?!
A large enemy force was surrounding them?
The news crashed through the stronghold like a thunderclap.
In an instant, almost every resistance fighter's gaze—full of suspicion, anger, and fear—snapped toward Leon, Mike, and Maggie.
The air was thick with the reek of distrust, more choking than the battle about to begin.
"It's them! It has to be them who brought them here!"
"They show up and the enemy follows right after! What are the odds of that?!"
"These so‑called 'Imperial agents' are just bait sent by the National Guard!"
Accusations flared one after another. Many fighters even unconsciously swung their muzzles a few degrees toward Leon's team.
It was hard to blame them. In twenty years of brutal struggle, betrayal, infiltration, and traps had been daily nightmares.
Leon's group had arrived, and the enemy had launched a sudden assault almost immediately afterward. It was hard not to connect the two.
Very likely, these three had, on their way here or through some unknown means, exposed this forward resistance stronghold.
A brief but explosive shouting match was about to erupt.
Several hot‑blooded young fighters crowded forward, their faces twisted with the rage of the betrayed and the despair of the cornered.
"Calm down! Everyone calm down!" Nikolai tried to regain control, but his voice was drowned in the noise.
Just then, Leon stepped forward. His voice was not loud, yet it carried a still, cutting calm that sliced through the chaos and reached every ear:
"Arguing is pointless."
He spoke like a hammer blow, meeting their hostile stares without flinching. "We're standing here, armed, facing the enemy at your side. That is our position.
We are not human traitors. The Imperial Investigation Division does not have that word in its vocabulary."
He shifted tone and pointed outside. "Hunting for someone to blame now is a waste of time.
Far more likely, one of your squads slipped up in a previous operation and got tagged by enemy scouts or an informant.
But right now, that no longer matters."
His voice hardened with uncompromising resolve. "The primary—and only—thing that matters is organizing an immediate withdrawal. Preserve your combat strength, or you won't live to fight again."
As soon as he finished, there was a sharp click as Leon chambered a round into his custom Gauss submachine gun. The crisp metallic clack rang out clearly above the din.
He no longer looked at the soldiers who'd been doubting them, instead turning his eyes straight to the resistance commander on the scene—Nikolai.
At almost the same moment, Maggie and Mike drew their weapons without hesitation.
Maggie's hands closed around a pair of modified combat daggers that gleamed with a cold, blue energy sheen, while Mike gripped his large‑caliber pistol.
In an instant, the three fell into battle posture, forming a back‑to‑back defensive triangle, silently declaring that they would face what was coming together.
"…"
Nikolai watched the three "strangers" snap into combat readiness, then glanced at his subordinates—furious, yes, but even more afraid—and fell briefly silent.
A veteran's intuition and reason told him these three weren't acting. Their eyes and movements made it clear they fully intended to stand and fight.
And right now, internal suspicion and division were the greatest enemies of all.
A moment later he jerked his head up, the decisiveness of a commander returning to his gaze. His booming voice rolled over the shouting:
"Agent Kennedy is right! This is no time for infighting! Our top priority now is to pull out!
We cannot gift the Combined Army and those National Guard scum the chance to wipe out this precious fighting force!"
Ignoring the muttered objections of a few, he began to issue orders—fast and crystal clear.
"First Squad, under Sergeant Ivanov, stays here to cover the retreat and slow the enemy's advance!"
"Everyone else, destroy all sensitive documents, grab essential gear, and follow Emergency Evac Plan Three. Use the underground tunnels to withdraw immediately. Abandon this strongpoint at once! Move!"
The moment the orders dropped, the stronghold sprang into motion. The tension remained, but with clear instructions, the chaos snapped into line.
At that point, Leon turned to Nikolai. "Captain, Agent Shaw and I will stay and help cover the retreat."
He looked over at Mike. "Mike, you go with the main resistance force. Keep the encrypted channel open, guide us to fallback routes and rally points."
The plan made Nikolai start, and he objected at once. "Agent Kennedy! You're intelligence and recon. You shouldn't be in the hottest part of the line of fire. Rearguard is our responsibility. Protecting you is also—"
"Captain." Leon cut him off, his tone firm. "From the moment we stepped onto this ground, we've been on the front line. There is no rear area.
Besides…"
His gaze swept the soldiers who had been accusing them. "Since some of your people believe we brought the enemy down on you, then we have a responsibility to prove our innocence with our actions—by covering your withdrawal. It's the best way."
He stepped in close until he was face‑to‑face with Nikolai, his words low but full of force. "Enough, Captain. No more arguing over it. Time is short. Every second is life or death. It's time to move."
Seeing the unyielding look in Leon's eyes and feeling the resolve and sense of duty in his words, Nikolai swallowed back his protest.
Then he clapped Leon hard on the shoulder. Everything else went unsaid.
"Fine. Stay alive." Nikolai turned and bellowed, "First Squad! Ivanov! You, your men, and Anna stay to coordinate with Agents Kennedy and Shaw!
Everyone else, fall back with me!"
In the end, a squad of seven resistance fighters—including Anna, the girl who'd led them here—stayed behind to carry out the dangerous rearguard mission.
Leon and Maggie, as promised, remained in the forward strongpoint that was about to become a killing ground.
Gunfire was already drifting in from outside—
Pop.
Crack.
The scattered shots outside were like a dying pulse—and then they stopped completely.
That meant the outer sentries had been overrun and eliminated by the Combined Army troops and National Guard traitors, who held absolute numerical superiority.
Heavy footsteps, the roar of armored engines, and the low, buzzing chatter of enemy comms closed in from all directions like a tightening noose.
Inside the dilapidated apartment block, the faces of the resistance fighters were set with a mix of tension and grim resolve.
They moved to their preassigned positions, taking advantage of what cover the building offered—
Windows, jagged gaps in broken walls, stairwell corners. Braced against piles of sandbags and scrap metal barricades, they held their weapons at the ready, fingers resting on triggers, breathing rough and tight from pressure.
On the second floor, at a window with a relatively clear view, Leon had already set up his Gauss submachine gun and was fine‑tuning the focus on his scope.
Beside him lay the young woman named Anna, her hands wrapped around an old rifle fitted with an optical sight.
Her face was a little pale, but her eyes were rock steady.
"Hey… old man."
Anna spoke under her breath, still keeping her eyes locked on the enemy silhouettes pushing closer outside. "If things go bad, don't hesitate. You bail out with me. I know a few hidden routes."
She hesitated, searching for words. "Even though… even though my first instinct was to think you brought this swarm of bastards down on us, my gut says you didn't.
So keeping you alive… is one of my priorities now, too."
It was a trust born of combat instinct—something especially rare and precious for resistance fighters who lived in a world of betrayals.
Then something seemed to occur to her. She glanced around and asked in confusion, "By the way, where's that Miss Maggie? I don't see her anywhere."
Leon didn't lift his eye from the scope. He just jerked his chin toward the world beyond the window, his tone as calm as if stating a simple fact. "My partner? She's already outside the door."
He added a sentence that made Anna's pupils constrict:
"She's about to be the first one to open fire on those traitors."
?!
"What? Outside the door? Alone?!" Anna almost yelped. Nearby fighters, hearing that, also stared in shock and disbelief.
Outside the door?
That was the open ground about to be completely encircled by more than two hundred heavily armed enemies.
To step out there without looking for cover, to deliberately expose yourself to crossing fields of fire—might as well walk into an execution.
What difference was there between that and standing there to be turned into a sieve?
"What… what the hell is she doing?!"
Anna's voice shook with both fear and incomprehension. She stared at Leon, desperate for an explanation.
Leon's expression didn't change. He simply said, steady as ever, "Don't panic. Just wait for the signal."
His voice carried a calming weight. "For now, no one fires first. Stay hidden."
Though they were full of questions and dread, seeing Leon so composed forced Anna and the others to choke back the urge to pull the trigger. For the moment, they chose to trust these mysterious "Imperial agents."
They held their breath and watched that lone, proud figure standing before the ruins outside.
At that same moment, among the Combined Army and National Guard forces completing the encirclement outside, there was equal shock.
?
They saw a woman—a tall woman who looked apparently "unarmed"—walk calmly out from behind cover to stand alone in the open courtyard, facing down more than two hundred of them.
It was a naked insult to their firepower.
Their force was not only packed with National Guard traitors, but also a significant number of well‑equipped, well‑trained Combined Army soldiers—the real elite compared to the collaborators.
After a brief stunned pause, a loudspeaker crackled to life on a wheeled APC. A voice—apparently a National Guard officer—boomed out, dripping with condescension and the irritation of someone who felt provoked:
"Listen up inside! You're completely surrounded! Drop your weapons and surrender at once! This is your only chance to live! Think of your families, your friends! Don't drag them down with you because of pointless resistance! Your struggle is meaningless! Surrender immediately—"
He never finished the sentence.
Tatatata—!
A burst of sharp, precise Gauss submachine‑gun fire shattered the brief lull his ultimatum had created.
Maggie, who had been standing motionless until then, snapped her Gauss SMG to her shoulder and, without a heartbeat of hesitation, raked the APC with fire.
The ultra‑high‑velocity spike rounds left the barrel in invisible streaks.
The first volley, as if guided, drilled straight through the National Guard officer's skull. His helmet tore open like paper, and he pitched backward like a felled tree.
She didn't stop there.
The armor‑piercing spike rounds, still carrying lethal momentum, punched through the APC's supposedly thick ballistic glass on the driver's cab and the armor on the side turret.
A cloud of blood mist blossomed inside in an instant. The driver and gunner died before they could scream.
The armored vehicle died with them, grinding to a halt like a slain steel beast.
!!!
It had all happened too fast, too suddenly.
After a frozen heartbeat came the enemy's explosive counterattack.
"Fire! Kill her!!"
"Take that bitch out!!"
The National Guard traitors, panicked and enraged, scrambled to return fire, pouring automatic weapons fire at Maggie like a waterfall.
The Combined Army troops showed their own professionalism, diving for cover and snapping off tight, controlled bursts in an attempt to pin down this terrifying target.
But Maggie was faster.
The instant she fired, she was already moving, breaking into a sprint with speed beyond normal human limits, her path a wild, unpredictable weave.
She danced through the storm of bullets—rolling, dropping, changing direction on a dime. The dense streams of fire could only rip through where she'd been a fraction of a second before or kick up chains of dust and debris in her wake.
Even more jaw‑dropping, she managed all this while performing precise tactical reloads on the run and calmly sending accurate short bursts back at any enemy who dared expose themselves.
The distinct bark of the Gauss SMG crackled across the battlefield again and again, and almost every time it did, an enemy went down.
With most of the enemy fire focused on her and their formation thrown into chaos—
Bang!
A Combined Army soldier crouching behind cover with a rocket launcher dropped like a puppet with its string cut.
Leon had joined the fight.
Through his scope, he coolly hunted priority targets, and he shouted to the resistance fighters around him:
"Now! That's the signal! Open fire!"
The resistance fighters, who had been holding their rage in check, were stunned beyond words by what they'd just seen—but more than that, they were ablaze with fighting spirit.
They didn't hesitate anymore.
From windows and firing slits, they leaned out and loosed their pent‑up fury.
"Hit them!"
"For our dead comrades!"
"Cover Miss Maggie!"
The rattle of rifles and light machine guns erupted into a solid wall of sound. Their weapons were old, but their fire was accurate enough to pin down the enemies trying to swing in and flank Maggie, buying her precious cover.
What should have been a one‑sided massacre suddenly turned into a fierce, chaotic clash, all because of Maggie's thunderous opening blow and the resistance's suppressive fire.
And in that storm of steel and blood, the Imperial agents demonstrated to this world's resistance what it meant to fight the Imperial way.0
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