{V}

Dear mom,

It has been three days, and our Tank Destroyer outfit has destroyed more flowers and pastures than tanks. Three days ago, the Imperials declared war on Gallia. We responded by waging a war of our own on the earth. Everywhere I look, I see farmers stepping over the kilometers-long gashes our treads leave, tilling their trampled soil. I think about the nine months of training we got that normal tankers didn't, and our our sleek, tank-killing machines, now slathered in mud. All I've really learned so far is that every piece of dirt in Gallia feels a little different to sit on after a long day. Today's dirt means we're somewhere in Northen Gallia. Maybe Bruhl (is that where we went for the yummy bread and the mill tour?)

My training says to go out and fight the enemy tanks, but we've been ordered to wait. The farmers brought food to our TDs and erected blankets over the open roofs. There's this fog of cigarettes as they lean against the tank and talk to the captain about how the capital is doing. It's hard to believe there's really a war going on. Maybe when the Imperials are gone, we'll come back and replant their fields. I'd feel terrible about it if we didn't!

Kris lifted her pen and scribbled in the air for a moment. There was a gentle ramp of loam around their TD, leaving only a bit of the turret clear of the ground. A few extra pits dotted the farmland behind them, TD-sized molehills. Her boots swung back and forth through the open roof as Kris gnawed on her next thought like it was a particularly sour grape.

Can I make a confession? My mind understands that hiding in a pit and shooting the enemy in their sides is the most logical way to fight a defensive war. But... somehow, I'm still nervous about this idea of hitting someone in the back like that. You always said beating up a bully didn't count unless it was head-on. you said not to fight bullies at all but we're ignoring that! I guess what I'm trying to say is... I want to win the war, but why do I have to throw gravel in someone's eyes and kick them when they're down to do it?

Bullying always seems personal, but war is supposed to be just the opposite.

Kris fell back onto the dirt and grass, her boots hanging down into the TD. She looked to her half-written letter with a pout. Maybe the censor people would strike everything she said, and even if mom got the letter intact, would it just make her more nervous? She laid a sleeve across her face and groaned. "Ugh... Terra?"

"Yes, Kris?" Terra said, her voice within the turret as clear and sharp as an oiled bayonet.

"Why do we have to shoot them in the back?"

"Because they have more money to waste on thicker armor, Kris," she said. There was a mirthful pause before Terra continued. "Didn't you go to Lanseal to learn just that?"

"Well, until the war happened, yeah..." Kris peered between her fingers at the clouds above, the breeze tugging on her jacket. "But my academy time has nothing to do with it! Didn't they learn better after the last invasion? Do they just hate us?"

"Us? No, just you," Terra said smoothly.

Kris deflated. "Really? I'm being serious here!" She kicked a foot in the direction of Terra's seat, but only struck empty air.

If there is one thing I am grateful for, it's my crew. My other family. Remember Terra? You called her a green-eyed, blond-haired shark. I don't think that's entirely fair, though she does have teeth. She's sharp, and really clever too. But mostly, she looks out for me and makes me feel stupid when I do something stupid.

"Might help if you climb down here, first. Or do you want the Imps to see your pretty red hair from kilometers away?"

Kris felt Terra's smugness through the armor-plate as she knocked on her boot. "Fine," she sighed, wiggling forward and dropping onto the turret floor. She ducked instinctively on the way over to her seat. Kris was taller, a little wider in the shoulders than her friend, and the TD's interior was a crowded place.

Terra was splayed out over the gunner's seat, the cool-eyed blond examining her morning coffee like it were a roadmap to Kris's thoughts. "Do tell, is this for another letter?"

Kris slumped against the bulkhead and blew her disheveled hair out of her eyes. "... have you ever tried being, well, not right about me? What's the big deal, anyway?"

"What's wrong with corporal Kris staying outside, writing letters to mom?" The gunner shrugged. "You get mopey thinking about letters, then you don't do your job... oh, and you pout. The pouting makes me feel bad, we can't have that."

"You're ridiculous, you know that?"

"What can I say," Terra said, ruffling Kris's hair. "I'm bad at writing letters for other people's parents."

Kris sputtered. "What? That's ridiculous!"

"Then don't stick your head out the top. Captain Bix is paid to get shot in the head, not you."

"Y'know, that's really depressing."

"Maybe," the gunner shrugged. "But that's reality. Is it nice with your head in the clouds, instead? I bet it's less depressing up there."

"Yeah! It's real nice not having a cranky gunner needling me about what I'm writing to my parents, I mean I promised so many times I would if war ever happened. You're being a big fat hypocrite anyway," Kris huffed. "Remember when we had to do recon for a month straight? My letters were the only thing that kept us from going bonkers from boredom!"

"Ever try being less boring?" Terra said, wearing one of those slick smiles that made it so very hard for Kris to stay mad at her. "Don't pout like that, you'll get wrinkles," she added, fast enough to betray a hint of concern. After a moment, Terra stiffened in her seat, a gesture that made Kris jump upright. She put on her headset in a hurry and crawled back to her seat. At once her ears were filled with the squawking of voices over the wireless.

"—aptain, Nightshade here. We're seeing some infantry running toward our dugouts."

"Their uniforms?"

"Uhh, blue. Definitely Gallian. Twelve hundred meters... I see dust trails."

"Friendly vehicles?"

"Firefly... I don't think so, not with how those militia boys are running."

"Any Army vehicles should have evacuated already. Keep your eyes up and get your men under armor, Nightshade."

"Roger, Firefly. This stinks..."

She clung to every word. Their voices were low, rapid-fire. It reminded her of listening in to mom and dad's early-morning arguments. Nothing good would come of it.

"Kris?" Terra sprung from her resting spot and dropped her book into a bin beside her. She pressed her brow to the leather pad over the gunsight, her exhalation soft in the cabin.

Kris swept her half-written letter into a spare ammo can and locked the top, skittering across the floor and rapidly turning a handle at her side of the turret. "Yeah, I've got it!" The travel lock came lose with a gentle pop, the turret rocking once as Terra turned her hand-wheels on the opposite side. Kris's feet tiptoed back from the edge as the floor begun to churn. Her eyes darted around the TD's interior, though she knew where every round and box of ammunition was placed in the turret by heart.

Mom, you like to ask if I work too hard. And while I guess it is true this is very physical labor, I've always thought the hardest things in war were making decisions that effect other people. Since I'm just a loader, I don't have to worry so much about directing a battle. I just grab the right kind of shell when the captain tells me to and load it. Terra likes to say that machines are more reasonable than people. They won't bite you unless you ask for it.

"Crew. Make ready to move," the captain said, using his gentlest school-master's voice. Terra and Kris sat up in their seats like their hearts had felt the same skipped beat. It was his unfaltering calm that made Kris wring out her hands, her breath caught in her chest. "Driver, power to main engine. Loader — Armor-Piercing."

Kris was kneeling before the captain had finished speaking, up to her eyeballs in wire latches and storage racks. The whole interior of the TD was laced with waist-high rows of shells, looking like a wine cellar stocked with brass and ragnite. Black noses meant armor piercing, yellow and green meant high explosive, but Kris knew them by how the paint glided under her fingertips.

"AP loaded!" Kris croaked, the breech clanging shut as she snapped away her fist.

"—tanks. Four Imperial medium tanks cresting the hill, column formation. Eight hundred meters."

"Terra," Kris whispered. "Isn't an Imperial platoon..."

"Five tanks, Kris."

"Not four," she sighed. Kris unsnapped the clasps on the other rounds of armor-piercing, stacking them bottom-first at her feet. She placed three of the elongated projectiles onto the floor between her feet, grunting. "I'm going to take a look up top."

"Don't forget your helmet this time," Terra said, already holding the coal-skuttle shaped headgear in her hand. Kris scooped it up, mashed it down over her headset and hoisted herself up to the TD's roof, tenting the blanket splayed on top. Out to their left and right, the other three TDs were buried up to their noses in dirt, the tell-tale wisps of exhaust rising up behind them. Captain Bix passed her the binoculars.

The Imperials are different people than Gallians. They dress their soldiers like mounted knights in plate-mail, their squad leaders wear royal red and gold on their battle uniforms and tanks. I hope they enjoy being tired with that much weight on their backs. Imperial soldiers just seem so arrogant.

They taught us all about tanks at the academy, Gallian and Imperial ones. You put one cannon on a tank so you can make it as big as possible and carry as much ammo as possible. You make the armor simple and sloping so armor-piercing shells won't find a place to dig in. Imperial tanks though, they always have one or two little turrets on the front to carry their mortars and machine guns, even though it makes their armor weaker. Their scout tanks, built in the last war, are as big as a house, and held together by rivets instead of welds.

Their military is a picture of antiquity, but they want to invade a country who pioneered the tank. I know we're better fighters than them, but I'll never understand the extra turrets on their tanks, or the uniforms they polish until they shine in the sun.

"Imperial Mediums, all four of them," Kris said breathlessly. Her eyes never left the brown shapes climbing the gentle slope, their dust plumes billowing out into one growing cloud, the clatter of their tracks carrying across the field. She could see the shining metal of the tank commander's helmet in the lead vehicle. It was meaner, wider than the usual Imperial tanks, with pumpkin-shaped turret and sides bristling with extra armor plates, supporting a stubby field gun.

"The new ones?" asked Captain Bix. "Are you certain?"

"Yes sir. Two sub-turrets on the nose, squat, big ugly rounded turret with a bunch of armor and a big gun."

"I'll have to trust your sharp eyes, corporal," he said.

Terra's voice emanated from below as the turret started to churn over. "Ugh. Imp Mediums. I need him within five-hundred meters and a flat shot to crack his front plate."

Kris clung to the rim of the turret, shrinking down with the optics in her hands. "Um, won't they see us then?" As she scanned downward, the shapes of their own retreating militia forces loomed, blue-uniformed bodies tumbling past their positions.

Captain Bix collected his radio handset and keyed the switch, still jutting above the roofline like a lord in his castle. "Platoon! On my command, engage the lead tank with armor-piercing shells. The range is six-hundred meters. Keep your engines warm, and be ready to move to secondary positions. Have the militia continue their withdrawal."

"Firefly, this is Nightshade, we have you loud and clear."

"Hemlock is ready to kill."

"Firefly, Wisteria. Loaded and sighted in. We're ready when you are."

As Kris scanned the horizon, there was a bump against her leg. "Kris, spot my round for me," Terra whispered.

"Sure thing!" she trilled. Given the shapes lumbering down the road, Kris thought she should have felt crushing fear. Kris couldn't describe the feeling as anything other than feeling... breathless. Something between trepidation and excitement. As she lowered the graduations of the binoculars onto the shape of a tank, she felt her feelings knit into a heavy weight in her chest. How would she write home about this? Mother, I shot an Imperial by surprise and killed his friends? "Range, six-fifty."

"Platoon... steady... fire!"

"Hang onto your butt, this is going to be loud," Terra said. Kris squeezed her eyes shut so the initial flash wouldn't blind her, but she felt the heat against her cheeks, the feeling whole field was being torn up and slammed into her face. As she rattled against the turret edge and held to the field-glasses, Kris barely caught the blue-white tracer arching home into the front of the first Imperial tank. She saw the commander fumbling with the hatch as the first round struck one of the small turrets on the nose, splitting it down the middle. The other three rounds struck at nearly the same time, one glancing off with a bone-rattling clang while the other two burrowed and hid the tank behind a curtain of orange sparks.

Just tanks. Not people, Kris told herself. "You hit him! Left turret clean through, he's stalled out." She dropped down into the turret, fast enough the casing was still airborne as she ducked down for the first round. Kris had made the motion thousands of times before in training. With her ears throbbing, breath weightless in her chest, it was the first time she'd forgotten a shell weighed nine kilograms. It flew into the breech before the gun had fully recoiled. "Loaded!"

"Wisteria, Hemlock, retreat to the second position. Firefly and Nightshade will cover," Bix commanded. "Gunner — AP — 1 o'clock — 500 Meters — Ranging Fire."

"I've got him."

Kris snatched up the next round as the entire TD bucked, the thunderclap of the main gun muted inside their steel box. The casing leapt back on a column of flame and smoke, banging off the turret rear before dropping down by Kris's boots. She felt the heat through the leather as she lunged forward, carrying a lethal payload in her arms. The breech clanged shut almost in time with her fist sliding off the base of the round. "Loaded!"

"Firefly, Hemlock. We've fallen back to the second line, we have you covered."

"Driver, back us up."

Her eyes watered from the smoke. Kris clawed for the turret rim, pulled her eyes above the edge as the engine rasped. Their TD went lurching backwards, plowing out of their hiding spot and through the field. In front of them, two brown Imperial tanks had turned into pillars of blue flame, the gleaming shapes of Imperial crew fleeing into the woods. The surviving two were charging forward, their tanks a lightshow of spraying machine guns and belching cannons. Kris twitched and ducked when the near misses snapped overhead. "Yeah, that was dumb... they're driving right at us."

"Makes it easier to kill them," Terra said. "And what did I tell you about sticking your head up?"

"Why are they charging across a field at us? Shouldn't they look for cover?" Kris brought the binoculars back to her eyes. She'd never been in a tank fight before, and she didn't have a veteran's intuition like Terra or Captain Bix, but something in her screamed that the battle unfolding was wrong in some way. The TD's ride threatened to toss her off the side, but Kris kept a paranoid eye on the trees.

Mom, how did you make it through your own war? Did you have someone there to tell you what to do? If war is impersonal, how do people learn to cope? Do they hang on and hope for the best? I've realized I have it so much easier than other people that have to go leap into trenches on their lonesome. I'm meant to work as a team, and I'll always have someone wiser to look out for me. If I had to fight a war, I can't think of another way I would prefer it.

"Driver — halt in the pit. Gunner - AP - 12 o'clock - 800 Meters."

A glint. As they came to a halt in the second dugout, Kris sawa flicker of color off to their right, exposed to the kiss of the sun for just a moment. Her veins were filled with ice as she tried to get a second look. She cupped her headset and found her breaths short and raspy. "Captain? Captain, ...I think I see something to our right, 4 o'clock, about eight hundred meters. In the trees..." Her tongue was sandpaper, and her reserve of courage for the day had been spent. Kris dropped back to the turret floor.

The turret begun to spin as Terra worked the traverse handles in a blur, her brow furrowed. Kris blinked the smoke of the gun out of her eyes and dug a hand into her ammo box, brushing past her letters in search of a particular glass jar. When things had been rough in school, mom seemed to always have an endless supply of sweets and advice on hand. "Hurry up and relax," was a favorite saying of hers.

Kris was definitely in a hurry. She smiled to herself at the thought, tossing a cherry-flavored drop into her mouth. Terra smirked, despite the banging and the clatter of machine-gun fire against their hull. The chatter in their ears spiked.

"Firefly— to your right, right! Enemy tank, three-hundred!"

"Gunner!"

The TD rocked. Kris was still closing the metal can at her feet when she felt the air blow past her back, the heat blossoming against her skin. Her shoulder slammed into the bulkhead before the interior became a shower of white-hot sparks. They slammed into the bulkheads like bullets and splattered against her skin.

"Oh, is that where number five was hiding? Kris," Terra said, calm as ever. "They hit us. Give me another round."

"What?" Kris groped for words to say. Her head was spinning, her eyes stung from the smoke. She saw it in her head, the red shape in the woods. The frustration rolled molten down her face, splattering against the shell she had dropped. Kris tore it up into her arms and rammed it into the breech, her arm ready to come out of its socket. "Damn!"

"Misfire. Kris, help me kill this stinking Imp," Terra sighed. There was sunlight streaming in through her pockmarked side of the turret, a fist-sized hole by her leg where bits of metal had carved out rivers of her blood. Terra's boot slid against the floor-mounted trigger with a squelch as she clung white-knuckled to the controls. For all of it, Terra's only outward sign of strain was a wrinkled nose. "And quit staring, will you?"

"I'm sorry," Kris whispered. She hooked her arms around Terra's waist and tugged. Her footing skidded on the slick and the two went sprawling onto the floor. Her shoulder banged into the hull, her skull throbbed. The Imperial fuck who hit them.
Kris focused on that singular thought as she crawled up onto the gore-soaked seat. She blinked the anger out of her eyes and peered hungrily through the gunsight.

"I have him," Kris whispered. It was red, angular. The hull was pyramidal, with an ugly, offset miniature gun mount, and a pentagonal turret with a long-barreled field gun. It was almost none of the things she had trained to fight, but some part of the icy grip on her heart told Kris it was very much deadly.. Kris tracked it, twisting on the traverse wheel at her side. The red machine skewed to a halt, the commander's slate black and gold armor catching the light. Their barrels lined up, and the Imperial commander seemed to bore right through Firefly's armor with a gaze. Kris's hands shook as a scowl bled across her face.

"We've lost Nightshade— Crew, abandon the TD at once!"

War is impersonal. I keep telling myself that, and things seem a little bit easier to swallow than they would be. Still, I can't help but wonder what the Imps think of us. Maybe war is just business for them. So we're another odd patch of color on a map, a few blue uniforms with some farms, some dirt. My professors say war is just the extension of foreign policy.

War has no color or timbre, it comes and leaves on nobody's schedule. After it's all done, not even the dirt remembers what really happened.

So why hold a grudge? There's more to this war than just life and death, I'm sure of it.

Kris blinked. There was a flash between them. The heat smothered her, but nothing felt as red-hot as the anger in her chest, the primal growl of frustration in her.

"I'll kill you. As long as I'm alive, I'll tear you to fucking pieces!"

Her voice was lost to the tidal wave of burning propellant and the groaning of metal. The Imperial commander seemed to stare right at Kris as tongues of blue fire engulfed the hull.

{V}

A/N: Still experimenting with various formatting to differentiate radio chatter and correspondence. I really wanted TL To have a strong first step focused on characters, as the initial pass was far too dense for my liking. It might read very different, but the same spirit behind TL is there as always. Let me know what you think!

2-3-16: Revised the intro.

5-20-16: The entire fiction's been rewritten up to Ch 5 (Saving Grace.)

1-29-17: Finally revamped the prologue entirely and removed the "Tank Destroyer" as a separate chapter entirely. It's a completely different battle now.