International Brigades Reinforcements

Looking at the reinforced battalion of nearly a thousand men, Morin couldn't help thinking that this was exactly the sort of battalion Britannia would field.

One battalion had almost as many men as Old Li's entire independent regiment had in its early days...

And that meant the 1st Battalion, already battered on the high ground, would soon face several times its own number of enemies—elite troops at that.

To be honest, even Morin felt a flicker of despair when he saw them.

The old tactic of throwing entire battalions into battle had now become a crushing advantage in numbers.

He had played every card he had. The Vickers Machine Gun had only one belt of ammunition left, nowhere near enough to overcome such a vast disparity in strength.

What could he do?

Morin's mind raced. After weighing his options for a few seconds, he gritted his teeth.

"Turn the machine gun!"

He pointed at the Britannian troops forming up.

"Aim it at those Britannians! Leave the Royal Army soldiers to the riflemen! And trust our comrades on the high ground!"

At Morin's order, the machine-gun crew hurriedly swung the weapon around.

The drumbeat of the Grenadier March grew faster. Both enemy forces had assembled below the slope, and the dark mass of troops began moving uphill.

"Listen up!"

Morin's voice was unusually grave as he gave his orders.

"Once the machine gun runs dry, we withdraw around the side and rear of the high ground! Don't charge straight for the summit like fools. You'd just make yourselves targets!"

"Yes, sir!"

Below the slope, the Royal Army soldiers who had been rallied still seemed shaken by the earlier attack on their flank.

Morin could clearly see them glancing warily toward the machine-gun position his men had occupied before as they advanced.

They never would have guessed that the gun that had claimed so many of their comrades' lives had quietly moved and was now aimed at their allies from another angle.

Morin had everyone stay as low as possible, hiding behind fallen trunks and shell craters.

The two enemy forces drew closer and closer.

Morin's heartbeat quickened with the rhythm of the drums.

In truth, he wasn't confident.

When he had been captured, he had seen one of his own side's heavy-armored soldiers withstand a pistol shot at close range.

He worried about how much damage the Vickers's .303 rounds could do to those Britannian tin cans.

The military drums suddenly quickened, and both enemy formations broke into a jog.

At the top of the high ground, the 1st Battalion's surviving soldiers began firing sporadically, trying to slow the advance.

Royal Army soldiers raised their rifles and returned scattered fire.

The moment had come.

Morin hesitated no longer.

"Fire!"

At his command, gunfire engulfed the silent makeshift position.

"Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—!"

The Vickers Machine Gun poured out its last ammunition without restraint, a deadly whip of fire lashing the ranks of the Northumberland Fusiliers.

At the same time, platoon sergeant Klaus and the others opened fire with their twenty-odd Gew.98 rifles.

Their well-aimed bullets crossed the gap of less than two hundred meters and struck at the Royal Army soldiers charging uphill.

The Royal Army, which had only just been broken by machine-gun fire from its flank, suffered another familiar blow.

This time, only twenty-odd rifles were firing, so the casualties mounted far more slowly. But the attack from their flank was still hard to evade, and their formation fell into disarray.

Soldiers at the front dropped one after another, while those behind instinctively sought cover. The entire charge faltered.

At the same time, gunfire erupted from the top of the high ground. The rest of the 1st Battalion had clearly begun working with Morin's men to create crossfire.

But Morin was more concerned with the battle on the other side.

Machine-gun rounds struck the armor of the Northumberland Fusiliers' front-rank troops, throwing off showers of sparks with a rapid metallic clatter and making the heavily armored soldiers falter.

It works!

Morin's spirits lifted, but his heart soon sank again.

They were going down far too slowly.

Most of the heavily armored soldiers only staggered and fell after taking several direct hits from the machine gun.

Through his binoculars, Morin even saw a soldier wielding a two-handed greatsword take five or six rounds to the chest before his breastplate finally shattered and buckled.

Only then did the following machine-gun rounds penetrate his body.

Against a force of nearly a thousand, losses like that barely mattered.

After a brief disturbance, the Northumberland Fusiliers did not retreat. Instead, they charged faster.

The khaki tide surged toward Morin's position with seemingly unstoppable force.

"Machine gunner! Stop sweeping the line! Pick them off one by one! Aim for the tin cans!"

At Morin's words, the gunner stopped sweeping the weapon from side to side and began targeting individual heavy-armored soldiers.

But the rapidly shortening ammunition belt meant he could not keep it up for long.

Then, at that desperate moment, the battle took an unexpected turn.

From the corner of his eye, Morin saw the unit marker for the International Brigades' 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, Eastern Europa Brigade racing toward his position on the System Map.

The two sides had only been about six hundred meters apart to begin with, so the several hundred International Brigades soldiers appeared behind the Northumberland Fusiliers' flank in the blink of an eye.

A clear bugle call rang out from their direction.

"Charge—!"

"Ura—!"

All kinds of thunderous battle cries followed.

The sudden turn of events clearly caught the charging Britannians off guard.

They had to hastily turn part of their force to meet the troops that had appeared out of nowhere.

The ringing charge call not only fired up the International Brigades volunteers; it set Morin's blood boiling too.

"Rat-tat-tat-tat... Click!"

The machine gunner finally fired the last round in the canvas ammunition belt.

"Lieutenant, are we still withdrawing?"

Platoon sergeant Klaus had asked the crucial question.

But every soldier, Klaus included, had already guessed the answer. Their hands went to the bayonet sheaths at their waists.

"Fix bayonets!"

Morin practically roared the order as he swiftly drew his own bayonet and fitted it to his rifle.

The cold metal against his palm steadied his racing thoughts a little.

The International Brigades soldiers had clearly come to relieve Morin and his men.

There was no way Morin could abandon them and retreat now.

At this point, they could only fight.

"Charge!"

Without a moment's hesitation, Morin was the first to leap from cover.

Rifle and bayonet in hand, he led the twenty-odd soldiers he had left in a countercharge toward the enemy below.

When the two sides closed to about fifty meters, Morin shouted again.

"Grenadiers, throw!"

Several soldiers carrying spherical hand grenades lit the fuses and hurled the deadly iron balls with all their strength.

With the advantage of the slope, the grenades flew much farther than usual and landed squarely among the front ranks of the Northumberland Fusiliers.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A string of explosions sent the heavy-armored soldiers at the front and the infantry behind them sprawling.

Their thick armor stopped most of the fragments, but they were not Astartes—true tin cans. Sharp shards still found gaps their armor did not cover.

More importantly, the force and deafening noise of the close-range blasts left the armored soldiers briefly stunned and confused.

Now!

Morin and the International Brigades volunteers struck like two sharp daggers, driving into the Northumberland Fusiliers' formation from two directions.

At the top of the high ground, the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, who had been holding on by a thread, saw what was happening.

When the Royal Army soldiers closed to within a hundred meters of their position, Major Thomas drew his pistol and let out a deafening roar.

"Soldiers of Saxony! For the glory of the Black Eagle Banner! Counterattack!"