That was all well and good, but Yu Lian had neither an atom-light spear stolen from an Imperial Starrealm Knight commander, nor a sample of a Stormburst blaster rifle swiped from the Alliance's Future Star Lab, nor the psychic longsword he'd found in an Enlightener ruin, the one capable of cleaving through a Star Dragon's scales and a Titan's armor.
Right now, he was just a half-crippled man who couldn't move a muscle. The only ones with him were a sergeant major who might become famous in the future, and a bunch of guards who didn't seem particularly dependable—the sort people casually called "guard fodder" or "errand boys."
They really weren't dependable. A whole group of grown men had lined up in place and were firing their rifles, bang bang bang. No skirmish line, no overlapping fields of fire, no layered defensive positions. At a glance, you'd think they were forming a battle line.
Honestly, how out of touch did a bunch of men have to be to think they were warships?
Yu Lian knew it wasn't really their fault. The entire galaxy had received the gifts of their predecessors far too early, and the various technology trees had grown crooked. It wasn't just the hopelessly pathetic people of the Commonwealth's homeworld, Blue Star. Even the Empire and the Alliance, the two great powers now dividing up the galaxy, had infantry tactics just like this.
But a squad of more than ten men, with no heavy support weapons, no transport, and only four powered exoskeletons—what people called mechs—one of which he was wearing and which was probably already broken? That was absolutely intolerable. Even the garrison forces of an inland Imperial lord wouldn't make such a stupid blunder.
The Blue Star Commonwealth's pathetic state really did run in the family! Yu Lian compared the two sets of memories and suddenly felt his eyes had been opened.
Fortunately, although their own squad wasn't very dependable, the enemy wasn't some endless sea of ferocious clawed bugs or Leviathan-class behemoths capable of taking on warships. They were just ordinary zerglings and hydralisks. In Yu Lian's era, they were mere cannon fodder and support units in the swarm. They could manage terrorist attacks behind enemy lines and sometimes serve as emergency rations, but on a frontline battlefield against a regular army armed to the teeth, they were just there to get slaughtered.
The guards really didn't have much tactical sense, but their weapons were electromagnetic rifles that could spit out a thousand rounds a minute. They still managed to form a dense wall of fire. The insect- and beast-like monsters had evolved shells that could withstand bullets, but every living thing had its limits. In Yu Lian's view, fewer than one in a hundred had actually made it up to the squad, and every one of those was wounded.
"Baka!" Lieutenant Monderson shouted.
"Biehn!" The squad's burliest man let out a roar that no ordinary person could have managed. With a single stride, he stepped out of the line and snatched the power axe from his waist.
His power axe was more than a size bigger than a normal soldier's. Once its blade unfolded, it was clearly as large as a wagon wheel. Yet the sergeant wielded it with effortless ease, swinging it with thunderous speed and overwhelming force.
The first zergling to break through the wall of fire took the full blow of his axe to the head and shattered into pieces on the spot. That wasn't all. Its corpse flew backward like a massive baseball hit by a bat, slamming straight into a hydralisk.
The hydralisk had already spread its shell to launch its spines, but the impact knocked it back into the wall of fire, where it was riddled with bullets.
"For the Commonwealth!" The lieutenant, also a burly man, shouted as he leaped behind the sergeant. Standing back-to-back, he raised a chainsword that emitted a shrill whir and cleaved another zergling clean in half with a single stroke. His timing was so perfect, it was as if the zergling had charged straight into the blade.
Clearly, he was a master swordsman. He was probably using "Imperial Stormtrooper Combat Swordsmanship—First Form," one of the so-called "anti-beast" styles—basically, a form designed specifically to fight large predators. It had been developed by the Empire's psychic aristocracy, but it was common enough that anyone who served in the Imperial military could learn it. By now, it had spread throughout the galaxy.
Now those were two iron-boned heroes! One possessed natural strength, the other was a master swordsman. In the age of cold steel, their martial prowess alone would have been enough to make them legends—or even found their own houses.
He felt he had to do something, so he tried moving again. This time, a searing pain shot through his lower body. Still, at least he'd regained feeling in his upper body.
Yu Lian's upper body was clad only in a field uniform. His lower body, however, was still encased in the powered exoskeleton—or rather, the lower half of what remained of it.
"Weapons... Don't we have any weapons?" Yu Lian fumbled around and actually found the grip of a rifle beside the powered stretcher. He gave it a quick check. The magazine was full, and the battery still had more than half its charge. That would do.
...All right, he had a weapon. But there was still a technical problem: he couldn't even lift his upper body, so he had no firing arc at all. Who was he supposed to shoot?
Yu Lian tried shifting his lower body again. It didn't move at all, and the pain was so intense that cold sweat broke out across his skin.
The alloy armor could give him three times his own strength, let him sprint at full speed for half an hour, hold two thousand rounds of ammunition and ten grenades, and carry a power axe or chainsword that an ordinary person could barely lift. But now it had become a shackle, crippling even his basic movements.
What a weak body.
And where exactly was I injured? Yu Lian couldn't help muttering under his breath.
"You took a severe blow to the waist," said the sergeant major beside him, Sirika. The beautiful young woman, who might be someone famous in the future, answered while keeping up a steady stream of fire.
Unlike the others, who were spraying bullets indiscriminately, she fired in precise three-round bursts. Each burst hit a zergling that broke through the wall of fire, killing it outright. She was providing perfect cover for the two teammates locked in melee.
By now, Yu Lian was at least eighty percent certain that she was the person he thought she was.
"Sorry... You risked your life pulling Xiao Qiao out of the bugs' jaws, and you were badly injured, but we still couldn't save him." This time, the speaker was the other of the squad's two women, a girl with an unremarkable face, figure, and presence. A red caduceus emblem on her uniform marked her as a medic.
But the female medic didn't even have a specialized medical exoskeleton? Did the guards really not know how to value their technical specialists?
As Yu Lian wondered about this, the medic had already picked up a needle as thick as his finger and plunged it into his waist without a word.
The instant it went in, it hurt like hell. Then a cool sensation spread through him, and the pain faded until it was barely noticeable. He also seemed to regain some strength. At least Yu Lian could now manage to prop up his upper body, giving him a much wider view.
"Second Lieutenant, you still need to rest! Don't worry, we'll hold them off..." The medic was startled by Yu Lian's movement and hurried over to stop him, but he shouted, "Ina, shoot the hydralisks!"
Ina Sirika, staff sergeant of the Blue Star Commonwealth's New Jade Gate Defense Guard, jumped in surprise. She wondered, You've been here less than three days. Since when did we get so familiar? But what came out of her mouth was, "What's a hydralisk?"
The sergeant major naturally didn't know the "military term" that the various nations of the galaxy wouldn't recognize for another few years.
"The big cobras! When they open their shells, they're about to spit spines. Fire at their chests beneath the shells!"
When hydralisks spat their spines, they were at their strongest. In the future, the evolved hydralisk breeds at the peak of their development could fire spines from beneath their chest shells high into the sky, piercing two-centimeter alloy armor even at a range of more than a kilometer.
But that was also when they were most vulnerable. The instant their shells opened, the central nervous system and muscles in their chests were left completely unprotected.
Of course, spotting that brief window and taking the shot amid the smoke and chaos of battle demanded exceptional marksmanship. This wasn't the later era, when every mobile infantryman carried a personal targeting radar. Even the spaceships of the time still had plenty of hand-cranked anti-aircraft guns.
"Bang bang bang! Bang bang bang! Bang bang bang!"
Ina Sirika began firing, still using the classic three-round burst. She didn't disappoint Yu Lian, either, proving the marksmanship of the woman who might become famous in the future. Every three-round burst sent a hydralisk tumbling with a howl, bloody flesh flying from beneath its shell.
For a full minute, not one of them managed to spit out its spines.
However, perhaps because Ina was no longer picking off targets with pinpoint accuracy, more zerglings managed to leap through the wall of fire. One of them even slipped past the swordsman lieutenant and the burly sergeant, pouncing on a soldier.
The private was completely stunned. He wore only an ordinary field uniform and a bulletproof vest, neither of which could stop the creature's sharp mouthparts and blades. He was about to be killed in a single blow.
Yu Lian raised his rifle and fired a burst. He was glad that although this body was weak and possibly crippled, it still had some instinct for shooting. Combined with the shooting skills honed by countless hours of practice in his memories, he put the bullets straight into the zergling's gaping maw, then blew its head apart.
But when even a cripple like him had to join the fight, it could only mean one thing: the enemy had gotten right up in their faces.
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