Planetary Defense Force, can they stop interstellar warriors?
Even though they are traitors, Nides—Or rather, Sydney Blaywins and his seven battle brothers, are veterans with at least two hundred years of combat experience.
Their combat experience is extremely rich.
Blaywins and his comrades, a total of eight men. One man did not come down from the patrol cruiser in the sky, leaving seven, with two following by Blaywins' side, the other four guarding their landing ship.
Upon realizing that something was wrong, they made a decisive decision to start killing people and forced the people of Extinct Soil Star to transport the prepared resources and slave labor to their landing ship.
Transport as much as they could.
As for those members of the Planetary Defense Force who dared to launch an attack against them, they did not hold back when killing them.
The Planetary Defense Force on Extinct Soil Star fully met the general impression of a Planetary Defense Force—they were truly weak. Perhaps even within the Defense Force, they were among those with poorer equipment, training, and morale.
They neither broke through the traitors' defense, nor did they manage to take out the coerced transport laborers or destroy the landing ships used by the traitors to touch down on the planet's surface.
The seven traitors, after spending about twenty minutes to kill over a thousand soldiers from Extinct Soil Star, left the surviving troops completely disheartened and afraid to engage further.
Orders urged on by Ahzimuba kept coming in, the high-ranking officers gritting their teeth issuing mortal orders to the lower echelons, insisting they attack or face execution if they survived by not doing so. Under such circumstances, they finally managed to regroup and launched a few attacks.
But one can imagine how poor the quality of such offensives was.
Extinct Soil Star soldiers, reluctantly driven forward, after firing a few shots and witnessing their comrades being precisely sniped off one after another, would quickly retreat back.
In such a situation, the traitors even launched a few offensives.
They first located a Defense Army command post, destroyed it, and killed the commander.
Although it was not the highest commander—the supreme commander was far in the rear—it still caused chaos among the frontline troops of the Planetary Defense Force.
Then, in the confusion, they also destroyed the artillery positions of the Planetary Defense Force, eliminating the heavy firepower threat to the transport team.
By the way, in this process, they also took down five aircraft with man-portable missiles.
After dissolving the Planetary Defense Force's capability to resist, the coerced slave laborers finally managed to load all the resources, and themselves, onto the landing ship.
The landing ship started its engines, with four Interstellar Warriors still guarding outside. They would jump onto the ship only once it had completed its launch sequence, and even when it was already about a meter off the ground.
It seemed that no one could stop them now.
The ship soared into the high skies.
Ahzimuba, in the distant desert, heard the report from his subordinates, both desperate and furious, he collapsed in rage, cursing the traitors with bitter words, calling them Imperial traitors who would not die well, then cursing the officers under his command as a bunch of useless garbage, later accusing the Alliance of constantly closing in and making life impossible—though the Alliance had not had the chance to do anything from the start.
However, at that moment, he heard another report from his officer.
"Those pirates... they've come back!"
"They have flown back!" The officer's voice contained not the slightest hint of joy, but was filled with fear.
Having thought that after so many deaths, they had finally dispatched the angel of death, Ahzimuba, even though he was cursing, let him curse as it seemed no one would die.
But now the killers had returned, and that could very possibly mean more deaths.
During the recent battle, they had already lost more than a thousand lives, with the only result being the death of fewer than a hundred kidnapped slave laborers, and those few 'pirates' weren't even scratched, or at the very least, were untroubled.
Why had they come back?
Ahzimuba also pondered this question.
Could it be to kill me?
He had just been ranting about the pirates' escape, but now that they had returned, Ahzimuba was so scared that he broke out in a cold sweat.
He quickly told his driver to go farther away, taking him to the nearest safe house.
But then, a few minutes later, new intelligence arrived.
It was a message from the Observatory, indicating that a navy fleet had entered the Extinct Soil Star System.
Some of these ships bore the insignia of the Tianma Fleet of the Empire; but the majority of them were clad in the blue of the Alliance.
Due to the backwardness of the observing means, the fleet had not only completed the Star Realm traversal by the time they were observed, but they had also arrived at a location not far from Extinct Soil Star.
In at most four hours, they could reach the planet's orbit.
This fleet must have crossed the Star Realm Tunnel between Hongjian Star and Extinct Soil Star at least two days ago, and only now were they observed...
It also proved that the fleet from Hongjian Star had been closely following right behind the heels of 'Nides' and his crew. Nides and his team had arrived at Extinct Soil Star, and from the time they dispatched the landing ship until now, less than five hours had passed, yet the fleet from the Tianma Star Sector had arrived.
No wonder 'Nides' wanted him to prepare all the resources so urgently; any slight delay would have spelled their doom, right?
Combining this intelligence, Ahzimuba guessed the purpose of the traitors' return: They knew they couldn't outrun the Alliance Navy's encirclement in the Star Sea, so they weren't planning to run. Evidently, they didn't seem to be in the mood to make a desperate last stand; instead, they planned to hide within Extinct Soil Star, playing a game of cat and mouse with the Alliance in the vast desert.