202: Chapter 202 Evacuation

No. 24 froze in place, looking at the bustling alien officers coming and going all around him, a chill running deep into his heart.

He knew better than anyone that from beginning to end, those superiors had never regarded the lower-ranked soldiers as compatriots. In their eyes, these foot soldiers were not even worth a blade of grass.

Commander No. 24 did not say another word.

He had long known in his heart that it was utterly impossible for him to see the prince, nor could he get any help from this group of parasites in the command headquarters.

He put away the report in his hand and left without looking back.

At this moment, No. 10773 was sitting in his office processing documents when the door was suddenly pushed open, and in walked Commander No. 24.

Looking up and seeing the newcomer, No. 10773 felt a pang of covert delight in his heart.

He knew he had bet right; this former supreme ground commander had ultimately stood on the king's side after all.

"Shut your mouth."

"I am speaking now, you listen, and then go execute it. Understand?"

No. 10773 nodded immediately, looking respectfully at Commander No. 24 while waiting for him to issue orders.

"We must leave here immediately."

The very first sentence spoken by Commander No. 24 gave No. 10773 a jolt in his heart. He heard an unquestionable conclusion from the other party's tone.

In this former commander's heart, this war was already an absolute defeat beyond a doubt.

"Commander, this..."

Before No. 10773 could finish speaking, he was directly interrupted by No. 24.

"We have already lost this war, and the defeat is sealed. Preserving enough elite forces and troops loyal to us is the only thing we should do right now. Our goal now is to completely escape the Origin Star System."

After listening to this near-mad plan, No. 10773 was first full of shock, then looked at Commander No. 24's solemn and serious expression, and ultimately chose to believe him.

"Lord Commander, what do you plan to do?"

Commander No. 24 closed the door, sat down opposite No. 10773, and revealed to him the true crisis outside.

"An unprecedented plague has begun to spread within the army; it is a biological weapon specially developed by humans against us. The soldiers we want to take away must be uninfected people."

Hearing this request, No. 10773 showed a troubled expression.

"But do you know how many hundreds of millions of people there are in the entire army? Right now on this land, the assembled Lux Aliens already exceed fifty billion. The number is far too huge, and there is simply no way to distinguish one by one who is infected and who is not."

No. 10773 stated his own difficulty.

The army was not under his control to begin with; they could only secretly execute the king's plan. Their manpower was extremely limited to begin with, and it was simply impossible to screen the entire army.

Commander No. 24 looked at him, his tone so calm that there wasn't a trace of ripple:

"There is no need to take everyone back; we just need to screen the people we want to take away."

No. 10773 instantly understood his intention: only screen out the troops loyal to their own side to take away, and disregard everything else entirely.

After discussing all the details, Commander No. 24 and No. 10773 immediately mobilized all their forces and began to implement the plan in secret.

Commander No. 24 wielded the power of logistical deployment, easily organizing a large medical team under the guise of epidemic prevention screening to vet the troops loyal to him.

Batch after batch of Lux Aliens who were uninfected with the virus or possessed natural resistance to the human virus were screened out and successively transferred to the rear under various pretexts.

Commander No. 24 even stepped forward personally to rally these people, bringing them back under his control.

As for those who were unwilling to obey or harbored dissent, Commander No. 24 also used various methods to make them disappear silently.

After all, the plague had already broken out in multiple places; he could completely deal with these dissidents under the pretext of eliminating the source of the epidemic.

Soon, Commander No. 24 gathered a trusted force of tens of thousands of people from the chaos.

On this day, Commander No. 24 was standing at the hatch of the transport plane, taking the latest research report handed over by the medical team.

[Soldiers have begun to show persistent high fever accompanied by extreme aggressiveness; please attach great importance to this.]

At the same time, No. 10773 also mobilized his connections within the space fleet.

A transport ship secretly docked at the orbital gap, releasing a large number of landing craft to head to the ground for rescue and pickup.

Commander No. 24 stood on the rear landing platform, holding a latest situation summary of the troops in his hand.

[The epidemic is out of control; we must evacuate immediately.]

There was only a short line of words on the paper, but it straightforwardly stated the current perilous situation.

But Commander No. 24 did not care about this at all.

In his heart, among these tens of billions of Lux Aliens, probably nearly a third had already become mobile virus transmission sources.

"But what does this have to do with me?"

"I am leaving this place immediately."

"As for the remaining mess, let that hot-headed young prince clean it up himself."

Soon, under the cover of the heavy night, Commander No. 24 boarded the transport ship and led the troops loyal to him to begin a full-scale retreat into space.

At this time, Lux VI was sitting in the command room.

Now the reports sent to his desk were long no longer just battle damage statistics, but more of urgent reports about the outbreak of an unknown infectious disease in the army.

This infectious disease had begun to seriously affect the combat effectiveness of the troops. According to incomplete statistics, the number of infected people had reached a scale of at least several billion.

Only then did Lux VI truly realize the severity of the problem.

Obviously, this infectious disease was like a wild fire burning brighter and brighter, roasting him over the fire.

Yet even so, Lux VI still decided to suppress the news.

Taking Holy Mountain City was the top priority; these days the troops had already paid extremely heavy casualties.

Although the breach smashed open by the escort ship at the beginning failed to break through smoothly, it also firmly dragged down humanity's two top war machines, the red hunter and the ripper, pinning them tightly at that breach so they couldn't break away.

Precisely because of this, the remaining troops led by Lux VI could only successively tear open several defense line breaches in other sections.

The width and troop-deployment capacity of these breaches were far inferior to the one smashed out by the warship.

Thinking of this, Lux VI immediately leaned over and stared at the combat map, ordering all forces to be concentrated on the main attack point: the breach smashed open by the escort ship.

He was going to launch a true lightning assault and directly attack into the interior of Holy Mountain City.

But when Lux VI made this plan public, an officer finally couldn't hold back any longer and stood out.

"Your Highness the Prince, but the plague is rampant in the army. This subordinate believes that we should at least deal with the epidemic first, or isolate the infected. Otherwise, if we keep fighting like this, without humans having to do anything, we will collapse ourselves first."

Lux VI sat in the main seat, his fingers gently tapping on the tabletop, and then nodded, seemingly even agreeing with this officer's statement.

Just when everyone thought His Highness the Prince was going to come up with some epidemic prevention plan, Lux VI changed the subject and said in a cold tone:

"In that case, let all infected people act as the first assault echelon."