205: Everyone! Charge!

"Team A! Disperse and maintain vigilance!"

"Team B! Calm the crowd! Restore order! Count heads!"

After roughly clearing all The Consortium soldiers present, the Special Operations Team Members, under Celius's command, quickly split into two groups.

The Special Operations Team Members marked as Team A, while finishing off the The Consortium soldiers on the ground who still looked relatively "intact," cooperated with the snipers at the pipeline openings above to quickly secure all entrances and exits;

The members of Team B quickly dispersed, ran into the slightly chaotic crowd, and immediately began their calming work.

The thousand-plus people present were all high-level intellectuals who had spent their lives doing research; they were of high caliber, most had seen big scenes before, and they were reasonable.

Combining this with the actions of those soldiers in red and white powered armor, they quickly deduced that these people were here to save them,

And after conversing with the soldiers who had entered the crowd to maintain order, this judgment was quickly confirmed—

Consequently, basic order was quickly restored on the scene.

Except for a few elderly professors with poor psychological resilience or advanced age who hadn't recovered yet, everyone else had reached a state of being "able to communicate normally."

Soon, the members of Team B finished counting the heads, totaling one thousand one hundred and three people.

To facilitate movement, they simply lined up in four columns, with an estimated two hundred-plus people in each; although the recent chaos had slightly disrupted the formation, most people were still lined up in an orderly fashion—which made Team B's work much easier.

Soon, Celius finished communicating with his superiors and walked in front of the crowd—

The main force of the First fleet had not yet arrived, and the reconnaissance FG300 that had brought them over might have truly burned out, with all its engines malfunctioning; it was currently parked on the surface of an asteroid, waiting for rescue and repairs; in other words, there were no ships to pick him up right now.

Therefore, their current mission had changed to first taking these researchers to a relatively safe place and holding out for 50 minutes, waiting for the fleet to send a Warship to pick them up.

Celius glanced at the mini-map on his powered armor display; night lamp had already planned out that safe zone for him, a small storage area about five minutes away.

Immediately, he turned his head and said into the command channel:

"Team A, six of you come with me to the central control room here!"

"Everyone else! Escort the target crowd to the location specified on the map!"

"Yes!"

...

Meanwhile, on the other side, in the B-2 storage area, inside the airtight compartment of the space station separated by a wall, fifty Special Operations Team Members who had just landed were guarding the entrances and exits on both sides in a tight formation—

There were no surveillance cameras in these airtight compartments, or rather, even if there had been when they were designed, they had long since been dismantled and sold off.

Inside the warehouse at this moment, several ultra-micro drones were hovering in mid-air, looking just like slightly larger specks of dust. But don't let their size fool you; in fact, their functionality was anything but small—

"How is it? How many people are there?" Several drone operators were watching the synchronized view from the drones, marking red dots on an electronic map from time to time. Team Leader Lang Ming of Group C walked up to these people, glanced at the map full of red dots, and asked.

The few of them looked at each other and spoke in turns:

"The number of rescue targets is basically correct. Hostile target identification currently shows thirty-one people inside the warehouse. Firepower configuration: ten fully automatic rifles at the entrance, 5 heavy anti-materiel automatic weapons; one heavy anti-materiel automatic weapon on each of the left and right elevated platforms; additionally, one automatic rifle on the elevated platform directly above, with a suspected wired communication device."

"Left empty warehouse, three hostile targets, currently smoking, three automatic rifles."

"Right empty warehouse, no one."

"Outer corridor, 40 hostile targets, with three unmanned armored units, two equipped with suspected Autocannon, one equipped with a suspected flamethrower, each carrying 4 missiles, unclear if there is supplementary ammunition, plus 35 automatic rifles, three officers."

Listening to the reports from the people on the scene, the team leader scratched his chin. This number is a bit high, isn't it?

"What are they doing now?"

"They are distributing clothing to our rescue targets and installing shock collars!"

Shock collars? That night lamp had indicated it would handle that, so for now, the rescue targets were in a safe state.

After thinking about it, Lang Ming ordered into the communication device:

"Everyone, prepare for combat, prepare to attack,"

"All squads stay online at all times, prepare to listen for my command to attack."

"Drone group, continue outward, expand the reconnaissance range."

There were many hostile targets now, so many that they couldn't be cleared all at once. He only had fifty people in his group, and excluding support personnel, the force that could actually participate in a frontal assault was only 35 people. If they assaulted, it would easily cause huge casualties, and they might not even win—making massive casualties among the hostages almost a certainty.

He decided to wait and see. The group of people currently staying at the entrance were obviously different from the permanent guards. If they left directly after finishing the equipment distribution and installation, then they would wait for that group of soldiers to leave before starting the attack;

As for having people enter combat positions in advance, that was because he was worried that those The Consortium soldiers would take this group of scholars away immediately after installing the collars and other equipment. In that case, even if it meant suffering enormous casualties, they would have to launch a direct assault—after all, for a few hundred people to find tens of thousands of people scattered in a huge military building, with the time they had left, was clearly not enough.

Time passed second by second. Lang Ming stood behind the drone operator like a nail, staring unblinkingly at the drone surveillance footage projected on the screen, until his eyes began to dry out, until his palms were soaking wet.

In the footage, that group of scholars finally finished the installation of that whatever-it-was shock collar. Hundreds of Amnesty Soldiers responsible for installing the collars picked up the boxes that still had a few things left, lined up, and walked out. Subsequently, a guy wearing an Exoskeleton with officer livery walked onto the now-empty vehicle.

'Yes, that's it—' Lang Ming thought to himself while watching those dispersing soldiers reform their lines, 'You have completed your mission, that's it,' 'Hurry up and leave, take your equipment, take your whatever-it-is things, hurry up and go—' 'You must still need to set up defenses, right—just like that, leave these hostages here, anyway in your eyes, they can't run—'

"Bang bang bang bang bang!!!!" Suddenly, a harsh sound rang out. The crowd in the footage was immediately startled, and Lang Ming, who was staring at the screen, was also startled. The The Consortium officer who had walked onto the roof of the vehicle directly drew his pistol and fired a burst at the ground, then turned on his loudspeaker—

"Now! New Amnesty Soldiers!"

"Change into your new uniforms within one minute! Violators will be shocked for one minute!"

"Within two minutes! Group up and line up in groups of one hundred!"

"After three minutes, anyone who hasn't put on their uniform or hasn't found a queue will be shot immediately!"

"Listen up! I don't care what you were before, anyway, once you're here, no matter how badass you were before, no one can come to save you!"

"Here! What I say is heaven! The officer a little higher than me is heaven that is even higher than me!"

"Now I order you to charge into battle for us and participate in production!"

"So—take your cheap lives and be loyal to the great The Consortium, the great Marshal!"

Lang Ming listened from above, and with every sentence that officer said, his face grew darker. It sounded like they were going to take the people away as soon as they finished changing? Thinking this, he tightened his grip on his gun. There was no other way; it seemed he could only launch an assault...

Suddenly, he saw the officer in the footage raise the pistol in his hand, and the Autocannon crew of a heavy Autocannon nearby also pulled back the bolt following the officer's movement, gradually turning the muzzle toward the crowd.

Not good! Almost immediately, he shouted into the command channel—

"Firepower team, get ready! Destroy the enemy's heavy equipment and communication devices at the first opportunity!"

"Snipers! Stop that Autocannon!"

"Everyone!!! Assault!!!"