When Horatio saw his classmates running towards the sound of gunfire, he knew something big had happened.
He immediately stood up and instructed the Half-cat person, who was wolfing down food: "You eat here. Take this."
Horatio tossed the bread given by the Bread seller and the address plate given by his assistant Jonathan to the Half-cat person girl, saying:
"If you recognize the name Horatio Cochrane, you'll know I've taken in more than one person like you."
The Labor Union had previously taken in many such small-time thieves, who would act as lookouts, gather supplies and intelligence for the gang in exchange for a place to stay and enough food to fill their stomachs.
"..." The Half-cat person girl was speechless for a moment, silently watching him.
He turned to leave.
"Sir, you don't have any armor!"
Yin Shuyao cried out, flustered, stepping forward and spreading her arms to block him: "Bullets have no eyes, it's too dangerous to go over there rashly like that."
"From the moment the training transformed me into a Childer of Loyalty, my body and soul already belonged to the God-Emperor.
Now that my classmates are rushing to the scene, what reason do I have to cower behind civilians?"
Horatio pressed down the girl's arms and smiled: "Since you're so worried, please pray for my safety."
Seeing that he was determined to go, the girl didn't know what else to say for a moment. After a brief deliberation, her eyes filled with resolve.
"Sir, please wait a moment."
She scurried behind the bar and took out a medical kit from the cabinet below, then returned to Horatio.
"Please take this, I hope it helps you."
"Thank you. May the God-Emperor bless kind people like you."
Horatio took the medical kit from her hand, looked at the Childer of Loyaltys, and immediately rushed towards the front line of the gunfire.
These elite-trained Childer of Loyaltys had excellent physical fitness and speed; even wearing heavy carapace armor, they moved very quickly.
Because it was only a security patrol, they were not equipped with large weapons with strong armor-piercing capabilities, such as the Ryza-pattern Hellgun, but instead carried new, high-quality, and rare Akatran Scout Laser Guns.
Moreover, as a light firearm, its lethality was not as great as the Catrell standard Laser Gun, making it very suitable as standard armament for the Childer of Loyalty Marines to maintain stability in the port area.
"Excuse me! Sorry, please make way!" Horatio moved against the flow of the crowd, pushing his way closer to where the shooting occurred.
The once crowded intersection, filled with protesting demonstrators and pedestrians, was unusually clear, like a drop of detergent on a greasy plate.
The protesters scrambled to flee, leaving protest banners about rising living costs strewn across the ground, along with scattered rocks and rotten vegetables.
Dozens of injured lay on the ground, some lifeless, others groaning and crawling with their hands clutching their wounds.
The situation was horrific, and the report's claim of "No civilian casualties!" was easily disproven.
Directly across the intersection, the main road leading to the surface and the Abyss Port Administrative Palace was blocked by armed bounty hunters and mercenaries.
Led by the representative of the Guild Alliance, the first row knelt, the second row stood, and their gun barrels smoked.
Frightened screams, the wails of relatives of the dead and injured, the moans of the wounded, and angry condemnations of the perpetrators all merged, causing the street to erupt once more.
"These beasts." The brutality before him was unacceptable to Horatio.
Although he knew the Warhammer world was dark and despairing, with mass killings occurring at the drop of a hat.
But when indiscriminate shooting at innocent civilians happened right before his eyes, he felt deeply shocked, his heart scorching as if being roasted over a fierce fire.
More importantly, the mercenaries' actions were clearly not sanctioned, otherwise the Childer of Loyalty Marines would not have come to intervene and stop them.
Finally, his gaze stopped on the van, which was now stalled in the middle of the road, with a bread pattern painted on its body.
There were bullet holes in both the front and rear driver's seats.
[The child in the back seat!!!] Horatio's eyes widened, a sense of suffocation rising in his throat, and he immediately rushed towards the van.
"We are the Childer of Loyalty Marine Corps! We are now taking over the scene to maintain stability. In the name of the Imperial Navy, we order you to leave the scene! Otherwise, you will be charged with insubordination!" Female Sergeant Louise led the shouting.
At the same time, she called for medical reinforcements from the Sisters of the Sacred Rose and the Imperial Navy.
A total of 35 Childer of Loyalty Marines, converging from various nearby locations, secured the scene every 5 meters, efficiently maintaining stability.
"Representative, the Childer of Loyalty Marine has arrived," the War Contractor, responsible for organizing the bounty hunters, said to the representative.
"Maintain the human wall! These rioters must not be allowed to charge the Administrative Palace!"
The representative of the Guild Alliance was a man dressed in embroidered silk robes, his face powdered white, and even wearing lipstick, making him look neither human nor ghost, and his voice was full of effeminate affectation.
Horatio rushed to the bread van, where the cries of a child inside were incessant. He pulled open the door and saw the slightly plump Bread seller protecting his wife and daughter, his waist and thigh already stained red with blood.
"How many people are injured?" Horatio asked anxiously.
"My husband..." Amidst the little girl's wailing, the woman in the passenger seat covered her mouth and sobbed, her makeup smeared by tears.
"I'm fine, just my lower back hurts a bit, ouch." The Bread seller's lungs gasped for air, his face pale, completely unlike how he described his condition.
Thanks to his previous work, Horatio had mastered exquisite emergency bandaging skills.
He skillfully cleaned the Bread seller's gunshot wound, using a tourniquet and sterile cotton for emergency hemostasis and bandaging.
"Classmate, you shouldn't be here, go back! You're not wearing carapace armor!"
Sergeant Louise walked behind Horatio, who was bandaging the Bread seller, and shouted.
"I know, but I am already a coin of the God-Emperor, I want to help them." Horatio didn't turn his head, focusing intently on treating the wound.
"It's very dangerous here. I am a Sergeant, and I must be responsible for new warriors like you. Leave the rest to me, you must leave now."
Sergeant Louise had no intention of commenting on or correcting the new Sergeant's thoughts and views.
She simply stepped forward, ready to take over the wound treatment from Horatio, but was suddenly interrupted by a wave of furious roars.
"Murderers!!!"
Shouts came from the right corner of the cross-street. Some angry people with red headbands rushed out, both men and women, all young adults, holding some old firearms they had obtained from somewhere.
"Senior, you should go maintain order. The situation isn't looking good now." Horatio looked into Louise's purple eyes.
"Be careful." The Female Sergeant furrowed her willow-leaf eyebrows, nodded, and then gestured for the Childer of Loyalty Marines to go reinforce.
That was the 'Citizen Army' that Jonathan had mentioned.
Through his memories, Horatio knew.
The Vegas Citizen Army was an armed group formed in recent years by workers and students living in the Vegas Middle Hive, who claimed to fight for the interests of citizens and oppose the Guild Alliance's exploitation.
As calls against the Guild Alliance grew louder, the influence of the Vegas Citizen Army also gradually increased, and it was designated as an extremist group that must be eradicated by the Guild Alliance regime.
However, because many of them were usually workers and students in factories and schools, and they were very restrained in their use of force.
In addition, their power was not great, and they only targeted and plundered the Guild Alliance regime's supplies, very sensibly never provoking the Imperial official forces.
They even actively submitted all captured supplies, except for the necessary amount for relief, as the planetary 'tithe' to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Even if the Guild Alliance insisted they were 'rebels,' the Imperial bureaucrats clearly didn't care and didn't want to add extra workload to help the Guild Alliance deal with these messes.
According to statistics, the average Ministry of Internal Affairs bureaucrat on each planet would witness more than a dozen regime changes during their long and tedious lives.
For them, as long as Abyss Port remained loyal to the Empire and could consistently submit the 'tithe' to the Empire on schedule.
Then who managed Abyss Port was not important.
Therefore, the planetary Ministry of Internal Affairs, Adeptus Arbites, Imperial Navy, etc., also turned a blind eye to this, classifying them as 'opposition forces' rather than 'rebels'.
These people disregarded the Childer of Loyalty Marines at the forefront and forced their way through the intersection, firing at the bounty hunters and mercenaries and throwing homemade Molotov cocktails.
For a time, gunshots once again erupted on the street.
"First row! Prepare!"