May 2037 – Kryvyi Rih Basin, European Federation

  The air smelled of wet metal and battery dust.

  Beneath the rusted gantries of the mine’s surface level, two ballet dancers moved with impossible grace—pirouetting on a wooden platform barely elevated above oil-slicked concrete. Their white costumes caught the shifting light like snowflakes against ash, while behind them, the heavy outlines of lithium processing towers loomed, steaming in the May heat. A drone buzzed gently overhead, circling the performance, its camera-eye tracking every delicate motion. A screen mounted on a loader nearby projected the footage live, albeit with a few seconds' delay.

  Miners sat cross-legged or leaned on massive tires, jackets stained with sweat and graphite, boots caked in a hybrid of mud and powdered ore. Some smoked. Some stared. None spoke. The music came from a single speaker lashed to a scaffolding pole with duct tape, slightly warped, giving Swan Lake a distorted, almost synthetic edge.

  That’s where I first met Mykhailo Hrytsenko.

  He stood off to the side, one foot braced against a rusted beam, his broad frame shadowed by a tangle of old Soviet-era piping. His right arm was a sleek black prosthetic with yellow hazard paint still faintly visible near the wrist actuator—military surplus, if I had to guess. It flexed subtly as he flicked ashes from his cigarette.

  “You’re early,” he said without turning.

  “You said noon.”

  “I did. Thought you’d take longer getting past security.”

  I shrugged and stepped closer, the crunch of fine lithium dust underfoot like dry snow. Behind us, an automated hauler rumbled by, its electric motor silent save for the hiss of hydraulics.

  “You ever seen a ballet in a mine before?” he asked, still watching the dancers.

  “Can’t say I have.”

  He smiled. “Get used to it. Morale budget’s big now.”

  He nodded toward the drone.

  “Company wants footage for their recruitment reels. ‘Culture and dignity in the new labor frontier.’ That’s the tagline. The girls are from Kyiv. Probably had no idea they’d be dancing for people with carbide dust under their fingernails.”

  He finally looked at me. His eyes were tired, but sharp. Steel-blue. The kind of look someone earns, not inherits.

  “So,” he said, crushing his cigarette beneath a boot, “you wanted to talk about the past.”

  I nodded. He gestured toward the gantry stairs.

  “Let’s go. You’ll want to hear this somewhere the air doesn’t taste like batteries.”

  ============================================================================================

  The worker village sat just outside the mine’s perimeter, a patchwork of eras laid bare in brick, plaster, and rebar. Rows of crumbling Soviet-style houses leaned against each other like old men, their paint long since bleached away. Between them, gleaming apartment blocks rose in cold symmetry, their glass balconies caged in by solar mesh and laundry lines. The streets were quiet, save for the occasional electric motorbike buzzing past often with two miners riding on top of each other like Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio in Titanic, or the bark of dogs chasing shadows.

  We found seats outside a squat restaurant with peeling green walls and a chalkboard menu. No name, just “?жа” “Food.” The kind of place where the coffee tasted like burnt earth and the cutlery was always a little bent. But it was full. Miners came and went, helmets on the tables or on their knees as they ate, faces grey with dust, laughter low and tired.

  Mykhailo sat back in his plastic chair, legs stretched, a paper tray of fried buckwheat and sausage on the table in front of him. I picked at mine. He, on the other hand, had already started dividing his leftovers for the pack of strays gathering near the curb.

  “Every shift, they wait,” he said, tossing a chunk of sausage toward the biggest mutt. It caught it mid-air without even flincnhing. “They know who shares and who doesn’t. They don’t bark. Just sit. Watch.”

  “Smart dogs,” I said.

  “Smarter than some men I’ve served with.”

  A pause.

  He took a swig from a plastic bottle of kvass and squinted toward the horizon, where the smokestacks and solar fields blurred in the heat.

  “You know,” he said, “when I first got back from the front, I thought I’d leave this country. Go somewhere where people didn’t look at you like a relic. Somewhere warm, where the war hadn’t been televised in real-time. But then I saw this place again. The mine. These people. We're like these dogs. Battered. Half-wild. But still here.”

  He leaned down and scratched behind the ears of a mangy-looking pup with one eye.

  “You see this?” He tapped his prosthetic against the edge of the table with a dull thunk. “Everyone’s got something like it now. Maybe not metal, but something. Guilt. Loss. The weight of it. You stay long enough, you start carrying it for others.”

  He looked at me again, not blinking.

  “Still want to write your book?” he asked, not unkindly. Just curious.

  I nodded. And this time, I meant it more than ever.

  "The lieutenant should’ve known that just parking our vehicles on that road was suicide. The guy had survived the war a few years earlier. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians dead, and yet he hadn’t learned from half their mistakes. You either seize the advantage or you get the hell out of Dodge. You move away from the range of their FPV's, ATGM's, artillery and the spotter's binoculars."

  My tank commander didn’t wait around for orders. As we sat there on that long stretch of road—vehicles burning, tanks ahead and behind firing blindly,he told the driver to turn 45 degrees and reverse. We weren’t waiting on his command, or the UN high command either. Those had vanished like smoke.

  At first, it was just a rumor—Zaporijia had fallen. A few unconfirmed Telegram posts saying the eastern bank of the Dnieper, the side we were supposed to be holding, was under attack by Tripods. Then came shaky footage from the city outskirts, followed by brutal house-to-house fighting. And then nothing. Entire Telegram channels, Twitter accounts, wiped. Total media blackout. Happened right when the ECF was starting to censor online activities. Either down right deleting everything or flooding said channels with irrelevant, false, or NSFW shit.

  The reports I mentioned came late that evening. By morning, we were back in our tanks, heading west to break the siege from the east. A solid group of fighters was still holding the city, along with civilians. They were dug in, but unless we got there by sundown, their names would just be another plaque on a memorial wall.

  The Crabs hadn’t just crossed the Dnieper at that section of the front—they’d fully encircled the city and were pushing east and southeast. A few GAZ TIGR's and UAZ's we sent forward first had stopped responding, the only scouts we had gone with the wind. So there we were, one long column advancing. Kicked so much sand in the air the crabs probably saw us coming from miles away.

  An entire battalion, 31 T-72s and a few T-80Us like mine. A couple of trucks behind carrying supplies and fuel.

  Was on the turret as it happened, Aleksei, my tank commander on the right out of his hatch. We mostly drove on top like that, our upper bodies peeking out of the turret unless we were in direct combat. Even in those situations it wasn't unlikely to have Aleksei peek out to have a better sense of what the fuck is going on. Couldn't rely on those periscopes. I saw the first flash and I ducked and closed my hatch.

  The first platoon up front was wiped out in seconds. They didn’t even have time to react, one moment, the lead T-72 was charging ahead, and the next, it exploded. The turret flew high into the air, and it would’ve landed right on the tank behind it, but that one got destroyed too.

  We were about 10 tanks back, and we weren’t watching them go down. Instead, I focused on looking for thermal signatures, scanning the area. Aleksei, my tank commander, was shouting at me like that would somehow make me find something faster. But I saw nothing—no Crabs, no Tripods, no Beetles, not even any rocket carriers. Just the usual empty heat on the horizon.

  "3 O'clock, 200 meters by that chapel!" Aleksei yelled, his head sticking out, scanning the battlefield the old way, using binoculars like a man from the past.

  I swung the turret to the right, and sure enough, there it was. The rockets from a nearby cart were flying toward us. An entire volley, and in an instant, my thermals were blinded by the sheer intensity of it. Just after that, everything went dark. My thermals shut down, and the shaking from the impact rattled through me. My head slammed against the optics, hard enough to make me see stars.

  If Aleksei hadn't ducked just before and slammed the hatch shut, we would have been done. The overpressure from those rockets would've torn us apart. Seven rockets, maybe two or three of them hit us directly. Had we been facing them head-on or not had the ERA (Explosive Reactive Armor) intercept a few, I wouldn't be here to tell this story.

  I quickly refocused, my vision still blurry from the impact, and I gripped the controls tightly. My mind raced, trying to shake off the shock. "On!" I yelled, steadying my hands. Aleksei was still yelling, but I couldn’t make out his words—just the urgency in his voice.

  "Fire!" he shouted.

  Without hesitation, I squeezed the trigger, sending a shell hurtling toward the cart. Time seemed to slow as it flew through the air. I watched it hit the cart dead-on, and then—boom! A deafening explosion rocked the battlefield. The cart disintegrated in a ball of fire and dust, and the shockwave pushed us back in our seats.

  In that instant, the crabs around the wreckage were engulfed in the blast. The ones closest were torn apart, their shells twisting and crumpling under the force. The fireball expanded, incinerating anything in its path.

  The radio crackled to life with chaos. Voices shouted over each other, urgent, panicked. “This is Bravo! We’re taking fire from the right! Where the hell is the support?” One voice screamed, but it was drowned out by another. “Contact! 3 o'clock, multiple units!”

  I barely had time to process the noise when the autoloader in the turret clicked, and another high-explosive shell was loaded into the breach. The metallic clink echoed through the tank, sharp and cold.. Breech swallowed the shell in.

  The driver’s voice cracked over the intercom, frantic, “Aleksei! What do we do? Should we pull back or push forward?”

  Aleksei’s reply was a sharp command, his voice stern, “Keep moving, don’t stop! We can’t afford to be sitting ducks out here. Get us to cover, now!”

  Easier said than done when your tank reverses at a top speed of 8 km/h. Still, we managed to get over the ditch on the side of the road and moved as far away as we could. It also gave us a better view of what was happening. The tanks in front of us were done for. We were about a kilometer from the outskirts of the town, but the crabs had turned the road leading there into a kill zone. Tanks further behind weren’t faring any better. I saw one get hit by a blaster some 300 meters out in a field. The red-burning blaster round flew through the air for a few seconds before it punched through the side of the tank. The hatches on top of the turret were blown clean off. Instead of dazed crew members stumbling out, we saw flames shoot from the hatch, followed by a massive explosion that consumed the tank. A few lost soldiers, hiding behind it, were caught in the blast as well.

  "Gunner, coax, infantry in that field!"

  "ON!" I interrupted him, already zeroing in on the "foxhole" where a crab had been firing a blaster toward our comrades.

  "Fire!" he shouted, and I opened up with the machine gun. 7.62 may not have been ideal, but it did the job. The thermal sights were fried, thanks to that volley of rockets that had knocked them out along with our laser rangefinder and some other systems. But I saw the crab’s head explode with the second volley.

  "Target stop!" I shouted, just before another impact rattled our turret. The tank shook, but luckily, nothing penetrated.

  "You see where that came from?" I yelled, desperately scanning for the source of the blaster shot.

  “No! Driver, keep reversing, don't show them our ass!” he yelled, yanking the lever to deploy the smoke canisters.

  The grenades shot from their ports, arcing smoothly through the air before bursting at ten meters, releasing thick clouds of smoke.

  The tank lurched as the driver slammed the throttle backward, reversing us quickly. We were no longer near the road, but still close enough to feel exposed, the pressure mounting with every second. Smoke canisters hissed and spewed, filling the air around us with a thick cloud. It wasn’t enough to cover us completely, but it would hopefully confuse the crabs long enough for us to pull back further.

  The engine hummed loudly as the driver fought to push the tank away from the kill zone. The vibrations from the terrain jolted through the hull, reminding us of how vulnerable we were, how every second mattered. My eyes remained glued to the vision blocks, scanning for any signs of movement through the haze.

  "Keep going!" Aleksei shouted to the driver, some kid from Kamianka called Pavlo.

  Our front was concealed by the smoke, but we could still see the occasional burst of fire from the convoy up ahead. A few other tanks, scattered to our right, were also moving towards the field, desperately trying to break free from the ambush. It was chaos—the crabs had us in their sights, and we needed to get the hell out of there.

  Instead of continuing to reverse, two of the T-72s next to us turned, presenting their backs to the enemy. Aleksei grabbed the radio, his voice cutting through the chaos. "Turn the hell around! Face the enemy with your armor!" But it was too late.

  Almost in perfect unison, two shots slammed into their rear armor, barely five seconds apart. The first T-72 erupted in a fireball, the shot likely hitting its ammunition carousel. The explosion was so violent that the turret was blasted off, sending a shockwave through the air. The second tank didn't fare much better. The shot hit cleanly in the engine compartment—no explosion, but that tank was done. No one was crawling out of that one either.

  The silence that followed the blasts was deafening, even with my ear protection on. Tank engine humming behind me, I still heard the eerie void where sounds should have been. There was nothing we could do for them now. We had to keep moving.

  "Shit," Aleksei muttered, his grip tightening on the radio, but it was clear there was no point in calling for help. "Keep moving, Pavlo. We’re not stopping for anyone."

  He stopped mid-sentence, threw open his hatch again, and yelled at me as he grabbed hold of his DHSK mounted on top.

  "Mykhailo! Left, 9 o’clock, there’s a whole squad of them, 200 meters!" he shouted before opening up with the heavy machine gun.

  I spun the turret around, cursing as I lost sight of them for a moment. It was a miracle I caught a glimpse of those crabs hiding in the field. Their muddy carapaces camouflaged them well as they lay down, aiming their sights on us. Saw the red tracer of their blaster shots firing in our direction wildly.

  I fired the coax at one of them, his position perfect. I saw the 7.62mm rounds hit the mud in front of him, sending chunks of earth flying. He was a sitting target, but I wasn’t about to let him get any closer. The driver, Pavlo, did his part—he turned the tank left so we could face them head-on.

  We couldn’t afford hesitation. Every second counted. The smoke we had deployed earlier was already thinning, and the moment it cleared, we’d be exposed. The crabs seemed to hesitate too, cringing as we unleashed our firepower. With a DSHK or a PKM you didn't need to be precise. Even firing over their heads, human foe or crab will cower for cover, they all knew better than be in the receiving end of a bullet that can rip your arm or claw off with just one hit.

  Another volley from Aleksei, the heavy machine gun tearing into the enemy. I saw the first round hit one of them in the head, and the rest of the rounds followed through, puncturing the body. The creature crumpled to the ground in a ball of dust and blood, but there was no time to dwell on the kill. There were more out there, and we weren’t out of danger yet.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Something hit us again. From that same squad, a Crab had fired its blaster—this one heavier than the rest. The round slammed into the turret with a sharp, thunderous crack. Thanks to the angle of the tank, the high-incendiary blast didn’t punch through, but the impact was still brutal. Aleksei let out a blood-curdling scream and dropped inside the turret, clutching his face.

  He was yelling, cursing, crying, hands slick with blood as he rocked on the steel floor. I didn’t have time to check how bad it was. All I knew was that he was hit, and we were still in it.

  I spotted the crab with the bigger weapon. Their weapons weren’t like ours—no assault rifles, no marksman rifle or anti tank weapons. Just blasters, either molded into their bodies or hand carried. From what I’d picked up over time, the only difference was the power behind the shot and the speed it traveled.

  This one had weight behind it.

  I saw it crouched low in the brush, a shimmer of glass-like casing glowing faintly on its back. I swung the coax around and laid into it, spraying bullets into the foliage. One of the rounds must’ve pierced the casing—there was a sudden pop, followed by a blinding flash as the crab was engulfed in its own exploding munition.

  Without thinking, I switched to HE and let go of a round. I fired straight into the bush, blasting what was left of that position into the sky with a burst of dirt, flame, and shattered carapace. Made sure there was nothing left of that squad—they were either destroyed or had bolted, because after I popped my head out of the hatch, I couldn’t spot a single one of them moving as the autoloader slammed a shell into the chamber

  Aleksei was out of commission, and just like that, the tank and its crew were my responsibility. I peeked out of my hatch, scanned around and spotted a village about 200 meters to the south. It looked deserted, partially damaged, but at least it offered cover. I guided Pavlo in that direction, pointing and shouting over the engine noise, then fired off our last volley of smoke grenades to cover our retreat.

  When I slid down into the crew compartment, Aleksei was sitting upright against the turret wall. His face was a mess, cut up and soaked in blood. Whether it was shrapnel from the blaster or fragments from our own reactive armor, I couldn’t say. There was a hole punched clean through the front of his helmet. Only reason he was still breathing was because he’d been wearing that modern Kevlar Ops-Core helmet he swiped from some dead body month's ago. If he’d been stuck with the old Soviet-era dome I had on—basically glorified rugby gear—he wouldn’t have made it.

  "Get a hold of yourself and join me upstairs when you can!" I yelled, grabbing his shoulder. His face twisted from raw pain to something calmer for a second, like just hearing someone take charge gave him a sliver of ground to stand on. Then I climbed back up into the turret.

  "Any station, anyone still alive, move to the village—" I paused, squinting at the map, trying to find a name.

  "Move to the village 300 meters south of that fucking kill zone. Don’t sit on your ass, pop smokes and regroup there!" I shouted into the radio.

  Nothing. Static. No reply. Just the hum of our engine and the distant rattle of gunfire.

  I sat back down and turned the turret to cover our rear, scanning for anything that might follow up on the ambush. Aleksei pulled himself upright without a word, his face still a mess, but he calmly slid his goggles down and took his position up top like he always had. We exchanged a quick nod. That was all we needed.

  A few minutes later, I realized the distant thuds weren’t just more chaos, they were friendly artillery hammering the position the crabs had ambushed us from. Someone had eyes on them and called it in, but I had no clue who.

  I climbed back up and stood beside Aleksei, raising the FN FNC I had attached against my chair. Belgian gift from the last war. I used the ACOG to scan while he stuck to his old-school binoculars. Smoke and debris still choked the air, but through it, I saw them, three tanks and a couple of trucks cutting across the open field toward us. We held our breath. If they were targeted, there was nothing we could do. No cover. No concealment. Just flat open land and the hope that the crabs had either pulled back or been dealt with.

  We watched in silence.

  A whole battalion had rolled down that road. Now, it was just us… and the handful of stragglers crawling back through the smoke, like ghosts.

  A whole battalion had rolled down that road. Now, it was just us and a handful of stragglers crawling back through the smoke, like ghosts.

  Half an hour later, we were still in the same spot, engines idling low. We’d lost radio contact when we first took that hit—no wonder no one had answered. One by one, the ones who hadn’t turned back the way we came started appearing through the haze, stumbling across the field toward the village we’d holed up in. Bloodied. Shaken. Silent.

  Pavlo stayed in his seat, head and shoulders sticking out of the driver’s hatch, eyes wide and unfocused. He hadn’t said much. Just sat there like he was stuck between fight or flight, flinching at every echo in the distance and twitching when the village dogs barked. Muttered once about shooting one if it didn’t shut up. No one called him out on it.

  Up on the turret, Aleksei was leaning back against the open cupola, one leg hanging limp inside the hull. Some girl from the supply company worked on him in silence, her med kit cracked open beside the DShK. I watched her gently peel his goggles off, and the blood just poured out. He didn’t scream this time. Just grit his teeth and stared off at nothing.

  She was slipping on plastic gloves when her gaze snapped past us, towards the convoy route. She froze, pointed with one bloodied glove, then quickly slid off the tank.

  I turned.

  Forty, maybe more. Crabs. Picking their way across the mangled convoy like carrion over a graveyard. Walking on scorched tanks, on shattered bodies. Some stopped to crouch by the fires, soaking in the heat like it was food. Others hunched over corpses and began tearing into them. Ours. Theirs. Didn't matter.

  They hadn’t noticed us. Maybe they didn’t care. Or maybe they were just waiting to get closer.

  Red ones, too. You could tell by the way they twitched. Some of them didn’t even flinch when the fires cracked. They wanted to be near it. Learned over time that we rarely called artillery on our own heads.

  The crabs loved to get as close as possible, they had learned by now that we mostly didn't call artillery on ourselves. Some red crabs even sprinted towards you once mortars landed.

  "Platoon, form up on the north side—use the buildings for cover. Supply, get your people dismounted and watching the rear. We're interrupting their lunch," Aleksei said into the mic, voice steadier than his face looked.

  Aleksei had taken back command after we got the radio working again—Pavlo had climbed up and replaced the bent antenna with a spare. Static turned to voices, voices to orders.

  I heard the rest of the tanks grinding into place, settling into the broken village street. Each one took cover behind whatever was left of low homes, rusted tractors, collapsed sheds. The barking from the dogs started to swell again—one, two, then a whole chorus echoing down the lanes like a damn air raid siren.

  Then they turned. The crabs. All of them. Like a single mind snapping to attention. One after the other, twitching in sync until the entire mass was staring right at us from across the field, their bug-eyed heads locked on.

  Five hundred meters out. Right where the wrecks were.

  As the last tank rattled into place, Aleksei gave the order; “Fire!”

  I was already on it. Switched to HE, let the autoloader do its thing. Sighted in on a charred T-72 hull they’d been crawling over like ants on a carcass. Pulled the trigger.

  The shell hit center mass. The blast ripped through the crowd—black smoke, dirt, and pieces of carapace thrown skyward. Probably five gone in one shot. If it hadn’t been so loud, so messy, I might’ve admired the way that shrapnel sliced through them. Might’ve.

  We kept at it for a few minutes, methodically picking them off. Each shot seemed to send the crabs scattering, ducking into the ditch and huddling together, their movements erratic with fear as they tried to avoid the barrage. The whole scene felt mechanical—calculated—like shooting fish in a barrel.

  I was too focused on taking them out to hear what Aleksei was yelling over the radio. The only sound that cut through the tension was the steady thump of our cannon firing and the crack of crabs being shredded by the blast. But something snapped me out of my trance when I felt Pavlo turn the tank around, his eyes wide as he followed the lead tank with its turret facing west.

  His eyes locked on something ahead, and I couldn’t help but notice the sign in the distance. Zaporijia. It hit me in an instant.

  “Oh, right, Zaporijia. That’s why we’re here,” I thought to myself.

  A few scattered crabs lingered here and there, rogues, what we called them. It’s a fancy word for the ones who were rarely ever part of a proper squad, often without weapons, trying to survive on their own. They were never too far from the main army, but they rarely got involved in the larger fights. Just scavengers, picking up what they could.

  As we passed through the security cordons, some manned by kids barely out of high school, I couldn’t help but notice the contrast. We were heading straight for the heart of the city, but for those young soldiers, I’m sure it must have felt like some twisted joke. Their relief came not in the form of fresh, modern forces, but battered tanks that barely had the armor to survive in the open, let alone in urban combat. It must’ve been a bitter pill to swallow, seeing what was supposed to be their salvation rolling in with dents, scratches, and Aleksei with his bloody face."

  ============================================================================

  The field wasn’t much, patches of grass fightng with dry dirt, the white lines faded and crooked—but the kids didn’t care. They were loud, relentless, darting after the ball like it was the last thing that mattered on Earth. Mykhailo’s boy wore the number 7 jersey, too big for him by a size or two. He moved fast, thin legs covered in dust, hollering something to his teammates in a voice that hadn't quite caught up to his age yet.

  We sat on a pair of plastic chairs someone had dragged over from the same restaurant than earlier. The kind that creaked under your weight if you shifted too much. Mykhailo had his arms crossed, eyes squinting toward the low sun as it dipped toward the edge of the worker blocks. He still had his work clothes on,boots caked with dust, jacket stained from the day’s shift down at the mine. The wind carried the smell of dry earth and hot steel, mixing with the faint scent of fried dough from a nearby food stand where someone was making the most of the crowd.

  “You see that?” he said, nodding toward the field as his son cut past another kid, lining up a shot. “He always does that little fake like he’s going left. Never works.”

  But the shot did. The ball curved low and to the right, slipping past the goalkeeper’s outstretched hands and slapping the back of the net. The kids screamed. A couple of them jumped on Mykhailo’s boy in celebration.

  The sun had nearly touched the buildings now, casting everything in gold. The half-lit chimneys in the distance looked like they belonged to a different world entirely, Soviet ruins dressed with LED lights and Police surveillance drones humming lazily above them. Going street to street, analysing the crowd, the people walking, sitting, drinking. A few workers, off shift, leaned against their bikes or sat on the curb, watching the game without saying much.

  Mykhailo didn’t smile, not really, but I saw the way his shoulders relaxed. A quiet pride. A quiet relief as he waved his hands towards his kid, Aleksei .

  “Kid plays like he hasn’t seen half the shit we have,” he said. Then after a pause: “Hope he never has to.”

  The plan was to break north of the city, link up on the highway with the main allied force, Azeris and Kazakhs and, in the meantime, cut off the Crabs from bringing any more reinforcements across the river. We got one night of rest in the city center before the push. Barely needed headlights; the bombardments pounding the riverbank lit up the sky like constant lightning.

  By the time we reached the outskirts, infantry were moving on either side of us. A few FPV drones buzzed ahead, hunting targets a few klicks north. I’d always ragged on how old our T-80 was, but age didn’t mean she couldn’t keep up. We’d adapted. Aleksei had a tablet mounted on his lap, hooked into a battlefield management system. Most of the units in the area had those. Everyone could notify everyone else, we had platoon, company chats. Sight on all the friendly units, position marking for suspected and enemy positions. The connection? His phone duct-taped to the top of the turret, running off mobile data. Primitive as hell, but it worked. After that last mess on the highway, we weren’t going in blind again.

  We still had four tanks left. The infantry beside us were fresh, somewhat. Mortars in the back, drones overhead. It wasn’t much, but it felt like something. I went through the last system checks as Aleksei ran a hand across his high fade. Funny sight, a guy in his early forties, thick beard, fresh scars across his face, rocking a haircut more suited to a high school kid. He’d told me it was his son’s idea. Said his wife and kids liked it that way. Like he was trying to justify it, as if anyone was going to give him shit.

  Not that they would. Aleksei was built like a concrete wall. Guy stood 1.90, all muscle, barely fit inside the tank. I used to joke we ought to keep an engineering recovery vehicle nearby just in case we had to drag his corpse out.

  Clock hit 6 o'clock and we got the go, moved north across the fields and farm land, infantry riding on top of us. Drone higher overhead scanning for anything with a pulse, damn near blew a family of Foxes hiding in a bush with HE shells. We heard on the radio that the Azeris and Kazakhs had run into heavy contacts but were holding the line, we were about to hit whoever those were in the rear hard. Started worrying when we heard there were CAT 2 tripods in the area, that sent our pulse running. It was bad enough to be hit by their lasers on foot, but in a tank you were doomed to fry alive if hit by that. Tanks bounced around, hit a pothole. Aleksei head hit part of the open hatch and I laughed in what felt like the first time in a while.

  “I wouldn’t be laughing if I lost as much money as you did last night betting on Dynamo Kyiv to beat Bayern,” he said coldly, eyes still on the tablet.

  “They lost? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “Didn’t want to sour the mood and mess with my crew’s morale,” he replied.

  “They were playing in England, right?” I asked, cutting off Mykhailo.

  “Yeah. Guess they didn’t want to kill morale any more than it already was. And those crazy bastards actually held the Champions League there. Barely any spectators, half the players conscripted. But it made for good barracks talk—and betting,” he continued.

  "The earth shook and from my periscope to my left I saw one of the four remaining T72's get hit by a volley of rockets."

  "300 meter's by the destroyed BMP!" someone yelled on the radio as it popped it smoke grenades."

  "Infantry get the hell out!" Aleksei yelled before closing the hatch fully. "Mykhailo, do you have eyes?!" He yelled. I spun my turret, slowly but surely.

  "On!" I yelled back as the crabs prepared the second volley."

  "Fire!" Aleksei yelled and I fired a he shell to it. Hit it too low, let out a volley of shrapnel on it but not enough to destroy it entirely.

  The autoloader kicked in. The carousel spun, and its mechanical arm locked onto another HE shell. We were only running high-explosives at that point. No point carrying more than four APFSDS dart rounds when fighting crabs. Those four were reserved for tripods.

  We had rearmed the night before, and every shell I had struggled to load was worth its weight in gold, even with my arms cramped to hell by now.

  "Again! AGAIN! AGAIN!" Aleksei shouted, desperate.

  I squeezed the trigger and fired, adjusting my aim as I did.

  "V desyatku!" Aleksei yelled as the rocket cart exploded.

  "How the hell did the drones miss them?" I shouted back, eyes scanning for more targets.

  We made it north in one piece. The crabs put up some resistance, mostly rocket carts like that, just enough to slow us down like they were following a plan.

  We reached the top of an old quarry. It was the perfect vantage point. The friendly battalions were some four kilometers to the north, and everything between us and them was extraterrestrial.

  Open season.

  Fired the entire afternoon. Rolled down after every shot, then crawled back up to peek and fire again. Over and over.

  The barrel was glowing by then. Smoke hung in the air, thick and greasy. Visibility was trash. Just shapes moving in the haze. Things that didn’t look human.

  Each shell felt like it counted. Not because it changed anything big. But because it kept us alive.

  Aleksei's voice was wrecked. All that shouting earlier tore it up, but he kept going anyway. Still yelling, even if it came out cracked and shredded.

  "Again! Load it, move, hit them now!" He barked, his voice catching like gravel in a dry throat.

  We had their timing figured out. The crabs would creep up, test us with a few carts, try to force us off the ridge. We answered every time.

  Third time they missed, we didn't.

  There was a lull. Long enough to take a swig from my canteen. Warm water, tasted like metal. I checked the caroussel. Three shells left.

  Soon enough, the guys who had survived the ambush yesterday linked up with what was left of our platoon. Or what used to be one. We were running on fumes. Our ammo as much as ourselves.

  We needed to head back to the city. Rearm. Grab something hot to eat. Seemed simple enough.

  The road between the quarry and the city was supposed to be clear. We’d been driven in and out along it more than once.

  What could go wrong?

  Maybe a crab that had survived it all by hiding in a hole or ditch. One that just happened to be parallel with our tank. A crab neither me or Aleksei saw as we rolled past.

  A crab strong enough to lift its blaster. A shot clean enough to hit the engine.

  And that was all it took.

  The shot hit hard, right into the engine compartment. No warning, just a thundercrack and a jolt that threw us against our restraints. The whole tank bucked. Systems blinked out. The tracks locked. We weren’t going anywhere.

  Smoke poured in fast, thick and oily. Warning lights flared red across the dash. I heard the autoloader jam mid-cycle, metal grinding on metal before it seized up completely.

  "Mobility kill!" I shouted, already unstrapping. Aleksei was coughing hard, trying to kick open the hatch above him.

  The intercom was dead. Mykhailo was pounding the side of his headset, then gave up and climbed. The heat inside the hull was unbearable. Something was burning, maybe fuel. Maybe wiring. Didn’t matter.

  Aleksei finally shoved the hatch open. Sunlight poured in through the smoke like a spotlight. He climbed out first, dragging his rifle. I followed, my arms trembling from the adrenaline and the shell loading earlier. Mykhailo came up last, eyes wide, face streaked with soot.

  We hit the dirt hard, then rolled, staying low. No sign of the crab that hit us. Just the hiss of leaking coolant and the distant sound of gunfire from somewhere down the road.

  The tank was still upright, still whole, but it was dead. Just a metal coffin waiting to catch another round.

  We didn’t wait.

  Aleksei dropped the crab when it came looking for us. I saw him raise his AKS, calm as hell, and fire. The thing was at least seven feet tall. It moved more like a curious kid than some hardened alien soldier, peering down into the ditch beside the tank like it was looking for a toy it dropped.

  We all opened up on it. Part fear, part frustration. One bastard had taken out an entire tank.

  We were about two hundred meters down the road when the tank went up. Might have been the engine fire touching off the fuel, maybe the munitions finally cooked off. Doesn’t matter. It blew sky-high.

  Months in that filthy, cramped, stinking tank. But it was ours.

  Now it was burning. Along with most of my stuff, but I still had my life and my rifle.

  We had a few kilometers to go. But night was closing in, and that wasn’t good. We were starving, you know that type of hunger where your hands shake.

  It’s funny when I think about it now, but I never realized how quiet things could get. Even with the distant explosions, gunfire echoing from somewhere down the road, and jets roaring overhead, there was no constant engine noise in our ears anymore.

  Without that deafening hum, we could hear everything. Every step we took in the dirt, every crackle of brush moving in the wind. The groan of our bones as we moved. The sound of our own breathing.

  It was almost worse than the explosions.

  Pavlo was muttering something behind me, probably to himself, maybe to anyone who’d listen. Aleksei was up front, too focused on keeping us heading in the right direction to say anything. We couldn’t see much, just the faint glow of the sun sinking below the horizon and the distant fires flickering in the smoke-filled sky.

  We kept our heads down, praying we wouldn’t stumble into a crab or some rookie conscript manning a post, half-drunk, shooting at shadows. Mistakes like that? They’d get you killed faster than any enemy. One foot after the other the sounds grew quieter. Artillery calmed down, less and less jets flying overhead. And it was like I was in autopilot. Be it the shock, the tiredness or the hunger. Through that dusty road, outskirts of the city, the checkpoints, teenagers half awake or drinking. We found some warm food inside that church that served as shelter. Aleksei had given up trying to find out where the rest of our guys were. Last we heard, on that quarry a few hours earlier, half the battalion had been destroyed trying to even enter the city. Who would notice one less tank and a missing crew. He had managed to find some cigarettes. Even after eating my hands were still shaking. Damn near burned my fingers smoking that Chinese brand cigarette to its filter. Some officer, no probably mayor. It was obvious, he was wearing some military jacket, too clean, and so were his hands and boot. Probably just put it on to look serious.

  "The siege has been broken! The crabs fled back west of the Dniepr!" And most people started shouting and yelling as they celebrated. The younger ones, the ones who only that week had to pick up a rifle and defend their homes. How could they be so blind. Me, my crew and the other dishevelled veterans inside that candle lit church didn't share their enthusiasm. The fools. The crabs hadn't fled, they rarely fled. We had just killed most of them before securing the river banks again. We knew they'd see soon enough. Soon enough the city would be under attack, encircled or whatever. And they'd realize there was no reason to celebrate every time you got the crabs of the pot. You'd waste your energy popping champagne every time you managed to keep the bastards at bay.

  Only thing you could do was refill your magazines, eat, send a text message without having signal to a loved one, down playing the situation you were in to your mother or girlfriend. And then sleep until you're woken up by that damned artillery falling in the distance or some stray dog trying to eat your leather boots.