Very soon,
the somewhat dim space began to grow bright.
A door appeared before them, and beyond the door was a domed structure like an open-air super stadium.
"Careful, there are people out there!" The woman had everyone take cover carefully.
They hid themselves and looked out quietly.
In this very large space there was a structure like a giant swimming pool.
The outline of a starship could be seen, and then hundreds of pipes were pouring blood into this pool.
All around were the Frey's own soldiers.
Because this was the Frey's restricted military zone,
the natives were kept out under the tightest guard; at most they were left in charge of security on the outside.
So the security force here in the inner ring was very small:
only a few dozen combat mecha standing here.
"They're filling that pool with blood!" the woman cried out.
A rumor she had heard before came into her head: "I've heard a theory before. The Frey civilization has a special way of forging starships. First a warship is built, then the warship is surrounded with blood, and then the warship is awakened with the Frey's own blood, turning it into an interstellar warship. Could it be! This is their blood-sacrifice ritual!"
Hearing the woman's words, everyone present felt a chill down their backs, and their heads filled with fury.
"These bastards: they dare use our own people as a blood bank. Damn them!" The big leader could hardly keep himself from charging out.
"Leader, calm down!" The woman held him back.
"How am I supposed to calm down now? Watch with my own eyes while they drain our people's blood and then blood-sacrifice to awaken their so-called starship! I can't do it!" the big leader said furiously.
"Leader! We have to get word of this place out!" the woman said earnestly.
The big leader froze, and calmed down a little.
Then he said, "You're right about that. Someone has to carry the news out. Here's what we'll do. You and Xiao Zhang are responsible for getting the information we've filmed out. The rest of you stay here with me. We destroy this filthy place. That starship stained with our people's blood must never fly!"
"Yes!" the team members said in unison.
The woman hesitated a moment.
In truth she wanted to stay.
But thinking it over, she took on the task all the same.
"Leader, you all stay safe. Once we've got the information out, we'll come straight back to support you!" the woman said earnestly.
"Once you're out, don't…"
"No! We're one team. We came together for one ideal; we swore that even if what lay ahead was a road to death, we'd walk it together!" the woman said, unshakable.
The big leader glanced at the woman.
In truth no one knew the two of them were lovers.
Only, out of consideration for the organization, they had not wanted their being lovers to affect the organization's missions, so they had always kept it secret from others.
And for those staying behind, the outcome of this fight could be imagined.
Opposite them were dozens of the Frey civilization's combat mecha, all T1-grade.
And though they were fully armed too, it was all infantry weaponry after all.
The gap was still very great.
This fight could be called one chance in ten of living.
But even knowing this,
these people chose without hesitation to stay, for nothing else
but the tens of thousands of their people trapped in the containers as blood bags!
"Wait for us!" With that, the woman headed back the way they had come, the man beside her hurrying after.
The remaining team members looked at the big leader.
"Check your weapons and gear. Follow the plan for fighting combat mecha we trained for before. They've always called us rats in the gutter. Today, let these people know that we rats will make them pay for what they've done!"
All the fighters of the big man's team exchanged a look.
The big leader held up three fingers, then slowly drew one back, then another.
As the last finger dropped,
several team members stepped forward with grenade launchers and fired into this stadium-like arena.
The grenade launchers were not aimed at the combat mecha, but landed at different spots in the arena.
These "rounds" did not explode; instead they spewed white smoke.
They were not shells of any kind, but smoke rounds.
In a mere few minutes, the smoke filled the whole space.
"Enemy attack!"
The Frey government forces' combat mecha, seeing this white fog billow out, knew at once that the outer line of defense had been broken by the rebel organizations and that they had already infiltrated.
They could not care about much else; even with their view blocked by the white fog, each aimed at an area and opened fire with the autocannons in their hands.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
A dense roar of gunfire rang out at this moment.
And in the pool, the blood kept pouring in.
"Go!" Everyone in the big man's team put on a mask; in their goggles the positions of those few combat mecha could be seen.
The fighters with energy shields charged at the front, and the other fighters followed behind.
They thrust forward fast.
Along the way they would throw some smoke grenades now and then, renewing the smoke.
"Turn on the thermal radar scan! Don't let these rats get away!" a pilot of the Frey government forces' combat mecha shouted.
But after starting the thermal radar they found it could not pick up any intruder's biological signature at all.
"How is this possible?" The pilot looked as if he could not believe it.
But suddenly the sound of an explosion came.
"Damn it, they're right under my feet. They've planted a bomb under my feet! Help me, quick!" a pilot of a Frey combat mecha screamed over the comms channel.
"Lock onto this mecha's position at once and fire!" The other combat mecha no longer cared whether they hit friendly forces, and opened fire on this Frey combat mecha sending out its distress call.
"Pull back, quick!"
The big man's team, having destroyed a combat mecha, pulled back quickly at once.
And in the middle of their team, from the tactical backpack one of them carried, an antenna extended.
It was this device that let them, within a certain range, stay off the enemy's radar.
Together with the smoke rounds, they could carry out this kind of infiltrating attack.
Just at this moment,
a whirlwind suddenly arose in the arena, and these whirlwinds blew away in an instant the smoke covering the arena.
This left everyone in the big man's team exposed right under the eyes of those Frey combat squads.
"Find cover, quick!" the big leader shouted at once.
Almost in an instant, every kind of attack from the combat mecha around came down on their position like rain.
Boom, boom, boom!
Almost in this one round, more than half the fighters of the big man's team were killed outright.
The big leader looked at a team member before him, coughing up blood, who said to him, "Leader, I… my lower half hurts so much. Is my thing ruined? I haven't finished my feat of a hundred notches yet."[1]
The big leader gritted his teeth, and the gun in his hand was aimed at his team member's head: "Whether your thing is ruined I don't know. But your lower half flew a good way off. Brother, go well. Next life, your big brother will treat you to the full-service package."[2]
————
On the other side, two members of the big man's team ran outward along the passage they had come by.
"It's no good here either; there's signal jamming!"
"No good here either!"
Time after time they stopped to check their position, and every time it showed they could not connect to the network, so they could only keep running outward.
When they had almost run out of this military base's buildings,
they saw an unbelievable sight.
Around the outside of this military base, great numbers of people and vehicles were rushing at the military base, and what they held in their hands were weapons sent from beyond the sky, the same as theirs.
However strong the military base's defensive weapons, however many fell in pools of blood, people still kept coming, one wave after another.
These were all members of the various underground forces.
"Stop staring; hurry and send the information from here! There's signal here!" The woman shoved the man, who was standing in a daze.
"R… right."
The man at once took out his communications device and sent out all the footage they had filmed.
No processing was needed at all.
That footage could make everyone understand clearly everything happening here.
Very soon this video was posted to this planet's internet.
But in under five seconds, the video was deleted.
"Someone's intercepting our video!" the man said anxiously.
"Then keep sending it. You can send it first to the chat groups of the underground organizations and have them help share it," the woman said earnestly. "The truth of this place: we must let the world outside know it!"
"Right!"
The video was sent out time after time.
Very soon more and more people saw these videos, and saw the scene inside the military base too.
"What is this?"
"My god, are these all people?"
"Could these all be people who were locked up before?"
In the cities, residents saw these videos, and saw the people in those containers, and the blood already drawn out of them.
Some stopped walking, stopped their work; even vehicles stopped at the roadside.
At this point drones appeared over the streets.
"Warning! Warning! Do not view banned content; anyone found doing so will be given the severest punishment!"
The warnings sounded on every side, one after another.
Some, afraid, did not look.
But some chose to keep watching, paying no heed at all to the warnings.
Peace officers' vehicles began to appear on the streets in great numbers, sirens wailing on every side.
They had received orders to arrest those spreading and watching these videos.
But among these peace officers, some froze too at this moment.
"Hey! What are you still standing there for? Get going!" The peace officers' squad chief scolded a young peace officer under him.
"Chief, this man… I arrested him myself. He… all he did was watch a video, and… and this happened to him?" The young peace officer looked incredulously at that young man curled up in a container.
Had he not recognized the scar on this young man's neck, he truly would not have known the man at all.
When he had arrested him, the man had been in his little room, and his body had still been rather plump.
But now, in the container, he had become a withered, mummified corpse.
"This is what the law lays down! We only have to carry it out," the peace officers' squad chief said earnestly.
"But what if our law is wrong! Even if these acts are bad, is it necessary to take their lives? And this is only what I've seen. Does that mean many of the people we arrested before all ended up like this?" The young peace officer looked at his own hands, utter disbelief in his eyes.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
At this moment gunfire came from inside the peace bureau.
"What's going on?" The peace officers' squad chief ran back at once.
He saw a peace officer with a gun in his hand, his head drooping to one side, a bloody hole in it.
Before him that video was still playing.
He had killed himself.
Of the peace officers in the peace bureau, over half had lost control of their feelings at this moment.
Some killed themselves, some held their heads and wept bitterly, some hid in corners, not daring to face the truth.
The order of the whole society began at this moment to turn to chaos.
Who knew who it was that gave a shout.
Great crowds appeared in the streets; these people rushed like madmen at the Frey civilization's government offices.
As for the drones that had always been feared, now the moment one was seen, they used every kind of weapon to shoot it down.
Once the flame of resistance was lit, more and more people stood up.
And at this point, some organization or other published the blood-sacrifice sites of the Frey civilization all over this planet, and where the weapons depots concerned were too.
Anyone willing to stand up and fight alongside them could go to these places to draw weapons and equipment, and go together to destroy those blood-sacrifice sites.
True, after the Frey civilization conquered this planet, it had disarmed the locals and built armed forces of its own.
But it should be understood that this had been no more than ten years.
In this time, there were still great numbers of discharged soldiers scattered among the people.
Only, because of the Frey civilization's powerful military strength, these people could only live as ordinary common folk, quietly.
And now that the ugly face of the Frey civilization had been laid bare, many of these veterans chose to stand up at this moment.
In a housing compound,
a middle-aged man in his forties pulled a box out from under his bed; when he opened the box, inside lay a uniform.
It was the uniform of a certain kingdom on this planet ten years ago.
He stroked the pattern of the insignia on the uniform.
He took out the uniform and put it on again.
Only, the buttons that had once done up perfectly now had to be left open two at the top, and even so it still looked somewhat tight.
"I always told you to exercise more, exercise more. Now you see it yourself; you can't even fit into your old uniform," a woman said, coming in and looking at the familiar husband before her.