Two Prowler fighter jets passed over the burned Tree of Life, and all the anti-aircraft guns on the ground seemed to have gone silent.
After more than three days of fierce attacks, the Elanshir Empire's troops stationed on Higgs 5 have now begun to disintegrate.
Organized resistance is decreasing, and many troops are no longer able to receive effective support when they are surrounded.
Compared with the previous battle for the dozen or so highlands, the defenses of the Airanhill Empire are obviously stronger now, but the time they can hold on to them is obviously shorter.
There is no way, because the strategic depth of the troops has been lost, and most of the troops have begun to lose combat effectiveness due to continuous combat.
The good news is that there are fewer and fewer places to be garrisoned, so the density of troops has increased to a certain extent.
Because of Andre's command, the Elanshir Empire's troops collapsed very slowly. At least until now, there has been no complete chaos.
Next to a truck that had been completely destroyed, sweepers were chewing on the engine hatch. The truck's tires had been eaten away, leaving only some parts of the trunk.
Beside this truck, some sweepers were also eating. What they were eating were the vaporizing corpses of their companions.
Further away, patches of Sweeper soldiers were laying eggs. They piled their eggs neatly together, waiting for the eggs to hatch into new warriors.
About 20 kilometers away from here, in the solid Fortress No. 3, soldiers from the Airanhill Empire were carrying shells for the fortress's heavy artillery.
These fortress artillery pieces from 10 years ago are actually backward things, and they are just used as supplementary equipment.
Although it seems that the huge caliber of 280 mm has a range of more than 20 kilometers, making these weapons still usable, they are obviously much less powerful than electromagnetic guns.
What is also impossible is that although there is a simple automatic loading machine, this kind of artillery must rely on a cart to transport the shells out of the sturdy ammunition magazine and place them on the ammunition supply device of the loading machine.
For the sake of convenience and increasing the rate of fire of artillery, everyone no longer cares about the requirements in the safety operation manual.
It became a matter of course to prepare these shells in advance and place them in more convenient positions so that the fort could fire more shells before being destroyed.
So everyone piled artillery shells and propellants next to the loading machine, filling the entire transportation channel and spreading to the vicinity of the weapons depot.
This is a huge fortress, and there are even some walls camouflaged by vines. In front of the fort's surface fortifications, which are arranged like stars, there are also hidden trenches and machine gun fire points.
Even, in order to strengthen the firepower of this fortress, in addition to the 20 280-caliber heavy artillery turrets, 2 electromagnetic artillery were deployed here.
The entire fortress is powered directly by an underground nuclear fusion reactor, so the interior is also well-lit, and there is even an underground train station designed.
Although it seems that this place is impregnable, everyone knows that these seemingly impenetrable defenses will collapse sooner or later in the face of the constant stream of attacking troops from the guards.
The only difference is actually only the length of time. Once this place is breached, the nuclear fusion reactor will be destroyed, which will cause the core defense fortress behind to lose one-third of its power supply. There is no way around it.
At the outermost edge of Fortress No. 3, a fierce battle between the two sides has begun. Intensive gunshots and explosions occurred one after another, and the entire high ground was filled with lingering smoke.
In the basement of the core fortress, Andre was still sitting next to the map table, looking at the small defense area.
He sat there quietly, listening to his adjutant reporting to him what was happening on the battlefield: "The troops stationed near Fortress 10 requested support, and I sent the 5190th Division that had just withdrawn from Fortress 16 last night.
Already."
Andre recalled that the 5190 Division had just been replaced, so he asked: "The 5190 Division has less than one regiment left. They have been fighting for another day. The current state is not good."
How good."
The adjutant was also a little embarrassed and replied: "There is no way. They are the closest and have just received ammunition replenishment. If the 5230th Division is sent there, it will be more than an hour late."
If there was any other way, he would also like to let the troops who had just been withdrawn get a good rest. But the current battle situation made it impossible for every troop to rest safely in the rear before going to the battlefield.
In fact, most of the reason is that the frontline troops are too tightly oppressed by the enemy, so many troops can only go up to fill holes and cannot replace the troops and retreat.
As a result, many troops had just replaced some of their soldiers and had a short rest. Before they had time to retreat to a safer place, they had no choice but to return to the battlefield and continue fighting.
Of course, in fact, there will still be troops who have rested in the rear and been sent to the front line. However, the elite troops that have completed their rest can now only be used as fire-fighting teams.
Normally, only when there is a gap in the defense line and the entire defense line is about to collapse, such troops will appear and then go to the front to fight.
What happens next is that this force can no longer be withdrawn. It can only be consumed in the front, reducing its strength bit by bit until new supplementary troops arrive, or they are defeated and replaced by other rested troops.
their location.
Andre showed a bitter smile and teased the adjutant: "Have we started to count our time in hours now? It's really embarrassing."
"Let the 5190 Division go over there to help first. I have already recorded it. In 5 hours, I will replace the 5190 Division with the 5230 Division." The adjutant did not answer the question and just continued to talk about his arrangements.
Andre glanced at the other party and asked a question that is very difficult to answer nowadays: "Are you sure that the 5230th Division will still be resting at the original place after 5 hours?"
The adjutant knew that this kind of chat was Andre looking for a way to relieve his depression, so he replied: "Actually, I'm not sure. I will probably have to change the 5271st Division to go there."
Sure enough, Andre knew his troops very well and continued to ask without checking the information: "The 5271st Division? Isn't there only the remnants of 2 battalions left in that unit?"
The adjutant also knew these things very well. In fact, this is what he did. I heard him reply: "Yes, I plan to cancel the designation and integrate this unit into the 5100 Division as a supplementary force."
The 1st Battalion of the 5101st Tank Division has completely gone underground. As a fire support and counterattack force, it is deployed in the tunnel group to the east to support infantry operations.
Another temporarily reorganized light infantry regiment was strengthened by the 2nd Battalion of the 5101st Tank Division and was deployed near the tunnel extending from the direction of the Tree of Life on the west side.
The remaining tanks have been dispersed and handed over unorganized to those grenadier units that need to supplement their strength, forming some mixed combat groups.
This is done on the one hand to increase the combat effectiveness of these troops, and on the other hand to avoid the concentrated use of tanks being targeted by the opponent's air force.
Previously, the main force on the planet Higgs 5 was the 5100 Armored Division. Now this unit has lost a large number of tanks and is no longer able to fight independently.
After adding some infantry, the combat effectiveness of this unit plummeted. Now it is not even fully organized, and it was still resting on the second line just now.
That's why the adjutant said that the remaining remnants of the 5271st Division should be given to the 5100th Division as supplementary troops.
When Andre heard the familiar numbers of the 5100 Division, he sighed with emotion: "Those numbers that I am familiar with are disappearing little by little."
The adjutant still spoke to comfort him: "There is no way. In the current army, new numbers will be canceled every day. Some are canceled by ourselves, and some... disappear normally."
Most of those disappeared numbers were actually troops composed of puppet battle robots. These troops quickly disappeared due to the brutal battles, and now the remaining ones can only help to hold on to their positions.
In order to prevent these puppet robot troops from being held back, the general method is to mix and integrate these puppet robots into the clone army. This can simply solve the problem of the lack of personnel in the army.
Andre didn't want to continue this topic. He could feel that his topic was a bit demoralizing, so he changed his question to a more concerned question and asked: "How is General Adair's injury being treated?"
"It's nothing serious anymore, but it will probably take at least a few months to fully recover." The adjutant breathed a sigh of relief and replied.
"He may be our only high-end combat force now." Andre thought about the series of death reports of magicians, swordsmen and demon masters he had received before, and sighed.
The adjutant nodded and said: "Yes, the only special forces deployed here, as well as some subsequent units, have been exhausted in the battle for control of the Tree of Life."
The Tree of Life was so important that Adair was unwilling to give up on him and even went to the front line to fight in person, even temporarily shelving the important task of protecting Andre.
As a result, the magicians and masters of various races he took away, including most of the dragon troops, died in the battle.
Also lost were more than 70% of the anti-aircraft anti-aircraft guns, hundreds of artillery pieces and rocket launchers, and hundreds of thousands of clone troops and puppet troops.
But such huge losses resulted in nothing. The defensive positions near the Tree of Life still changed hands, the watchers still destroyed the Tree of Life, and the entire atmosphere of Higgs 5 began to collapse faster.
Now the entire atmosphere of Higgs 5 has made people feel breathless. In a few days, or at most ten days, the difficult breathing may even affect the combat effectiveness of the troops.
However, no one is too worried about this happening. After all, it is still unknown whether they can continue to persist for more than ten days.
Judging from the current situation, no one can predict whether the atmosphere will collapse first or whether the defenders of the Elanthir Empire will be wiped out first.
The adjutant paused for a moment, then continued to add: "We no longer have magicians and elves, and we also have no demons and orcs... Now our highest combat effectiveness is the clone grenadiers."
"At least they won't defect before the battle, and there is no problem with their loyalty." Andre smiled mockingly to himself.
The adjutant raised his chin and replied proudly: "Yes, they will hold on until the last second! But because of the continuous fighting and no rest time, they are all very tired."
Hearing this statement, Andre was obviously stunned, because he remembered what an officer said to him after he decided to stay on Higgs 5.
The two million defenders will do everything possible to protect him and fight for him... Now, these clones are fulfilling their promise.
To Andre's regret, the officer who said this had died on the front line more than a month ago, and he would never see him again.
"If the enemy breaks into this place, the first thing you have to do is to shoot me to death with a pistol!" Andre seemed to be arranging his own funeral arrangements.
He has been wiping the pistol on his waist recently. I heard that this pistol was given to him by General Modell. At the cocktail party on the day he was promoted to general, he also received a Silver Eagle Medal.
The adjutant was silent for a few seconds, then nodded and promised: "General...if this really happens, I will definitely do this!"
There is no need to say too much about some things, because everyone knows what the standard procedure is like: the general's body cannot be handed over to the enemy. After shooting Andre, the adjutant still has a lot to do.
He might find some gasoline and burn Andre's body, or if the matter was more urgent, he might use a grenade.
However, everyone discussed privately that the best way is to go to the underground ammunition depot of the core fortress, find a storage room for large-caliber artillery shells, pour gasoline in it and light a fire.
When the time comes, nothing will be left with a bang, and you can completely ensure that your body will not be left to those damn watchers.
Andre nodded slightly and said solemnly: "Thank you!"
"You're welcome!" the adjutant also replied solemnly. They have often talked about death recently, and from here we can see how bad the situation is.
From a few days ago, death seemed to be something that could happen at any time. Many familiar names, including colonels, lieutenant colonels and commanders, disappeared one after another.
Andre looked at the adjutant: "I feel very happy to have you by my side on this last journey of my life."
The adjutant stood at attention, saluted, and said, "It is my greatest honor to work with you, General Andre."