At the signal of the Guild Alliance representative, the War Contractor waved his hand, and the thugs pointed their guns at the charging armed militants.
"Kirkland, look out!" the Female Sergeant, who hadn't run far, suddenly turned and shouted.
Horatio looked up and saw that the mercenaries had already aimed their guns at them.
"Damn it…" He cursed.
"Fire! Fire!! Shoot these unruly citizens!"
'+ Activate: Power Fist +'
Horatio raised his iron hand, instantly tearing off two car doors and stacking them together, then jumped out of the car, keeping his body as low as possible.
Bullets rained down on the Citizen Army members and the passersby and protestors behind them.
"Ugh!" Several armed youths were the first to be shot dead, their bodies riddled with bullets.
Immediately after, some demonstrators attempting to drag the injured to the sides were also struck down by the surging gunfire.
Bullets mercilessly pierced through the flesh and blood of mortals, and also struck the door panels Horatio held, but failed to penetrate the second layer, sparing Horatio behind it.
With a scream, a civilian woman fell to the ground; she had been shot through the femur while pulling her injured daughter.
More and more people fell to the ground, even if they only wanted to drag their injured family members to safety, these bloodthirsty bounty hunters and mercenaries would shoot them dead.
Horatio was enraged by this cruel scene; he steeled himself and charged into the line of fire, holding the two layers of door panels.
"What is that thing! Fire! Don't let him get through!"
Bullets hammered densely on the door panels, making thudding sounds, and the first layer had already been riddled like a sieve.
Horatio stomped the second door panel onto the ground and pulled out the deformed first door panel.
His prosthetic limb gradually increased in power, and hot air surged.
"Form up!" the Female Sergeant shouted through the horn-shaped sound array on her back to the Childer of Loyalty Marines around her.
Even amidst the crowd, the surrounding civilians still dared not collide with the Loyalists, all consciously making way for them.
Thanks to this, more than thirty people quickly formed a long line.
"Stop! Cease fire! Quick! Don't hit the Loyalists, kill that kid!"
The War Contractor shouted, but bullets have no eyes; a bullet struck the Female Sergeant standing at the front of the line.
The bullet hit her carapace breastplate, instantly shattering into countless fragments that flew backward.
Buzz—
A terrifying red light emanated from the eyes of the Aum Shield type Childer of Loyalty helmet.
Horatio stood in front of the injured mother and daughter, and two daring protestors seized the opportunity to drag the injured into the alley.
Another youth stumbled and fell to the ground in front of Horatio; he struggled to crawl on the ground, and from the book he carried, he was probably just an unfortunate student passing by who got caught up in it.
Seeing a line of people pointing their guns at him, Horatio waved his hand, pulling the fallen student and the two nearest injured people behind him.
"You cold-blooded butchers…"
With astonishing arm strength, he grabbed the first door panel and threw it like a discus.
Clang!
The flying car door knocked down the line of mercenaries preparing to fire like bowling pins, and the strong wind scared the mercenaries into sitting on the ground.
Looking at their colleagues whose bodies were broken, some people were at a loss and began to waver, and the battle line became precarious.
"God Emperor, how can he be so strong…"
The Female Sergeant watched Horatio throw an entire car door over ten meters away, knocking down a group, and couldn't help but let out a small, murmuring gasp of surprise.
This was a terrifying strength that even a Childer of Loyalty, whose limbs had been reinforced, could not achieve.
She quickly regained her composure and immediately issued a combat order.
"Shoulder arms! Aim!!"
At her command, all Childer of Loyalty Marines raised their Akatran Reconnaissance Laser Guns in perfect unison, their dark muzzles pointing at the mercenary squad lined up.
This scene caused confusion among the opposing mercenary squad; some began to whisper and look towards the Guild Alliance representative, their will to fight wavering.
"What do we do? We agreed to help you guard the intersection, but we didn't say we'd help you fight the Childer of Loyalty Marines!" The War Contractor shouted in a flustered, dull manner.
"Don't be afraid! Everyone, hold the entrance to the surface for me! That's just for show, they won't shoot! We are the Guild Alliance, the legitimate government of Abyss Port! No one dares to touch us, not even the fleet!"
The representative crossed his arms and tucked them into his chest, completely unfazed by the Childer of Loyalty Marines' aggressive actions.
"Fire!!!"
In an instant, precise and deadly lasers surged towards the mercenary line, who were in a kneeling firing position.
This Laser Gun, equipped by airborne units, possesses fierce and powerful firepower, adjustable between full-auto and semi-auto, with a bullpup design and long battery life, making it easy to handle close-quarters combat and suppressive fire.
The laser fire instantly overwhelmed the mercenaries' gunfire, many mercenaries were killed or wounded, falling to the ground, and for a time, cries of agony filled the air.
Under the protection of bulletproof armor, some people, though not dead, were half-dead.
The shot areas were severely burned, emitting a foul smell of charred flesh; even with medical treatment, large chunks of flesh would have to be cut off, or even amputations, enough to force many of them out of this line of work forever.
In less than a minute, the unerring volley knocked down a third of the mercenaries in the line.
Already unnerved by being hit by a door panel, they could no longer maintain their line; most did not dare to return fire at the Childer of Loyalty Marines, and even the few audacious ones could not penetrate their sturdy carapace armor.
Finally, the line of scattered stragglers collapsed, the mercenaries fled, and the enraged crowd surged forward like a wave.
"Don't come any closer! You unruly citizens! I am…" The Guild Alliance representative was so scared his legs went weak, and he plopped onto the ground.
"Ah! Ah-ow!"
He shrieked in an effeminate voice, his chest pierced by the enraged populace with a sharpened steel pipe, along with his 'Guild Alliance Excellent Service Medal'.
Immediately after, his head was severed by a whistling, crude cleaver.
These weapons were originally the production tools and building materials of the Middle Hive laborers, but under the unbearable pressure of life, they transformed into spears, swords, and halberds aimed at the powerful.
Pffft—blood spurted like a fountain from the severed neck.
On his powdered, painted face, his makeup mixed with blood.
His terrified, rolling-eyed head was impaled on a steel pipe by the angry people, and his crimson-stained white fake curly hair fell to the ground, mixed with the blood and grime.
Whether powerful or commoner, their blood flowed equally on the filthy ground.
Only death can bring true equality.
"Down with them! Down with them! Down with them!" The protesting people gathered again.
The shouts, accompanied by the gradually receding crowd, faded, and the un-cleared street once again saw pedestrians coming and going.
This did not mean they were safe; those who participated in the protest for survival had left, and those who toiled for a living continued their labor.
This was where the livelihood of millions of laborers depended; even if there might still be danger, everyone, for the sake of their livelihood, could only pretend nothing had happened, and brave it out to conduct business and trade.
People living in the Middle Hive were all wage earners, pure working cattle; except for those who had completely given up, Middle Hive residents were busy every day.
As the galactic war escalated and the Imperial situation worsened daily, many workers who couldn't find factory work would wait on the streets from three or four o'clock in the morning, terra time, looking for odd jobs.
Even though it was already afternoon, the number of workers looking for work at White Street intersection was still endless.
The Middle and Lower Hives were cold all day long without sunlight.
Workers without jobs huddled in their grimy overcoats, which had been worn for who knows how many months.
The wrinkles on their faces were full of the hardships and sorrows of life, without a trace of a smile; squatting on the ground, they caused serious traffic congestion.
They worked day and night to earn money, averaging fifteen or sixteen hours a day, until their bodies were hunched.
In this place with a distorted supply chain, no matter how much money was earned, it could barely sustain survival; the Engel coefficient was terrifyingly high, and in the end, they were still working for free for the material providers.
It is said that just twenty large Karack transport ships loaded with food from agricultural worlds would be enough to feed every single person living in Abyss Port.
And every day, thousands of such ships docked at various ports in Abyss Port.
Although most of these materials would be transshipped to other worlds, it was still enough to make large-scale famine almost impossible on this planet, and certainly not the farcical situation of '500,000 for a loaf of bread'.
However, reality is like a cliché story, a dark Mobius strip that makes people laugh and cry.
No matter the era, the distribution of resources in human civilization always becomes distorted as the population expands.
Upper Hive residents living on the mild and comfortable surface could casually discard fresh food that lower-class people couldn't afford into sewage pipes, simply because they felt these things weren't nutritious or healthy enough.
In the crowded and cramped Middle Hive, '007' (working from 0:00 to 0:00, 7 days a week) had clearly become a true blessing—a factory assembly line job was incredibly valuable.
And thousands of meters underground in the darkness, ragged, unemployed Lower Hive residents would fight fiercely, even taking lives, for a piece of sour dough.
As for the Bottom Hive, that was an unimaginable hell.
Even though twenty large transport ships could feed everyone, under the invisible hand of 'profit' and the bloated, slow, and extremely cumbersome supply system, a leviathan named 'uneven distribution' was artificially created.
Corruption also arose and spread from this.
The Childer of Loyalty Marines did not stop for a moment, immediately beginning to re-stabilize order, and the masses did their utmost to give the Imperial Loyalists their due glory and dignity.
They began to calm down from the previous frenzy, no longer engaging in extreme behavior, only shouting slogans against the Guild Alliance.
Bloodshed was not what the people here wanted; they only wanted to cling to life, to ensure that the women and children in their families could fill their stomachs and not freeze to death in their sleep due to lack of heating.
But stagnant wages and continuously rising prices meant that these necessities were already nearing the average affordability of Middle Hive residents.
And the Guild Alliance, as a commercial government, not only failed to stabilize prices, but the increasingly high 'survival essential fees' further worsened the situation.
However, Horatio, who had already become an Imperial Childer of Loyalty, would no longer live such a dark and miserable life.
He would gloriously serve Emperor of Mankind on the Golden Throne, possessing a future and destiny unimaginable to these commoners.
"Make way! Clear the area!" the Female Sergeant shouted to the surroundings through her sound array.
Whoosh—three shuttles flew down from the surface entrance where the mercenaries had scattered, forcing the re-gathered protestors to disperse again, moving away from the air blast.
[Is it the Guild Alliance's reinforcements?]
Horatio's hair was disheveled by the sudden strong wind; he looked up, and through the dazzling searchlights, he vaguely recognized the rose knot of the Nun Order.
The shuttles slowly lowered their altitude, and several ropes were thrown from the tail compartment.
Soon, several tall female warriors in silver armor and black robes deftly jumped to the ground, gripping the ropes.