Hu Hao and his men crouched low behind a mass of rubble. Three hundred meters ahead, an Allied heavy machine gun nest dominated the street. Scattered across the approach were several stragglers from other units, huddled behind debris and too terrified to return fire. The entire battlefield was a graveyard of remnants from the 28th Army and the 88th Division.
“Dammit, this is a city we’re supposed to be defending, and we let the enemy set up a fixed machine gun nest right in the middle of the street. I have no idea how the units in front of us were fighting,” Hu Hao growled, slamming a fresh magazine into his rifle.
“Listen up! In a moment, you cover me. Just draw their fire—keep them shooting in your direction. Don’t try to trade shots the whole time; when they open up, you get your heads down!” Hu Hao commanded.
“Hao-ge, you’re going to charge alone?” a soldier asked, stunned.
“Yeah, I’m going. Give me some grenades!” Hu Hao nodded. Several soldiers reached into their kits and handed him grenades. He secured them, gripped his rifle, and peeked over the ruins to scout the path.
“I’ll start the dash. When they open fire on me, you start shooting, then duck!” Hu Hao told them.
“Understood. Be careful, Hao-ge!” The men nodded. Hu Hao gave a sharp nod in return, vaulted over the rubble, and sprinted forward. His eyes remained locked on the machine gun nest even as his body zig-zagged through the debris.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Rat-tat-tat!
The machine gunners at the far end spotted him and opened up immediately. Behind him, Hu Hao’s squad began peppering the nest with fire, forcing the enemy to swing their heavy barrel toward the direction of Huan Xingtao and the others.
Hu Hao used the distraction to dive into a shattered building. He checked his progress—he’d cleared barely thirty meters.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Seeing the machine gun focused on Hu Hao’s position, his men redoubled their fire from the rear. The Allies shifted their aim back toward the squad’s cover.
Hu Hao didn’t waste the opening. He leaned out and fired a rapid string of shots. Crack-crack-crack! The enemy machine gunner slumped over his weapon.
“Dammit! He’s in the house! Aim for the house!” a voice screamed in a foreign tongue from across the street.
Hu Hao didn’t understand the language—this world had hundreds of them—but he knew he was the target. As the heavy rounds began chewing through the brickwork, he threw himself backward and hugged the floor. The machine gun fire shredded the walls, but Hu Hao had already moved out of the enemy’s field of fire.
Seeing the machine gun pinned on Hu Hao again, Huan Xingtao and the others resumed their suppressive fire.
The moment the machine gun swung away to deal with the squad, Hu Hao smashed through a window and continued his advance along the exterior wall. He fired on the move, his rifle barking rhythmically as he dropped at least three Allied soldiers trying to flank him.
After another few dozen meters, Hu Hao dove into another room. To his surprise, he found a group of soldiers wearing 28th Army patches huddled in the shadows.
“What are you doing here?” Hu Hao barked.
“The enemy has the exits zeroed in! We can’t get out!” a Lieutenant said, standing up shakily.
“Bullshit! If you can’t go through the door, kick the damn wall down!” Hu Hao cursed. He didn’t say it out loud, but it was clear they were just waiting for death.
The heavy machine gun rounds continued to hammer the building, trapping Hu Hao with the stragglers.
He waited, counting the rounds. After about a minute, he heard the distinct silence of a belt change. He surged out of the building, hugging the corners and firing, dropping several more Allied infantrymen.
“Ignore the guys in the back! Kill the one charging!” an Allied soldier screamed as Hu Hao continued to cut through their ranks.
Hu Hao saw the cluster of enemies leveling their rifles at him. He performed a hard tactical roll behind a concrete slab, pulled a grenade, yanked the ring, and threw it with a violent heave.
“How can he throw it that far?” “GET DOWN!”
BOOM!
BOOM! Hu Hao hurled two grenades in rapid succession. Because of the distance and the arc, they exploded as airbursts directly over the Allied position. The soldiers had no cover from the overhead shrapnel. The moment the smoke bloomed, Hu Hao was on his feet.
“FOLLOW ME!” he roared at the stragglers hidden along the road. Inspired, several men grabbed their rifles and joined the rush.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Hu Hao fired as he ran, picking off the survivors before they could stabilize their aim.
“Move up! Expand the perimeter! The rest of you, fan out and push into the city blocks!” Hu Hao commanded. The objective was clear, but the sound of heavy fighting was still coming from the parallel street. His own men were likely still pinned back there.
“Hao-ge, you’re a beast! I’ve never seen anyone reach them with a grenade from that distance!” His squad and Li Jingsong finally caught up, breathless.
“Are you the one from the beach? The ‘human mortar’?” Li Jingsong asked, crouching beside him in the dirt.
“That’s our Hao-ge! We were there too!” Sima Xuankong said proudly.
“No wonder,” Li Jingsong nodded.
“Set up a machine gun nest right here, now!” Hu Hao ordered. “Leave ten men to hold this junction. Heavy gun in that window. Rocket team, into that house. Put some riflemen on the perimeter.
And you lot from the 28th—get out here and man the line!” He barked at the stragglers. “The rest of you, follow me to the next block. I can hear the enemy’s rifles over there. They’ve got our boys pinned from the side. We’re going to flank them, clear the street, and push the whole front forward!”
“We’re with you!” the men shouted.
Hu Hao didn’t stop. He led his squad in a tactical dash toward the flank of the next Allied position. He hit them with a barrage of grenades, and once the smoke cleared, the street was silent. He linked up with another 27th Army unit.
“Hao-ge! Thank god! These bastards were pinning us down like they had unlimited ammo!” a Sergeant yelled.
“Establish a defensive line,” Hu Hao said. “I’m going ahead to scout. We hold the ground we take and move forward as a wall.”
Over the next two hours, during the peak of the midday heat, Hu Hao’s makeshift force pushed nearly a kilometer into the contested zone. They rescued dozens of 28th Army stragglers along the way, folding them into the ranks.
Hu Hao eventually called a halt, leaning against a massive pillar in a high-rise lobby to eat a bun. He was starving; they had no field kitchen, only what they carried.
“Hao-ge, look,” a Battalion Commander said, sliding into cover beside him. “The enemy isn’t pushing. They have armor; they should be steamrolling us, but they’re just holding their ground.”
“They’re waiting,” Hu Hao said, chewing slowly. “They want to consolidate. Once they turn these buildings into fortresses, the real nightmare begins. Their commander wants to turn this city into a meat grinder to bleed us dry. This city… it should never have been the battlefield.”
“Why not?” Li Jingsong asked. Gunfire and explosions continued to echo through the concrete canyons.
“Because we are a force of greenhorns,” Hu Hao said, his voice dropping an octave. “Sending raw recruits into urban warfare is the worst tactical decision you can make. The Allies have experienced units; they get to choose when and where to strike.
They’ll learn urban combat in a day, while our boys just sit and wait to be killed. Look at the 28th Army today—they’ve likely lost half their strength, and it’s only day one. If we had dug in outside the city in proper trenches and bunkers, our men would have had a fighting chance. They would have learned how to be soldiers before they had to learn how to be ghosts. But here? In these streets?”
Hu Hao let out a long, bitter sigh. This city was the perfect killing field for the Allies. He was furious—at the High Command’s deployment, at the incompetent leadership, and at the waste of so many young lives. They were being led to the slaughter by men who didn’t understand the cost of a single bullet.