Resocializing Soldiers

At midnight the following day, Augustus and the soldiers of 1st Squad crawled up from the sheets and blankets spread across the ground to assemble at the designated location in the town of Vellino.

The assembly point for the 5th Battalion was an open space in the town center, a site previously used by the locals as a marketplace. Augustus's 1st Squad formed three columns of four, standing between 2nd Squad and 3rd Squad in the third row.

The searchlights on the chest plates of all the marines were already activated, bathing the entirety of Vellino in bright light. Only Warfield's company occupied this wide area, leaving the rest of the vast space empty.

Half an hour later, a company of marines marched into the open space with such uniform steps and precise formation that it looked like a military parade; they stopped directly opposite Augustus and stood facing him.

Those marines also belonged to the 33rd Ground Assault Division, their Power Armor painted in the iconic silver-gray, yet the armor bore no insignias or serial numbers to indicate which unit they belonged to.

The number of troops in this suddenly appearing force was equivalent to a battalion, and from their entry to their final formation, there was only the sound of power boots striking the mud, demonstrating astonishing discipline.

At first, no one in Augustus's unit thought there was anything amiss with this force, until 12:45 AM, when a commander walked before these soldiers, shouted his name and rank, and ordered the soldiers to perform their pre-battle oath.

The moment the last word of the order fell, all the soldiers stood at attention simultaneously, lowered the Gauss Rifles slung over their shoulders, and lowered their helmets to begin the oath. Their movements were uniform and synchronized, startlingly consistent, as if they were a single entity.

"We swear here that we have the duty to protect the planets and colonies of the Terran Confederacy, and we regard this as our innate mission. We shall fight all enemies of the Confederacy, whether they come from within or from beyond the stars."

"We obey all orders from our superiors as if we were obeying the arrangements of God. We are the Marine Corps, and we are Semper Fidelis. We will send all enemies of the Terran Confederacy to hell, until it is filled with the wailing of the damned."

"We shall all die, but this is our pursuit. Our sacrifice is for the eternal survival of the Terran Confederacy."

After the oath was completed, all the soldiers closed their helmets in unison and slung their rifles back onto their shoulders, without a single word of verbal communication between them from start to finish.

"What a bunch of poor wretches," a platoon leader suddenly said on the command channel above the squad leader level of 1st Company.

"Resocialized soldiers?" the 2nd Platoon leader said. "That reminds me, I've heard of them. These people were all deserters, political prisoners, murderers, or some other kind of social scum."

"These people don't look like criminals at all; they're even more obedient than a flock of chicks," the 4th Platoon leader said with a booming voice.

"Resocialization," 3rd Platoon leader Reagan seemed to know more. "In layman's terms, it's what you call brainwashing. There are many methods, such as stuffing a criminal into a container filled with chemical agents, or directly cutting open their brains to remove unnecessary parts of the frontal lobe, then adding some extra memories."

"Then these resocialized soldiers become walking corpses that absolutely obey the orders of the Confederacy. Even if an officer told these people to jump into a lava lake for a bath, they wouldn't hesitate in the slightest."

"My God, that's a crime against humanity," a squad leader exclaimed.

Although Augustus did not speak, he had been listening intently.

Since entering the recruit training camp, Augustus had gradually learned some information about resocialized soldiers. The 4th Brigade had the lowest proportion of resocialized soldiers in the entire 33rd Ground Assault Division, which was why the officers there were not very familiar with the matter.

In other units, such as the 1st Brigade and 2nd Brigade, resocialized soldiers already accounted for one-fifth of the total troop count. These soldiers were either organized into independent units or scattered into various squads and platoons.

To win this war, the Confederacy had already sent brainwashed soldiers to the battlefield at this time, and was systematically preparing to replace ordinary soldiers with independent thoughts with resocialized ones.

These resocialized soldiers were brave and fearless, knowing nothing of terror. The will and skills of combat were inscribed into their bodies like instinct; it took only the time of a single surgery to transform an ordinary person into a killing machine for the federal government.

However, these resocialized soldiers also had a fatal flaw: this transformation actually caused damage to their brains.

While being stripped of their independent personalities, they also lost the ability to think and judge for themselves, requiring direct orders from non-resocialized officers to know what they needed to do.

Overall, aside from this flaw, resocialized soldiers were absolutely perfect warriors, capable of executing all of a commander's orders to the maximum extent, never making mistakes, never fearing, and never retreating.

Augustus also knew that after the Guild Wars ended, the proportion of these resocialized soldiers would continue to rise. By the time of the first full-scale war between humanity and alien races, the majority of soldiers in the federal military would have undergone this transformation.

At 1:00 AM, Warfield's company set out on time, advancing toward the eastern urban area of Pride of Boke in the silent night, accompanied by four brother companies and two battalions of resocialized soldiers.

On Augustus's HUD display, that urban area was designated as the Dunlin District. Before its fall, the Dunlin District had possessed the largest assembly plants for mag-lev cars and IAA holographic projectors on Turaxis II; these factories were previously assets of the Terra Family, one of the founding families of Tarsonis.

According to the offensive deployment, Warfield's 1st Company would be one of the first units in the center column to push into the urban area, with two other units launching attacks from the left and right flanks. Before departure, the marines followed orders to turn off the searchlights on their chest plates, switching their visor displays to night vision and thermal imaging modes.

As they approached the urban area of Pride of Boke, just 2 miles from the outermost buildings, two Arclite Siege Tanks and a full 12-man squad of Goliath combat robots joined Warfield's force. One of the Arclite Siege Tanks was right in front of Augustus's squad, and two massive Goliaths walked on the right with heavy, rhythmic steps.

Because there were always two moons in the sky of Turaxis II, the nights on this planet were not particularly dim when the weather was clear. But on this night, the sky over Pride of Boke was covered in thick clouds, and with all federal troops having extinguished their light sources, the army advanced in pitch-black darkness.

At 4:00 AM, by the time Augustus could see the landmark Goddess Lighthouse of the Dunlin District with his naked eye rather than the focusing camera on his helmet, the Kel-Morian defenders in the city finally fired their first flare.

Because the Kel-Morian space stations and satellites in synchronous orbit had already been destroyed by the federal fleet, the Kel-Morians could not determine the specific time of the attack, even though they knew a large number of federal troops were approaching from the rear.

But these Kel-Morians clearly had not slept all night; as dozens of flares lit up the sky, the dense artillery fire from mortar and electromagnetic cannon positions had already blanketed the first resocialized platoon to charge forward.

Thanks to Gede and Agent Rongrong for the tips.