Heavy Losses

With their mental states yet to undergo a true transformation, witnessing the death of their teammate clearly caused their error rates to spike even further.

Suddenly, Price, who had been hiding behind a piece of wreckage, took a hit to one of his engines.

"Steady yourselves!!!"

Seeing the situation on the field, Hans shouted urgently.

"Hold out until Xu gets here!"

"Milai is already dead! We cannot follow in his footsteps!"

Just as Hans finished speaking, the Ginn forcibly shoved aside a relatively thin piece of wreckage.

The machine gun in its hand locked onto Hans, who had just swept past.

If Xu De were here, he wouldn't have dragged this out so long; he would have either immediately sought an opportunity to retreat or fought to the death.

After all, they were Coordinators; dragging the enemy into the ruins had initially allowed them to catch the opponent off guard.

But against a Coordinator who had gradually grown accustomed to combat in the ruins, they—piloting Mistrals—had absolutely no advantage whatsoever.

"Die! Inferiors!"

With no obstacles between them, the laser communication came through with crystal clarity.

At this moment, despair flashed in Hans's eyes.

He closed his eyes instinctively.

However, at this critical juncture, a single orange-yellow Linear Cannon shell, accompanied by a rain of Vulcan Cannon fire, descended from the sky and struck the Ginn's monitor.

"Hans, bottom right, hide behind that fragment!"

The moment Xu De's voice rang out, Hans instinctively pushed the control stick.

Without the auxiliary targeting of the main monitor, and compounded by the inertia caused by the head explosion, the bullets fired by the Ginn's machine gun lost their original accuracy.

The machine gun rounds were continuously blocked by the dense debris, giving Hans the chance to scramble back into cover.

"An elite?!"

Realizing the opponent was piloting a Moebius, the Coordinator lost his previous arrogance, though his tone remained vile and frenzied.

"Surrender."

Meeting the other's words, Xu De spoke without a hint of emotion.

"Your main monitor has been destroyed. Relying only on auxiliary sensors, you cannot keep up with my speed."

"Damn you! You piece of shit! We won't surrender even if we die! We won't! You asshole!!!"

Listening to the opponent's increasingly frantic voice, Xu De sighed.

His intention had been to provoke the pilot into losing his sanity if he wouldn't surrender.

Just like the tactic he had used moments ago.

For Coordinator soldiers whose homes had just been nuked, this kind of bait was all too common.

In the end, they were just militiamen who had joined the war with nothing but hot-blooded fervor.

However, regarding this unjust battlefield, Xu De felt nothing.

This was not about defending one's home, nor was it about overthrowing a class system.

It was pure oppression, and the key was that both sides were oppressors.

As that great man once said, the war happening here was neither just, nor did it exist to end war itself.

Much like how some soldiers with a conscience returning from Iraq would find themselves questioning the meaning of life.

Of course, this was a life-or-death battlefield; no matter how depressed he felt, Xu De buried it deep within, his hands moving with relentless precision.

The Ginn on the other side was left with only auxiliary sensors, and with one Moebius and four Mistrals against them, the outcome of this small-scale skirmish was decided shortly, even without a surrender.

"Inferiors!!! Just you wait!!!"

"This blood feud will not end here!!!"

Seeing that his machine gun had been shot off and the armor outside the cockpit significantly compromised, the Coordinator pilot roared and drew the sword from his waist.

"Mm."

Xu De gave no response, simply using the cover of the Mistral piloted by Hans to strike the battered cockpit directly with his Linear Cannon.

Watching the faint spray of blood brought about by the kinetic shell, Xu De felt no sentimentality; he simply opened the comms to the other four and said, "Are you all alright?"

"We're fine, thanks to you."

Flint spoke first.

His voice was filled with the relief of someone who had just survived a brush with death.

After Xu De's sudden, god-like descent, if the three of them had previously viewed him as a rival, they now regarded him with genuine worship.

If not for Xu De, they would have been dead long ago.

The terror of those two previous waves of attacks by ZAFT was still fresh in their minds.

Hearing their praise, Xu De merely let out a grunt through his nose.

The only reason they had survived was because they had listened to his advice and put in the effort themselves.

Even if he considered them friends, he could not truly protect them every second of the day.

This was a battlefield, not some other place.

Once things escalated, even he could be killed.

However, after undergoing such training, as long as they didn't die, they would likely become squad leaders in the future, if not elites.

People who had fought together on the battlefield were far more reliable than those who only knew how to fawn over him.

They might not be brothers who had shared life and death, but at the very least, they were friends.

Thinking this, Xu De asked, "What is the situation with the Third Fleet?"

Following Xu De's question, the communication line fell silent for a moment before Hans organized his thoughts and spoke.

"The Minsk, belonging to our Third Fleet's Fourth Sub-fleet, was destroyed in the first wave of attacks."

"And the Houston from the Second Sub-fleet didn't make it through the second wave either."

"Although the other warships haven't been completely wiped out, it's estimated that most of them are in dire straits."

Hans's voice was bitter, and Xu De could faintly hear the others' breathing becoming slightly ragged.

"Two sub-fleets are gone..."

Xu De frowned deeply upon hearing this.

The Third Fleet consisted of three sub-fleets.

Among them was one operational command headquarters and two combat units.

Each sub-fleet possessed one Agamemnon-class ship, about fifteen Drake-class ships, and one space supply ship.

As for the Nelson-class, they had not yet been fully deployed.

The Minsk and the Houston were two of the three largest Agamemnon-class flagships under the Third Fleet.

With two sub-fleets gone, only the single Agamemnon-class ship remaining at the operational command headquarters was left.

He wondered if Revil was having any trouble.

But regardless of whether Revil was in trouble, once this battle concluded, the Third Fleet and the other two fleets would likely be completely crippled.

If one were to deduce the process from the results, it was no wonder the Earth Alliance would be suppressed and pinned to Earth in the future.

The scale of these three main fleets was massive; the First Fleet had five sub-fleets, the Second Fleet had four, and the Third Fleet had three.

If they were all lost, the Earth Alliance could forget about gaining any advantage in space warfare for a long time.

After all, these three fleets were the largest scale of the United Army in space.

The Eighth Fleet wasn't even at full strength; it only had an operational command headquarters and not a single combat squadron.

Otherwise, in the original timeline, facing a main fleet at full strength with five sub-fleets, Le Creuset likely wouldn't have dared to charge in with only two warships.