87

87
Jackson's POV

We all had our guns out through the windows, and then we started shooting as quickly and as accurately as we could. Robert, on his part, seemed to be having a good time, and he was now relaxing and shooting with a smile on his face, as if he suddenly thought that this was advantageous to us. I honestly didn't see anything fun about us having to run for our lives and the amount of danger that we were in right now, with a chance of being dead because of just one wrong shot, but he seemed to see some kind of humor in it. I decided against saying anything to him, wanting to just focus on the fight so we could get over with this.

Damien kept on shooting at us with the tank to protect us, and with us ducking behind the large iron structures, every time we weren't shooting, it was pretty much difficult for them to harm us at all. I was still in the middle of picking out another one of their men when suddenly, there was a loud sound of a man screaming. It sounded near us, not at all like the other sounds that had come from the men among our enemies that we had killed previously. I frowned, looking beside me, but suddenly noticed that one of our men had fallen, like literally falling off the tank. He was in a pool of blood already, and the tank was far ahead of him now. The soldiers that were after us, some of them, stopped beside him and shot him dead with about five whole bullets, each one of the bullets going into places where it wouldn't kill immediately, no, places where it would hurt so that the person would die due to loss of blood. My eyes flashed in anger.

That was about the worst way for someone to kill another person. They made it painful, and they made it painful intentionally. I felt like I would never be able to forgive them after what they had done. After all, this was one of my men that they had brutally killed for no just reason. Although it was a battle between our groups, I took out my gun and pointed at one of them, firing intensely and angrily. I got him down in no time and then shot another bullet at another man. Why hadn't I brought a machine gun or something like that? I might have rounded up all of them by now. If I had such a heavy firearm, instead, I had brought just one pistol, a pistol that I needed to reload every 20, every 30 shots that I made. That was really slowing me down and giving them some opportunity to actually keep up with me. It was fine, though, because I knew that it was only a matter of time before I ended this. Either it ended with a breakthrough for us and we defeated them all, or it ended with a stalemate for them because I didn't see us losing any tension.

The large iron tank was our refuge and fortress in this situation, and it was definitely helping us to move faster and at the same time protecting us and giving us some things, a structure to take cover under while we shot. With our enemies exposed in the open, our advantage was pretty much enough to negate their own advantage of numbers, if not even surpass it. I noticed that some of them started to slow down, and a couple of them stopped entirely, looking at us with frowns on their faces, but then stopping again and turning to look at the leader behind them. I counted all of them now and found only 10 men out of the 25 or so that had been after us. All of them strong people, there were only 10 of them left to actually chase us down and defeat us. I counted my own men and noticed that out of the previous number, there were only 4 left. It was me, Robert, Damien, and one other random soldier. It was very nice that we had been able to whittle down their forces by a very large ratio, far larger than the ratio that they whittled down our own forces by, but it wasn't enough. I knew without a doubt that we were going to need a lot more than that if we were going to succeed. With the current situation of things, it was going to be a 2 vs 1 fight, and even then, we wouldn't still be able to make up for all 10 of them. We had done great good, but we needed to do more if we were going to win.

I had the tank still moving forward, but suddenly noticed that the distance between me and both groups was widening. I frowned, noticing that they were standing still on purpose, letting us get away. No, that can't be right, I said, knowing the person that had been looking for me and knowing quite well that he wasn't the kind of person to give up, he wasn't the kind of person to let his prey slip away from his fingers. Also, especially after I had annoyed him to such an extent, was it some kind of trap or was it some kind of joke? I frowned, waiting to see any signal that could tell me what exactly was going on, but I didn't get anything. It seemed transparent enough.

"Well, that was a close one," Daniel said, looking at me and heaving a sigh of relief.

"No, not quite," I responded, still frowning. "Something's wrong. They're supposed to chase us and hunt us down. They have the clear advantage here, and they should believe that they can win, and that's it. That's the reason why they should come after us and try, but they aren't." I finished, staring at him and waiting for him to give me a reasonable explanation for that hole in logic.

"Well, they didn't, and soon we'll be happy about that," he replied, rolling his eyes. "We should be glad, for the moon goddess' sake, that we are finally out of this formal situation. Just imagine what would have happened if they heard you on stage. I could have been killed or worse. The same with Robert here, whom you seem to admire. It's honestly a good thing that we were able to escape at all, so we should be heading home now to get some recuperation and also plan a reprisal so that we can come and fight another day," he finished.

I nodded slightly, thinking that it was the reasonable thing to do, but I just felt like something was off. "Is there any other thing you want us to do?" a quiet voice asked me. I looked forward to see Robert staring at me with a concerned look on his face. He also seemed to be on Damien's side, which was another consequence that Damien was probably right, but I just didn't think so myself.

"I want to figure out why they stopped," I finished, looking at him and wanting to see what he would say if he advised me not to.

"You can't be fucking serious," came Damien's response. He was looking at me now like I was insane or something. I found it hard to stomach the fact that he was opposing my rule and my decisions so openly and blatantly without any hesitation. But at the same time, I thought that it was natural. After having almost led them to their deaths just a moment ago, what would I expect? This was exactly what I deserved, so I couldn't say anything about it. Not now, not unless I redeem myself. I had a lot more confidence now.

"As I spoke once again, we should indeed find out what they are up to. It can't be anything good. And maybe we can still do a little part of our mission, even though we can't find out exactly who their leader is and where their base is. We should at least find out their next course of action so that we'll be able to meet with them before that happens," I finished.

The last man who hadn't spoken for quite a while, who hadn't spoken at all, suddenly checked in. I looked at him in surprise, but I felt grateful at the same time that he was on my side. At least he seemed to be. I honestly didn't see any other reason why he would speak up suddenly and be in my favour as well. I looked at Damien, who was looking at me with the most shocked expression on his face.

"We shouldn't go back there," he said simply, but I wasn't listening. I had turned back already.

"Well, we should," I responded.

There was a brief silence in the air, and I could feel the tension building up. I was no longer moving. I was just stopped with my back turned to them, waiting for them to make a move. The worst thing that could ever happen to a leader would be for the people to actually rebel against his rule as a result of incompetence. It's one thing for them to rebel, but another thing entirely when they do it and you can't actually blame them. I waited for them to make their decision, feeling pressure mounting on me and knowing what the consequence of each choice would be.