ã€ŠPhagocytosisã€‹


 Chapter 1: First contact

    Noun

    ¡°Phagocytosis, process by which certain living cells called phagocytes ingest or engulf other cells or particles.¡±

    Saint Gilles neighbourhood, Brussels. European Federation. July 2034

    Alessio Bruno greeted me warmly at his pizzeria, offering a firm handshake dusted with flour. He apologized for the slight delay, mentioning that a sizable order of 20 pizzas had just arrived for the evening rush, and he had been diligently preparing the dough. Since the official end of the conflict and the establishment of the European Federation, business in the capital had been flourishing. However, summer consistently heralded the peak season for small businesses. A veteran of the war, he caught my attention at a general assembly meeting of veterans of the conflict

    As he shouts to his son to take over the preparation of the dough he invites me to sit outside, pouring me a glass of coffee and offering me a cigarette.

    "Not that I don¡¯t appreciate the visit, but I¡¯m surprised you came to me first of all people. Someone in your line of work, I''d expect them to interview the generals or the heads of states," he proclaims as he lights his cigarette.

    ¡°Well, you were there from the start to the end, seems like you have a story to tell.¡±

    Alessio shrugs as he takes a long drag and stares at the sky. The sight of a bird gliding to the sky catches his attention.

    ¡°Honestly, if that¡¯s what you¡¯re looking for you should ask the birds.¡± He says with a smile on his face.

    ¡°The birds?¡±

    ¡°Yes, those guys got out of dodge even before the ministers and the journalists.¡±

    ¡°Could you explain further.¡±

    "Listen, it''s not just the fact that I lost half my hearing and knee joints in that damn war. It''s like it caused a short circuit in my brain. But one thing I know for sure is that those darn birds saw it coming," he remarked, exhaling the last drag of his cigarette.

    ¡°One day they were there. Then, about half a day before those crabs landed they got out of dodge. For a whole day the sky was filled with flocks of them moving north, east, west, south, up and down. We knew something was up from that point on.¡±

    ¡°Tensions were high?¡±

    ¡°High? You¡¯d drop a stack of boxes on the ground a bit too loudly and half the base would be jumping behind anything that seemed solid enough to take cover behind thinking we were getting bombed! Then, there''s this guy who decides to light a candle in our chapel, and next thing you know, a part of it catches fire after he left! Before we could even dial up the firefighters, My staff sergeant yelled at me to grab my machine gun, lie down in the hallway, and be ready to fend off the Russians. Picture me, in my sport shorts and football jersey, all geared up with my plate carrier and helmet, tucked away in a dark corner, convinced Spetsnaz were about to storm the hallway in any minute.¡±.

    ¡°2025 was that though?¡± I asked. Alessio seemed annoyed I interrupted him.

    The skirmishes we had at the border, we lost 30 soldiers. Sure it was a tragedy but during the war against the crabs, losing only 30 men in one day would be cause to pop champagne.¡± He took out another Lucky Strike cigarette and lit it.

    "But little did we know, the storm hadn''t even hit us yet. I remember that evening like it was yesterday. I was holed up in my room, binge-watching The Sopranos on my cursed laptop. That thing was so noisy it could wake the dead, let alone my roommates. Suddenly, one of them calls me out to the hallway. Late-night briefings were nothing new to us; our platoon commander often briefed us after his meetings with the higher-ups. Our lieutenant, fresh out of the academy at 24, had a name none of us could pronounce.

    As I stepped into the hallway with my notebook and trusty foldable camping chair, I saw it written all over his face. Fear. He was trembling like a leaf. He ordered us to gear up for 72 hours straight. One guy was told to sprint to the ammunition depot and save us a spot in line before the other platoons swarmed in. Everyone was to grab their gear, drivers to bring the vehicles to the parade square, and the rest of us to rush to the armory and ammo depot.

    In those few seconds of silence, we all exchanged the same incredulous looks. ''Is this for real?'' was written on every face."

    "We were like deer looking at headlights. And then, that kid with two stars on his chest and five years of military academy experience let out his first genuine panicked yell in his entire career. In a flurry, we darted to our rooms, snatching up our gear, stuffing our backpacks with everything we might need. Amidst the rush, I stole a moment to shoot off a quick text message to my girlfriend at the time." Alessio turns around to stare at his wife in the shop who¡¯s overlooking the books.

    ¡°Some crazy bastard once told me that the moment I knew I¡¯d be getting into combat; that I should understand that I was already dead. That way I¡¯d be less scared once the moment comes. Trust me, even with that I sat on one ass cheek the entire way to our TAA. My wife never forgave me for that message I sent her.¡±

    ¡°TAA?¡± I asked.

    "Tactical assembly area, where we gather before the action kicks off. The vehicle I rode in, a CV9035, had been prepped daily for potential encounters with the Russians. We had bought them a year ago from the Sweeds. Despite the exhaustive technical checks and training drills, it was still a chaotic mess. The transition to the TAA resembled a Congolese farmer''s market more than a meticulously planned military operation by the most formidable alliance in history. Vehicles left with tanks half-empty, ammo boxes vanished into thin air, and we discovered our infantry fighting vehicle had only half the water we needed because someone used our war stock to cook noodles during training. Then there was the German tank that accidentally flattened a parked military police car in route to the TAA. The craziest part? The commander didn''t even bat an eye once he realized nobody was hurt; he just pressed on to join the rest of his platoon. Can''t blame the driver, though¡ªwe were all pretty distracted."

    ¡°Because of the meteors?¡±

    "You should''ve been there to witness it firsthand. The footage doesn''t do it justice. It all kicked off as we were scrambling onto our vehicles. Everyone hit the deck, seeking cover. It took a few minutes for us to realize we weren''t in immediate danger and emerge from our tanks, basements, drainage pipes. Picture this: central Latvia, practically right under the impacts. Every few seconds, our tank would shudder from the sheer force of the explosions. The noise was deafening. No wonder the few survivors in the area ended up with tinnitus.

    Meteors, each weighing hundreds of tons, detonating kilometres above us, shattering as they broke the sound barrier. That''s what I call shock and awe. Our first air casualties weren''t from our or the Russian air defence firing blindly in the chaos; they were helicopters, fighter jets even two air liners unfortunate enough to be directly under those meteors transporting crabs. A buddy of mine witnessed an NH90 torn apart by the shockwave alone. Even the helicopters and jets that made it back to their airbases had to be grounded due to structural damage it inflicted."

    ¡°As we left our base I had to see it, so there I was like a kid looking at the night sky. It was dark, but the meteors entering the atmosphere was like a second sun lighting up the surroundings. They exploded and became hundred of different smaller pieces each carrying god knows how many crabs in them¡±

    ¡°Did you know what they were at the time?¡±

    "Not in the slightest, it was chaos. Radios blaring, everyone trying to make sense of the madness. Our lieutenant had to hotmic the radio at one point to restore some order. Initially, we thought it might be MIRV¡¯s, Multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles. Nukes that separated into multiple different ballistics ogives that each could target a different city. Seemed like the closest match. But the meteors were not even 1/10 of the speed of those. And if they had really been nukes none of us would be here to tell the story, so we scrapped that theory.

    When we finally reached the TAA, my vehicle commander, a sergeant in his early thirties, stone-faced as ever. You couldn''t crack a smile out of him if your life depended on it. Ask him anything personal, and you''d get the driest response before he walked off. Guy smoked like a chimney and could outdrink anyone. He hailed from West Flanders, a real ''boer'' as we called them¡ªonly farmers lived there. Anyhow, he ditched his crew helmet, ordered us to hold tight, and bolted towards our platoon commander''s tank. From where we stood, there was just one friendly Czech battalion between us and the Russian border. Not that it mattered, since we were clueless about those falling crabs all around us and landing from Kaliningrad to St Petersburg. 510 million square kilometres on earth and they somehow landed in the most heavily militarized region."

    ¡°I was scanning the treelines, we didn¡¯t have permission to fire but we still had to hold 360 degrees observation of everything around us. I had to watch a field, from what looked at the time like an abandoned barn to the start of a wood line That¡¯s when I saw it.¡±

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    As Alessio took a long drag from his cigarette, his eyes lingered on the scene unfolding in the park before us. His gaze followed the carefree movements of a child chasing a small dog across the lush green grass. The innocence of the moment and the gravity of his memories seemed to weigh heavily on him. In that simple interaction between the child and the dog, there was a fleeting glimpse of normalcy. It was as if, for a brief moment, he found solace in the simplicity of the scene.

    ¡°Silhouettes on my thermals on the ground about 400 meters away. I could only make out the shape of their heads above the mud. I still don¡¯t know what they were doing. I still don¡¯t know if they were waiting for us there or if we had caught them off guard as they were digging in to nest in the mud.¡±

    ¡°I had the safety off, I damn near fired a shot when my sergeant unsealed his hatch and dropped in. That how much he scared me. As he was babbling on about how the lieutenant had no intel and that our orders were to keep our sector secured I was switching between thermal, night sight and normal camera trying to understand what the fuck I was looking at. It looked like they were digging themselves in. The squad we were carrying had dismounted and were digging in aswell. He shaked me as I was trying to get sense of what was being displayed infront of my eyes. That¡¯s when I broke. My only defense at that point was to fall back my training.¡±

    Allessio took another drag of his cigarette.

    ¡°UNKOWN CONTACT, 3 O¡¯CLOCK, 400 METERS.¡± ¡°I must have scared the shit out of him, he quickly switched his monitor on and looked at what I was seeing. After what seemed like an eternity of switching camera modes he grabbed the handheld radio and radio¡¯d it in to our lieutenant. As he was trying to describe what he saw the meteors lit up the figures for a second or two. They had stopped moving and seemed to be watching us. He had to coordinate things with the lieutenant on the radio, the dismounted troops outside and with us inside. It was my turn to shake him to try and get his attention.¡±

    As Alessio drew from his cigarette, his eyes fixed on the tranquil park surroundings. Across the way, a teenage couple sat, their gazes directed upwards, marveling at the expanse of the sky. In their shared silence, the world seemed to slow, offering a momentary reprieve from the chaos of his thoughts.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, we can stop here for now If you¡¯d like.¡± I told Alessio. He quickly brushed it off and continued.

    "You know, I still can''t figure out who fired the first shot. It definitely wasn''t us, and the dismounts on our left weren''t the culprits either. I''m pretty sure it was that 1-5 vehicle on our right that kicked things off. Anyway, they let loose a burst, targeting one of them. Then BAM! The third high-explosive shell hit, and its whole carapace just cracked open like butter. The ones before barely made a dent, but that last one? It was a game-changer.

    I still get chills thinking about it. Even munching on shrimp brings back that memory like it was yesterday.

    Afterwards, the whole field lit up. Picture this: a hundred of those guys, armed with their makeshift blasters, all aiming in our direction. It was like a scene straight out of a space western.

    They weren''t exactly the most precise bunch but they made up for it in coordination. Half of them let loose their shots all at once, while the others waited for the first half to reload before firing. Even to this day me and my colleagues who survived think those were the first to land, their shock troops of sort. Precision wasn''t their strong suit, but trust me, you didn''t want to catch one of those ''geo thermal'' blasts.

    It was like getting hit by a supernova in miniature form. The heat seared through tissue, wood and dirt like butter, leaving nothing but scorched earth in its wake. You could practically feel the ground tremble with each blast. A few shots hit our vehicle. Thanks to the armor we survived. They couldn¡¯t take us out with those blasters. Still it made me shit myself. I didn¡¯t even know who I was fighting but I started blasting. But the dismounts outside were less fortunate. Some fitness freak right infront of our vehicle. She caught one in the thorax and she was split in two. And that was just a ricochet. The driver described to me how her upper half was jolted into the air.

    I picked a target, fired a burst of HE shells. They were though. Shrapnel from the HE shells didn¡¯t kill them outright. I realized quickly I had to get a direct shot.

    As I blasted that cannon, I saw those sneaky crabs pop out of the field ahead, wielding their weird weapons. So, I adjusted my aim real quick, targeting the closest critter. When I let loose that first shot, it tore through the air, smashing those crab shells like they were made of glass.

    But they were relentless I tell you. They retaliated, their energy weapons or whatever the fuck you want to call them hit our armored hull dead on. Each explosion rattled the vehicle, but the vehicle held its ground. I don¡¯t know how long that first engagement lasted. A couple of minutes. Target after target I took out, the dismounts outside were having a very bad time. A few injured and crippled guys from our platoon dragged themselves inside. I remember my sergeant grabbing a tourniquet next to me as my cannon was reloading and throwing it outside to one of the lads who lost his leg. That was the only thing we could do during a firefight. In theory, if one gun is taken out, you don¡¯t stop firing yours to help him out. As that first groups of theirs got quiet my commander ordered my turret to look further left, an entire other mob of those crabs was coming maybe 600 meters away. As I spinned my turret, that thing that looked like a barn lit up. As my gun was already firing on the other group, my commander overrid my turret controls and before I could have time to curse him for what he was doing he set my sights on that. The ¡°tripod¡± as we called them later powered up. Its legs extended and he raised himself into the sky.

    Someone, I don¡¯t know who the brave bastard was that fired a flare gun to the field, Illuminating it and the tripod.

    As I sat there, staring through my screen, I caught the sight of it¡ªa strange, towering contraption that seemed like something out of an old science fiction movie.

    I muttered to myself, squinting to get a better look. Its three legs, all gnarled and twisted like tree roots, dug deep into the muddy ground, anchoring it in place.

    At the top, there was this bulbous metal shell, all dented and rusty, like it had seen its fair share of scraps. Wires hung loose, and bits of machinery jutted out at odd angles, giving it a real patchwork vibe.

    And those legs... well, they weren''t much to look at, all clunky and slow-moving, like they were held together with duct tape and hope. It looked cheap despite how tall it was. That cannon wasn¡¯t stabilized so it had to stop to fire, and you could see its legs struggling to keep hold of the ground as it fired. But let me tell you, when they decided to hit shit with its leg, they packed a punch.

    It wasn''t pretty, that''s for sure, but there was something about it¡ªsomething rugged and resilient¡ªthat made you think twice before crossing its path. A relic from another world, right here in our backyard. When we envisioned aliens arriving on our planets we imagined them coming with shiny silver space ships. Those guys seemed like they used recycled materials for everything. It¡¯s why allot of people believe they came from a distant collapsing planet, or that they had lost their home world to war and now were trying to settle here. Before I could even think on how I was going to take it down it¡¯s central hull fired a beam which met and hit the vehicle on our right. There was a scream on the radio, someone inside was describing the tripod before screaming as the heat blast boiled them inside before the ammunition cooked of and sent the turret flying ten meters in the air. I blasted it with all I got. HE, APHE, APFSD. The HE seemed to shake it. But the armor piercing rounds did the trick. When I say those thing were resilient I mean it. They traveled god knows how many galaxies on meteors and somehow survived the landing. I was blasting it as I saw its cannons heat up. My sergeant, god bless him popped the smokes. We had smoke cannisters on our vehicle pointed at every angle. He saw it heat up and order our driver to drive forward five meters as the phosphorous smoke cannisters flew and exploded in the air.

    As we pushed through the smoke I started unloading again. As I saw the cannon heat up, some brave bastard fired a rocket at it. I believe it was a Spike. A tv guided anti tank rocket that can pierce pretty much anything human made. It tried to stand tall for a few seconds again before falling in the mud.

    Not like we had time to breathe, the other group of crabs was closing in.

    ¡°May I ask why you call them crabs?¡±

    ¡°Seriously?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s just for the record¡±

    ¡°Well, with their armor and helmet. They looked like shrimps with crab shoulders. Not much thought behind that name. We needed something fast to call them. Pretty funny most grunts in the world all gave them the name of crustaceans.¡±

    Our conversation is interrupted by a couple greeting him as they walk by, Allesio shakes their hands. I notice burn marks on them.

    After exchanging some courtesies in French, the couple continue their walk. Allesio turns back around towards me.

    ¡°We were starting to run low on ammo. We still had the ability to fight but the situation we were in stank. There we were in a small wood in the middle of the Baltic farm country. One destroyed vehicle, countless dead and injured. And fighting an enemy we didn¡¯t even know existed half an hour ago. Our lieutenant told us to load up the wounded and who ever was still alive. Because one of our three vehicles got destroyed its dismounted infantry sat on top our IFV during the whole drive back.

    We drove by our barracks, set ablaze. The light from the meteor strikes an hour ago was supplemented by countless fires on the horizon. We just drove into the night. Our vehicle filled to the brim with men, some wounded, some even dead. We had orders to regroup north, our high command was still trying to gasp the situation. Entire villages and forests aflame. Keep in mind that was March in Latvia, you could barely start a campfire without it turning off because of the moist. Yet those devils had ordonnance that could set entire forests a blaze. That¡¯s what hit us on our way into ¡®Valmiera¡¯.

    ¡°We really don¡¯t have to talk about this right now.¡± I protest trying to calm Allesio down.

    "No, I''m glad you''re here to put this down on paper. Grunts like me, we''re usually the forgotten ones. Sure there¡¯s fifty different podcasts exclusively listened to by other veterans. Each of us believes we''re the hero until we come to terms with the fact that nobody but us really cares about our story.

    "Sure, there are our kids who enjoy hearing us talk about anything, and our partners who hold us tight at night after we wake up from nightmares. But apart from that..."

    I look at him as he grabs hold of another cigarette.

    ¡°We were driving down a provincial road. We had met up with the rest of our bataillon an hour back. Must have been 200 vehicles. One third of us was unaccounted for. Even then, maybe 200 vehicles but we were high tailing it for Estonia. None of that bumper to bumper shit the americans and Russians like to do. I was in the group of the first 40 vehicles. Praying our vehicle wouldn¡¯t break down as we drove at 40km/h through the countryside. If one broke down its entire platoon had to stay and wait for it to be fixed or abandoned before continuing. Must have abandoned one CV90 and two trucks. We just wanted to get out of dodge. From what little info we had, those things only landed in Latvia. Sure that info was wrong and it aged like milk. But the hope in us saw a warm shower and a hot mess hall in Estonia. As we drove along the quiet road, the only sounds were the hum of our engines and the gunfire and explosion in the distance. We drove by four destroy M109 artillery vehicles and half a dozen utility trucks. All blown to bits and still burning. Some with its crew still smoldering in and outside of the vehicles. It¡¯s hard to understate how critical the position the crabs landed in was. In modern, peer to peer conflict. Your enemy doesn¡¯t appear in your back, front, north, east, south and west. You don¡¯t have enemies parachuting in your back yard all of a sudden, that only happens in Hollywood movies. Had they landed on the Russian side, we might have had a fighting chance that week. I was on the turret, peeking out with that sergeant I told you about on the side. At first I thought it was a firefly because of the way it flew in the air. It peacefully glided in the air from ground with a weird flight path. That why I thought it was an insect at first. Until I realized it was at a distance and was coming straight for us. I barely had time to yell ¡°Get inside!¡± that it exploded in the air into multiple fragments. It hit our convoy. My right hand was still holding the hatch handle and was exposed outside. The burn I still feel from time to time. I am lucky to still have control of the arm. I am even more lucky I managed to get the hatch closed. Second degree burns, I wept and felt like I was about to pass out from the pain. All while we fought our way out of that ambush. Thank god that ordonnance didn¡¯t take out our engine. I wept all the way to the border. Took me a few weeks to get my hand in order.

    He smiles as he finishes his cigarette

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t mean I didn¡¯t take part in all the fighting¡±

 Chapter 2: Heavy Metal

    November 2034, Gdansk. European Federation

    Pzschemek courteously welcomes me into his apartment, gently balancing his half-asleep young boy in one arm as he opens the door. The 34th floor of this public housing tower was completed just a year ago. As a combat veteran, the governement paid half of the price on the already affordable apartment. Since the official end of hostilities and the remarkable population surge, these towering structures, inspired by their Asian counterpart, have sprouted in nearly every remaining major city across the continent. Having seen combat from the start all the way to the end, I was referred to him by the head of the Polish Army Land Forces who was his battalion commander during the start of the war.

    I''m offered a seat on the living room sofa, amidst scattered toys and clothes strewn about. He settles across from me, his son peacefully asleep in his arms, after preparing coffee for us.

    A veteran of the war, he had seen combat all across Poland as a tank commander.

    "When I began my training, we operated with the PT-91, an upgraded Soviet-designed T-72¡ªsturdy, but we viewed them as deathtraps. Just imagine our optimism when my battalion received our first Leopards 2a7. Transitioning from a 1980s Soviet tank to modern german, American and ever Korean tanks¡ªbefore the war in Ukraine, even entertaining such a notion aloud would have warranted a psychological evaluation. After a year or so. I knew that thing inside and out. It had short comings but it was a beauty.

    He points to a frame on the wall¡ªa cutout of a newspaper front page. It depicts him and his other crew members atop their tank ¡®Sokoly¡¯ written on its cannon, with a destroyed tripod lying on the floor behind them, the backdrop a sight of a ravaged city. With the title; ¡°Our boys took Vilnius!"

    "We made the front page of Gazeta Wyborcza with that picture. Our company commander sent it in. My parents hadn''t heard from me in weeks, and one day, he recognized me on the front page at a news stand."

    His face lights up with a warm smile.

    "We hit the road five hours after the first landings. My vehicle was still getting fueled when I drove into our base, rushing to the briefing room in my jeans and rain jacket. I was expecting orders to be to rush to the Belarusian border or help out our guys in Lithuania to fend of the russians. Instead, our company commander starts talking about visitors from another world, how the info keeps pouring in every minute, but everything''s still up in the air. We didn¡¯t believe him until we saw the footage of the meteor landings, or air force footage from the airstrikes on beings we didn¡¯t even know could exist. That one footage from that tank station, those crabs walking in and shooting all those civilians really set us off. That segment where one crab ripped out the arm of a dead man to make sure he was dead must have filled us with hate. Even do we didn¡¯t know who or what they were. We didn¡¯t ask too many questions. You¡¯d expect us to yell out stuff in the likes of ¡°Have we tried to make contact with them? What is the United Nations saying? From what planet are they?¡± but the only questions that could be heard was ¡°Did the 2-5 tank get its tracks fixed? How much water should we take? Do we get our shells here or the TAA?¡±

    ¡°We were scared don¡¯t get me wrong but I¡¯m still proud of my boys, Its been a while but we still have contact with each other. Last summer I was the best man at my loader¡¯s wedding.¡±

    After laying down his boy, who had just woken up, he watches as the little one instantly grabs a toy police car and starts playing with it. Pzshemek gazes at his son, lost in thought, as he happily engages with his toy.

    "We spent five hours on the road, with our tanks hitched onto trucks. When we finally reached our deployment area, chaos was everywhere. The roads were packed with cars from the north¡ªPolish, Lithuanian, even Russian and Belarussian plates. People crammed into buses, I even saw a truck with an empty container but packed with civilians inside. On one van, boys sat on top, like scenes from trains in India. It''s a miracle we only arrived an hour late. In Suwalki, we turned an Ikea parking lot into a makeshift FOB. Half of it was filled with troops fresh back from Lithuania and the border. Fresh might not be the right word. They were ravaged, they sat in silences. Nearly all with bandages or injuries of some sorts. The heavily wounded were being treated in tents and civilian ambulances. The dead layed in rows and rows of bodybags. They had commandeered one of or trench building vehicles to dig a mass grave for them. Helicopters landed, unloaded countless men and they loaded the helis to the brim with the injured. Tents and tents of make shift hospitals. More and more troops arrived. They looked like they¡¯ve been to hell. I remember at one time my gaze met one of the men. I was looking around until I saw him looking at me. He was sitting on a stretcher being treated by a paramedic, his chest and arms were burned black. He was staring at me. I don¡¯t know if it was the morphine or the shock, his gaze wouldn¡¯t leave me. Fighter jets kept buzzing us. On our way to bomb targets and to slow the advance of the crabs down as much as they could. I was confident on our way there but the sight of all those defeated man made me want to empty my guts. We got called to a tent to get a briefing on the situation. There was a white board with grainy pictures of what we could expect. Even drawings. It was the Polish military attach¨¦ to Lithuania himself who gave the briefing to us. He looked like he had been to hell. I learned later he had to be restrained with the help of punches and shoved into the last helicopter out of Vilnius by his men.¡±

    ¡°What did he discuss?¡±

    "We''re in the dark, and we''re counting on you to keep us informed as you hold the line. My English doesn''t do it justice, but that was the last thing he said before we set out. We knew more different type of enemy assets would emerge as they settled in. Turns out, our drones spotted them digging into the meteors they landed in. As we left the FOB, they were loading everything onto anything with a motor and wheels. They didn''t anticipate us holding our ground. Now, that''s what I call motivation.¡±

    Our chat got interrupted when Pszemek''s wife walking into the apartment, decked out in nurse scrubs and juggling grocery bags. Pszemek jumped up to help her out, and they headed to the hallway, chatting away in Polish. Before she disappeared into the dimly lit bedroom, they stole a quick kiss.

    ¡°She has the night shift.¡± He said coldly as he put away the groceries.

    ¡°We got on our tanks, our entire company made it and we were lined up platoon by platoon.

    I closed the hatch, sat down, put my helmet on. My loader who also was my assistant of sorts. Installed the radios, helped copy the maps our lieutenant got, made coffee or passed drinks. He gave me a thumbs up, it was our signal and it meant we had radio communications with everyone that mattered. I pressed the push to talk of my microphone. ¡°Everyone in position? Sound off!¡± I tried to say firmly and calmly. I knew back then it wasn¡¯t the time to show any fear to my boys.

    ¡°Driver ready!¡± One voice yelled loudly. ¡°Gunner ready!¡± followed by ¡°Loader ready!¡± we set off right after that

    At Suwalki we had to hold the highway entering the city from the north. Nothing particular, just fields and roads. We would have excelled there if we faced anything other than that. As dawn broke. The air strikes and artillery lured closer and closer. Along with our reconnaissance elements on the radio notifying us every time they got one kilometer closer. We could just sit there, it took us five minutes to mark and call out points of interests in that field so that we could communicate quickly during the battle and then we counted down the kilometers between us and them. Some men smoked, wrote letters. My gunner, a young guy he must have been 19 back then. He opened the hatch suddenly to vomit outside. Our nerves were all over the place. We nearly shot our recon troops as they speeded through our lines. They rushed through us and took cover behind us. They had done their job warning us and coordinating airstrikes. I told my boys it was our moment to shine. That whatever may walk,run,crawl over the border that we were the Polish anvil set on stopping them. We sat at two kilometers from the first woodline. We had infantry in the woods to our west and east. We had the open fields. We had to stop them or win time for the folks in Suwalki. But this wasn¡¯t Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. This was Poland. We wouldn¡¯t give them an inch. We all grew up listening to our grandparents talking about what the Nazis and Soviets did to them and to our country. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    At first, it was lone crabs on that wood line. They moved from tree to tree. We could see their silhouettes on the thermal sights. As more of those crab joined them we didn¡¯t bother to shoot. We called in the mortar platoon to take care of them. Even after the mortars landed and took care of the first ones, their numbers grew. Then when there mobs of them we called in the 155mm artillery. It turned that forest. We felt the shockwaves as it blasted them. Trees were shredded and their pieces sent hundreds of meter away. Then we heard the first rumble of the beetles. I still have no idea why they didn¡¯t appear on my thermals with all the heat they were carrying inside. If it wasn¡¯t for the dawn and the reflection of the moonlight I might not have seen it until it was on top of me. Those things were as big as an apartment block. I still can''t wrap my head around how those beasts survived a journey across galaxies. Must be why they were so darn hard to kill. We had no idea how they fought, how fast they could move. We called them beetles because it was the only thing earth like we could remotely compare them to in shape. I felt my heart race when I switched to normal sight and saw one of them move. I was looking right at it yet it appeared black as the solid on my thermal heat sight. There must have been six of them pushing that field alone. Against twelve of our tanks and three platoon¡¯s worth of infantrymen and IFVs, you''d think we could''ve held them. But when they carpet-bombed us with fire, everyone lost it. Those beasts opened their mouth as their throat expanded, the fire inside of that could hurt to look at if you watched it with the naked eye. We didn¡¯t know what to expect, but them spitting magma on us wasn¡¯t on our bingo list so to say. Sure, they were two hundred meters short, but everyone outside of tanks must''ve felt the heat. They fired what could only be described as ropes of magma all in unison. The infantry platoon beside us, even the most ¡®gung ho¡¯ grunts who had had time to dig trenches, said ¡®fuck that¡¯ did a 180 and sprinted back a few hundred meters. Our platoon commander was swearing up a storm on the radio, trying to get their commander to get his men in order. Can''t blame them. We opened fire right after their attempt to cremate us. I told my gunner to aim for the head and fire. Even with the shock of the 122mm armor-piercing shell hitting it, the thing just staggered and kept moving. Even in the tank, with all that armor and my ear protection, I could still hear my colleagues unloading on them. Again and again I ordered my gunner to go for the head. I still don¡¯t know how they survived the kinetic shock alone of a shell like that hitting them. Later on in the war we learned that it gave them those weird types of concussions that made them act all weird, made them even attack their own side and such. But at the time, you can imagine me sitting there looking at them eating a tank shell like it was nothing. One shell hit its upper back. We saw the shell ricochet of its back and fly god knows where in the horizon behind it. My loader was grabbing shells and loading them in the breech at a rythm he could have gotten a medal for that alone. They were getting closer. The beetles and the crabs moving in with them. They spit fire again in unison. This time they were right on the mark. I heard the commander of the tank on my left yell in the radio as his tank ate hot magma. They were safe for now on the inside but the panic it instilled, there was nothing like it. Keep in mind, we still had 155mm artillery landing, it didn¡¯t seem to be bothered by it even do the crabs next to those things were turned into moshed potatoes by the shrapnel and shock blast.

    Pszemek got up suddenly to move his kid away from the kitchen as he tried to grab a hold of the hot coffee pot.

    ¡°little devil¡± he said silently.

    ¡°When I realized we couldn¡¯t pierce it from the front I ordered by gunner to go for its knee caps. He didn¡¯t hesitate and put its sight on it. The beetle was moving slowly enough for him to aim. My loader, exhausted from carrying shell after shell yelled out ¡°GOTOWY¡± with a blood curling yell right before my gunner pulled the trigger on the joystick. The ignition on the shell shook the tank as it always did. It¡¯s like a giant punch that makes the whole vehicle jolt backward violently. You can feel the force ripple through the tank, and everything inside shakes for a moment before it steadies again thanks to the suspension. The shell hit it right on the mark. The beast lost its footing. It crashed face-down, crushing a few crabs beneath it who were taking cover under it. It took a few moments for the creature to rise on another leg. Sharp as a fox, my gunner aimed for the first leg on the opposite side and fired another armor piercing shell through the meaty split between its strong carapace. The devil was down. With its front legs disabled, it had no balance. Instinctively, I grabbed the radio. The radio was buzzing with "NO EFFECT ON THE TARGET" and "LIEUTENANT, LET''S GET OUTTA HERE, FOR GOD''S SAKE." I shouted at my colleagues to aim for the kneecaps to slow them down. It got everyone to shut up and focus at the task at hand.

    One by one, the beetles crashed in the mud. Don¡¯t get me wrong, they kept shooting their magma at us. My tank got some aswell. It cooked our thermal sights and lazer warning receivers instantly. But since our engine was spared we just had to reverse back twenty meters and we were alright. We were speeding at 30km/h in reverse, I was praying there wouldn¡¯t be a confused 20 year old infantry man end up under our tracks. The beetles were everything but precise. They even hit their own crabs as they desperately spat fire. The amount of which was drastically lower than earlier, their fuel tank just like ours were running low. One brave bastard on the radio yelled out for us to wait for it to fire and then hit it right in the mouth. That¡¯s literally a tactic out of a video game. We did as he told. My gunner was with his sight right on what can be described as its mouth. His knee shaked in anticipation of the shot. I was looking at the gunner sight through my screen. As it opened its mouth, I didn¡¯t even have time to yell ¡°FIRE¡± that my gunner had already unleashed a high explosive shell down that thing¡¯s throat.¡±

    Pszemek looked at his boy with a warm smile as he thought back at one of the few good events of that fateful night.

    ¡°The devil exploded, the flash was so bright it lit up the interior of our tank through the periscopes. For a second I could see the exhausted look on my loader sweaty face. The fire gulf must have taken out god knows how many of the crabs taking shelter near it. My entire platoon followed suit and before long the entire field lit up with the explosions of those devils. I heard later from the folks in Suwalki that they saw the flashes of light all the way back there. One by one we took them out like that.

    With the beetles out of the picture, we made quick work of the crabs. They were only five hundred meters away, close enough to start firing. Against our tanks, they didn¡¯t stand a chance. The infantry was less fortunate. I saw one of them fire one of their shoulder mounted cannon, hit an IFV on its side and afterwards I saw the crew throwing themselves out of their vehicle as they burned alive. We took out three-quarters of them before they scrambled back across the field the way they came. Then we picked them off as they ran. Our coaxial gun was working overtime, we barely could keep up reloading that machine gun. I was praying it would¡¯nt jam or overheat. With the last one down and our lieutenant on the radio, praising our performance, I unlocked my hatch, swung it open, and peeked outside. There were still patches of molten magma here and there, and the whole field reeked of sulfur and gunpowder. People were treating the wounded, some men cried, some men were laughing hysterically. Most of them were quiet. I lit up a cigarette, wiping the sweat off my face with a towel. The loader tossed me a can of Monster from our makeshift fridge. I gave him props for his work before he collapsed from exhaustion.

    We held but the units on our flanks were about to break and collapse because of the onslaught. We could have stayed there, most of us would have been happy dying in that field if it meant we slowed their advance into our country even for five more minutes. Turns out high command had other plans for us. They had already plans for if ww3 popped off. They already know which unit would be decimated and which would have been spared if the Russians had decided to attack. Lucky for us our battalion was supposed to survive to fight another day. The worst case scenario had a defensive line from Gdansk through Olsztyn all the way to Bialystok. In haste we fled like cowards back to Augustow. Stopping time and time again to give time for refugees to flee south. We were glad the Russians in Kaliningrad took a beating. They estimated they held ? of the crabs in the southern front and payed for it with their lives. Every fight was harder than the last. We had less and less ammo. Jets were flying less and less. Especially when the crabs found a way to shoot them off the sky.

    We felt like cowards every time. Sure, we got a lot of civilians to safety, but even then, we felt powerless, even with our 65-ton metal beast facing the never-ending tide of Crabs, Tripods, and Beetles.

 Chapter 3: Pompes FunçŒ«bres

    Rennes, Bretagne, European Federation August 2034

    Late in the evening, amidst the pulsating lights and thumping beats of the rave, I was invited by Seb. "La Pompe," as it was affectionately known, stood as a beacon of counterculture even before the war. It nestled within the walls of a once-abandoned funeral home, now a sanctuary for a motley crew of individuals: hippies, punks, anarchists, and all those who dared to defy the status quo of mundane existence. Some were here as a statement of their anti system way of life. Some, like Seb were tired and broken by life itself and just needed a warm and dry place to rest, smoke, drink and read. Despite the baja hoodie, the beard, and the joint in his hand, the only giveaways that he''s a special forces veteran are the scars on his face and the French paratrooper tattoo on his right arm, ironically next to a miss match of Anarchist tattoos. Sebastian, or Seb like he likes to be called spent the entirety of his career in the renowned 13eme regiment de dragons parachutists. The regiment was a special reconnaissance unit of the French Army.

    He leads me outside to the communal garden to talk away from the deafening music. I ask him to describe what his unit was. He looks in my direction with a blank stare as he talked.

    ¡°Our mission was always to acquire human intelligence at any time and in any hostile environments be it from the water, mountain peaks, jungles.¡± He recited, as if reading from a pamphlet. ¡°They trained us and made us go above and beyond. During my training we started with 48 and only four of us made it. I still wake up shaking sometimes, be it from the war or thinking I¡¯m back during those training ruck marches where we walked for days and slept out in the cold and wet. They trained us for ¡°misery you couldn¡¯t imagine¡¯ they said. I still believe half of the misery they put us through was to fill their sick urges¡±

    ¡°the sergeant¡¯s you mean?¡±

    ¡°Our cadre during training, be it the sergeants, the soldiers who helped or even the platoon commander. Sure they wanted us to be tough but when they¡¯re smiling at you after they had you run 10 km with ballistic plates and a gasmask, daring you to hit them. It¡¯s not just because of the love of the regiment. We¡¯d walk for days with 40 kilos on our back. Take position somewhere hidden. Often swamps because the enemy never expects anyone to be dumb and courageous enough to hide in a mosquito infested swamp. We¡¯d dig in, make spider holes for us to hide in and then relay what we see to higher command.¡±

    He walks forward and kneels down in the dirt. He lifts up a vegetable from the ground and inspects it.

    ¡°Not ripe enough¡± he says as he pushes it back in the ground with his joint between his lips.

    ¡°They had woken us early in the night. I¡¯m not gonna give you the ¡®bla-bla¡¯ about how we were surprised we weren¡¯t going at war with the Russian. We picked up our gear and left for the airport of Bordeaux, loaded up on our A400m and we were off into the night.¡±

    We¡¯re interrupted by two young girls exiting the building. They ask Seb a string of questions in French and he points to the second floor. They were gone as fast as they came.

    ¡°We knew we weren¡¯t fighting the Russians but we still had no reliable communication methods with them. Our AO was the Suwalki gap, we didn¡¯t know if they would be nice enough not to shoot us so we were dropped high and far. HAHO, High altitude high opening. It was before the enemy ¡®sling shots¡¯ We drifted on our parachutes for two hours and gained about 40 kilometers. We saw in the distance the gun fire, tracers of small arms and anti air guns alike dancing in the night sky. Explosions and fighter jets buzzing above and under us. Miraculously we landed right on the mark. The last thing we needed was for my section to be scattered.  There were 6 of us. Not more. We had no idea when we would be extracted and even if it would happen. We set position deep in the woods, we had to keep eyes on the E67 highway connecting Poland to the Baltic states. Last we heard, they landed in northern Lithuania and Latvia. Some of them had already moved into Poland. We dug deep. In an hour we already had dugged two holes big enough for all of us to hide in. A real spider hole, with a roof with layers of trees, dirt, foliage¡¯s. A small hatch to enter, which we could close if they were about to walk on top of us.¡±Stolen novel; please report.

    Seb took a last drag of his joint and threw it in the ashtray. He removed his baja and sat on the bench next to me shirtless.

    About an hour later, those ''enemy elements'' started making their way down the highway. It''s still mind-boggling how those things understood what a highway was all about. They were surprisingly sharp, you know? Can''t believe I''m saying this, but we all took turns spending five minutes glued to the window just to watch them. The crabs, man, they ranged from about one-and-a-half to three meters tall. We tried figuring out why there was such a height difference, but no luck. And get this, the smaller ones sometimes carried these massive cannons that could take out a tank, while some of the big dudes had these tiny pistol-sized cannons. It was like a cosmic joke.

    It wasn''t just a couple of crabs, either. It was like the first ones made way for this massive crowd of ''em. Must''ve seen tens of thousands just on that stretch of highway alone. And they had beetles too, naturally, though they preferred cruising through the fields. But those tripods, man, they were the stuff of nightmares. Imagine this: the shortest one was like twenty meters tall, and the tallest? Who knows, maybe hundreds of meters. They scanned the landscape like they were hunting for prey. Creepy as hell.

    We were in the dark about a lot of things. Didn''t have a clue if they had thermals, or any sort of command structure. Shit, we weren''t even sure if they were operating as a hive mind or if each one was its own unique entity. That''s why we were there, remember? Human intelligence in the midst of a hostile environment. Right smack in the middle of their territory. We radioed back, describing the endless stream of them pouring down the highway. We even took pictures that we transmitted thanks to our satellite communication. I learned later on that the pictures I personally took found their way all up to NATO high command in Brussels and also to the Kremlin. The polish defense minister had send it to Russian ambassador in Poland with the ¡°Signal¡± app of all things. That¡¯s how badly coordinated we all were. There were cases of artillery positions on both side firing on designated targets if ww3 broke out and jets here and there being shot by air defences. But we were lucky to avoid a three sided conflict on that first day. It helped that our ambassadors, ministers and diplomats knew each other on first name basis.

    Unlike the infantry and armored guys we were in the thick of it without even having our safety off. At that point in the night this was like every exercise we ever did. Scout and spot targets. Two of those American jets locked onto their targets and unleashed eight GBU bombs. We were only about 2 kilometers away, but the sheer force of the explosion rattled our entire hideout. I hadn''t even thought to put on my ear protection, and let me tell you, my ears were ringing like crazy afterward. The A10s came back and fired their guns on the top of the column. The sound of the cannons was enough to give us a hard on. The shit eating grin on all of us, you could have seen it through our balaclavas.

    That smile quickly left after the third HIMARS strike. They just kept coming. And we simply didn¡¯t have enough bombs, missiles, artillery shells available.

    We prayed that wave would stop, but nothing. They just kept coming. I can¡¯t even tell you about the march back to the coast where a submarine was waiting for us. I was that exhausted. I didn¡¯t even remember when we actually walked into the marshes were hundreds of those were hibernating. I barely had time to drop by backpack as one of them grabbed a hold of it. It disappeared into the murky water along with the rest of my friends.

 Chapter 4: Tinnitus

    Vejle, European federation. September 2034

    Crisp, bone cutting cold air sweeps through my jacket as I meet Mads Andersen on his farm. Having fought in the opening months he had been critically injured and spent the rest of the war at home in recovery. His prosthetic leg a constant reminder of that.

    ¡°Honestly the leg is not the problem. I have enough tractors and automated irrigation to do the hard work. Maintenance is a bit tricky sometimes but if its too much my cousin, she¡¯s always here to help me out.¡± He explains as he notices my quick glance at it. "The worst is the constant ringing in my right ear." he added as he opened his front door.

    He welcomes me in his kitchen as we start discussing the war.

    ¡°The smell, that¡¯s what brings me back to it the most. A scent of blood, gun powder and I¡¯m back in one of those apartment blocks.¡±

    ¡°That was their picket fenced houses so to speak, utilitarian apartment buildings constructed during the communist era. Entirely out of concrete panels, the commies copied pasted them from Leipzig to Vladivostok. Our company was there reinforcing the german 23<sup>rd</sup> infantry bataillon. Four platoon of us Danes. Only two of ours made it to Vilnius. We were positioned at the southern entrance of the city. We knew it was a matter of hours before the city was encircled. Some of us were furious that we weren¡¯t ordered to pull back with the rest out of Lithuania. They threatened to just drive away. They had to physically restrain a corporal at some point because he threatened to beat up our company commander.¡±

    ¡°Did they arrest him?¡± I ask

    ¡°Ha! And take away one abled bodied soldier? And have two soldiers watch over him? They gave him back his weapons and sent him back to his platoon. They gave everybody weapons. Not only did we have Lithuanian soldiers, we had Lithuanian police officers in the same appartement block as us, narcotics division if I remember correctly. Then they started giving rifles to every abled body that stayed in Vilnius. We still had thousands of civilians stuck in the city, lots of men and women that were more glad to help. Don¡¯t get me wrong, they were even more scared than us. And besides showing them how a rifle worked and making them watch one street we couldn¡¯t teach them more. We didn¡¯t have time to teach them MOUT (Military operations in Urban terrain) TCCC (tactical field combat care) or any type of urban tactics. We were desperate. Any time we would be encircled. It was just a question of holding long enough for someone to break the siege. But by the pace the rest of NATO was retreating, by the number of casualties we knew we were digging trenches and our own graves at the same time. But trust me, at first we didn¡¯t have enough time to think about all of that. The moment we jumped of our trucks and few IFV''s we had to dig. We dug trenches, move debris onto the streets to block movement, deploy barbwire, block entrances. It was a mess. We had some kids help us move furnitures, oldest one must have been twelve. Even then, no way we would have given him a weapon. But they made themselves useful. We emptied all the furniture of four floors onto the ground flour to block the entrance of the building. We were literally I burying ourself alive. The gunshots and artillery bombing was getting closer and closer. We received the order at around noon to be ready for contact.¡±

    Mads''s train of sentences is broken by the sudden appearance of his cat leaping onto his lap.

    ¡°Our platoon had to hold an apartment block overlooking an important crossroad. It connected the main avenue with the highway going east. If we were to be ordered to break out or have reinforcement break the siege from the east, we were there for it. We had another platoon on the other appartement block across the road overlooking ours. The plan was for us to give each other mutual support. We established strategic positions throughout the building, the upper floor and rooftops mostly. Those apartments had narrow staircases, so on paper we could hold those as long as we had ammo. We were trained to avoid obvious firing positions, but there was no way to work around some windows.¡±

    As Mads gently strokes his cat''s fur, enjoying the soft texture beneath his fingertips, the playful feline suddenly nips at his hand. Mads smiles as he softly slaps the cats forehead.

    ¡°The cops I told you about. One of them ran upstair room to room with a radio in his hand. Telling us they would be on us in any second. I breathed in through my nose in a vain attempt to calm my nerves, the M60 machine gun I checked to be sure I put on enough oil in it. Took a sip from my camelback. And there was nothing left I could do. Despite how prepared I thought I was, I jumped when one of those crabs awkwardly turned the corner me and half the building were looking at. The sight of it awkwardly turning the corner without a care in the world. We opened up on it, must have had 6 rifles and two machine guns blow him into multiple pieces. All of them except me.¡±

    ¡°You didn¡¯t shoot?¡±

    ¡°I pulled the trigger, but my M60 had a mind of its own. I heard a click but no shot.  In a panic I pulled the bolt again and let out a burst in the crabs direction. After that one of them turned the corner and tried to drag his friend back into safety, safe to say he met the same fate. I let out a burst and hit him straight in the chest with 5 or 6 bullets. He was crawling on the ground and I finished him with another. I looked at them both laying down before two guys ran into the room. I jumped as they threw themselves into the room, they were carrying two LAW¡¯s each. Single use rocket launchers.

    ¡°They¡¯re coming¡± they yelled. ¡°I fucking know that¡±

    ¡°Not those grunts, something bigger is making its way down the street¡± one of the said as he expanded the LAW and armed it.

    He put himself next to me. ¡°Mind the backblast alright?¡± I yelled at him. ¡°And wear you¡¯re ear protection for christ sake¡± I added.

    ¡°Never mind that, once you see that thing you won¡¯t care about tinnitus or a broken rib.¡± He yelled at me furiously.

    More crabs made their way down the street. Once three of them turned the corner more joined and started firing everything they got towards us. My M60 was rattling, I fired three burst on one of them before he went down. That one seemed to be tougher than the rest of them. I cursed at him as he went down for wasting my time like that. As I spun my M60 to have a better sight at another one, my casings hit the LAW gunner as I fired. ¡°HELVEDE¡± he yelled as he recoiled in the back of the room trying to remove the burning casing he had just received in his neck.

    My belt was done, I threw myself under the window as I reloaded.

    ¡°WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU NOT FIRING YOUR RIFLE!¡± I yelled at him as he took back his bearing.

    ¡°JUST WAIT TILL YOU SEE THAT THING!¡± he yelled as he positioned himself infront of the window.

    Poor kid didn¡¯t see what hit him. Everything from his chest up exploded. The wall behind him was painted with blood and molten magma. What was left of his body collapsed next to me as I tried to remove the blood from my eyes and to put some distance between me and the burning hot stuff on the ground.

    The second guy was in shock, so was I. Took me a few seconds to take it in. I instinctively looked away from his mangled body and focused on reloading my machine gun. I lifted myself up and started firing the moment my barrel was pointing outside. Same crab who killed him fired another round out of a tube like weapon, he missed and hit the wall behind me. I took cover to dodge it before peeking again and unleashing hell on him. The newsstand he took cover behind was as riddled with bullets as him. It tried to crawl back behind the corner of the street. One crab at the corner tried to reach for him before I also took care of him. Three crabs ran back behind the corner. We stopped firing as we realized we had driven them away. We knew it was temporary. I barely had time to feel how much ammo I still had that the corner itself, what was left of it exploded as that thing drove through it. Only thing I can describe it as was a tractor. A walking truck as big as a van, with a multiple barreled rocket launcher on it. It unleashed hell on us. I felt the entire building shake as it took potshots at us. With the amount of rockets in those tubes it didn¡¯t need to be accurate.

    Seeking shelter amidst the chaos, I found myself enveloped in a whirlwind of dust and debris. In that moment, I offered a silent prayer, realizing the gravity of the situation my colleague had urgently conveyed just minutes earlier.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    It stopped firing for a few seconds, I peeked again and fired everything I had left at it. It did nada, If it had paint I would only have scratched it. As my belt was empty I instinctively threw myself at the young conscript crying in the corner. I ripped the LAW from his arms. The damn gun truck fired again, One rocket must have hit the floor right above us, part of the floor came collapsing and I was hit by debris right on the back against my neck. I was down on the ground. I took some nasty falls in my career but that was one of the hardest. Realized my hands were bleeding, my gloves were in shreds by that point and there was nothing protecting my palms blood poured out of it as I tried to stand up. The damn thing had stopped firing as I tried to find the LAW. I struggled through the debris and I nearly twisted my ankle as I made my way to the window. I peeked and saw some of the crabs tried to fix the gun truck under a hail of gunfire from the few guns still firing from our building. I took aim as the rockets starting lighting up, the rockets were starting to glow, I¡¯m not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I knew what it meant. I took aim as fast as I could. I fired a rocket right at it. The damn thing blew up so hard it threw me down even do I must have been 50 meters away. All the air from my lungs was forcefully removed, I felt like I was hit by a truck. Next thing I remembered my staff sergeant blared into the room, half his face bleeding yet he grabbed me and my full pack and lifted me up.

    ¡°Great shot, get back at the window the kid is going to grab you more ammo.¡±

    Barely had time to process that, As I put my weaponon the window I looked at the damage infront of me. There was nothing left of the guntruck nor the crabs nor half of the street. I made sure my gun was ready to fire, that there wasn¡¯t any debris inside of it and counted the ammo I had left. The kid, forgot his name. A 20 year old kid from Copenhagen. He still hangs out there he¡¯s very big in the underground club scene. Anyway he made his way through the debris with two belts of 7.62. As I organized everything, our rest was short lived. One of the cops got into the room. His Kevlar was torn to shreds and he had a tourniquet around his arm. ¡°30-40 of them coming, hold tight!¡± He barely finished his sentence that the first crabs turned around the corner.

    The cat jumps on his lap again.

    ¡°Firing an M60 is like harnessing controlled chaos. The weight of the weapon settles into your hands like an old companion, like a toxic relationship with a girl you love and hate the damn thing. The weight of it, the unreliability in some circumstances. The small injuries be it from casings hitting you or the burning barrel touching your arm. All of it is forgiven and forgotten as you press the trigger. When you squeeze that trigger, it''s like unleashing a storm. The roar of the M60 reverberated through your bones, every shot a thunderclap. Despite the recoil pushing back against you, there''s a sense of power, of being in command of something primal. It''s not just about the sound and fury; it''s about the precision too. With every burst, you''re sending a message, "don''t fuck with my squad" as you''re laying down suppressing fire with the kind of authority that only comes with experience. And when the smoke clears, there''s a quiet satisfaction in knowing that you''ve tamed the beast once again, if only for a moment.

    Once that smoke cleared I felt euphoric from the smell of the gunpowder and the sights of stacked bodies on that street. I must have gotten so many of them they would have put a bounty on me if they knew." Mads recalled with a smile on his face.

    ¡°GREAT SHOOTING MADS!¡± someone yelled as he ran down the hallway. Throwing me 300 more rounds.

    ¡°There¡¯s more coming, don¡¯t get that street corner out of your sight.¡±

    Back at the window, I clocked a tiny dot in the sky inching closer and closer. It was pointed toward the avenue around the corner. As it drew nearer, I recognized it just in time before it let loose with rockets. A mi24, Russian attack helicopter. A mean thing. As I realized what it was I saw the smoke from the rocket pods and the rockets hitting the avenue behind the corner where I didn¡¯t have any sights. The rockets shaked the whole building and dust and debris flew all over us.

    The same cop came running back again. His good English and calm demeanor was nowhere to be seen this time. ¡°THERE¡¯S HUNDREDS OF THEM ON THAT AVENUE, HOLD YOUR GROUND!¡±

    The heli flew right over us, I recognized the russian markings and the red star on its tail.

    He was right, even do the rocket hit right on mark some crabs peeked again. The same routine started again and I was firing everything I had at the damn things.

    I had that feeling in my stomach getting bigger and bigger as I realized how low on ammo I was getting. Despite how euphoric I felt shooting, the looming dread was immense. I couldn¡¯t think of what would happen once my ammunition ran out.

    They kept coming, one by one they turned the corner and tried desperately to take the street, as if their lives depended on it. As if there was a political officer with a pistol behind them threatening to to shoot them or cancel their leave if they didn''t clear the building we were in. I was down to my last belt praying to god that they would stop throwing themselves at us. The kid next to me had resorted to grabbing our dead colleagues magazines. He was sobbing as he fired his rifle. After I cleared a jam and put my M60 on the window again I saw another speck high in the sky. It was coming right at us. It was elegantly flying in the air. Calm as it went at its own demise. I recognized what it was just a few seconds before it hit the avenue. I threw myself on the kid and we landed behind what was left of the brick wall as the kamikaze drone hit its target. I felt all my bones and organs shake from the explosion. Took me half a minute I think to realize I was alive and that the kid was indeed crying for his father.

    Damn Russians had fired a Shahed at those things. Remember those? How much trouble they caused in Ukraine and Israel. Don¡¯t know how they had the foresight to hit that specific road but it saved us allot of trouble.

    Mads brings out the coffee and serves me a cup.

    Before long an all clear was given and I was ordered out of there. All the joints in my legs were agonizing and my hands felt like they were given thousands papercuts but I was not in any position to complain. We had lost 10 men defending that building in that attack alone, our platoon commander was killed with two other guys in his room when that gun truck fired right at it. My platoon sergeant ordered me and two other guys to take position across the street to hold the avenue in depth. I don¡¯t know why but I only noticed the smell once I was outside, I had spent too much time on the ground floor jumping from one furniture to the other trying to exit the building to notice it, but when I was outside that distinctive smell of mold attacked my senses. It was the first time I was so close to so many of those dead crabs. Despite all the dust, gunpowder and shit in the air the smell of it was putrid, like someone had left a Tupperware of food for a month in a closet and forced your face into it. Once we crossed the street and threw ourself in a sewer ditch that had been cracked open by the explosions, one of the rifleman with us complained of itches on his skin. The other felt euphoric and was starting to laugh hysterically. Now that I think of it, despite the weird bodily anomalies dead crabs gave us we were lucky no one contracted some unknow sickness that would have killed us all. They were from another galaxy and another planet, their evolutionary timeline was different than ours, the only similarity was that we were both bipedal. Their could easily have been some pathogen that would have wiped out all live on our planet once they arrived. I know its still being studied, but no peer reviewed paper will affect me as much as me puking my guts out, the guy next to me removing his gear and threatening to cut off his skin and the other grunt laughing hysterically at the sight of a bill board with the picture of a black kid. All of that was temporary. The effect and how long it lasted depended on your physiognomy. The dust started to fall down. Gunshots and explosions could be heard all over the city. We ducked for cover countless times as more suicide drones flew ahead. We had no communication with the Russians. We were glad for the bombings, we never thought we would have been glad for Russian ordonance. We didn¡¯t know if they did more good than bad, but it calmed down the crabs in our sector and at that moment in time its all that mattered. The dust in the air made visibility null, we relied on runners to communicate, the same cop as earlier came running to us, we nearly blasted him before we realized he was human. We could see at maybe 10 meters and that was it.

    ¡°Stand down!¡± he yelled, no other orders and before we could ask anything he disappeared in the mist again.

    That¡¯s when we heard it, rumbling of tanks. After a few years in the army you could differentiate between American, German and Italian tanks. But the noise we heard was new. It kept getting and closer down the avenue we were holding. We began to see silhouettes in the distance and a large shape getting closer. Damn near send one of the guys with me to run to our sergeant to ask him what was going on.

    Before I could make that decision the dark shape became very distinctive. I recognized the turret armor of a Russian T90M. So could him. Its turret rotated and lowered until it was aiming right at us. The beast must have been 20m away. As it got closer its turret turned and was aiming down our street. Had I not been dehydrated I¡¯m sure I would have pissed my pants right there and then.

    About fifty armoured vehicles and a bataillon of infantry entered the city through the side we held. Not enough to hold Vilnius but enough to organize a retreat. They had fought for hours on the east to help organize a breakthrough.

    Our platoon, battered but bolstered by a Russian company were the last ones out of that city. With trucks packed to capacity with civilians and military personnel, there was simply no more space. So, we made our exit atop T90Ms and T72s, our faces etched into that iconic picture that came to symbolize the chaos of that war. You know the one - a Russian tank with a mix of Danish, Lithuanians and Russian soldiers riding on top. Funny thing is, that single image seemed to bridge more gaps in international relations than all the diplomatic efforts of those political science graduates combined.

    The Lithuanian cop was beside me, tears rolling down his cheeks for most of the ride. He wasn''t just grieving for his lost colleagues and missing family, but also grappling with the feeling of letting his land down.

    Me? Well, I was just glad to be out of that slaughterhouse

 Chapter 5: Flying Cossacks

    Grudziadz, Poland. European federation. November 2034

    Kozak barely glanced my way as I wandered through his cozy bookstore, totally absorbed in perusing his eclectic collection. Kozak was a towering figure, a veteran of the 25th Air Cavalry Brigade, but right now, he seemed more preoccupied with rearranging the shelves than with anything else.

    He''d just finished up with a group of primary schoolers who had swung by on a field trip, and now he was deep in the trenches of organizing the chaos they''d left behind. Standing at a solid 6''3" and weighing in at a hefty 110 kilos, you''d think he''d command the space with an iron fist. But nope, turns out, he was just trying to dodge his wife''s wrath. He confessed to me in passing that he didn''t fancy facing her fury if she caught wind of the disarray in the store.

    "It felt like d¨¦j¨¤ vu all over again, must''ve been our fourth refuelling and resupply of the day. From the crack of dawn till well into the night, we were up in the air, no breaks in sight. Our only pit stops were for a quick refuel and rearm. Those precious few minutes on the ground were spent darting to the nearest porta potty and scarfing down whatever food we could grab, all while catching up on orders from our squadron commander.

    They were advancing without rest. All our defensive lines were overrun. The general evacuation order for Gdansk had been called. In less than a week they were threatening Warsaw, Minsk and Tallin no mattered how many bodies we threw at them. Our orders had stayed the same, respond to call for fires near Wyszkow. It¡¯s a city north east of Warsaw. We had ten thousand men there using everything from MBT¡¯s, artillery, assault rifles, swords and sledgehammers to stop their advance. That city was not supposed to hold, just give time for the capital to prepare for the never ending tide of crabs.

    Down there, it was a scene straight out of a Stalinist great war movie. Word was, we had more volunteers than rifles. Trucks packed with civilians from Warsaw had been rolling in all afternoon, dropped off to lend a hand. Their mission? Dig trenches, shore up buildings ¡ª anything to fortify our defenses. The capital had practically run dry of cement as they scrambled to throw together makeshift bunkers in every direction north of the city.

    Everything from special forces to fire brigade units were put on a line that stretched as far as the eye could see north of Warsaw. The Sikorsky line we ended up calling it. We had nearly all men above 17 years on it. When they were not digging they were learning how to use rifles and antitank weapons.

    We had done well preparing for ww3. We had warehouses full of cold war weapons and modern weaponry. It just wasn¡¯t enough. As my AH64 took off in unison with my two other wing men. Our computer had given us a course to Wyszkow and we were there in less than an hour.

    My copilot was tasked with using our last hellfire missiles on the big beatles. Our 30mm cannon would do the rest of the work against the tripods and we saved our rockets for column of infantry.

    Sure enough we saw the city thanks to the never ending gunfire that flew tracer rounds north. That and the explosion from artillery barrages. We hovered stationary south of it, at an attitude of 500m. Us and our wingmens coordinated who would hit what when an emergency call for support blared on the radio. We didn¡¯t need the unfortunate infantry man guidance as we saw the beetle spit fire on a group of houses at north in the outskirts of the town. My copilot fired a missile and after 20 seconds in the air it hit the beetle right in its small neck. We had learned in a few days where the weak spots were. For the guys on the ground it was the kneecaps and the mouth. For us it was the top of the neck. It decapitated the beast before it was engulfed by its own hell fire. The explosion that followed temporarily blinded me through my night vision goggles, but I couldn''t help but grin as the radio chatter shifted from desperate pleas for help to gratitude from the infantryman coordonitang the airstrikes below, insisting he owed us one.

    We got closer to target some platoons of crabs moving on foot into the city. The lads on the ground fired a red signal flare above. It was our signal to target the crowd of crabs when they were to overrun a position. Still hovering at a steady height, my copilot switched to thermals. Thanks to the helmet mounted display, a great piece of American technology that costed more than the house I grew up in. I saw what he saw, with the thermals we could see atleast fifty of them crossing some sort of scrapyard. My copilot didn¡¯t waste any time, only when he was absolutely sure those were crabs thanks to their weird movements and height differences between them he opened fire. Our 30mm cannon fired HE shells at them, Didn¡¯t take too long for us to make quick work of them. When that 30mm chain gun starts firing, it''s like the very thunder of the gods unleashed. You pull that trigger, and suddenly you''re riding a storm, each round roaring out with the fury of a hundred storms. The recoil shakes the bird, but you hold on tight, because every impact is like the hand of justice itself coming down on the target. It''s precision and power, wrapped up in the symphony of war. And when it''s all said and done, you know you''ve made your mark when you see the dismembered remains of the target through the thermals.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    Sitting up there we wondering why we were losing the war. We always were brought back to reality when we were low on ammunition. As my copilot took care of the last ones another wave of them pushed from a forest north west of the scrap yard.

    My wingmen, who was itching all evening for more kills took the lead on those, he made his way towards them and at about 3km away he used his rockets. When those hydra rockets leave the rails, it was like unleashing a dragon''s breath. You feel the Apache tremble as those rockets scream into the sky, leaving a trail of fire and smoke behind. The entire forest lit up with the explosions of the high explosive shells.

    Had it not been for the deafening noise of the two T700-GE-701C turboshaft engines, I guarantee you we could have heard the cheers of the infantryman, cops and volunteers under us.

    Barely had time to celebrate that we had an urgent call for fire coming in, some tripods had breached a line, they had just walked over our guys and were tailing it south. Those were a real danger, their speed and mobility were nothing to scoff at. They also managed to make our guys rout easier than the crabs, guntrucks. We tailed it to their position. Despite their height they were easy to miss from a far in the night. Our tactic to hunt them was to fly low and hope to see their shape break the horizon. It was a dangerous as it sounded. We were flying south east maybe at 200m high.

    As we took to the night sky, the darkness enveloped us like a cloak, our Apaches poised for action. Low and fast, we wove through the terrain, feeling the rush of air against our frames. The glow of our instrument panels cast a faint light in the cockpit. I was praying we wouldn¡¯t encounter strong winds.  At that altitude and speed any mistake could be our last.

    We relied on our instruments, trusting in our training as we skimmed over the landscape, vigilant for any sign of movement.

    A column of police and national guard vehicles came face to face with the tripods as they tried to cross a stretch of highway. We zeroed in on their position and made our way there. We didn¡¯t need their guidance anymore as we saw police sirens and the tracers of gunfire. The guys on the ground lit up the position of one of the tripods with a searchlight. As we started to see the silhouettes we all gained altitude and started to hover at a distance. With precision honed through countless hours of training, I locked onto the target, my focus unyielding. The Hellfire missile armed, I felt the weight of its potential destruction in my hands. With a calm but determined demeanor, my copilot squeezed the trigger, unleashing the missile into the night.

    As it streaked from the rail, a trail of smoke and fire marked its path through the darkness. Then came the impact, a thunderous explosion that lit up the night sky,. The tripod imploded, only then I realized that beast must have been two hundred meters tall. The top shell exploded and lightened up the entire surrounding area. It must have been a sight for the guys on the ground to see that thing explode. My other wingmen took care of the others with another volley of hellfire missiles and the 30mm autocannon. The surviving tripods tried to take us out with their cannons but we were too far, too small and too fast for them to hit us. Those things had a low fire rate. Maybe two a minute.

    They all collapsed one after another as we made swift work of them.  We radioed that we took care of them, scanned the surroundings for any other possible contact and waited for a response from our squadron commander. As one of my wingmen took lead infront of me as we flew back to the city. I noticed a smallll speck in the distance. I only saw it because of its dark silhouette appearing infront of the distant lights and fires. I asked my wingmen if he saw it aswell. After a few seconds he noticed it. It appeared to come closer to us. As I radiod our commander, asking if there were any jets in our area the shape flew right through my wingmen. The apache didn¡¯t even explode at first, it just seemed to be cut in half right under the engine by that jet. Time in my head seemed to freeze as I saw the jet be engulfed by fire as it crashed. The fast mover, we ended up calling them Banshees or "Sling shots" because of the way the crabs fired them from the ground circled back. Me and my surviving wing men instinctively turned towards it. Our copilots started firing their 30mm cannons at it in a vain attempt to take it down or scare it. It went straight for my wingmen. I heard the cry on the radio from it as the banshee  hit it head on.

    It too was cut nearly in half before it exploded from the ordonnance and gasoline burning.

    It circled back again as my commander was shouting on the radio asking me to explain what was happening.

    As it closed in on us, I swerved to our left as my copilot was firing everything at it.  It had lost most of its velocity and was bound to crash whether or not it hit me. As I swerved the thing missed me by a hair. My copilot didn¡¯t, one of the 30mm shells hit it and made it lose its balance. As I saw it pass us it was nearly as big as us, just one bulky and long dark shape. It swirved and crashed in the hill behind us. It must have borrowed into the ground before exploding. Its explosion lifted tons of dirt into the air.

    The one advantage we had over these things was lost that night as reports of those banshees came from all over the frontline.

 Chapter 6: Liaison

    Berlin, August 2024

    Jungnyeong (Captain) Park Ji-eun, a seasoned veteran of countless battlefronts throughout the war, awaits me at the caf¨¦ opposite her office. Her remarkable service has earned her battlefield commissions after commissions, despite still being in her late twenties.

    ¡°How I ended up in Warsaw? Well, I took a nasty fall down a set of stairs while carrying boxes. I was in the ROK Marine Corps at the time. Thanks to that, I ended up behind a desk for the rest of my military service. Then there were those loan sharks I owed, thanks to my father¡¯s debts that I inherited. And to top it off, my boyfriend ditched me for some girl set to inherit her old man''s business. But even now, I¡¯m sure it had something to do with my looks.¡±

    I signed up to be a military attach¨¦ in Poland¡ªa gig that involved bridging the gap between our military and theirs. With Poland buying loads of gear from us, they needed some Koreans on-site to handle the nitty-gritty of communication and sharing sensitive military intel. Being the newbie on the team, my role often boiled down to making calls back home to our defense contractors, gathering intel the Poles dished out daily. From the radar cross-section of our aircraft to which motor oil our K2 tanks should steer clear of, it was all on my plate.

    With just me left in the office, the place felt eerily deserted. Two of my colleagues had taken off for vacation back home, while another had left earlier due to marital issues just before the shit hit the fan. As I sat there pondering my next move, news of the advancing enemy forces weighed heavy on my mind. The Crabs, relentless in their assault, had breached every defensive line set up by the Poles and our European allies. With the outskirts of the city already under threat, I knew it was time to head to the South Korean embassy. Partly to offer support, but also to seek solace among my own people.

    As I was doing the 1,000 steps in our office trying to figure out where I left my gas mask, some Polish officer barged into my office. A fat and bald man with half his right arm missing and bandaged beyond recognition. He started blaring orders in Polish. I looked at him like he was an extraterrestrial being. As he realized the absurdity of his behavior, he pointed at me.

    ¡°You drive?¡± he said while mimicking a steering wheel.

    I just nodded.

    ¡°You follow me.¡±

    Before I knew it, I was out the door with my vest and my backpack.

    He threw me some keys as we made it through the Ministry of Defense building. Folks were running around in panic. Some soldiers threw papers from the windows; as they landed outside, they were put in a singular pile of fire¡ªas if the Crabs could read. It was as if there was a plan.

    Despite the chest-thumping, they didn¡¯t intend to stay in Warsaw. Word ran fast in the morning that they wouldn¡¯t be able to hold it. Our only advantage over those beasts was close air support from our jets and helicopters, and massive artillery strikes. We were losing jets and helos so fast because of those Banshees that they had to pull them back, and the supply of artilley shells was running low.

    The general who ordered the withdrawal had locked himself into his office after giving the order and had shot himself. Partly because of the shame he felt and also because his family, who was being evacuated by helicopter, had been shot down from the sky.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    It was mayhem. There were still a lot of folks stuck in the city. There were endless lines toward trucks and train stations to get out. I distinctly remembered a guy at a red stop flashing a Rolex watch in exchange for me driving him and his family out of there. Me and the Polish officer paid him no mind as we were waiting for our turn to cross the road.

    I was driving the Humvee, filled to the roof with ammunition. We had to deliver those to a subway station near the district where most of the embassies were. It was a win-win situation for me and him. He was in the passenger seat, juggling the radio and his mobile phone, trying to get his men in order. I had complained I didn¡¯t have a rifle when we made it to the parking lot, and he simply gave me one from the trunk with a box worth of mags and ammo. That¡¯s how desperate the guy was for a hand. The sky exploded on top of us as the first wave of Banshees made their way over the city. There were gun positions all over the capital, trying to take enough of them down so that our air assets could be called back in¡ªeverything from CIWS to Cold War flak guns. All the while countless jets were roaring and in roller coaster dogfights against the banshees.

    Our saving grace was that those Banshees were blind as bats and didn¡¯t seem to fly for too long. We knew they had to refuel often. Turns out, their way of filling their tanks involved landing and soaking themselves in a huge bath of that hellish fluid. Once in a while, you¡¯d hear the loudest bang you could possibly hear followed by a flash of light in the distance¡ªthat was our HIMARS hitting those fuel pools, as we called them. At first we thought they were nukes.

    As I turned at an intersection, one of the cops directing traffic dropped his radio and lifted his rifle in the air. As he and his colleagues started shooting their rifles at a low-flying Banshee, anyone who wasn¡¯t armed threw themselves behind cover as it came crashing down. Must have been hit by an incendiary round the way it was burning even before hitting the ground. It crashed maybe fifty meters in front of us, vaporizing a row of parked cars as it came down. Our windshield exploded from the blast, like all the other windows in that street.

    ¡°Szybki!¡± the officer yelled as I hit the gas pedal while trying to remove debris from my face. As some magma burned on our hood, I prayed that none of it made its way inside our car¡ªwith all the ammunition we were carrying, it just needed one spark for me and that fat officer to be turned into a crater.

    Park waves to a woman passing by; they exchange a few sentences in German. She must have explained who I was and what I was doing since she looked at me, awkwardly smiled, and said goodbye to Park before walking away.

    ¡°We got to that damned station. Some soldier ran to the middle of the road and flagged us down. As I stopped, I caught a glimpse of my reflection: cuts on my face, just like my passenger¡ªboth from the windshield. I barely had time to gather my thoughts before half a dozen men surrounded our vehicle. The officer got out and started barking orders. All the boxes were unloaded and carried down to the subway station. It looked like we had brought them ammunition for a last stand. Before I could approach the officer, who was carrying two boxes himself, a Polish soldier grabbed my shoulder.

    ¡°You¡¯re trying to go to the Korean embassy?¡± he shouted in my face, mostly due to the damage to his eardrums instead of bad manners.

    I simply nodded.

    ¡°Those heathens broke through; they could be anywhere on the north side of the city by now. The embassy is on the second street to the right. Take the car¡ªwe won¡¯t need it anymore.¡±

    He ran towards the subway entrance before spinning around and yelling, ¡°Good luck!¡±

    They could have escaped. Had they taken their vehicles and trucks, they could have...

    Instead they''d bunker down in the subways and sewers for months. Fighting the damn bugs in their own terms, coordinating air strikes. There were about 2000 men and women in those tunnels. Yet at the end I remember the voice of that officer. He was the last one radioing information out of the city. Not begging for a ride out or a rescue. No, his last message he was asking for the air force to bomb a public park the crabs used to refuel their banshees.

 Chapter 7: No friends but the mountains

    <h2>Budapest, European federation, 2034</h2>

    Varga Janos struggles to get up the stairs as I follow him to his rooftop. The city, which had been the headquarters of the Central European command forces seemed empty compared to how it was during war time.

    ¡°You couldn¡¯t find one bed between Vienna and Belgrade. Refugees from Poland, Germany and Czechia kept pouring in. And when all of them got settled you couldn¡¯t find one loaf of bread or a bottle of beer. I¡¯m glad I wasn¡¯t there to see it, you¡¯d have to ask my cousin he owned apartments and thought he made a killing until he realized the money he was being paid in rent was worth less that cigarette paper to roll.¡±

    Varga and I settled into our seats around the table. As the sun dipped below the city skyline, painting the sky with hues of orange and pink, he offered me a cigarette. His eyes lingered on the horizon, reflecting the warmth and tranquility of the evening.

    ¡°We must have climbed for an hour, with snow finding its way into every part of our bodies. By the time we reached the top of the mountain, we were soaked. And yet, it wasn''t even the highest peak in the Carpathians.¡±

    ¡°The Carpathians was our gift from God. Some, the more religious believed it to be a gift for our piousness. I was in the army before the war, we saw how pious our people were. Be it in the football stands or at political rallies. Be it now or before, that holier than the enemy rhetoric always grinded my gears. Whatever it was, those mountains protected us from the crabs for the entire war. That¡¯s all I know. The mountain passes, they¡¯re still digging up bodies over there after all those years. That¡¯s how bloody it was for them. The Carpathian Mountains create a sweeping, protective arc that encircles the Transylvanian Plateau, providing a natural fortress for the regions within its embrace. The arms of Mother Europa we ended up calling it, with us being cradled by them. This unique shape saved us before in history and it served us then as well. It¡¯s a shame the Romanians lost half their country and their capital, but they were smart enough to cut their losses and fall back to the western side of the mountain after they evacuated the country. The Carpathians, the Balkan mountains and the alps saved most of southern Europe from being overrun the first months. Every mountain pass had machine gun nest after machine gun nest. Recon and snipers at the entrances to radio movement. artillery and attack aircraft on standby during the entirety of the war. It was the place to be stationed in. Hell, they¡¯d send people who fought to the teeth on the other fronts there as some unofficial r&r. If a company commander saw how broken you were after countless battles, and if you were on his good side they¡¯d put in your papers so that you would be rotated there.

    After a month they had nearly all of the Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek and between the Balkan mountains and the black sea. Us, Slovakians, Austrians and the Croats held Vienna and Bratislava right between the Alps and the Carpathians. Must have had ? of our army there while the rest watched the mountain passes. The Turks split their army in half and sent them both places. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    I remember clearly how it was, I sat on a rock, my cigarette in one hand and the radio on the other. I had but one message to send. I was anticipating the moment I¡¯d see those crabs arrive. Through the snowfall, I gave no mind to the cold and the wind. I just kept my eyes on that road despite all the whining from my teammates. By the time my cigarette burned to its filter, I ignored the burning against my fingers as I saw those mobs make their way across the highway in the pass. Like everywhere else, you had hundreds of crabs followed by their beetles. I took out my notebooks with my radio communication written on it. Here I still have it, too good of a memory to just throw it away.

    ¡°Burkut 6 this is CCT 1, Fire mission over¡±

    After a few minutes of static, the Turkish F4 phantoms above us answered.

    ¡°CCT1 this Is Burkut6,, send fire mission over.¡±

    ¡°Burkut 6, my position marked by IR strobe. Target location bearing 10, range 2 clicks. Grid 49.220024, 23.315528. At my command.¡±

    ¡°CCT1 this is Burkut 6, ready for fire.¡±

    ¡°Burkut 6 this is CCT1, send ordonnance over.¡±

    I lit up another cigarette as the sound of the f4 phantoms losing altitude came closer.

    It lined up on the highway, flew right at above our height.

    As it flew nearly at our altitude, I saw it drop 18 MK.82 freefall bombs. They hit right on mark. They carpet bombed the highway. I felt the shockwave hit us and I held on to everything I could. Those bombs didn¡¯t take out all of them. Some like the beetles resisted. But that¡¯s where the second part of the plan came in. As the next crabs made their way up the road and the beetles got back their bearing the mountain gave in.

    Must have been a trickle at first. A few snowdrops must have fallen from a tree near the top or something. Suddenly, a deep rumble echoed through the valley, and the snow started to shift and crack.

    Within moments, a massive wall of snow broke loose from the mountainside. The avalanche gained speed rapidly, turning into a roaring, unstoppable force. As it rushed down, it swept up more snow, rocks, and debris, creating a massive, churning cloud.

    The avalanche barrelled into the mountain pass, obliterating everything in its path. Trees snapped like toothpicks, and any structures or vehicles in the way were buried or swept away. The landscape was now a mix of snow and debris, leaving behind a path of destruction. The tiring hike up that mountain wasn¡¯t for nothing. We saw those crabs gets swept by a wall of snow. Must have hit them like a truck. Even the beetles couldn¡¯t resist the first hit. We saw all of them being swept by the avalanche and disappearing under the snow to die of asphyxiation or the cold.

    In just a few minutes, the avalanche passed, leaving an eerie silence. The mountain pass, once a safe route, was now a treacherous and impassable snow-covered expanse.

    It would help us hold the line for the rest of the war. As more countries poured in we had enough men, vehicles and ammunition to hold the passes even during the summer. Sure, Czechia and part of Austria resembled Verdun but we wouldn¡¯t be here if it wasn¡¯t for the Carpathians.

    I met a Turkish soldier once, we talked about it. Turns out he was Kurdish and they had a saying for this; No friends but the mountains

 Chapter 8: Kali Yuga

    Brussels international airport, European federation. September 2034

    Dieter Janssens meets me at the arrival gate, having a few hours before his next transatlantic flight we share a cup of coffee.

    "Berlin couldn¡¯t fall. There were traffic jams spanning from east Germany all the way to the Benelux countries and France. It would have been a disaster to lose Berlin. They needed a week more of holding them off before Berlin and most of eastern Germany could be considered evacuated.

    The highways were a clusterfuck, pardon my language. The Ministry of Defense wanted to keep the road to the east clear for incoming reinforcements, while civilian authorities insisted it be opened to allow people to drive west and alleviate the congestion on the other routes. My entire flight I saw traffic jam after traffic jam. Just unending kilometres of cars bumper to bumper. We had estimated it would have taken the crabs six months to get to our "last call" defensive lines in the Pyrenees. But I think they would have made it there faster than the folks sitting in their car.

    Did you hear about the incident in Hannover? Some police officers opened the road leading west to relieve congestion, but they didn¡¯t notify the military. As a result, Dutch army vehicles ended up facing hundreds of thousands of refugees. Although there were no collisions, the army wasn''t able to move aside for them, and negotiating with the massive crowd of refugees was impossible. It blocked that army brigade for two days as they had to close the road in Hannover and literally push the civilian cars blocked out of the way.

    Nothing managed to stop them. Central and western Europe was too flat, there weren¡¯t any mountains or enough wide rivers to stop them like in the Carpathians or Urals. And we didn¡¯t have enough men to hold them off. As my F16 flew 10km above Potsdam I put on my game face. It was nearly 1800. Me and the thirty other aircraft had to drop their payload right at the same time. Harder said than done when you had to coordinate American, Belgian, Dutch and French aircrafts. Francfort was my target, despite the similarity in name with its bigger counterpart it wasn¡¯t as easy to spot. With the lights turned off I had to check more than once with my onboard gps. I lined my aircraft with my target.

    Imagine the cockpit of an F-16 as your command center in the sky¡ªkind of like a high-tech cockpit from a sci-fi movie but with a lot of buttons and switches. You¡¯ve got your seat right in the middle, with a control stick in front of you that handles all the flying. The throttle¡¯s on your left side, letting you adjust the speed. Your dashboard is a crazy mix of dials, screens, and switches¡ªeverything from altitude and speed to radar and weapon systems. There are some big, bright displays that give you all the vital info you need, like navigation and targeting data. It was a 1970''s aircraft but with the most modern electronics you could imagine. You also have a heads-up display right in front of you on the windshield that shows you crucial info while you''re flying, so you don¡¯t have to look down at the gauges. The cockpit¡¯s designed for quick access, so everything you need is within reach. There are buttons for controlling the aircraft¡¯s systems, launching missiles, or switching between different modes. The whole setup is built for speed and efficiency, so you can keep your focus on flying and fighting.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    As I reached my target I confirmed the order with the radio. I was three minutes early but they didn¡¯t mind. I recited a small prayer as I switched the nuclear consent switch. I made sure I was on my target. The area was swarming with crabs, it reassured me that there weren¡¯t any humans down there.

    I pressed the trigger and dropped the B61 bomb. It must have fell for about 1 minute. I applied my afterburners and did a 180 to get as fast away as I could. And there I was, flying along when suddenly, I saw this blinding flash coming from behind me ¡ªway brighter than anything I had ever seen. It was like someone had turned on a supernova right in front of me. Everything around me went white, and I had to squint even though I was wearing sunglasses.

    Then came the shockwave. It felt like someone had slapped me hard, but not just on the outside¡ªthere was a deep, gut-wrenching force that shook the plane. The entire cockpit rattled, and I could feel it in my bones. I watched the shockwave traveling outward, distorting everything as it moved. I was praying to god, nearly whimpering hoping the structure of the aircraft would hold.

    Next, there was this massive, expanding fireball rising up, with a dark, ominous mushroom cloud forming as it grew. It was an incredible sight but also completely terrifying. The air got hot, and I could feel it even from up in the cockpit. The whole experience was a stark reminder of just how powerful and destructive a nuclear explosion really was as I circled around it and flew back towards Belgium.

    I sat there, trying to process what I had just witnessed and what I just had done, knowing that this blast was unlike anything I had ever encountered. It was a mix of awe and dread, making me appreciate just how serious and devastating nuclear weapons could be. When I had gotten to the military academy the first day I imagined myself shooting down Russian sukhois or bombing some "jihadists" on their toyotas in a far away land. Not dropping a tactical nuclear weapon above east germany. And as I took it all in more flashes came from my left and right. All along the front line from the black sea to the Czech republic There were blasts that shook and lit up the sky. The entire frontline was turned into molten cobalt by American and French made nuclear bombs. As the first wave of bombing wiped that part of Europe off the map the second wave, fired from submarines hit the same spot 2 hours later to let the crabs know we were serious.

    After I landed in Kleine Brogel, my aircraft went through decontamination. While I stood on the tarmac watching the process, I couldn''t help but admire an American B-1B Lancer. It was a magnificent aircraft. I watched as it taxied along the runway after landing. Even though our airbase was too small for it, our engineers managed to make it work. As the B-1B turned right, I noticed the inscription outside the cockpit: "Kali Yuga."

    Something had broken us. Not only figuratively. As every unit that came into contact with the damn bugs was considered expended after a week. Something inside of us broke. This wasn''t just a war, we felt like we were living the last days.

 Chapter 9: From the slaughterhouse to the graveyard

    Bielefeld, European federation.

    My train was delayed, but Zo? Koch had been kind enough to wait for me at the station. At 43, the retired Paramedic looked older beyond her actual years. Her face like most people I''ve interview was wrinkled and her hair grey. Her body ravaged like most of Central Europe that hasn''t been rebuilt yet.  After a brief and polite greeting, she invited me to a local restaurant where I had the chance to try authentic Schnitzel and German beer.

    "Honestly, it was a miracle that the fallout hadn''t claimed as many lives as we initially feared," she began, noticing the burns on my hand. "Radiation sickness accounted for only about 5% of the deaths recorded by the Red Cross that month."

    She paused for a moment before continuing. "We suspect that more lives were lost due to delays in patient intake, as we focused on preparations for the bomb rather than immediate care. What helped was that, despite the poor state of the military, soldiers were equipped with CBRN kits. They were prepared for everything¡ªexcept for the shock waves and EMPs. It took some time, but once the dust settled, the wounded started arriving again."

    Zo? took a sip of her drink before elaborating. "My Red Cross team was deployed at the BG Unfallklinik in Frankfurt am Main, on the outskirts of the city. The park and surrounding fields were transformed into a massive field hospital. It span kilometers from the hospital and it¡¯s nearby grave yard to the end of it where the improvised landing area for the helicopters was. Entire kilometers of tents, mobile units, and prefabricated buildings¡ªeveryone was there. The Red Cross, the Bundeswehr, Doctors Without Borders, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, UNICEF¡ªyou name it, they were there. Hell, we even had over a hundred pastors, nuns, and about twenty imams running from tent to tent, offering last rites and helping however they could."

    In a cold, calculated manner, Zo? glanced at the message on her phone before turning the screen upside down, choosing not to respond.

    "Sorry, it''s my son," she said, silencing her phone with a click.

    I was stationed at the CAT 1 section, the part responsible for the most critical cases¡ªthe wounded soldiers and fighters who arrived near the helicopter LZ. Priority 1 cases. We had run out of body bags, and the field outside was filled with corpses wrapped in garbage bags and plastic tarps. Trucks worked around the clock, hauling them a few kilometers away to a mass grave.

    The crabs were about 200 kilometers away in Bavaria, and the nearby field hospitals were being evacuated. No one knew how long the nuclear threat would scare the crabs away, it forced us to move the wounded further away. Amid the moans and shouts of the injured, the constant whir of helicopters landing to drop off casualties was as loud as those. Everything from every European air forces to medical and even civilian helicopters, refitted to carry less critically injured patients, was involved. Brave folks those civilians. One time two of them collided as one approached the LZ and one left it. Thank god there wasn¡¯t any tent nearby and only one of those helicopters were carrying the injured. Took them about two hours to remove the wreckages.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    We had a team of teenagers from a local football club, all in CBRN suits and Red Cross reflective jackets. They moved between the helicopters and the tents, carrying the dead and the wounded. Four or two at a time, they''d lift stretchers and rush them toward the triage area, then sprint back to the next helicopter. These lads worked tirelessly for hours. During the rare moments of calm, they¡¯d collapse onto the grass, exhausted, only to wake up when another helicopter arrived.

    Sleep and food were luxuries we couldn''t afford. We worked until we dropped, and for some, that meant literally collapsing from exhaustion. We had several heart attacks among the staff, a grim reminder of the toll 20 to 22-hour workdays could take. When the American, Chinese, and African medical teams arrived, it was a relief, but even then, we were still averaging 18-hour days at best.

    ¡°What type of injuries were the most common?¡± I asked, noticing her gaze linger behind me.

    "From the nukes, we had burned retinas, radiation sickness, thermal burns, and blast injuries. Radiation poisoning, of course. The fun stuff," she replied, her voice a mix of grim experience and dry humor. "Aside from the nuclear fallout, it was a melting pot of burn and blast injuries from the crabs¡¯ weapons, fractures, and traumatic burns. Hell, there were even a few cases of limbs torn off from our guys who were foolish or desperate enough to engage the crabs hand-to-hand. Those were rare, but not pleasant. When that happened, the tourniquet would often be surrounded by mold and infection, and we had to amputate several centimeters above the injury just to be sure."

    She paused, her eyes distant for a moment before continuing. "Sometimes, they¡¯d walk around as if they didn¡¯t have a care in the world, forgetting the limbs or cartilage they¡¯d lost. One would disappear from a tent and reappear a hundred meters away if you took your eyes off them. We had to write on their foreheads with markers to remind us which tent they were supposed to be in, and if we didn¡¯t cuff their ankles or wrists to the field beds, they''d take off on their own. Hell, sometimes they''d even grab the beds and go for a hike."

    She let out a loud laugh, and the couple sitting next to us shifted uncomfortably, their faces a mix of disbelief and horror.

    ¡°There was this one French soldier,¡± she continued, shaking her head. ¡°He was convinced his comrades were outside, under the plastic tarps. With one hand missing, he struggled to flip the tarps over to find them. It took two police officers to restrain him and sit him down. Honestly, there was something in that ¡®crustacean matter¡¯ that made people lose it.¡±

    The doctors, nurses, and volunteers were affected too. I remember one nun¡ªshe was Congolese, I think¡ªwho had been cleaning an APC that had been used to carry the dead to the mass grave. She¡¯d spent a good part of an hour scrubbing away the blood inside. If I recall correctly, she became hyperfocused on it. They¡¯d told her it didn¡¯t need to be spotless since it was headed to the front lines, but she just couldn¡¯t let go.

    When the APC had to leave with the convoy, she lost it. She started shouting abominations for half an hour and hurled the empty bucket toward me, demanding more warm water. Maybe it was the endless stream of the dead and dying, the constant hum of helicopters, the controlled chaos, or the stench of bodies and blood that drove her to that point.

    Honestly, I¡¯m not surprised I don¡¯t remember much of what happened with her. Who would notice a madman in a camp full of them ?

 Chapter 10: "Dzieè‰… S?du"

    Undisclosed Location, December 2034

    Jakub Kowalski is not an easy man to find. The former defence minister remains exiled from Europe for his own safety. While most of his fellow Poles bear him no ill will, a dangerous minority does¡ªenough to keep him under constant protection in a foreign land.

    He has turned down countless interview requests. But I had the rare opportunity to meet him a year ago when he guest lectured in one of my university classes. We stayed in touch, and over time, he began to open up. Now, at last, he is ready to talk about what happened.

    ¡°You don¡¯t lose half your army and just tell your allies everything will be fine. From day one, nuclear weapons were already on the table. The president and prime minister kept kicking the can down the road¡ªeven when the Sikorsky Line fell, even when Warsaw was encircled.

    Four of our seven army divisions existed only on paper. Conscripts and firefighters were thrown into them just to keep them standing. Worse, some units took it upon themselves not to fall back, choosing instead to be encircled and wiped out.

    Those crabs numbered in the hundreds of millions. We estimated it took just two weeks for one of their ''eggs'' to grow into a full-sized Chitarran. It took us 18 years to raise and train a soldier¡ª16 if you cut corners like some other countries did.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

    Even with five allied divisions stationed in Poland, it was unwinnable. Those men¡ªwhether it was a Belgian general leading a battle group or a Spanish private lugging a machine gun to wherever his sergeant told him¡ªweren¡¯t as invested as we were. They tried at first, but for them, retreat was logical when faced with what we had. For us, it was unthinkable.¡±

    I hesitated before asking, ¡°Did NATO not have any plans or coordination?¡±

    Jakub ran a hand over his brow. ¡°On paper, sure¡ªagainst the Russian and Belarusian militaries. But those plans went out the window the moment something with laser blasters welded into its crab shell landed on our heads.

    We had fistfights in NATO command centers¡ªWestern officers trying to save their men from encirclement, Polish officers refusing to let their hometowns fall. We agreed on evacuating civilians, but soon, battalion commanders stopped coordinating with NATO officers on the ground. They¡¯d tell us to fall back; we¡¯d feign ignorance and hold our ground.

    Not everywhere was like that. Plenty of our units survived the entire war. But too many died simply out of unwavering loyalty to the land and its people.¡±

    Jakub looked out the window, his face flushed red.

    ¡°We received the ultimatum from NATO High Command: move your troops west of the Oder River within two days¡ªno ifs, no buts. Anyone left behind would be vaporized.

    Our president resigned rather than give the order. Our prime minister went mad¡ªthey had to sedate him. And so, all along the chain of command, the impossible decision landed on me.

    Too many lives were at stake. Too many fathers, sons, husbands, and daughters still fighting. I had to save some of them. I had to bear the consequences.

    I agreed to be the scapegoat for what happened, for the rest of my life, as long as it meant some of them would live.

    There¡¯s a reason each bomber had four air superiority fighters escorting it. A reason NATO sent jets equipped with SEAD missiles to wipe out our radars and air defenses if they even dared to turn on their radars. They weren¡¯t taking chances.

    In the end, it¡¯s estimated that only a quarter of our forces made it past the Oder. The rest stayed behind. And it was too late. Logistical problems in the evacuation of civilians and radioactive protections had made it such that the bombing was delayed for a week. By then they were well inside of Germany. It gave us a few weeks to regroup, for new units to arrive from abroad.¡±