Sushi's Chopping Block [Glory to Mankind]

_____Kris rested her head against the cold, steel guard of the 75mm cannon. It was late in the night, and only moonlight shined in through the periscopes and viewports. She tried her best to sleep, but it only came in little bouts. The hatches never closed tight, and the rain would drip down onto her back, not once failing to wake her up. Then she would listen to the dull roar of the rain beating against the steel roof until sleep came again.

_____A sharp kick at her shoulder woke her up this time. "Ow." Kris said, wincing and sitting up in her seat. She tried to stretch, but the gunner's seat was so cramped she could hardly lift her arms without touching more cold hull. She glanced at the watch on her wrist, and saw it hadn't been quite two hours since the last change of shift. "What's going on?" A quick glance over her shoulder glimpsed a Gallian uniform in the commander's seat, Dai's blue hair damp as her face was scrunched up by the periscope.

_____"I see some shit glinting in the field in front of us. Two hundred meters. I bet it's fucking Imps."

_____Her stomach churned. "Are you sure?"

_____Dai's boot made an irate squeak against the turret floor. "You've got the gun, why don't you take a look?"

_____"Alright..." Kris rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and pressed her face against the leader pad of the main gun sight.

_____The glass was dark and clouded at the edges. The moonlight just barely caressed the grass in the field, leaving everything from the waist down completely murky. They had walked the field earlier, and found that it was almost exactly half a kilometer long. With her left hand, Kris spun the handwheel that turned the turret left and right, leaning her body to keep her eye glued to the sight as the cannon tracked left. Then, for just a moment, she thought she saw a flicker of something metallic. Her breath halted, and Kris found her hand wrapping tight around the firing handle. "Alright. I think I see something. A hundred meters."

_____She felt a nudge from behind her again. "You see the Imps? Light them up."

_____"I can't see the sights..."

_____"They're gonna see the fucking tank, Kris."

_____"I know, I know..." Kris shivered hard, although she hardly felt the chill of the rain. Through the wet blanket of fatigue, she thought about things like lead and fifteen to twenty round bursts. Then she thought about things like friendly fire and accidents. She released the firing grips and clenched her hands into fists before grasping the switch for the interphone. "Bull, you awake? I need your help." She released the switch and pressed her headphones in tight. With the main gun to her front and the ammunition below, their driver was swallowed up by the inky dark in the lower half of their tnak.

_____"Listening." His voice blunted some of the anxiety Kris felt. Bull said little, he was steady where Dai was fiery and volatile. Right now, she felt better having both of them.

_____Kris held the switch for the interphone in one hand while feeling for the coaxial machine gun with the other. "I need you to hit the headlights at my cue. Just a few seconds. I... just want to get a better shot, you know?"

_____"I understand. Ready when you are."

_____Her fingertips felt around the rectangular body of the machine gun, then the slender handle on the side. She wrapped her hand around it, reminding herself to grasp the handle palm-up. Kris pulled hard to the rear, but the handle stopped short. "Shit." She pulled again, but her glove tugged away from her fingers. "Give me a second."

_____"You're fucking kidding me, did you jam it?"

_____"Not the time, Dai." Kris tore her face away from the sight and wrapped both hands around the seized handle, pulling hard, leaning and tugging. She turned her whole body with a huge pull, and heard leather rip, her fingertip burning as sharp metal bit into her skin. "Crap. Shit. Fuck." She pried her glove off and pulled the handle to the rear again. This time she felt a cartridge fling free and eject onto the floor as the bolt slammed forward with a ear-ringing clang.

_____"Okay, okay. I got it. Bull, do it."

_____Kris took a deep breath. She pressed her eyes to the sights just as the glare of the headlights washed out everything for a moment. A part of her knew they were Imperials just by the way they froze. Before her eyes had adjusted and seen the shapes of polished metal helmets and breastplates, her fingers tightened around the firing handle. At this distance, their bodies filled up most of the periscope sight. They looked like midieval knights half-buried in mud. "Erma, on the way."

_____Her thumb pressed in the firing stud on the Y of "way," and she spun the traverse wheel back and forth, swinging the turret in a whipping motion as the machine gun belched. The gun rattled, and blue streaks of tracers ripped through the air and through grass. Blood rushed through her ears until the gunfire sounded distant. It was like watching someone else do the shooting for her. Kris thought only of keeping the Imperials squarely in her sights as she held down the trigger. The turret filled with acrid smoke, and casings were bouncing off her knees, her boots, pooling on the floor.

_____Kris stopped firing when the smoke had gotten so thick she couldn't see through the periscope. It stung her eyes and clung in a thick layer to her tongue, her throat. She slapped at the lock for the side hatch and shoved it open, taking huge breaths of fresh air, rain on her face. The burst of automatic fire was still echoing into the trees as she caught her breath. Bull switched the lights back off, leaving the field dark and still once more.

_____"... I think you got em, " Dai said. "You gonna move the tank?"

_____She wiped the stinging tears out of her eyes. After a few more huge breaths, she felt like she had come back down to earth, and her heart didn't slam so hard it was gonna shake her chest apart. Kris slumped down in the gunner's seat as the gun sizzled. She smelled something like burnt copper in the air. Kris held her hand up to the open hatch and saw her fingers were slick with blood, and her pinky ached. "Crap." Kris fished a clean bandage from their first aid kit, still open from the last time she'd cut herself.

_____All of a sudden, she was feeling very drained. "Going back to sleep is what I'm going to do."

_____Kris laid her head against the steel gun shield and closed her eyes. She thought about a lot of things. About cleaning the tank in the morning, how it would be a nuisance scooping up all the empty casings littering the turret floor.

_____She didn't think about the Imperial soldiers laying still in the grass as sleep took her.

​

One Week Ago
Randgriz, Gallian Army Tank Depot
_____Gallian miltia in dirty blue uniforms clambered over neat rows of light tanks. Kris thought they looked like drab blue ducks from a distance, with a low-slung hull that tapered to a squat, short little turret that was just big enough to house a big cannon. You could tell a lot about a tank crew by how they took care of their tank, or how much they carried on it. Kris thought of all the things they had packed on the back of their tanks during their days in training. Right now, their tanks were mostly bare, most of them having been retrieved from storage not long ago. Some still had heavy preservative grease slathered over their armor plates.

_____Their tank was well used. Stripes of blue and white had been worn into splotches of color, and a few dots of silver showed where bullets had struck the armor. A militia tanker climbed out of the open top hatch and made a beeline for Kris. "You're the newcomer?" He extended a gloved hand to her.

_____Kris nodded and shook his hand. "Yeah, that's me. Corporal Massis. 601st Tank Hunters. Nice to meet you."

_____"Sergeant Grenier. Welcome to the 1st Militia Tank Battallion." The sergeant was short and stocky, like many tankers. His dark blue hair was peppered with gray, though he couldn't have been much older than Kris. "I've never heard of the 601, is that some kind of army outfit?" He turned from the tank and waved for Kris to follow. "Come on, we'll talk on the way." They followed a paved path that bisected the base, falling in with numerous other militia all headed the same way.

_____Kris found herself counting all the tanks as they went by. There were easily enough tanks to fill a battalion. "Sure, and yeah, sort-of. We're an army unit that trained in Vinland. They donated tank destroyers for the cause, you know?"

_____Grenier let out a grunt at that. "I'm sure those Vinlanders expect their 'donation' repaid in double. What kind of things they teach you in Vinland?"

_____"I think it'd be easier to tell you what they didn't teach us... It was a lot. You don't think a tank destroyer is as big as it is until you cover the whole thing with camouflage. Or dig a pit for it. I didn't expect all the walking around and scribbling in notebooks. We even shot anti-tank lances at old Imperial tanks. We did lots of training by platoons." Her chest swelled with pride at the thought of it, although it felt so long ago. "Guess it doesn't matter too much now. I don't think you get to that level of confidence with just any random people. And even our equipment was totally different."

_____"What, not a fan of our Gallian-issued popguns?"

_____"I didn't say that..." She gave a sort of half-smile. "But when you put it that way, kind-of. I'm definitely used to more firepower. We called them tank destroyers, or TDs. Think a fast tank with a big gun. No roof either, so you can see them first. 'Seek-Strike-Destroy,' and all that."

_____Grenier turned to face Kris as they arrived at a line of trucks piled high with supplies. "Very cool. You here to take my job?" Grenier sounded deadly serious, despite the broad grin that told Kris he was anything but. "Sounds like it with all that fancy training."

_____Kris shook her head with a little smile. "Who, me? Afraid of responsibility, commitment, and long work hours? No way. I see how hard you sergeants work. I don't want any of it. I just want to get through this war and be able to say I did my part after. That's all."

_____The sergeant gave her an inspection-day hard stare, and it was enough to make Kris wilt in her boots. "Alright, Massis. But we all work here. As long as you're willing to do that, we'll be cool. Grab a box." A man in the bed of the nearest truck swung cases of tank shells over the side by the handles, and the throng of tankers were stumbling over each other trying to grab them up. Kris ducked a flying elbow and managed to escape with a single case, even as she staggered under the weight of it. Sergeant Grenier took one over each shoulder, and they were marching back toward their tank, all the way at the other end of the depot.

_____"They're rationing it, that seventy-five milimeter ammunition. Grab as much as you can."

_____"I'll have to make another trip," Kris said, sweltering under the weight of just a single box. She was relieved when they got back to their side of the depot and placed their boxes in a small heap with the rest of their supplies. "What's her name?" Kris panted. "-the tank."

_____"Imp Cleaner. Like it?" A blue-haired woman in oil-stained coveralls spoke to Kris from atop the tank. "Don't really give a shit if you don't, but hey."

_____"... the name's fine," she said with a shrug. "What are you, a mechanic?"

_____"That's Dai. Private Dai. Be less of an asshole to the corporal, will you?" Grenier shook his head. "You're gonna be working together. Dai does a little bit of everything around here. Fixes the tanks, shoots shit. Most everyone here If you can't tell, we're really hurting for new blood, so we'd better get along. You reading me, Dai?"

_____"Yeah, yeah..." She jammed a prybar into a case of ammo and pried the lid off. "Five boxes, fifteen rounds. What do they expect us to do with this shit?"

_____"Kill Imps, Dai. Isn't that what you're here for?" Grenier clambered onto the tank and Kris scrambled to follow. "Where's Bull?"

_____"He's finding a new air filter. This one's clogged full of shit..."
 
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03: ​

For a place known as the "blue country," Gallia was so very green. A single blue truck rattled down the road, passing pasture after green pasture, and forest thick enough to blot out the sun above. The precious shade washed over the two passengers in the bed of the truck, who were crammed in tight with boxes of ammunition and medicine, piled high. One was a young Gallian wearing a dusty brown jacket, still wrapped up in white bandages from a recent hospital stay.

"What the hell happened to you?"

It took a moment for her to register that she was being spoken to, and another for her to turn groggily around. "Huh?"

A woman smirked at her over a crate of ammo. She had a boot kicked up lazily on the cargo, but her gaze was razor sharp. "Don't tell me you're all drugged up from the hospital. They give you the good stuff?"

"Oh," the Gallian said with a slight smile. "No, I was just distracted. Writing a letter, you know. Having a hard time with it..." She turned her gaze more fully to the stranger. The smell of foreign cigarettes and gunpowder was pervasive on her, and her uniform was dotted with foreign rank and insignia.

"What's so hard about writin' a letter?"

"Well... it's for my parents. I don't know a good way to break the news," the Gallian said. "I mean, I just got hospitalized. I don't have any clue how I did, either, and well..." she looked off to the side at the rolling hills. "... I'm getting transferred to the militia, too. It just seems like too much bad news to put into one letter."

"That's not so hard." The foreigner flicked the lid of a cigarette lighter with their thumb. "Shit, you're alive, mama and papa are gonna be over the moon. Who gives a rat's ass what unit you're going to?"

"That's... a positive way of looking at it, I suppose."

The foreigner shook her head. "Nah. I'm saying it how it is. You're alive, and you're safe. Anything else is secondary." She leaned closer to the Gallian with a grin. "By the way. Got a question for you. Where you steal that jacket from?"

The Gallian responded with a slow blink. "What? This jacket's mine. I didn't steal it from anyone."

"Bullshit. That's some Vinland heritage you're wearing, soldier. What the hell's a Gallian doing wearing all those patches?"

It made her take pause. The way this Vinlander kept smiling as she jabbed at her. It was some kind of game, to get a rise out of her. The Gallian folded up the letter in her hands and tucked it away in a pocket. "It was issued to me, at the Tank Destroyer School in the states. The 601? That's my unit. Don't know why you're being a jerk about it."

The Vinlander laughed at that. Her eyes glimmered over a lit cigarette. "A jerk? Kid, if someone isn't giving you a hard time in the army, it means they don't like you. I'm just happy to see another familiar uniform." She exhaled a long stream of smoke and looked over the front of the truck. "What's your name, corporal?"

"Kris Massis. Nice to meet you, uh..." Her eyes dipped down to the stripes on the Vinlander's sleeve. "Staff sergeant."

"Pleasure, Kris. Just call me Winter." Kris followed the woman's gaze, and saw that Fort Amatriain had finally emerged as a distant shape among all the patchwork farmland.

"Can I ask a question, too?"

"Shoot."

Kris kicked her boot against one of the many crates in the bed. "My unit... A Company, 601 TD. Have you heard anything about them?" It was a question that put a pit in her stomach. Kris wasn't sure she even wanted the answer, but... it was her unit, and she owed it to them to find out. "The officers at the hospital. They wouldn't say anything, not even if they've heard a rumor. I half think they're doing it on purpose."

Winter's smile wavered. "Yeah. That's tough, Kris. If I were you, I'd be dying to know. But I stepped off a Federation ship yesterday. I can ask around for you, of course, but you should hope we don't run into each other too much."

"Uh, why?"

She flicked her cigarette out of the truck. "It's an embarrassing story, tell you some other time."

​

30 km from Randgriz

A tepid cup of coffee sat in front of her, sloshing with each bump in the road. Her pen scratched insistently at the paper. There were several crumpled-up letters piled up at her feet. Half-written ones. She had the first part down, just telling her mom about where she had been these past few days, that everything had been okay after leaving the hospital. Breaking the news about the transfer had been something Kris had dreaded, but compared to being given command of an entire tank crew, that seemed so small and unimportant now.

"Have you considered practicing your aim instead of writing fucking letters?"

Kris closed her eyes and tried her best to let the initial wave of irritation pass on by. She held her breath for a moment longer before letting it out. "I know you're not serious when we have a whole eleven shells. But if you think you can outrun the coax... we can do some target practice."

Dai snorted. "Itching to get a darcsen kill, dickhead?"

The burning in her cheeks shut up Kris right away. She had resigned herself to an embarrassed silence when sergeant Grenier finally thought it was time to step in. "You misunderstand, Dai, corporal Massis here isn't out to shoot all the darcsen tankers, just the annoying shithead ones. Like you."

"... fuckin' traitor is what you are, Grenier."

"Perk of rank, Dai." The sergeant said his retort with a characteristic flatness that made it seem like this wasn't thef first, or second time they had had this exact conversation before. "Just you see. When you pass the promotion board for sergeant, you'll be just the same as me." He waited a beat before reaching up and pushing the top hatch open. "Anyway, you lovebirds get your shit together. We have another mission to do."

"Fuck you."

"Roger, sarge." Kris let out a sigh in relief. Somehow fighting the Imperials felt preferable to endlessly butting heads with Dai. The young private had a way of turning every single word into a source of confrontation, and even listening to Dai and Grenier bicker had become fatiguing. How did Brenner deal with it? The man had been silent in the driver's hole for the entire march. "What are we doing? Did the LT say anything?"

"Bull, we're third in the column. Put us right behind Chariot." Grenier took a sip of his coffee as Imp Cleaner rocked on her heels and started to lumber down the road. "The LT needs us to back up a militia tank squad. Enemy lancer squad. We gotta kill them all," the sergeant said with his usual mirth. "You feel good about that, Kris?"

Kris grit her teeth. It took a moment to relax her jaw, a soft exhalation of breath following before she answered. "Do I have a choice?"

"No, not really." Grenier's chuckle was dry and toneless. "But that wasn't what I was asking."

Kris lied. "I don't feel anything about it." Kris didn't sound convinced, and she knew it. Grenier had to be able to feel how hard her heart was slamming in her chest. So why did he ask? It was more testing, Kris thought. "I've shot an antitank lance before, in TD school. It's no big deal." She thought about the fantastic flash of light and the way the armor panels dented inward. The warheads struck with brilliant showers of hundreds of pinpricks of light. Their instructor had reminded them that each and every point of light was a supersonic piece of metal.

The thought made her gut work into tight little knots. A part of her found some irritation in it; the way the sergeant was prodding those insecurities. She spoke again, more softly now, but more firmly. "An anti-tank ambush happens in an instant. If they... were still alive to ask for help on the wireless, I think they must be pretty tough. So I guess I feel that."

It was quiet for a moment, save for another sip from the sergeant. "Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it. Keep your eyes peeled. First round's HE."

Kris peered through the sights, and saw the other two tanks in the platoon rolling ahead of them. The first had its gun pointed over to the left, the second to the right. She gripped the traverse handle and spun the cannon over to the left, leaving her with little but the leaves in the trees in her sight as they clattered along. She was alone to her thoughts when Grenier gave her a sharp tap on the shoulder.

"Gunner, turn to your one o'clock. Can you identify that vehicle?"

"Let me take a look." Kris leaned into the sights, and saw Chariot turn sharply off the road, plowing into grass that went almost up to its turret. Imp Cleaner slid off the road and slewed right, putting since distance between the other tanks in the platoon. When the shaking in her sights settled, Kris turned the handle and swung over toward the far end of the clearing. There was a slight rise in the land, where the grass gave way to ruddy dirt, and a farmer's plot charred black by shell-blasts. There were craters big enough to swallow a tank whole, and militia in light blue uniforms crawled through them like so many ants. "I see our troops. Around a dozen of them."

A giant militiaman with scars on his face stood up from the scant cover and aimed his lance at the trees beyond. There was a flash, and what sounded like a dull pop to Kris as the warhead launched, before the thunderclap of impact a few moments later as a tree was blown to splinters. He immediately dropped back down as more rifle shots echoed out, invisible except for the puffs of dirt all around the lancer. He scrambled for better cover, and the other militia stood to fire back with rifles, then the rattle of machine guns filled the air.

Kris followed the stream of tracers to a turret, and the shape of a tank half-buried in the mud. "I see it... oh, that's a big fucking tank." It looked twice as wide as a light tank, and entirely different in shape. Where the Gallian tanks hulls that narrowed to a neck-like roof, the body of this tank was low and rectangular, the front dominated by a thick, single piece of armor raked backward. From the welds, the armor looked three or four times as thick as a light tank, and turret on top was wide, low, arrow-shaped, mounting what looked like an oversized field gun. The white-painted gun mount reminded Kris of a rhinoceros horn. It was sunk all the way down to the tracks in the mud, but the turret spun and spat long streams of automatic fire. "I- think it's one of ours, but I've never seen a tank like that in my life."

Grenier sat up in his seat and peered through a pair of binoculars. He beat a fist against the tank roof. "Yeah, son of a bitch, I see it. Why don't we get a closer look?" Imp Cleaner lunged forward through the glass, dirt torn up by spinning tracks. "Kris, put some fucking HE in those trees. 12 o'clock, 300 meters. Follow those tracers."

"A-alright!" She was already spinning the wheels to put the cannon on target. Blue Gallian tracers sailed lazily through the air, disappearing amongst the trees at the end of the clearing. Kris tried to imagine where they were landing and pulled the aiming mark just beyond the tracers. "On the way!"

The white-hot tracer seemed to linger in the air on the way over, traveling in an arc over the heads of the militia, descending just out of sight before fiery blue swallowed up the woods, and a tree fell sideways in a rain of splinters and dust. Grenier didn't send the next shell home in the breech. It was an odd sort of quiet following the deafening crash of ragnite shells, and Kris could hear the blood rushing through her ears as the other tanks in the platoon fired all at once.

75mm cannons firing sounded like fists beating against the hull. The shells impacted in a line a hundred meters wide. Four tongues of blue flame collapsed an entire section of the trees, and for a few moments, the forest had fallen entirely silent. Not the platoon of tanks, however. Grenier slapped Kris on the shoulder. "Did I tell you to stop, gunner? Rake those fucking trees with the coax."

"R-right. On the way." Kris exhaled and spun the traverse handle as she pressed down on the coax pedal. Blue tracers ripped through the air and vanished into the air between gnarled, burnt tree trunks. Dai scampered out of the way as fistfuls of scalding hot brass casings ejected onto the floor. Small puffs of smoke appeared in the trees, and it took Kris a moment to see the flash of lance warheads arching toward them, impacting the dirt in front of the tank, the explosion scattering shrapnel against their hull like a handful of pebbles.

"Longer bursts, Kris. Don't be shy." Imp Cleaner lurched as the cabin started to fill with the stinging fumes. Kris blinked stinging sweat out of her eyes and watched the shape of the Gallian tank loom larger and larger, until they came to a stop just behind and to the side of it. When the other tank fired, Kris felt Imp Cleaner rock from side to side from the muzzle blast.

"Oh, shit," Kris muttered, releasing the coax pedal every few seconds to let the machine get some relief, sheets of stream rising off the barrel and blocking her sight. The lancer that had fired earlier jogged over to their tank and thumped the butt of his lance against the side. He was covered in a thin layer of dirt from the exploding shell-bursts.

"Hey, you in the tank!" His voice was gruff. He didn't seem particularly bothered by the bullets snapping over his head. "Shift your fire to the right, twenty degrees." Kris spun the turret over, her eyes glued to the sight. No matter how she squinted and moved around for a better view, the trees were all that she could see from inside the tank, the enemy hiding somewhere below her sight. "Right there!"

"Oblige the man," Grenier said. "Give them another HE." The weight of a shell rocked the gun up and down as the breech clanged shut. At this distance, she barely had to lift the center of the reticle for the round to be dead-on to her point of aim.

"HE, on the way." Kris saw the militia lancer cover his hands with his ears and pressed the red switch for the gun. The gun slammed back from the recoil, and the tracer careened through the center of the scope, exploding almost at the same time as the shell case slammed into the turret wall and dropped down. The other streams of tracers from the platoon's tanks swung over, and more HE shells landed right on top of the position.

Kris kept firing the coax until the box ran empty. A few minutes later, the militia emerged from shell-craters and moved to the woods, hunched down low. Kris heard a few muffled thumps that she recognized as grenades exploding. When the militia returned, they were marching Imperial soldiers in battered metal armor, streaked with blood that seeped from beneath tightly wrapped bandages. The medics moved up, checking on their own first, then the Imperials. Grenier climbed out of the tank then, and Kris followed.
 
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I like the 'fog of war' aspect of this encounter: Kris doesn't even see what she's shooting at most of the time, and she doesn't even know how the battle is progressing until it's over.
 
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