I Am Yu Lian

Since it wasn't safe to stay any longer, they had to withdraw. But before that, there were still a few loose ends to take care of.

Lieutenant Mondsen checked on everyone. Aside from the one person still lying down, they were all doing all right. He and the other soldiers stood in silence for a few seconds in front of Second Lieutenant Russo's body, then took his dog tags and left him exposed in the wilderness.

In these extraordinary times, surely even the spirit of Second Lieutenant Russo, who had already become one with the Spirit of the Universe, would understand.

Then the lieutenant retrieved the powered exoskeleton and handed it over to the black sergeant.

Powered exoskeletons were hard currency these days. Anyone with half a brain could see that against those neither-insect-nor-beast monsters, you either had one and came out on top, or you didn't and became their meat. Besides, this thing was important military property. They couldn't leave it behind to be buried with the dead.

The black sergeant with the thick neck and big head seemed to be called something like Yoyo. Now that he'd gotten a new piece of gear, he wore a carefree, delighted grin. He'd probably always thought a suit of steel armor that made you look cool just by walking was awesome. If someone hadn't just died, he might have started dancing to celebrate.

Even so, nobody voiced any displeasure. That alone showed that Second Lieutenant Russo hadn't been particularly popular.

Hopefully, he could rest in peace.

They hadn't given the powered armor to the squad's obvious strongest fighter—Sergeant Baka, the Beorn bear-man—because the AS40 model had a major design flaw. It was made for wearers between 1.6 and 1.95 meters tall and weighing under a hundred kilos. Clearly, it was designed specifically for standard Earth humans.

And Sergeant Baka? Just look at that build—big enough to be an unstoppable monster on a basketball court. His natural body was already a size larger than the powered armor. Unless it used the legendary technology of spatial folding, how was he supposed to squeeze inside?

"I heard the Empire and the Alliance have special powered armor for their beast assault troops." The plain-looking nurse, with her plain figure and plain air, sounded a little wistful. Perhaps she was unhappy that she didn't have a suit of medical armor of her own, or perhaps she simply couldn't stand the big black guy.

Of course, Yu Lian now knew that the young woman, Corporal Belinda Leonard, was just a little nurse, not a dedicated military doctor. The squad's actual medic was Sergeant Major Banks, who was still back at the base.

Everyone was now preparing to figure out how to get back to base. After all, they'd inexplicably had two encounters with "beasts," four people had died—including an officer—and they'd used up nearly half their ammunition and energy. Everyone was exhausted and tense, and they had a severely wounded man who couldn't move. No normal army could keep carrying out its mission under those conditions.

However, Belinda, the only technical specialist there, firmly objected.

"Warrant Officer Yu Lian's injuries can't wait. I need to find somewhere relatively safe and clean to treat him immediately!"

Everyone fell silent for a moment, then nodded in silence.

Yu Lian was their comrade. A few days ago, since they hadn't known him well, the highly educated trainee officer who'd suddenly been parachuted in had seemed distant and superior. But the battle just now had been enough to make the honest foot soldiers accept him as one of their own.

So this weak body is also called Yu Lian? Yu Lian wondered.

So I've actually become the one holding everyone back? Yu Lian wondered again.

"Let's find a cave over there." Yu Lian pointed at the nearby hills. Their shape was typical of karst terrain, common on this planet. It wouldn't be hard to find a cave where they could take shelter.

"Move out!" Lieutenant Mondsen told everyone, in a calm—or perhaps overly calm—tone.

Sergeant Yoyo, now equipped with powered armor, and Sergeant Baka, who could handle five opponents at once even without it, lifted Yu Lian's powered stretcher and set off first.

The powered stretcher was supposed to move by itself, but the one Yu Lian was lying on seemed to have a problem. Its battery kept flickering, as if it was running low. Just like this entire infantry squad, it was absurdly out of place, with so many glaring problems that it was hard to know where to start complaining.

This was the damn space age! The mechanized infantry didn't have enough heavy weapons, didn't have a powered exoskeleton for every soldier, and still had to march on two legs through a dangerous alien wilderness. Forget flying boats—couldn't they at least have some troop carriers?

Five minutes later, they did find a reasonably spacious natural cave and settled in for the time being.

Ina stood guard at the entrance with her gun and two sentries. Baka the bear-man and Yoyo the big black guy cautiously scouted deeper into the cave. The lieutenant took out his communicator to contact his superiors, though judging by how frantic he looked, he probably couldn't get through. The rest began taking turns resting. The nurse called over two soldiers to help her carefully pull Yu Lian's body out of the half of his powered exoskeleton that remained.

"Pull" was indeed the only way to describe it. The half of the outer armor had clearly taken a tremendous impact and was beyond repair. There was no way to open it normally.

By then, the painkiller in Yu Lian's system had worn off, and the pain nearly made him pass out. Of course, as an extraordinary psychic saint who had opened the Seventh Astral Ring, he couldn't show weakness, lose face, or make a scene. So he gritted his teeth and didn't make a sound, even as his face turned pale and sweat poured down him, even as the veins stood out and the corners of his mouth twitched. The soldiers around him watched with newfound respect, and the nurse's eyes shone with admiration.

Then that inscrutable look in her eyes quickly turned to pity.

"Um... I need to tell you something. Please don't panic," Belinda said carefully.

"...I'm a soldier. I won't panic."

"Your spine is broken!"

"Who's Spine? ...Uh, all right. It's a lot worse than I thought." Yu Lian's spirits sank, but he still tried to reassure her. "It's no big deal, though. They can still fix it if they put me in a growth tank."

"...That's gene therapy. But they only have that kind of equipment on Tulong! The station infirmary can give you an injection of nanomachines, but all I can do here is stabilize your bones for now."

Medical nanomachines could enter the gaps in his blood vessels and bones, temporarily serving in place of the nerves. Once his spine was stabilized, Yu Lian could at least walk like a normal person.

"Then stabilize it for now," Yu Lian said with a forced smile. After that, he'd return to the station to get nanomachines injected, then go to Tulong, the capital of New Jade Gate, for further treatment.

Of course, Yu Lian had a way to instantly restore himself to full health, full energy, and peak condition. But that method wasn't suitable for normal people, and he didn't know whether it would even work. After all, this body of his looked so weak! It didn't look like the body of a favored child of heaven at all.

The nurse got to work, producing a pile of drills, hammers, steel rods, and other such things as if by magic. Perhaps she thought the treatment would put Yu Lian under a lot of stress, so she tried making awkward small talk. "By the way, do you remember what happened before you lost consciousness?"

"...Why do you ask?"

"No, it's just that you look confused. You hit your head when you were injured earlier, so I'm worried you might have suffered some kind of brain trauma."

Confused, my ass. Are you the protagonist of some book? Do you have some magic skill that lets you spot fleeting emotional shifts and changes in people's expressions?

Yu Lian was feeling a little stressed, so he decided to change the subject. In a casual tone, he said, "Come to think of it, everyone's certainly full of energy this time. No flying boat and no car, either. Are we out here for a hiking exercise?"

The nurse paused, then replied with an awkward expression, "Well... Warrant Officer, Second Lieutenant Russo is dead. I know he made a lot of mistakes, but he's still dead."

So what did I do? Why are you talking like I dragged him out here to beat his corpse?

"I know you were upset that Second Lieutenant Cruz took the airship to haul spices for the governor. You were even angrier that Second Lieutenant Russo sold the energy packs from four of our five armored personnel carriers to a Minlan merchant. You even said you'd report it to Tulong Command..."

No wonder Second Lieutenant Russo had been so eager to leave me behind! But this kid named Yu Lian was just as reckless! Didn't he know this was standard procedure in the Commonwealth military? It wasn't just the security forces—even the marines and space fleet weren't immune. Wasn't he afraid someone would shoot him in the back for reporting it?

"What do you mean, the last one? Uh, well... You said you didn't trust Second Lieutenant Russo and wanted to drive it yourself. Then... then you drove it into a sinkhole, didn't you?"

Oh. So it was my fault, in the end!

"...Well, Second Lieutenants Cruz and Russo weren't good people. They put on airs and bossed us around, and they were always bullying us low-ranking soldiers. But they did share some of the money they'd skimmed with us. So... so, sir, could you please not..."

What kind of twisted values were those? If you were my soldier, I'd shoot you! Yu Lian thought.

"Does it all sound unbelievable to you, Moonie?" At some point, Lieutenant Mondsen had come over, too. He plopped down beside Yu Lian as if they were old friends and forced a stiff smile. "I knew about all of it, but not only did I fail to stop them, I took the biggest share."

No, on the contrary, this all sounded very believable. Also, why were you calling me Moonie?

"We're not like you. You're a Moonie, a favored child of heaven. Give it five or six years at most, and I'll probably have to call you sir. You've got a bright future ahead of you. But we're just security officers stuck doing odd jobs in the colonies. Every one of us came to this backwater to chew sand with the desert folk and pirates for the money."

So when you say Moonie, do you mean someone from the Moon?

"Alas, I was such a fool! I'd only thought Cruz would be back in a few days. We'd already reported the armored cars' energy packs as training losses, and new ones were due next month anyway... But I never imagined the desert folk would gather up and rebel now! They've already started laying siege to Tulong! And I never imagined Command would order us back to support them at a time like this. Alas, it's all my fault!"

The lieutenant's words were packed with information. Perhaps they stirred up Yu Lian's muddled memories; his head suddenly began to ache. He frowned and touched the back of his head. There really was a huge lump there.

"Um... Warrant Officer, you must know Commander Bonaparte well, right? You're both Moonies, so you must. I saw you having dinner with the commander in Tulong last time. Well, if you could..."

Yu Lian clutched his increasingly painful head and sucked in a breath through his teeth.

"Warrant Officer!" The little nurse's face went white with fright. Lieutenant Mondsen looked as if he blamed himself, and the corners of his mouth twitched. All the soldiers resting in the cave were startled, and Sergeant Major Ina, who had been standing guard at the entrance, hurried over.

"Hey? Hey, can you hear me? Look at my eyes, Warrant Officer. Look at my eyes. Our Moonie, look at my eyes! Who am I? Do you remember?"

"...You're Bill Mondsen, a lieutenant in the New Jade Gate Security Command and commander of Outpost No. 12."

"And who are you? What's your name? How old are you? Why did you come here?"

"My name is Yu Lian. I'm a warrant officer in the Blue Star Commonwealth National Defense Force, twenty-one years old, a fourth-year student in the Strategic Studies Department, class of 830, at Central Defense University. I came here for three months of short-term service as internship training before graduation."