00:20 – 26.06.2047 Southern Front / Forward Line
The command's plan was to break through the enemy position in a lightning assault using the armored draisine and to crush the opposing units. The infantry was to follow close behind and eliminate whatever remained of the defenders. The objective was to inflict maximum enemy casualties while minimizing damage to the infrastructure. After all, the primary goal was the seizure of agricultural production.
The worst part of any engagement is the waiting.The worst part of war is the silence.
Ten minutes—ten miserable minutes—separated the men from death and life, from failure and victory. A superposition of existence: dead and alive at the same time. Every heart beat with the knowledge that it might never beat again. It hammered against ribcage and bone, as if it wanted to escape and save itself. But death sat at the back of the neck. Wherever one looked, the enemy lurked; every existence was punished, and every order threatened to shatter in the wind.
The Second Company stood behind the armored, heavy-engine draisine bearing the inscription "Fire of the Revolution."David smelled the stench of high-proof ethanol, used as fuel for the steel beast produced in small series. At the converging front, additional armor plating had been installed to deflect direct fire and ensure the physical breach of fortifications.
Then the commands rang out—monotonous, precise:
"Put on gas masks!"
Like a single synchronized mass, they donned their standardized equipment. The world dimmed, tinted brown. Breathing became heavy behind the filters.
Some secretly drank to steel their nerves—a frowned-upon behavior, as alcohol-thinned blood drastically reduced survival chances in the event of injury.
"Check weapons and boots!"
David followed the orders automatically, like a machine. He took his rifle, inserted a magazine, and disengaged the safety in one smooth motion. He checked his boots to make sure they were tightly laced—there was nothing worse than stumbling, or worse, falling during an assault.
The soldier beside him strapped a metal box to his back. This field telephone was the only means of coordinating units with command, and judging by its crude construction, it had already survived several battles—probably more than most of those present.
"Fix bayonets!"
As ordered, David drew his combat knife from the sheath on his belt. With a loud click, it locked into place. Now they waited.
Time seemed to freeze, thick and slow like honey. Every possible outcome raced through David's mind. Would he die today? How many of his unit would survive? He hoped he would not be overwhelmed in close combat.
The political commissar stared intently at an old silver pocket watch.
Then, finally, release from the waiting.
With a sharp gesture, he ordered the draisine crew to start the engines. With a thunderous bang, the engine roared to life, spewing a cloud of blue-gray smoke. Like a beast chasing its prey, the vehicle surged forward toward the enemy.
The commissar ordered the first wave to follow.
David and his comrades struggled to keep pace with the armored vehicle. The tunnel echoed with the dull thuds of their boots. They crossed the carefully cleared position, vaulted sandbag barricades, and moved through exposed paths in tangled barbed wire—step by step closing in on the enemy.
This double-track tunnel, supported only in places by crumbling pillars, belonged to no one. Neither side had concentrated enough forces to claim it. A no-man's-land, home only to rats. Rotting bodies lay scattered about, flesh decaying from bone, abandoned by all. Some still lay as if they were holding their posts. Without a gas mask, the stench would have been unbearable.
Countless shell casings littered the ground around small sandbag outposts, alternately occupied by both sides. Advance, hold position, repel counterattack, dig in—that was the doctrine. And so the front shifted by only a few hundred meters at most, until pressure from the opposing side forced a retreat. Dozens of times the same positions were taken and lost. Countless dead for a brief shift in the line.
The improvised armored vehicle crossed this zone in minutes, crushing corpses beneath its wheels with a sickening crunch, tearing them apart. Soon they reached the enemy's first line. The infantry struggled to remain in the protective shadow of the beast.
Machine guns flared. Volley after volley hurled bullets at the attackers, most ricocheting harmlessly off armor and tunnel walls—though the ricochets were just as deadly. Soon, they reached the first line.
The draisine returned fire, unleashing a red-yellow sea of flame across the enemy's forward position. Within seconds, men were ablaze. Some desperately tried to stop the steel monster with their small arms, but it was futile. As if the machine possessed a will of its own—a rage that nothing in the world could appease.
Only after the beast had already moved on did the infantry reach the position.
Burning figures writhed on the ground, desperately trying to extinguish the flames. Heat blistered their clothing; flesh and equipment seemed to melt together. One figure reached a hand toward David. The face was charred black; only the left eye remained wide open—its eyelid likely burned away. White. The only unchanged thing about the man.
He tried to speak, but no sound came. No words—only trembling lips.
David lowered his rifle. For a single heartbeat.
He understood anyway.
He aimed at the head and pulled the trigger. With a dull crack, the head fell lifelessly to the ground. He had to release him from his suffering.
A furious voice barked at him:
"What the hell are you doing!? Don't waste bullets on them!"
It was his sergeant, shouting at him with grim anger.
"If they're incapacitated, use the bayonet. Don't waste valuable ammunition. Understood?"
David nodded hesitantly.
"Good. Move!"
The others obeyed, stabbing one after another. A grotesque form of mercy.
They advanced again. The draisine had already reached the next position. Machine-gun fire once more failed to stop the assault. Again the salvos barked through the tunnel, ricochets snapping off the walls. The same horrific spectacle unfolded: bodies ignited, screams echoed into nothingness—vainly searching for release.
The Southern League was caught completely off guard by the offensive. Line after line was crushed beneath the boots of the People's Army. There were no survivors. The one-sided massacre ended only when the station itself was reached. In this area, Union martial law forbade excessive force—after all, this was a war against an army, not civilians.
The armored vehicle continued onward toward the next station to cut off enemy supply lines. Clearing the station of hostile elements fell to the infantry.
A gray tide of steel flooded in all directions. Civilians vanished into their barracks, hoping not to be crushed between the fighting. The defense force tried in vain to contain the breakthrough.
Bodies, blood, and entrails spread across the concrete floor.
David was in the thick of it. He fired volley after volley. His targets fell one by one. Around him, friend and foe died in droves. He followed orders. He did his duty. And yet—something felt wrong. As if his very core condemned him for it.
Reality tore him back into the present.
A soldier charged him with a knife. David struck with the rifle butt, throwing the man to the ground. In one motion, he drove his bayonet into the attacker's chest. The steel blade pierced flesh effortlessly, severing fibers and puncturing a lung. The wounded man stared in disbelief at the wound, clutching the blade with both hands.
David tried to pull it free, but it was stuck in his enemy's grip. No time to think. Instinctively, he planted his boot on the man's chest, ripped the bayonet free with a jerk—and gasped as a fountain of blood sprayed toward him.
The sergeant shouted over the din:
"Second Company, secure the agricultural production! Do not damage the infrastructure!"
They obeyed and pushed deeper into the station.
What they saw was beyond anything they had imagined.
Behind the residential sectors stretched lush mushroom farms in shelf-high beds. Under argon lamps, cucumbers, potatoes, and carrots ripened. Food in such abundance was a rare sight in the overcrowded Union.
At the center of this botanical garden stood a small building, its facade covered in verdigris. Copper plates adorned it, and above the entrance shone a golden sun—the symbol of the Sol Faith. A chapel of devotion and offering. Some clung, after the end of the world, to the pantheon of the past and the new gospel of its guardian, hoping for salvation from a messiah who had abandoned them.
Soldiers stood before it, ready to defend the house of their god to the last breath.
The soldiers of the People's Army made short work of them.
Perhaps they believed their lord would send angels to save his followers from the heathens—but no one came.
The station had fallen to the Union.
And it had no intention of ever giving it up again.