From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 359 Mars
"Ha! I knew I followed the right person!"

Randall said this with some excitement, and Cleves was also relieved after hearing Amber's decision.

"You two guys are just waiting for me to say this, right?"

Although Amber was very pleased that the two fleet commanders under his command had "humanity", he still wanted to sound a warning to them in advance.

"Are you ready? Hell is coming."

Amber sighed and continued:
"Once we start accepting the surrender of the Imperial forces, the Federation will definitely take the opportunity to cause trouble. They hate Atlas to the core, but they also covet it. I have a strong feeling that this matter will not end so easily. So I ordered..."

After hearing the last sentence, Randall and Cleves immediately sat up straight and became serious.

"The Atlas Fleet will enter the highest state of combat readiness from now on, ready to respond to provocations and attacks from the Federation Fleet at any time, while keeping in mind our principle of not firing the first shot."

"Understood!"×2
"How's the progress of Infinity's construction?"

"We completed the final outfitting work yesterday, and according to the plan, we should be ready to start the full system test today.

The lady Saleh you brought back is truly amazing. With her assistance, the progress of the entire construction work has been accelerated a lot, and many problems have been identified in advance."

Randall answered. As Cleves was the chief commander of the fleet, he focused more of his energy on the fleet, so the progress of the "new ship" was temporarily monitored by Randall.

"Tsk, this is really a rush. I originally wanted to test the Infinity for a while longer, and the personnel and equipment on it also need to be adjusted. Now it seems that there is not enough time."

Amber frowned. It was obvious that the current situation was developing faster than he had expected.

"Let them rush here while conducting the test. The remaining combat ships in Babel Tower and the asteroid belt should also set out at the same time. They will reunite with the Infinity halfway and then jump over directly."

"Amber, are you going all in?" Randall asked in shock.

"'A lion will use all its strength to fight a rabbit'. Moreover, the gap in strength between us and the Federation is so huge. Since a conflict with the Federation is highly likely to be unavoidable, we might as well just give it a try and let them know what 'pain' means."
-
The Imperial infantry platoon that surrendered to Atlas, after disarming all their weapons and completing inspections under the supervision of Atlas soldiers, entered a separately designated area in the camp one after another.

For some reason, these surrendered imperial soldiers relaxed one by one after seeing the Atlas soldiers around them dressed in white and the red cross symbol on them, and then remembered the legend about the "battlefield angels" circulating among the imperial civilians.

Even they themselves didn't know why they completely let down their guard, so that most of them didn't even bother to eat after entering the camp and temporary board house built by the worker bees, and fell asleep directly.
On the other side, when these surrendered imperial soldiers gradually relaxed, ten refugee camps, including this camp, received orders from Amber.

Soon, the military commanders of the ten combined battalions and the members of the training team knew the threat they would face from the Federation after they began to accept the surrender of the Imperial soldiers.

The reactions of the crowd were pretty much what Amber had expected—everyone shouted "asking for a fight" and said they would definitely fight to maintain the "bottom line of intelligent creatures."

This is especially true for Roma people like Mondon and Telak. Just as the ram-headed platoon leader Om said at the time, the Roma people have their own persistence and principles in this regard. Their race has an unimaginable persistence in "providing shelter for the weak".

This is of course good news for Amber, because it means that these Roma people have gradually moved away from being "money-oriented" in this incident, and are truly wanting to do this from the bottom of their hearts.

Of course, the bad news is that they should be easily "red-tempered" by the provocation of the federal soldiers, and there is an 80% chance that they will fight each other once the conflict breaks out -
In the increasingly tense atmosphere between Atlas and the Federation, time passed day by day.

During this period, the persecution of refugees and surrendered soldiers by the federal army was almost at the opposite extreme from the treatment on the Atlas side.

So more and more refugees began to come to seek asylum, and at the same time, imperial soldiers began to surrender to Atlas's troops in an organized manner.

Of course, all this is limited to the areas covered by ten refugee camps and outposts. Atlas cannot take care of most other places on the planet now.

This directly led to a large number of refugees and surrendered soldiers who were not in the coverage area, following the coordinates shared by others in the local network, and began to move towards their nearest refugee camps, embarking on a "difficult road" with an extremely low survival rate.

The federal ground forces naturally discovered Atlas's actions.

In particular, Camp No. 5, which is under the responsibility of the Second Heavy Combined Battalion and currently houses the largest number of refugees and imperial prisoners, can be said to be the focus of attention.

Every day, countless drones conduct reconnaissance and provocation outside the "no-fly zone" designated by the camp, and the reconnaissance team sent by Monton and the temporarily deployed satellite reconnaissance also discovered that the federal ground forces were mobilizing troops in this direction.

The scale is roughly that of two combined brigades.

In response, Amber also sent down the three reserve battalions one after another in the name of "reinforcing manpower due to the increase in refugees."

Twenty days later, Infinity and other combat ships in the formation completed the jump and arrived in deep space about 5 hours' jump distance from Pella IV to wait for orders.

After the arrival of Atlas' most powerful ship, Amber felt a little relieved. But then another piece of news came, which made him anxious again.

According to the intelligence collected by Lilith with the assistance of the Intelligence Analysis Center, three unmanned fleets of the Federation Navy also arrived at the Pella galaxy and carried out fleet replenishment and repairs in deep space with unknown specific locations.

Their arrival brought the possible fleet battle to a situation that was absolutely unfavorable to Atlas.

At the same time, an urgent message came from Camp No. 5 - a federal force requested to enter the refugee camp to inspect the recently admitted refugees and imperial troops.

"What was supposed to happen has finally happened. The show is finally about to begin."

(End of this chapter)