A Turning Point in History

Well, just as he remembered, his senior was still the same as ever. Her tailored naval uniform hugged her tall, athletic figure, and she stood there quietly with her arms crossed, beautiful as an elegant marble statue.

Of course, that was just what she looked like on the surface.

Yu Lian remembered the first time he'd met this stunningly dashing senior. It had been on the training grounds during combat class. She'd thrown a senior from the ground combat command program—twice her weight—over her shoulder, sending him flying right in front of Yu Lian. He'd stared, completely transfixed.

"What's that supposed to mean? I can do that too," the older girl he'd grown up with had grumbled in his ear.

Ah, the rose-tinted days of youth. They'd flown by in a flash...

His senior's eyes swept across Yu Lian's face in an instant. Surprise and relief flickered through them, but she first addressed Captain Winter. "Captain, thank you for your efforts. Could you report your unit's strength and position now?"

"All 127 members of the 101st Company's mobile infantry have arrived, but we brought no vehicles," the captain said. "As for our position..." He looked over at Yu Lian, who quickly opened a holographic map on his terminal and pointed to the canyon where they were.

"This puts us behind the enemy's main camp. Based on my observations, the Sandmen command post—that is, Elder Hesen's location—is about fifty kilometers away." Yu Lian pointed to a spot among the Sandmen's densely packed camps. A red dot appeared there.

"You've already identified the enemy command post?" Elinor raised her sharply defined, elegant eyebrows.

"Yes. It's here."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Over the past few days, Sergeant Sirika and I have spent at least ten hours a day observing them. From their banners and the size of their camps, we've roughly worked out where the forces from each tribe and city-state are stationed. I'll send the information to everyone's terminals later. Yesterday, before the Sandmen attacked Tulong, dozens of riders carrying colorful standards set out from this spot and galloped toward the various camps. They're the Sandmen's messengers."

The banners were actually stone objects resembling totem poles. This planet had little in the way of trees or other vegetation, at least before humans colonized it. So the Sandmen, who were skilled at working with mud and stone, made long poles of sandstone in all sorts of shapes and colors to use as standards.

It was worth noting that these totem poles were elegant and archaic in style, and counted as works of art. They were highly sought after on the galaxy's international collectibles market.

It was also worth noting that the Sandmen had received armor, firearms, tanks, and even cannons from their collaborators, but it wasn't easy to change the habits of an army with a melee-era tradition. In the days of melee weapons, messengers on horseback who raced around the battlefield through a storm of bullets had been a most admired and respected profession. How could they just abolish it? Replace them with a bunch of mouthpieces huddled around machines going "Hello, hello"? What would that do to the dignity and honor of Sandman warriors?

There was no helping it. You could buy weapons, but an army's organizational core was an immense and intricate system. It couldn't be put in place in a day or two.

Elinor nodded, finding his reasoning sound. Then she gave Yu Lian a look he couldn't quite read, before turning her interested gaze to Ina, who was biting her lower lip. "I need your guarantee!"

"I swear on the Blue Star national emblem that I'll take responsibility for everything I've said! Besides, the psionic fluctuations are strongest there. As everyone knows, Hesen is already a third-ring 'wizard.' Several of his disciples are carefully chosen sensitives, and even awakened. That has to be where he is!"

Hesen had opened the "Command" ring and reached the third ring, making him a "wizard." That was no secret. The governor's office had detailed files on him, which any officer was authorized to borrow. It was just that the spiritual leader of the Sandmen had always been rather compliant, so few people had bothered to read them closely.

"You've certainly done your homework. That's the kind of thing we Moon-dwellers do... Wait, psionic fluctuations?" Elinor had just started to praise him when she realized something didn't quite add up.

"Ah... For your information, I've awakened psionic abilities, and so has Sergeant Sirika. She's a Sentinel with exceptional senses. That's why we can detect the enemy's psionic fluctuations."

Of course, Hesen was a "wizard," which meant that his spiritual abilities took the form of a wide variety of psionic techniques. He excelled at taking on a hundred enemies alone, summoning wind and rain, and conjuring lightning and fire. He had an unmistakable presence. But perhaps because he was so conspicuous, psionics users on this path weren't very good at hiding themselves before reaching the fifth ring.

Elinor's expression had gone a little stiff. That was understandable. Finding two psionics users among a few dozen people at a small outpost was about as likely as digging two gold nuggets out of your backyard vegetable patch.

"Your outpost must have some amazing feng shui!" Lieutenant Parkin's eyes widened. He touched the long string of pendants on his chest—taiji symbols, Buddhist figures, crosses, crescents, hexagrams, and the like. Now he was genuinely envious.

Captain Winter was shaken too. This young man was a Moon-dweller and a psionics user. His future was bound to be bright, so Winter wasn't sure he should pull rank on him. Thinking it over, he hadn't been rude to the boy earlier, had he? No, probably not.

Elinor folded her arms and gave an inexplicable snort. There seemed to be a hint of contempt in her gaze toward Yu Lian, which left him equally bewildered. He shuddered and hurried to keep moving his fingers across the holographic map. Then he tapped a high point northeast of Tulong, where another red dot appeared.

"Also, this spot is twenty kilometers from Hill 6, Alchi."

Elinor finally stopped looking contemptuous. An approving smile spread across her face, and she nodded slightly. "Very good. So you've also noticed that the enemy is setting up an artillery position there."

"Yes. We can confirm there are about ten high-powered ion or electromagnetic cannons. They'll pose a serious threat to the city's shields!"

"But that's also our opportunity..." Elinor nodded thoughtfully. She glanced at Yu Lian, then turned to Captain Winter. "Captain, what do you think?"

The elite company commander in the Marine Corps studied the map, especially the terrain around Hill 6 and the enemy's defenses. After weighing it up, he said firmly, "We can take the position and quickly destroy all their heavy cannons, then withdraw before the enemy's main force surrounds us."

"No. I need you to hold off on destroying the cannons. Draw as many enemy reinforcements as possible and cause as much chaos as you can. Then I'll lead every soldier in the city in a counterattack and kill Hesen. He's the banner these Sandmen rally around. Once he falls, this rabble of natives will scatter. Captain, can you do it?"

Captain Winter's expression darkened. He stared at the map without a word.

Everyone knew what that meant. Even if they were elite, they numbered barely over a hundred. Attacking an artillery position that would inevitably be heavily defended was already dangerous; trying to draw in as many Sandman reinforcements as possible made it worse. One mistake could mean the annihilation of the whole company.

In theory, the captain had the right to refuse Elinor's order. First, he was a Marine, not under the authority of New Jade Gate's security force command. Second, Elinor had received no orders from her superiors and had no authority to command all the reinforcements or direct the entire operation.

Captain Winter looked at Parkin, then at the other officers and senior sergeants in his company. After a moment of thought, he nodded quietly. "We can do it."

Here it comes, here it comes! Yu Lian's expression stayed calm, but inside, his excitement was surging. He knew this was the beginning of the raid that would go down in the textbooks of almost every military academy in the galaxy. The start of a legend.

Captain Winter and the men of the 101st Company truly moved like the wind, stood firm as the forest, invaded like fire, and struck like thunder. They crept right up to the enemy artillery position before launching a fierce assault, catching the defenders completely off guard. In just twenty minutes, they had routed the garrison and destroyed all ten newly installed heavy cannons. They even captured a group of Karda gnome engineers.

The defensive battle that followed was dangerous, but not especially brutal. The captain and his men quickly built fortifications on the high ground and immediately destroyed several Sandman tanks. From their commanding position, they gave every enemy who came their way a crushing welcome.

Meanwhile, Senior Elinor led every soldier in the city out in a counterattack, heading straight for the Sandmen's main camp and killing Elder Hesen on the spot. His carefully trained disciples were almost all wiped out as well. The million-strong army scattered like startled birds and beasts, while many city-state rulers knelt down and surrendered on the spot.

In the end, the 101st Company suffered fewer than ten casualties. Tulong's losses amounted to little more than two hundred.

Still, there were regrets.

First, Hesen's most prized disciple—the Sandman national hero who later carried his banner, Kazhan, the father of Sandman independence—escaped. He continued leading the remnants of the Sandmen in their resistance, remaining a thorn in the governor's side. History would later show that he truly brought the Commonwealth's rule on New Jade Gate to an end.

Second, Senior Elinor had been far too reckless. She wasn't some high-ring psionics user who could take on a thousand men. She was just a delicate, pretty girl who'd thrown a ground combat command student into the infirmary during a combat class at the military academy.

Yes, she really wasn't a psionics user. But she still charged ahead at the head of the attack. She personally killed Hesen, but was also knocked unconscious by the psionics user's final burst of power. She spent half a year in the hospital.

If she'd remained in command, perhaps this major incident wouldn't have ended so abruptly, after such a promising start.

At the thought, Yu Lian spoke up. "Ma'am, I have a somewhat premature suggestion."

Everyone turned to look at him. He felt a little pressure, but what he felt even more strongly was an excitement he could hardly describe, and a shiver that came from the depths of his soul.

He knew he truly stood at a turning point in history.