“Imperial Kusari forces push back against the CFN! In a stunning move that took Kusari forces by an awful surprise, the combined Kusari, Orlish, Asanaian, and Lorathian forces commenced offensive operations against the stalled CFN forces in Kusari. Advance has been swift, with Orlish and Asanaian armored units reportedly driving ten to thirty kilometers deep within the first day of the attacks. MN forces have reported that CFN resistance has been lighter than expected, possibly due to their forces being recently redeployed to North Hebei.”

  - Geopol Press

  +++

  Northeastern Kusari

  3rd Knights Detachment Unit

  2nd Combined Arms Battalion

  H Company

  ‘Join the Army of the Reclamation Government for the salvation of the nation!’

  Those were the endless posters pasted through the streets of Chataan city, which was thirty-five kilometers west of Rajabad. Captain Henrietta Lurois’ tank rumbled through the road at one of the slums of Chataan, its pace that of a slow grind. The battle throughout the city was still clearly ongoing, gunfire and explosions rattling each district left and right.

  A weak cough came behind Henrietta. She briefly looked down at her tank’s gunner, Corporal Freya Blum, as the younger woman gave off another weak cough. Behind her, the newly promoted Corporal Linze Esser lightly patted the gunner’s back, concerned in her eyes.

  “Do you need an inhaler?” Linze calmly asked, but Freya shook her head.

  “No, I’m fine,” she breathed out. “Just got a bit anxious about all this.”

  The two lightly laughed at each other, attempting to calm themselves down, while Henrietta turned back to her gunner’s sights. She then pulled out her radio and spoke to it.

  “Helix Actual to 1-1, what’s your current status, over.” Henrietta lowered her radio, waiting for the response of the 1st Platoon’s commander. Within seconds, the crackle of radio buzzed on Henrietta’s helmet.

  “We’re doing well. We’re advancing briskly on the road to your left,” the woman replied, her breathing a bit tense. “What about you, Captain?”

  “I’m doing well here too,” Henrietta replied, as their tank continued moving forward through the rubble. Behind them, Lieutenant Hannah Veraldine’s tank advanced closely, following the pace of Henrietta’s tanks. Her XO soon spoke on the comms.

  “This place is so damned tight,” Hannah complained. “It’s like, we can be ambushed in all directions…”

  “Stop being so negative, Lieutenant,” Henrietta replied. “We have drones watching over us anyway. They’ll give us a warning when an enemy is ahead of us.”

  “Sure…”

  As they reached a turn in the road, the dismounted mechanized troops of Helix Company advanced ahead of Henrietta’s tank. She watched as they checked the houses and the corners of the road, before giving Henrietta the signal to move forward. She gave her orders to her driver, Corporal Jeanne Graf to advance.

  Their tank slowly made its turn, as Jeanne tried to move past an abandoned and destroyed SUV stuck in the road. They drove forward, continuing into an intersection with a highway that ran east-to-west of the city. The drones flying high above them spread out, scanning the buildings that dotted the intersection.

  Within seconds, a warning was sent to Henrietta.

  “Driver, cease movement now,” Henrietta ordered, before turning her attention to the rest of her unit. “1st and 2nd Platoon, clear out this highway in both directions. 3rd and 4th Platoon, remain on standby.”

  “Roger!”

  The units of Helix Company rapidly moved through the roads, their tanks spreading out in all directions, before they continued advancing westwards, taking different routes and passages. Behind them, the IFVs of the 3rd and 4th Platoon waited, before driving forward when the area was cleared out.

  Two fighters streaked above the skies, sending powerful shockwaves throughout the city. Within seconds, four bombs were released from their bomb bays, and Henrietta watched as four explosions tore through the high rises of the city’s central district, causing one of the skyscrapers to abruptly collapse.

  Henrietta’s tank followed one of the tanks from 1st Platoon ahead of them, as they advanced westward on the highway. Through it all, they passed through the torn-down establishments right in front of the road. She briefly looked at one of the destroyed local gas stations, dozens of undamaged cars still left unattended on it.

  Briefly, they saw a few children scurrying through the side of the highway, hiding behind one of the destroyed convenience stores. Henrietta almost teared up at the sight of the two malnourished children, a boy, and a girl, staring at them lifelessly as their tank drove forward.

  “3rd Platoon, make sure to check on those civvies briefly if they’re fine,” Henrietta ordered. “Seems like children were left behind here.”

  “Copy that, Helix Actual. We’re leaving one of the squads behind,” came the quick reply.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Damn…this place is just…” Linze silently mumbled on the side. “It’s such a mess.”

  “They’ve bombed the hell out of it,” Freya commented, watching the destroyed buildings and structures they were passing through. “It’s like…they fought here through all streets and—”

  “They carpet bombed this place,” Henrietta said, cutting the discussion between her gunner and loader. “That’s why there’s so many craters around, and why so many houses are burned down. This city was firebombed by Larissan heavy bombers during Kusari’s retreat.”

  “...That’s brutal,” Freya said, as they passed through one of the craters, evidence of the heavy firebombing that this city suffered under. “So many civilians must have died.”

  “Yeah,” Henrietta mumbled, turning her commander’s sight to the side. “I bet there’s still tens of thousands of survivors stuck in here though, waiting to get out.”

  Two more rumbles from a distant airstrike cracked through the city, the thuds fell even under their L?we tank’s armor.

  +++

  “Hostiles ahead! Opening fire!

  The guns from Henrietta’s tanks finally began to sing their war tunes. Ahead of them, hostile formations of soldiers hiding on top of rooftops or in buildings bitterly resisted the advancing Orlish armor. One of them even fired a handheld rocket straight at Henrietta’s tank.

  The force briefly made Henrietta and her crew duck, but they were otherwise unharmed.

  “Gunner! Aim at that building now!” Henrietta ordered, her eyes looking straight at her commander’s sight. “Give it a good tap!”

  “Copy that, Captain!” shouted Freya, as she turned their main gun into the same area where Henrietta’s markings were placed. Within a split-second, she pulled the trigger, sending an HE round straight into the apartment complex. The forces of the explosion quickly caused nearly half of the building to subside, sending bodies tumbling beneath the rubble.

  “Load HE again!” Henrietta ordered as she took control of their tank’s coaxials. At one of the roads, dozens of soldiers from the Kusari puppet regime rushed out of the collapsed apartment, only to be struck by a blistering hail of Henrietta’s machine gun fire.

  The dismounted infantry from the 3rd Platoon quickly joined in, their arcano rifles overwhelming the remaining survivors until they folded, leaving brutalized bodies on the ground.

  One of 3rd Platoon’s M8 IFVs soon passed by Henrietta’s tank, advancing on the street ahead of them, its 20mm autocannon sending round after round straight at the buildings that still had soldiers shooting from its windows.

  “Driver, drive forward,” Henrietta ordered. “Keep up with 3-2. Corporal Blum, I want you to give them cover too, and open fire on those buildings that are firing at us.”

  “Rog!” Freya replied, as their tank surged forward. They rushed through the chaotic street, gunfire from the windows responding as the hostile Kusari soldiers tried to hold them off. Grenades and Molotov cocktails fell from the windows, setting both Henrietta’s tank and the IFV in front of them on fire.

  Unfortunately for their enemies, the damage was largely superficial. The grenades and the other throwables they were sending at the two armored vehicles barely scratched their armor. In response, they instead received powerful HE shots from Henrietta’s 120mm gun, or a barrage of the 20mm autocannon from the 3rd Platoon’s IFVs.

  Below the buildings, Henrietta’s soldiers also began the grizzly work of entering and assaulting the Kusari troops. They threw grenades at the interior of the buildings, before rushing inside with their guns and spells. The radios were filled with buzzes about enemy locations and requests for help, as each minute of the assault went on.

  When they were done, Henrietta’s group had already advanced eight blocks through the city, leaving behind battered Kusari formations. After one last HE shot from Henrietta’s tank straight into a coffee house occupied by the enemy soldiers, and suddenly, white flags finally began appearing.

  “They’re surrendering,” the leader of 1st Platoon reported.

  “Right-o. I’m seeing white flags on my end here too!” the leader of the 2nd Platoon shouted.

  Henrietta checked the rest of the battlefield, noting the soldiers coming out of the badly damaged buildings and establishments, their hands raised above their heads, all while displaying torn white rags. As the gunfire around the district they were assaulting slowly tapered off, Henrietta finally gave the order.

  “All units, cease-fire if they’re surrendering,” she declared over the radio. “Otherwise, keep fighting until the rest of them surrender.”

  +++

  The Kusari POWs in front of Henrietta seemed to be in bad shape. They stood in front of the wall of a local police station, all of them stripped of their equipment and watched by Henrietta’s troopers. The Kusari POWs all stared at the ground, utterly broken and defeated.

  “Is there anyone here that can speak Orlish,” Henrietta asked. None of them raised their heads, their silence almost deafening if not for the fact that the city was still filled with noises of war. “Anyone?”

  Again, there was no answer from them. Henrietta sighed. That was until she noticed someone. He was a ranked officer, a lieutenant specifically.

  “Wait, aren’t you the interpreter we had—” she stopped, as the man raised his head. Henrietta noticed that he was a far cry from the Kusari Imperial soldier her unit worked with back when they were rushed to her during the outbreak of the war. “You’re Lieutenant Bhatta?”

  The Kusari soldier tiredly grinned, his cheekbones notably somewhat visible, possibly from short-term starvation.

  “Long time no see, Captain Lurois,” the soldier said. “Still as beautiful since I last saw you, huh?”

  “Is that really your first comment?” Henrietta replied, annoyed. The Kusari soldier looked down again, laughing to himself.

  “Pardon me for that. You Orlishwomen simply are quite a stunning sight on the battlefield, that someone would have taught we’re being saved by angels. Reality begs to differ though, I suppose,” he sighed. “Yeah, we…all turn coated, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “All of these soldiers—?”

  “We either had to join the Reclamation Government’s Army in exchange for freedom after the war,” he explained. “So we took up arms against you.”

  “...I see then,” she sighed. “Do you have any idea where those…Larissan or Pozneki soldiers are? We haven’t seen them in this city since we arrived here.”

  “They already fled. They left us here to die.”

  Henrietta stepped back a bit, turning her head to the rest of the Kusari soldiers standing in front of them. It horrified her a bit, how badly these people were treated. First, they were left behind under disastrous encirclements, thousands of them falling into capture.

  Then, they must have suffered severe mistreatment while they were pressed into service for their enemy. Now, they have just been massacred badly by their old allies.

  Goddess above…

  “I…I’m sorry,” Henrietta muttered. “This is simply too cruel to fathom.”

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