Chapter 347: A Distracted Voroltz - II

The final meeting ended shortly afterward.

Voroltz and Federick left the room with several officers returning to their formations. The attack was about to begin, and the commanders had finished their preparations.

After everything Commander Brandon showed them, Voroltz believed Golden Eagle had more than enough firepower to destroy the central Hive.

He was still trying to get his head around those production figures. Hundreds of rocket and missile launchers in one week, most of the new vehicles assigned to Fires rather than armored formations. And those were only the numbers from the first four War Factories.

It was hard to imagine anything surviving the bombardment. Then again, the damned infected had surprised them before.

But something else was bothering him.

What would happen afterward?

Once the Hive was destroyed and the remaining infected cleared, Silverpeak could finally begin rebuilding without that thing underneath it.

Then what? Would the Golden Eagle Army simply pack up and leave?

Voroltz doubted it. They had built enormous installations across the secured districts and put considerable resources into restoring the city’s infrastructure.

It would be strange to abandon all of that afterward.

"Colonel?"

Federick’s voice pulled him back.

"Hm?"

"Are we returning to headquarters?"

"Yes. We still have our own preparations to check."

They continued toward the entrance.

Outside, several MDC soldiers were waiting beside the transport vehicles, and two of them were talking rather enthusiastically until they saw him coming and straightened up.

"Colonel, sir!"

"At ease."

Voroltz was about to walk past when he caught a word from their conversation.

"...recruitment?"

The two soldiers glanced at each other.

"Ah, yes, sir."

"The Golden Eagle Army?"

"Yes, Colonel."

So the news had already spread this far.

Voroltz shouldn’t have been surprised. Several of his men had returned from Grefort days ago, and soldiers were hardly known for keeping interesting news to themselves.

"You’re thinking of applying?"

"No, sir," one of them said quickly. "We were just talking about it."

"Just talking."

"Yes, sir!"

Voroltz almost laughed.

"Back to your duties."

"Yes, sir!"

He kept walking with Federick beside him.

"Even our own men are talking about it," he muttered.

Federick sighed. "I’ve heard similar conversations over the past few days, sir. Some are only curious. Others sound rather serious."

"And you?"

"About joining Golden Eagle?"

"Yes."

Federick thought about it for a moment. "I can understand why they’re interested."

That wasn’t quite what Voroltz wanted to know. Was Federick considering it too?

He didn’t press. After all, he had been wondering about the same thing.

A few weeks ago, he would have dismissed the idea without a second thought. He had served his country for years. The Mountain Defense Command survived the Event, held whatever ground it could, and kept fighting long after many other military organizations disappeared.

He was still proud of that. But pride was one thing, and what he had seen over the past few weeks was another.

He looked toward the nearby road, where several Golden Eagle vehicles were heading for the forward staging areas.

They passed an intersection held by Army Soldiers and continued deeper into the secured districts.

Beyond the intersection, Voroltz noticed a large transport aircraft being prepared on the apron of a nearby Airfield Base.

A Valkyrie, if he remembered its name correctly.

Its rear ramp was lowered, with several heavily equipped soldiers nearby while the ground crew made their final checks. There were surprisingly few soldiers for an aircraft that large.

What are they preparing that thing for?

From what he understood, the attack would begin with artillery, missiles and strategic bombers. Golden Eagle intended to destroy as much of the underground Hive as possible before committing its ground forces.

So why was a transport aircraft preparing to depart with so few soldiers?

Maybe it was carrying a small team for something else. Or perhaps more troops would follow once the bombardment ended.

He couldn’t tell.

Brandon hadn’t shared every detail of Golden Eagle’s assignments during the meeting. The MDC only needed the information relevant to its own participation.

Voroltz watched the aircraft for another moment, then looked toward the Golden Eagle soldiers stationed along the road.

There was something about them he still couldn’t explain.

His men had fought beside them several times, and even at the start, the Golden Eagle troops were far more capable than he expected from ordinary soldiers.

But his men’s reports kept saying the same thing. The longer those soldiers fought, the better they seemed to get. They reacted faster, hit the infected more accurately, and kept going long after everyone else grew exhausted.

At first Voroltz put it down to experience. Soldiers improved after surviving enough battles.

Not this quickly, though. And certainly not in the middle of a single fight.

Then there were the reports about their squads.

Several MDC soldiers who worked alongside the same Golden Eagle squads on different occasions noticed that the squad leaders and a handful of veterans stayed the same, while the others kept changing.

Sometimes there were only two or three new faces. Other times, almost half the squad consisted of soldiers the MDC men had never seen before.

That wasn’t unusual. Armies rotated personnel all the time, and Voroltz had done the same with his own formations.

Golden Eagle seemed to do it constantly. The veterans stayed, and new soldiers joined them.

Yet those new soldiers followed their leaders, coordinated with their comrades and carried out their duties without the usual difficulties of a newly assembled squad. They worked together as though they already had months of experience.

What kind of personnel management were these people practicing?

There was another part of the reports that bothered Voroltz.

An MDC liaison had visited a Golden Eagle training area where veteran soldiers were demonstrating their weapons to newly assigned men. The new riflemen fired first. Their marksmanship was excellent, but that wasn’t enough to surprise Voroltz.

Then the veterans took their turn.

Voroltz hadn’t believed the liaison’s description until the man sent him a recording. In the footage, an Army Soldier fired into a row of reinforced targets. His rounds went straight through material that should have stopped rifle fire. Another soldier fired into the wreck of an infected Tank, tearing apart the remains of its armor.

Both were carrying ordinary service rifles.

The heavier weapons were worse. A veteran Guardian GI fired a short string of grenades into a group of abandoned armored obstacles. The explosions hit harder and covered more ground than Voroltz expected. A machine-gun team fired for so long that the MDC soldiers watching began asking when the barrel would fail.

The Golden Eagle instructors acted as though there was nothing unusual about any of it.

Federick watched the recording too. He’d asked whether the liaison had been given the correct information about the ammunition. Voroltz still didn’t have an answer.

And then there was the matter of logistics.

He knew what an army that size needed: food, ammunition, fuel, spare parts and medical supplies. Normally, the larger an army grew, the more difficult it became to support.

Yet he’d seen surprisingly little supply traffic around Golden Eagle’s formations. There were transport vehicles, certainly, and he saw the wounded being evacuated and Engineers moving equipment between positions.

But where were the fuel trucks? The ammunition convoys? The supply columns for all those tanks, aircraft and artillery pieces?

One of his night-duty officers submitted a particularly strange account. A Golden Eagle section that had nearly exhausted its ammunition was ready to fight again after midnight. The MDC observer couldn’t explain where the ammunition came from. He could only report what he saw.

That wasn’t a normal supply system.

And now Golden Eagle had hundreds of rocket launchers on top of everything else. Their crews were preparing for the bombardment without the massive ammunition traffic Voroltz would have expected.

It was as though the soldiers and vehicles came out of their factories with everything they needed, then somehow continued fighting without the resupply his own forces depended on.

Voroltz shook his head. It was one mystery after another.

No wonder his soldiers were interested. They had seen what Golden Eagle could do, and if he was being honest with himself, he was tempted too.

That would have embarrassed him weeks ago.

Loyalty to the nation, service to the country, protecting the people. He had said those words many times, and he had meant them.

But what exactly was he protecting now? And what would an army like Golden Eagle mean for whatever was left of his country?

He didn’t have an answer he liked.

"Colonel, the vehicle is ready."

"Ah. Right."

He took his usual seat while Federick got in from the other side. As the vehicle pulled away, another group of MLRS vehicles crossed the road ahead of them, with Guardian APCs guarding the front and rear of the column. Beyond the launchers, aircraft were lifting off from one of the new Airfield Bases.

Voroltz understood the orders Golden Eagle’s commanders were giving. It was the force carrying them out that he couldn’t understand.

An artillery army in a week, and soldiers who became more dangerous the longer they fought.

He could ask Brandon about the recruitment program another day. For now, the Hive was still alive, and he had his own men to look after.