Chapter 92 The Dead Against the Dead—Krieg’s Death Charge!

The Death Korps’ defensive line stretched along the highway.

Across the vast snow-covered plain, artillery had blasted open one blackened crater after another.

Rising heat and lingering smoke combined into a dense haze that refused to disperse from the battlefield.

Beneath that white shroud, charge whistles sounded one after another.

Agile figures in gray military greatcoats advanced through the thunder of artillery and launched a fearless charge.

Their courage exceeded anything the world had imagined.

When confronted by such a terrifying tide, even JTF soldiers chose to remain inside fortified positions and rely on modern firepower to wear down the enemy.

They would never have considered using only one hundred thousand soldiers to charge an apparently endless infected army numbering nearly ten million.

Such an offensive required more than strength.

It required extraordinary courage.

Krieg soldiers advanced behind the Earthshakers’ creeping barrage.

Within the smoke-filled battlefield, they resembled demons returning from hell as they collided head-on with the scattered parasitized troops and biochemical horrors devastated by the bombardment.

The war correspondents recording the battle from the Jefferson Line stared in disbelief.

The soldiers of the Death Korps remained silent throughout their charge.

They appeared utterly indifferent to casualties, as though the storm of bullets fired by the parasitized army did not exist.

Even when bullets struck them or stray artillery shells tore through their formations, the soldiers never screamed or wailed.

They ignored their wounds like machines concerned only with completing their mission.

Yet the blood flowing from those wounds proved that they were human.

When a Krieg soldier suffered injuries severe enough to prevent him from continuing the mission, he pulled the pin from his grenades or activated an explosive charge and threw himself into the nearest group of enemies.

His death opened a path for the soldiers behind him.

Such fearless insanity shocked the reporters filming the scene.

It also stunned every viewer watching the live broadcast.

However, Earth’s experienced generals reacted differently.

They frowned and began cursing furiously.

Who was commanding this battle?

Why would anyone waste soldiers of such exceptional quality in an unnecessary war of attrition?

Even with superior equipment, the logical choice was to remain inside the fortifications and gradually wear down the enemy.

The approaching horde was so enormous that even nuclear weapons might fail to stop it.

Worse still, it contained large numbers of parasitized soldiers.

If the Death Korps exhausted itself, wouldn’t its fallen soldiers be infected and turned against humanity?

The generals and military observers soon discovered that their judgment had been wrong.

The Death Korps’ charge was not stopped by the tide.

Instead, as the soldiers advanced, the Earthshakers’ bombardments became increasingly precise.

Occasional shells from the Medusa siege guns struck with equal accuracy, annihilating the parasitized forces concealed within the zombie hordes.

Coulson also discovered that the Death Korps’ lasguns were extraordinarily effective against zombies and mutated creatures.

When conventional firearms were used against zombies, any shot that failed to strike the brain or another vital area produced limited results.

An ordinary soldier might empty an entire magazine and kill only two or three zombies.

Parasitized soldiers were even harder to eliminate.

A human soldier could expend an entire magazine without killing one—only to be killed himself.

The parasitized soldiers, particularly those originating from Blackwatch, wore heavy armor.

The JTF primarily used standard NATO weapons firing 5.56×45-millimeter M855A1 ammunition.

At distances beyond two hundred meters, killing a parasitized soldier with those rounds was exceptionally difficult.

Not only did the infected troops wear military-grade body armor and ballistic plates, but the parasites had also enhanced their physical constitution.

Even if their original heads were destroyed, the parasite could replace the brain’s functions and continue controlling the body.

Unless human troops used heavy-caliber weapons, killing them was extraordinarily difficult.

That was why so many American soldiers had been defeated, infected, and absorbed into the parasitized army.

When those same creatures encountered the Death Korps, however, the situation was completely reversed.

A single lasgun power pack contained enough energy to kill at least ten zombies or mutated creatures.

Even the parasitized soldiers’ heavy body armor and ballistic plates could withstand only one or two additional hits before being penetrated.

Meanwhile, the parasites’ weapons struggled to pierce the Krieg soldiers’ plasteel armor.

The advantage had changed sides.

Armored vehicles and tanks soon emerged from the parasitized army.

Their exteriors were covered in warped biological carpets of flesh.

Infected M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles immediately opened fire on the charging Death Korps.

The Leman Russ tanks advancing alongside the Krieg infantry responded.

Their experienced crews calmly returned fire.

The performance of the supposedly antiquated Leman Russ shocked every military observer and viewer following the battlefield broadcast.

The slow-moving tanks looked like relics from the First World War.

Then at least six 120-millimeter rounds from infected M1A2 Abrams tanks struck them.

What happened next astonished everyone.

The APFSDS rounds failed to penetrate the “antiquated” tanks’ armor.

They left only shallow marks across the Leman Russ hulls.

The Imperial tanks immediately returned fire.

A 180-millimeter battle-cannon round struck an infected M1A2 Abrams.

The armor-piercing shell carried terrifying kinetic energy. It penetrated the tank before its explosive filler detonated inside.

The blast tore the parasitized Abrams into two sections and ignited its ammunition, triggering a violent cook-off.

A hull-mounted melta cannon fired at another M1A2.

A dark-red beam radiating astonishing heat struck the infected tank.

Its armor alloy melted into slag.

The beam burned straight through the vehicle and completely vaporized the parasites inside.

Coulson stared at the Leman Russ tanks in disbelief.

He had assumed they were outdated relics.

Instead, they merely looked ancient while incorporating military technology far beyond anything modern civilization possessed.

Heavy weapons mounted on the Leman Russ turrets and hulls continued pouring fire into the parasitized soldiers.

The twin-linked heavy stubbers were particularly brutal.

Whenever their solid rounds struck an infected soldier, even a glancing hit to the torso could tear the body in half.

Under the Death Korps’ fearless assault, the parasitized army acting as the horde’s backbone was savagely beaten head-on.

However, the Death Korps possessed relatively few mechanized units.

Most of its soldiers were infantry, leaving it severely outnumbered by the enemy’s armored forces.

Coulson quickly noticed that weakness.

Just as he expected the Krieg infantry to be massacred by the parasitized mechanized units, something astonishing happened.

Death Korps antitank teams emerged to confront the infected heavy armor.

They used infantry melta weapons to deliver precise attacks against the M1A2 main battle tanks.

Whenever parasitized armored vehicles appeared, surrounding Krieg soldiers also concentrated their lasgun fire on the same target.

The combined density of las-fire and melta energy forcibly burned through the infected Abrams’ armor.

Other Krieg soldiers charged directly toward the heavy vehicles and destroyed them at close range with melta bombs.

The parasitic Brain Beasts serving as command nodes within the infected army descended into confusion.

Having absorbed extensive human military knowledge, they could not understand what was happening.

Their previous tactics had always succeeded.

First, they used enormous numbers of zombies and mutated creatures to exhaust human ammunition and firepower.

Then the parasitized military units broke the weakened defenders.

Finally, the defeated humans were infected and incorporated into the parasitic army.

That strategy had worked repeatedly.

During the battles of the previous few days, it had allowed the parasitized army to expand without end.

Why had it suddenly failed?

Natasha, Coulson, and the experienced human officers observing the battle understood part of the answer.

The Death Korps’ countercharge did not succeed merely because of its superior weapons.

Even if the JTF received identical equipment, American soldiers could never maintain the Death Korps’ terrifyingly constant morale.

Ordinary troops became frightened when an attack stalled or casualties mounted.

If the losses continued rising, their formations might collapse completely.

How could they possibly be expected to charge into a horde of this size?

During the Death Korps’ offensive, observers also noticed that the largest concentrations of parasitized troops were being subjected to merciless artillery strikes.

The bombardments inflicted enormous casualties.

The Death Korps was clearly using its infantry charge to force important enemy targets into the open.

Once those targets were identified, the soldiers called in artillery and completely destroyed them.

The biochemical hordes remained endless.

However, as the parasitized military formations were annihilated, the front unexpectedly began moving away from New York and toward the infected zones.

The Death Korps was advancing toward the three biochemical hives.

A single countercharge destroyed more than one hundred thousand parasitized soldiers and over a million zombies and mutated creatures.

The parasitized army and the endless horde appeared to be controlled by some kind of central intelligence.

After suffering devastating losses without gaining any advantage, the enemy abandoned vast numbers of ordinary zombies to block the Death Korps’ advance.

The surviving parasitized troops withdrew toward the hives.

In its first engagement, the Death Korps routed a million-strong horde at minimal cost.

The biochemical hives recalled the remainder of their infected armies, abandoning the attack on humanity and pulling their forces back toward the three corrupted cities.

Only enormous numbers of ordinary zombies were left in the surrounding areas to delay any human counteroffensive.

For the United States—and for the Death Korps of Krieg—this was unquestionably an epic victory.

Everyone assumed the Foundation’s orbital operation had already succeeded.

Most expected its forces to halt and rest.

Instead, the Death Korps continued advancing.

As an attractive television reporter excitedly described the glorious victory and viewers worldwide celebrated, two colossal carriers slowly arrived above Manhattan in full view of the entire city.

The Foundation’s two MTF regiments—the Helljumpers and Nine-Tailed Fox—had already eliminated the parasitized forces within Manhattan.

Inside a former Blackwatch command center, Ethan was meeting with the surviving Blackwatch commander, the JTF commander responsible for Manhattan, and Elena Sheffield, commander of North American Special Operations Command.

The subject of their meeting was command authority.

Even Ethan did not realize that this meeting would determine the future of Earth.

It would mark the beginning of a great new journey—

The moment when humanity’s armed forces began to unite.