NOVEL NEXT 24
Chapter 24: Battlefield 1
Life is filled with disappointments more often than not.
Ellis had anticipated an extraordinary battle. As the plane flew over the front lines, he, along with three other captains, listened to their superior’s briefing through their headsets. Suddenly, the plane was unexpectedly bombarded from afar.
Everything happened so quickly that no one was prepared.
The explosion occurred at the right rear of the plane carrying the captains. Shrapnel sliced through the fuselage, splitting it in half, and the plane plummeted from the clouds with a wail.
The captains exchanged glances and decisively ordered an immediate evacuation.
Hundreds of heavily armored soldiers in exoskeleton suits jumped out of the plane, their parachutes automatically deploying.
Upon landing on the battlefield, the situation before them was far worse than anticipated. Ellis immediately reported this to his superior.
The superior had not foreseen this turn of events either. He was supposed to arrive at the battlefield by noon. After a few moments of contemplation, he said, “Initiate Plan B,” and promptly set out for the battlefield.
The other three captains also received the order. Their respective units quickly changed formations and regrouped.
The superior was the crucial command center of this regiment. High-mobility formations required his presence on the scene.
Initially, they had expected a minor skirmish, leaving the captains to handle it. But no one anticipated such a twist.
The enemy seemed to anticipate their moves. Despite being caught off guard initially, they quickly regrouped and began attacking the weak points in their formation.
This was practically a suicide mission!
Furious, Ellis urgently discussed with Angie, Owen, and another captain, Delov, and decided to use their last-known formation.
By the time the superior arrived, they had already lost a tenth of their troops.
Once on the battlefield, there was no thought of retreating.
Amid the chaos of war, with bodies strewn everywhere, and ruins all around, the initial motives were completely forgotten, and the mocking laughter at the enemy had long died down.
Reinforcements kept arriving, and soldiers kept dying.
The river of blood, shocking at first, soon became numbingly familiar.
“If I ever get the chance, I will never go to the battlefield again,” Ellis said, lying in a trench with Angie, gun pointed forward.
“These things don’t come or go just because you wish them to,” Angie replied, his face covered in dust, the pre-battle jesting long gone.
Days of fighting had forged camaraderie among the soldiers who lived and ate together amidst the fire.
Of the four captains, Owen had been injured by shrapnel in his arm and had been sent to a temporary medical station to recover.
Delov was the one with the most outstanding military qualities, leading the vanguard to scout the enemy’s situation up front.
“I used to think simply, believing that soldiers were great, but I never thought they’d be risking their lives at any moment.”
“What did you think?” Angie sneered. “The high benefits and good treatment soldiers receive are all bought with innocent lives.”
Every day, the operation screen displayed the list of the dead. Once an exoskeleton mech was damaged, its operator was unlikely to survive.
“My reason for joining the military was selfish—to get away from things I didn’t like. Before, I disliked the idea of losing my life even more than getting married.”
“I can understand emotionally, but don’t expect me to agree with you. A soldier should act like a soldier, fighting on the battlefield to protect the country. Death isn’t scary; what’s scary is having no belief and being unable to sacrifice for your faith.” Angie efficiently loaded his gun. Through the scope, he saw someone sneaking around on the other side and pulled the trigger, the person fell.
They had been classmates for four years and colleagues for three. Despite their seven years of close association, Ellis felt he never truly understood Angie.
Angie had a heart more resolute than anyone else’s. He was deeply thoughtful, holding onto beliefs that didn’t belong to this era and weren’t approved by others.
“You still talk the same way, just like in college,” Ellis said.
“University? Who remembers such distant times.”
“Every single thing,” Ellis knocked on his steel helmet with the heavy fingers of his exoskeleton mech, “I remember each one clearly, as if it were yesterday.”
“When we first enrolled, your self-introduction included a pledge: ‘I will dedicate my life to eradicating the remnants and restoring peace to our Zerg star.’ Everyone in the class laughed at such grand ambitions.”
“You have a good memory, but you never use it in the right place. You used it all to study movies. That one year at the end of term, if Owen and I hadn’t dragged you to cram, you would have failed your exams,” Angie said.
“That’s all in the past.” Ellis noticed an armored vehicle slowly emerging from behind cover at the two o’clock position. He reached for a mine in his waist pocket and grinned, “Looks like we’ve got more volunteers. After this, I’m definitely going to the underground bar for a couple of drinks. I need to unwind.”
“Some things are in the past, but some things never really pass.” Angie murmured softly.
“What are you saying, Angie?”
“Nothing.”
“Let’s bring Owen along tonight. My treat.”
“Alright!” Angie followed behind Ellis, quietly approaching the armored vehicle.
No one anticipated that the armored vehicle was just a decoy. The real enemy was in the air. When the plane swooped down and dropped the bomb, no one had time to react. The bomb came straight at the two of them.
In a split second, Angie lunged at Ellis, pushing him three to five meters away. The sand and dust kicked up by the bomb slammed into Ellis’s face, and the display on his right arm was completely wrecked by the impact.
Before he could process what had happened, Angie had vanished.
Ellis’s mind went blank, and the plane circled a few times before buzzing away.
Scrambling frantically, Ellis saw only the charred marks from the explosion.
He fell to his knees, desperately sifting through every inch of sand, but found no trace of blood or flesh, only a dog tag with Angie’s name on it.
His old stomach ailment, dormant for years, suddenly flared up with a violent spasm.
Pale-faced, Ellis returned to the camp and quietly relayed the news to Owen, who was sitting and nursing his wounds.
Owen closed his eyes tightly, his face ashen, and murmured, “It can’t be. It must be false.”
“It’s true.” Ellis held the dog tag, the kind every soldier always carried, up to Owen’s face.
Owen’s hand clutched the name-engraved tag so tightly that the sharp metal bit into his flesh.
Ellis closed his eyes tightly. “I got him killed. I shouldn’t have let him come with me to check on that armored vehicle. I should have realized earlier that it was suspicious for it to appear alone.” Ellis hated his own coldness now, but he truly felt incapable of any expression.
Owen opened his eyes, saw the chain of the dog tag dangling from his palm, and tears filled his eyes.
Hot tears streamed down his face.
“No, it’s impossible. We promised to fight side by side. How could he leave first?”
“How the hell could you leave after the first battle?!” Owen roared, lowering his head deeply.
After a long while, he raised his head, tears still staining his face, but his eyes shone with determination.
In a daze, Ellis felt that Owen now looked remarkably like Angie.
Owen walked towards the mech, his injured arm clamped by the steel apparatus. Blood gushed from his wound, but he seemed unfazed, grabbing weapons and equipment from the temporary camp with a sweeping motion.
Ellis stood frozen, his stomach churning again.
He watched helplessly as Owen left the camp, shouting, “Anyone not afraid of death, follow me into the Tartar’s cowardly camp and wipe them out.”
Ellis hurried to stop Owen.
Owen retorted, “I need to vent this rage, or else he’ll haunt my dreams forever.” He patted Ellis on the shoulder, “One captain must stay in the camp, Ellis. This task is yours.”
Ellis said he would go with Owen, but Owen replied, “This counts as defying orders and acting on my own. I can’t drag you into this. Ellis, you’re about to start a family. Don’t be reckless. Your male partner is still waiting for you in Siming.”
For the first time, Ellis hated his own weakness, easily convinced by these words, watching helplessly as Owen led the team away.
That night, Owen was carried back on a stretcher, his body covered in wounds, some deep enough to expose bone.
When he saw Ellis, he even managed to smile before passing out, still clutching that dog tag tightly.
The surviving soldiers said they caught the enemy off guard, fighting fiercely and fearlessly, taking down about a hundred men.
However, after wiping them out, Owen knelt in the yellow sand, soaked in blood, howling like a lone wolf, tears streaming down his face.
Despite emergency surgery and antibiotics, Owen developed a high fever by midnight.
The medic said the fever wouldn’t break with medication anymore; Owen had to fight it off himself.
Ellis didn’t sleep a wink, tending to him, cooling him down with water.
Delirious from the fever, Owen muttered incoherently, fragments of words.
Ellis finally understood what he was saying around 3 a.m. as the fever began to subside.
Owen said: “You are the snow in my palm.”
Ellis dropped the towel he was holding.
That was a poem Angie had casually written on a bookmark back in university:
“The wind drifts lightly,
The clouds fly white.
Heaven bears the frost and snow,
Entrusting you to me.
You are the snow in my palm,
Melting in my heart.”
Owen and Angie had been together.
Thinking of this, past interactions came flooding back, and their relationship was evident.
How laughable that he had been so oblivious.
Ellis hadn’t eaten anything at night and, after caring for someone until midnight, his stomach began to cramp again.
He started coughing violently, one cough after another. He quickly ran outside the camp, gasping for breath and coughing loudly.
The pain was so intense that he couldn’t help but curl up, hugging himself, which made him feel a bit better.
His throat itched terribly, and his coughs made his lungs hurt until he vomited a liquid.
He had coughed up blood.
A sense of absurdity welled up within him.
He had caused his friend’s death, torn apart his friends’ relationship, so how did he still deserve to live, to be alive?
Was it just because of this ridiculous blood cough?
Ellis began to laugh. The soldier on duty nearby saw him and quickly called for help, bringing a doctor to support Ellis back inside.
**Author’s Note:**
Ellis isn’t actually a qualified soldier.
I can’t write about power conspiracies, so the protagonist won’t be involved in the power center, just brushing against it. There is no deep meaning behind the events.