It Doesn't Matter, I'll Handle It

After reaching the conference room on the fifth floor of the building, the soldier gave an Aquila salute and stood aside while Qin Mo pushed the door open and entered.

Grey and the squad-level officers and above from the 47th Regiment were sitting on the floor, their attention drawn by the sound of the door opening.

When they saw Qin Mo enter and sit down, the Regimental Commander said to everyone, "Let's begin the meeting."

Everyone nodded.

Then the Regimental Commander introduced himself to Qin Mo. "Klein."

"Qin Mo."

"What should we do next?"

The Regimental Commander asked the question immediately after introducing himself, catching Qin Mo off guard.

Seeing everyone turn their eyes toward him, Qin Mo lowered his head in thought.

To give Qin Mo more information to work with, Regimental Commander Klein began explaining what he currently knew.

"According to the intelligence from above, there were only thirty thousand rebels in the Underhive, while we sent one hundred seventy thousand men in. We clearly had the advantage."

"But the rebels actually numbered three hundred thousand. They had even established an industrial zone in the Underhive and could sustain themselves."

"Three days ago, our front line was crushed within a single day. The Marshal and every senior officer around him were assassinated. Fortunately, before he died, he sensed something was wrong and ordered fifty thousand men to construct defensive positions under the pretext of establishing supply depots."

After giving a rough explanation, Klein fell silent.

"Keep going," Qin Mo said.

"Of course I should keep going, but I need to know what you don't know so I can focus on the important parts." Klein nodded.

"I don't know any of it." Qin Mo raised his head and looked at Klein. "I'm not a Regimental Commander or an officer. I'm just an ordinary trooper from the 44th Regiment. I stupidly entered the Underhive, then stupidly built fortifications. I don't even know why the higher-ups wanted defensive positions built while carrying out an offensive plan."

"Uh, all right." Klein nodded vigorously and told him everything he knew without holding anything back.

Only then did Qin Mo understand the current situation.

Communications had been cut off.

Other than the fifty thousand soldiers ordered by the Marshal to establish defensive positions, the units that had continued carrying out the offensive plan could be considered completely wiped out.

At this point, no one knew which defensive positions had been breached and which still remained. They were completely unable to contact one another.

In other words, the most pessimistic yet reasonable assumption was this: apart from this building, every other defensive position might already have fallen.

Unless someone could prove that other positions still existed.

Finally, Klein revealed an order known only to regimental-level officers: once the offensive plan failed, the only passage from the Underhive to the lower hive would be destroyed.

"Who gave the order to attack in the first place?" Grey was furious. "This was practically a fraud! I have every reason to suspect that the upper echelons of the Hive City wanted us to die!"

"My family is in the upper hive, but as far as I know, the offensive plan was devised and carried out by the Marshal himself." Klein answered helplessly.

"I think the most pessimistic possibility isn't that there's no one left besides us. It's that the entire Hive City has already fallen under Rebel control!"

"Perhaps..."

"Emperor above, how could the intelligence have been so wildly wrong?"

"..."

"Enough!" Qin Mo raised a hand to stop them. "The most important thing right now isn't discussing whose fault the offensive plan was. It's figuring out how we survive, then taking vicious revenge on those idiots once we get out alive!"

At those words, Grey swallowed the curse she had been about to unleash and nodded in agreement.

Qin Mo turned to Klein. "Did the military high command send you a battle plan? Something like a map showing every defensive position, or anything else?"

Without hesitation, Klein took out a map and handed it to Qin Mo.

Qin Mo spread out the map and examined the positions near the 47th Infantry Regiment.

Seventy kilometers due east was a position defended by two regiments.

Fifty kilometers due west was a position defended by four regiments.

The rest were at least one or two hundred kilometers away.

Before crossing over, Qin Mo had been unable to grasp just how immense a Hive City was. Now, he understood.

"If we want to survive, the first thing we must do is withstand the Rebel offensive." Qin Mo raised his hand and swept it across all the positions. "We need to determine which positions along the line still exist and which have been breached. If too many have fallen, we'll need to withdraw and establish a new defensive line. Otherwise, we keep defending."

"What's the point of continuing to defend? Can we expect reinforcements?" Klein asked.

"We can't expect reinforcements, but I can guarantee that if you give me enough time, I can increase our combat strength by orders of magnitude," Qin Mo answered.

Klein's gaze drifted toward Grey and the other four survivors from the 44th Regiment. They all carried metal backpacks, which might have been why they could move through a hail of bullets as though no one was there.

Klein therefore had every reason to believe Qin Mo's promise. He nodded in agreement. "I agree. Please tell us your orders."

"Fine. We, we..." Qin Mo hesitated, then asked, "Why have you acted like my subordinate from beginning to end?"

Klein gave Qin Mo a strange feeling. He was very different from Burl. This man had actually taken the initiative to show that he was willing to obey orders instead of trying to secure his own command authority.

"Because I want to live. I don't care who commands us. I only care whether a powerful Psyker can remain at our side, because if there's another attack and you aren't here, everyone in the 47th Regiment is doomed!" Klein said with absolute frankness.

Qin Mo understood Klein's thinking.

This man would love nothing more than for Qin Mo to become the 47th Regiment's Regimental Commander directly, because then Qin Mo would have a duty to fight for the lives of every soldier in the infantry regiment.

Of course, that was only a theoretical duty. After all, if he simply ran away like Burl, the soldiers beneath him would have no way to stop him.

"All right." Qin Mo lowered his head to study the map and pointed at the position due east. "I'll go there first and confirm whether there are still any survivors at that position. But before that, I'll help you reinforce your defenses."

"First, this building isn't reliable. Sooner or later, it'll be blasted apart. We need to make it larger and sturdier, then build underground sections as well. The soldiers will fight above ground and rest below it."

"We have too little heavy firepower. We must add heavy Stubbers and fixed meltaguns, and reduce every window into firing slits and observation ports."

"And then..."

"Sorry to interrupt." Klein raised a hand. "No one is handling logistics anymore. We don't have engineering troops to build fortifications, nor do we have convoys to transport large quantities of heavy weapons to the front. We only have the people here."

"It doesn't matter. I'll handle it." Qin Mo stood and looked down at Klein. "Now, have your men find me metal and electronic components. If they can't find electronic components, then find copper and rubber."

Hearing the order, Klein nodded, doubtful but willing to believe.