Chapter 385: Chapter 385
Chapter 385
2-in-1-Chapter
Note> Hi, I know I said we were going back to regular scheduled (we are) but I was preoccupied with moving, if you missed my message in chat the short story is I needed to move out (again), and I finally did so.
Anyway, Happy reading!
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It wasn’t just his group—every single one of the other four had been ambushed.
And the firepower they had encountered was even fiercer, especially for the two groups attempting a flanking maneuver along the city’s perimeter.
Those two units had been nearly wiped out.
The reason was simple: they had been targeted by focused airstrikes from Aurora PMC’s aerial support.
Inside the city, the rebels had faced mostly rotary cannon fire.
But outside the city, there were no such limitations. Rockets, air-dropped bombs—everything was used.
The bombardment left the rebels wailing in terror.
Aurora PMC’s air force deployed Medusa heavy combat aircraft, a more advanced version than the Scorpion-Tail that Leo had sold to the Bolivian President.
Moreover, Aurora’s pilots were far more experienced than those of the government, with vastly superior skills and combat instincts.
They didn’t fire blindly. Before launching an attack, they scanned the battlefield and analyzed the threat level of different enemy units.
High-priority targets were always enemy units equipped with anti-air missiles.
Even though both Medusa and Scorpion-Tail units came equipped with flare dispensers and heavy armor capable of neutralizing missile threats, Aurora pilots never gambled on their defenses.
They preferred to eliminate threats before they had a chance to strike.
As a result, the anti-air-equipped rebels among the flanking units were the first to be obliterated by the descending Medusas.
Any rebels who dared to reach for anti-air launchers were immediately marked and neutralized.
As for the rest, they had already lost their nerve and fled as fast as they could.
"Truss, shouldn’t we be getting out of here?"
Even his close aides were now urging him to leave—not just out of fear that Truss might lead them to their deaths, but because they dreaded the idea of Aurora PMC forces arriving.
It was now clear that Aurora was not the same as the Bolivian government forces. The two were fundamentally different.
If a full battalion came, maybe they’d have some chance of putting up a fight. But with just their current numbers, they wouldn’t even be enough to plug a bullet hole.
Truss looked around.
When he saw the hesitation and lack of support on the faces of those closest to him, he understood that no matter what he said now, it would be pointless.
He knew that retreating in disgrace would likely bring punishment or worse. But if he stayed and tried to push forward, there was every chance someone might put a bullet in his back.
Between the two, survival was the better option.
Truss sighed and said, "Alright. Go prepare—we’re pulling out."
The moment he said it, the expressions of those around him eased noticeably.
What they feared most was Truss being stubborn and dragging them into another assault or insisting on holding position in the capital.
But now that Truss had chosen to retreat, they could finally breathe easier.
Just then, a strange howling sound suddenly echoed from above.
A strange, piercing howl tore through the air above.
The crowd instinctively looked up and saw two Medusa gunships circling overhead. No one had noticed when they had arrived.
Everyone’s faces changed instantly.
Those who had flanked the city earlier during the daylight hours had already experienced the firepower of these aircraft.
So now, upon seeing the Medusas in the sky, many turned and bolted without hesitation.
Of the remaining fighters, some scrambled into nearby buildings, while others, acting on instinct, raised their weapons and opened fire on the sky.
But without anti-air missiles, their standard infantry weapons were useless. The bullets struck the Medusa’s armor and sparked in brilliant flashes, but none managed to penetrate. Every round bounced off harmlessly.
The next second, the twin Vulcan cannons mounted beneath the Medusas began to spin up.
A torrential barrage of gunfire rained down like a thunderstorm.
Most of the rebel militia had failed to take cover when returning fire. It wasn’t because they had no fear of death—it was because most of them had never received proper training and lacked even basic battlefield awareness.
So, when that rain of death descended from the sky, the outcome was inevitable.
The Vulcan cannons mounted on the Medusas were not in the same league as infantry machine guns in terms of firepower.
The rounds from the Vulcan cannon tore through human bodies, blasting gaping holes as wide as a bowl.
When multiple rounds struck the same person, they were instantly torn to pieces, their body reduced to scattered fragments in mere seconds.
And that was exactly what played out in reality.
As the Vulcan swept across the area, anyone not shielded by cover was left in shreds—limbs, flesh, and blood littered the ground, forming a grotesque carpet of carnage.
In less than a minute, casualties had already risen into triple digits, and the number continued to climb rapidly.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Truss had retreated into one of the buildings. He stared in horror at the two airborne reapers—the Medusas—raining down death with absolute impunity.
The downpour of bullets was unrelenting, each burst claiming more of the rebel militia.
Truss wasn’t unfamiliar with aircraft, but the Medusa and the Mag-Lizard were in a class of their own. And the pilots under the government forces were clearly not the same as those flying for Aurora PMC.
His men had been crushed without a chance to fight back.
Those who had dared to resist in the beginning now lay as mangled corpses across the streets.
The rest had either taken cover inside buildings or were running in panic, scattering like insects.
Possibly due to the fact that this was an urban zone, the Medusas had refrained from using high-impact ordnance like rockets or other oversized payloads. They had deployed only their Vulcan cannons.
Even so, the devastation was beyond what the rebel militia could handle.
Their weapons, when fired at the Medusas’ armor, might as well have been tickling them. Meanwhile, every round from above dealt catastrophic damage in return.
As he stared out at the inferno unfolding outside, Truss felt a sense of surreal detachment, as if reality had split apart.
At the start of the campaign, they had marched on the city, expecting the government forces to collapse at the first sign of pressure—either surrendering or fleeing.
They never imagined they’d face real resistance, much less government aircraft.
According to intelligence, all Mag-Lizards belonging to the government had either been destroyed or captured.
That was what their defected government soldiers had sworn in their reports.
So where had these two Medusas come from?
Because they had been certain the government had no remaining aircraft, their unit had brought only a minimal number of anti-air missiles.
Anti-air launchers were dead weight against ground targets. And with no air threats expected, it had seemed more than enough to carry just a few for insurance.
The result was that all of their anti-air assets had been allocated to the two flanking squads sent out during the daytime operation.
But when those squads encountered the Medusas, panic had overtaken them.
They hadn’t even tried to retaliate. Some had even tossed away their launchers altogether, seeing them as too cumbersome while fleeing.
Which meant that, despite having several thousand troops gathered here, not a single anti-air missile remained in their arsenal.
Thousands of men were now like penned-in turkeys, helpless as the two Medusas butchered them at will.
Technically speaking, it was still possible to use rocket-propelled grenades against aircraft, in the absence of dedicated launchers.
Back in the days of Black Hawk Down, American helicopters had been brought down with just that.
But that was the late 20th century.
Now it was 2077, and aircraft technology had evolved by orders of magnitude.
Even without accounting for modern countermeasures like decoy flares, the Medusas’ heavy armor alone could easily withstand a direct hit from an RPG.