and challenged us, formally signaling the Consu's intent to fight us.The courier's low rank is meant to show that they have little respect for our military.If we were important, the Consu would have sent a high-ranking courier.Respect or not, we don't mind.In fact, no matter who the opponent is, the messengers sent by the Kangsu people are generally small characters.Not to mention that unless you're particularly sensitive to the pheromones of the Consu, they all look alike.

A second Consu emerged hours later from behind the shield, roaring like a herd of cows.Immediately, he exploded, pink blood, organs, and carapace fragments splattering on the protective shield, hissing softly, and falling like a light rain to the ground.The Cansu apparently believed that if a soldier who had died like this had completed the necessary rituals beforehand, his spirit would go to the enemy camp to inquire about the enemy, and after a period of time return to where the Cansu spirit should go.This is roughly the idea.This is a high honor, not something that comes lightly.In my opinion, this is simply letting one's best soldiers die for nothing.But since I am their enemy, there is no downside to this approach.

The third Consu was one of the top members, and his mission was simply to explain why and how we died.After that, we can let go of killing and being killed.It was useless to rush the situation by firing first at the shield; there was hardly any way to knock the Consu's shield apart short of throwing it whole into the core of a star.Killing the courier can only repeat the opening ceremony, further delaying the start of the war and killing. Then again, it wasn't that the Consu were huddled behind protective shields and refused to come out, they just had a lot of pre-battle ceremonies to do, and they wanted to be free from the inconveniences of bullets, particle beams, or explosives.In fact, the Consu people have an unrivaled love for fierce combat.They only want to set foot on a certain planet, set up a position, and provoke the locals, so that the other party can blow them away by means of war.

That is the case here.The Consu have no interest in colonizing the planet.They just blew up one of the human colonies here, and that was the way to let the colonial army know they had arrived and wanted to fight a war.It is impossible to ignore the Consu, they will keep killing the colonists until someone comes out to fight them.You never know what counts as a formal challenge to their concept, though.You can only keep increasing the number of troops until a Kangsu messenger comes out and declares war. Aside from their striking, impenetrable protective shields, the Consu's level of combat technology was close to that of the colonial armies.You might find this exhilarating, but it's not.From the wars between the Kangsu people and other species, we have gradually learned that the weapons and technology of the Kangsu people have always been on par with their opponents.This further proves a point: what the Kangsu people participate in is not war, but sports.It's the same as football, only there are no spectators, only colonists who have been killed.

Launching an attack on the Consu first is not a good option.Shields protect their entire internal systems.The energy for generating the shield comes from the white dwarf companion star of Consu's star. This companion star is completely buckled with some kind of harvesting mechanism, so all the energy it emits is used to provide energy for the shield.Realistically, humans really shouldn't mess with creatures with this ability.But the Consu have an eerie sense of honor: once they've been wiped out of a planet by war, they won't come back.It's as if war is the vaccine and we are the anti-pathogen.

This is all provided by our military database, which our commanding officer, Lieutenant Keyes, ordered us to access and read before the battle.Watson didn't seem to know anything about it, which means he didn't read the reports.That's not too surprising, because from the moment I knew Watson, I knew he was the kind of pompous, headstrong, stupid, ignorant piece of shit who would kill himself and his comrades.My difficulty is that I am also his comrade in arms. The third Consu stretched out his sword-like arms (probably they evolved to deal with some unimaginable horrors on their home planet during their evolution), and the more recognizable arm below the arm The forelimbs are pointing towards the air. "It's about to begin," Vivoros said.

"I could hit him without breaking a sweat," Watson said. "If you do that, I'll shoot you with my own hands," Vivoros said. There was a bang in the sky like God's own rifle firing, and what followed was like a chainsaw sawing through a tin roof.The Consu are singing.I plugged into BrainPal and it translated for me: "Damn, it's too loud," Watson said, sticking a finger into his left ear and turning it.I guess he didn't even bother to have BrainPal translate for him. "Jesus, this isn't a war, this isn't a football game," I said to Vivoros, "this is a baptism."

Vivoros shrugged, "The colonial army doesn't think so. It's how every one of their wars started. The higher-ups think it's their national anthem, but it's actually just a ritual. Look, the protective shield is down .” She pointed to the protective shield.The shield is flickering and is shutting down completely. "It's almost fucking close," Watson said. "I'm almost falling asleep." "Listen, you two," Vivoros said, "calm down, focus, and get down. We've got good terrain here, and the lieutenant wants us to knock these bastards out with a single shot when they come charging. Don't Play tricks, aim for their chests and shoot - that's where their brains are. We shoot one, and our comrades have one less to worry about. Rifle mode only, other modes will reveal our position faster .No sound, from now on you can only communicate through BrainPal. Do you understand?"

"Understood." I said. "Fuck it," Watson said. "Very well," Vivoros said.The protective shield finally failed, and the missile that had been aimed at the target a few hours ago flew across the middle ground between the Consu and humans in an instant.The shock wave of the missile explosion was followed by human screams and the metallic chirps of the Consu.For a few seconds, there was only smoke and silence all around; followed by a long roar, the Consu rushed forward, and the humans held their positions, killing as many as possible before the two armies' vanguards intersected. Consu people.

"Let's do it," Vivoros said, raising her MP, aiming at a Consu in the distance and firing.We all started shooting. How to prepare for battle. First, let the system check your MP-35 rifle.This step is very simple; MP-35 has self-test and self-repair functions, and it can also use ammunition blocks as raw materials to manufacture necessary components to troubleshoot in a pinch.The only way to completely destroy an MP is to put it behind a firing thruster, but then you'll probably end up with it too—you're in big trouble. Second, put on your combat uniform.This is a self-sealing full-body elastic bodysuit that can cover all parts of the body except the face.Leotards are designed to make you forget about your body in battle.Clothing made of nanomechanical particles lets in the light necessary for photosynthesis and regulates temperature; for your body, standing on an ice floe in the Arctic or on a sand dune in the Sahara is almost the same thing, The only noticeable difference is the view.If you sweat, the tights wick away the sweat, filter it, and store the moisture until you pour it into your military canteen.You can also do this with urine.But generally, peeing and peeing in tights is not recommended. If a bullet hits your stomach (or anywhere else for that matter), the tights tighten where it was hit, allowing the energy of the impact to spread throughout your body instead of allowing the bullet to penetrate.It hurts, but it's better than having bullets zip merrily through your guts.Alas, this method only works to a certain extent, so avoiding enemy fire is still extremely important. Strap on your gear belt, where you'll find your fighting knife, multi-tool (aka the fully grown Swiss Army Knife), an impressive fold-out personal tent, army water bottle, and a week-long power pack. melted biscuits and three grooves for ammunition.Apply a face cream full of nanomechanical particles that interact with your tights and share information about your external environment.Turn on your protective color switch, and try to see if you can find yourself in the mirror. Then, open your BrainPal channel to your squad and keep it open until you return to your ship or die.I thought I was smart enough to have thought of this in boot camp, only to find that it had long since been enshrined as one of the most sacred of unofficial doctrines.Communicating with BrainPal means no ambiguous commands or signals, and no voice giving away your location.If you hear a colonial soldier screaming in the middle of a battle, he's either stupid or howling from bullets. There's just one downside to communicating with BrainPal: If you're not paying attention, your BrainPal will send your emotional messages along with it.You may suddenly feel like the shit out of you, only to realize that it's not you who's about to pee incontinence, it's your comrade.This kind of thing will distract you, and your comrades-in-arms don't want you to remember this kind of embarrassment for the rest of your life. Only connect with your comrades.If you leave the channel that connects the entire platoon open, you'll have sixty people cursing and fighting and dying in your head.You don't need this. In the end, forget about everything else and just remember to obey orders, kill anything that isn't human, and save your life.The Colonial Army made this very easy; for the first two years of service, every soldier was an infantryman, whether you were a janitor, a surgeon, a councilman, or a bum on the street.As long as you can successfully pass the first two years, you have the opportunity to become a commissioner, get a permanent post in the colonial army, and engage in the logistics work that every army has, and you don't have to fight north and south.And in these two years, all you have to do is to go to various places according to their orders, shrink behind the rifle, and not be killed while killing people.It's simple, but simple and easy are not the same thing. It takes two shots to take down a Consu.This kind of thing has never been seen before, and there is no mention of personal protective equipment in the information about them.But there was something about them that held them back from the first shot.The first shot makes them lie on all fours on a part of their body (you'd probably think that was their butt), but a few seconds later they're back on their feet.So two shots had to be fired: the first to bring them down, the second to keep them from getting up. On an extremely busy battlefield, it is not easy to shoot two consecutive shots at the same moving target across a distance of several hundred meters.When I discovered this, I had the bastards devise a special firing sequence that fired two rounds with just one pull of the trigger: the first with a blank bullet, and the second with the explosives loaded.I can switch to this particular shooting routine at a whim.One second I was single-firing a standard rifle cartridge, and the next second I probably used my special slaughter procedure for the Consu.I love my rifle. I sent this special firing procedure to Watson and Vivoros; Vivoros put it in the chain of command.Within a minute or so, the battlefield was filled with the sound of rapid double-bore fire.The Consu's chests popped one after another, as the explosives exploded the guts in their chests, sounding like popcorn.I glanced at Vivoros.She was aiming and shooting relentlessly.Watson was grinning as he fired, like a young boy who just won a stuffed animal in the airsoft shooting range on the farm. Vivoros sent a message, "What?" Watson said, looking up.I grabbed him and pulled him down.The missile hit right on the boulder we were using for cover.A shower of freshly formed gravel rained down on us.I looked up just in time to see a rock the size of a bowling ball twirl wildly and hit my head.I hit it hard without thinking; the tight sleeves hardened all over my arm, and the rock slid away like a softball.My arm hurts; if I were on Earth, I'd probably be the proud owner of three severely fractured and misaligned forearm bones.I won't do it again. "It's bloody bloody weird," Watson said. "Shut up," I said, sending Vivoros a message. She replied, removing her multi-tool from her gear belt, pulling out a mirror from it, and using it to peek over the edge of the boulder.There are six Consu, no, seven, coming up. Suddenly there was a clicking sound from the left.While correcting, she put away the tools, I nodded and Watson grinned again.As soon as Vivoros sent "throw," we all hurled grenades over boulders.I counted, three rounds each.After the nine explosions sounded, I let out a breath, prayed softly, and then jumped up.I saw the body of a Consu, another dazedly shuffling away from where we were, and two more struggling for cover.Vivoros killed the wounded one, and Watson and I each killed the other two. "Welcome to the party, you stupid pigs!" Watson yelled excitedly, and triumphantly jumped up and down the boulder, just in time to bump into the fifth Consu.He moved one step faster than the grenade, and fell before we could knock down his buddies.The Consu raised the barrel of his gun and shot Watson in the nose.Watson's face sunken, then bulged out—a fountain of intelligent blood and muscle and bone tissue that had once been part of Watson's head on the Consu.According to the design, Watson's tights can be instantly hardened when hit by a bullet. When the bullet penetrates Watson's head and reaches the back of the head, the material does harden, and the bullet, smart blood, head, brain and brain companion fragments are separated from the only one. The opening popped out. Watson never knew what hit him.The last time he sent over the BrainPal channel was a feeling of dazedness - that's probably the best way to describe it; someone who knows they've seen something unexpected but hasn't figured out what it is A little surprised.Immediately afterwards, his link went down, like a data source suddenly shutting down unexpectedly. As Watson's face was blown to pieces, the Consu who hit him sang.My translation was always on, so Watson's death I saw was captioned: "Saved" as the fragments of his head trickled over the Consu's chest Repeatedly in my ears.I screamed and opened fire.The Kangsu backed away suddenly, bullets shot into his chest, and his body exploded immediately.Roughly, I wasted thirty bullets on a dead Consu before stopping. "Perry," Vivoros used her voice, which brought me back to my senses, "it's important. It's time to go, let's go." "What about Watson?" I asked. "Leave him alone," Vivoros said. "He's dead, you haven't, and there's no one here to mourn him. We'll collect the body later. Let's go, we have to save our lives." We won.The double-shot technique wiped out a large group of Consu, and finally, they had another idea, changed tactics, and fell back to attack with missiles, abandoning another frontal attack.A few hours later, the Kangsu people retreated across the board, activated their protective shields, and left a group of people to perform a suicide ceremony to show that they accepted their defeat.After they inserted the ceremonial knife into their skulls, all we had to do was collect the corpses and rescue the wounded. On this day, the 2nd row performed well: two people died in battle, including Watson; four people were injured, only one of them was seriously injured. Will be back in a few days.All things considered, things are looking good.An armored hovercraft of the Consu people crashed into the 4th platoon of C company, and the explosion killed sixteen people, including the platoon leader and two squad leaders, and most of the rest of the company were also injured.I think, if the lieutenant of the 4th platoon hadn't died, after such a damned tragedy, he would definitely feel that life would be worse than death. After receiving clearance from Lieutenant Keyes, I went back to collect Watson's body.A pack of eight-legged scavengers was already eating him.I killed one of them and scared the rest away.In a short period of time, they have come a long way.I was both amazed and depressed: after losing the head and most of the soft tissue, there is literally nothing left of a person.I put his remains in a body bag and headed to the makeshift morgue a few kilometers away.I stopped only once along the way to throw up. Alan spotted me as I walked in the door. "Would you like me to help?" he said, walking up to me. "I'm fine," I said, "and he's not sinking either." "Who?" Alan asked. "Watson," I said. "Oh, it's him." Alan grimaced. "Well, I think someone somewhere will miss him." "Don't make me cry," I said. "How was your day?" "Not bad," Alan said. "He kept his head down most of the time, and every now and then he stuck his rifle out and fired a few shots in the general direction of the enemy. Might have hit something. I don't know." "Have you heard the hymn of death before the battle?" "Of course I did," Alan said. "Like two freight trains mating. That's not something you can choose not to hear." "Yeah," I said, "I mean, did you translate it? Did you hear what the translation said?" "Yes." Alan said, 'They want us to convert to their religion, and I don't like the plan very much myself, their religion seems to include death or something. " "Looks like the Colonials thought it was just a ritual. Like a prayer they recited, as they used to do," I said. "What do you think?" Alan asked. I nodded towards Watson's wreckage." The Consu who killed him screamed 'saved, saved'. I think that's what he would have said if he had gutted me .I think the colonial army underestimated what was going on here.I don't think the reason the Consu people never come back after a war is not that they think they have lost.I don't think this war is really about winning or losing.In their view Come on, the planet is sanctified in blood now. I think they think they own it now." "Then why don't they occupy this place?" "Maybe not yet," I said, "maybe they'll have to wait for Armageddon in some sense. But my point is, I don't think the Colonial Army knew if the Consu really thought this place their estate. I think they're going to surprise people sometime in the future." "Come on, I don't believe it," said Alain. "Every soldier I've ever heard of is bragging. Well, what are you going to do?" "Damn it, Alan, I don't know," I said. "I'd better be dead by then." "Let's change the subject to a less depressing one," said Alan. "It's amazing that you can think of the winning shot sequence for this battle. Some of us really Annoyed. Your drinks will be paid for in the next few weeks." "We're free to drink," I said, "forget it, it's an all-free tour of hell." "Well, if there is a bill to be paid, someone will pay it for you," said Alan. "I don't think it's that exaggerated." I said, but found that Alan had stopped and stood at attention.I looked up to see Vivoros, Lieutenant Keyes, and an officer I didn't recognize striding towards me.I stopped and waited for them to come forward. "Perry," said Lieutenant Keyes. "Lieutenant," I said, "forgive me for not saluting, sir. I'm taking a body to the morgue." "That's where the corpse should go." Kais said, pointing to the corpse, "Who is this?" "Watson, sir." "Oh, it's him," Keyes said. "He dies fast, doesn't he?" "He's excitable, sir," I said. "I suppose so," Keyes said. "Well, whatever. Perry, this is Lieutenant Colonel Lebicki, commander of the 233rd Battalion." "Sir," I said, "I'm sorry I didn't salute." "You're holding the body, I know," Lebicki said. "Boy, I just want to congratulate you for thinking up that shot today. You've saved a lot of time and a lot of people. Those bastard Consu keep inventing Something new to deal with us. The shield is a new method, and it caused us a lot of trouble on the battlefield. I want to commend you, private. What do you think?" "Thank you, sir," I said, "but I figured someone else would." "Maybe, but you're the first to think. That's what counts." "Yes, sir." "When we get back to the Modesto, I hope you'll let me, an old footman, pay your bill, boy." "I'm honored, sir," I said.I saw Alan giggling behind them. "Well, all right. Congratulations again." Lebicki said, pointing to Watson, "Also, I feel sorry for your friend." "Thank you, sir." Alan saluted us both.Lebicki returned the salute, turned and walked away, and Kais followed him.Vivoros turned to face Alan and me. "You look happy," Vivoros told me. "I'm thinking, it's been fifty years since I've been called 'kid'," I said. Vivoros smiled, then pointed to Watson and asked, "Do you know where to send him?" "The morgue is over the hill," I said. "Put Watson down there, and then I'd like to take the first ship back to the Modesto, if I can." "What are you talking about, Perry," Vivoros said, "you are today's hero. You can do whatever you want." She turned to leave. "Hey, Vivoros," I said, "has this always been the case?" She turned around, "What's always been like this?" "This kind of thing," I said, "wars. Fights. Fights." "What?" Vivoros snorted. "Hell, no, Perry. Today was an easy win, the easiest fight ever fought." She laughed and walked away. This is my first battle.My war years have begun.