The revolting ratmen had brought a fast-breaking epidemic with them, and it buried the Eastern Theater Command's enormous advantage outright. Jin-person soldiers were going down sick beyond counting, and what that cost was not only the fighting strength of the units. Without jin-person soldiers there was no effective way to hit back at all, and no way to hold the ratmen off.

The iron people who had not been infected had to detach men besides, to look after the sick.

"Command, this is Zhang Dacheng, vehicle 017. Every jin person aboard is unconscious, whole-body convulsions, vomiting and diarrhea. No combat capability left. I can't look after them on my own. Requesting support!" Super iron person Zhang Dacheng was driving his own armored combat vehicle, and the strain was plain in his voice as he reported to command.

His vehicle carried a hundred jin-person soldiers, and by now almost every one of them had the virus. It was luck that command had given the order to fall back in time; before the virus took them completely, the soldiers had got back into the vehicle holding one another up, so that not one of the sick had been left behind.

But now every soldier aboard was out of the fight. The guns and ammunition, the bows and crossbow bolts stored in the vehicle had nobody to use them, and the man who normally drove was down sick as well, so Zhang Dacheng had to drive the thing himself and had no strength left over for fighting.

He was still reporting when a rat general on a rat-beast came at him, and he had to haul the wheel hard over to get clear of the rat-beast's jaws.

The jin-core javelin the general threw hit the plating anyway and punched a wide hole in it.

Whump!

He had not shaken that rat-beast off before another came in at him, ramming wildly, and very nearly rolled the vehicle.

"Vehicle 017, hold on. Fall back to the moat — our reserve units are setting up a defensive line along it. Get to the moat as fast…