_____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 tank.
_____"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 medieval 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. 1st Platoon, A Company, 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion. Nice to meet you."
_____"Sergeant Grenier. Welcome to 1st Platoon." 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 millimeter 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 crate 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?" The sergeant jerked a thumb at the open hatch, and Kris eased herself inside.
_____"He's finding a new air filter. This one's clogged full of shit..." Dai lifted a black-nosed armor-piercing round up onto the rear deck, and Grenier passed it to Kris. She cradled the unwieldy projectile in her arms and ducked down inside. The rest of the conversation was muted by the steel hull around her.
_____It had been a while since she had last been in the standard-issue Gallian tank, but it was about as cramped as she remembered. Their tank was the result of some Gallian general insisting a not-at-all light 75mm field gun should be stuffed inside the smallest and lightest tank possible. The sheer size of the gun took up the entire right side of the turret, and as Kris slipped into the top hatch, she had to contort herself to the left to slide into the commander's seat. She eased the round into one of many spring clips placed around the turret and took a look around. Tanks like these were meant to be filled to the brim with shells and boxes of machine gun ammunition. Without any ammo, it was an oddly cavernous and lonesome sight. Kris stood herself up to receive the next shell, a yellow-nosed explosive one, and ducked back down to slot the round into another rack. By the time they had loaded up all fifteen shells, the inside of the tank still looked mostly barren.
_____She wiped sweat from her brow with a rag before hoisting herself back out. Dai and Grenier were seated on the back deck, deep into a conversation. Kris let them speak for a bit while she watched the other tanks. The others were cramming shells, fuel, and personal belongings inside their tanks, and lashing them down wherever there was extra space. It didn't matter how far she looked, though. She hadn't seen any sign of her old unit here, and it was looking like this new militia assignment was going to stick.
_____Hey, sergeant," Kris said. "There's only three spots in a light tank. You said there's four of us? What exactly did you have in mind for me?"
_____Grenier looked to Dai, who hopped off the tank and found something else to occupy herself with. The sergeant turned to face Kris. There was a sudden calm to the way he spoke that immediately put Kris on edge. "I'm leaving this place in a day. HQ wants me training new tankers. They said they would send someone with some good experience and training under their belt, and well, looks like you're it, tank hunter. It's yours now."
Kris emerged from the tent, a fog of acrid smoke following her. She braced her hands against her knees and coughed up a lungful of the cloying smoke. She spat out the taste of tar from her mouth and for a few long moments regretted not having brought a canteen.
Sergeant Grenier was waiting, a cigarette dangling from his fingertips. He looked from the smoke-filled tent to Kris and back, lingering just long enough to make her feel self-conscious before finally nodding. "You listen to the briefing?"
"I did, sergeant." Kris wrinkled her nose at the smell and flipped open her notebook. "Took notes, too."
"Good. Go tell your crew." Grenier waved for her to follow, and they marched off toward the tanks.
She hesitated for a moment before walking alongside the sergeant. "It's your crew, you know - not mine. I mean, I don't have a problem with them or anything, but..." As they stepped onward in relative quiet, Kris tugged at the collar of her shirt and squired up her shoulders as best she could. "That mechanic, Dai. They're a real hard-ass. It's like they want me gone, you know?"
The sergeant shook his head with a little smirk. "That's funny, Massis."
"What?"
He took a long drag from his smoke. "You keep arguing with my decisions - that's fine, I don't take that personally, at least not from you. You're new, you don't know shit. But the army is the one that put you in that tank. You gonna try your arguments with General Damon? Good way to end up a crunchy, Massis."
"A what?" Kris sputtered.
As they walked up to their tank, Grenier kicked a tread with his boot. "Crunchy. You know, infantry, dismounts. People who don't ride in a tank. You learn much in that tank-hunter unit, Massis, or you just been pulling my leg?" Grenier exhaled a thin stream of smoke.
"I learned lots, sergeant. Just not... that." Kris felt her cheeks burning, but said nothing more. She hooked her feet into the road wheels of the Gallian tank and hoisted herself up to the top hatch. The voices of the crew fell to a dull murmur as their boots thumped across the roof, and Grenier. The sergeant jerked his thumb toward the open hatch.
"Get your ass in the saddle, tank killer. Tell your crew what the lieutenant said."
"Yup, sergeant. Right away..." Kris let out a little sigh as she flipped through her notebook. Her chicken-scratch handwriting took up most of three pages. "Okay. Uh, crew." Dai turned around in the gunner's seat and stared flatly at her. Kris could see the broad shape of the tank driver's shoulders shift back, his head just out of view. "...Elements of the 502nd Imperial Heavy Panzer Battalion attacked the garrison at Ghirlandio yesterday. They were outfitted at the company level with a tank resistant to our 75mm AP projectiles from combat ranges." She flipped the page, going to a hastily scrawled diagram. "Intel calls it the medium Imperial tank. They think it's uh, forty tons or so. It's armed with a medium-velocity 85mm cannon, a mortar turret, and some machine guns. HQ estimates the armor is around 5 centimeters thick at the front half of the tank... angled back ten degrees... and they have armored skirts, too."
"Skirts. Cool." Grenier ashed his cigarette off the side of the tank. "Stay focused, now. The mission, corporal. What are we doing?"
"Uh, right. We're going to take a road march. To Vasel. It's supposed to be pretty clear..."
"It is, or it isn't, Massis?"
Kris grit her teeth. "HQ - they said they Imperials haven't gotten to our main road out of Randgriz. We should be..." She squeezed her hand into a fist briefly. "... we'll be safe in the initial road march. We're going to be moving with the entire battalion and we'll have lots of support. They told us about the new Imperial tanks just to be safe, but they don't expect us to fight any tanks on the way."
Dai thumped her fist impatiently against the roof. "Okay, so if we do run into these tanks you just made such a big-ass deal over..."
"Yeah. Right." Kris flicked the corner of a page with her thumb. "If you can shoot around the skirts, or through them... AP shells should go right through the side at a thousand meters. The mortar turret, it's thinly armored, if you can hit it. And we can crack the front at point blank range - under 300 meters." Kris finished the last of her notes in hushed tones, trying not to think too much about how her hands were sweating in her gloves.
"Soo..." Dai said, sitting up in the turret and leaning against the edge, sitting just arm's length from Kris. She stared doggedly at Kris, who tried not to flinch too obviously as she turned to return the look. "You gonna tell us how to kill these things without getting fucking shot trying to get right up in their faces? With your special tank killing training shit?"
"I..." Kris eventually swung her eyes away from Dai. Something about the disdain in her gaze... it made her feel very childish and small. She shoved down the thought, and corrected herself. "We. We keep shooting them. Those Imperial tanks, they might be big, but I've seen one. A captured one, in the states... and you wouldn't believe it, but they're riveted together, like a steam train. If you shoot them enough, keep hitting them, the armor is gonna break open at the seams. You just have to be a better shot than them."
She turned her head as the front hatch of the tank clattered open, and a huge man in a Gallian uniform managed to squeeze through. He took several steps up the angular front of Imp Killer and took in the sight of the gathered tankers before looking right past Kris, speaking to sergeant Grenier. "-the way she's saying we. You're giving the rookie the tank?"
"I-"
Grenier silenced Kris with a small raise of the hand. "Bull, it's my choice."
The big man seemed to chew on his thought for a moment. "Forty-five tanks in the battalion, Grenier. Each of them with three trained tankers. You got yourself one-hundred thirty five replacements that, no offense to the young lady - are all better qualified to take the reigns than some new blood. They deserve it, too. Everyone works hard here. I ain't gonna question your decision if it come down to it, but I would feel of hell of a lot better knowing why."
It was the sergeant's turn to listen and think. He flicked away his cigarette butt. "Bull, you always come at me with the tough questions. Lucky for me you're a man of logic and not feelings, and if you did for some reason feel a little sour that I'm having a rookie take a shot at the saddle, you in no way would let it get the way of your job, would you?"
The big man snorted. "A straight answer once in a while wouldn't hurt you none, top."
"Got me there." Grenier shrugged at that, and grinned. "Corporal Massis, this is your driver, Corporal Brenner. A good man, when he doesn't think too much for his own good. His only vice is that he's too damned big to fit in a Gallian tank, but find a better, or smarter driver in the army, you will not."
Kris swung her legs over the hatch and stood herself up to face the man. They shook hands, Brenner's calloused fist big enough to swallow her fingers entirely. She was sure that he would crush her bones to dust, but Brenner's squeeze was brief and non-hostile. She found herself smiling reflexively at the handshake. Even if the man had spoken up just to question her being here. It wasn't like Kris disagreed with Brenner. She'd never felt so out of her depth, not when she was thousands of miles across the Atlantic. Everyone had told her the outbreak of war would turn every thing on its head.
Grenier didn't give her much time to think on that. "You heard the corporal. We've got our destination, and I'm getting sick of this base. Mount up. Massis, you're my gunner. Dai, take the floor. Lots of space when we don't have ammo."
"Yeah, whatever." The blue-haired mechanic disappeared into the hatch, and Kris followed right after, balancing herself commander's station before sliding forward, into the gunner's narrow seat. The driver's hatch clanged shut at the front of the tank, though Kris had hardly seen Brenner making his way inside. As soon as Grenier sat down behind her and the sun was blotted out by the armor, Kris found herself missing the feel of the breeze overhead. Her shoulder was pressed up against a cool bulkhead on one side, the sheet-metal recoil guard for the cannon on the other. She peered through the sights and saw a fish-bowl version of the base outside, the center of the sight dominated by many small, graduated lines. A machine gun sat beneath the sights, a belt of rounds glimmering in the half-light.
"Bull, start her up."
"Roger."
The tank shuddered as the engine rumbled to life, the lights flickering. Through the sights, Kris saw the blue glare of dozens of other tanks starting, and the plumes of exhaust twisted together in a tangled fog that settled around the formation. She glanced down at her station, and the saw the familiar shape of two hand wheels, as well as a thin grip that was shaped like the butt of a pistol. She wrapped a gloved hand around it and felt the vibration of the engine go right into her bones. Kris gripped the lever tight and tilted it over to the left.
With an electric whine, the whole turret spun over, the sights becoming a blur. She released her grip and the turret's spin stopped as soon as it had started. "Neat," Kris said. Sergeant Grenier gave her a single pat on the shoulder. It felt like she'd been caught stealing from the cookie jar. "Guess the army's... the militia's issuing nice stuff now."
There was a sharp knock on her boot. "Yeah? You must be in a very different fucking army than we are." It was Dai again, seated on the floor beneath the turret. "The army's been using the same fuckin' tank for years."
"It's just not what I'm used to," Kris said. She glared to her side, but the mechanic was somewhere below her, out of sight. "-I got into the army a few years ago. Guess I've been missing out."
"That's cool, don't think anybody fuckin' asked how long you'd been in the army."
Kris opened her mouth to offer a retort, but Grenier was faster on the draw. "Dai. Massis. Shut up."
She glowered into the sights for a while, out of sight from the other crew members. The tank lurched as the motor whined to life, and when the sights became too much of a blur to see much of anything, Kris leaned against her seat and dug into her uniform pocket, removing a half-written letter and a pen as they rumbled out of the base.
Her cheek dragged against the grass. The engine of a tank roared. Kris crawled forward, fingers curling into the dirt. The morning dew sent a chill through her. She pushed forward, hand over hand, smearing her uniform with mud. There was something in a clearing just beyond the grass, but before Kris could reach it, she came to in the dimly lit interior of the Gallian tank.
It had been the same dream for weeks now. Kris glanced down at her letter, and saw her pen had trailed off after just a few words. Every time she had a spare moment to write home, the exhaustion would lay her out before she could get any work done. There was less sunlight streaming in through the hatches, and it felt like most of the morning had gone to their road march.
Kris turned to stretch, and saw Grenier pressing his radio headset tightly against his ear. "Cardinal, this is Cleaner, I have you loud and clear."
She heard the radio over her own headset, and she recognized the voice of the lieutenant from the morning briefing. "Imp Cleaner, take Chariot with you. A militia squad is reporting sporadic fire from a farmhouse down the path. To your eleven o'clock, six hundred meters."
"Roger, I see it."
"Take care of it. The rest of you, pull over and check fluids. Cardinal, out."
Kris curled her hands into tight fists. "Should- do you want me to switch? With her, the mechanic." The sergeant's hand pushed her shoulder down before she could try to leave the seat.
"No, Massis," Grenier said. "In a real war, we don't just decide we can't do our jobs. Get on that gun and scan for targets. Bull, bring us down that road to our left. Stop before we break through those trees." Even with her face pressed to the main sight, Kris could see perfectly the smile that was likely plastered across Grenier's face. Her hands quivered once as she took up the fire controls for the gun.
"Alright..." Kris turned the grip left, and the turret spun, too fast to see anything but the green blur of more trees. Her view became starkly blue as the tank bit into an embankment, its nose pointing upward before coming down on the other side, hurtling toward rows and rows of saplings and fruit trees. A small one met the front of Imp Cleaner and got sucked into the tread in muted pop.
Kris thought about how long it took a farmer to start an orchard of this size, and how fast a tank's tracks could tear that hard work apart. The unevent ground tossed her back and forth in her seat, and she pressed herself tightly against the sight, her stomach churning as they bounced and swerved through the trees.
"Driver, halt." The sergeant sunk back into his seat, keeping his head well below the open hatch as he bent at the waist, and picked up a shell from their precious stash. Kris felt the breech clang shut beside her. "Gunner, you have an HE loaded. Fire at my command. You see anything?"
She looked to the red firing switch on the handwheels and nodded her head. "Alright, I'm looking." The farmhouse was beyond the edge of the orchard. It was a tall wooden building, simple, but well kept. There weren't any of the horses or livestock that Kris had expected to see, only the huddled blue shapes of militia hiding behind sacks of feed, their heads bent down low. Every now and then a pop would echo in the air, but inside the tank, Kris could hardly tell how far away they were, or what direction they had come from.
Kris spun the turret over with the electric motor. As her sights settled on the dusty windows of the building, her hands moved to the traversing wheels. The telescopic sight moved across the building front, now moving much slower as she cranked the turret over. She saw the specs of dust on windowpanes, the blotches of tar on roof tiles, but nothing like rough-hewn slots that could give away a machine gun or hidden cannon. "Uhm, sergeant, I can't see anything yet. Our troops are hiding. I don't know who's hurt."
"Hurt's not our problem," Grenier said. "Focus, Massis. Keep an eye out, someone's gonna slip up sooner or later."
Kris wiped the sweat out of her brow. It was a contortionist act, spinning the turret by hand while keeping her face to the sights well enough to see. The militia were pointing now, and Kris turned her sight to the slumped shape of body in the middle of the dirt road. The militia were huddling close, their bodies taught and coiled for a plan that Kris could see hastily being thrown together. One of them, then two, took off at a run, leaving the safety of an irrigation ditch, clambering over a wooden fence.
They had almost made it to the fallen body when Kris saw the flashes from a ground level window. The dirt kicked up in a dozen places all at once, and the Gallian folded in half, falling in a dusty heap as the machine gun belched. Then the other went scampering back to cover. Rifle fire sounded off from militia positions before being drowned out by the deafening chatter of machine-guns. "Oh, shit. They're shooting!"
"I figured," Grenier said. "Gunner, hit them!"
Kris brought her sights over the window, over where she thought the Imperial soldier could have been sitting. "On the way!" Her thumb pressed in the trigger, and the Gallian tank rocked back. She heard the clang of the shell slamming into the turret wall and the report of the cannon all at once, and the near-simultaneous crash of the shell tearing through wood and stone, exploding inside the farmhouse with a flash of blue that stung her eyes. Grenier shoved another shell into the breech as smoke filled the tank.
"Again!"
The farmhouse was raining down. "Shit, on the way!" Kris squeezed the trigger as soon as the breech closed, and this time she remembered to look away before the flash. This shell didn't burrow so far into the building before exploding, and the thunderclap of its eruption shook her entire body as bigger pieces of rubble clattered against Imp Cleaner's roof. When the dust settled several long moments later, she saw the farmhouse, buckled in the middle where the second floor had fallen into the crater of the front room.
Grenier gave her a solid clap on the shoulder. "Target hit! Gunner, coax! Clean them up!"
Her other hand squeezed, and the machine gun below her sights begun to chatter, blue tracers tearing through the air, splintering wood. Grenier tapped her on the right shoulder this time. "Sweep the coax, Massis, keep those fucking heads down." With shaking hands, she gripped the power traverse and slewed the turret over, holding down the trigger all the while, spent shells pelting her legs. Almost as soon as she had started, she felt the sergeant's heavy hand thump her back.
"Cease fire, cease fire. Target destroyed."
"Oh, shit. Oh shit..." Her hands were shaking so violently Kris could do little but stare at the still image of the smoldering farmhouse. Eventually some of the militia moved forward, crawling through rubble with their hands clutching grenades. They flew high into the air before exploding out of sight with muffled thumps.
"Massis, target at your three, tank! AP, AP!" The very word made Kris shiver, but she clutched the handles desperately, jerking the turret over at once, bracing herself against the gut-churning spin. The sergeant grunted behind her as he nosed a heavy shell into the gun.
It looked as big as a house. Kris fired before her eyes could see its whole shape, the cannon thundering. In the aftermath of swirling smoke, she saw the angular shape of armored panels, the squat shape of the armored turret. The cannon spun around for them. When she saw the bare silver streak where her shell had glanced off the Imperial, her heart turned to ice. The enemy tank balanced precariously at the top of the slope, throwing up dirt as it barreled down, away from the Gallian tanks. "Shit!"
"Gunner, AP, one more time!" The Imperial tank shot left.. Kris turned the grip and spun around to follow. It took a long agonizing second to find it, halted right in front of their tank. The Imperial gunner brought their cannon around as Kris squeezed the trigger.
The hull shook with a sharp crack. A moment later, something exploded outside.
Sergeant Grenier clambered out of the tank after a few moments. Kris shut her eyes and caught her breath. She heard what sounded like the thump of shells not far away. Kris wasn't sure exactly how long she waited before prying herself away from the gunner's station, out of the top hatch. As soon as she did, the heat was smothering. At slightly more than a hundred meters to their left side, an Imperial tank had become a brilliant blue inferno. Burning shells shook the carcass of the tank with muffled bangs. The hatches of the tank had been blown open like flower pedals, but Kris saw no bodies.
Her stomach had worked itself into a knot. Kris heaved, and held her face in her hands at the same time. Her mouth was sandpaper dry. Dai slipped wordlessly from the tank, and the driver's hatch fell open moments after. They shared the same moment of sickened awe, their faces shadowed with stark blue light. Fruit trees had been stripped to the trunk in the blast, and the intense heat had bubbled up the paint on the buildings that still remained standing.
Grenier took a seat by Kris and lit a cigarette. He somehow managed to look like he'd aged years in just a few minutes. "It was a light tank," he said. "Good for us."
"What?" She managed to croak in response. Grenier lowered his arm and her eyes followed to a streak of smeared paint and raw metal on the turret roof.
"Light tank. Hit us with that popgun forty-five millimeter," he said. "You hit him, right in the turret. It skipped off - I saw the flash. It rang his bell, but he put a shot in us. Lucky for us that Chariot put a round up his ass. Burnt him to the ground."
Each word made the pit in her stomach grow deeper and deeper. "I screwed up. I'm sorry."
The sergeant didn't look to Kris as he spoke again. "When your back's to a wall, a blindly thrown fist is better than nothing at all."
Kris ducked her head when a shell exploded inside the burning Imperial tank. She took a shaky breath. "What is this? Are you just trying to scare me to death? I'm not above admitting I'm scared. I don't think my training prepared me for this. I know I'm out of my depth. Why? Why me?"
"There's your problem," the sergeant said. He tapped his finger against her forehead. "You're thinking. Don't think. An enemy shell isn't going to fly any slower because you're worried about it. You think you can, you think you can't. Nobody cares about that. The enemy won't ask you how you're feeling before they kill you and your friends." Grenier turned to the crew gathered around the turret. "Bull, you asked me for a straight answer earlier. I'm gonna give it to you, one time, and never again.
The sergeant grinned. "You know what beats the hell out of me, Massis? You couldn't stand that tent filled with smoke. You kept trying to puke up your guts. You keep giving me those glares every time I have a cigarette, and you think I won't notice. It's like you haven't been in the military a god-damn day. But for some reason, none of that cannon-smoke bothers you, or those toxic fumes when you shot a whole belt from the machine gun. Doesn't bother you. Not when you got an Imperial tank charging you. You're just acting in a way that society wants you to act, but to be honest, we're too busy out here trying not to get killed for that. If that shell had struck a few centimeters lower, it could have been you, or me, or probably, both of us. But who's fault would it be? Mine, for sending you to your death. You're just doing your job.
"Quit fighting it. Quit looking for excuses out of it. I could pick someone else to take the tank, and then what, Kris? The next worst thing gets you. This won't be the worst thing to happen to you, not by far. The war's been going on for a week, and already - you know how many people," Grenier said, pausing to ash off his cigarette. "-got their stripes because someone above them got killed? Can you imagine how many tankers got their jobs by washing their predecessor's guts out of their tanks? Except you. You can say you're special, not because of some fucking training, but because nobody had to die to give you this responsibility.
"The fact is - this is easy. This is as easy as it's ever gonna be. It's going to get worse from here. So enjoy this moment while you have it."
One of the tiny, and relatively insignificant details I had to figure out early on with the story was how I wanted to portray the not-so-tiny Gallian Light Tank, which is something of a cannon-fodder unit in both the game and anime. If you go strictly off of how it is portrayed within the lore of the game, it's a twelve-ish ton light tank with a big ass infantry support cannon and an autoloader. Crew numbers aren't specified, but the anime makes it seem like a two-person tank with one driver and one tank commander/gunner.
I didn't see that making much sense, or really making for an interesting story. So there would be substantial deviation there with the tanks that I had our characters using. Most of these details weren't important enough to stand mention in the story itself, but I thought it was worth noting here.
Weight + Armor
The weight of 12 tons seems slightly on the light side. We're looking at a vehicle which is similar to a 38t (9~10 tons) but has a short-barrel 75mm howitzer (the gun is basically identical to KwK 37). The 75mm Howitzer Motor Carriage M8 is 16 some tons with 25mm of armor at the front, but it doesn't have a roof. So it is in the right ballpark, maybe a bit light given it is a 75mm cannon in a fully enclosed and powered turret. Not only does the turret need to be larger to take the larger breech and ammunition, but the gun mount needs to be large enough to take the mount and handle the recoil.
The armor looks cast or welded, so it should hold up better than the riveted Imperial tanks. The front is moderately angled, but probably only 20-30mm thick given the weight, even thinner, 10-15mm on the sides and rear. I took this to indicate that a Imperial light tank with a 45mm would probably ricochet at 500 meter + engagements, but either tank could knock each other out at close range.
Turret Layout
The Gallian tank has an interesting setup where the main gun is offset to the right side of the turret. The breechblock, recoil guard, and perhaps the receptacles for spent shells all take up space. The picture above is a specially cut-away Jagdpanzer 38t that shows the crew layout. Most of the crew has to all sit in a row on the left side to make room for the gun.
I imagined the Gallian tank's tiny turret and large main gun to have similar compromises. The gunner is up front on the left side, with the sights, controls, and coaxial machine gun. The commander would sit behind them, using the periscopes in the cupola to see around the tank. They would probably also pull double duty loading shells, as this was generally how most light tanks in early WW2 worked and a lot of early medium tanks.
I didn't see the autoloader that VC lore talks about being in a turret this cramped. (Read: I don't like autoloaders!!) You could stick a loader behind the far end of the gun, but I imagine that they would want more space for ammunition instead of the extra seat. The M8 HMC only holds 46 shells, and most tanks of the early WW2 time span held around 90-100 main gun rounds, whether it was a medium or light tank ammunition capacity was always an issue. This one of the reasons you don't actually see that many tiny tanks with large guns.
The turret is still probably a little too small. The turret roof needs to be slightly taller so that the breechblock of the main gun can be tilted up if the tank is firing from a hull-down position.
Hull Design
I didn't realize this for years, but there's a very specific thing about how the driver's situated in the Gallian Light tank; they sit in the direct front center. In most WW2 or interwar designs, the driver is sat on either side of the hull. This is for practical reasons: Most tanks of the time are front-transmission, rear-engine, with a driveshaft that runs through the floor (like a normal RWD car). When the steering levers and gear shift directly attach to the transmission, it is much easier to drive the tank. But you have to offset the driver to the side on a typical tank (everything from a 38t to a Matilda or Sherman) because the driveshaft goes through the middle of the floor, and if you have the driver seated directly on top of it, it makes the tank unnecessary tall (e.g., M3 Lee).
There's also a hatch on the front. It could be a transmission access hatch (like a Panzer 38t), but since there's no driver's hatch at the hull top, and the Gallian light is said to be based heavily on the Panzer II, I assumed that small hatch is actually how the driver gets in and out, like a Panzer II (below).
The Panzer II has the driver offset to one side, and the transmission is set on the other side of the hull. This doesn't really apply with the Gallian design, so it seemed the light tank should have been rear-transmission. Modern tanks are now mostly rear-transmission. This makes maintenance much easier as you can lift the engine and transmission out in one piece with a crane. But during WW2, there weren't many rear transmission tanks. Front transmission made for easier shifting of the gearbox and easier steering. Without electronic fly-by-wire, you have to somehow connect the gearbox, clutch pedal, and steering levers at the front of the tank to the transmission and gearbox at the back end of the tank, and being attached by metal rods can make shifting very difficult.
Consequently, I think the light would be a bit difficult to drive, requiring a lot of physical strength to shift gears. You could do a few things like put a pre-selector gearbox in it (like a Panzer 38t) to make it easier to drive.
The Gallian Light tank has the drive sprocket on the front, but I think this is just an oversight of making it look like a Panzer II without thinking of how the internals of the tank would have to be laid out. I think the alternative (there is no driver's hatch) doesn't make much sense.
Anyway, that's some headcanon lore and tech for you!
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 rocket exhaust.
It happened too fast to think about it. As soon as Kris realized enemy lances had been shot at them, the warheads had already struck the ground just in front of Imp Cleaner and exploded. An ice cold feeling spread from her stomach to her hands, and her feet, clinging in a greasy layer of anxious feeling. Shrapnel rained against their tank, sounding like a handful of pebbles hitting a tin roof. It was so different from being behind a lance, firing them at a target. You could see the hot flash of exhaust from the lance warhead all the way to the target.
Being on the receiving end was nothing but a bang and a flash. It was terrifying.
Another tap on the shoulder brought her out of it. "Longer bursts, Kris," said the sergeant. "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.
"Good hit, good hit gunner. Don't let them rest, get them with the coax."
"Alright..." Kris pressed the coax pedal with her boot, and the machine gun chattered, joining into the lethal rain descending on their target. As she fired, the machine gun started to shoot faster, and faster, until the bolt slammed forward on an empty chamber. It was deafening quiet, save for the sizzle of the barrel. "I'm out, I gotta reload." She flipped open the top cover of the Erma and wiped empty cases aside with her gloved fingertips. Dai lifted a full can of ammunition from the hull and passed it up to her.
By then, the militia had started to emerge from shell-craters and move forward, their bodies hunched low. They moved fast, and they wore little aside from their uniforms and a few pouches full of ammunition. Most didn't even wear helmets or armor. The militia darted from cover to cover as Kris slotted the fresh box into place, and draped the belt of 7.92mm rounds into the feed tray. She heard dull thuds in the distance she recognized as grenade blasts, and closed the feed tray cover with a tap of her fist. By then the tanks had stopped firing, the militia having vanished into the trees and brush. "Thanks for the ammo," Kris said.
Dai didn't bother to respond.
When the militia returned, they had Imperial soldiers in battered metal armor marching in front of their bayonets. They were streaked with blood that seeped from beneath tightly wrapped bandages. As sergeants blew whistles and the troops shouted an all-clear, the medics moved up with their heavy cases of ragnaid, checking on their own first, then the Imperials. A tendril of cigarette smoke filtered up from below as Dai stared out of an open hatch. A layer of empty casings from the machine gun covered the floor beneath the turret. The cases jingled as Grenier grabbed his weapon and climbed out of the turret. He looked like he were just going on a leisurely hike, instead of stepping into a recently-shelled warzone.
Kris took a peek below the turret ring. They had nine shells left. Four black-nosed armor-piercing shells, five yellow-nosed high explosive shells. There were piles of unopened 7.92 ammunition cans for the machine gun piled all around the hull.
Dai didn't look at her as Kris climbed up, out of the turret. The shock of breathing air not tainted with gun-smoke was enough to make Kris double over, gripping her knees as she heaved. The next breath of air tasted like charcoal and the acrid, stinging smell that a high-explosive shell left after detonation. Kris ran her hand over the bare metal where the shell had struck the day before. It was smooth as glass and cold to the touch now.
When Kris brought her eyes back up to the scene of the fight, she saw all the militia emerging from their hiding spots. They were an odd assortment, old and young. She saw a clean-headed man in a headband who looked far too old to be lugging around a MAGs and a dozen magazines like he was. It struck her in an odd way, like she had seen her grandfather take up a sub-machine gun to fight in the war. There was another shocktrooper, pretty and silver-haired, who fussed over some powder and eye shadow, even as her uniform was caked with mud. The tall lancer with the scar on his nose looked like he had worn gold fringing on his uniform shoulders, which made him one of their sergeants. As Kris jumped down from the tank, the big lancer offered a curt nod.
It felt like by now, her heart had finally stopped racing, and the fresh air didn't make her light-headed any more.
After a battle, this was usually the time when a squad's officer would be checking up on their enlisted, but Kris didn't see any officers walking around. She turned her attention to the odd tank they had been sitting by, and the militia standing by it. There was a corporal in a traditional Darcsen shawl talking to what looked like the squad's officer, along with another sergeant with a red scarf on her head. They had been working away at the tank with a pair of shovels, but it wasn't enough to expose a single road wheel yet. Kris turned to Imp Cleaner and grasped a heavy, braided cable sitting on the hull, hefting the weight over her shoulder as she returned to the militia squad.
As she got closer, she saw the turret was marked "07" on its side. She stopped a few steps away from a young man with messy brown hair who looked like the officer. Kris clicked her heels together at attention, at least as best she could with a heavy cable over her shoulder, and raised her hand to her brow in salute. "Good morning, sir! Corporal Kris Massis, C Company, 1st Militia Tank Battalion." After a moment, she added, "I thought you might need a tow."
"Wow, really?" The officer lit up at the greeting, looking a lot more chipper than Kris would have expected from someone who had just been in a firefight. He almost sounded juvenile, compared to other officers Kris had met. "That sounds great, thank you."
"Yeah. It's no problem, uh, sir..." Kris hoped her reaction to the young officer's demeanor wasn't obvious. She held her salute as the officer remained at ease, his eyes turned to the sight of the burning trees.
Kris turned her eyes briefly to him, and he looked back at her. She saw a moment of gears grinding in the man's head before his eyes widened in realization. The officer finally jumped to attention and returned her salute. After a moment, he let his hand drop, and Kris was able to relax and support the weight of the heavy cable. "I'm Welkin Gunther, and this is my sister, Isara. Nice to meet you, Kris." He gestured to the young girl in the scarf, who nodded gratefully to Kris.
"Gunther? Like, the war hero Gunther?" Kris sputtered.
Welkin smiled, then exchanged a look with the girl he had introduced as his sister. "Dad didn't like being called a war hero. He thought it was too stuffy. But I know a lot of people looked up to him." He spoke in a warm way, far removed from the mud and blood surrounding them.
"You could definitely say that... Everyone studied General Gunther in tank school. You could say your father helped all of us survive." Saying the words helped Kris feel a little better about the situation. About the odds they were facing.
"Really? Wow, I've never thought of it that way." Welkin looked lost in his thoughts for a few moments. "I almost wish he talked more about the war. I didn't feel very up to the task when they wanted me to lead a militia squad."
"You could have done a lot worse for being caught in an ambush, sir." Kris looked to the tank, and the small smears of bare metal where antitank lances had skipped along the armor. "Those lances - they bounced right off your tank."
"Yeah, no kidding." Welkin exhaled sharply at the sighed. He looked to the girl in the shawl. "Are you alright, Is? Edelweiss took a few hits, I was worried about you."
Isara's cheeks flushed as she shook her head with a little smile. "I'm alright, Welks. I'm sorry for getting us stuck." The two of them seemed close, although Kris was having a hard time seeing the family resemblance.
"Hey, no use blaming yourself now. Everyone gets stuck. It's a rite of passage for us tankers, you know?" Kris knelt down by the radiator at the back of the tank. She had stories like any other tanker, of being stuck in the mud, usually on a rainy day. Sometimes it was a freak accident, other times, she'd had her own hand in causing the mishap. Kris didn't like talking about those stories.
"...thank you, Kris."
The tow eyelets were at the bottom of the hull on most tanks, which meant they were under several feet of mud for Edelweiss. Kris grabbed a shovel that had been jammed into the mud and started to pick away at the thick layer caked onto the hull. She heard footsteps beside her, and Welkin started on the other side. They dug up the mud for a while like this. It was a kind of miserable that made Kris think back to training. The instructors seemed to always pick days for field exercises where the rain poured and the dirt had become a muddy soup. They said the worst conditions made the best training. It seemed like miserable bullshit at the time, but now that they had seen combat, being in training again seemed like a better alternative.
"Alright, got it hooked up." Kris gave the cable a tug to ensure it was on tight, and walked the other end back to Imp Cleaner. Brenner had already moved the tank closer to make it easier to hook up. Kris knocked against the hatch, and he obliged by tilting open the viewport.
"Corporal Massis." Brenner tipped up his goggles. It was probably the first time she had gotten a good look at him. He had the kind of square jaw that she associated with someone who worked in a steel mill, messy brown hair and sharp, blue eyes. His shoulders nearly touched the edges of the hatch, and his legs barely fit with the seat cranked all the way back. "Just making friends?"
"Yeah, you could say that. Could you raise the platoon on the wireless?" Kris pointed to the bulk of Edelweiss sunk deep into the mud. "That thing's probably two, three times as heavy as our tanks. I think we'll need at least two tanks to pull it out."
Brenner looked from Kris to Edelweiss itself. "More like three tanks. We'll give it a try."
Sergeant Grenier joined them shortly after they hooked up the cables, and eventually Imp Cleaner was connected to Edelweiss, with Chariot sitting directly behind them, connected with another pair of cables. Kris walked the tank back until the cables went taut, then she gestured for the others to take several steps away. "Don't be near these things if they happen to snap," she said. Turning back to the motley arrangement, she flashed a thumbs-up to Welkin, who was back in the turret of the massive tank.
"Alright, try it again, Is." The tank shuddered, a sound emanating from within it that sounded like the spinning of a gigantic cutting tool. Little of the characteristic exhaust shot out from Edelweiss, just a steady, low hum that got louder and louder as the radiator sizzled and popped, ragnite blue light emanating from it as the tank came fully to life.
Kris started to raise her hands, and Imp Cleaner rolled back, engine rumbling as it build up revs. Then Chariot started to pull in turn, the two light tanks pulling their cables taut, spraying up dirt as they pulled heavily on the buried tank. Edelweiss screamed, white exhaust pouring from the mud as the tracks spun furiously, rocking the tank from side to side. It looked like the huge tank was simply tearing up the mud, digging itself a deeper grave despite the efforts of the others to pull it free. That was when Brenner let up on the throttle, as Imp Cleaner bit into increasingly muddy ground, tracks vanishing behind a curtain of dirt.
Kris massaged her temples. "Crap."
"If nothing broke, don't worry about it." Sergeant Grenier stepped up beside her, watching the trio of tanks sink into the mud. "The LT called HQ for a recovery vehicle thirty minutes ago."
"Oh... that helps." It was embarrassing to go to so much effort when there had been a better solution all along. Kris tried to remind herself there were more important things to worry about. The small details of the recovery wouldn't affect how tomorrow would go, after all.
Kris was sitting on the tank roof, her boots kicked over the side. Brenner had finally taken a moment to climb out of the tank and stretch. Dai had struck up conversation with Isara, and Grenier had gone over to the lieutenant's tank for another leadership meeting.
The clatter of tracks on the main road made their heads turn, long before the tanks themselves pulled into view. The choppy sound of their engines was unfamiliar to most of them, but Kris found it oddly familiar. The moment of trepidation finally passed when the first green tank rounded the corner, its frontal armor emblazoned with the white wheel of the Atlantic Federation. They were a familiar sight from her days training in Vinland. Brenner must have seen the way her posture relaxed at the sight, as he asked, "You recognize them tanks?"
"Yeah. They're from Vinland. Mk. 4 tanks, also called the 'minute.'" The first rolled on by, with a tall, teardrop-shaped cast body, a squat turret sitting atop with a medium-caliber cannon. The second and third passed them by, and finally one with a large crane built into its hull instead of a turret and cannon. Parts were festooned all along the sides, spare tracks, wheels, and pins. The group of Federal tanks came to a stop just down the road from them, the hatches falling open as the commanders peered around them with binoculars.
"Hey, where you steal that jacket from, corporal?"
Kris turned her head in a shock, and saw a blond staff sergeant smirking down at her from the roof of the recovery tank. "This jacket was issued to me, staff sergeant..." She smiled, then. "It's nice to see a familiar face."
Winter jumped down with a blocky sub-machine gun slung over one shoulder, a cigarette dangling from her lips as she eyeballed the tanks. "Same to you, kiddo. That's some big fucking tank you all got stuck."
"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Why don't they issue us anything that nice?" Kris looked to Edelweiss, and saw Welkin's face light up at the sight of them.
Winter nudged Kris with an elbow. "So, how's it being in the militia? As awful and shitty as you were saying it was gonna be?"
She thought about it for a moment, but shook her head. "No, honestly. Everyone's been working hard, fighting their butts off. And mostly nice, nicer than I would have expected. I think... everyone in the regular army is so cynical, but the militia seems more optimistic, if that makes sense.
"Uhuh... sounds like you're doing fine." The Vinlander was staring at her. Sizing her up for something. "Listen, I've got something important to talk to you about. About your unit."
