"Twelve-pound seven milimeter?" Kris said. As the two poured over her forms Kris felt her stomach knot. It was hard enough to hold down food when her gut was always achine, but skipping meals had started to catch up to her... she couldn't help but think of some nice crusty bread or a sandwich. Focus. "That's whatcha use on armored cars and anti-balloon machine guns. You guys have one?"
While you're fiddling, I noticed that the Index on the first page and the Thread marks have different amount of chapters. You might want to consider updating them, if not which one do I use?
While you're fiddling, I noticed that the Index on the first page and the Thread marks have different amount of chapters. You might want to consider updating them, if not which one do I use?
_____Good news? I had to report to the 3rd Militia Regiment, but I'm actually going to be in the 1st Militia Tank Battalion, which is apparently a different organization altogether. I'll still work with them, but my boss is a guy name "Dirk." Take Captain Bix and get his complete opposite. Young. Brusque. Not so experienced. I'm worried he's more concerned with what's going on above his pay grade than below it, with us enlisted. The stupid thing is I can feel myself lapsing into the same thought process.
_____Knowing full well what can ruin your chances in any battle, I'm still wallowing in doubt. About my situation, my skills, my unit...
_____The lieutenant asked what I could bring to the unit. What I'm good at, basically. I know you're going to just say I can be good at anything and I know, I know... but right now, I'm not sure of what I can do. Everything is busy, it's just like the last hours before a field exercise where everybody forgets to bring everything at once. Except instead, this is that over the span of a few days. I have to tear my habits apart and recondition them on the fly but there's just no time for it.
_____My entire career was about tankers doing things in this fixed, incorrect sort of way that's rooted in EW1. Open cavalry charges with skirmish lines of tanks, you know? Being part of the TDs meant being smarter, using terrain and being better-trained than anyone else. And that's the bad news, really. I'm training new people now. I don't think it means extra risk for me than any other job, but it's this enormous responsibility for someone who normally shovels shells into a breech day in and day out. It's not that I don't have to worry about the consequences of my actions normally, but a loader only thinks two or three steps ahead of the gunner. Unless things are going wrong it's pretty multiple-choice.
_____This is like staying a dozen steps in front of thirty different individuals at the same time. I trip up once and they'll remember it forever.
_____Kris took it in her hands and threw it on the counter, kicking up a cloud of white powder that settled thick on her clothes. The tickle at her nostrils made her twist, churn and jolt with a sneeze that shook the flour out of her apron. Naturally, Alicia already had a tissue in hand by the time her world had come back into focus.
_____"Oof." Alicia said, taking the bread-to-be into her hands like it were a small child. "Letting off some steam there...?" She chided, giving the tanker a sideways look like a slap on the wrist.
_____"Maybe." Kris sighed her guilty admission as she peered over the miltia sergeant's shoulder at her handiwork. There was a handprint in the middle of the boule that wasn't disappearing as fast as it should have, and some flour had blown out of the sides from impact against the counter. "... did I kill it?" Kris squeaked. She could see a dozen of the pasty white domes on Alicia's side of the kitchen, almost completely smooth save for the knife-scores across their tops. "I swear I don't normally do that, we used to bake a ton of bread for sandwiches back in town..." Mixing, adding yeast and salt, folding, chilling, folding, resting, more folding... baking wasn't the busywork Kris remembered from the shop. Maybe it was even a miracle that they had some competent bakers in the regular units, all considered.
_____"Hey, hey. It's okay, alright?" Alicia smiled at her. Turned out, that was another thing she did better than Kris. Even though the heat in the kitchen had Kris's hair matted down with sweat, she could still describe the militia sergeant's expression as warm. It made things feel less like a transaction of supplies and labor. Alicia didn't seem to mind her as she dipped her fingertips in water and pinched the severed ends of the dough together. The brunette slid a wooden paddle under the loaves and eased three at a time into the oven. She ran the thing even hotter than they had at the kitchen back home. "See? Nothing to it!"
_____Kris shook her head. "You make that look way too easy."
_____"Well, it is just dough," Alicia said warmly. "You, Sergeant Kris, make handling battery acid look easy— so what's some flour and yeast? You've helped so much already."
_____The redheaded sergeant nodded. Lately, she kept thinking every compliment did little more than hold a hidden favor or request for her. Having a conversation, of all things had Kris stumbling interally. "Yeah, I guess so," Kris muttered. She had become accustomed to a constant ache in her abdomen. The sergeant hadn't eaten much since leaving the infirmary more than half a day prior.
_____Alicia bent her knees and dipped down until Kris was looking her in the eye instead of the floor below, head cocked and eyes half-lidded in muted annoyance. "Did you learn how to do that in the army?" She asked.
_____There it was again— a mention of the army that wasn't laced with negativity. She could get used to that. Kris didn't realize she were smiling until Alicia reflected the expression in turn. "No, that's actually outside my specialty."
_____Alicia dusted off her apron and cracked open the oven, using tongs to drag out a pan of boiling water from the racks. Kris had never used water when baking before, but Alicia had assured her it helped build a better crust. In other words— more baker's magic. Sergeant Melchiott let the bubbling pan cool on the countertop and shook out of her mitts as Kris scooted aside. Even as sweat beaded on her forehead, Alicia's eyes lit up at Kris's admission. "Oh?"
_____Kris dabbed at her own damp forehead with a kitchen rag as the two gave the oven its fair distance. "Yeah, a tank destroyer or tanker learns how to tear down their machine to the tiniest part, but things like fabricating new parts or recycling is usually something maintenance depot people do."
_____"Usually?" The bright-eyed sergeant waggled a finger in front of Kris as she crossed the narrow kitchen. It was getting loud with the Squad barracks just next door, and Alicia took a spot by the wall beside Kris. Somehow I don't think you're the usual type. Where did a talented sergeant like you pick up your repertoire of skills?"
_____"Hmm..." Kris watched the militia pass by the open doorway. She didn't mind questions, but somehow they chafed on her like new boots on a ruck march. Questions were always accompanied by requests. Compliments were just the first half of a request— it was a ploy even her crew had relied on from time to time. "Just... living, I suppose. Part of town where I came from, you bought a car battery once every few years, didn't matter if it broke down on you or not. Military doesn't have to worry about that so much."
_____Alicia bounced on her heels as she took up the tanker's hands. "Most of the time, right? We're lucky you came by. Is being a tanker hard? Isara hardly sleeps when she's working on Edelweiss, and the motorpool is always so busy!"
_____Kris hadn't realized her fingertips were raw until the militia sergeant had given her a squeeze. It hurt, but not enough for her to make guilt-tripping Sergeant Melchiott at all worthwhile. She hid her cringe by smiling back. "It can be. Your job is ninety percent physical labor, ten percent having the time of your life. Most of us think it's worth it."
_____"'Us' meaning 'tank destroyers,' Sergeant Kris?"
_____"Yup."
_____"What's a tank destroyer?" Alicia asked. "Is it a tough job?"
_____"Hm. There's a bit of training. Three months of specialty school after basic, sometimes more. I went to Lanseal for a bit," Kris said. The thought of school was still a bit raw, but the rest wasn't hard– it was the sort of thing drilled into her head on a daily basis. "Tank Destroyers... Well, the Gallian army doctrine orients tanks first and foremost in an infantry support posture, so you have things like that seventy-five milimeter compromise in the normal armor force. It has a lot to do with how successful the FT tank was in the last war, and..."
_____Alicia was nice enough not to wear confusion on her face, but the infrequent nod of her head said enough about her familiarity with the topic. "Uhh. Sorry," Kris sputtered. "Tank destroyers are to tanks as lancers are to other infantry. More than that, tank destroyers are a way to fight obsolesence in the armor force."
_____Kris shook her head. It was grossly simplifying things. Her job was complex. Trying to give a catchphrase that bottled up the entirety of her job and why their branch even existed didn't work. "So, think of the very first tanks as land-ships, yeah? Like big boxes with tracks running top and bottom, guns sticking out of the sides. You put guns everywhere, you need more people for them, then the tanks get bigger, heavier and more thinly armored. These bigger tanks don't go any faster than infantry do. Their guns are mostly designed to kill things infantry can't kill because of that, like bunkers. The breakthrough in the last war was using smaller tanks that held two or three people with just as much armor, with one big gun in a spinning turret on them. Still follow?"
_____Sergeant Melchiott blinked once, but nodded, glancing once at the oven. "Go on," she said, leaning forward as if to eavesdrop on a grand conspiracy only Kris knew.
_____Okay, cool. Kris didn't consider herself anything like a speaker or storyteller, but at least the topic was familiar. "Gallia has really only just modernized its armor force. Tanks are getting faster and better armored at the same time, so you can't keep firing what are essentially howitzers at tanks and expecting results. In the long term, we should be using specially made guns that can kill tanks just as well as bunkers or infantry, but the thing is, it's cheaper to make a separate tank destroyer branch just to kill other tanks instead. Out of the many thousands of tankers in the Gallian army, you only train a few hundred to that same level of excellence.
_____"So a tank destroyer might be just like a tank, the difference is we're trained to do all these different things that doctrine doesn't allow normal tankers to do. Regardless of if we have to use a tank destroyer, an anti-tank gun, or even a lance and grenades," Kris said. The silence that followed made thes sergeant clamp her mouth shut and letting her eyes fall back to the deck.
_____"Wow!" Alicia said, stuck into a state of wide-eyed bewilderment. "You're just like Welks, you know that? You really get talking when you're interested in a topic. Did you learn all of that from Lanseal?"
_____Kris felt her cheeks burn and wiggled away, folding her arms across her chest. "Hey, don't tease..."
_____"Hey! I mean it. You're in a special unit. You're definitely brainy. Count me as being in your fan club, Kris."
_____Kris cupped the TD badge on her sleeve, running her fingers over the ragnite crest. "I guess you could put it that way... I feel like you're still teasing a little bit, but I appreciate it. It stops being 'special' after you miss the holidays for the second or third time. The sad thing is the distinction is so fuzzy that most people don't think there's a need for a separate branch, really."
_____"You said you went to Lanseal though, why aren't you an officer? If you don't mind me asking, that is."
_____Kris did her best to choke down the grimace before it got to her face. She reminded herself Alicia wasn't mom. Alicia wouldn't force her opinion down her throat. Probably. "Well... when the Imps declared war, I was nine months into earning my commission at Lanseal. They gave me the option to be a newly minted second lieutenant right then and there, but I turned it down.
_____"I had signed up for the army for lack of better options, but I decided that I wanted to be the most well-trained tanker around. Getting half my training and leaping into an assignment with a platoon of tanks to lead in combat... that's petrifying," she said. Being platoon sergeant now was tough, but at least she wasn't in Lieutenant Dirk's shoes. "I like being a sergeant, but it's already pretty stressful. I don't think I could handle more responsibility."
_____Alicia rested her chin on an upturned palm, a little wisp of breath escaping her. She looked as if remembering a weight that had been on her back all along, though the wistful look in her eyes said it couldn't have been too bad. "You know, the weirdest people can make good officers..."
_____Kris wiped a red strand out of her eyes, mostly to hide the twitch of her lips. "Really?"
_____
"Gosh, where do I start?" As the two chatted with watchful eyes on the ovens, Kris learned that she wasn't the only one with an eccentric commanding officer.
_____I took a few minutes this morning to read through the Type 34 Field Manual. Mechanically the militia tanks have a lot in common with Army TDs, same engines and transmissions, a lot of common wiring and motors. We were experimenting with a few different gunsights in the Army, and it's been a while since I've put my eyes to the standard tank sights. I bet they look completely unintelligible to a normal person, huh?Well, maybe not with universal conscription
_____Isn't that pop up paper amazing? You can spin the edge! It took like, an hour to get it right. The big triangle in the middle is four miliradians wide and four miliradians tall. The very tip-top of each of the smaller triangles are four mils apart, too, but the bottoms are two mils apart and they're two mils tall as well, so you can say they're like finer graduations. Miliradians are units of angular measurement. While you have 360 degrees in a circle, you have about 6,283 miliradians in the same space. It's weird because some armies use different miliradian counts for their maps, like 6000 or 6400. Either way, a mil is 1 Meter wide at 1000 Meters distance exactly. You measure the presented width of a tank in your sight picture to get the range.
_____The little bubbles are the graudations for range. Coax MG and AP on one side, high explosive on the other. Some sights just have a marker somewhere along the graduations where HE "starts." All tanks have some similar system in their tanks, be it with lines, triangles or bubbles.
_____(Tank Width : Miliradians) x 1000 = Range
_____Conveniently, most tanks are 3 to 3 1/2 meters wide and6 1/2 meters long. Our tanks are smaller by a meter each way, so their gunners have a hard time. So if a the front of a tank filled up the entire big triangle and touched one of the small triangles, it would be 6 mils long.
_____6 Mils = 3 m
_____6 : 3 = 2 m
_____2 m x 1000 = 2000 m
_____Not all guns have marks for miliradians. It isn't uncommon to take three rounds to plonk a round onto a target, so it's really important your tank commander has an accurate reading and spots the fall of your rounds. That's why I have those artillery binoculars Captain Bix gave me!
_____By the time Kris had gotten to the firing ranges on Amatrain's outskirts, a loaf of fresh bread had become a single handful. Now that she had a full stomach, two tanks to practice with didn't seem so bad.
_____Technically, four. One was just a turret with the rear half sawn open, planted on an open steel skeleton in the range soil. Kris saw the tank she had helped clean earlier that day, alongside one of its cleaner siblings on the far left side of the range. The tankers there were careful to keep the throng of militia away from their mounts. Not far from the centrally-located entrance, Kris found herself looking a slice of Gallian history planted on the range soil. It could have been older than her, a riveted box that looked even more duck-like than their typical tanks. The machine wore thin tracks wrapped around four bicycle-tall road wheels, a dart-like nose up front, a stunted tail at the back and a rounded turret that sat upon the squat body of the machine like a cap. If Alicia had been with her, explaining the importance of the FT tank would have been a breeze.
_____On the other hand, it was probably better that Alicia hadn't been there to see the blood leave Kris's face. FTs mostly sat in museums and memorials— exactly where they belonged in a war like this. A few had been upgraded to use the same engines as their newer tanks and wield bigger cannons, but Kris knew it would only exacerbate their biggest problem.
_____The range officer overseeing the flock of militia planked a red flag on the roof of the FT tank. Kris fished into a pocket for her army-issue earplugs and pushed them home, followed by the headset at the top of her kit bag. She straightened her back and leveled her head, digging down for her best stomach voice. "Cover your ears! NOW!"
_____Around half of the fifty militia present did so, clapping their hands to their heads simply out of reaction to her voice. A moment later the tank's stubby muzzle spat a tongue of flame, rocking the entire hull back. The little tank was swallowed in a puff of dust a moment later, the concussive slap hitting Kris in the chest even from a dozen meters away. When the tanker unclapsed her hands from her ears, she could hear the cheer that rose from behind the cloud of dust. Kris hooked her boot onto the nearby berm and peered over at the range, just on time to see the flash of blue-white as a shell hurtled down-range. She eyeballed it as a four-hundred meter shot, and from how low the shell had been launched knew it at once to be a miss. The fist-sized shell hit the dirt in front of a wrecked tank target and corkscrewed into the air.
_____Misses weren't unusual. Kris only dropped her first shell on target on a very good day, and after spending enough days on the range she had almost memorized the distances of each individual target. But the shells spat high, low again and again until three rounds had done nothing but score the dirt. There was a bald tanker on top of the FT's engine deck, his headphones askew as he exchanged a few choice words with the hapless tankers inside. The radiator on the back was slightly scorched gray instead of roaring blue, but Kris gave it a wide berth just to be sure as she moved alongside the tank.
_____Kris hadn't even opened her mouth when the bald tanker turned and looked her over, his lips pinched at the edges into a sort of grimace. "Can't you see we're conducting live fire here?" His voice was flattened, soft. Kris imagined it was how a monk in Ghirlandio would have greeted the first living being they had seen in months, yet the sergeant's eyes narrowed and at once dispelled the notion of friendliness. The man's polished scalp looked like the handpiece for a reedy walking-stick body, brows knitted like roots. Kris saw that he had even buzzed his eyebrows and replaced them with pencil-thin lines of ink as thin as his lips, making the rake of his lips seem all the more whimsical.
_____Kris squared her shoulders and look the militia sergeant in the eye. "1st Militia Tank Battalion?"
_____His smirk evaporated. "Naturally, that depends on who is asking."
_____"Sergeant Massis. 601 TD. Transferring in."
_____"...of course you are."
_____Kris plastered a saccharine smile across her face. "So, kinda hard to shoot that EW1 junk, isn't it?" When one of the sergeant's tattoo eyebrows twitched, Kris knew she had hit her mark. "Can I take a look at it, sergeant...?"
_____"Milo," he said, chewing on a thought as he looked from Kris to the surrounding troops. After a moment the wrinkle in his brow smoothed itself out and he quickly added,"Sure, be my guest, fellow sergeant Massis from the six-oh-one." Milo kept his boots planted as Kris climbed up the side, taking up most of the right engine grille. Kris had to hook her boot on the radiator housing to find herself a spot. "May I gently remind you that our not-so-great tanks are almost as bad as our trainees? These brilliant conscripts have been throwing shell after shell all day now."
_____"I'll keep that in mind, thanks," Kris chirped. Her forced enthusim contorted Milo's face like it had been a particularly rank odor in the air. Kris took a step forward and peered into the FT's turret. Every other tankhad a bustle box that poked out from the armor, usually for radios or ammunition but the stubby FT turret had a pair of doors that opened up like access into a cellar. The turret was so narrow that a person's shoulders almost touched the white-painted interior sitting perfectly still, and the commander sat in a leather sling attached to the left and right instead of on a seat.
_____Today the commander was a raven-haired private who kept figeting with the breech. Open, closed, open, closed... Kris stopped his hand with a flick. "Easy. What's your name?"
_____"Hi sarge." The private leaned back from the sights and rubbed his eyes. He had to hunch to avoid rubbing his headset into the roof, and the standard-issue uniform was snug around the collar and the belt. A ray of sun came through the top hatches and fell across his slightly reddened nose. "Private Risner, nice to meet you. When do I get to leave?"
_____Kris rolled her eyes, give the band of the private's headset a nudge. "How long have you been here?"
_____Private Risner twisted inside the tight confines of the turret, his back popping rapid-fire. "Oh, about half an hour. You see, after I flubbed those shots, sarge Milo said I can only fire one round every ten minutes since we've got so few lying around. Tanks are really very boring, aren't they?" Risner laughed, at least for a moment before his voice fell to a nervous chuckle.
_____Kris bit her lip, turning and glaring daggers at the smug NCO just a few steps away. She didn't say it, but the private needed to get out before the heat made him pass out inside his metal box, but letting him run off would have compounded the waste of ammunition... "You're kidding. Tell you what— is that coax loaded?"
_____"The what?"
_____Oh boy. She hadn't been expecting trainees this green. Inexperienced? Sure, but there were only two guns in the turret to load or not... Kris poked her arm past Risner's head, to the pistol grip jutting downward just to the side of his main sight. "On the left side of the gun, that MG? Go grab the charging handle— underhand it, and pull it all the way back twice." Risner nodded rapidly and charged the gun with a clunk. "Take off the safety on the left side and give it a short squeeze, private."
_____It took a few moments for the private to nod along, mumbling. "Uh okay." Whatever followed was swallowed up by the belch of the coaxial MG. Kris leaned around the left side of the turret and watched the rounds scatter across dirt like a handful of thrown marbles.
_____"Cease fire, cease fire," she said, thumping her hand on the turret roof until the belch of red-white tracers died off as suddenly as it had started. "Private Risner, did you notice anything when you fired the coax?"
_____Risner did the mad dance to shake out the scalding-hot brass casings from his uniform and almost fell right out of the sling. When he finally settled, collar damp with sweat and panting heavily, the private slumped against the nearest turret wall. "Well, gee. It was all over the place actually, just bullets flying in from the left side and going everywhere. How am I supposed to shoot through this tiny little hole?" Risner whined.
_____"Alright, good. Hang with me, okay? We'll be done real soon." Kris gave the private's shoulder a squeeze and wiggled a shoulder through the hatch, plucking one of the small 37mm rounds from its rack. It was still about as long as her forearm, but compared to what the army normally fired, it was the most boring, unimpressive tank cannon Kris could have imagined. No wonder the private was suffering. "I'm going to feed your gun another round, but think about this. Your coax MG is mounted five centimeters to the left of the sights you're looking through, so when you aim at a target..."
_____"Oh. Oh? Oh!" Risner dabbed at his forehead with a rag, leaning as far back he could to get near the flow of fresh air. "I aim to the right a bit, sarge?"
_____Still, even if he was barely chugging along, the private was listening. Like Alicia had told her, most people did their best. It just took some time, right? "Yup. The cannon on this tank is five centimeters the other way. At long range you'll really want to hold to the left to compensate for that. Did you make a range estimate on that tank you shot earlier?"
_____"Uhhhh..."
_____Kris tried her best to hide the grit teeth. She wasn't a good teacher on the best of days, and even the greenest army tanker she had run into knew how to read a sight. Kris groped for a way not to throw up her hands and storm off. Not to give the NCo lazing on the deck more ammunition. "That's fine," she started. What would Sergeant Melchiott have done? "Stay focused, okay?" Kris pointed the shell at the private, then the padded sight at the front of the turret. "You're psyching yourself out. It's much much simpler than you think Just take a good look at the range. Make a guess. How many meters is that?"
_____Rister tipped his body forward until the leather brow pad and shoulder stock of the cannon supported most of his weight. He let his breath out and scrunched up behind the gun, blinking once against the glare of the sight. "Look, I don't know. If I had to guess maybe three... two... three hundred meters."
_____Kris almost bulled into the hatch rim, craning her neck to listen with earplugs. She hung on every word, and when the sweltering private finally gave his estimate, Kris found herself rubbing her hands together in... if not glee, at least an imitation of it. "Good! That's not too far off," Kris blurted out, though a moment later she was backtracking on her assumption. "If that tank was exactly three hundred meters away and elevated your muzzle enough to drop the shell at three-hundred meters, where on the tank would you be hitting?"
_____Even in the hotbox interior of the light tank, the private nodded along as the gears spun to life inside his head. "The... bottom?"
_____"The ground, yes! So really when you're aiming at the middle of that tank, are you aiming a three hundred meter shot?" Thinking about training finally made Kris smile. It had been so long the tanker wasn't entirely sure she was wearing one correctly.
_____Risner craned his neck to stare at her. He seemed to take her smile as a sign of faith, leaping back to the controls with an energy completely apart from his lethargic struggle just moments before. "When you put it that way— hm. No, not a chance."
_____When shells fell at a target's feet, a tanker had to add onto their range estimate to hit the target's 'belly button' instead. "In those situations, we're under five-hundred meters away so you add one-hundred to your range estimate. See the big 'four' line on your sights? Elevate to there," Kris added, before flicking the round home in the FT's gun and slapped the breech closed.
_____"Sarge? How can I tell if I hit though?"
_____"Oh, you'll know," she responded cheerily. "Just squeeze that shoulder pad tight, don't jerk the trigger. Take it slow, slow, slow." Her instructors had always said to take your time— quickly, but it didn't seem right for Private Risner, or for Sergeant Milo looming behind her shoulder. Oh well, Kris thought. Maybe if I'm ever back with the unit.
_____"Firing... now?"
_____"Go for it."
_____Kris expected fidgeting and vocalized doubt, but Private Risner squeezed the tirgger without another moment's thought. The cannon-blast was more of a muted thump inside the FT, the whole machine rocking as if shoved briefly upon its heels. Kris almost missed the shell again as it left the barrel, rose and headed for the dirt. The shell met its target nearly at ground level, but the force if its impact threw up a flash of orange-white sparks twice as tall as the wrecked tank.
_____Voices all around her reacted with a cheer, and raised fists.The militia tankers wandering up and down the range had gathered around them since she had arrived, and their celebration left Kris at a loss for words. After all, hitting a target was the minimum, not something to break out the champagne over.
_____Then again, maybe Alicia would have disagreed. Kris helped Risner scramble from the turret and off the side of the tank. He uttered a thanks before snatching a canteen from back-slapping friends. Kris looked to Sergeant Milo, but found the clean-headed tanker wearing the same bland smile, just with squared shoulders and a salute.
_____A salute? Kris snapped around as Lieutenant Dirk made a beeline for the tanks with a storm over his head. "1st Battalion! At attention!" There were mutterings of dissent, but the conscripts parted around Dirk as a blue-gray sea, spacing out at arm's length intervals. Milo leapt off the FT's deck as Dirk scribbled on his ever-present clipboard. It was hard to miss the way her elbowed and ducked through the neatly-arranged crowd, up until arriving at the side of the two light tanks at the other end of the berm.
_____By then, Kris could have recognized the first tank by the blotches on its blue-white camouflage. It was the very same machine she had helped strip and clean, already digging into the fresh soil. The bald sergeant approached Corporal Brenner and Private Dai with a few sharp gestures of the hand. Without hearing the words they exchanged, the way Dai stomped with a boot was an instant red flag for the sergeant. Kris swung down from the machine and squeezed past Dirk.
_____Kris had just emerged from the throng of militia when Dai took up the blocky receiver of an Erma light machine gun. A quick wiggle dislodged it from the roof mount of the tank. Sergeant Milo was already there to receive the weapon, tucking the muzzle over his shoulder. Why right now? Kris felt the blood rush through her ears as she marched herself up to the trio. "What's going on here?"
_____"Hello to you too, tank-destroyer sergeant," Milo started, voice smooth and even as ever. "I didn't take you for the gambling type, at least until you gave more precious, war-winning ammunition to the hapless rookie. How very interesting of you."
_____She jerked a thumb at the formation over her shoulder. "You shouldn't bail on the el-tee like that. What's with this? Why are you taking that machine gun?" Kris tried her best to be even, not to let her voice jump. Milo kept smiling as he shrugged against the weight of the Erma.
_____"Why, Sergeant Massis, the lieutenant has much more important business than ours. Or yours, evidently. Tell me, is it normal in your other unit to dislodge strangers from their jobs and show-boat?"
_____Easy, easy. Keep cool, Kris thought, but already her fists were aching with the need to plant a cross in Milo's face. "Is that what this is about? We're supposed to be working together, aren't we?"
_____Milo's irises were inky black pools as he turned to Private Dai. "... are we? Working together does, after all, involve taking... responsibility for things."
_____"Fuck you, asshole!" Dai shot back. The private clenched cocked an arm back with a clenched fist before Kris stepped between them.
_____I am so done with this. Kris shot a glare at Dai with enough heat to melt armor-plate. It wasn't that she was hurt. The military was all about hush-hush deals, after all. Kris wanted so badly to have one day without mistakes and disasters. Especially when every single wrinkle in the unit meant something to Lieutenant Dirk. "You're going to explain. Right now."
_____"Certainly," Milo interjected, basking in Dai's agonized silence. "Private Dai is offering this spare machine gun— a bribe, essentially, in exchange for my crew's promise to take lead position in our next mission. The private was quite badly rattled losing a tank commander in a fight, naturally. We considered them the lucky duck of the battalion for a while, you see, and since that's passed the two have been understandably rattled." The sergeant dipped his head to Dai.
_____Kris had clenched her hands so tightly they started to tingled from lack of circulation. She hadn't known any of them for long, but when every interaction with Private Dai had involved a cussing-out, a nearly-thrown fist the silence between them spoke the loudest of anything. Kris doubted Milo's character, but his words rung true. "Okay. We need every spare machine gun we can get, and we can't just trade our duties like that. Private Dai, what you're trying to do could easily get you the firing squad."
_____"Fuck it," the private spat. "What can I do? Fuck all. Shot up against a wall, burn down in a fucking tank. I'm screwed either way!"
_____"It would be cruel of me to concur," Milo yawned. "But I am inclined to agree, and you, sergeant of the TDs, know better than to force the issue, don't you? After all, you lack seniority here, and our lieutenant has a dire need for trained NCOs, far too dire to get rid of me for a lapse in regulations."
_____"Look," Kris said. Her breath knotted in her chest. What would Alicia do? What would mom do? Kris couldn't break Milo's jaw even if her mother would forgive her for it. She wasn't good at throwing a punch to begin with, or trying to smooth-talk her way out of things. The doubt had to be etched onto her face plain as day. Kris held onto her breath and listened to her pulse pounding in her ears.
_____It was as plain as Milo's irritation at Kris. He couldn't tolerate how she had barged in and taken over his task, even if he didn't enjoy the work enough to do it right. Or to at least look the part. "This is just about appearances, isn't it? That's absurd. Nobody should be ashamed of fear in a warzone. You shouldn't care about who looks good training the new tankers. But okay. I'll play by your shitty game. You said you like to gamble, didn't you?"
_____The very word made Milo's fingers drum against the Erma's receiver, his eyelids dancing once before the smugness of the sergeant could smother any hint of doubt. "Explain?"
_____Kris groped for words as the air between the two all but molten. She had resigned herself to a long list of things to be bad at, and explaining herself had just joined the list. "I... we'll run a mad minute. See who can burn rounds faster on the range. Right here, in front of the trainees. You or the scrawny TD girl out of the infirmary. Do it quick and the lieutenant might not even notice." After tearing a tank apart with hand tools, Kris didn't know much strength she still had. Something betwween a snicker and a groan broke past her lips just thinking about the whole situation. "The only way to screw that up would be blowing off the challenge entirely, don't you think?"
_____Milo's face was little more expressive than marble as he sat his plundered Erma upon the tank's skirt. Corporal Brenner eyeballed the sergeant over a lit cigar and shrugged once in wordless approval. Dai lasted all of ten seconds before storming away with thrown-up arms. "That's a stupid fucking idea and this is bullshit!"
_____"Sergeants, what the hell is going on here?" Dirk's quiet growl made ramrods out of Kris and Milo in unison. "Why isn't that weapon pointed safely downrange? Why aren't you attending the trainees?"
_____Milo tipped his head to Kris. "The good sergeant wanted a friendly competition. To inspire the trainees, naturally."
_____Oh, you asshole. Kris bit down her bile as Dirk looked her over. The grimace he wore said enough about his confidence, even before he asked a simple, "Why?"
_____Kris shook her head vigorously. "When I win, Dai and Brenner are going to be my crew. They won't have to worry about bad-luck missions because..." Dirk was already looking fatigued by her answer. Kris knew she was going to be transferred again. But.. she was here. Worrying about her past wasn't going to help her any more than it would help Dai. Kris had a job to do, and the good fortune of having trained for years to do it.
_____"You asked what I was good at. This is it. I'm the best tanker in the battalion. I know more than all the rest of your non-coms put together. I'm hurting, but they'll never outpace me. This jerk? I'll beat him until 'Milo' becomes another way to say 'this is the human train wreck that picked the wrong fight today.''"
_____Kris looked breathlessly to Lieutenant Dirk. The officer sighed, glanced at his watch and said, "Carry on."
"You asked what I was good at. This is it. I'm the best tanker in the battalion. I know more than all the rest of your non-coms put together. I'm hurting, but they'll never outpace me. This jerk? I'll beat him until 'Milo' becomes another way to say 'this is the human train wreck that picked the wrong fight today.''
Right so yes, 33 day old thread but I hope this is meaty enough to justify it. So I remember reading this early on and it was good.. I really liked the gritty tank scenes juxtaposed with the anime-esque out of tank stuff to a degree. But I had a hard time following characters since for me at least the characters did not stick in my head.
Now though? Much improved over all - Every time we got a new character introduced, which was at a decent but not overwhelming pace, we got a good roster of physical and emotional features to remember. Dirk is the baby faced LT, Dai is the little spitfire that hates EVERYONE at the moment. Etc. Since I could remember the characters I could care about dialouge, which means I remembered it and it served more then just bridging actions together.
That said... I want to kill Milo for being a total smug bastard and NOT a good smug but like a 'ahaha I'm a NCO' type smug.. your an NCO BE AN NCO YOU SMUG LITTLE - PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE DUE TO YOU AGAGAGA.
I've finished about half of this chapter, all new material for the most part. I'm just stuck really hard trying to write combat again without it being super dense >_<
Turned out November wasn't a fantastic month to get anything done. But my brain was abuzz with schemes and half-scenes all the while. I'm finally getting to a place where I can start writing again.
I've been posting some WIPs in my Chopping Block thread. To not clog this thread with revision after revision, I'll just link the new prologue I've been working on.
Oh my god I finally revised the prologue and I think it's a ton better for it.
This takes one or two chapters out of the story too, so I can get to the The Good Shit™ much sooner than before.
Thank you for sticking with me for all this time. Got a lot more writing to do.
Today I sat down and wondered if TL should stick mostly to VC canon or be divergent. On one hand, having TL be a VC side story means it sorta fits within the overall weave of the canon, like VC3. But there's a lot of potential in running amok with these new characters and seeing how the cast reacts to it all.
Today I sat down and wondered if TL should stick mostly to VC canon or be divergent. On one hand, having TL be a VC side story means it sorta fits within the overall weave of the canon, like VC3. But there's a lot of potential in running amok with these new characters and seeing how the cast reacts to it all.
Well, it depends on how big the divergence is, for me anyway. As long as the overall shape of the war remains relatively consistent with the games I think people would give you a lot of latitude.
On another note, may I just say how much I love the dialogue and the way you write combat scenes? The prologue was absolutely scorching with its intensity, the Vasel section was great, and these characters get better and better developed every scene.
The tone is also brilliant. I've often wished that VC would go in a bit of a grittier direction (it's really the only logical path left after they tried JRPG fantasy and high-school anime) and I would highlight Tread Lightly as a prime example of how to roughen up the setting while still keeping it interesting and safely out of grimdark melodrama territory.
Not sure if this is officially dead yet, but I just thought you should know.
Well, it depends on how big the divergence is, for me anyway. As long as the overall shape of the war remains relatively consistent with the games I think people would give you a lot of latitude.
On another note, may I just say how much I love the dialogue and the way you write combat scenes? The prologue was absolutely scorching with its intensity, the Vasel section was great, and these characters get better and better developed every scene.
The tone is also brilliant. I've often wished that VC would go in a bit of a grittier direction (it's really the only logical path left after they tried JRPG fantasy and high-school anime) and I would highlight Tread Lightly as a prime example of how to roughen up the setting while still keeping it interesting and safely out of grimdark melodrama territory.
Not sure if this is officially dead yet, but I just thought you should know.
It's never dead in my head at least, I spend most of my breaks at work rewriting scenes in my RPs and fics in my head and weighing where to take things. If I do any writing at all this is always on top of my list, since it's a fic I had a lot of fun with. I think what you said is highly flattering and I'd like to keep going. Soon, maybe, but I don't want to give promises when my life's been so erratic anyway.
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!
