This story segment contains a scene of violence and death.

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28-AG-30: 8th Panzerdivisione Southeast Advance

The M4 Sentinel medium tank carefully pushed its way into the building through a broken wall, budging cement blocks and rubble. While the structure shook, it did not collapse. Easily, the tank slid itself through a back door and into a little plaza between the buildings, a recreation area where the apartment’s inhabitants could get fresh air and sit.

Treading over a bench and past a wooden fence, the tank found itself squeezing into an alleyway between two buildings that had been reduced to gray and brown mounds. In the alley, the tank commander called his subordinates over the radio, and then one other M4 and a single M3 easily followed his trackmarks through the building and into the alley.

Together they advanced through the depths of Knyskna’s ruins, knowing that any major building collapse would force them to abandon their tanks. They advanced in small groups to avoid choking the tight paths and to coordinate easier. It was nerve-wracking movement, stopping and starting and stopping again, careful not to disturb the area.

As they wandered through broken buildings and squeezed into alleys and trod over hills of rubble, through their periscopes they saw tiny groups of Gebirgsjager men in their cloaks climbing the sides of tall, sturdy buildings to establish positions and flush out scouts.

In pairs and even sometimes on their own, these hunters protected the tanks from any more communist ambushes. Already they had flushed out a few communist scouts.

These were not the only men in the ruins.

Ahead of them, a man in motorcycle approached and waved for them to advance. He led them into open spaces between ruined blocks and standing structures. Every so often the motor soldier would pause beside the lead tank, climb it, pop the hatch and address the commander. He shared what he had learned about the area, and where next they could squeeze the tank platoon into and advance unopposed. They would call it in, await confirmation from a beautiful voice. Then they would be off again.

Brigadier-General Dreschner had ordered them to make their advance directly through the ruins and up north. And so they moved through the rubble, and they called Dreschner’s little siren to keep the General appraised of their progress through the maze.

“This is Signals Officer Schicksal in contact.” She said. “Report confirmed. Continue the advance as ordered. Watch the high ground for enemy activity.”

So they moved through the ruins, high explosive loaded into their cannons and ready to shoot in case of an ambush. They knew the communists had few tanks of their own, and those that did exist could be destroyed even without penetrating rounds.

These tankers had not personally seen the ambushes. They had been briefed, and they understood there was danger. But they were relatively fresh off the staging areas and no harm had come to them as they moved, so they were just as confident as the men in the morning, advancing through a land devoid of the enemy. They had heard of the embarrassing defeat of the communists at Tukino and Dori Dobo and in the borders.

They hailed from Nocht, the capital of capitalism – they would win.

For many of them, they had to win. For their country, yes; but also for their futures. For their careers. Names and histories were being made in this ancient land, and you either flew or you fell. Nocht’s technocrats demanded perfection. Nocht was a land of opportunity, but only the very best, the hardest working, the most skilled, would earn the true riches to be reaped. It was a competition; even as they advanced together every man knew that he had to take the glory for himself first, in order to earn himself a big seat like Dreschner’s.

United without, divided within, and with gold in their eyes, the tanks advanced.

Coordinating this effort in southeast Knyskna was Lt. Kunze. Unlike the Brigadier-General’s Befehlspanzer, Kunte’s M4 Sentinel had the standard radio equipment and a real gun. He could communicate with the FOB in Djose, but the farther he got, the worse he would sound to them. He could definitely not contact any forces farther than that, but he did not need to. Speaking to Dreschner (Schicksal, for the most part) was enough.

His tank was pitted and burnt and the left track was worse for wear – a 120mm mortar had nearly struck him, and he had endured several BKV attacks when he attempted to pursue the communists and avenge the loss of his assault gun platoon.

That had been more than enough combat for Lt. Kunze. He was anxious enough without suffering the persistent sweat and shaking of being in a fight. He hung back now, following a ways behind the advancing troops, always removed from them around a corner or hidden in an alleyway, observing and coordinating well away from the front.

From below him a boy barely out of his teens turned to face him. He was the radio operator of his tank crew, which included a gunner and loader in front of him, and a driver below as well. In a soft voice the boy said, “Schicksal is calling, sir.”

“Is this something you can’t handle? Turning a knob?” Kunze said contemptuously.

“She wants to speak with you personally.” the boy continued, his voice shaking.

“Fine, fine.”

Kunze pulled his headphones from around his neck and up to his ears.

“Lt. Kunze reporting.”

“Status report,” Schicksal asked, “Brigadier-General wishes to know your progress.”

“According to the Jagers, we’re only a few blocks away now. But we have to penetrate the thoroughfare from multiple alleys, or else we will have all the tanks bunched in one place and suffer the same problems.” Kunze replied.

“Correct. Therefore, you should make greater haste.” Schicksal said.

“We are advancing on schedule!” Kunze said, raising his voice suddenly.

Schicksal did not rise to the provocation.

Her own voice was smooth and clear, her lines delivered with precision and skillful timing. “Our schedule is being rewritten. Sunlight is precious right now. Brigadier-General Dreschner expresses his desire for you to personally direct the assault on the communist defenses along the southeast thoroughfare. It is, presently, the shortest and most direct route from which to attack the communist base, given the problems Reiniger is facing.”

She paused. Preempting a response, she spoke again.

“Of course, if you do not feel up to the task–”

Obviously, there was no choice. Clearing his throat and controlling his tone of voice again, Kunze replied much more affirmatively. “I am honored that the Brigadier-General chose me for this mission and I shall conduct it to the best of my ability.”

“Wonderful. Then, do make haste. All tracks are to stop at nightfall.”

Kunze grit his teeth a little reflexively. He hated it when the radio girl tried to tell him how to conduct himself. He hated it even more when she seemed like the one giving him orders, when she spoke with a voice like she had deigned to command him. What would she know about anything? How dare she talk so authoritatively to him as though she had a role of any importance in this battle? What goddamn nerve.

Of course, he knew intellectually that Schicksal was just passing along whatever it was Dreschner mumbled to himself in his radio tank as he waited for them to do the work.

But it still felt condescending and humiliating when it was she who delivered the lines and not the CO. It reminded him of the attitude she pulled in the Djose, talking when she wasn’t supposed to, sitting by Dreschner all the time like she was something special.

He envisioned Schicksal having just as much of a stick up her ass as Dreschner, all the while sitting comfortably behind the lines, and it vexed him.

He almost went as far as to say he hated Schicksal and her ilk.

But Kunze was at heart a fearful and stealthy creature.

He said nothing untoward. Schicksal had nothing to aspire to, and therefore she had nothing to be careful about, but he did, and he had to.

“Acknowledged.” He said. “We will speed up and breach soon.”

“Good. Report just before launching your attack. Schicksal out.”

Silence on the radio. Lt. Kunze and his tanks were now the premier force in Knyskna.

Kunze ripped his headphones from his head and in a sudden fit, threw them and the little box they were attached to at the radio boy, striking him behind the head with the object. Not a peep came out of the boy, and faced with Kunze’s sudden fury he just hunched closer to the small radio unit affixed to the side of the tank.

Irate, incoherent thoughts filled the Lieutenant’s head. He bit his nails. He sweated like a pig. It was all up to him now, suddenly. That snake Schicksal, he thought irascibly, her tone revealed nothing, she did not betray any of the impact of the situation in her voice, but he knew, he knew. This was his chance to either fly or fail. Dreschner was testing him.

He knew. His heart pounded.

“Vorwärts!” Kunze shouted, his voice reverberating inside the tank.

His gunner and loader steadied themselves on their makeshift seats, and his driver sped them all out of an alleyway, cutting in front of a platoon of tanks in order to advance toward the creeping front line. He would be getting even closer now to the communists than he had ever been before. In his mind Kunze still heard the shots and the blasts and felt his tank shaking. His whole body trembled with the thought and his stomach roiled, but there was no other way. Regrettably he would have to direct the advance with greater fervor.

Otherwise, he risked a higher rank on Dreschner’s shit-list, along with Reiniger.

So many of their elite 8th PzD had failed already.

Kunze couldn’t afford to fail with them. This was for Nocht, for country, for people, for freedom, for capitalism, for glory, for himself. It was better to die than to fail this.

“Listen up, and broadcast this to the crews when I’m done.” Kunze shouted, his voice strained over the noise of the tank. “Kampfgruppe K has been given the honor of taking the communist’s base of operations in Knyskna. We will be the first into the oven and the last out, as it should be. We are the real men in this fight! Our country depends on us; depends on you. I’m expecting a swift and thorough victory! Allow none of the communist scum to escape your grasp. You have the better weapons, the better training, and the spirit of progress and ingenuity!  I want to hear no excuses and see no failures. There will be rewards, great rewards, to those who distinguish themselves! Vorwärts!”

Everyone in the tank cowered; the message soon shook other hearts in Kpfg. K. as well.

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28-AG-30: Southeast Inner Boroughs West Bend

Abandoning the FOB the Ayvartan troops ran toward the far side of the thoroughfare and vanished into its alleyways and intersections. Groups of horses had been tied down around the thoroughfare in case emergency transportation was needed.

Headquarters’ own horses were located just behind the FOB, and they were already riding up the thoroughfare: everyone else dispersed hastily off the path.

Leander’s squad ran two blocks up from the FOB and took a corner into a tight alleyway that opened up into a small sitting plaza between two big buildings, within which a single big tree had been planted. Several horses had been left tied to this tree, with one soldier left behind to care for them. He waved to make himself known when he saw Leander’s squadron approaching, and began to untie the horses for them.

Smiling, Leander approached one of the bigger horses in the pack, its hide a uniform brown and its mane long and dark. All of the horses were Ayvartan breeds, middleweight, meant more for riding than for heavy pulling, and they were quite beautiful to behold.

Though he might have been a stranger to war and an untrained warrior, Leander knew horses. A caravan was nothing without them, after all! He made cooing noises and stroked the horse’s muzzle as he stood near it. He laughed contentedly as he petted the animal.

Obediently, the horse made no move away from him, and seemed for the most part ambivalent to his presence. Fair enough! They didn’t know each other yet. He felt oddly excited about the horse, even in the middle of this situation. They could be attacked at any moment! But a horse was such a natural and beautiful and comforting sight.

Behind him, Elena laughed and patted him cheerfully in the back.

“You two are hitting it off, I see! What do you think of it?”

“This is a good horse.” He replied. “It has a great build. Does the army have cavalry?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking.” Bonde said, grinning at Leander. “We have cavalry units that ride horses to battle, dismount and then fight on foot. I’m afraid you won’t be leading any saber charges in this era. Not with machine guns around.”

“Around the caravan I always heard war stories but they were mostly about swordsmen and cavalry charges and things like that. I guess those stories just don’t work anymore.”

Bonde shook his head with a big smile on his face. Elena chuckled again.

“I don’t want my own horse.” Sharna said suddenly.

Everyone stared at her again as though she were going mad in front of them.

“Why not?” Elena asked. “You don’t know how to ride one?”

“I know; but someone needs to be on guard with a good weapon.” Sharna replied.

“We can use our pistols from horseback can’t we?” Elena added.

“I said a good weapon.” Sharna replied, hefting up her BKV.

“You can shoot a BKV from horse-back?” Bonde said with surprise.

“I can shoot a BKV from any position.” Sharna said proudly, sticking out her chest.

Bonde looked puzzled, but he did not argue any further. He waved for Sharna to climb on Leander’s horse. Everyone seemed to correctly assume that Leander was probably the best rider, and the implication pleased him greatly. Finally, something he could do well! Leander climbed on first and took the reins, recalling when his mother had taught him how a proper woman should ride. It was all he knew growing up, so he would have do it.

Sharna sat behind him, her BKV set against her shoulder and her legs tight around the sides of the horse. She raised the barrel over Leander’s shoulder and kept her eyes locked to the sights, swaying from side to side as the horse began to move.

After receiving a good scolding from everyone, she hooked herself up to Leander with a rope, in case the recoil and tenuous position threatened to knock her off. Elena and Bonde both took their own horses, and withdrew their pistols as they rode.

Together, Squadron III trotted out of the alleyway and back onto the thoroughfare, gathering around in the middle of the road to make sure everyone was handling their horses well and fully appraised of the situation.

Behind them followed the horse handler, unarmed, riding his own horse while guiding the spare horses up as well. Soon as they were out on the street they saw a trickle of other riders leaving the alleys as well. Many rode clumsily up, and a few were trotting for lack of experience with galloping. Leander thought it was quite a shame to see.

“Everyone knows where we’re going right?” Bonde said to the huddle.

“Up the thoroughfare to the last defensive line.” Elena replied.

“Good. Everyone got that? Remember to watch your sides and watch the buildings, our enemy is apparently stealthier than we imagined.” Bonde said. “If your horse is sniped at, try to get away from it and not fall with it or it could crush you.”

“Easier said than done.” Leander said sadly. “But if someone gets hurt I will try to swing around and help you. I used to ride horses with my brothers, racing through the wood. This thoroughfare is cake compared to riding the Kasht!”

“Riding the what?” Sharna said.

No one heard her; her lips moved but her voice was lost under the booming of a gun.

Flying in from out of sight, a shell cut across the road and blasted the street.

A high explosive charge blasted the handler and the spare horses to oblivion. Responding to the blast the squadron’s horses trembled and grew anxious, they neighed and took several steps away from the source of the heat without command; that they did not jump and panic from such a close blast attested to their thorough training. A few meters closer and the shell fragments might have given the horses cause to panic and topple.

Over his shoulder Leander spotted an M4 Sentinel charging out of a building facade through a shower of concrete debris, with a second tank creeping along not far behind. Both of them turned their cruel turrets from the ruined remains of the handler and the spare horses and the street beneath them, seeking after prey.

The promised attack had come!

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This story segment contains a scene of medical treatment.

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28-AG-30: Knyskna, Southeast Inner Boroughs FOB

A dismal compliment of soldiers returned to the FOB.

It was late afternoon and the sun had already begun its trek down from the sky.

Soldiers trickled up from the southeast, climbing wearily over the rock, squeezing through rubble, and ambling across the open streets, making their way into the building.

Sgt. Bahir’s headquarters staff greeted the arrivals and furnished them with some food and drink in paper cups, soupy lentils and milk flavored with fruits, a minor pick-me-up.

Staff members took quick reports from surviving officers, gathered inventory and distributed supplies, and found everyone places to sit and rest. There was a somber and eerie mood around them. Nobody wanted to admit it, but they all felt quite defeated.

Squadron III arrived with the others. Though the ambush was far behind them, in Leander’s mind, and likely the minds of his comrades, he still heard the blasts and saw his allies die fighting, and it felt stunning and bizarre to him, like he had watched it in a film.

Sergeant Bahir entered the lobby where all the soldiers were gathered, and he appeared to look over everyone at once from his position by the door of his office.

He had a semblance of a smile and a fiery gaze.

“Good work everyone.” He said. The instant he started to speak all the whispers in the room quieted. Despite only being a Sergeant, Bahir was older than everyone else in the room and more experienced. He commanded the respect of a general within this FOB, and everyone was eager for his message. It would end up being brief.

“Nocht will have to work harder to penetrate through to this FOB. All of our defensive sectors across Knyskna are holding so far. I received word from the railyard that we have only a few more trainloads before our armored train can take us all from here. Avenge your fallen comrades by living to fight another day. Victory is close, comrades!”

He raised his fist into the air, and everyone followed. This was all the speech that he would give. It was not the right time now for long speeches. He acknowledged them and praised their efforts and that was all he could do in the face of what had transpired.

Once Sergeant Bahir and his staff retreated back into their makeshift office, and everyone in the room began to idle once more, Leander felt Elena’s hand settle on his back.

He looked over his shoulder, and she tapped him in the cheek to make him look away, positioning herself behind him and sliding her hands into his jacket solemnly.

Bonde joined her, and from the glances Leander got of his face he appeared concerned.

Though Elena was as ginger to him as she could be, his wounds still stung awfully whenever she touched them. She inspected him, and shook her head several times while doing so and made disapproving sounds. She was exasperated by his condition and he did feel like a bit of a fool for his recklessness back in the thoroughfare.

“Leander, you need to go find a medic and get yourself patched up.” Elena said.

“I’m fine.” Leander replied. He wanted to stand guard. An attack would be coming. It hurt, but he could deal with the pain. He hoped during battle it would fade into the background completely. It was only a dull, persistent ache at the moment.

“Your back is a mess of bloody cuts. You could get an infection. Go.” Elena insisted.

Sharna recused herself from the discussion, but Bonde was watching them intently.

“Go to the medic, Leander.” Bonde said suddenly. It sounded like an order.

Leander complied.

He dropped his BKV and ammunition into a crate, and asked a nearby soldier where to go. With her directions he made his way to the back of the building, arriving at a rectangular sky-blue room once used as a washing and laundry space. Soldiers had pushed the cylindrical washing machines out into the alleyway behind the room’s back door, and the space was now occupied by a few tables and curtains. It was a lonesome place.

There were no wounded men or women to accompany Leander.

Anyone who might have qualified from the forward platoons had been wounded to death. Nobody had even had time to collect their bodies due to the situation.

Leander purged his mind of such morbid ideas, drank his milk and tipped the gooey lentils into his mouth. He could not even focus on the taste. Seated on the edge of a wheeled bed he waited for a medic to come tend to him. There were no medical orderlies on hand this time. Manpower of that nature was scarce; the few medics probably had other duties.

He figured that someone would be sent to him soon enough, after they completed some other chore around the FOB, and so he waited patiently for what seemed like a half hour for attention. He wondered idly what kind of doctor had stayed behind with them.

Whenever he stopped moving or fighting, he always seemed drawn to take greater notice of his condition, and all the little discomforts that were piling up. On the battlefield it was easy for him to forget the slight chafing of his breasts against the brace, the aching of the bruises across his chest and belly and shoulder whenever he bent or moved his arms.

He smelled like gunpowder and smoke, and there was a hollow ringing in his ears from the absence of explosions and screaming and gunfire. He guessed he was a soldier now, more than before. A week ago he had no training and a rifle he could barely work.

Now he had all kinds of scars, and an eerily building knowledge of battle.

Leander sighed a little. But this was the man he had chosen to be.

A man who could protect his people and his dreams in absence of any greater technical skill or ambition. Was that an ideal soldier? He didn’t know. It was just who he was.

He was starting to regret having time alone to think.

When finally he heard steps along the adjoining hall, he raised his head. So far he had given no consideration to seeing another doctor and explaining his unique status to them: but he figured it would not be a problem. Then, through the empty doorway into the room appeared a familiar face. It was Dr. Agrawal in her white coat and long skirt, her hair tied up into a bun and her face looking less rough than the day before. She was on her own and smiled when she came into the room. Leander’s own face brightened at the sight.

“Ah, Leander Gaurige! I did not expect you to be here.” She said, loudly and cheerfully. Leander flushed a little bit. “Don’t be surprised, you are still quite fresh on my mind. I thought by now you would be safe on your way to Solstice. I must admit it is bittersweet to see you again. I love familiar patients, but people only come to me with misfortune.”

“Sorry.” Leander said. “I had to stay. It’s the kind of man I am, you could say.”

“I suppose you could be a much worse kind of man than this!” Dr. Agrawal said, patting him on the shoulder. Leander cringed a little bit, and she removed her hand. “Oh, sorry, sorry. I’m such a friendly oaf sometimes. I need to regain my professional spirit.”

“It is fine. I can feel myself healing already in your care.” Leander said.

Dr. Agrawal laughed. “I’m not that good I’m afraid. Are you surprised to see me?”

Surprised was a large understatement. Leander was quite visibly exuberant.

It was almost like meeting a great friend again after a long time, even though he had only met the doctor for the first time very recently. She had been very kind to him, and as his first real doctor, outside of quacks and spirit healers, she left an impression on him.

“I never asked what you were doing, but I assumed you would leave.” Leander said.

“No, I was never planning to go. I came out of a fairly early retirement in order to do necessary medical work in this time of crisis. A doctor should follow the blood draining from the people. So I decided to rejoin the army, albeit a bit begrudgingly. After all, I’m used to the environment. I learned medicine while in the army. It has been a quite a long time since I was last active military, but that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Well, I for one am glad you are here, doctor. Makes me feel safe.”

She nodded. “Working with wounded soldiers these past few days was what rekindled my commitment. And I must admit you were on my mind since we last met. Let us not leave your back running red for any longer, Private Leander Gaurige.”

Leander cooperated easily and removed his shirt and loosened brace to free his breasts. He was happy for the doctor’s company in this situation. It was a real relief to see her again.

Dr. Agrawal cut the bloody bandages from his back, and stared with consternation at the red, pitted expanse across his spine, covered in shards of metal and long cuts.

He saw everything in a mirror established across the room.

It was worse than it looked when he had his clothes on.

However it was not crippling. Just a honeycomb of bright red flesh wounds.

The Doctor nodded to herself after examining him, and stepped beside the bed. From a nearby crate she gathered clean towels, tweezers, a roll of bandages and a bottle of clear liquor. She put all the things atop a little trolley and kicked it over to the bed.

Leander was puzzled by the final item and picked up the bottle.

“This is eighty-percent alcohol!” Leander said with child-like wonder.

Dr. Agrawal took the bottle from his hands, and tapped him on the head with the cap. “It would certainly make your throat feel a bit raw if you drank it. But it’s not going in there right now. Liquor has other important uses in a time of crisis you see.”

She popped the top of the bottle, shook it to give him a warning, and then poured a steady stream over Leander’s shoulder. He cringed and clung to the side of the bed with his hands, his wounds flaring up with stinging pain the instant the liquid dripped over them. He felt heat seeping through the cuts and into his flesh, and felt the sharpness of the fragments anew as the liquor flowed past them and over the gashes on the surface.

“We ran out of medical alcohol, but hard liquor is decent.” Dr. Agrawal said.

Leander grit his teeth and tried to smile a little through it, saying nothing.

Dr. Agrawal picked up her tweezers, and the towels and bandages, and she set to work, taking the tiny bits of steel and pulling them gently out of Leander’s body, setting them aside, then cleaning the wound again with another sharp drizzle of liquor. Dabbing from the towels irritated his flesh, but Leander tried to be strong and stony faced.

Between cleaning and pulling, Dr. Agrawal paused and looked up at the mirror, feigning like she was examining him with more interest.

After a few times, she finally came out and said what she was thinking.

“Bullets to the chest and explosions behind your back. I see you’re becoming a regular soldier, my boy!” She pulled another fragment as she spoke. Her ward could not help but burst out laughing through the hot discomfort of the liquor seeping into his wounds and the awkward touch of her tools across his back pulling out pieces of steel.

It was strange but wonderful to him how he could laugh in the middle of these events, in a medic’s quarters having fragments pulled from him and blood cleaned off his back.

Once all the pieces had been pulled from him, Dr. Agrawal dressed the wounds.

“Thanks.” Leander said softly. Both for the treatment and the good laugh.

“I try.” Dr. Agrawal replied. “A good attitude helps everyone. Myself included.”

“Is that how you handle being in the military?” Leander asked.

“All of the labor involved in that is invisible. It happens in the brain. What aspect of the military do you wish to harden yourself against? Fear? Loss? Grief? Everyone thinks about each of them differently.” Dr. Agrawal said. She closed her eyes and smiled contemplatively. “I used to feel a mute pain and pity for everyone around me. Gradually the group of people I mourned for grew smaller, not always by death, but simply by necessity. You’ll start with a big heart in war, but you’ll find that it will shrink.”

“I see. Being honest, I sort of want to weep for all the comrades who lost their lives.” Leander said. He smiled a little. He felt the tears in his eyes but he did not weep. He felt oddly calm. “I do not, though. Perhaps my heart is already hard.”

“It is not. If it were, you would not admit it to yourself so readily.”

“Is it alright to be calm in the middle of this? I’m sitting here awaiting an attack.”

“War is an alien thing, especially in these times. We all process it differently.”

“I suppose that’s just another part of myself I have to figure out.” Leander said.

Dr. Agrawal finished wrapping his bandages and helped him to affix his chest brace anew. She patted him gently on the shoulder with the tips of her fingers, careful to be friendly with her touch but not actually excite his wounds in any way.

“You would be a novel man indeed if you can completely decipher such a thing.”

Leander stood from the bed. He extended his hand toward the doctor and she shook it.

“It is no problem at all comrade.” She said. “This is my reason to live.”

“Will you be staying? With our company, I mean. Or our division? I don’t know.”

Dr. Agrawal chuckled. “I would usually be considered a regimental asset, but perhaps I can convince HQ about the dire need for increased medical care at all levels. But yes, unless misfortune befalls me, I intend to follow your general grouping of men and women as far as we go. I will try to be available specifically to you if that is possible.”

She withdrew a card from her pocket, with her name on it, and handed it to Leander.

“Just show anyone that card if you need care and I will see to it to personally.”

Leander beamed. “Thank you! I would feel much more comfortable that way.”

“I’m glad you appreciate the arrangement.” Dr. Agrawal beamed back. “Until we get to Solstice, I’d like to do what I can to help you. You’re a special patient. I really want you to meet Dr. Kappel. I think it will do you so much good to meet with her.”

“I will definitely make it to Solstice and meet her.” Leander said. Though a part of him wondered why she was so happy to help him, he suppressed this cynicism rapidly and easily. “And maybe you can meet Dr. Kappel yourself as well!”

“Ah, no; I have different people I must meet first if Solstice is ever on my horizon.”

She looked a touch melancholy for a moment, the light wrinkling around her mouth and eyes becoming a bit more pronounced, and a flash of an old pain in her eyes.

Their conversation was cut short before Leander could venture to ask what was wrong and who she might meet instead of her colleague. A uniformed man tapped his fist on the door frame several times and leaned through. He was a little shaken up.

“All HQ staff must prepare for evac, ma’am, and the Private should go out front.”

Dr. Agrawal nodded. “Go on, Leander. And take care.”

Leander followed the beleaguered soldier out to the lobby, where everyone crowded around Sgt. Bahir and a few of his direct subordinates at the door to the FOB.

He sought out Squadron III and easily found Sharna standing about a head taller than anyone else, drumming her fingers along the body of her BKV anti-tank rifle.

Leander regrouped with his comrades and asked them to catch him up on what was happening. He saw people everywhere, and standing at the doorway, Sgt. Bahir spoke determinedly into a radio, but Leander could not hear what he was saying or listening to.

“Supposedly a runner’s coming with information.” Elena said. “Are you well?”

“I’m fine.” Leander sighed. “I was fine before, actually, but I am even better now.”

Elena frowned at him. “You were only a fine way from an infection.”

Shots rang suddenly out across the ruins.

Through the gaps in the bodies around him Leander saw a pair of people running at them from the distance, rifle bullets striking the earth around their feet with sharp cracks.

People started to disperse and he could see better what was going on outside.

It was the forward observers running toward them and under attack, desperately climbing over rubble, squeezing between broken buildings and running across stretches of wide-open street to try to make it to safety. Someone out there was gunning for them.

Men and women from the FOB suddenly leaped over the open window frames and through the door of the lobby and onto the street, their own rifles in hand, and opened fire at the buildings overlooking the thoroughfare to try to cover for the runners.

Leander, stunned, did not join the charge. As he watched things unfold, he felt almost bitterly that he should go fight, but he and his squad stayed behind instead. He felt more than a little foolish huddling in cover with Elena and Sharna and Bonde.

Outside, the situation was confused. Fire fell intermittently, deflecting off rubble or striking the ground near boots and crouched legs. Nobody could find the snipers anywhere at first, until suddenly a bullet carved a bloody hole through the neck of one of the runners, and it seemed that all at once half the company was locked to the same building a block away and firing relentlessly. A body fell from a high window and people ran out to collect it as well as the injured runner, who choked in the street, grasping the wound.

Despite this, bullets continued to fall from nearby rooftops and the battle continued both for the people outside and for the people in the FOB, as the snipers began to put their rounds through the windows and the door with increasing frequency and accuracy.

A burst of chopping gunfire that could have only come from a Norgler fell near the rifle troops outside. The HQ staff began to wave people to cover and distributed guns. Leander picked up a BKV again and aimed out the window, but couldn’t see a thing to shoot. Sharna and Elena filled the air with lead in his stead, and Bonde picked up a scope and scanned the area, but it all seemed hopeless for them from where Leander sat.

A dozen meters away the runners and the soldiers from the FOB linked up, and took cover from the snipers and from the hidden machine gun together. Sgt. Bahir watched them. Unfazed, barely hiding against the building’s door frame, he cast a smoldering look at a cluster of nearby structures. He turned a dial on his radio and called their artillery.

“Company calling for a 120mm barrage on the Dunbe apartment block, hit the rooftops. Three tubes, 15 rounds total across three buildings. Coordinates to follow–”

Minutes later the sound of machine guns and rifles coming from the rooftop was shouted down by the blasting of mortar shells, crashing down in as much of a rolling barrage as three tubes could muster across the rooftops of three adjacent buildings.

Rooftops collapsed under the heavy mortar shells, and smoke and flames belched from the upper floor apartment windows. As the shells fell and the smoke blew Sgt. Bahir waved for the people outside the FOB to run back inside, escorting the live observer and carrying the injured observer and the body of the dead Nocht soldier into safety. Inside they settled the injured observer down on a table, but it was too late. A medic pulled down her eyelids and arranged her hands over her chest. Feeling that the presence of death would upset everyone, a few soldiers were tasked with taking the body out back to be bagged up.

Meanwhile Sgt. Bahir examined the badge on the Nocht soldier.

He picked it up and raised it to his eyes, and everyone around the room could see it.

It was a flower that Leander had never seen before. It was easy to tell that this sniper was a different kind of soldier than the men they had slaughtered around the tanks. He had on a more rugged-looking uniform with a cape and hood and thicker pants, all gray with a strange pattern over them, and his rifle mounted a scope atop.

Clipped to his belt was a folding grappling hook. He was a climber.

“Gebirgsjager.” Sgt. Bahir said. “The edelweiss badge leaves no doubt.”

“Mountaineer troops?” A member of Bahir’s staff asked.

“Yes. Trained for mobility in rough terrain. Such as the ruins all around us.”

“Sergeant!”

Behind them, the remaining observer caught his breath and saluted clumsily.

He was not dressed in a military uniform, but in a vest and shirt and trousers, like a civilian, but with an orange scarf around his neck. Leander wondered if he was a civilian, or just dressed like one. Their observers were dispersed all over the city, watching Nocht’s movements and reporting via radio. What kind of circumstances would force them to run back? From the look of it all, it appeared to Leander that this Gebirgsjager soldier had been hunting the observers. He gulped at the thought of it. Such a feat in such a short span of time certainly made the mountain men of Nocht a lot more frightening an enemy.

The Observer stuttered as he spoke. He looked quite shaken up.

“Sir, the imperialist forces have left the thoroughfare here in the Southeast. They didn’t even move the wrecks from the ambush spot. They’re pushing through the buildings and alleys and taking a circumspect route toward us. I lost track of them sir, I’m sorry. I was attacked and lost my radio in a panic. She and I, we were attacked by them.”

“It’s alright.” Sgt. Bahir put his hands on his shoulder. “You did well. Take a horse from out back and evacuate. Carry her body to her family as well if you can. We thank you both for your service. This should not have been your fight, comrade.”

“Thank you sir.” Still shaking, the Observer was helped out back by staff.

Sgt. Bahir turned around to face all the soldiers on guard around the windows and the doorway, rifles out and looking over the windows and rooftops nearby for more of these Gebirgsjager men. He called them all to attention and pointed them outside. “Everyone gather your equipment. I want as many BKVs in hands as we can spare. We’re abandoning the FOB. Run to the alleys, take the horses and ride to the last line.”

Around him, there was a nodding of heads and the evacuation commenced in a hurry. Squadron III formed up quickly, took their things in shoulder slings and packs, and hurried outside with the rest. Leander suddenly looked forward to meeting a horse.

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28th of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E.

Shaila Dominance – Djose Wood, 8th PzD Headquarters Area

A gruesome ambush unfolded in Knyskna; it was all the more chaotic when witnessed only through the radio. Communication was so incoherent that Dreschner periodically ordered the lines to be cut for a moment so they could take a breather from the noise.

With the fighting dying down Karla Schicksal diligently wrote down the details – it would be up to her to pass on the losses to Oberkommando in a preliminary report via radio. Kampfgruppe K lost an entire platoon of assault guns in Knyskna, and several tanks suffered damage from a ceaseless barrage of heavy mortars that would be difficult to repair. However they managed to destroy key enemy positions in the process, and killed many of the entrenched communists, forcing the ambushers to flee from the site.

Kampfgruppe R was a disaster, having lost a platoon of assault guns, an M4, and suffered damage similar to Kampfgruppe K, broken periscopes and blasted guns that would require them to pull back to the headquarters. They suffered these loses without taking any of the enemy in turn to show for it. In addition Kampfgruppe R‘s main route of advance had been destroyed and they would be slow and vulnerable if they stuck to the plan.

Piling atop these troubles, both Kampfgruppen had seen a total and devastating loss of foot soldiers. Each would have to bury its compliment of Baumgartner’s men.

There was a bright spot.

Kampfgruppe L had also been ambushed, and lost most of its platoon of assault guns to the attack, but it had retreated diligently and inflicted terrible damage to a platoon of communist light tanks, and its compliment of recon troops survived the onslaught.

This was the extent of the good news.

They could not rely on L for their main penetration: the Western thoroughfare, through which L advanced, wound more and took longer to navigate than the south or south-east.

Despite the setbacks, she realized every Kampfgruppe had achieved its (uncontested) initial objectives, therefore the operation was still on schedule.

Could additional movement be possible in these circumstances? Clearly their final objectives would be heavily contested, and the terrain favored the enemy. Driving through the main thoroughfare would leave them open to more ambushes, and there was still the question of breaking through the rubble in a timely fashion. With their depleted manpower, the 8^th Panzer Division’s kampfgruppen in Knyskna might not be able to make it.

Obvious as it seemed with the benefit of hindsight, nobody in the 8th PzD had foreseen the vicious ambushes and the prodigal coordination that had made them possible.

All of the Kampfgruppen had been allowed to advance uncontested toward the ambush points, and had all been struck at almost the same time. Anti-tank rifles at relatively close range had taken tracks and engines. Anti-tank grenades at such ranges scored deadly hits that crippled the vehicles. Their men, inside and out of vehicles, became sitting ducks.

Schicksal sighed audibly. For the most part she felt quite removed from the fighting, as though not really a part of this invading army. But in these moments she felt a sickening sort of solidarity with the poor fools who had been burnt and blasted dead.

She also felt a disgusting complicity. She facilitated their march toward death. She had been a primary medium for many deadly words: “advance!” and “attack!” and so on. While Dreschner gave the orders, so many men heard them through her voice.

Many perhaps found it soothing to do so.

That was probably a key part of her job. Schicksal had a good voice. Did these men feel more inclined to charge into ambush having heard a siren lure them to this course?

Schicksal sighed; she wondered how people reacted to her reports. Would seasoned warriors think about this situation and its participants differently? Was there a different brain in a General or Field Marshal’s skull than the one she had been born with?

She pulled down her glasses and rubbed her temples. She stared long and hard at her radio, her vision blurring in and out of focus and a tight pain flaring across her head as she pressed with her fingers. Her mind was running away with her. She reined it in.

She was just a signals girl, she had no power and no debt of blood to anyone.

Many of these men probably did not even consider her a soldier.

From overhead, Dreschner tapped her on the shoulder with his foot.

“Shicksal!” He called out authoritatively.

“Yes sir!” She replied.

“I order you to eat!” He unexpectedly replied.

Schicksal pulled down her headset and looked over her shoulder.

“Say again sir?”

“You have not eaten a thing in seven hours now. Break open your Keinne and eat.”

“Yes sir.” She said. In the back of her mind she felt he was being quite patronizing. She thought she was just fine. He hadn’t eaten either. But he must have seen her rubbing her head and sighing and staring at her radio with frustration. Obediently Schicksal pulled open a gray pouch on the floor of the tank, along the wall with her radio equipment.

Inside was a can of Fleisch, and bundles of bread and cheese wrapped in wax paper. She spread the creamy, pungent meat paste atop the dark, hard bread and ate, gnawing on the cheese between bites. Beside the bread, meat and cheese they had a large can of mixed vegetables preserved in stock, and sugar candy in the form of little amber rocks.

There was nothing to drink but water.

Schicksal was quick to finish her meal. It fell into her stomach like a stone, and it was all rather bland. Perhaps a bit of oil or mustard would have helped the taste.

She found the repetition of chewing and tasting eerily calming regardless.

While she ate, Brigadier-General Dreschner had thoroughly looked over the same photos for the fifth time, and nodded his head to them. They were all taken days ago and were in Schicksal’s mind mostly useless as a source of information on the current enemy position, but Dreschner was incredibly interested in them. From time to time Dreschner would write something with an ink pen on one of the photos and mutter to himself.

He had invested much into this plan, having received permission to push ahead on his own from the Oberkommando Suden. The High Command wanted movement at any cost, and they were willing to believe that movement could be gained with Dreschner’s limited resources. Dreschner was all too eager to believe he could take Knyskna.

It was an ambitious drive, and though they had planned for a few snags, they had not planned on the level of resistance and ingenuity they were met with. Schicksal always snatched glances of the General as he worked, wondering dimly what went through the mind of a tactician, how he saw the unfolding battle. Did he think anything like she did?

She wondered how he saw the communists too; what he failed to see; what he saw now that could correct his earlier mistakes. It seemed alien to contemplate; and ultimately there was not much of a show for her in watching the man tap and fidget and grit his teeth.

Schicksal made to put her headset back over her hair and turned her back again, but she paused when she heard the General grunt in her direction and felt him tap her on the shoulder again. Graciously, but with an inner sigh, she met his eyes anew.

“Would you like some bread as well sir?” She replied with false cheer.

“No, not that. I’ve got a new route for Kunze and Reiniger to follow.”

Karla feigned interest. “Changing the plan, sir?”

“Our enemy is different than we expected.” Dreschner said.

“Do you think we can still take the rail station before night sir?” She asked.

“Yes.” Dreschner said tersely. Karla wondered whether this was all his pride talking.

But she was just the signals girl.

She listened, and with her soothing voice, she relayed the orders.

“In addition,” Dreschner said, rubbing his chin and smiling with a sudden satisfaction, “Contact Baumgartner and ask if among his men there are any Gebirgsabteilungen soldiers. I want those men in the southeast and the west, advancing into the city, alone. I want them to climb, and I want them to put those hookshots and rifles of theirs to good use.”

Karla nodded.

Dreschner was definitely wrapping his head around the situation now.

She saw it in his eyes.

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This story segment contains scenes of violence and death.

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28-AG-30: Knyskna, Southeast Thoroughfare

Leander felt his heart beating hard in his chest.

He kept himself pressed against a corner of the room, his rifle in a stiff grip in his hands. As the tanks thundered closer the vibrations along the cement walls transferred to his body and sunk deep into his gut. He tried to be strong, and he endured the situation as much as he could, but the noise and smell and the shaking was turning his stomach.

Sharna lay against the wall on the opposite side of a blasted-out window frame from him. Their dilapidated hideout overlooked the road and made a prime sniping spot – Sharna herself picked it out. She raised her finger to her mouth to signal quiet, and shifted her eyes toward the window. Leander stood carefully beside the frame and peered out.

A column of five assault guns, turretless tanks, advanced in a tight formation, two wide, two deep with a fifth vehicle trailing behind. Leander had committed to memory pictures of the tanks they would be facing, and knew these to be M3 Hunters.

With their guns mounted on the right side of the tank, they would have to turn dramatically to attack Leander’s position, which menaced them from their left. Their awkward design, lack of a machine gun and their engine power meant, according to the notes he had read, that they would be quite vulnerable during such a maneuver.

He took heart in this weakness and hoped he could exploit it.

But the tanks were not completely alone.

Among the armored column traveled over fifteen men, three in a motorcycle, but most on foot – the motorcycle had to start and stop and struggle through the debris beneath and around the column. They were not outfitted for house to house fighting. They had no automatic weapons, only long bolt-action rifles like the ones Leander saw them use when fighting in the woods, and they seemed to struggle with the terrain as they moved.

In addition to the men Leander still heard noises in the distance of tanks blasting at debris, so he knew that the vanguard of the enemy probably counted on reinforcements. Their ambush had to be sprung soon before the rest of the enemy’s tanks caught up to the vulnerable M3s. Every additional tank cratered their chances of success.

Everyone waited for the signal to attack. Below them the Nochtish men kept their eyes to the road and advanced clumsily. Whenever they looked overhead they focused on roofs and balconies and cast only brief glances. They did not know that the buildings ahead and around them were taken up by men and women ready to die fighting them.

When Sgt. Agewa or Sgt. Ibori launched their attacks, it was likely that knowledge of this would be disseminated quickly across Nocht’s forces. They would become far more aware of their surroundings. It was critical to launch their ambushes as soon as possible and with some level of coordination. This was the importance of their radios.

Leander looked behind himself, across the ruined room, where a depression in the floor led to a fairly intact staircase. Elena and Bonde crouched there, waiting to ambush any troops that rushed into the building – and also listening to the backpack radio. When it was time to attack, Elena would let them know with a thumbs up from the staircase.

Leander lifted his rifle for no specific purpose. He could not yet fire, but with every movement he felt more used to its weight, better able to heft it and aim down the sights and quickly take a shot. It was not so different from a Bundu, it was only heavier.

He moved it, and pulled bolt to check the chamber, and felt that these small things could be preparation enough. It helped keep him focused through the rumbling.

“Shoot at the tanks ahead of the column. That will slow them all down.” Sharna said softly, fidgeting absentmindedly with the length of her rifle. “Try to hit the flat, depressed bed right behind the cannon housing. It is the thinnest armor, and right over the engine.”

“Alright,” Leander mouthed, nodding his head to acknowledge her.

They heard a light tapping on the floor behind them, and looked back to see Elena’s hand, raised in a thumbs-up. The time had come for the ambush.

Sharna and Leander stood fully erect against opposite sides of the window frame, their rifles in hand. In this position they were still concealed from the enemy, but could easily fire and take cover before the infantry could get them. They were ready to fight.

Nocht’s tank column was now a short ways past their building, but still well within the BKV rifle’s optimal anti-armor range of 100 to 300 meters. Leander’s five-round internal magazine was already loaded, and he only needed to shoot – the BKV was semi-automatic, a real marvel of a weapon. Leander hardly knew the advantages of this trait.

Sharna took a deep, audible breath, braced her rifle against her shoulder, raised the barrel out the hole in the window frame and took aim while standing on her feet.

In an instant she opened fire, a loud echoing boom issuing from the gun as its 14.5 mm projectile screamed out, the stock pounding against Sharna’s shoulder but hardly rocking her expert stance. She stabilized within seconds and fired again.

Leander stifled a surprised gasp at her and hastily joined the attack, aiming poorly and letting loose a hasty shot – the round ripped from the barrel with a noise like thunder, and the stock pounded his shoulder and nearly pushed him a step back. It was certain to bruise.

The projectile struck the lower left side of an M3 and did seemingly nothing to the track. In a panic the enemy footsoldiers raised their guns and opened on the window.

Leander returned immediately to cover.

From three buildings across the street came similar volleys of sustained anti-tank fire.

Sharna ignored the enemy’s rounds pounding uselessly against the concrete wall around her. She leaned out and fired twice more at Leander’s previous target in quick succession, punching two visible holes into the bed behind the cannon housing.

Her target stalled, black wisps fuming from inside the engine compartment.

Under accurate fire from a building directly overlooking it, four smoking holes quickly appeared on the bed of another leading M3, causing it to stall near its companions.

Nochtish men huddled behind rocks and near stalled tanks, shouting Hinterhalt! as the battle was joined in earnest. With their way blocked by their immobilized lead tanks the remaining three M3s in the back started the laborious process of turning, slowly shifting their glacis plates so that their guns could face toward the buildings and open fire.

“Tracks now, try to aim for the tracks!” Sharna shouted, pausing to work her bolt and load a new clip. “Aim for the farthest tank from you to get a straighter shot at it!”

Leander shifted a step out of cover, swinging the barrel of his gun out of the window and taking aim across the street from his building, where an M3 committed to a ninety degree turn to fire on them. He took aim at the tracks and fired.

His first shot struck the hull plate over the tracks. Enemy fire forced him back to cover.

Because the gun was so large he was unused to thinking of it as semi-automatic – it felt like it should naturally be bolt-action like the Bundu and so he did not rap the trigger or fire successively before going into cover at the sight of retaliatory gunfire.

He had the shoot-and-hide muscle movements from the Bundu too close in mind.

Breathing deep, he stepped out of cover to shoot, this time aiming a touch lower.

Sharna joined him, her rifle now reloaded; Leander’s shot punched through one of the road wheels, blowing it out, and Sharna took out two in quick succession. Under this violence the track split completely, stalling the tank mid-turn and helpless to respond to the ambush. From the opposite side of the street, anti-tank grenades flew toward the immobilized tanks, setting ablaze their stalled engines and smashing holes in their cannons.

Anti-tank fire fell relentlessly upon the hatches and sides of the stalled tanks. Under this onslaught three tanks were rendered useless and their hatches flew open, the crew running out to the street with pistols out and screaming audible nonsense into hand radios.

Stray rifle rounds struck the window frame, kicking up tiny wisps of plaster and cement dust. Sharna and Leander hid again. Nocht’s men were rallying in ever more vigorous support of their tanks, the shock of the ambush fading from them. They aimed for the windows with greater fervor, and though sporadic their fire endangered the snipers.

But the AT rifles were not alone: peeking over the window again with great care Leander saw automatic fire pouring out of the lower floors of the buildings, bouncing off tanks and cutting across the positions of Nocht’s riflemen. Caught in the crossfire several Noctish men fell instantly to the automatic bursts, riddled with bullets in the middle of the road. Several men rushed desperately onto the remains of the streets and charged into the buildings with their pistols out – more easily manageable in close quarters than their rifles.

From behind him, Leander heard the belabored thumping of the DNV light machine guns as Bonde and Elena fought back against the incoming home invaders.

Hidden along the staircase, they could fire on anyone trying to pass the building’s open doorway, as well deliver suppressing fire over the thoroughfare. Their raid on the Djose must have taken its toll on Nocht’s forces, because no grenades or other explosives were flung toward the buildings to dislodge the defenders – the sounds of battle grew decidedly one-sided as the cries and guns of Nochtish men were silenced. DNVs beat like drums from the lower floors. Joined by the booming of intermittent BKV fire this cacophony overwhelmed the mechanical chugging and snapping of Nocht’s weapons.

Leander pulled the bolt on his rifle and loaded a new clip – the bundles were large and difficult to manage, especially while standing with his back awkwardly to a wall.

“You need to shoot more before hiding, Leander,” Sharna said. She was already through two clips, loading her third; Leander was just now reloading for the first time.

Nodding, Leander maneuvered his rifle out of the window to fire once more.

Two remaining tanks had managed to complete their turns and now faced the row of buildings across the street from his position. Leander’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the guns climbing. There were more of their comrades on that side of the street, and their fire had drawn the most attention. He spotted several snipers on the targeted windows, desperately firing into the glacis and gun mantlet of the M3 to no avail.

Alone, their weapons could not stop what was coming.

“Spirits defend,” Sharna gasped, “We have to help them Leander!”

From her pouch, Sharna sought out an anti-tank stick grenade, and found a single, solitary example among a few useless fragmentation grenades. While she prepared to throw it, and at a loss for how else to help, Leander fired three shots into the engine bed of the tank closest to him in quick succession, the BKV stock pounding into his shoulder.

He struck the bed several times at a good angle, smashing through to the engine housing but with seemingly no immediate effect. Sharna took the opportunity to throw her primed grenade at the tank below, aiming to exploit the damage Leander had caused to the engine housing. Those 700 grams of explosive encased in the grenade detonated on contact and blew open a great hole into the weakened engine hatch. Flames burst up from the exposed engine compartment and spread dangerously across the back of the tank.

It was not enough – the vehicle clung on to life. Even as the fire spread they saw the assault gun adjust its cruel aim. Assuredly in its death throes, the gun still readied to fire. There was now no way for Leander and Sharna to stop what was coming.

The M3 Hunter had raised its 75mm cannon as high as the short-barreled gun would elevate. With a dying roar it launched a high-explosive shell through the window across the street, past several snipers still firing in a panic. It detonated behind them.

Leander felt the explosion like a shockwave sinking through his flesh.

Fire and smoke expanded from the windows and doors, casting out burning, dying bodies onto the street. The roof burst from the inside out and showered the thoroughfare in cement chunks, and the upper floor collapsed entirely, burning and burying the machine gunners guarding the doorways. Five meters away the fifth M3, almost entirely unharmed in the chaos, opened fire on a building further down the street, its cannon smashing open the facade and ejecting snipers from the second floor with a crash of thunder. The snipers landed unceremoniously on the streets, instantly dead from their expulsion.

Moments later the vehicle below them had become an inferno.

Leander and Sharna’s previous target had had enough, and the fires finally spread to the ammo racks. From the inside out the great, murderous assault gun burst into pieces with an explosion that forced Leander and Sharna instantly to cover despite their shock.

Whether it had roasted its crew inside it they did not know, but finally the M3 Hunter lay ripped apart along the road. In the span of a few minutes three other assault guns, numerous men, but most importantly, many of their comrades, lay dead with it.

One assault gun remained, and it was unsatisfied with the bloodshed. It once again began to turn, this time casting its murderous cannon directly at Leander’s position.

Bonde ran up to the second floor, loading a new pan magazine atop his empty DNV as he went, and with Elena trailing close behind him and standing guard by the steps. They too had sought cover from the explosion happening almost right in front of them. “We’re abandoning the building. Gather your things quickly. We’ve got time before it shoots.”

Leander and Sharna peeled themselves away from the window, and nodded in silent shock. Leander still felt as though the blast were rolling over him.

Together the crew gathered pouches of ammunition and grenades, clipping them to their belts as they rushed down the steps, Elena and Bonde leading with their machine guns. They each fired a burst out into the streets at any men who might have been cowering somewhere, injured but alive. Seeking new cover the group ran out of the ruin and put their backs to one of the smoking husks, stepping over the dead and the unconscious dying.

Behind them they heard the tank moving and cracking of its gun as it elevated. The squadron crouched near the debris and the hull of a broken M3 and they covered their heads. A 75mm high explosive shell flew into the window that had once been their sniping position and blasted the inside of the building. Chunks of hot concrete and smoke poured out over the street. They heard the tank’s tracks laboring to move once again.

“Does anyone have an AT grenade we can throw at it?” Elena asked.

“Only frags left in my pouch.” Sharna replied, and looked to her fellow anti-tank specialist. Leander silently raised his hand from his grenade pouch, holding a Faru-Kombora 28 or FKB-28 stick grenade, the communist’s AT grenade model.

It was their only one left.

“Do you think you can get close and hit the back?” Bonde said solemnly.

Leander gulped, the fire and smoke and the dead still flashing in his mind.

It was time to be brave.

He set his shoulders and forced his shaking voice.

“I can do it. I just need some covering fire or a distraction.” He said.

Elena looked grimly at him, hands gripping her machine gun as if to say it was useless.

“I think I can keep it busy.” Sharna said. “I can break its periscope and try to put something in the barrel and hatches. I can be very annoying! There are small targets all over the face of that tank I can hit, even if I can’t destroy it by doing so.”

“I guess that will have to do.” Elena said. She patted Leander on the back.

“Run out first, Sharna. Use the debris. Find a good spot.” Bonde said.

With the sling around her shoulder, Sharna confidently rested her BKV against her hip. She held the weapon with one hand on the carrying handle affixed to the barrel, and the other on the trigger guard. Leander nodded to her in the direction he intended to run out from – Sharna nodded back and took position away from it, bracing herself.

She left cover as close to the opposite side of the street as she could, running out into the open and briefly staring down the tank. From the hip she fired her BKV twice at its face – the heavy rounds blasted open the periscope and sank into the front of the leftmost track and took chunks from the treads wrapped around it. A strained noise issued from them as the track began to churn and the tank moved forward. Sharna rushed away from it and took cover behind a collapsed portion of the roof recently shattered by the M3.

Leander marveled for a moment at Sharna’s grace with the BKV – she could carry it and heave it much more competently than he could, and shoot it much more accurately. Perhaps it was her size relative to him, but more likely it was her experience.

“You’re up Leander,” Bonde said. “May the ancestors be with you!”

“Don’t do anything foolish. Throw and hide!” Elena added.

Taking a deep breath, Leander plunged out of cover in the opposite direction from Sharna, scrambling over the fallen men. While in cover he had hardly noticed them, but in motion they all seemed to reappear, staring at him from the earth, bleeding from dozens of wounds across their gray uniforms and unable to even raise their pistols to stop him.

He thought he heard the moaning of their souls in the process of leaving behind their ruined bodies as he ran around the husks they once defended.

Almost on reflexes alone he weaved between the wrecks of the other tanks, using them to conceal himself as he ran closer to the remaining enemy vehicle.

More BKV shots rang out from Sharna’s position and from far up the street, where the last remaining BKV team still lay in hiding and now found occasion again to provide their support. All the shots bounced harmlessly off the tank, but Leander heard the target’s tracks stop and the sound of its gun clanking and groaning as it adjusted elevation.

They had drawn its attention away. Now, however, it threatened his comrades as it had done before, and any one shot would be too much for them. It had to be stopped.

Keeping himself on its left to avoid the gun, Leander ran out into the open, just a few meters from the monster. He threw his anti-tank grenade overhead as best as he could.

Having no immediate and good cover, he hit the dirt and crawled near low-lying rubble.

He closed his eyes and heard the grenade explode atop the vehicle and felt a wave of heat washing suddenly over him. Only a moment later he heard tracks again, and his heart sank. Did he not manage to stop it? He stood and got a grip on his BKV, intending to shoot it anywhere he could in a desperate bid to stop the thing once and for all–

Bonde and Elena opened up on the tank with their machine guns from up the street, despite having no hope of penetrating the thing. Leander realized that it was not moving forward, but retreating carefully down the street, its damaged track rattling as it moved.

Smoke blew from atop the machine, and a hunk of shattered metal flapped against its side. He had blown open the top hatch! Its interiors were now vulnerable.

Leander was breathing again suddenly, ragged, his eyes drawn open, his mind racing to process the opportunity. As his allies’ DNV machine gun fire crashed uselessly against the face of the retreating tank, Leander reached into his pockets and drew his bundle of frag grenades. Purging his mind of dissenting thoughts Leander charged headlong again toward the vehicle, closing physically as fast as he could with the giant machine.

He instantly heard an incoherent screaming from behind him. All machine guns stopped firing lest they kill him as they had done the men lying around him.

He could hear in his head Elena’s voice distinctly asking if he had lost his mind; but he knew he had to move then, as he had in the forest. With a damaged track the vehicle’s movements had been reduced to a careful creep to avoid splitting its treads completely.

Leander ran with all his might and caught up.

He ran alongside the machine, pulling the pins on several grenades and then tossing the entire pouch through the smoking hatch. He heard the deadly metallic ringing of the grenades bouncing down off the commander’s seat and around the interior.

Still running he turned immediately and hurtled away from it as fast as he could, making for any kind of cover from what was about to transpire. He was still running when the blasts began, making his way across the street. It was an instantaneous chaos behind him. Fragments, heat and smoke blew first from the hatch, and then the ammunition stored inside the machine felt its share of the violence as the remaining grenades exploded.

From the inside-out the tank burst open as its stored shells detonated.

Hunks of steel blew from the vehicle’s punctured sides and roof, and when the engine blew the tank almost leaped. Leander heard the pieces flying off the battered machine, whizzing across the air with deadly new life, its rivets, hatches, glass, everything was now ammo. Hundreds of tiny fragments and projectiles blew over him like a cloud, stinging his back and scraping his sides, falling like metallic ashes from a mechanical volcano.

As he set foot on the adjacent street Leander threw himself with all his strength into an open doorway as the larger pieces of burning steel came crashing down around the street, sure to kill whoever they fell upon. He made it to the safety of a building’s interior.

Rolling on the ground in pain; flailing his arms as though trying to beat insects or snakes off his body; blowing out labored breaths as though they could cool the burning metal pinpricks across his back. In this brief, annihilating moment of agony Leander had hardly any time to process that he had almost single-handedly destroyed a tank.

Outside, the street was covered in smoke and fire and metal that any advancing force would have to clear. The ambush had made its indelible mark on the fighting.

No one could be under any illusions, however, that they had stopped Nocht.

As he thrashed over a mound of pulverized concrete and tried to batter down the hot pain across his back, Leander became acutely aware of new sources of noise.

Fresh explosions thundered in the distant parts of the thoroughfare, and Leander, dazed by adrenaline and still in pain, thought it had to be the ammunition in the tank still going off. However, the retorts from cannons soon became unmistakable.

Shots began to fall closer to the ambush sector.

Within minutes he saw the first shell making landfall directly outside his building, and he felt the rumbling of the blast drive right through him like an invisible knife.

Leander forced himself to his feet, grit his teeth against the pain and climbed out of a side window and into a nearby alley. He saw Sharna running up the street and he joined her without looking back, hugging the buildings as he went for what minimal concealment the awnings and collapsed facades might give him from the tanks. Bonde and Elena were not far behind, and vacated their position as Leander and Sharna ran past.

Soon every survivor from the forward platoons was running pell-mell across the ruins.

“How many are coming up?” Leander shouted over the throng.

“It’s a fresh platoon, probably five more tanks. We’ve lost more than half the forces we had here. We can’t stand and fight any longer.” Bonde replied. He seemed stricken suddenly with a thought. “I think it’s about time we called in a favor.”

He paused for a moment, and then he withdrew his flare gun.

Sharna and Elena almost skidded to a stop ahead of them, looking back to see what was keeping their comrades. Bonde raised the gun overhead on a shaking hand.

“Can those three mortars we have left even damage a tank?” Elena asked.

“If they’re 120mm then they might be able to.” Sharna said.

Leander looked back on the street as well in time to see Bonde shoot.

Briefly he saw the M4s charging in the distance, until Bonde launched the flare over the road in as far and high an arc as he could. Before the first shells were even loaded from across the thoroughfare the team began to run again, joining anew the remainder of their company’s forces also fleeing from the sector. Soon the shells began to fall around the advancing M4’s, kicking up dust, rattling the hulls and putting strain on the tracks.

The M4s fired on the retreating forces with their 50mm cannons, but once the platoons dispersed into the ruins they became impossible to directly hit with cannons. Even so, Elena would not yet get her clear answer as to whether the mortars could damage the tanks.

Nobody was looking back into the midst of the shells and the enemy cannon fire.

Under the cover of the mortars and across the rubble-strewn road, the company left behind that bloody, ruined block of houses and the road between them, dotted with bodies and the wrecks of tanks shredded by BKVs and grenades. Their next position was the FOB.

In all, the fighting around that lost block, that had claimed so many lives and tanks, had lasted only minutes, and much of the Nochtish force remained intact.

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28-AG-30: Djose Wood, 8th PzD Headquarters Area

Karla Schicksal maintained radio communication with the different Kampfgruppe, tracking their progress and reporting to Dreschner, seated above her in the Befehlspanzer with his headphones off, tapping his fingers on the iron walls of the tank.

Kampfgruppe K under the command of Lt. Kunze was advancing sluggishly toward its first objectives in the southeast; Kampfgruppe L under Lt. Lenz made decent progress in the West despite tight roads and rubble; Kampfgruppe R under Lt. Reiniger, tasked with the important main thoroughfare in the South, was not cooperating with her.

Schicksal contacted Reiniger various times, and very few times did he reply.

She did not at all intend to cover for him, but she gave him some slack, knowing him a capable enough officer and a willful sort. Reporting to Dreschner, she told him that everything was going to plan and that no engagements were reported. He was satisfied enough with this. “Tell them to give a detailed report at the first objective areas.”

“Yes sir.” She replied. This type of instruction appealed to her. Dreschner being hands-off in these situations was for the best. It meant she had to make no judgment calls.

She sent the message to each crew in turn. Though the Befehlspanzer’s radio could collect multiple frequencies worth of incoming audio in one feed that she and Dreschner could hear, it could only transmit to specific Kampfgruppe channels at a time.

Dreschner hardly ever listened in – it distracted him.

After sending her instructions and receiving replies, she would notify him of what was said instead. Late morning and early noon passed slowly this way, hearing routine reports. She liked the voices of the men (and the very few women) on the radio – the dedicated signals officers were soft spoken and had clear, interesting voices, unlike the fighting crew.

By noon the first objectives should have been seized, and enemy contact long ago reported. Kunze reported his objective and held for instructions; Lentz did the same; both reported no enemy contact. Reiniger reported nothing. Schicksal gave him the benefit of the doubt at first, but then Kunze and Lentz reported advances towards their second objectives, and Reiniger still did not call. He was far past due for a reprimand now.

Schicksal could no longer ignore Reiniger’s foolishness.

She put down her headset and turned on her seat to face General Dreschner, who noticed immediately. “Something wrong?” He asked, still drumming his fingers on the steel.

“Lt. Reiniger’s reports have been sporadic and vague, and for the past hour or so he has not reported anything at all. What’s more worrying sir, is that none of the Kampfgruppe have reported enemy contacts at all throughout the operation. Something is not right.”

“Of course, it had to be Reiniger,” Dreschner grit his teeth. “That insubordinate clod. Had he any less skill or any less trust from his men I would sack him.”

“What should I do, sir?”

“Contact the fool and put him through to me. Accept no excuses.”

Schicksal nodded and put her headset back on and indicated for Dreschner to do the same. She turned back to her radio set, turned the dial to the correct frequency, and picked up her transmitter. Flipping a switch, she spoke calmly into her transmitter.

“8th PzD HQ to Lt. Reiniger, report your progress and disposition, this is 8th PzD–”

“Progress and disposition is everything’s fucked, lady!” Lt. Reiniger shouted.

Schicksal cringed from the sudden, sharp cracking of his voice over the radio.

She heard gunfire around him and the sharp retort of his tank’s cannon firing. Despite the ambient noise it was the voices that disturbed her the most. She had never heard Reiniger sound so anxious and so loud. Dreschner was by that point listening in with his own headset. His face was contorting with anger and confusion. He tapped his headset.

“I’m here as well you thug, do not shout into the radio!” Dreschner said.

Reiniger paused at the Brigadier-Generals’ voice. They heard nothing but his breathing for an awkward moment. “Well, shit sir. I thought I could fix it myself but I’m afraid I’m gonna have to report, we have just gone and lost some tanks to the commies.”

“Explain you miserable idiot! Why have you not been reporting your advance?”

“Sir,” Reiniger began, which for him, was rare and dire a thing to say indeed, “Kampfgruppe R captured its objectives early and met no resistance. I ordered them to advance until they made contact with an enemy, and I was so focused on command–”

“You clown! Of course they were trying to lead you into an ambush!”

“I’m going to need a losses report for the Logistics crew,” Schicksal meekly interjected.

Dreschner waited with clenched teeth and fists for Reiniger to deliver the report.

“Six tanks knocked out.” Reiniger said, his voice growing more guttural and restrained, as though he felt the General’s hands choking him. “All escorts and their motorcycles too.”

“How the hell did this happen?” Dreschner shouted suddenly.

Reiniger devolved into a pronounced stutter. “They blew up the floor right from under ’em. We didn’t know there was a sewer or bombs there sir! All the assault guns collapsed or blew up, and an M4 fell in from not retreating fast enough. All the men had been clearing a minefield when the charges went off, so it took them all too. Remaining M4s are retreating back to the first objectives. But sir, I believe we’ve got a bigger problem.”

Schicksal’s head hurt, Dreschner and Reiniger’s shouting bouncing around inside her skull. Dreschner was shaking from head to toe in anger, and he spoke as though to an archenemy rather than a subordinate. “You are dangerously close to the edge Lieutenant! I should like to know what you have to report, with your record this blackened!”

There was audible gulping on the other end. “We’ve been trying to fight back with just the M4’s but their High Explosive is garbage. I’ve got reports that even the fucked-up–”

“Mind your filthy tongue when you talk to me you pig!” Dreschner shouted. Schicksal nearly cried out in pain, her hands going up to her earpieces and almost ripping them from her head. She had barely restrained herself from doing so in Dreschner’s presence.

“The M4’s guns can’t even break the ruined buildings the communists are hiding in, sir.” Reiniger said, clearly putting in the effort to affect a dialect more in kind with Dreschner and Schicksal’s speech. “Sir, we need more 75mm assault guns out here and fast if we want to break the main thoroughfares. That 50mm won’t cut it, sir, it’s too limited!”

“Your head is too limited.” Dreschner said, in a low and bitter voice that was far more comforting for Schicksal than the screaming. “You know we don’t have equal amounts of M3s and M4s. Your men will hold their position until the next wave of your Company reaches them, and those will be the last assault guns you will receive, Reiniger.”

Dreschner swiped his hand across his own neck, and Schicksal turned the dial, cutting Reiniger off. Immediately the Brigadier-General turned around and tore some photos that had been taped up from the wall of the tank. He pored over them, flipping between them rapidly, looking over the South roads as photographed days and days ago.

“Knyskna’s main thoroughfare is wide enough for a larger formation than the five-tank advances we were using.” He said, aloud but to himself, Schicksal knew. His mind was racing through possible options. “Six tanks, two rows of three, both M4 and M3.”

He looked up from the photos, and then back down, but at Schicksal instead of his own hands. “Send word to Kunze and Lentz to watch for ambush and avoid overextension. They will expand cautiously past the first objective, with an eye toward the roofs–”

Schicksal turned the dial mindlessly to execute the order, but the radio rewarded her efforts with a blast of static and noise that pummeled her senses.

She winced and stifled a cry, almost in tears now from the unprecedented abuse her ears had received in such a short span, but ever the professional she grit her teeth and got to work, adjusting the sound as best as she could with the radio’s controls. Within moments the mess of noise and static became the frantic voices of Kunze and his tank commanders and the ambient chaos around them, together flooding through the airwaves.

“They’re under attack sir!’ She said. “Kampfgruppe K was ambushed in the southeast!”

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28-AG-30: Knyskna, Southeast Inner Boroughs FOB

Knyskna’s southeastern thoroughfare began out in the Djose, along a dirt road that passed through and connected the wood and the field into the city proper. Along the edge of the city the dirt road transitioned to a paved thoroughfare, and sparse blocks of buildings spread many meters apart and flanked the road. Despite this it remained tighter than the main southern road or the western road, and grew more so the deeper it extended.

Unlike both of those roads, Southeast Knyskna curved sharply in two places. First it bent starkly northwest out of the outer boroughs and into the inner city portion of the thoroughfare, and then it cut even more sharply westward to connect to the city center.

It had been a place full of homes and canteens, markets hosting the villagers that had come from out of the Djose, and artisans of similar origin. Compared to the grandiose main thoroughfare with its theaters and drug stores and its big names written in lights, the southeast was comfortable and homey and had played host to many little peoples.

One could have called it a historic place.

Yet many days ago the Luftlotte’s attack hit this little-known place hardest. Bombers avoided the heavy air defenses south of the city by looping around the Djose and closing in from the east, and the little-known markets, canteens and homes, and the little-known villagers that lived and worked there, were caught in the blaze.

Explosives disgorged brick and wood and cement in mounds over the road, and toppled whole structures over the thoroughfare. People ran screaming as the air raid sirens blared and the world collapsed around them. There was little difference now between the thoroughfare and the alleyways and streets branching from them – all of the outer borough and most of the inner borough had become a maze choked at every turn with rubble.

Tanks and motorcycle troops would find it hard to operate in the choked southeastern boroughs, at least until they made it to the cleaner westward bend into the city center.

So the plan was contingent on keeping them in the rubble as long as possible.

Forward observers had already spotted the tanks moving into the city.

Knyskna’s 824th Lion Company, under Sergeant Bahir in the absence of their deceased Lieutenant, counted on the inhospitable terrain as their chief advantage.

Facades that had been blown open by bombs revealed ruined interiors to the wandering troops. Standing doorways opened toward choked stairways and largely collapsed stories, the remaining high ground accessible by climbing the mounds of rubble in the rooms.

Many buildings that from the outside still seemed to stand were occupied only by their collapsed upper floors, each story piled directly atop the ground floor. These were useless to the Company. Most buildings sadly were: they had largely become indistinct hills of piled rock, and a few had been blasted to the point that they were nothing but stark, chalky foundation lines. The material that once stood over these lines now littered the roads, in many cases blocking off those pathways. In places it was as though whole buildings had been plucked from the earth and casually thrown over alleys and across the main street.

Forward elements of 824th Company assembled deep the inner city portion of the southeast thoroughfare. The buildings there were just right for a temporary base.

Eight-Two-Four had established a Forward Operating Base in a large building just off the corner from where the thoroughfare bent westward. Most of the rooftop and third floor had collapsed, but two other floors had their walls and facade mostly intact.

There were many good and sturdy window frames to shoot out of, big rooms to hold meetings and store supplies, and many of the neighboring buildings shared a similar condition. Therefore it was an accessible, defensible position that was not immediately discernible to the enemy. Advancing forces would only see a ruin before it was too late.

Inside, a 45mm anti-tank gun laid in ambush, pointed south off the bend and ready to hit any tanks trying to make the turn unawares – hopefully in the flanks. In a pinch, it could also be elevated to fire over the rubble as long as a radio observer could sight for it.

It was poor artillery, but it was the only field gun they had at the FOB.

A gaggle of troops waited for orders. The FOB temporarily housed the defenders, their weapons and ammunition and their one good long-range radio receiver. The defenders consisted of two platoons forward, forty-eight soldiers in total. Their remaining platoon was three kilometers away preparing another defensive line, with their two Orc tanks in position and their three functioning 120mm Mortars ready to support the forward elements.

Stationed at the rear, an anti-aircraft gun of 85mm caliber was depressed as low as it could go to use as a last-resort direct fire gun for the very last line of the defense.

All the combat platoons were incomplete. Nobody had what was written on paper.

Soldiers were needed to help Bahir as a headquarters troop. In addition several soldiers huddled in alleyways along the thoroughfare, given the crucial task of caring for the horses that would quickly transport survivors between the defensive lines if a retreat was ever necessary. Trucks and tanks would have just slowed them down if used in this role.

Ambush platoons prepared for battle. They knew all too well now that their position bore the crucial task of delaying the enemy as much as possible. From crates laid down atop the uneven, rock-strewn floors of the FOB, the forward troops picked up new weapons.

Men and women lined up, trading their Rasha submachine guns and Bundu bolt-action rifles for heavier weapons: DNV-28 Light Machine Guns, long automatic rifles that loaded from ninety-round pans set across the top of the weapon; and the pipe-like BKV Anti-Tank rifles, large and somewhat unwieldy. Everyone had pouches of grenades, and even a few explosive mines. A few persons, dispersed among the squads, received backpack radios.

Leander was one of the men lining up for a new weapon. In the distance, he heard the explosions, and saw clouds of cement dust and shell smoke mingling over the far end of the outer borough. Nocht tanks were blasting their way in. A quartermaster gave him a BKV and a side-arm, a small semi-automatic pistol that fit his delicate hands well. He did not have a proper holster for a side-arm, however. He stowed it in an empty pouch.

He grouped up with his squadron in one of the rooms on the ground floor, a nursery that was empty save for a strangely macabre series of baby cribs untouched by the violence. He was quite happy that Bonde and Elena remained with him. They had both been given DNV LMGs, and both of them seemed daunted by the chances their weapons stood against a Panzerdivision. Elena also carried the additional burden of a backpack radio, while Bonde once again bore a signal flare gun, with the same purpose as before.

“Looks like we’ll be depending on Leander to help us with the tanks.” Bonde said.

Leander gulped. “I’m not sure why they decided I’d be suited for this.”

“I’m positive they just handed these out randomly.” Elena said.

“Got any advice?” Leander asked his comrades, sounding helpless.

“I learned a little bit from basic training. Aim for flat surfaces in the back of the tank, the tops of the turrets, or at the wheels between the treads. Those spots tend to be vulnerable to BKVs. Don’t shoot at the front armor – it is too thick for that gun.” Bonde said.

“Yes, that. What he said to do.” Elena shrugged. Leander smiled at her.

“Hujambo!”

Reflexively, the squad replied to the traditional greeting with Hujambo! of their own. A young Arjun woman walked through the open doorway, a BKV rifle slung over her shoulder, and stood before them. She bowed a little. She had a vibrant face, with a lovely smile and a richly brown complexion and long, silky black hair down to the waist. Her build was somewhat round and plump for her size, which was actually rather tall.

Leander thought she had probably been a civilian like him.

“I’m Private Sharna Mahajan.” She said, still smiling at them all. “I was told this is where Squad Three was meeting. I’ve been assigned here as an Anti-Tank riflewoman!”

Elena and Bonde stared at her, but Leander did not find her enthusiasm strange at all. Her cheer felt contagious, and soon Leander was replying back in a gregarious tone of voice as well. “Yes, you’ve got the right place comrade! We are happy to join hands in the struggle! Did you get your rifle out of a crate purely at random as well?”

“Oh no comrade, this is my rifle. I completed my training a few years ago and took a leave until things took a turn recently. My platoon was mostly lost in the Djose assault, so I was reassigned. You will be pleased to know I am a dedicated AT riflewoman.”

Leander clapped his hands. Elena and Bonde’s jaws hung, looking stunned.

Aside from Sergeant Bahir, Private Mahajan was then perhaps the first real, fully trained soldier either of them had personally met. They quickly moved ahead of Leander and shook Sharna’s hand, and she smiled and laughed and shook hands very graciously.

Leander thought nothing of it and joined the hand shaking, until Sharna’s hands were thoroughly shaken.

“Ahh, so welcoming!” She giggled. “You all are nothing like my old squadron from the 8243rd. So stodgy. May their spirits rest in peace!” She clasped her hand together as though in prayer and quickly muttered an Arjun chant under her breath, without turning her face away from her squad mates or breaking eye contact at all. It was strange for Leander, who knew very little about Arjun traditions. They were the majority of the Ayvartan population, but Leander had never had much cause to interact deeply with them.

“We are quite glad to serve with you.” Elena said

“Might I ask who our squad leader is?” Sharna said.

Elena pointed at Bonde. “That would be this guy. Private First-Class Bonde Okiro.”

“I received the promotion this morning.” Bonde said. “It is not important.”

Sharna saluted him. “I’ll follow all orders to the best of my abilities. I can hit a field mouse from 500 meters away, and I have already destroyed a vehicle in this war!”

Leander whistled, standing in awe of the woman. “Was it a tank?” He asked.

“It was a motorcycle! My BKV shot took the front wheel off!” She declared proudly.

There was a bit of silence for a moment as Sharna puffed herself up with victory.

“Well, that is better than what any of us have personally done.” Elena said soberly.

“Does the armored car count? I feel like I did a lot to it.” Leander said.

Nobody responded.

They heard a whistle from outside the room and gathered by the door to the hostel with a variety of people from the other squadrons. Atop a small, ruined indoor fountain, Sergeant Bahir stood over the platoons. He lifted his fist into the air, extending his arm completely.

A few people in the room joined him, Bonde one of them.

The fist was a revolutionary gesture that arose within the groups that became the KVW and overthrow the Empire; but its use declined except with the more fervent communists.

Sgt. Bahir held the fist for a full minute, his head bowed.

“It is sad to me how this gesture has been made to disappear.” He said.

Everyone in the crowd stood at attention. They stood to take in their orders, to hear the plan – but Leander knew they also, more than that, wanted to hear that they stood a chance. So far the war was something none of them could have seen coming, and every battle had ended in defeat and retreat. Leander had heard the others talk of officers killed in bombings, of tanks lost by the hundreds in the Tukino pocket. He himself was motivated enough – he wanted to see Solstice. But as a whole the troops needed reassuring.

Sgt. Bahir gestured out past a blasted window frame, to the rubble-choked thoroughfare, a maze of ghostly bombed-out buildings flanking mounds of debris and overturned structures blocking the road. “The same bombing that claimed this hostel, claimed many of our comrades. It claimed the Lieutenants who trained us and many of the people who support and supply us. It claimed much of our strength. But today, it will also claim one final victim – the enemy’s hope of thoroughly destroying us!”

Leander looked across the room. Almost everyone in attendance was fairly young. Most were older than he – Leander was barely a few months past 18 – but not older than the Sergeant. He looked to be pushing forty. The Lieutenants had all been older, or so he had heard. The Territorial army saw little conflict in many years, and its ranks remained static as its staff grew old. In one fell swoop they had been lost – and so a group of Sergeants commanded Companies in the chaos. To Leander though, Bahir was like an old General from the stories of cavalry and swordsmen that got told around the caravan. He was tall and sleek and gallant like a Lendian knight. His real rank didn’t matter to Leander.

“We are not individuals.” Sgt. Bahir continued. “Our enemies believe our camaraderie and empathy are our weakness. But an Ayvartan never fights alone. We are units! We are a community, we are a combat force, we are platoons and squads; we are comrades. And even when individuals are lost, a community survives. Our objective here is to survive and nothing more. Several trains are scheduled to come and to go throughout the day, ferrying our comrades and whatever valuable materiel remains in the city out to the Dbagbo dominance. Many of these people have not fired a shot, but they have contributed to the conditions necessary for us to fight. Our objective is to buy time for these beloved comrades: for our guardians, for our loved ones, for our friends, for people we don’t know, and even for people we might hate, to escape the enemy and continue the struggle.”

Everyone watched, some looking exhausted, others rapt, but all respectful.

“You will group up into 10 assigned squadrons. Most of you have radios. You will ambush and harass the enemy along with your comrades. We have indirect fire support from three 120mm mortars as well as the 45mm gun here in the FOB. Observers have already spotted tanks moving in – and you have already heard them moving in yourselves. I will not lie, we are not adequately equipped to destroy a Nocht Panzerdivisione. But we can and must slow them down. In coordination via radio, we will resist the advance of the imperialists. We will disperse into the rock, but we will not huddle like they intend us to. We will strike them from every direction. We will fight bitterly. But we will not die.”

Sgt. Bahir turned to face the city center with a flourish.

He raised his voice even more.

“Nobody here will become a martyr! We will survive. In the evening, an armored train will come to cover our escape and ferry us to safety. Keep this hope in mind, and fight to see it. Aim for their tracks, aim for their hatches, aim for exposed men. If you must, retreat to a defensible position. And if they take the FOB we will retreat to the second thoroughfare bend, where we have Orc tanks and a heavy 85mm gun waiting. And if they force us back then we will fight for every piece of track in that rail-yard. We will use every available tool to disrupt and maim the invaders! If they want this rubble, they will bleed for it!”

Sgt. Bahir raised his fist again. Leander raised his own fist almost without thinking – and so did every single other person in the lobby. This was perhaps the speech they needed.

The Sergeant got off from the fountain and the crowd parted as he joined his impromptu staff in his command room. Small hand-drawn maps of the thoroughfare were handed out to each squadron, marking the large clusters of rubble throughout the roads, as well as the positions of escape horses in alleyways. Relative positions for each squadron were listed on the map: Leander’s Squad III would be in the thick of it.

Leander joined Elena and Bonde and newcomer Sharna in front of the FOB and they set off, marching toward the ambush point. They walked across low-lying rubble and over a few eerie stretches of clean road. Far ahead they spotted a thick tangle of debris from a toppled building blocked their view of the road. A window frame along the side of the mass survived the collapse and seemed like the entrance to a labyrinth. It looked ominous.

Soon they reached this obstacle and stood before it in mute awe.

“Well then. I guess it’s time to dig and climb.” Elena said exasperatedly.

“I’m ready when you are, sir!” Sharna said, smiling and saluting Bonde.

“Please don’t call me sir,” Bonde said gently.

“I’m also ready to go, sir!” Leander saluted, miming Sharna.

Bonde shook his head at them. Elena laughed a little. Together they navigated through the rubble. Leander felt an inkling of trepidation, a shaking at the tips of his fingers and feet as he felt the heavy AT rifle at his back, and the shifting rubble below and around him, and heard the explosions far out into the thoroughfare, but he kept himself focused and tried to grin and bear it all. The type of man Leander wanted to be was strong and reliable and committed, and to that kind of man, this trek was no dire ordeal. He had to be brave.

Beyond this rubble, beyond those tanks, he knew Solstice awaited him.

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