"Emergency assembly! Emergency assembly!"
"All combat personnel, report to the conference room immediately!"
Shouts echoed down the corridor as doors on both sides flew open one after another. Some came stumbling out half-asleep, buttoning their military uniforms while jogging toward the briefing room. Others were still running with sandwiches clamped in their teeth.
Within moments, all fifty-four combatants had gathered.
Captain Snyder looked over the assembled troops and nodded.
"Just moments ago, Headquarters received an urgent warning from the Soviet Union! Their intelligence division has obtained the exact time, direction, and approximate troop deployment for the Germania Empire's upcoming all-out offensive.
"The Soviet reinforcements will likely be unable to assist us, as they have intercepted plans for simultaneous offensives on two other fronts, with an even more terrifying concentration of forces! (Refer to Operation Barbarossa.)
"However! Our allies have still provided us with a substantial cache of new equipment, which will aid us in resisting the Germania invasion!
"Our mission this time is far more dangerous—and far more critical—than ever before!
"The objective is to destroy the Germania Empire's frontline headquarters, eliminate their commander-in-chief, and take out the other senior officers!
"We must slip between four enemy armies, dash straight for the enemy command center, destroy it, and withdraw immediately!
"Comrades! Do you have the confidence?"
"Yes!"
The uniform cry reverberated through the conference room.
"The enemy's general offensive begins the day after tomorrow at dawn! We must set out tonight, before they launch their attack, and destroy their headquarters!
"All personnel, prepare for combat immediately! We move out at 1600 hours today!"
"Sir!"
The briefing adjourned. Everyone set to work organizing their gear, writing their final wills, and buttoning up their uniforms.
They knew there was a real possibility that the entire unit would be marching to a point of no return.
It was now 11:30 in the morning, leaving four and a half hours until departure...
*Sigh, this is a suicide mission...*
Life isn't easy, Zhurong sighed.
*Why is it a suicide mission?*
Violet sat on the edge of the rooftop, gazing out at the distant skyline.
*The commander of the Germania Southern Front is also a Senior Mage, and several of his subordinate generals are Intermediate Mages. Even his guard battalion consists of Junior Mages tempered in the fires of war.*
*Not to mention the two full armored battalions tasked with defending the headquarters.*
These were the details Zhurong had seen in the Soviet intelligence files. Though not entirely exhaustive, it was more than enough.
The intelligence sent to the Southern United Front also contained these defensive deployments, though for reasons unknown, they had never been directly passed along to K Unit.
*Two armored battalions... and a mage guard battalion...*
When it came to tanks, Violet possessed a more comprehensive understanding than any other member of K Unit. For instance, she knew the locations of most design flaws on various tanks, along with the operational requirements and performance trade-offs of different models.
All of this knowledge had been shared with Violet by Zhurong like bedtime stories during their idle hours.
At this moment, most people still failed to realize the terrifying defensive power tanks could wield on a battlefield starved of air support.
To put it without exaggeration, if a tank's performance was reliable enough, its armor thickness appropriate, and its crew sufficiently resolute, a scenario like the final act of the movie *Fury* was entirely realistic and viable.
In the history Zhurong knew, a real-life precedent had occurred: during the Patriotic War, a single Soviet KV-1 heavy tank had repeatedly ambushed and successfully blocked German armored and transport columns at a crossroads, finally being disabled only after relentless assaults and demolitions. Along the way, it destroyed multiple German tanks, several anti-tank guns, and numerous transport vehicles, inflicting severe losses on the enemy.
If a single tank stubbornly holding a crossroads could exact such a toll, the mind boggled at what two full armored battalions defending a command post could achieve.
Even if they simply parked every single tank in a circle around the headquarters, it would inflict catastrophic casualties on K Unit—wiping them out entirely before they even laid eyes on the Germania Southern Command.
*In any case, I'll move with the unit for now and figure something out as we go...*
Zhurong stared at the Hector Plasma Macrocannon precision strike beacon in the system interface, lost in thought......
Should things truly reach that point... this gadget would finally come in handy......
......
In front of the K Unit camp, twenty transport trucks stood idling by the main gate as men loaded supplies into several of them.
"Major Richthofen, you will serve as the sniper for the fire support team during this operation. The armory has issued you a modified Soviet anti-tank rifle."
Lieutenant Colonel Snyder pulled out a piece of paper bearing Violet's emergency transfer order.
"The engagement distances this time will be unprecedented. None of our current snipers can match your range, which is why Major Richthofen has been specifically assigned as our sniper."
Violet took the order and scanned it briefly.
"Understood! I will not let the Lieutenant Colonel down!"
Soon, crates of supplies were packed tightly into the trucks.
Lieutenant Colonel Snyder checked his watch. 13:56.
"All personnel, mount up! Move out!"
Combatants, logistics personnel, numbering over a hundred in total, quickly climbed aboard.
The convoy roared to life and pulled away from the K Unit camp.
It was sixty kilometers from here to the front lines of the Southern United Front—roughly an hour's drive.
After that, the convoy would need to travel another hundred and twenty kilometers west along the front to reach the sector closest to the enemy headquarters' estimated position.
The location of the Germania frontline headquarters had been narrowed down to a circular zone with a ten-kilometer radius. K Unit would need to successfully infiltrate behind enemy lines and pinpoint the exact coordinates of the command center themselves.
According to the plan, five squads would bypass the Germania Empire's forward defenses via five separate routes, pushing twenty-odd kilometers deep into the rear to scout the general vicinity of the frontline headquarters.
Once the target command post was located, they were to execute a decapitation strike, inflicting a fatal blow to the enemy's command structure.
"Major Richthofen, your new gun looks magnificent!"
The fire team's regular sniper, who had previously lost a contest to Violet, stared at the new weapon in her hands, practically drooling with envy.
"Care to try it out?" Violet said flatly.
"Can I? Please, by all means, let me give it a shot!"
Violet handed the weapon over with a single hand.
It was a colossal firearm nearly two meters long, its thick barrel and massive muzzle brake loudly advertising the kind of heavy armor it was built to shred.
The sniper braced himself, gingerly accepting the weapon—yet he was still caught off guard by its absurd weight, nearly dropping it on the spot.
"This gun... must weigh close to twenty kilograms..."
A heavy gunner nearby muttered in disbelief. After all, this thing looked heavier than his own dozen-kilogram machine gun (a 7.62mm heavy gun that weighed around ten kilograms without its tripod).
"This rifle is an absolute masterpiece! If I make it back alive from this mission, I'm getting myself one of these!"
The sniper stroked the anti-tank rifle, his voice trembling with excitement.
The oversized muzzle brake, the long and thick barrel, the magazine even larger than a sidearm.
(Modeled after the Soviet PTRS-1941 semi-automatic anti-tank rifle, gas-operated recoil, 14.5mm caliber, shortened from a 2-meter barrel to 1.8 meters, converted from a 5-round internal magazine to a 10-round detachable box magazine, and equipped with a PU-style optical scope.)
The sniper handed the anti-tank rifle back to Violet.
Watching Violet casually take back the twenty-kilogram weapon with one hand, everyone in the truck swallowed hard, choking back a mouthful of unspoken complaints.
The convoy pressed forward at a steady pace. The men inside tried to ease their tension in their own ways, holding fast to the belief that they would complete the mission and return alive......
At 9:30 that evening, K Unit's five combat squads slipped past the defensive lines of the Southern United Front at different points, stepping into the deathly silence of the contested zone.
"We are currently here. There are enemy defense lines to our west and east, and a large number of outposts right through the middle."
Squad Leader Lieutenant Hoffmann unfolded his tactical map, marking several positions with a pencil.
"These coordinates were obtained two days ago at the cost of our reconnaissance pilots' lives. They should still be accurate."
Lieutenant Hoffmann put away the pencil and straightened up.
"We are about to enter the seams of the enemy's defensive network. Our intelligence may already be outdated, so everyone must be prepared for contact."
The men huddled around the map all nodded.
"Move out."
The map was stowed away. The twelve-man squad fanned out in a wedge formation, spacing themselves four steps apart as they threaded through the dense forest.
They moved swiftly. Sheltered by the woods and the darkness, they slipped past several guard posts right under the noses of the Germania sentries.
As they walked, Lieutenant Hoffmann suddenly flashed a series of hand signals, motioning for everyone to take cover in place.
The Lieutenant gestured again, summoning the snipers to his side.
Violet and another sniper crept forward from the rear of the column, halting beside the Lieutenant.
"Look, up ahead."
The Lieutenant handed his binoculars to the sniper, a man named Greg.
Naturally, Violet didn't need binoculars to see clearly through the gloom several hundred meters away.
Through the trees, they spotted several Germania main battle tanks—Empire Panzer IV medium tanks (the Empire IV being a scaled-down, simplified variant of the Panther G hull).
Some of the tank crewmen were sitting on the vehicle roofs chatting, while others patrolled the perimeter with submachine guns in hand. (A submachine gun that looked from every angle like an MP-40, though the receiver was noticeably shorter, the bolt travel was reduced, and the full-auto rate of fire hovered around 750 RPM.)
"If we detour here, we'll have to march a full eight kilometers around another enemy position, and by the time we do, we might miss our window to strike at midnight and dawn."
Lieutenant Hoffmann traced an alternate, shorter route on the map in the moonlight.
Taking a detour meant adding a massive dogleg to an already convoluted path. It wouldn't just be an extra eight kilometers; in practice, it could easily balloon into twenty.
Moreover, bypassing this tank camp was entirely unfeasible.
There was a guard tower to the northwest, another to the northeast.
And sandwiched directly between them was the tank encampment.
Sneaking past quietly was out of the question—they would either have to take out one of the two guard towers or wipe out the entire tank camp.
The difficulty of either option was staggering.
To eliminate the tank camp silently, every single crewman had to be prevented from scrambling back inside their tanks, and it had to be done without firing a single shot that might alert the guard towers.
Silently butchering several dozen men simply wasn't realistic.
The guard towers were just as troublesome, housing seven or eight men in the guardhouse at the base and another three or four up top.
To clear a tower without raising an alarm, the only method would be to saw through the support pillars and take out everyone below with knives.
(A direct assault on the tower was impossible; it stood over ten meters high, connected to the ground by a single wooden ladder. The moment the men below were ambushed, everyone upstairs would instantly know.)
But that was equally impractical. The sound of sawing wood would echo clearly from top to bottom through the structure. Once noticed and an alarm was raised, the entire operation risked complete failure.
As for using firearms...
Even with a suppressor, the gunshot would still carry for hundreds of meters—especially in the dead of night.
"Major Richthofen, what do you think?"
Unable to reach a decision, Lieutenant Hoffmann looked to Violet.
"We push through the eastern outpost. Leave the sentries to me."
Violet pointed toward the northeastern guard tower.
Lieutenant Hoffmann fell silent for a moment.
Everyone present knew Violet's combat prowess; the moniker "Golden Violet" was not earned by accident.