Chapter 1288 - 418: They’re Here, They’ve Come, We Are Their Slaves!

Chapter 1288: Chapter 418: They’re Here, They’ve Come, We Are Their Slaves!

Cuba starts to warm up in February.

The average temperature hovers around twenty degrees, the plains are heavy with moisture, and the muddy earth should be in prime sowing season for the year—yet right now, not a single soul can be seen across the fields.

In the abandoned farmland, the weeds this year are especially thick, growing an inch a day; by now they’re about waist-high, swaying slightly in the monsoon wind, their bleak rustling sounding like they’re lamenting something.

Buried among those wild patches of overgrown grass are bones of who-knows-who, whose husband.

The spent shells scattered all over the ground have already rusted, crushed over and over by passing wheels, pressed deep into the soil—no one is ever going to remember them.

Yuri wiped the condensation off his face, looking exhausted; he was already starting to miss the coffee his wife brewed back home.

Right now, even the Cuban cigar in his hand can’t get his spirits up.

He took a deep drag, feeling the cigar smoke spread through his mouth, then slowly exhaled.

Hooo—

White smoke filled the cabin.

"Report, HQ just sent word: the first batch of troops Horizon Corporation is shipping to Cuba arrived 24 hours ago. Headcount is huge, projected at least eight thousand."

Fuck!

"How many!? Eight thousand?!"

The message from the comms Soldier beside him made Yuri stumble; he couldn’t even hold the cigar steady, dropping it onto his pants, the burning tip searing a big hole.

He hurriedly picked the cigar back up and knocked off the ash, thinking it was his ears acting up.

What the fuck are you babbling about?

Eight thousand? And that’s just the first batch?

Do you have any idea that the few thousand people in Cuba right now are already tearing the place apart?

Two thousand men smashed Cuba’s defenses.

Six thousand regulars went head-to-head against their 3,500 + 12,000 and didn’t lose ground.

Now we finally managed to land a nuke and cripple Horizon Corporation, and you’re telling me they’ve scraped together another 8,000?

Am I supposed to beat you to death or what?

Just hearing that number made Captain Yuri’s scalp go numb.

A flicker of fear for that company started gnawing at his heart.

Two, three whole months—by rights, they’ve been attacking nonstop, their casualties shouldn’t be small; just the bodies we’ve collected are over a thousand. But the offensive at the front never slackened, their numbers never seemed to drop. Instead they fought harder and sharper the longer it went on.

To Yuri it felt like they were using him as a live-fire training exercise. Even if they really were brainwashing living people and turning them into Soldiers, isn’t that a bit too fucking exaggerated?

Now another eight thousand—aren’t they here to collect his life?

"Uh, no, sir."

The comms Soldier pointed at the data from HQ on the screen.

"According to intel, this batch of reinforcements isn’t Horizon Corporation’s professional Soldiers, but people they forcibly pulled from various lines of work—Night City cops, engineers, agricultural technicians, Hovercar drivers... they even called up cooks and hobos.

Intel people speculate this is Horizon Corporation’s do-or-die gamble; they’ve got no Soldiers left, they’re at the end of their rope."

Even the cooks are here?

Only then did Yuri swallow the heart that had shot up into his throat.

"Phew, scared the shit out of me."

Then he laughed in relief.

"Looks like it won’t be long before we’re back in Europe. I don’t want to stay in this fucking dump another minute, can’t even find a woman that’s worth the trouble."

The comms guy snickered along with him.

If the intel boys aren’t slacking off and the evidence holds up, then mopping up these broken remnants Horizon Corporation has left shouldn’t be too much of a chore.

But what could possibly go wrong?

In scale and assets Horizon Corporation is nowhere near a top-tier corp; even now they barely count as third-rate. So they’ve mastered the tech for brainwashed Soldiers and turned those Cubans into fully cyberized lunatics at any cost—so what?

War isn’t just about bodies, it’s about weapons and gear, and all of that is money. Horizon Corporation can’t possibly have that much capital; they can only mortgage their own assets to Military Technology to get loans to buy weapons.

When the cannons go off, Gold burns by the ton.

Two, three months of this is more than enough to bleed them dry.

Thinking that, Yuri’s heart blazed.

Sure, he really does hate coming to some backwater like Cuba to fight—but if they really can bring down Horizon Corporation, the stuff he can skim off the top would be insane.

Weapons and gear scattered everywhere, people, drugs, meds, cyberware supplies—even if he only gets a bowl of soup out of it, he’d never have to worry about food and clothes for the rest of his life.

So the look he threw at Big Sur grew burning hot.

"Move in, today we’re taking this goddamn place once and for all."

The intel work on the Anglo-French side is nothing if not meticulous; they even dug up what jobs the players hold.

They’re right—players’ professions are all over the place, everything from scholars to cooks, you name it. Their combat strength is all over the map too. Some might not even have a single combat proficiency; some look like scrawny hobos who couldn’t strangle a chicken, but can whip an axe out of their underwear and chop you to bits at any moment.

And no matter how trash a player is, they’re still a player, not a normal human.

With players, besides the whole resurrection thing, the scariest part is how their data is visible.

Your profession, your skills, your level—they’re all written out clearly on your panel.

As long as you assign them properly and command them well, you can squeeze maximum value out of them, and you won’t get total newbies dragging the whole team down.

"Anyone with combat experience who’s killed before and has basic firearms mastery at LV3 or above, with me—front-line trench third row is short two bodies."

"Infiltration group recruiting, run by a full-mastery boss; anyone with stealth basics LV4 or higher, come here. Also need one electronic warfare Hacker, mastery only."

"Convoy recruiting—drivers LV3 and up, 150 Euro a run. If you’ve got a commercial license in real life, level doesn’t matter, just show a photo and you’re in."