Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Ms. Wallcroft?” I snap from my daze, rise, and prepare for my punishment. I know what will happen to me, and I deserve it. I enter the office I presume the voice came from, and stand at attention before the desk of an inspector, who faces away from me in her black spinning chair. 

“Lieutenant Wallcroft reporting as ordered, inspector!” I belt out, as I’d drilled to do hundreds of times over. The inspector wheeled around to face me, some kind of big cat it seems, and stared at me briefly before standing.

“Ah, Lieu~te~nant! I’ve read up on your file,” she cooed, “I assume you know why you’re here?” It was somewhat disarming, her voice I mean. She spoke with that sing-song tone some newer inspectors liked to put on, and she seemed like she might even be younger than me. Definitely wasn’t shorter, however. As she stood up and stepped closer, this became abundantly evident.

“That is correct, Inspector Harleen.” She gave me a wide grin, the kind you might expect from an animal given its first meal of the day. Her tail flicked back and forth feverishly.

At least one of us is excited right now.

“Well then, darling, let’s go over your options!’ she excitedly yipped before opening a small manila folder. She laid a few papers on the desk before rubbing her paws together. “So, let us see!~” She lazily read an additional document and muttered a couple of words I couldn’t make out. “Ah, yes, death by firing squad!”

What?!

I tensed, was what happened that bad? Is… is this how I go out? No, this can’t be, right? They're gonna kill me? I feel a bout of nausea set in, my legs shake, and I swallow the lump in my throat.

I never even got to marry…

Suddenly, a snicker catches my attention, the grin on Inspector Harleen’s orange muzzle grows somehow even wider as she contains her laughter “Oh my~, did you… tch! Did you actually think we’d kill an officer with as clean a record as yours over some statistics?” she then failed to contain herself, and let out a cascade of pent up laughter.

The inspectorate truly is the most well-conducted organization in Bismarck.

After what felt like half an hour of her cackling, she finally made an attempt to recompose herself “Oh my, oh… you should’ve- you- the look on your face Lieutenant! I’ve never seen a wolf lose her shit before, it's priceless!” Despite her cackling, a part of the previous statement said stuck out to me.

“Statistics, Inspector?” The cat reeled herself in and took a quick breath to steady herself.

“Well, yeah. Casualties happen in war, you got the job done.” I felt like my blood was boiling.

“With all due respect, Inspector, my girls are K.I.A.” Harleen slapped her paws together and pointed at me awkwardly for a moment before jabbing a claw into my chest. I recoiled back under the force of her prodding but returned to my previous posture.

“Correct! They are dead! And if the campaign had failed, so too would you be. If you’d come home empty-handed, that firing squad would’ve been set up weeks ago, Wallcroft. You’re luckier than you know~” The cat's grin faded, and she gave what I’d almost call a nod of assurance. 

Whether it was a nod of assurance meant for my luck, or the statistical prospect of my demise I couldn’t quite parse, yet I decided to put some trust in her. You should trust your officials, right?

“Lucky, Ma’am?” she lapped at her chops while giving the file a quick glance through a pair of rather gaudy glasses that slid, threatening to jump off the bridge of her muzzle.

“Well, normally the army would bust you down to say, a sergeant or something. Lucky for you, I’m not army.” I did find it rather curious that my court-martial was being handled by an inspector. The army doesn’t particularly take kindly to the inspectorate busting into our affairs, every branch hates it. I’d once heard a story of an inspector being thrown overboard when they boarded a navy vessel, only to try whisking the ship mascot away for assignment. Oh, the poor humie, too. I heard he was traumatized. “So instead,” she continued, snapping her clawed fingers to regain my attention, “you are being reassigned.”

“Reassigned, inspector?”

“Correct! We need a lieutenant for the… 15th Sturmov company!”

What the fuck is a Sturmov?!

“Sturmov, ma’am?” the inspector snapped shut her folder and reassigned, for herself, that shit-eating grin I rapidly became unfortunately accustomed to.

“It was the idea of one Vanessa Sturmova. You see, we get a lot of humie honeys who keep committing these anti-state actions. Theft, protest, assignment evasion, assignment fraud. Y’know, the stuff that dumb boys do when they don’t know what’s good for them.” Harleen, as she gave her explanation, dusted off her grey wool uniform, and began pacing back and forth. “Well, re-educating some of these men is… futile~. So instead, we cut them a deal. They enlist in a Sturmov company, fight in the name of the state, and their crimes will be forgiven.” This simply couldn’t be real. Most of the guys I hear about would sooner immolate themselves in public before serving the state.

“And they just… accept these terms, inspector?” Harleen chuckled and shook her head.

“Oh no, dear pup, they don’t. We had to sweeten the deal for them. They sign on for a big bonus.”

“That being?” I said a little too casually. In response, Harleen hissed in agitation and almost pounced around the desk separating us.

“You will address me with respect, or I will slit your throat and piss down it!” She snapped, managing to cross the room and tower over me in an instant. Against better discipline, I shrank a little. Seemingly satisfied with my reaction, the tiger relaxed herself and leaned back against her desk. “If a man serves honorably, meets a combat hour requirement, and survives a campaign, we’ve promised him assignment immunity. The one thing we do for these idiots, giving them wives who will satisfy whatever sick desires they might have, and they would rather kill their own ill-minded ilk just to be removed from the pools. Puzzling, isn’t it?” 

“So I'm being placed in command of a penal platoon?” Harleen scoffed and planted a paw to her head.

“An anti-state penal platoon! One wrong move, one questionable command action, and these guys may just kill you. We only put girls who’ve been naughty in Sturmov, you know?~.” she began to cackle once more, any serious demeanor being sent straight out the door, “Be advised, Lieutenant, the men in this platoon are predisposed to despise you.~ We can’t afford to kill you, but we can’t trust you with more soldiers either. Better to just give you the chairwoman’s trash to get killed off rather than real soldiers.”

I was frankly at a loss for words. This didn’t seem out of the ordinary for state thought processes in any way. Even I had to admit that this didn’t seem like the dumbest concept on the planet. Say these anti-state humans were assigned, and fathered children, human children! Surely their filthy human rhetoric would rub off and ruin their own progeny. I suppose, if they at least have training, leading them is a superior alternative to labor camp or a firing line. However, one must be sure.

“And if I refuse command?” Harleen snickered.

“Well, I suppose you’d eat shit and die!”

Ah, figures. It was a rather unprofessional statement from the inspectorate, but I suppose it leaves little room for incorrect interpretation.

“You are dismissed, Lieutenant. Have fun~, I hear the 15th is gonna go help take Mackinac. Should be a lot of dead traitors." With a quick salute, I about-face and remove myself from the inspector’s office.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sitting in a supply truck, I ride through the dust-ridden camp of the 15th company. It was a rather small camp stationed in what we believe used to be called Detroit. The tents are of poor quality, and some are in complete disarray, there is no medical station, nor a mess hall, nor anything resembling a laundry station. Although the wool of our uniforms often can be cleaned of debris with little more than a wall and some kinetic force, every military installment I’d seen in my three-year service career had a laundry station.

Back in the Florida campaign, I remember we’d use these old women from the towns we liberated for clothes laundering. Of course, we never paid them, state commerce was meaningless to them, and old-world human commerce was considered contraband in the army, but those old gals were awfully sweet. I wonder what happened to them after the campaign. With men, we just give them a few weeks to get educated and install them into the assignment pools, but I’d never met human women outside of the wars, so I really don’t know…

Better not to think of it, I suppose. 

The driver of the truck was a badger who, in the hours of travel, I’d never got one full meter from. Frankly, she reeked, and judging by the seemingly endless cigarette she’d been smoking the entire trip, I had a clue as to why. There were other passengers sitting in the supply bed of the truck, one was a young vixen, the other some kind of doe. Both were POGs, and neither carried a weapon greater than a sidearm. Judging by the way they wore the holsters, I could tell those pistols had never been drawn. 

In the month since I’d received notice of my reassignment, documents had trickled into my old office to give me a better idea of how the Sturmovs worked. They were never deployed alone, only as support to anthro troops, It was against regulation for multiple Sturmov companies to deploy to neighboring sectors. I suppose it might be a nightmare if they combined into a battalion-sized element and eclipsed the immediate anthro presence. This explained why the companies were numbered, rather than assigned a phonetic alphabet designator. I’d been placed into the 15th company's second platoon and had to find another wolf named Captain Willow. All of the officers were anthros, a surprising majority wolves, but a few human NCOs existed. In fact, looking over my platoon roster for the eighth time today, I became again aware that I was the only anthro in the second platoon

The uniform was odd too. Rather than the greenish-grey wools the anthros among us wore, humans wore this odd bluish-grey copy uniform. We were issued the lighter cotton summer uniform, which was a little closer to an olive or reed green color, but the Sturmovs only received the trousers, which cinched at the ankle with a tab-and-button closure over their boots. This meant that every human I’d passed in this truck since reaching camp wore a blue and green parachute-panted clown monstrosity of a uniform which, in the field, would be accented by the green belt rigs used to hump our gear. Not an ounce of thought was put into camouflage efficacy; frankly, I can’t tell if it was on purpose or not.

The drive had been rather tense, the badger wasn’t much a talker. The two in the back conversed amongst themselves a little, the fox really tried her best, much to the verbalized chagrin of her doe counterpart. The truck eventually came to a stop, and immediately was swarmed by a mix of anthro supply personnel, and uniformed humans, who I assumed to be the infantry judging by their rifles and carbines. Whether they volunteered or were voluntold, was beyond me. I had more important things to figure out. I tapped the shoulder of one human, who was lugging two boxes of crackers under his arms. He turned to look at me, his dark complexion and black eyes meeting mine with an oddly strong form of eye contact.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he coldly stated, his voice a rumble. His eye contact and firm voice told me he was a bit more confident than a conscript, even some anthro volunteers I’d served with paled in comparison to the nerve of this man.

“I’m looking for Captain Willow, any idea where she is?” he simply nodded and gestured for me to follow with a tilt of his head. Wordlessly, I followed behind him on the dirt road. Surrounding the camp were blown-out buildings, relics of a long-gone industrialized civilization. Humans always had such interesting architecture, and the state seemingly agreed. These buildings, were they in less disrepair, wouldn’t look too out of place back home in Bismarck. Judging by how they looked to me, the destruction of this city must’ve been long ago, possibly not even a state action. Yet as bad as the rubble looked, this road felt worse. It was very hard dirt, almost like stone, and the tents and facilities of this urban camp somehow looked worse than the surrounding destruction.

 I guess humans agreed, some Sturmovs sat in blown-out living complexes, their legs hanging over collapsed rooftops and windows as if they were attempting to distance themselves from associating with the camp. They eyed me carefully from their perches, seemingly distracted from assorted activities of leisure. One group sat next to a somehow still burning bistro and played some form of poker, others sat on some rubble to my right, passing around canned goods which I recognized were not state-issued, and illicit reading material depicting… anthro women, oddly enough.

“Yo! Johnny Reb!” I heard one shout to another, who moseyed over and kneeled with his rifle draped across his legs.

“Whatchu got, Vince?” they sounded foreign, an odd local accent, perhaps?

“Check out this one, you ever think you’d find knockers this big on your fantasy human girls? I don’t think so!” 

fucking hell, is this their idea of attempting re-education? 

Another human made his way over too, he was noticeably taller, and his face was covered in freckles and these cute little round glasses.

“What are you guys looking at?” he asked, slinging his carbine over his shoulder.

“Why, Becket, I’m showing Johnny Reb the fruits of the Anthrostate. Wanna peep, buddy?” Becket simply gestured for the magazine lazily, and when passed it, pulled out an additional pair of glasses and comically attempted to put them on over his existing pair.

“Jesus fuck! She could kill a motherfucker with those things! See Reb, that’s the thing about assignment, man. Either you could get put with some crazy rat bitch or hyena or some shit, or, if you study real hard and be a good boy, you could get put into the delightful embrace of a buxom beauty like miss…“ he quickly looked closer at the magazine, “Fontaine! Y’know, I guess I got a question for our resident Vixen expert.” Becket quickly turned away from his magazine to another man as I began to approach. “ You think she gushes like a Fontaine, oh sir Baudelaire?” the man in question, who’d been cleaning a machine gun, decided to pipe up.

“That isn’t my last name. What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

At least one of them noticed they were being watched. All of them turned to me and Becket quickly tossed the magazine over a shoulder. A shorter man, who I assumed was Vince, snatched it out of the air and stowed it in a clothing bag with similar urgency.

“Those reading materials state-regulated?” They remained in their previous positions. It's time to assert rank, I suppose.

The one attempting to clean the machine gun, which I recognized as a state-made copy of an old M249, answered while returning his attention to the feed tray.

“No human women being depicted, so yes ma-”

“Stand at attention when I ask questions of regulation, boy!” Three of them scrambled to their feet instantly, and the last, who was apparently misidentified as Baudelaire, stood and presented himself with a bit more grace. His uniform was a shade of green that matched the trousers, and the four pockets were pleated with scalloped flaps. It looked to be a cotton summer jacket with customized tailoring. His shoulder straps, an implement on every state uniform to display branch of service, were of matching material and piped in pink. Sturmov shoulders were piped in black. This man was disrespecting the chairwoman by completely disregarding her divine uniform regulation. I could almost hear her sob out in agony.

Oh, sir, you look like a bum.

Forcing down my disgust, I decided some introductions were in order.

“Identify yourself, human!” he stood a bit straighter and seemed to glance over my shoulder.

“Private Bruno Charlagne, Lieutenant.” His voice, despite the yelling, was smooth, almost gentle, yet the cadence of his speech had some bite. Perhaps this one fancies himself as a gentleman. Nevertheless, he was acting outside of the regulation.

“What the hell are you wearing?!” He simply blinked twice, his brown eyes shaping into a form of confusion. His hair was long, quite long, and lightly under the wind, its chestnut locks fluttered. Humans were supposed to keep their hair short from what my files had told me. Additionally, he had grown a short beard. Full beards, unlike mustaches, were not in regulation either. Not one part of this man was in proper uni-

“My uniform, Lieutenant.” it wasn’t a confused question. This ‘Bruno’ was sure of his statement. Frankly, I disagreed.

“That is incorrect, private. Additionally, your hair and face are a mockery of the grooming standard outlined by the department of the army itself. I should NJP your ass!” Usually, a Sergeant Major or some other NCO would conduct this kind of discipline, but by the fact that his hair had grown this long, it was evident that his NCOs were undisciplined as well. Besides, I had the experience.

“Easy there, Lieutenant!” A feminine voice called from behind me. Turning to the source, I was met with a rather erm… busty timber wolf sitting at a table reading her own magazine whose uniform blouse was questionably in regulation. I recognized her as a captain, likely Willow, but…

Is a jacket waist that thin and a chest tailored to be that pronounced allowed?

“Go on Bruno, baby, tell her!” I turned back to the man in question, who no longer wore any confusion, and even seemed relaxed.

“Be advised Lieutenant, every part of me, at this time, is in accordance with the regulations of the uniformed services, as well as the human grooming standard outlined in the July 15th revision, under section 53k.”

Excuse me?

I shot him a confused look, and he seemingly noticed. “That would be the alternate standards of personnel representing an Aristocratic house, Lieutenant. I represent the House Charlagne, and therefore wear a uniform sent to me from the head of house.”

“House Charlagne?” He glanced over to the wolf behind me. 

“Captain Willow?” He called out.

“At ease. Clean that gun, darling.” She responded. At least my assumption was correct, this was Willow. Bruno returned to his previous position and resumed his work, yet the others stood awkwardly at attention. Willow walked over to the three of them casually and fished through the clothing bag before presenting the magazine. “Which page were you on?” The three relaxed, and although I planned to reprimand them for leaving attention, their conversation carried on.

“Page 54, Captain,” replied Vince, adjusting his blue watch cap.

“Well, let’s see, then.” Willow licked a padded finger and flipped through the pages until… her face lit up. “Ah, Claudia Fontaine! Y’know, Vince, I actually had the pleasure of enjoying a night of passion with her after an address given by the chairwoman a few years ago.”

…What? 

“Ain’t no fucking way!” Becket's hazel eyes also lit up, and he stepped over to peer over her shoulder. She took a knee so their height difference wouldn’t keep the magazine away. The difference in height between the average anthro and human was quite large, so the accommodations must have been appreciated. Bruno’s interest also seemed to be piqued, as he looked away from his work, and eyed his captain under the visor of his field cap, which matched the rest of his uniform in color. After a brief moment of just staring, he chuckled a bit, which only caused Willow to grin.

“Am I to understand that my company commander, a complete degenerate might I add, not only betrayed her state by being a lesbian but also slept with a porn star during a federal event?” Willow’s grin grew further.

“That I did! She was a sweet girl, too. Had this cute voice and she’s actually around your height, Bruno. I bet she’d love to spend a night with big sir Charla-”

“Miss Fontaine can take a number, I’m taken by a much less… salacious vixen. Might I recommend Vince Vargas instead?” Bruno remarked sarcastically. Vince glanced up from the mag and beamed a big smile.

“Fuck yeah! See, this is how they should sell assignment to people; big-tittied vixens with fat asses!”

Wait, if he’s married, why is he here? And I thought these guys were supposed to be anti-assignment. Is that not why they’re here?

“I was under the impression that you didn’t support assignment.”

Vince looked over at me, and his smile died instantly.

“You heard right, fuck that shit! If I’m gonna bag a wife, I’m going at it the old-fashioned way. I ain’t letting some bitch-ass inspector tell me who to love and have a collar put on me. I’m big man Vargas, and I demand me some respect!” His bravado was unmatched, and those surrounding him shared a laugh.

“Don’t get it confused, Lieutenant,” Bruno started with some bravado of his own, “Every man in this company is a certified state-hater, indeed. This does not mean we hate you… yet. We are here because we don’t want to get sold off as marriage stock. You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t at least find the right anthro women attractive… barring Johnny Reb, possibly.” Johnny smirked at his mention, “I’m pretty sure a few guys here might try for some with whatever unit we end up supporting, the nasty dogs.” Willow let out a bark, and everyone shared another laugh.

“What about you, aren’t you already married?” I asked, somewhat curious.

“I am promised to a woman. Maybe if we live long enough… let’s say three weeks, I’ll tell you.”

“So… you were assigned?”

Bruno seemed offended, he scoffed and gave me his full attention. I couldn’t see his eyes under the visor, but I knew somehow he stared straight through me.

“I was… chosen .” the group settled down, and smiled gently as though thinking about what he said.

A pause fell upon the group for a moment before the Captain let out a faint whistle. “Alright, Lieutenant Wallcroft, let’s get you squared away. Then I can answer any questions you might have.” Thank god, honestly.

“I’d love nothing more, Captain.”

Chapter Text

The new Lieutenant and I stepped into the company headquarters situated delightfully in an old deli. Much like myself, she was a wolf with a few years on her back, a cutie too~. She was a little smaller than me but bigger than my boys, and by the way she wore her uniform, you could just tell she was an enlisted woman at some point. The way her collar was creased told me she leaves it open, no O.C.S. boot-fucked officer wears an open collar, so I assumed she was at least competent. We stepped behind an old counter and sat at a little table, passing by one of my favorite boys on the way.

“Hi, Hanky~!” I gave him a big hug, much to the chagrin of Wallcroft.

“Captain, ma’am?” I set him down quickly, and he gasped for air.

“Lieutenant Wallcroft, this is Specialist Hank Benelli, he’ll be your Platoon medic.” He gave a salute, which after seemingly mulling something over the sweet girl returned. “Oh, Hanky? Did you get the morphine I requested?” I asked.  He quickly nodded.

“Yes Captain, I worried it wouldn’t arrive before we step off.” I chuckled, he always was a little worried. I turned to my lower officer and smiled.

“I keep Hank around the office sometimes, he’s a little dear, ain’t he?” She cocked her head to the side slightly and raised a brow, her muzzle spelling confusion.

“I uhh… I thought Charlagne said you were lesbian?” I couldn’t help but laugh, she was just adorable!

“Well, Lieutenant, I am! Why did you think I was sent here?” she blinked and briefly shook her head.

“Well, no I mean you’re just… really affectionate towards this guy.”  she remarked.

 I suppose she had a point.

“Sometimes I just pull my guys in for hugs when they do a good job!” I almost squealed. I was starting to sound a little too giddy, so I reeled myself in a bit.

 Deep breaths, Edith, deep breaths.

“And they are… okay with that?” the wolf asked to which I looked at her briefly as though she were stupid.

I scoffed, “Of course they are! I mean, besides Bruno, nobody seems to mind. Hell, some of them really enjoy themselves. Vince and Becket enjoy it the most, those pervs~” Wallcroft’s muzzle fell agape in minute disgust. Honestly, I can’t blame her. “I’m not like, into them sexually though. We just bro it out.”

“Bro it out, Captain?”

“Yeah! Just because I got mad jugs doesn’t mean I can’t be a bro! Why do you even ask?” She thought for a moment, her tail swaying nervously. before trying to say something, but stopped. I could feel my tail join hers.

I whispered, “Lieutenant, you wouldn’t happen to be…” She looked at me, utterly confused. “Do uhh… do you like girls too?” I could feel myself heat up a bit.

I need to take the blockers again.

“No captain, I uhh… never really found women my cup of tea.” she flatly stated. Alas, what a shame. She looked nice in her uniform.

“Ah, forgive me. I get a bit excited at the prospect. So um…” Gotta change the subject now, “So we step off in three days to go to Cadillac. You need to get antiquated with your platoon!” Wait-

“You mean acquainted?” she said, stifling a grin.

Yeah, I definitely need to take the blockers.

“Correct! Let me uhh,” I reached over to grab a small radio, “Reel in your boys.” 

She nodded slowly. I clicked a small button on the side of the radio and licked my lips.

“Fifteen-Two, this is Fifteen actual.” A brief moment passed before a buzz granted me an audience to Sergeant Garcia.

“Fifteen actual, this is Fifteen-two, send traffic.” His voice was nice, and it had this… rumble to it. I liked all their voices, even that little rat squeak voice Becket gets when he’s excited. 

“Fifteen-two, I need you to round up your platoon and form up outside company HQ, your new Lieutenant has arrived.” Another small buzz followed a beep.

“Fifteen actual, I copy. Gimme 20 to lasso.” I giggled.

“Affirm, I copy last. Out.” I let off the button and couldn’t help but smile a little. Hank approached with a pot and two cups.

“Uhh… Captain?” I glanced at him, “You want me to fall in with them?” He looked like a lost puppy. The kid was like, barely eighteen. But he’d do this little shuffle whenever he offered me tea and…

Awww, he’s so damn cute!

“No, I need you here to make sure we have enough medicine.” I glanced at the new gal, “Tea, Lieutenant?” She nodded and took a cup from the plate after Hank set it down. “And Hank?” I gently tapped his wrist, and he twitched, almost in fear.

“C-Captain?” His eyes twitched, and he briefly brushed his wrist with his other hand before putting both at his sides.

“Did the uhh… heat blockers come in?” He swallowed down a lump in his throat in what definitely was fear.

“N-No ma’am, they didn’t. I-I’m sorr-”

“All good, Hank! I’m a big girl, ain’t gonna lose it on anyone. Would you rather fall in with your platoon?” He straightened up, more confident.

“Yes, captain!” Eh, I could let him go for a bit. I really just needed the morphine anyway. Supply was running low after the last batch they sent turned out to be expired surplus. I had enough blockers to keep dry for about a month. Surely the unit we get attached to will have some to spare.

“Then fall out, corpsman~” I gave him a pat on the stomach with my forearm, and he quickly snatched his gear from a nearby chair and bolted away. I turned to Wallcroft, who seemed unimpressed.

“He’s scared, what’s his deal?” 

Oh if she knew the half of it.

“He’s just a bit skittish, that’s all” I quickly retrieved some maps from a bag sat on the table, and laid them out. It was an old map of Michigan, dating from the mid-2000s. I had placed it in a transparent sleeve so it could be drawn on, and had placed a bold red line along our path of advance. Northwest to Cadillac, then North to Traverse City, then Northeast to the two biggest prizes. Mackinac City, and the islands. Wallcroft studied the maps, not seeming to need further words to explain the plan. Despite this, she piped up anyway in a pretty stern tone.

“What units are we supporting?” She looked up at me for a moment.

“Well, we are rolling out of here with the 85th infantry when they come through, but they’re popping out east of Cadillac. At this time, it seems to be a toss-up between the 215th armored regiment, and seventh recon. Whoever gets there first, it seems.” 

Admittedly, there really was no plan for our company, we and four other companies did actually have a commander above us, a brown bear Lieutenant Colonel named Mosk. but those higher officers weren’t really tactical officers. Instead, they were treated as handlers of sorts. I personally had only met her once when I was given command, and her job only seemed to be telling the companies numbered ten through fifteen where they would be going. From there, our tactical plan would be handled by whatever regimental or divisional commander was in charge of the unit we were supposed to support. At least she gets us our mail on time, I guess.

“So we just roll through in trucks?” she inquired, “Are the trucks at least armed?”

To the point, this one is.

“The sides of the truck beds are tall, more for anthros to sit in. The boys use them like trench parapets and the seats like fire steps. So our trucks are similar to gun platforms, I’d reckon. We will get humvee support from the 85th, but they will basically just be there to prevent my boys from deserting.” I explained.

She rubbed a paw across the underside of her muzzle in thought and nodded.

“You think any of them will?” she asked. It was a good question, honestly.

“Nah, they know that life in the state without risk of assignment is more fruitful than whatever these run-down ruins have to offer.” 

She exhaled through her nose quite sharply, as though decompressing herself. It was actually really cute. “So, if you don’t mind me asking… why do they hate assignment so much?”

…She may be cognitively delayed.  

…Can I think that? God, now I’m horny and bigoted.

Oh right, I’m talking to somebody, I have to actually respond.

“You should ask them that yourself” I grunted.

She hummed in affirmation, then took a sip of her tea. The cup, clearly made for humans, was hilariously small, as was the portion. By the end of her sip, the little teacup, so short and stout, was empty.

Wait, fuck, I’m thinking of the pot, not the cup.

“We getting any ass when the humvees ditch us?” she asked.

I hope I can get at her as-

“Depends which unit we group with after Cadillac. If the 215th arrive first, we can expect both light and heavy armor; tanks and LAVs.” I took a quick sip of the tea, and sighed contentedly before resuming, “If the seventh gets there though, things may get… complicated.” I mumbled. Her response was immediate.

“Complicated?” she replied. I licked my lips and raised a finger, attempting to recall a way to explain my understanding of their situation.

“Our satellites are state of the art, and the real crazy spy stuff is being done by the inspectorates field division. Our enemy, a gaggle of wannabe gangster warlords from the upper peninsula, are really bad at hiding their stuff from our recon sats.” I stated. She seemed to be following along, adjusting her cap. “So, basically, we have so much intel from pics we took from orbit, and live feeds from planes and drones, that there is literally no actual reconnaissance to be performed.”

“So why are they here, and what are they doing?” she inquired, pulling on her sleeves.

I chuckled, “Well, they are probing enemies in APCs and transport trucks, last I heard.” 

We both sat in silence, studying the map. Well, she was. I was more interested in her face. She had these big blue eyes and her fur was this delightful brindle that blacked out at her short snout. I could tell through her jacket that she worked out regularly, definitely was an enlisted woman at some point. She seemed more relaxed now, her shoulders loosening up, and would hum a little while reading the cartography. She was, conventionally speaking, very pretty.

“You got a husband back home, Wallcroft?” I said. She shook her head slowly, and snapped two fingers nervously. “I’m not asking for me, Lieutenant. Unless you get interested, I mean~”

God damn it, Edith! Stop flirting with the new girl!

“Is it hard?” she asked.

“What?” I cocked my head to the side.

“Like, heat… as a… y’know?” her voice trailed off.

Oh! Well, she gets personal pretty quickly, doesn’t she?

“Yeah, it uhh… I might enjoy a girl, but the body never is quite sated.” I replied a bit more saddened than I should’ve. It did suck, quite a lot, actually. In my twenty-eight years of life, I’d never quite been satisfied during that dreadful season. Fontaine came close, but she was worn out by the eighth round and had to take off sick days for the next week. Well, she sent me a letter later about how she wanted more, but on a more… confident time frame. She was fun but-

“Captain?” an olive-skinned darling called, grabbing my attention.

“Ah! Sergeant Tino Garcia! This is Lieutenant Wallcroft,” they quickly shook hands, “Wallcroft, This is Garcia, he’s your platoon sergeant.” She nodded.

“Second platoon assembled out front,” he stated boldly. He always sounded like those humies in the old Italian soap operas.

“Delightful!” I chirped, “Time to bond with your boys, Lieutenant~” and with that, the two left me at the table. I quickly swept up the map sheets and left only the radio call sign chart out. I’d forgotten to give Wallcroft hers; some captain I am.

Guess I ought to take care of myself, then . 

I quickly dug into the front-right hip pocket of my field blouse and pulled out a small orange bottle filled with little pink tablets. I pressed down and rotated the cap off before swiftly taking a pill into my mouth. It’d be about thirty minutes before the urges went away, but after that, I’d be fine. I stood from my chair after stashing the pills and stepped to watch Wallcroft introduce herself to the platoon. She walked with her hands behind her back, and when she stepped in front of a man, he’d sound off his rank, name, and squad. 

The tall, red-haired and freckled,

“Private Jameson Becket, first squad!” 

The long-haired, brilliant lover-boy,

“Private Bruno Charlagne, first squad!”

The unnerved youth of broken homes,

“Specialist Hank Benelli, corpsman!”

I stopped listening after that, listening to some thirty-something men sound off names I myself knew was boring. As if noticing my boredom, an orange paw fell on my shoulder.

“She the new girl?” a woman, who I recognized as Lieutenant Kennedy of first platoon, said. I turned to the young serval, her emerald eyes beaming.

“Yep, I think she’ll do fine,” I replied nonchalantly. The paw left my shoulder.

“Your blockers come in?” she calmly inquired.

“No, they did not.”

She removed her canteen cap and took a swig before offering me some, “I noticed you took that pill dry. Benelli says that’s a no-go”

Oh, Hank, what will I do with you?

I took a quick sip from the canteen. It was sweet, almost sour, whatever it was.

“Lemonade in your canteen, Jackie?” she giggled and shook her head.

“Legally? No. On the back channel? Maybe.” she laughed. I handed her back the canteen and she stowed it in its pouch. We stared out to the distance as she finished her address. Frankly, she wasn’t too much for speeches it seems. 

After they all sounded off, she simply shouted, “Don’t die, that’s the enemy's job!” and then dismissed them. Many of the men saluted me as they walked by and I decided I’d leave the deli. It was getting kind of dark out. The supply trucks began running headlights and some of the men turned their flashlights on. We weren’t issued NVGs, most units weren’t. Anthro eyes were so good in the dark, we simply didn’t need stuff like that. I walked to Wallcroft, who was having a meeting between her and her squad leaders.

“...and I want you to make sure they’ve hydrated, slept, and defecated before we step off. A piss can be done from the truck, can’t do a combat dump off the side of a moving vehicle” she said.

Okay Wallcroft, what the fuck.

“I want ammo counts, and food counts before we step off, too. Even the machine gunners should be carrying rifle mags.” she said, “the 249s can run M16 mags, so they can use them too. Three days to step off, keep them frosty, gentlemen.”

“Yes, ma’am” they yelled in unison before grabbing their helmets and walking off.

I chuckled, “Well, Lieutenant, you seem to know what you’re doing.” I said while offering her the call sign chart, which she took with another nod.

“Thank you, captain. Will platoon and squad leads be receiving maps of the AO?” she asked.

“Of course, I should be receiving them tomorrow or the next.” 

She began to read the list of radio frequencies until she got to a section that made her brow raise.

“Big Dawg, Captain?” she jeered.

It was a sign made for me by the company, a nickname the enlisted tended to use. I mean, what can I say?

“Cuz I’m the Big Dawg!”

And bitch, that’s the truth

Chapter Text

“You seen the Lieutenant?” I asked Reb.

“Not since the yard speech, Vince. Try Billy, I guess?” he replied in that southern twang he was known for.

Johnny Reb was an odd one. He had never been to Bismarck, nor any of its territories outside of training. He joined up with Sturmov after the state took his home in Richmond, Virginia. Something about him thinking the state would let his mom out of prison if he did his time. Hell, Johnny Reb isn’t even his name! Not even Willow knows what that is.

“Yeah, homie. You know where Yank is?” I asked. He hummed this weird tune he always did when in thought and pointed over to the chow tent.

“I think I saw ol’ Billy Yank trying to bag leftovers from chow hall, that bootlicker!” he jeered. Billy Yank and Johnny Reb seemed to have a massive mutual hate boner for each other but were awfully close for ‘cultural enemies’.

“And you saw right!” a more northern tone replied from behind us, “bagged us some crackers and peanut butter, Johnny!”

Johnny did an overly dramatic pose of praise with his hands out and went bug-eyed, “Oh, Billeh, you are just a de-vee-ant! Did you find the peaches?” he asked, to which Billy produced a can from a small bag. 

“Hey, Big man Vargas, you want some?” Billy asked. 

“Fuck yeah, I want some!” I said. He under-hand tossed me some crackers, despite being point-blank. I caught them anyway because I’m a total badass. The two waved me off, but I remembered I wasn’t done yet.

“Hey, Billy?” I asked.

“Yeah?” he replied, already eating a cracker as Johnny spread pb on some spares.

“You seen Charlagne anywhere? Post worker said he had missed mail from his girl. Came in late, I guess.” I showed off the envelope, stamped with a wax seal depicting a rose.

“He should be in his bunk,” Johnny said, “He isn’t on watch today, is he?” 

He wasn’t. I checked there already and almost got shot by a partisan.

“Probably should’ve led with that. Thanks, boys,” I concluded before walking off. The two then began talking shit over a sleeve of crackers. 

Billy was a similar story to Johnny. He was from the district of Columbia and joined on because the State failed its initiative to give jobs to the conquered territory. The well-kept capital of the old United States now resembles little more than a grim slum, rampant with crime and sickness. The human women native to that area were mass murdered by Inspectors in some camp but left a window open or some shit, and a homie saw. Now they got crime bosses and inspectors fuckin each other with nine mills in the street. Shit be like the state's very own Afghan. Shit.

Better them than me, I guess.

I walked a few streets down in the neighborhood we were bunked at. Place used to be filled with enemies and parti-boys and girls. Now they got their asses liberated by buckshot. I passed a few guys on the way, all had a rifle or a carbine, sometimes I’d pass an officer. You couldn’t mistake them, really. They were tall ladies, and their uniforms didn’t look stupid. Shit, at least Bruno gets to wear green. The pink shoulders though?

Think I’d pass, to be real.

*ZIP* *BANG*

Sometimes you’d hear the crack of gunshots in the street near the base gates, usually just guys following the engagement ruling of ‘all male anthros are to be treated as hostile, whether armed or not,’ or something. Some big fuckin’ animal-planet-ass bro would get curious and gawk. We’d pop a pretty flash for him.

Shit, we pop that flash through his head.

Other times a few local partisans or rebels would try breaking in, we’d treat them in a similar manner. They sometimes would hit one of us, but rarely would they kill anything, though. 

Last time they tried something big, they shot a supply girl in the stomach; this shark from some 109th regiment H&S company. Next thing the rebel knew, he had a whole company of anthrostate greens, and a platoon of big blues mag dumping him to the archangels. She lived, of course, sharks are built different. Boy wonder got smoked, meat falling off the bone type shit.

I grew up back in Bismarck, son to a dumb yeen and disabled father. My dad was a good guy, I think. Never got to know him before he got sent to the pens for refusing his wife sex. Shit man, he declined a tug, now they ‘gon gut his ass. That’s what the state be all about, though, submission and shit. All of us know it. Becket knows it, and Charlagne, and Garcia, And Johnny, Billy, Benelli, Blackburn, Shelton, Sanders, Miller, that post worker, DuPont, Franklin, and Wilker.

Everybody knows it, man!  

Them’s my boys, I known some of them since last year, some only since last month, but they my boys. They the bes-

“Can I help you, Vince?” Charlagne asked, looking at me like I be an idiot. I look around briefly.

When did I reach the bunk?

It's a bit often now, but sometimes I forget where I’m at. Ever since that supply girl got shot, and seeing that boy get pulped, I just… forget.

“Yeah,” I said, “yo girl wrote you, dawg.” I passed him the envelope, and he opened it with that posh grace and dumb letter opener. Bruno, for a rich asshole, was a pretty chill rich asshole. 

“You gonna read it for ya boy?” he glanced at me and turned to look in a small mirror on the wall.

“Why? Did that supply shark not give you a tug? With how much you lust for my sweet dear Leeda, I thought you’d try your luck with that new vixen who replaced her.” he mumbled in a somewhat nasally whine of upper-class sarcasm. Almost like he was delivering a passive-aggressive email to a subordinate.

“Cuz I’m a freak, homie!” 

He chuckled at that and began reading, “Dear beloved,” he smirked, “See, this one’s mine, brokie,” he sneered before continuing, “I tried on a few dresses today, Tuesday, the 15th of June I mean. I got a few pictures in the other letter for you. Write back which you like.

“Things have been pretty normal around the house. The cooks miss you, and the maids cry at night that the boy they raised in the cabinet might get killed, but I know you won’t. You’re better than that.” his smile died a bit, “Momma and I talked, she had sent a suitor to try courting me in your absence. I clawed his face and he ran crying.” and the smile was back, “I think she’s gonna break soon. She has to realize that you, Bruno, are the only one I desire.”

“Damn, she’s a kinky girl,” I remarked.

“I miss you dearly,” he continued, ignoring me completely. “And I can’t wait to find you at the altar.

“In my dreams, in my darkest nights, your beloved, Leeda Charlagne.” he smiled wider than I’d seen in a few days, and dug out the second letter.

“You gon’ read that one, too?” he shook his head.

“Nope.” he stated flatly, “This one’s for my… personal enjoyment.”

*ZIP* *CRACK* 

“These however, you can peep,” he said, pulling out an assortment of pictures featuring the lithe vixen herself. 

Leeda Charlagne wasn’t the first thing I’d jack it to. She didn’t have the massive breasts of those cover girls you’d see in Wolfers weekly, nor an ass that could cause an earthquake. She was… average, actually a little on the short side. Bruno was taller than her, and he and I were roughly the same height. She had these blazing orange eyes and this reddish mandarin fur. She wore dresses of white, which Bruno clearly took a liking to, judging by his wolfish grin. Takes after his ma, I guess.

He wasn’t really a nasty dog like the rest of us. He looked upon her in a tender way, like a shy lover raised by a more steady hand would; his eyes softened as he looked at her face and hair, which she had tied up, rather than her body. Of course, the sly bastard took his slight glances, but he was overall a much more disciplined man. It was crazy considering he never knew his dad neither.

“She’s pretty…” he trailed off.

*ZIP* *ZIP* *ZIP* *CRACK*

“That’s incoming fire, is it not?” he asked.

It was a bit more intense than usual, to be real.

“YO!” a man shouted behind us. Charlagne quickly took up his helmet from his bedside, and 249 from the floor.

“Sergeant Garcia?” he called.

“We got partisans, a lot of them. Get moving.” he stepped away from the door for a moment as we grabbed our stuff. Briefly, he glanced back in, “Let’s clock them hours, boys!”

Fuck yeah, sergeant!

I brass-checked my weapon, an old car-15 copy, and smiled when it effortlessly slapped into battery. The car-15s we had were alright. If you did anything besides shooting, you got a carbine. Of course, this baby was my main piece, but my m320 grenade launcher was a nice side hoe. Some officers wanted the launcher mounted to a screw-on rail segment on the guard; nobody in the state got issued quad-rail guards, just the polymer clamshell stuff. frankly, the launcher made the thing front-heavy and was cartoonishly large. Luckily Captain Willow was a bad bitch who let me leave it in stand-alone. 

The muzzle devices we got were… assorted. Guys with full-length M16s all had birdcage flash hiders. The 16s were copies of the old a1 model retrofitted with an a2 guard. The a2 sights were too easy to adjust, nervous privates would mess with them and throw off their zero. Some car15s were issued with bird cages, like mine. Some got issued with something called a regulator, which improved performance, none of us got suppressors. We would have to scam those off the recon girls if we got put with them. The bird cages were… fun? Shoot one on a ten-inch barrel like we had, and you’d see the issue.

Stepping out with Bruno and his big ass gun, I noticed the streets hot as D.C.

Garcia wasn’t joking, that’s a lot of incoming tracers. I looked at Bruno, who looked to Garcia for direction. Garcia only gestured to follow and took off. The tracers bounced around our feet, some whizzed by our heads, the kind of shit you’d see if you got through the state firewall. We weren’t at the gate yet, so shooting back was too risky. We passed behind a tent, which quickly had a tight burst of holes put into it, accurate MG fire if I had to say. Garcia jumped back a little and began cursing the enemy in some language I could never understand.

“Fottuta puttana succhiacazzi! Li ucciderò!” he shouted. Billy and Johnny were here, squatted behind a few crates in the grass. Johnny looked pissed, and Billy talked calmly into the radio. When Johnny saw me, he shouted.

“Them ‘sum bitches shwacked mah peaches, Vinneh!” Yeah, that checks out.

Billy squatted as he talked into the receiver of his radio, “This is fifteen-two-one, we have multiple hostile victors at the northern gate, supported by heavy weapons and RPG tubes. Requesting support.” he sighed away from the mic in annoyance. “Yes they are in fact shooting at us, I thought the shit blowing up on mic would tell you. Y- copy, out.” he looked at Garcia, “We’re fucked.” he spat.

“No support?” Garcia asked.

“No, we got support coming… from cooks and POGs . Apparently, it's Lieutenant Sinclaire approving artillery.”

Garcia scoffed, “Well, if she has her grids right this time, maybe she’ll overshoot and not kill us all.” Sinclaire was green, very green; A young hyena who somehow passed the army grammar test, let alone Officer Candidate School. She loved trying to win medals with these stupid danger close artillery bombardments, but back when we first took Detroit she got chewed out by the captain after shelling some guys from third platoon.

 I wish my ma would’ve got chewed like that.

“We’ll make the best of it, get up front, stay low, and grab cover. Let’s make some money!” ordered Garcia

“Oorah!” we yelled in unison.

The dash to the gate was uneventful, any stray fire was mainly focused through the main road, and we approached outside of the possible cone of fire. At the gate was the rest of the platoon, who must’ve been in the area after Lieutenant Wallcroft gave her little speech. Wallcroft was replacing a Lieutenant who got hit during the Detroit siege while trying to dig the aforementioned third platoon casualties out of the rubble. Lost her leg to a fifty cal, but lived. Most of us didn’t even know her name, instead calling her “miss”. She’d be given some high-performing human as a participation award. 

At least she wouldn’t be able to chase him if he ran, I guess.

“Vargas! Get yer stupid ass down!” yelled Johnny from a ditch in front of us. From where I stood, leaned against a gate wall, I could see one man with an AK running from a blown-out gas station. He wore a leather jacket, with mags clumsily sticking out of the pockets, which were haphazardly sewn on, likely by himself.

Decent rigger work.

I swung up my carbine and fired three rounds. The flash was horrifically prominent, and the concussive blast from my muzzle caused a possum passing to my right to flinch and hold her ears in distinct anguish. 

A2 flash hider on a ten, baby!

The man flinched when the first round hit, but completely tumbled face first at the second, the third missed completely. He writhed on the ground, a red froth expelling from his mouth.

Gotcha lung, bitch!

Another man came out to drag him back, but he was cut down by a burst from Bruno’s SAW. A third peeked to see if it was clear, but when I fired a round that hit the wall not an inch from his head, he took note that it wasn’t and went back to hiding.

The gunfire only seemed to intensify as a car drove up from their side, with a machine gun blasting through the front windshield. It had shitty armor riveted all over, which seemed to briefly stop the small arms fire. I slung my carbine, pulled up the 320, loaded up some H.E., and put a round through the windshield. It was surprisingly easy, the enemy at most was 100 meters away. The concussive blast blew the doors off, the shrapnel shredded one of the tires. And the MG had its muzzle blown off. A man fell from the flaming wreck, completely dazed. When he stood, half the squad laid into him. The man flailed wildly as he fell, blood pooling at multiple new orifices that appeared on his body. 

A paw patted me on the shoulder, “good shot, Vargas!” praised Wallcroft. I lowered my muzzle, allowing her to pass. She jumped into the ditch next to Garcia, and I ran in next to Bruno. He was snarling as infernal bursts flared from his 249. 

This guy, in all ways but body, was certainly a wolf.

As more came, he cut them down. After a while, the rest of us began to cease our fire, but Bruno continued, his gun screaming in fiery rage. Man after man fell as their legs, arms, heads, and chests were riddled in lead. Barely audible was a vengeful howl from him. Newer men and the LT looked in confusion, some in fear. 

I looked in admiration.

Now that is humanity!

“Cease fire!” the LT screamed as she waved a brindle paw in his sight. In defiance, he fired a final burst, finishing off a previous hit before letting his gun cool. “...You good?” she asked. Bruno turned to her slowly and nodded.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” he mumbled.

Something got him worked up. Looking down at his jacket, I saw a picture hanging out from his pocket, one of the dress pictures, which had its corner clipped by a round. Some poor dumbass thought he could shoot a depiction of Leeda and not get lit up by the flower boy of Charlagne himself. I patted him on the back, and he let out a soft exhale, like someone having a smoke might do.

“Damn, Bruno, you chewed ‘em up!” Yelled Corporal Blackburn.

Blackburn was the child of a pharmacist father, and a surgeon bunny mother, and was our corpsman before Benelli showed up. Nobody knows his first name, but I think it's Adam. He only stopped being a corpsman because he got promoted to Assistant Squad Lead. 

Bruno continued softly breathing his troubles away, and Willow arrived flanked by her posse of officers. 

Now, I got no beef with Willow, she loves us like a crew of little bros. When a Lieutenant from the 109th got sweet on Benelli, she came up on that bitch something furious. Hell, Benelli hadn't even been here long enough for Willow to know what's up with him. She's just territorial, I think. Now she keeps homeboy in HQ with her to make sure nobody messes with him. Frankly, I'd punch out a bear for the kid, I think we all would. Big Dawg is a tough girl, I think she's on eight years in the army.

Lieutenant Kennedy is a weird case. She's light on regulation, borderline doesn't give two shits. I remember she cried when “miss” died, they must've been friends. 

Third platoon lost their LT to the tragedy of retirement. She was an aged mongoose, a crazy bitch from Appalachia. Her replacement was supposed to be here after we took the city, but they got nobody right now, even a month later. Willow will probably cover it if a new girl doesn't show up to take over.

“I need four boys to clear that building to our front,” said Wallcroft. Garcia turned to the rest of his squad.

“Yank, Reb, Blackburn, on me,” he ordered with an odd hand gesture. The guys in question hopped to their feet from the entrenched ditch and quickly filed in behind the Sergeant. Wallcroft watched their movements closely, like she wanted to know whether we was trained or not. Their approach was quick, and they soon reached the front of a two-floor building with a blown-out sign. 

Looked like a library to me.

Garcia pointed to Yank and spouted something I couldn't hear, which made him take point. He pushed the door open with his muzzle slowly, and primed a frag in his offhand. Once he decided the door was open enough, he tossed his bomb in and braced for the inevitable blast, which came shortly after. 

At that, any attempt at further subtlety went out the window and the four pushed in. A few shots rang out, then the second-floor windows got blown out by a second frag a minute later. Some more shots on that floor and it all went silent. We waited in anticipation, searching for more rebels to shoot. Bruno swept his 249 up to the second floor, probably thinking our boys got whacked.

He was proven wrong when the body of a male coyote anthro was lazily tossed out the windows and face-planted on the road.

“Check it out, Lieutenant, your next of kin!” Becket sarcastically remarked from some other spot in the ditch.

“I'd prefer a human son to that ugly mug,” she replied almost instantly. She almost seemed angry, but must’ve remembered who she be dealing with here. If she lived long enough, she'd learn to like us. Hell, maybe the Sergeant will get laid and stop his Casanova bullshit.

Thank god she hasn't heard that rant yet, the poor dog would probably die of it. 

Johnny leaned out of one of the windows and gave a goofy grin and a thumbs up, to which Wallcroft nodded with a slight upturn of her lips. I could tell she was alright, might wanna know more about her, might not. I'd give her a few weeks like Bruno said he would. Garcia and the rest joined him in the window, as Willow fished out a camera.

“Smile, boys!” She shouted. Blackburn flanked Garcia on his left, the two trying to remain professional, Garcia unusually so. Johnny did that dumb thumbs up and Billy shot up a pair of finger guns. 

Willow excitedly snapped a photo and patted the LT on her shoulder

“They're good, aren't they~?” Willow cooed.

The LT nodded. “That guy must think so.” she muttered while looking at the coyote. With her eyes away, I took notice of the Sergeant taking his look-see, the nasty dog. I'll fuck with him over it later.

Right now, I just need some chow.

Chapter Text

The sun’s beaming

The way those gleaming strands of light hit my eyelids rouses me from my slumber. The dingy cot in the deli was decent, if not a bit smelly, and was a bit small. My lower paws hung over the metal frame at the foot lazily, not that I could feel them at the moment. My uniform hung neatly on a coat rack in the corner of my small room, which seemed to be a repurposed office, the Lieutenant bars shined against the sunlight in pristine fashion. I ran a paw through my hair and let out a soft yawn, arching my back in a deep stretch. A snicker caught my attention from the other side of the room.

“Well, good morning sleeping beauty~”

I let out an undignified scream and pulled the blanket to cover my chest, despite the fact I never took my shirt off. My eyes cleared up enough to make out a tall wolfess.

“Captain?” I muttered, wiping the sleep from my eyes. 

She entered the room, her head darting about to take in the sights.

“That’s right, Wallcroft, it's just me.”

The least she could do was knock, not that this room had a door. She was far too casual for a Captain.

Wait…

Willow had entered my room, in the morning no less. A superior officer, in my room, while I slept, at this time?

I should be at attention right now!

I swept my legs down, scrambling to my paws, but when I put my full weight on them I remembered they were still numb from the frame. For my idiocy, I tumbled forward immediately into Willow who caught me with relative ease.

“Easy there, big girl~” she giggled, “You ain’t gotta throw yourself at me. We can talk, too!” she sarcastically remarked. I groaned in irritation. “Just messing with you, Lieutenant. When you can stand, we’ll get breakfast,” she said softly. I attempted to regain my footing with difficulty, stumbling a bit. This seemed to be entertaining for her because all I could see when I looked up from her chest was a shit-eating grin that would have put Inspector Harleen to shame.

“Might we refrain from-”

“Telling the others what happened here?” she giggled, “sure, Wallcroft!” she tapped her muzzle in faux thought, before lowering her mouth to my ear, “but only if you tell me something~”

This was more forward than I’d prefer, personally. 

“And that is?” My legs were now functional, and I gently pushed off from her to fetch my field blouse.

“What is your name?” well, that’s odd. She should’ve known from my- “Your file only says your last name for some reason.”

Well, that’s odd, indeed.

I began to slip my arms through the sleeves. The wool caught on my fur in places, making the process rather annoying, but that’s just what a properly tailored uniform should do, at least, that’s what the higher brass says. 

“It's Mira,” I said. Her smile said all it needed to.

I like that name.

“Well, Mira, the boys are waiting at chow. I bet they’d love to see you~” she said in a sing-song manner. 

Frankly, they’d been indifferent since the gate shootout yesterday. Lieutenant Sinclaire’s artillery strike didn’t happen for about half an hour after the fight stopped. Apparently she was struggling to get her grid squares right. Her supply unit sent some girls to check for hits where the shells landed. Apparently she hit one guy. 

Slipping out the door, Willow passed me carefully.

“Your hair is a mess, Lieutenant. Rough night?” she said.

“No, ma’am” I lied. She seemed to buy it, whether by believing me or understanding the difficulties of sleeping I did not know, but she bought it. I could hear a bit of a ruckus occurring from another room, masculine voices clamored about.

“Why are they here? They should be in the mess hall right now.” 

the captain laughed.

“The supply girls you arrived with took it over, so chow got temporarily moved to our HQ.”

Well, that can’t be right. That would be a horrific misallocation of time. They only need half an hour at most to eat, and we’d just come in later, right?

“It's some Lieutenant’s birthday,” Willow flatly remarked.

Oh, they’re partying.

“But don’t you worry,” Willow began, “The boys can clean up after themselves, hell they cooked this one, too” she concluded, a little more excitedly. “It’s good food, DuPont really outdid himself,” she said, picking up two small foam cups. 

She offered one to me, and when the scent hit my nose, I remembered never to pass up on hot coffee. I took the cup a little faster than was socially acceptable, and for my hubris, a small bit flipped over the rim onto my wrist.

I winced in pain, which Willow didn’t seem to notice, and was led into the other room to be met with the entire company talking at benches and tables over plates of food. Some were passing around magazines like I’d seen on the first day. Becket, as well as the guys I’d first met him with were passing a bottle around of some kind of beverage.

I pointed them out, “Are they supposed to be drinking that? Where is their Sergeant Major?”

“They don’t have one, we got a manpower shortage. The closest you got is Garcia.” 

Willow then walked off and joined a table with the Sergeants, and I followed. There were no seats left, so I stood awkwardly next to the table.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” the three said in unison.

Ah, their names. I remembered Tino Garcia easily, he was the tanned one, ‘olive’ they called it. He was a shorter, stocky guy with messy brown hair. One was shaved down, and looked kind of frail. He was pale as a ghost. I think his name was… Marx? Somebody called him Karl, but he very vehemently protested that his first name wasn’t. He begged that I don’t report him to the Inspectorate yesterday after the firefight, but I had no idea why. That last sergeant was dark-skinned, which was oddly rare back in Bismarck. I’d only ever met two black humans before the army. His name was Steele, I believe. A pretty corny name for a Sergeant, which leaves me to believe it is a nickname

After I return their greeting, they go back to their idle chatter. 

“The boys were happy to get some, they’ve been waitin’ too long,” Steele said.

“Yeah, man,” Marx responded, his voice as frail as his body, “I got privates talking to their knives ‘n shit.” 

Tino chuckled, before responding in that funny bravado tone, “Yeah, you got some deadeye lunatics, just be glad the enemy ain’t half as good.” the others muttered their agreements before all simultaneously taking a swig of coffee. More and more I begin believing that the soap opera voice is just how that man normally talks. I can only imagine…

My name is Toni Garcia, you killed my father, prepare to die!

Yeah, that’d be hilarious, I should ask him to say that for me at some point.

Wait, Montoya wasn’t Italian, right? Is Garcia?!  

“What about you, Lieutenant?” Marx began, “Did you get any last night?” he sarcastically remarked as he looked at my belt, which lacked a sidearm.

“Hey, calm it, man,” Garcia protested, “it takes courage its own to run head-on into danger without a weapon,” he said, gesturing to me.

“Yeah, just don't let that courage get your head blown off, but I guess somebody needed to tell Flower Boy to stop shooting.” Steele laughed out.

“Flower boy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Marx responded, “Bruno.”

“Why do you call him that?”

“He was the Charlagne family’s flower boy, obviously.”

“Watch your tone, sergeant, and I thought he was a noble.” Tino glanced away, and the others laughed.

“If Bruno didn’t tell you already, perhaps we shouldn’t,” Garcia stated, placing a palm on the table. The others waved him off and scoffed.

“Whatever, man. At least he kills good,” said Steele.

“Damn straight!”

I looked over at the table he sat at, which now had basically his whole squad chatting over the now half-empty bottle. Vargas was gesturing mildly, and Johnny Reb would randomly do a cartoonish nod in response as though saying ‘Hear ye!’. Bruno was reading a small letter with a warm smile, and the rest listened to Vargas.

“What do you think they're talking about?” I asked.

“Oh, it's probably Vargas giving his state lecture again,” Garcia responded with a chuckle.

“He's always on that ‘The Inspectorate ain't shit, here's why,’ bullshit.” Marx groaned.

“The man makes good points, though. I can't argue.” Replied Garcia before shoveling some eggs into his mouth.

I may want to listen to that.

Suddenly, a plate was passed in front of me. I looked up to see DuPont. He was a pretty tough-looking man, despite only being twenty. He had darker skin than Steele and was bald, but never took his field cap off.

“Eggs benedict, Lieutenant,” he flatly grumbled before turning away and walking over to Vargas's sermon. I looked around, and it finally hit me. 

Where did Willow go?

“When did the Captain leave, and how did I not notice?”

“Oh, she just does that sometimes, the lady’s a fuckin ninja. Might be getting you a nine,” said Garcia, mumbling through his cup.

It was true that I entered yesterday's firefight unarmed, and I somewhat expected people to talk about it. The fact that my sidearm hadn’t been prepared before my arrival was something I hadn’t questioned too much. Usually, these things were in shortage ever since the files on male anthros got leaked from the Inspectorate. That leak caused the army to swell by the millions in less than two or three years. Of course there wouldn’t be enough handguns floating around.

I wonder if Vargas put that in his sermon…

Some part of me really wanted to listen to what he was talking about. I had been neutral on the inspectors for most of my life, their reputation with me only being sullied by their slowness in processing my assignment documentation. Of course, I never would tell them that’s why I joined the army, they’d do more than laugh at me for being unarmed if they knew that. My brief time with Inspector Harleen really sullied that department in my eyes, the snarky bitch clearly got off on reading about the girls I got killed, and probably fantasized about the same happening to these young men. It’d be a shame, honestly; good human men were always in shortage, that’s why the army always has to fight. We’d run out of our most valued asset otherwise. 

I took up my fork and knife and dug into breakfast. The eggs were tastefully seasoned, and although I had no idea where the hollandaise was sourced from, it was delightful. The portion was a bit small, likely just leftovers, but it was pleasurably satisfying. I probably ate the thing in three bites before I wiped off my face and turned to my sergeants, who’d relegated themselves to a card game while I got lost in my thoughts.

“I’m gonna check out what Vargas is on about, I’m interested,” I said, to which they only nodded. I didn’t know why I was so interested, I knew they hated inspectors, but how much did they know? Was this going to be a dumb uneducated rant? 

If so, this could be entertaining. 

Back in Bismarck, you’d sometimes find scruffy-looking men with eyes that’d seen too much chanting about the evils before getting pulled out back by an overzealous woman for whatever aims she might have… or a black van.

They were the kind of men who’d been to the pens but had crazy you couldn’t fix. They’d roll about, shuffling in dust until an Inspector decided ‘that’s it’. My legs moved of their own volition, deciding my professional patience was recommendation rather than law, Vince’s hand gesticulations brought curls to the edge of my maw. 

He caught sight of me, a quick hesitance before he decided against himself, “Ah, Lieutenant!” he cried, “I’m glad you found ya way here!” 

That’s why.

There it is.

Those damn smiles.

The way mama told me a husband would do it, why I came here. 

To the army, I mean.

The others turned to look, smiles betrayed by indignation in eye, but any thought got pushed away by a hand poking my side.

“More food, Lieutenant?” asked Hank, who had a second full portion.

“Did you eat?”

“W-well, yeah of course, yeah…” and he waddled off.

“Care to behold my thesis!?” clamored Vince Vargas.

Oh yeah, this’ll be good

I took a seat, fork in hand, and took listen in.

“Let me tell you, this shit they got ain’t it!” he laughed, a feverish chuckle, partially induced by beverage, by all odds.

“The state is fucked, bro!” He snickered, “Look, lemme lays it out for you, gir- Lieutenant”

Oh, yeah, this’ll be reeeal good!

“The inspectorate got two main goals, man; keeping humans in line, and making sure assignments happen. They got problems though, and here they be.” he cleared his throat, “Too many files coming out through leaks about Inspectors using too much force.”

I had honestly noticed that. That whole department seemed less professional than when I was a kid.

“Their shit’s gettin’ leaked. Y’know what that means? Inside peeps even know their shit is off.”

I’d not quite thought about it that way…

“That, and these current Inspectors ain’t shit compared to what our dad’s had to deal with. My ma told me a story once, her neighbor got assigned but his missus beat him so he ran. Inspectors couldn’t catch him, so they pulled rifles and mag-dumped his ass. His missus? Got a pension, and a new assigned husband, who she also beat.”

Damn.

“Lieutenant? Did you know that the Inspectorate doesn’t even have rifles anymore?”

Wait, don’t they? I hadn’t seen an armory in the office that sent me here, nor had I noticed gun racks in squad cars for years. Yet I had my doubts.

“Y’know why?”

I didn’t, but could guess.

“‘Cuz our current Chairwoman, bless her soul,” he shot a glance at Johnny, who whooped, “hates their asses. Too many leaks about this shit got their funding cut, they can’t afford this stuff no more. Their surveillance is bad now, too. People break through the firewall and pull up some crazy shit weekly! Weekly!

“Most of these reports are about older, higher ranking women fuckin up runaways. This one bitch put a claiming bite on a runaway. A fucking claiming bite! The kicker? Homeboy was assigned to another Inspector from the same department! She fucked that bitch up, and they both got sent to D.C. 

“Webs of blackmail from department heads are constant. They even got anthros protesting their ass. The result? The Inspectorate can’t shit-can half their force, but can’t handle the P.R. nightmare of keepin’ them with a badge, so they all get sent to D.C! Now Bismarck has these girl-scout-ass Inspectors, who think their job is to help and protect humans, but haven’t the superiors to show them how to oppress right! That case with my neighbor? Shit happens constantly, here’s the difference.”

Alright, Vargas, I’m listening

“This is how this shit goes now, girl beats humie, boy runs away, she calls an Inspector. They give chase, but he’s a runner… a good runner. They know what happened to their bosses when they used force on a boy, and know what’s up in D.C. What do they do? They say ‘shit girls, if he’s running so hard, what happened to him?’ and they give up! They turn around, investigate the wife, and she gets arrested for abuse! 

Now when a man runs, the wife remembers what happened to the crazy yeen down the street who got put away and thinks ‘Well, not worth it’ and she don’t even bother, man! Inspectors used force for so long, that when they finally had to be held accountable, the Chairwoman cowed them into submission. Now they’re a department designed to Surveil and oppress, but their funding is cut, so they can’t properly surveil, and their hunters all got caught up in shit and shipped out, so they lack the aggression to properly oppress. Jackboots can’t do Jack-shit! 

“Now that they don’t get calls, and look useless, they get more cuts to funds because they aren’t policing at all. It’s a vicious cycle of being completely inept. Now we got news reports of a refugee crisis in Florida ‘cuz the war down there is ending, ‘cuz all these displaced human girls can’t be killed, lest a new Washington D.C. open up, but can’t be displaced, ‘cuz we ran out of places to send them.”

I’d not read on that, but I plan to.

“Now the Chairwoman is gonna hold some kinda meeting with all the courts and politicians to discuss what we gonna do! We are in the declining state, man! The chairwoman looks poised to allow human women back into Bismarck! She’d rather give up her leverage on humanity to keep the state alive than let it burn up in its own inadequacy. Smart husky, I give her that!”

Chairwoman Alexondria was a strange husky, indeed. She had been a relative newcomer to politics when she was erected chairwoman, and had proved an oddly popular figure among the men, and a controversial figure among the women. She was pro-human and called for more civil reforms. She even wanted them to have guns. The courts and Inspectorate quickly blocked that, citing national security. 

“Does this have anything to do with the stag files?” I asked, nonchalantly. I hadn’t thought too hard on my words, they sort of slipped out. Everyone around looked at me in surprise. “What? I’m curious!”

The stag files were the official name given to the leaks about male anthros. Until then, most didn’t even know they existed. We girls, when with human men, only produced human sons and anthro daughters. It was an odd biological quirk, one I never grasped very well, but it was there. Those files had whipped up something in the populace, and we’d been going to war with our own male counterparts ever since.

Even the men of Bismarck are engaging in stag slaying, it seems

“Oh Lieutenant, I knew you were a baddie!” both Vargas and Becket squealed. Becket laughed, and Vargas continued, “See, boys? I was telling you she was cool! To answer you, Lieutenant.”

Here it comes-

“I ain’t got that far, probably some kind of internal shit between the Army and Inspectorate. Now get on, ma’am. Yo eggs gonna get cold!” 

Oh, right! I dug into my food, much to the amusement of the men.

Vargas stumbled over and took a seat next to me. 

“Now, Lieutenant, lemme put you on some game. Bruno, back me up, homie!” Bruno looked up from his growing pile of letters, each with a wax stamp.

“No, piss off.”

“Fuck you, Baudelaire!” he snapped, to which Bruno only smirked. 

Three weeks, don’t press it

Vargas looked at me from the side, his eyes sharp.

“Look, I can tell what you are,” he said, suspiciously.

“Whatever the Captain said, I’m not into her.”

He laughed, “No, not her. Tino, ma’am” I glanced at Garcia briefly, just quick enough to catch him shooting a glance back.

“You’re one of those marriage crusaders, right?”

“Excuse me?”

“Y’know, girls who join the army usually got a reason, we got reasons too. It's different stuff. You joined for assignment priority, right?” 

I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous, but he assured me with a tap on the shoulder and a quick lean-in. “Don’t hustle it, LT. I got your six, ain’t nobody gonna know.”

Relief washed over me instantly. Fuck he’s good.

“Look, you ain’t need assignment. He could have your six there, dawg.”

“Playing matchmaker, Private?”

“Just doing what I said, putting you on game, sis.”

“No way, Vargas.” he seemed offended.

“Why not? He’s all traditional and shit. That’s why he’s here, yo. His ma was navy, his grams was too, he’s in their steps but don’t need no civvie tramp. He needs a big bad wolf, like soldiers need tough men.”

His voice, only a whisper, was oddly persuasive.

“I mean, you caught him lookin’, I caught him too. He’s sweet on you, LT.”

This was rather much.

“That will be enough, Private Vargas, although I do appreciate you um… ‘putting me on game’” I said, pushing up a stern tone. He grinned ear-to-ear.

“I see you, LT!” he then stood and waltzed over to seat next to Bruno.

A familiar tap on my shoulder taught me of Willow’s reentrance, and she slipped a leather holster into my lap before her muzzle came oddly close to my ear.

“Merry Christmas, Mira~” When I looked over, she was already gone. 

Damn, she’s fast!

Opening the holster, I was met with a rather dated-looking sidearm, a scaled-up PPK, rechambered in nine-millimeter. It was pretty clean, all things considered, and looked unissued. It was nicer than most of the handguns that got issued,

but that’s just the state of things nowadays.

Chapter Text

This place sucks, it really does. I’ve been here with the 15th for more than a month, and it sucks. So, so bad!

No offensive action, no campaigning, just the rare spontaneous shootout with untrained amateurs. At least breakfast was good, I guess. Willow’s been god knows where, and I haven’t gotten the chance to speak with Lieutenant Wallcroft since morning. This place would put my ma in a coma of sheer boredom.

Move supply here, load mags and belts there.

Listen to Vince ramble?!

This sucks!

“Are we there yet?”

“Y’know, the platoon sarge shouldn’t be the one acting like a damn toddler,” said Lance Corporal Wilker. 

“Don’t even pretend this is fun to you,” I snapped.

“I’m not, it fuckin’ sucks, sarge,” he sips from his canteen, “but you, Tino, are the sarge. You’re the platoon Sarge, for Christ’s sake. What would the LT think if she saw you moping about?”

I groaned in annoyance.

He snickered, “Shit dude, just ask her for a tug already.”

“What? No! I don’t even know her!” Frankly, this was getting on my nerves. Hopefully, Vince isn’t playing matchmaker this time, he sucks! I haven’t forgiven him for getting that leopard from the 109th on me. God, she was weird. No formality, all vulgarity. Not an ounce of class in that one! Bruno agreed, she hit on him once too, before me. He pulled a knife and threatened her. She said something like, “You cut me and you’ll get put in the pens, and your mama ain’t never gonna see the cash for that bail.”

Bruno went Dracula on her, as Becket put it. I remember it clearly.

“That’s okay, I don’t need to see the price tag.”

God, he’s such an ass, but he’s ours, and not in the homoerotic sense. 

Wallcroft had arrived yesterday, and got into combat within the day, without a sidearm, no less! No other officer had I seen do that once! She’s a fine warrior, she has to be! I’d only had one or two talks with her, but her voice… it was like an angel! Like what my mama told me dad sounds like, and what dad said mama sounds like. 

Like an angel.

“Alright, Sarge,” I snapped out of my trance, to look at a disturbed Wilker, “I’ll just let you jack it in peace, man.”

“I’m not gonna do that, corporal, you’re out of line.” 

He laughed, that dumb laugh any guy in the company did when they thought I was lying

“I think she might pay you a visit, something about needing you for something?” 

Huh?! My heart sped up again, like it did after the shootout yesterday. It's just a girl! Like any other Lieutenant or Captain I’d seen. Only difference was those eyes; those big, sharp sapphires.

Damn it, Tino! You were raised better than this. What would mama think?

“You’re messing with me again, aren’t you?”

“No Sarge, I’m warning you in advance so when she shows up, you ain’t got your cock out. While she might be into forward types, I’ve never met a girl whose interest went up when seeing a stranger jack it to her.”

Oh piss off!

“Out of line, corporal!” I spat, anger beginning to swell. 

He put a hand up defensively, “Welp, I’ll leave you alone, Yank said his radio has been acting up, so he and I are gonna hustle for new batteries,” he said, snorting at my reprimand, before ducking out of the room. I let out a sigh of annoyance and looked around my room.

Our barracks, a small apartment block that lay across from the old deli our officers garrisoned, were reasonable accommodations for our company. The rooms were well-cleaned, and the plumbing still worked. Hell, there wasn’t even any mold!

It was an infantryman's wet dream!

The initial excitement of combat wore thin after the battle proper had ended, and the peacekeeping began. The 75th Infantry Regiment had been put in charge of partisan suppression after the battle, but so far their work had left much to be desired, it was the kind of annoyance that led me to whittle little wood sculptures out of surplus lumber stockpiles, as I found myself doing now. Little carvings of mundane things; clocks, dressers, totems like I’d heard of in Hawaii. The more perverse men in the company sometimes asked for more questionable talismans. Becket once asked for a totem of Lady Charlagne. That is, until her boyfriend heard about it, and proceeded to give him some hell in the form of a drenched uniform. Hank asked for a carving of a wolf once, something about exposure therapy, he still carries it.

It was a nice hobby to have, gave the hands something to do other than tremor like many did post-combat. The way the wood shaves smell, the way wood scrapes away into something new, more refined, its just calming, I guess.

There was difficulty in my hobby with a blade as long as our bayonet, but a quick trip to a postal exchange back in Toledo before we stepped off whisked back my dismay. I flicked out a small pocket knife and began my work. I didn’t have a plan for the result, I just began whittling. I used my foot to scoot a small bin closer to catch the shavings; I’d have to empty it soon. What originally was part of a bedframe support beam slowly was whittled to something new, something particularly thoughtless. Slowly but surely, a muzzle developed, and two pointy ears, patterning to mimic a transition of fur color into a solid-

I’m carving her, aren’t I?

I set the half-finished wolf aside, and crashed face-down into my bed. 

What is wrong with me? I’d never felt this way before. She is my Lieutenant, it’d never work out, she has no reason to want it to, right?

“Sergeant Garcia?” a brindle angel called.

“Oh! Uhh… yes, Lieutenant?” she cocked her head to the side when I looked over at her, then scrambled myself to attention.

“At ease, Tino. Did you get those reports and ammo counts I wanted?” I reached over to a small table by my bed.

“Uhh, Yes Ma’am! Here we are, whole platoon accounted for.” I said, offering the papers. She took them with grace, like a proper officer, but stopped when she saw the carvings that littered the desk in the corner.

“Thank you, Tino. say, where’d you get these?”

“I uhh… I made them?” 

It wasn’t meant to be a question, but sure sounded like it. She giggled in response, a sound that made me run hotter than it should.

“They look nice… may I?” she gestured to the sculptures.

“Go ahead.”

Why did I say that?!

She crossed the room slowly, her boots quietly thumping on the tile floor. She picked one up after the other, seemingly studying the designs.

“Very detailed… you’re quite talented, Tino.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” She only gave a humored exhale through her nose.

“This isn’t an inspection, Tino. Call me Mira,” said… well, Mira.

Even her name is pretty?!

Frankly, I needed to calm down. The way she affected me wasn’t normal, it couldn’t be.

I stood and began to prepare some tea on a burner that was definitely, totally in regulation for me to operate in a barracks room. She noticed, but ignored it, likely in solidarity with the struggles of the Infantry. I searched a small box of fragrant teas, all of which I’d been gifted by Charlagne when he arrived just hours before the battle started here.

“What’s this one of?”

“Huh?” I looked over to see her looking over the newest addition in a somewhat fond manner, as though she already recognized it. 

Right, Tino, play this cool.

“Eh, nothing in particular, just kind of whittled, and that’s what came out.”

“She’s cute, whoever she is. You must look at her a lot?” she asked, inquisitively.

What does one say in this situation?

I began heating the kettle and preparing a cup.

“May I have a cup as well?” she asked, seemingly dropping her previous line of conversation.

“Yes, lieu- …Mira.” 

She giggled a bit, obviously enjoying whatever this was.

“Say, Tino, where are you from?”

“...Bismarck?”

She laughed a bit more, that damn laugh was bothering me way more than it should.

“You could try to be a bit more specific, Sergeant. Everyone is from Bismarck.”

“No, I mean like, the city. The capital city of Bismarck.” 

She snapped her fingers, “Oh! That makes a bit more sense.” I handed her a cup and took a seat at my desk to wait on the kettle, “Makes you wonder why people say ‘Bismarck’ when they mean the State. Kinda confusing, eh?”

“Well, sure.”

A pause set in, surprisingly less uncomfortable than what this had been not one minute prior, before I spoke again, “So… where are you from, Mira?”

She paused and after a moment, stifled a slight grin, before returning to a more professional appearance, “Bismarck!”

I shook my head in slight dismay, “Very funny.” 

She nodded slowly with a smirk, “Yeah, I was born in Philadelphia.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded, “it was a nice place, all things considered. I moved to Bavaria when I joined the army, though.”

I’d always found it crazy that state expansion came so far that a simple change in profession might cause a woman or man to move whole continents. Really comes to show how dominant the anthrostate of Bismarck is nowadays. Subtly, she shifted her weight and fiddled with her hands with what I could only assume to be veiled nervousness.

“Hey Tino? Why do you talk like that?”

“What?”

“You say you’re from the capital, but that’s where Germany used to be. Your accent isn’t German, It’s Italian, right?” she asked, with a genuine speck of curiosity in her eyes.

“Well, I am Italian.”

“But Garcia isn’t an Italian surname.”

I had to give it to her, she had put a bit more thought into it than I would come to expect from somebody; most of the guys just ran with the accent without question. Usually, they didn’t care. 

“My mom wasn’t from Italy, she was from Madrid. My dad was from Venice.” she put down the last statue, crossed the room again, and leaned against a wall near the door, obviously wanting to hear more.

“Those two places are a bit far, eh? No way a man from Venice was assigned to a Spaniard. Say, what is your mom, anyway?” 

“Mama was a rabbit. She was a petty officer in the Navy, my grandma, too.”

“So how’d they meet?”

“Well…” I grinned, thinking about how passionate that little grey rabbit would get when recounting the tale herself, “her ship, a destroyer, was at port. He was working a fish stand with his mom-”

“What was she?” I shot her a glance for interrupting, “Apologies, Tino.”

I can’t even feel the slightest bit disrespected.

“She was a leopard,” I looked away and pulled out a chair to my side which I planned to offer. When I turned back, I found that she’d seated herself on my bed instead. I pushed the chair back into the desk awkwardly before continuing, “When my ma met him, she just had to have him. They spent all two weeks of her leave together, and Ma smuggled him back to Madrid.”

“Really?!” she snorted.

“Yeah! Oh man, his ma was furious, tried to put an inspector on Mama.”

she shifted straighter, her gaze bit at me intently

I continued, “So the inspector shows up, right? And you wouldn’t believe it, the ship crew threw her overboard in port!” 

She snapped up to her feet in recognition, “Wait, that was your dad?!”

She knows?

“Yeah, it was. How’d you know?”

She gives another hearty laugh and with the biggest grin I’d ever seen, almost shouts her reply.

“It was all over the news, the army still talks about it. That was like, what, twenty years ago now? My mom used to tell me about it when I was a pup! She’d be all, ‘Now don’t you be throwing inspectors out of your trench over a humie.’”

Interesting…

“Yeah, so the inspector didn’t work, so his family moved to Madrid when my mama got pregnant with my older sister. They didn’t want my dad failing to raise a proper Italian. The accent comes from his family, basically.” I paused, and looked back into her eyes. My gaze tended to move about when I rambled, something my squad reminded me of whenever they felt like calling me ‘Casanova’. “So, your mom was army?”

She only nodded, before sitting back down, my sheets had already formed to her. She wasn’t particularly large or anything, these beds just weren’t made to withstand the overall heavier anthros.

“How long was she in for?” I asked. 

She chuckled in response, toying with her hair, “Until she met dad, so like, eight years.”

That reminds me,

“You’re on three, right?”

She nodded, “Yep, four in August.”

“What class were you at O.C.S?”

She shook her head and clicked her tongue, “Never went. I enlisted when the Florida expedition kicked off. It was my time to defeat the stag menace, and save the poor enslaved humies of the new world.” 

Her words were dripping with sarcasm. Obviously, any love for the state went out a long time ago.

Wait-

“You made Lieutenant in three years? That’s really impressive!” I nearly yelled. She crossed one leg over the other, her uniform shifting in a way that accentuated her build, and I nervously averted my eyes having realized my excitement was a bit inappropriate.

“Goes to show how much the army fumbled the early months of that campaign.” she mumbled, “My company took 500% casualties in the first year.”

FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT?!

“Shit, Lieutenant… I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Mira-” she started.

“Lieutenant.”

She cocked her brow at me, before huffing and letting her head fall onto my sheets, “Our battalion commander was an old-blood traditionalist, a collie with a fondness for battalion-wide bayonet charges and a desire to get her full bird.” she leaned back on the bed and sighed softly, “She got that bird, too. It got her killed by a sniper two weeks later because she pinned it to her helmet cover.”

“I’m so-”

“Don’t be,” she snapped, before reserving herself, “She was a bitch, and got a lot of good women killed. She did worse to men from her camp.” she sighed once more, “You’d have thought she was an inspector.” 

“...Jesus.” I looked down, really just trying to keep my eyes off her, “that's some pretty heavy stuff to lead with, ma'am.”

An uncomfortable pause set in as she stared at me blankly. I'd seen similar stares out of a private from third squad after the siege.

Mira patted her lap awkwardly, and nodded to herself in agreement to no topic. For about ten minutes we sat in this uncomfortable silence before the whistle of my kettle gave me an out.

“Welp! Waters ready, you like chamomile?”

“...I do,” she replied in a cold manner. Clearly, this woman was lost.

I fixed two cups, just as Bruno had taught me the day he arrived, and passed the servings.

“Thank you, Tino. It smells…” she took a quick whiff, realizing she'd be a liar if she commented first, “...delicious.” I took a small sip to test her hypothesis, and found a delightful sweetness coating my palate. I gotta give it to Bruno, that Kraut has good taste.

She followed suit, taking a dainty little sip. She paused, closed her eyes, and with a smile gently slipped in a deep breath. 

“...Delightful.” she softly hummed. Her breaths came in controlled raises and gentle falls of her chest, and her eyes, when opened, seemed to sparkle with the faintest joy. Watching her, I felt my pulse rise, but frankly, I couldn't care less. After a moment, despite likely catching my stares, she softly whispered, “Think I may have to come by for tea as a habit.”

“...I'd like that.”

“Hmm?” she hummed, with a raised brow over the horizon of her cups rim.

“Nothing!” I flinched, “...I mean, nothing, Lieu-”

“Mira-”

“Piss off, LT.”

She giggled, and returned to the cup of ecstasy we talked over. Slow, soft sips followed by delighted sighs were all I got from her before I decided to keep the conversation going.

“So, if you don't seem to care about the army's goals or whatever, why are you still in?” I asked. She licked her chops, took a deep breath, and-

“Can we keep this between us, Sergeant?”

Do I have an in? Bless me, mama.

“Of course, Mira.”

She fiddled with her hair nervously, a hint of hesitation as she initially failed to get the words out.

“I know you guys aren't… Y’know, big on assignment. I just uhh…”

Oh…

“I get it, Mira. Assignment priority.”

She looked away, likely expecting moral condemnation. 

“Look, I'm not even here for the immunity. I just wanna keep up the family legacy. Honestly, I'm just surprised you don't got a guy already.”

She gave a weak laugh, and looked at me again, “You flatter me, Tino.” She briefly paused, weighing her words, “I… I think that tea habit may be better than I thought.”

Did I just score?!

She set her empty cup down on a small bedside table, and I stood. The bed was well formed to her rear, but I could look at that later. I knew Mama would be cursing me if I paid it more mind in her presence. She slowly rose to her feet, and gave my reports a quick once-over. With a quick nod, she approached the door, “I need to get these to Captain Willow, thank you for the tea.”

“I uhh… yeah! Thank you for the time, lieu- Mira!” 

Damn it, Tino, you’re fumbling!

She smiled, her gaze brushing again across the sculpture desk, and slowly backed away further, “Oh, and Sergeant?”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“You… you have nice handwriting.”

Frankly, for such a tame compliment, I found it intensively adorable.

“Also, I think you should get Vargas in line, he talks too much.”

That son of a bitch!

As she left and closed the door, I slumped into my seat and took another sip of the tea. My gaze, still avoiding the form imprinted on my bed, swept my wood collection, and I couldn’t keep a smirk down when I found one unaccounted for.

Chapter Text

The company infirmary was nice and calm today, I’d managed to get a break from the captain, bless her soul, and her repeated attempts to make me like wolves. I didn’t hate wolves, despite her beliefs about me, but I had my reasons to. A great reason for why I could would be the incessant flirting of the wolf I currently attempted to pull a bullet out of, and who I’d already had to treat thrice. 

“Next time, watch out for ricochets, ma’am.” I lowly muttered. It earned another giggle out of her, something she’d been doing after everything I said. It wasn’t much of a bleeder, just a hit to the ankle by a pistol caliber. The boot she wore took more damage than her foot, to be honest.

“Mhm, sure thing, cutie~” she cooed. I grew tired of her words pretty soon after she came in, but at least her voice was nice.

“And next time, make sure your unit doesn’t force whiskey down your throat when you take a hit.”

She took mild offense to this. “Oh, come on, you know we got a morphine shortage! I mean, who in the army doesn’t right now?”

“Good point, I suppose. Counter-point, if you can walk and are expected to fight, how will you shoot drunk?”

She gave a toothy grin and reached for my shoulder, “Better than I shoot sober.”

I had to give her some kind of response, but didn’t want her to think she was too funny, so I settled on a short exhale of mild amusement… I then swatted her grubby mitt away from my shoulder.

“Do I need to get the water bottle?” I asked, only partially joking. Captain Willow had actually gifted me a spray bottle, which I believe was stolen, and was ordered to, and I quote, ‘spray a bitch’ if she got handsy. I’d used it a few times, to differing effect. I treated the famous shark girl from the 109th, and when I used the bottle, she moaned at me. I swear, if I spray this one, she might try to bite the water stream.

That would be pretty funny, honestly.

I reached over to a nearby table and moved the spray bottle closer to my work. I worked a small pair of forceps into her flesh and found some purchase on the bullet, which I gently tugged on. She seized up, sucking air in and whining.

“Hey, humie?” she asked, voice a whimper. I hummed in affirmation. “This isn’t a flirt but… could you… could you hold my paw?” 

I moved one hand to cradle her foot rather than her ankle, but she wasn’t amused, “No, I mean my hand, doc.”

I took a brief glance at the spray bottle, which had a crude pen drawing of Willow with wildly exaggerated proportions. That woman could draw pretty well, I give her that. 

I sighed. “How am I supposed to use my forceps and hold your leg still one-handed?” I argued.

“Oh, come on, Hank, you know I’d try for you!” she exclaimed, putting on a show with puppy dog eyes and fluttering lashes.

“You’d try to have sex with me.”

She huffed and crossed her arms. “Oh, am I just some skank to yo-”

“No argument here, Ashe.”

She growled, but when I jittered my forceps, it died into a whimper. “Ah~ h-hey!”

Oh god, is she enjoying this?

“Ashe?”

“Y-yes, Hank?” she whined, obviously embarrassed.

“Do that again, and I leave the bullet in.”

She nodded fervently, not trying to hide the blush on her face.

“Oh, Hankie~,” said a deeper, somehow more flirty voice behind me.

Please, god no.

“Captain W-Willow?” I stammered. In all truth, there is a massive difference in holding your ground against a wolf when they’re injured and you happen to be treating them rather than doing the same against a perfectly healthy… well, ‘healthy’ wolf standing behind you.

“Have you seen Wallcroft or Kennedy?” she asked. I kept my eyes on my work in one of the few opportunities my work presented me to regard a superior with my voice but not my eyes.

“I b-believe Kennedy i-is in her bunk, b-b-but Wallcroft? I have n-no clue, ma’am.” 

Sometimes, I’d have to keep tears at bay when speaking to Edith Willow, something that the smaller wolf I was treating seemed to notice. She cocked an eyebrow up, her grin died, and she went to rest a paw on my arm but stopped upon realizing I was out of reach.

“Well,” began Willow, her optimistic tone dying in the face of a more saddened persuasion, “if you see Wallcroft, send her to Kennedy’s bunk, okay?”

“Y-yes, captain!” a shudder from my patient brought attention to my shaking hands. I sucked in a deep breath and turned to the idol I requested from Garcia weeks ago. I’d given him a picture of… her for study. His work was very, very accurate.

She looked just like when I was a boy. The sharpness of her snout, the ever-cold glare of her dead eyes captured in mahogany, the teeth that gnashed father to heaven. Luckily, it was a bust, so I never had to see the paws that beat me when she drank, and that likely beat Paisley in my absence.

I’ll get you out, sis… I swear.

My hands shook violently, my breath ran shallow and quick through my chest. My left leg battered against the leg of the cot my patient laid on.

The first she’d broken. Still shakes like it tried to when she’d done it, too.

As I stared into the dead eyes of my mother, I slowly felt numb to it, my hands fell still, as did my leg, and my breath smoothed in a single soft exhale.

“Hank? Are you okay?” whined Ashe, to whom I’d told nothing of my life.

I’d grown tired of her, my patience for her kind bottoming out in a kind of flat disdain. 

No longer bothering with theatrics, I slipped the forceps back into her wound, ignored any kind of discomfort I caused on the way, and pulled the bullet out with relative ease. She moved a small grease can from the ground, toward my hand, and I dropped the slug into it with a soft clink.

At least she’s mildly useful. 

“Try to stay off it, I’ll dress it, but you need to replace it daily,” I instructed, reaching for a wound dressing. I wrapped the bandage around her ankle, and she made no noise. I glanced up to look her in the eye, and she looked back in general discomfort. She didn’t scare me, didn’t look like mother, too black. 

“...Get out of my hospital,” I commanded. She looked at the wound, freshly dressed, and particularly stared at my hands as I set her foot down. The discomfort was gone, although she looked rather conflicted. Canine patients tended to think I was insane, the way I’d have to look at the idol before working on them, but they knew not to disrespect my work. Either they were in the midst of bleeding out, and couldn’t disrespect me, or knew I could ‘accidentally’ make their wound far worse than it was. It was an empowering feeling, knowing that they were at my mercy and that they had to respect it, but they always knew how to at least partially ruin it for me. For example-

“I think I love you.”

I quickly sprayed her in the face with the bottle after a light slap on the ankle. She let slip a tear, stumbled to her feet, and in a display of anger, slapped me with her tail before limping out of the small room to get a replacement boot. I smirked at her suffering, enjoying the little details, the way her tail twitched as agony shot up her right leg, the way I heard her whimper in pain. It was… delightful.

Just like momma used to make ‘em!

Now pulling my attention away from my love of causing Ashe mild discomfort, I turned to an orange cat who I’d been attending to for the better half of a week now.

“Holding up well, Prim?” I asked, cleaning a small bit of blood from my hands.

she turned to me with those strange green eyes and purred.

“Now I am! I was wondering when you’d give little old me some loving~,” she cooed, in an overtly sensual tone. Ashe’s flirtation, as of recent visits, was more akin to a running joke between friends. Not that I wanted anything to do with her, but anthros, especially in the army tended to lack basic self-awareness. Primrose, however, I couldn’t get a read on.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, I don’t date patients.”

She shook her head and clicked her tongue, making sure I saw the barbed surface. “Oh Hank, how you misunderstand~. I wouldn’t date you like I am now, I can’t work these hips on you ‘til my leg is fixed.”

I grinned in slight amusement. “Is sex all you anthros think about?”

She grinned in immense satisfaction. “All I think about is you, lately~.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit, she was good, I had to admit that.

Prim was an army post officer who’d been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. A holdout from the N.M.N.A, the New Michigan National Army, who we’d been sent here to kill, decided to go overt when he sprayed half a magazine from an mp5 into her hips at about 100 meters. By some miracle, however, he missed the major arteries, and the box of letters she’d been carrying stopped the rounds enough to prevent any lethal internal damage. Her organs were fine, but multiple bone fractures in her hips and legs left her temporarily immobile. I still remember the joy in her eyes when I informed her of the continued existence of her reproductive organs. She’d been incredibly forward with her feelings as I treated her, and I couldn’t quite tell if it was a joke like I once thought it was with Ashe. 

“Well, Prim, you won’t have to think of me much longer.”

Her eyes formed a look of confusion as her grin subsided. “Why’s that?”

“I believe my company is stepping off tomorrow or the next,” I remarked, wiping water from my well-cleaned hands

Dissatisfaction crept into her eyes. She stretched out on the medical cot and threw her blankets aside. “Thinking you can get away from me?” she said with a huff.

“Orders are orders, someone has to make the big play, and I gotta patch them when they get lit up.”

She smirked at this answer. “So… you’d rather be patching up your own boys rather than the sexy pussy cat who wants you~?” she flirted, pushing out her modest chest.

“The bottle still exists, you know,” I mumbled. Moving closer, she laughed a bit. The laugh died as I began inspecting her legs. She was a very cooperative patient, and did everything I asked of her. I’m fairly certain she wants me to ask more. She tried to raise a leg, but I stopped her with a disapproving glare. As I gently inspected her cast for any problems, she grumbled in annoyance. Obviously, she wished the cast wasn’t in the way. Alas, her femur had been shattered, and we needed those bones re-aligned. She would never walk the same, but I’d never tell her that, it’d hurt one of us far too much. 

“I think you should check my other leg, too. My thigh has been awfully sore as of late~”

“Asking me to grope you again?"

“Always~” she purred.

Her cast was fine, and I moved the bottle closer. She giggled at this display; of course, I’d never use the bottle on her. I felt a paw creep to my legs as I prepared to check her morphine levels. Her paws were soft, not that I could tell under the cotton legs of my trousers, especially not the wool on my arms.

“I wish you’d hold me, humie. It’d sure make me feel better~” she teased. 

“Can’t date patients, Prim.”

“Then fix me so we can fuck already!” she exclaimed. Half of the personnel currently in attendance laughed, many were in the infantry of the same regiment as Prim. Some whooped or exclaimed “Get some!”, some shot bedroom eyes at me, as though they’d have better chances at wooing me. They wouldn’t, I was honestly more of a cat person myself.

“Now you got everyone watching, Prim.”

“Aw, don't like an audience, doctor?” she jested.

“Can't say I do…” I muttered, reading the small monitor at her bedside. The paw on my leg crept up, slow teasing pokes of her claws on the fabric making her intentions known.

“Hank~?”

“Prim?”

“...Shut the curtain behind you there, you deserve something~” she requested with heavy, half-lidded eyes.

“You know I can't do that. Doctors don't do that, it's a conflict of interest.” I said in a stern tone.

Her response was quick. She waved a paw at someone behind me, and the curtain swung shut. It was probably another patient, I'd lecture them later.

“Now c'mere and get some~” she lustfully slurred, opening her arms at me.

“Prim. I can't.” 

“Hank. I don't care. Just stick it down my throat.” she said, opening her maw in invitation.

“Prim, I am currently on duty. If I do this, I’ll be discharged, assigned, my college tuition reimbursement will be revoked, and my sister won’t get out.”

“And I will be discharged back to Bismarck to accept your assignment. Your sister can move in with us if that sweetens the deal,” she replied instantly.

“That guarantee only applies if you wind up pregnant in the field.”

“Then hurry up and make it happen, Hank~”

“Prim, this is hardly professional, an-”

“Benelli, you in there?” called my new Lieutenant.

Wait, how much of this did she hear?

I quickly gestured for Prim to shut up and opened the curtain to meet the acquaintance of the wolf.

“Have you seen Captain Willow?”

“Y-yes, Lieutenant. S-she w-went to K-k-k-k”

“Your words, Benelli.” she softly said, words offering mild comfort. At least she was more professional than the other wolf in the company.

I took a deep breath, and she seemed concerned. “Kennedy’s room. She’s there, Lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Wallcroft only nodded, peering past me to the cat in her off-white sheets. I turned to look back, but Wallcroft cleared her throat, and pulled me aside.

“She bothering you, Benelli?” she whispered.

“N-no, Lieutenant.”

She clicked her tongue, and leaned forward a bit, “I heard a bit of the conversation, Hank. I’m glad to have someone with a bit of professionalism like you keeping us alive,” she praised.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Looking at her hands, I noticed she had files in her left, and a small sculpture cradled in her right.

“I take it Sergeant Garcia gave you a welcoming gift?”

“No, I sorta snatched it. Looks nice, though,” she remarked, looking it over before her eyes drifted to the idol on the table. “He told me you had one, too. What’s her story?”

Should I even tell her?

This was a hole I doubt the girl could see coming, nor would it be one she’d enjoy. 

“T-that’s my mother.”

She smiled slightly, her sharp eyes softening a bit. “That’s sweet, Corpsman. I bet she must be important to you.”

In a macabre way, I suppose she’s correct.

“What was she like?” she questioned.

I needed a way out of this line of conversation. I didn’t really want to talk about mother to her, not now at least. I looked about, wondering how I could weasel my way out, and then-

“She beat him, Lieutenant,” Prim groaned. I’d have to deal with her later.

Lieutenant Wallcroft was taken aback. “That true, Hank?”

My silence spoke louder than any word.

“Apologies, I’ll be on my way, then.”

She quickly removed herself after glancing at the idol once more.

I could feel a wave of anger filling the pit in my stomach. My fists balled tightly, a warmth spread through me as my nails dug deep into my palms.

“...Prim.” I spat, rage seeping off my tongue like dribble.

“Hank, I-”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” 

I flicked the curtain back shut, I wouldn’t check on her again for the day, and wouldn’t replenish her painkillers either, she’d earned that much from me. The other patients averted their eyes, except for a certain fox who’d been staring in wonder the whole time. My rage dispensed in her direction as a flurry of profanities and slurs ran from my mouth. The others shifted in discomfort, including the other doctor, a lamb. The fox didn’t mind, though. A concussive blast had rendered her deaf, so her pretty orange ears couldn’t hear a word I was saying. She made a great emotional punching bag, honestly. Besides the ears, she wasn’t really wounded, but she couldn’t perform tasks without ears, so in one of my cots, she stayed.

Better her than Ashe, I’d reckon.

One thing she could do, and always tended to do when I was enraged, was stand as she did now, quickly walk over to me, and wrap me in an admittedly very comfortable hug. She’d apparently always been a fuzzy ball of sunshine, according to her platoon mates. She ran a warm paw through my hair and slurred out abhorrently broken English.

“Issh okay, Doc!” she exclaimed, not knowing her own volume.

“Any news on her, Zoe?”

The lamb, who’d been cowering in a corner until now, looked at me.

“She should be able to recover most of her hearing with surgery, I have a truck picking her and Primrose up to be sent home within the week.”

I could feel my anger subsiding, likely due to the vixen massaging my scalp and back. She was a sweet thing, I could see why Bruno would adore Leeda if all were like Hazel here.

As my anger subsided, I slumped into Hazel's cot along with her as my day’s actions dawned on me. I’d smacked one patient's wound, enjoying myself along the way, and accosted a disabled woman on purpose. I stared towards the idol, whose back faced me in disgust.

Dear god…

I’m just like her.

Chapter Text

Sniping is freedom, and sniping is hard work. It is the lord’s work.

The right to kill without anthro permission, the power to persecute my own will upon the enemy. My lord in heaven has granted me this right, for I am his chosen. These lands, like the badlands that once were Belgium west of the Great Wall, are unclean and impure. Even such lowly breeds as anthros, who subjugate God’s chosen people as breed stock, know this to be true. In my tower, I need not deal with any of this filth, other than those I remove. The song and dance of marksmanship is a detached affair. Other men, more hot-blooded than I, like Becket, may prefer the bayonet or machine gun to the precision of my Kar98, but they are them, and I am not.

I remember my days in the orphanage, watching the birds through the stolen lens of a proctor’s personal binoculars. Blue feathers, red feathers, blue jackets, red blood. It was all the same in the end. My hands, steadied through my years of formative punishments at the hands of the orphanage teacher, were professional and deadly. After all, the carrier of Christ couldn’t be cursed with shaken hands, could he?

Between the ruler that bloodied my hands and the lens that scoured the birds, I would pray. My prayers were private, of course. I never understood churches. One’s love for the lord should be deep and personal, not that Bismarck congregational anthrodox bullshit that the lamb pope peddles. She is a heretic and should be lashed to a cross, much like the rest of her false papacy.

Here in Michigan, my prayer is delightful, I can combine it with my hobbies! My scope watches the movement of birds, which indicates the location of godless heathens to shoot, and I punish them in the name of Jesus Christ! The way their dirty blood spills, the way they scream for their furbag idols to save them, it's beautiful, cathartic even.

My scope, as of now, watches a small city block. It's run down, likely some kind of slum, but the volume of anthro males to shoot is high.

I’m on twelve so far today.

I, Anon Rackham Juda Mous, am the platoon’s designated marksman, more of a true sniper, in my humble opinion. I graduated basic training and infantry school with the highest range scores of any man in the company, and it shows. My spotter lays on a sandbag stack behind me, likely taking a nap, but I hardly need him for such amateur rifle work as this. The smell of coffee wafts through the little bell tower we were situated in. Neither of us drank much coffee, but the scent calmed him, something about his previous work as a barista in the capital. If only I had some cheese to accompany my work; it was truly something I missed about my previous employment at the vineyard. This delightful fennec girl I’d grown to quite appreciate would bring me charcuterie boards around lunchtime on Saturdays, and she’d have come on Sunday, but I always refused to work the sabbath. She’d even ask me to pray with her.

I recall a similar scenario: a young anthro boy, some kind of calico, came to our camp to bring wine and song. Initially, he was ignored by our captain, but I reminded Willow we had orders and volunteered to take the boy out back. She was disgusted, frankly, but I cared little. She was a homosexual, and would be damned to hell. The boy didn’t even cry, he didn’t know. I buried him in a shallow, unmarked grave somewhere south of here. I would have used the communal body pile Kennedy had started, but it stank something horrendous, and frankly, I couldn’t be bothered. At least it was a cat. With a neck so fragile, I didn’t even have to waste ammo!

It’s delightful when your work is your hobby.

I kept the wine, obviously. It is the blood of Christ, after all. Some of the other men, including my spotter, began calling me Jack. Something about a pirate, I guess? I had acquired an array of names. Things like cleric, bishop, pope, sinner, holy dickhead (bless me, lord), and “soapbox” by that inbred weasel Johnny Reb.

“You’re doing that face, Jack.”

Oh great, his nap is over.

“Whatever could you speak of, Sheridan?” I spat.

“The one that makes me think you’s be hating on some marginalized group again.”

“Are filthy heretics to be treated as marginalized groups?”

He chuckled, the slimy chuckle of a Frenchman, “Well, I suppose, non?”  

Corporal Sheridan had a tendency to slip into French sometimes, but due to spending time with Becket and… Vargas, he had the vernacular of some low-income yeen mudpaw. Even thinking of those two whores was enough to make a respectable man gag, unless you were the aristocrat. He’d be far more respectable if he followed the path of Christ, but he was at least nice enough to turn down my offerings of religious study with his own citations.

“Hey, Mous? I don’t think the human interpretation of Jesus Christ hated homosexuals; that just seems to be a trait of the anthrodox Jessie Christ. This passage reads more like a rejection of pedophiles.”

“Charlagne, my friend, Leviticus 18;22 specifically says that homosexuals are to be put to death.” 

“Yeah, but Leviticus is full of shit, and applied to the Israelites, not us. If I find you trying to kill Willow, you’ll meet the lord, Mous.”

“...I will study further into this interpretation, sir Charlagne.”

His argument was at least somewhat contextually informed and rather persuasive, what with the machine gun he leveled off at me as an accent. Ah, Baudelaire, such good taste in literature you have, reading the King James version instead of that modernized anthro-wretch fiction book about Jessie Christ burning for the state.

The lord was Jesus, damn it! (forgive me, lord)

“Can they be called a minority when they surround us?” I proposed.

“What, lesbians?”

“No! Heretics, you mutt!”

His laugh was hearty, and a small grin crept up on my lips.

“Well, I suppose not, uh?” he said with a grin. “Everyone is a ‘godless heathen’ to you, monsieur, even other Christians.”

“DuPont is not a heathen.” 

Sheridan grinned and set up on my left with his spotting scope before speaking. “The Mormons would disagree with you, Jack.”

“The Mormons are full of shit. You know why the anthros let humanity keep that denomination?”

He pondered for a moment but came up empty. 

“Non”

“Because even the shagwalkers know that mormons are heretics, ‘Mark of cain’ my ass!”

“Ah, do I detect a hint of Liberalism in that, mon ami?”

“It is not a teaching of Christ to despise man for dark skin. They can be saved just as you and I, so long as they place their fai-”

“Their faith in our saviuh, Christ, to save us. Yeah, yeah, don’t rant around me, Soapbox,” said the inbred mongrel, making his presence known.

“What is up, Johnny Rebelle?” Sheridan greeted. 

“I was sent, so graciousleh, to receive the lawwwd's benediction!” Johnny extravagantly claimed.

“I knew not you were a man of god, Reb,” I said, almost impressed.

“I’m not. The new girl needs your shooter report from yesterday.”

I glanced at my spotter, knowing well he hadn’t written it. In response, he scurried to a nearby typewriter he dragged up here to crank something out.

“Today’s as well, mon ami?” asked Sheridan, amusement in his voice.

Johnny tapped the toe of his boot on a wall, shaking some debris off, before giving a grin admirable only to those of lunacy.

“Oui, mi amigo!”

“That is Spanish, heathen,” I groaned. He chuckled quietly and took a seat to my right.

“It’s supposed to rain soon. Need a barrel cover?” said Johnny.

“Barrel cover? For what purpose?” 

No mention of a barrel cover was in the manuals or training for a Sturmov sharpshooter.

“Lieutenant says that the metal gets shiny when wet, so you should wrap a cloth sleeve across your barrel and scope and tie it down with blousing bands or… something,” mumbled Johnny. The abrasive rattle of the typewriter struck through the small room, managing to drown out the slowly quickening patter of raindrops against the camo netting placed over the windows. Sheridan and Reb prattled on in conversation about their life before service. Apparently, Sheridan got assigned to some inspector but found out she’d mauled her previous assigned husband to death after a drunken shouting match, so he signed on the day before he’d visit the marital office and managed to qualify for spotter school with no preparation. He planned to marry his high school sweetheart when he got home, some black cat named Selena, who worked as an English composition teacher in Bismarck. Johnny had no interest in anthro women. Instead, he wanted to marry a human girl out west. He hoped that the Florida refugee crisis might allow women back into Bismarck. It seemed plausible, honestly. He was surprisingly smart, for an inbred hick.

The conversation quieted down somewhat, the rain had picked up, bathing the street I watched in a thin haze. A squad of anthros entered the street below about 180 meters from my position, if not taking elevation into account, and began going door-to-door searching for partisans. They numbered less than the standard squad size of eleven, closer to seven, and they moved along the right side of the road in a single file line while sweeping their muzzles cautiously over every window they passed. One woman, who I recognized at her position as second to last in file, looked at my tower and waved. She was a wolf that would incessantly disturb the good Doctor Benelli via her love for getting wound badges, as well as her flirting. Benelli didn't like wolves too much, and frankly, I agreed. They are a savage breed of uncouth bitches, in the literal sense, who have no sense of independence.

I adjusted the magnification of my scope to get a closer look and to study the individual women. They packed no sustainment gear, only one canteen each, and carried no bandoliers of extra ammunition. They shouldn't need it, they'd be searching two blocks and reporting back to their commander. The rosary hung from my scope jingled faintly, like an understaffed keyring. It was the same scope I, as well as any sharpshooter in the army, had trained on.

When the files came out and the army swelled, the ability of Bismarck's industry to supply weapons was found to be inadequate. Old stock of pre-state human weapons would be pulled from storage and rechambered to fill the gaps. This became most appallingly apparent with precision rifles and sidearms. Bismarck had an adopted precision rifle, the m62a7, an adapted and modernized variant of the older m40 platform, and every sharpshooter that ran through the schooling to use these weapons was trained with this weapon. However, during my time in theater, which had totalled about four months, I hadn't seen a single instance of this rifle. Every man or woman with a bolt-action or semi-automatic basically used a rifle whose age was almost always over one hundred. Mosin-Nagants, MAS-36s, M1903s, M1Cs, SVD, MK14, SMLE NO.4, Kar98k, M110s and m40s were the best you'd see, all chambered in 7.62x51mm. I was among the lucky ones whose rifle wasn't a refurbished original from the 1940s, but instead was a mid-2000s civilian reproduction that had been procured and reinstated by the government. Judging by a small scratched up stamp on the receiver, my rifle had previously been used by an ATF sharpshooter. No matter what rifle you had, you always had the same optic, a 3-7x adjustable magnification scope made by Burton Precision Works. With minor modification, this scope could fit on practically any mount produced since the 1890s. My rifle was a blessing, I’d heard horror stories from the first platoon marksman about getting mags for an SVD in 7.62x51mm; he had to order civilian purchase magazines through a friend from high school because the state ATF would investigate him otherwise. He told the girl he’d take her to dinner for the trouble when he got back. 

At first, the squad below worked tightly, proving highly disciplined, but as a number of M7 Shay infantry fighting vehicles passed, they loosened up and moved forward in a loose bunch at a casual pace. The squad leader, an orange cat, gestured to a husky and tabby girl to take a nearby house. The tabby seemed to be some kind of black and silver mau whose giddy nature was evident by the way her lithe form happily bounced over toward the door. I scanned the streets as she knocked on the front door, and the two men behind me talked about rumors that the leader of first squad was courting the Lieutenant. I cared little; there were heathens to shoot, but at least the typewriter ceased its incessant noise. When nobody answered the door, the husky must’ve lost patience. I know this because when I hovered my lens back to said door, it was off its hinges, and the cat kneeled awkwardly outside with no husky in sight. A few moments later, a human couple was dragged outside by their arms and set down by the steps with a shove. The husky then pulled out a can and spray-painted a large red ‘x’ next to the doorframe to indicate a searched house. The cat offered water and an almond joy for the trouble, which the residents begrudgingly took. The woman in the couple stood and walked over to the squad leader. Reflexively, I took aim on a button on her blouse and hovered my finger over the trigger, but the woman struck up a conversation instead. 

The next house was taken by a lioness who carried a backpack radio and a shepherd dog of some kind. The dog was too soft-looking to be a German shepherd and looked kind of like a retriever. Some kind of mix, maybe? The pair moved over to the next house, laughing amongst themselves when the big cat briefly got her foot stuck in a pothole in the sidewalk. Their laughing halted, and mine began when the dog tripped over an even larger pothole. She fell flat on her face, and a pit bull in the squad instantly took a knee and barked out what must’ve been a contact claim. The others followed in taking a knee, and one woman, the husky, fired two shots into the house before the orange cat realized what happened. She hissed a ceasefire order that even I could hear, and the other two men had set up on either side of me. Sheridan manned his spotting scope, and Johnny mounted his rifle on the ledge, aiming at a random house on the street.

“What do we got, Bishop?” Sheridan asked, shifting his scope over the tripod it rested on.

“A girl tripped, they thought they were getting shot at.”

“Were they?”

“Nope.”

When everything settled down, the front door of the second house opened slowly, and an anthro woman, a lynx, stepped out with her human partner. The husky immediately opened fire again but missed her entire burst despite being within twenty meters. The pair hurried back inside, and the orange cat quickly smacked the husky on the head, angrily reprimanding her as the human woman became more and more aggressive. The pit bull moved to the third house, climbing a small set of stairs to a porch, but paused presumably to wait for a partner to search with. The wolf began making her way over as the argument went on. I watched as the feline attempted to soothe the human while escorting her to the house.

*ZIP*

*CRACK*

The cat hit the pavement dead, a round blowing through her back and out her stomach. The human screamed and ran to her husband, but the husky and lioness flipped around to dump burst after burst of automatic fire into the pair, killing the woman instantly and tearing the man’s legs asunder. The woman toppled forward, her legs crossing and tumbling above her head as the pavement snapped her neck on impact, and her husband fell on his side, smashing his face on a mailbox on the way down. The squad took cover and began shouting between themselves. The lioness must’ve realized that the human was unarmed, and the husky raised a paw to nervously shift her helmet in horror before-

*ZIP*

*CRACK*

A second round ripped through her shoulder, she fell to the ground behind an overturned garbage can. The pit bull barked something, raising her rifle in the direction of a crosswalk about 250 meters away from me, but before she could fire, a cascade of ammunition ripped through the door she knelt in front of, incapacitating her instantly. She tumbled down the porch steps, rolling onto her back before writhing in agony.

A full-blown firefight erupted with the third house as the sniper repeatedly missed shots on the wolf, who had remained untouched by the porch ambush. She sat screaming in terror by a lawn chair and small table, which provided more emotional security than actual cover.

“Can you see him?!” shouted Johnny.

“No, but I know where he lives,” Sheridan replied. “Crosswalk, left side house, the red one with the boarded window, 260 meters, sports jersey.”

“The heathen with the binoculars?”

“No, that is his spotter, mon ami. Shooter is the window to his right.”

I shifted my reticle as instructed and saw the culprit: a young man with an AR-style rifle. He had a brown bandana on his head that was draped to cover his left eye for no reason I could understand. I adjusted my aim for distance, which wasn’t much for this rifle, mumbled an excerpt of Psalms 2:8, and centered my aim on his exposed head. Gently, I squeezed the trigger and-

*BANG*

My round swam through the air and impacted in his eye; his head whipped back, and his weapon fell from his hands. Without further instruction, I swiftly recentered my reticle on the binoculars, cycled the bolt, and-

*BANG*

The left lens of the binocular shattered, and the man stood still for a brief moment before collapsing against the shattered window.

“Good fire discipline, enemy suppressed.”

“Through Christ, my lord, amen.”

By the time they were dealt with, the squad had repositioned to the side of the third house, the wolf laid prone on the porch, unaware the sniper had received an invitation from Lucifer, and crawled to the other side of the porch to put surprisingly accurate fire on the sniper’s previous position. It was a waste, of course, but we didn’t have comms with this unit; they couldn’t possibly know. Beside the house, the squad knelt below a window. The lioness spoke calmly into her radio, and the tabby backed up just in time to suppress a man who approached the window with a sidearm. He backed up before returning with a hand grenade, tossing it toward her. Skillfully, she dropped her rifle, caught the ball, and quickly whipped it back into the window. A cloud of debris erupted from the gap immediately, and she followed the first grenade with a second of her own before picking her rifle back up and wiping a small amount of dead grass from the action. A black cat, who I never noted, cupped her paws on her knee and boosted the tabby into the window as the wounded husky hobbled to them. The black cat herself was boosted by the shepherd, and the gunfire within the house intensified before coming to an abrupt halt. I almost believed the skirmish was over when the front door flew open as the tabby was choke slammed through by a massive anthro bull. He quickly began to slam her on the ground by her throat in repetition as she scrambled for air and leverage. A kick to his face only earned her a broken leg when he snapped it like little more than kindling. The wolf on the porch witnessed the scene as she raised her muzzle to shoot but found her weapon empty. Her bayonet was previously affixed, so she decided a charge was a reasonable course of action. The blade slipped into his side, and he flinched before batting her away with his forearm. She fell over the lawn chair as he pulled the entire rifle from his side and dropped it effortlessly. As soon as she was on her feet, he was upon her, pummeling her with blow upon blow. She stumbled around, failing to put up even the slightest defense before he grasped her throat and lifted her. His back turned, I had my perfect shot.

*BANG*

Make that thirteen, now.

The round impacted the small of his back but also penetrated into her hip. He hit the ground like a sack of bricks as his shattered spine rendered him paralyzed. She crawled to her rifle, loaded a new magazine, and put one into his head for assurance before laying against the wall to pull security. Soon after, a whole platoon, backed by a Shay, rolled into the neighborhood to take over. They pulled a dead black cat out of the house, loaded the tabby and husky into an ambulance, and upon finding the sniper dead, the survivors applauded the wounded wolf. Of the eight women who went into this neighborhood, three had died, including their sergeant, and another three had been wounded. Johnny got his reports and solemnly left the tower.

The lord’s work is difficult, and rarely is it recognized.

Amen  

Chapter Text

Today is the day. the convoy rolling in, and the high density of unfamiliar stateswomen tells me that much. The 85th has arrived, and we’d be on our way within the next few hours. Just enough time to enjoy my lunch! Currently, I sit at a table with Kennedy and Wallcroft, who keeps awkwardly eyeing my field blouse.

“Did I put on my tropical blouse by accident, Lieutenant~” I sarcastically muttered.

“No, Captain Willow,” she quickly affirmed.

Kennedy eyed the open fourth seat at our little cafe table, which I pulled outside for a better view. A series of maps was set out in front of us as we awaited the replacement Lieutenant for third platoon. I suppose the officer corps had been good girls as of late, no punishment reassignments.

“So, who’s leading our section in the convoy?” Kennedy asked while absentmindedly chewing on a pen cap. Wallcroft pulled out a small pair of glasses and studied the maps closely. One of which was an updated map with the position of most friendly units in the area. She was thankful to receive the maps, unlike a certain cat at the table.

“Thank you for volunteering, Jackie!” 

Jackie groaned, and Mira grinned under the round frames like a cute little librarian.

“Cadillac is a long way away. What’s our time frame to get there?” asked Mira, looking up from the map. I took a small drink of coffee and put down a reuben I’d been enjoying to wipe my hands.

“Well, the 215th and seventh are currently fighting in Grand Rapids, I think they’ve been there for two months now. I hear murmurs that the N.M.N.A. garrison there may hold out for another month at least.”

Now it was Jackie’s turn to look up from the map. “And how the hell is that happening?”

I snorted, “They misjudged the enemies anti-air capabilities, and never bombed the airport. They wanted to capture it intact, and decided rawdogging it with armored infantry was the best play.”

“And?” Kennedy raised her eyebrow inquisitively, likely a feign to her knowledge of my inevitable answer.

“ It was not.”

“They won’t hear about that one back home,” muttered Wallcroft, adjusting her frames. “Are the air casualties bad?” 

“Well, when they can only spare ten AF-42s, things can only go so well,” I plainly remarked. “Fallowfield made a home run when they made that jet, but it's designed to take on two F-22s, not eight, and don’t get me started on the F-35s. They’re finding those like hay in a haystack.”

 Kennedy cocked up a brow and smirked, “Really, captain? That was the metaphor you chose? Didn’t realize you were an uneducated hick,” she chuckled.

“If she’s a hick, I don’t know what that makes you, Kennedy,” Mira commented.

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you should learn what a fuckin’ simile is, kitty,” Mira retorted.

Oh yeah, I love her

I took another bite from my sandwich, courtesy of a local anthro girl, when I caught something grey and tan just out of the corner of my eye.

“Captain Willow, ma’am?” a soft voice nervously whined.

I turned to meet the acquaintance of a certain hyena.

“Lieutenant Sinclaire! The supply situation still haywire?” I queried, finishing my lunch and offering a mug for coffee.

She took the mug quickly, before finding it empty and handing it back, “No idea, ma’am. I’ve been reassigned,” she murmured.

Wallcroft looked back down at her map, and Kennedy looked up in terror. I realized immediately what was happening and felt a bit of anger begin to swell in me.

“I’ve been assigned to third-”

“Yes, shut the hell up, Sinclaire.” I spat.

She gets my men killed, and one of my girls disabled, and the army gives her a platoon?! Not just any platoon, the one whose men she got killed! She can’t lead them, I can’t allow that. It’s too late to file a complaint, and a transfer request would fall on deaf ears. Dammit, I have to keep her; she isn’t even infantry! I really only have one choice here…

“Sinclaire, you’re going to first platoon, not third,” I ordered sternly, “get any of those men killed, and I skin you.”

Kennedy turned her horror to me and replaced it with outrage, “Captain, what the hell?! Those are my men!”

I rapped my knuckle on the table, “No, those are the army’s men, Lieutenant.”

“But she-”

“I know!”

She flinched back and rubbed her hands along her legs with an angered frown, “Why, Captain? I couldn’t live with myself if my men got hurt under this… idiot ,” she muttered. Sinclaire shrank a little, obviously nervous.

“I can’t put her in third; she got those men killed, they’ll frag her. She got the old 2nd platoon LT killed, too. I can’t put her there either. I will move you to third platoon, Kennedy, and Sinclaire will take over first. Third is on point in the convoy. Grab your gear and address your men. Dismissed.” I commanded.

She quickly stood up, fetched her maps and web gear, and stormed off angrily. Well, she started to but stopped briefly to hiss at the poor yeen. Wallcroft had put away her maps and now nursed a small cup of coffee. She didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. We anthros could practically smell tension. A human might have better eyes, but a wolf has the best nose.

It was now my turn to stand. I grabbed my belongings quickly, patted Wallcroft on the back, to which she hummed a farewell, and took off to find some briefing to attend.

An hour later

I found a briefing with relative ease. You’d think somebody would’ve fetched our unit for a briefing, but it seems the 85th didn’t even know about the existence of Sturmov. A Major, some cougar named Berchau prattled off propaganda from the state in front of a wheeled whiteboard in a school cafeteria. She was a good orator, but was flat as a board, and kind of lanky to be honest.

“And we are expecting minimal resistance through Saginaw. The 109th has punched a hole from the south of town all the way through to the north. We will not be stopping here, the capture of Saginaw is the responsibility of the 109th,” she said, folding her arms against her nonexistent chest, and grinned proudly. “The enemy is breaking, expect to be home and married by Christmas, ladies.”

The room erupted in cheer, and the cougar bowed and nodded like she’d won the knight’s cross. The briefing told me little I didn’t already know. What worried me more was a dense, Jagged line on the map of Michigan, running west to east, the whole width of the mitten, just north of Traverse City. It was a hurdle I’m sure every woman here had thought about, but it was ignored.

The Czar line, named after a lion field marshal the governor of Michigan handed the war to, was one of the most impressive engineering feats I’d ever heard of. A massive network of trenches, supply bunkers, casemate guns, troop shelters, and tunnels between just about everything to prevent recon spotting, all of it concealed by camouflage netting. The line had only been spotted due to satellite imaging almost blinding a camera operator when she viewed the shiny layers of barbed wire. There were craters literally everywhere in the pictures I’d heard. Quite literally every meter of dirt had been pre-sighted by mortar and artillery defenses. There were probably full networks of machine guns with interlocking fields of fire running the whole length. It was the kind of thing that made me wish Bismarck hadn’t turned away the use of nukes after the unification wars. 

Poor Belgium

I had served fifteen years in the Afrikakorps, two years home service, and a year in Sturmov, and I’d never seen anything like that damn line. Of course, I never really talked about my time in Africa; the thought wasn’t very enjoyable. I can only hope Field Marshal Beryl is up to the task of taking it, that cute little poodle.

Now, I had another quaint predicament to deal with. As the women filed out, I shuffled over to the Major. 

“Major Berchau? I’m Captain Willow, 15th Sturmov company. Do you have any idea what my unit is supposed to be doing in the convoy?” I said, standing at attention.

“Hm? Sturmov, what’s that?”

You can’t make this shit up

“Human infantry, mounted.”

She guffawed. “They let anybody in the army nowadays, eh? I have no idea; no mention of your unit was made in any briefing I received. Hold on,” she looked over my shoulder, “Paisley! Up front!”

After a moment, an absolutely adorable little Pomeranian Sergeant Major came forward.

“Yes, Major?” she responded.

“I need a radio to division, figure out what the uh… 15th Sturmov company is supposed to do,” Berchau insisted.

The sergeant looked over at me and… is she biting her lip?

“Are you staying or going, you perv?”

The pom chuckled to herself before walking off.

“I’ve never met a lezzie so proud of it in my life,” Berchau groaned. She then turned to face me, having to look up slightly. “See any action, Captain?”

“Why, of course!” I guffawed, perhaps a bit too proudly. She looked at me in an odd fashion before straightening herself out.

She leaned in close while eyeing some other officers. “What’s it like out here? The combat, I mean.”

“The standard American fare, lots of Machine guns, good armor, kind of lacking on the artillery here, though. We’ve had more issues with the partisans. I swear, these American partisans are better armed than the N.M.N.A.”

This was nowhere near a lie. In my experience in Africa, local rebels would have little more than a poorly kept kalashnikov with maybe two magazines in reserve. U.S. “Minutemen,” as they liked calling themselves, were a nightmare. High quality civilian purchased ar15 platform rifles with optics, sometimes night capable or thermal, were surprisingly common. Some of them had body armor, too, and although Bismarck 5.56 ammunition was generally better at penetrating the armor than what our enemies used, the armor was shockingly effective. I’d seen a partisan with a flamethrower, for Christ’s sake. The locals in old U.S. territories were always well armed, a part of old 2nd amendment culture the army always had to consider. I can only pray for the poor women who will eventually invade Texas.

The cat seemed disconcerted by this revelation. She snapped her fingers lightly, failing to make any real noise greater than a hard rub, “so it’s as I feared…” she trailed off for a moment. “My entire division is green, you know? Called up in the winter of last year. I could count the number of girls in my battalion with combat experience on one paw. I just-”

“Division says the 15th will throw in with our battalion until their departure objective at Cadillac. We must sandwich them between two companies toward the rear with a squad between each of their platoons to prevent desertion,” the pom informed.

“Fantastic, Sarge. We roll in two hours, captain, get your girls in order.”

“Men, Ma’am,” I corrected.

She simply waved me off, and the pom giggled as I made my way out of the building. 

Half an hour later, I walked around camp, policing the men I could find, who all had expected a later departure time, and therefore weren’t at the barracks. I’d found most of them, most notably Becket, who I found pounding ass on a shepherd.

Honestly, I was tempted to join; she was cute.

By the hour-and-a-half mark, our camp was a controlled chaos; men loaded equipment onto trucks. Bags of various make and model were hung from the trucks containing spare ammunition, but not frags. The men had been convinced a frag grenade would explode if shot. Wallcroft assisted Charlagne in carrying a crate of belt boxes for the minimi, and those who’d finished stowing equipment squeezed in last-minute bayonet drills to the side. These men were honestly terrifying with how naturally they’d picked up bayonet fencing. They were better than most anthros I'd drilled with, and Johnny had even gotten use from his training against a partisan who’d charged him down with a knife. Something about their hands made them better for these kinds of things. It must’ve been the same reason husbands always won gold in shooting sports and fencing at the Olympics every year, but that might have more to do with their eyes being better in daylight. 

Maybe I should convince Johnny to join a fencing team.

By an hour and forty-five, everything was ready, the men stood with their web rigs and caps on, stood at parade rest in formation. They all had this stoic look on their faces, and I couldn’t see their eyes under their cap visors.

I suppose I should address them…

“This is it!” I began, “An enemy unknown stands between us and Mackinac, an enemy well-trained, possibly well-armed, and experienced. Human, and stag, regular, and partisan who want nothing more than to put you and your friends into some bum-fuck ditch off I-75. Take. Your enemy. Seriously! However, remember this! We are backed by the most powerful army in the world! We should expect to be well supplied! The N.M.N.A. and their ability to disrupt our logistics has been severely crippled. We have superior training, superior levels of ammunition, superior air support, and superior protection. 

“While I cannot promise you home by Christmas, and I cannot promise you home alive, I can promise you a fighting chance! So, for the chairwoman’s sake, put. Those bastards. Down! We cannot hesitate! However, I need you to ensure we are not the cause of unnecessary civilian deaths. We cannot go about creating partisans wherever we go! If he has a helmet? Cap the bastard! Is he wearing utilities? Cap the bastard! If you see a magazine peeking out of a cargo pocket or a jacket liner? Cap. that. Mother. Fucker! But ensure that you confirm your targets before pulling that trigger. The chairwoman can go back on words to these people; we can’t go back on bullets.

“Stay hydrated! Drink your fucking water! If I have any avoidable casualties from dehydration in this company, I swear I will fuck you up, and then fuck your mother! I might do the latter anyway if she’s cute.”

The company chuckled collectively before tightening back up into formation.

“Trust your training, follow your squad and platoon leaders, and don’t be stupid. You men and women are my greatest pride. I’ve never led better. Now get the fuck out of my sight and get on those trucks!”

…but not a soul moved, not for two minutes before I couldn’t keep a smile off my face, nor could Wallcroft, such discipline looked like it almost made that cutie cry.

“Good… very good.”

…

 “Dismissed!”

And hell broke loose.

“You heard the Captain, move!”

Within five minutes, the entire company was in moving trucks waiting to be inserted into the convoy to Cadillac. I watched as truck after truck slipped in and took off to the step-off line. Lieutenants slipped into supply trucks with their marksman teams, and squad leaders gave pep talks in truck beds. Men recited rap songs with varying levels of quality. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face all the way to my truck.

The trip to the step off line was nice and quiet, but the roads were pretty shit.

Chapter Text

I remember the streets of Bismarck

Downtown, I mean. Just me and my ma.

“DuPont! Get that fucking gun up!”

It ain’t too far off from here.

Ain’t my first time seeing a dead boy, or a dead man, either.

My weapon fires, just like my father’s. It’s natural to me, I guess.

“Foot mobile, on our nine!”

My weapon fires there, too. 

Old history books talked about the poor treatment of black men and women in the old United States, but I don’t think Bismarck is much better. Parts of our culture were appropriated by the anthros when they took over. Shit, we don’t even have rap anymore. The lyrics were too divisive, and Bismarck label companies re-released old tracks with rewrites. 

Furbags got pissed they couldn’t say the word neither, so they erased it.

We still live in ghettos, though. They ain’t care enough to fix that.

“Yo! Somebody fuck that guy up in the bush!”

“I’m changing mags, Yank!”

“Do it fucking quicker, would you?”

*BANG* *BANG*

“Good fire discipline, DuPont!”

They say Humie in rap now. All of us are in the shit.

The fire dies down, just like home.

“Ammo check.”

“... We’re green.”

I hadn’t paid too much attention to who was talking since we left five hours ago, too tired to care. The drive shouldn’t be this long, but we keep stopping to help casevac wounded. Removing the magazine from my rifle, I weighed it in my hand as if I didn’t know how much I had left. Of course, I knew those two shots were my first of the day. As we rode, we’d sometimes run into stragglers that the forward units missed, or more partisans. They usually had no ammo, or were shot for being stags. We never stopped to engage; we were trained to consistently hit targets from a moving vehicle 200 meters out minimum. Some of us could hit further out, some of us barely qualified. We’d spot one, take a step onto our seats, and pour fire from the truck bed. The Humvee in front of us had killed ten with the fifty so far, and the one behind us had flagged me at least five. Field blouses had been scattered all over the truck, and web rigs were hung from rods holding the truck walls up with their pouches open. Some of us had stuck socks into the magazine pouches to make them easier to reach when the rigs weren’t worn. 

Sanders fell back on his seat, cradling his rifle. He hadn’t fired a shot, hadn’t even seen combat before this. He arrived fresh only two days before the LT, and was always where the partisans were not. I heard his mom forced him in to man him up.

Poor kid, he ain’t even twenty.

“Shit, sanny, you act like you just killed a man,” said Vargas.

“He ain’t kill shit!” shouted back Becket, likely over the concussion of standing next to that damn birdcaged carbine. The kid shrank further into his seat, and for a moment I could see the dark in his eyes trying on god to square off with it all.

The boy’s too soft for this, he won’t last long

Everyone settled back into their seats, save for a few who needed to keep watch. Becket laid on the floor, attempting a nap. Reb broke into a stack of stale crackers, and Yank enjoyed a share of it. But Sanders just shook.

A small window between the vehicle cabin and the truck bed was left open for communication purposes. Garcia would receive notices on the radio, then yell them at us. The driver was some doe from a supply unit. 

Humies can’t even drive unless they’re freed.

That’s why I’m here. To be free. I want to drive my own car. I want to buy my own shit. I want to make my own mistakes.

I want to be free.

“You need anything, man?” said Sanders.

“Nah, I’m good,” I replied.

“Then quit staring at me,” he snapped.

“Wow, what a sicko! Watch your six, Sanny, Ponty getting sweet on you,” said Miller from the front of the truckbed.

“Shut your bitch ass up, Miller. Talk at me when your girl stop fu-”

“Ay, can that shit, we got orders!” shouted Garcia from the front. The doe flinched, shaking the truck and waking Becket.

The convoy slowed and pulled off to the side. The LT, and further up, the Captain dismounted their vehicles and began meeting for something.

“What do you think is going on?” asked Vargas.

“Probably stopped to interrogate a wounded or help casevac someone,” replied Wilker.

Then the vehicles behind us began passing, minus the Humvee, of course.

“Yeah, I got no idea, actually.”

After a few minutes, Garcia jogged back to our truck and jumped into the back.

“Alright, listen up,” he started, “we got an airborne unit with a problem. Apparently, they tried a combat jump to Saginaw to speed up the advance, but a company got mauled just north of the Birch Run Speedway. A race track, not a gas station. Our company and another are being detached from the convoy to break them out. Expect at least a company-sized enemy force; prepare for more. Get under your gear, we move in two.”

A general holler of affirmation roared through the truck, followed by similar in the surrounding trucks. 

As the trucks took off, guys pulled the socks out of their mag pouches, got their helmets on, pulled bandoliers with spare ammo out of a crate under the benches, and generally braced for contact. Sanders' shaking intensified, causing Franklin to hold him still

“Shit, kid, you good?” he asked. When no response was provided, Franklin reached into his left breast pocket and produced a small pack of cigarettes. “Here, take one,” he said, “it’ll stop the shakes.”

Sanders quickly took one and accepted when a lighter was offered. Taking a long draw, he coughed and hacked on the smoke, earning a laugh from most of the truck. Charlagne coiled a belt of ammunition into a belt box while chewing on a chocolate bar, and Johnny passed a bottle of root beer to Billy Yank. Some sporadic rifle fire could be heard ahead of us as the vehicles started to move. It was difficult to hear over the groaning of the dying engines. Our trucks were poorly maintained, and mechanics were more focused on the heavily armored vehicles hit in Detroit. Sometimes I don’t think they should be running. We were just North of Mt Morris, about twenty or thirty miles south of Saginaw, still a whole state away from Cadillac, but I guess our unit has time to run errands. The truck was fairly silent, just the groan of that engine, the grinding under the tires, and random radio chatter. Sanders had calmed down considerably, but he still hid under his helmet. He hadn’t even had time to paint it. Most of us sprayed patterns on our helmets, borrowing paint from a motor pool in Detroit or Toledo if you were in before the invasion. Covers were issued, but only to anthros with an assortment of patterns. The factory painted the helmets gray or green, depending on what factory made it, but our unit got gray ones. The Captain’s helmet is actually tan, but that’s just leftover paint from her time in Africa. 

Approaching from the south, we began to see fields with discarded parachutes strewn randomly along the fields and roads. A body hung in the trees, paracord tangling her left leg behind her head, and her right forced to her rear at the knee. Her equipment had been stripped, and the collar of her uniform had been cut off.

“Jesus, they got chewed up,” said Yank.

“There’s more,” replied Charlagne.

Pulling further forward, we could see the speedway in the distance on our right, and bodies lay out haphazardly along the roadside. A faint scent of cordite hung over the forest canopy beside the highway like a shroud. About 200 meters from the speedway, the vehicles pulled off to the side, and we hopped off the truck. It was standard practice that motor rifles like us dismounted at this distance to avoid anti-tank fire from cooking us. From there, we dipped into the tree line, where the vehicles were parked. The Humvee guns remained operated, but they stayed about 50 meters from us. We moved ahead at a light jog to withhold any advantage of surprise. Benelli patted me on the shoulder and pointed to a mound writhing on a tree.

“Hey,” he said, “gimme some cover, I’m getting her down. She’s alive.” 

I took a knee by a nearby tree and kept watch as he hurried over, much to the short-lived surprise of the Squad leader. He looked like he was about to chastise Benelli, but upon seeing the paratrooper on the tree, he stayed quiet and held the squad back. Sergeant Marx and Steele knelt beside him, and after a quick conversation and a pointed finger, second and third squad resumed their approach, while first stayed back. Blackburn ran over to Benelli, supplying a bayonet to gnaw through the tangled parachute. The trooper, a black lamb, groaned in anguish before she suddenly kicked the medic in the mouth. The rest of us looked at each other in mild amusement until the girl started struggling.

“Get the fuck away from me, you bastards!” she howled, “I’ll kill every last one of you!”

Immediately, we realized she was about to get us spotted.

“Somebody shut that bitch up,” someone whispered.

“No, really though,” another responded. Blackburn, thinking quickly, removed his field blouse and tied it to her muzzle by its sleeves. Now gagged, they cut her hands free. Benelli whispered to her in an attempt to calm her down, but now blinded, she didn’t trust a lick of what he said. When her parachute harness was removed, she attempted to grapple with Blackburn but fell on her broken leg. Making some distance, the two knelt down and began once again trying to talk to her.

“Like hell we’d ever let Humie’s do our fighting,” she growled. The two men tried to murmur to her, but all we could hear was her yelling.

From behind us, Lieutenant Wallcroft hurried over and took a knee, “What the hell is going on here?”

“A para,” I answered, “they cutting her down, she ain’t happy ‘bout it.” Her muzzle twitched in annoyance before she ran over, ripped the blouse off her face, and pinned her to the tree.

“Shut. the fuck. Up, trooper. We are friendly,” she growled. The para shrank into her jump smock slightly. “Benelli, look at her leg.”

“Yes, ma’am.” he scooted back close, propped her leg on his knee, and removed her boot. His inspection lasted no more than two seconds before- “Foot’s broken.” he rolled her pant leg up, “Broken hock, she needs medical.”

“Morphine?” asked the Lieutenant. Benelli shook his head, and she tilted hers

“I don’t have enough to spare, and I don’t know if she’s bleeding internally. She might not be stable,” he muttered while moving to inspect her arm. “Is it numb?” he lightly tossed it around, “it hurt?”

“Can’t feel it,” she replied, bewildered by him.

“Tell me again in five minutes,” he then let her go and moved to lift both her legs, “A hand, gentlemen?” he looked around, and Blackburn moved to her shoulders.

“Where we going?”

“The truck, we offload her when we find her unit. LT?” Wallcroft nodded. “Lift,” Benelli ordered. She was only about ten meters from her original position before a firefight broke out to our front. Blackburn dropped her right away, and upon hitting the ground, she lost consciousness. Benelli gave him a dirty look before gently lowering her legs and checking her pulse. The rest of us dispersed, but I was already covered behind a tree. Upon confirming the pulse, Benelli flipped her on her side and dove to cover behind her body.

The fight seemed to be at least a hundred meters away, but random strays sometimes slipped between us. One hit the para in the other leg, but she didn’t react to it. Benelli dragged her behind my tree, “You got a bandage?” he asked. I reached into my bandage pouch and flicked it at him before returning my attention to the fight ahead.

“Come on, let’s get in the war!” shouted Garcia, causing the whole squad to break into a leapfrog sprint in bursts of about ten meters per bound. As we got closer, we noticed one man had been hit from third squad. I moved to pull him behind a tree before a burst of automatic fire struck the ground between my legs. I looked up to find a man in woodland camo aiming an M5 at me from about thirty meters away. Without enough time to lift my rifle, I stared down the muzzle before a round came from my rear. It missed the enemy, but hit the tree he stood by; the dust it kicked up irritated the man, and his shot hit the man I was trying to pull instead. I whipped up my rifle and fired off single shots while Sanders moved around my right side. He charged forward as I placed shots on the tree, and when Sanders rounded on him, the enemy threw down his rifle in surrender. Sanders dragged him from the tree and pushed him to the ground, then moved for cover. 

“And look at that!” yelled Becket, “He still ain’t kill nothing, think he’s a pacifist!?”

“No time to keep that prisoner, kill the bastard!” ordered Blackburn. As though he’d been waiting on it, the platoon marksman, who was kneeling at least fifty meters ahead, pivoted on his knee, shouldered his K98, and plinked a round through the man's helmet before sounding off with a maniacal laugh and returning his rifle to the front. I continued my sprint after patting Sanders’ shoulder to signal cover. In about twelve seconds of a sprint, I had caught up with the other squads, much to Calico Jack’s delight.

“‘Ere to deliver benediction, are ye?” he shouted. I ignored him to fire suppression on the speedway. The rest of the company had come to bear on the building, cutting down the remaining men outside the building in quick succession. There was a somewhat large white building with a brownish-orange roof that we suppressed, but there were few windows for them to fire back from. One man from another platoon carried along the now conscious lamb and laid her by a sandbag stack the enemy had abandoned. She joined in, firing a carbine at anything that still moved. The incoming fire died out quickly, and from behind us, a rumbling of boots came close. I turned to look to find a platoon of anthros hoofing it toward the building, their Lieutenant flailing her pistol in the air wildly while blowing on a whistle. As they passed, we had to cut our own fire and could do little more than share looks of confusion.

They weren’t actually bayonet-charging a building, were they?

…

And there go rifles with bayonets, Jessie Christ.

They charged ahead, lucky that we had previously suppressed any opposition they would’ve had. I turned to look at Garcia, who glanced over and met the eyes of the Lieutenant, who signaled to hold. We took stable shooting positions where we could find them and watched the upper windows of the building. There were some bleachers, but they would provide zero protection for the enemy, realistically, and would be a bitch to aim through while wearing body armor if they had it. The N.M.N.A. wore body armor infrequently; most states hadn’t rebuilt quite enough to mass-produce it, and were too poor to buy it. Michigan, from what I heard, had come off a brutal warlord phase before we showed up, so most plates were damaged or lost. Some armor was crude, like some lobster shit, some were level four plates in a pre-war carrier. You never knew what they’d have. Same with camo; different enemy units would have wild variance in pattern and uniforms. Usually, they wore pre-war patterns like marpat, multicam, UCP (to little effect), but sometimes you’d see more exotic stuff like tiger stripe, flecktarn, or M81 woodland, which this garrison seems to have been issued. Made me wish we had camo. 

The girls ahead were about halfway through the open ground between us and the speedway when the Humvees opened fire on the bleachers. There was nothing there, not that I could see anyway, but they wanted to shoot, I guess. Tracers marked the path where anti-material rounds punched holes in any piece of steel they could. I could see a glimpse of Kennedy and Sinclaire having a small meet and greet with Wallcroft by a Humvee when I turned away from the current situation, along with Benelli trying to treat the third squad man. The officers came to some kind of agreement, and the other lieutenants ran off to their platoons.

“Okay, let’s get in there!” shouted the Lieutenant, rising from her tree and surging forward in a sprint. The rest of the platoon followed, but had to hold fire or risk hitting the fur bags ahead of us. Their charge had slowed considerably as they tried to funnel into the gate, which was surrounded by a white high wall. Bursts of automatic fire erupted from and into this black pit to our front, zipping around me. The company split in half to avoid the enemy cone of fire. Grenades popped off inside the compound as anthros boosted each other over the wall to bypass the gate. A similar scene happened during combat in Detroit, and it had to be the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen in my damn life. Oddly enough, this assault just felt… boring. The fire in the previous assault was even less heavy, but this just felt routine. Maybe it was the fact we was rear-lining it, or knew we had them outnumbered, but it felt oddly dissatisfying. We got up by the high wall on the right side. The windows further in continued to fire over us, but the field we crossed was mainly empty, except for trucks and probably some major in charge of this attack, so they couldn’t hit much. There were a few writhing mounds in the dirt; most were green, some were gray, some were blue. They were all ours, though. When I saw the bodies behind me in Detroit, I felt disgust, but here? 

Nothing

No rage, no hate more than before I crossed the field, not even disgust.

I couldn’t give two shits less, it wasn’t me. I felt more watching movies with my ma back home.

The thing was my favorite

The streets made me more anxious than all this. I wonder if they still will when I get back.

My thoughts were temporarily disturbed by the shouting and screaming, the gunfire, and such. The platoon was yelling back and forth about how to get around the gate.

“Blow a hole in the wall!”

“With fucking what!?”

“Vargas!”

“My three-twenty is not punching a man-sized hole in a brick fucking wall, you dipshit! And in no fucking universe am I backing away from my cover enough to try.”

The Lieutenant ran over to Billy, who kneeled next to me, holding Sanders, who cowered in fear.

“Radio! I need the radio!” she yelled. He handed the microphone and receiver over to her, and she crouched down to speak into it, “Havoc! This is fifteen-two, we need an Obmeyer to assist with this assault, you copy?”

Fire poured around us; even still, the gate hadn’t been breached. “Yes, this assault requires a tank! No, a shay will not suffice. There is a high wall we don’t have the weapons to punch a hole through. We need a cannon shot to breach it. No, wave the Shay off, the autocannon will just get my men killed!”

Willow approached in a low run to snatch the receiver, “Havoc, this is fifteen, get me that god damn tank! Bravo Company charged with bayonets, and are suffering casualtie- yes! Yes, Bravo is anthro!” she yelled, rapidly becoming infuriated.

Of course, they’d base willingness for support on the unit race

“How long until they’re here, Havoc? I need to- copy!” She handed back the receiver, “We got an Obmeyer about ten minutes out, sit tight!”

We looked around, confused.

“What if there are enemy tanks or artillery?” someone asked.

 “Were there any of those, there would be no living paras,” responded Wallcroft, Those are in Saginaw,” she briefly looked back toward the trees behind us. “Besides, they wouldn’t blow a hole in their own wall. It's keepin’ us in a funnel. We wait for the tank.”

Becket laughed to himself, “These guys suck at fighting, you think it’s a headquarters company?”

“How would you know that?” asked Sanders.

“My wildest boy, do you hear the gaps in the MG fire? Those are slow reloads!”

Sanders turned to Charlagne.

“He’s right, they aren’t used to belt-feds,” he replied, adjusting his helmet and brushing some dirt from his leg.

I settled down against the wall. The fire didn’t die down much, but the anthros on our flank seemed to have the same idea as us, and settled in by the wall and recited music among themselves. The N.M.N.A wasted ammo shooting at the wall, but damn it was nice cover. You could almost take a nap here, were it not for Johnny and Billy debating over some civil conflict from some hundred years ago.

Had to stick with Billy on this one, though

Benelli looked through his med-kit, hung from a shoulder bag, and Garcia chatted up the LT. The two had gotten close. much better than the other squad leaders. There was a betting pool on whether they be fuckin or not.

I had fifty for.

Becket and Vargas pulled security on the sides and rapped back and forth, “When shit hit the fan, is you still a fan? That humie gave us Billie Jean, you say he touched them kids!?” 

Miller sat to my left, taking a nap. Every few seconds, a round would skim the upper wall and drop shit on his face, waking him. He hastily put his helmet over his face, but Blackburn hustled over and kicked his leg.

“Keep your bucket on, we’re in combat,” he chastised. Miller groaned, sat up, and began rapping with the other two. 

Our wait was cut short when a shell whistled overhead, alerting everyone. The tank had arrived on the treeline.

“Make a fucking hole!” shouted the LT. We quickly complied and huddled about 50 meters away, almost intermingling with the anthros. I brushed arms with a collie private, who stared shocked. No idea if it was for being a humie, or being black. The shell blasted behind me as I stared her down. When I pulled away from the huddle to enter the breach, she just kept staring, boring holes in the nape of my neck with her eyes. The hole we had punched was far enough to the side that some guns couldn’t turn enough to hit us, and the ones that could were getting lit up by a Machine gun.

The LT popped some smoke through the hole and busted through with her bayonet fixed.

The fuck is it with anthros and bayonets?

Garcia followed with the squad, and I rose up to get through. The other squads stayed behind us to pass later, but found cover past the hole and fired on the windows and some infantry who left the building, probably to throw frags over the wall. No idea why it took so long to try that, though. There was a second building to the front of us that we hadn’t seen before. The windows were large, and when we busted through, the guys inside started to panic. Looked like radios and desk workers. I whipped up my rifle and shot one man in the stomach. The window between us burst under fire, and Vargas fired a grenade into the building. The breach afterwards was immediate and violent. The LT practically flayed a man with her bayonet.

Okay, I see it.

Rushing through the small building, we shot anyone that moved. In the first room were two, huddled in corners. I shot one, Vargas shot the other, and we continued forward to see that Garcia had gone around and shot the lone man in the next room. We stacked by a door to the last room, and I prepped a grenade. I looked at Garcia, who was closer to the frame and offered the bomb. He lazily took it and whipped it into the room. General panic erupted from the room. One man sprinted out, scaring the shit out of Garcia, before Charlagne put a burst into him. The squad scanned the room with our muzzles before crying out, “Clear!” and moving to some windows toward the back left corner of the building. From our position, we could see the main building, as well as the raceway, which had been turned into some kind of base camp; Medical tents, ammo caches, everything.

“Fifteen, this is two-one, we have secured a secondary building on the right flank of the objective building, we have spotted a full company headquarters. I- yes ma’am, we have broken through on the flank, looks like a radio station we’re in,” Billy chattered, “Hard copy, will comply,” he put the radio down, “Captain wants fire on the objective building,” he relayed.

“You heard the music, you know the dance. Let’s groove, boys!” shouted Becket. Charlemagne was the first to fire, seemingly already deployed in cover. He fired on the upper windows; the rest of us picked off anybody who got a little too brave. To the left, we could see new faces trickle through the gate and new holes punched in the walls. Soon, a blob of blue and green surged toward the objective, pouring fire into any place it could fit.

Garcia stood up, “Alright, they’ve got the building, let’s take that camp. Move!” he shouted. The squad leapt through the window and rushed to cover before putting fire on the tents. Most of the men had weapons, and some were doctors. Explosions erupted from the building to our left, and men retreated from it towards us. We pivoted our fire and swept the attempt before holding fire at the sight of anthros in the windows. One soldier smiled and waved, which Johnny reciprocated before giving that hellish screech he called his ‘rebel yell’. We pivoted our fire back to the front as two companies of infantry joined us. The camp became a hellscape of lead and fire, the likes of which I hadn’t seen before. Detroit came close, but damn.

“Cease fire! Cease fire! Cut it out!” somebody yelled. When the fire died, the quiet haunted me more.

I looked over at Garcia, who had been scanning the camp for anything out of place. He licked his lips and adjusted his helmet in relief.

“Okay, move up, secure it,” he commanded. The squad gingerly left cover and crept forward slowly. I followed behind Vargas, Becket, and Blackburn. Becket looked back and jerked his head toward the medical tent. We followed him toward the medical tent in silence. Steps were slow, quiet, and calculated as we looked around. Some nauseating feeling sat in my gut the whole while. Becket stopped at the entrance and glanced inside before sweeping in with his weapon up. The tent was riddled with holes that filtered the sun in bright dots, and the ground was littered with dead and wounded who had struggled out of their cots and writhed in agony. We didn’t speak; no quips until the job was done. The tent was clear; the firestorm we provided minutes before had ensured that. We turned around and left in silence. Outside, we saw Captain Willow riding the back of an Obmeyer Main Battle Tank while reading a small paper. She noticed Garcia coming from a tent near us and smiled.

“Detroit guards regiment, third battalion! Lost two infantry companies fighting for that city; all that was left were HQ and a cobbled-up infantry company,” she chuckled. “The paras are alive, but we gotta go find them,” she sighed. Garcia turned to the tent innards and whistled.

“Yank, radio Havoc, we’ve taken the speedway,” he ordered. Faint chatter sounded from the tent. 

I walked around the camp when the battle ended, running a hand over my head as I watched bodies get hauled and a handful of prisoners be handled. Looking over the smiles the anthros had, and the general exhaustion of the rest of us. A small clatter caught my attention behind a shack. I slowly crept over, and when I rounded the corner, I found a boy trying to wedge himself through a fence. His uniform was in tatters, he had no gear, no weapon, and his helmet was dented to hell. When he turned to me, I saw his face. His shade was dark as mine. I raised my muzzle, and he struggled harder.

“C’mon, man, I ain’t volunteer for this shit, they drafted my ass,” he said.

“You go that way, you’ll have to cross that field unspotted.”

He twitched in annoyance, “Sister ain’t catching me, man. Ain’t no way in hell.”

“You’ll either run into anthros or get recycled into your infantry.”

I didn’t wanna shoot him, I really didn’t. He was dead either way, but I didn’t want responsibility for it.

I lowered my weapon and let the breath from my lungs. “Alright, get the fuck out. I see you in uniform again, I’m killing your ass, feel me?”

He smiled and nodded, and I pulled the fence back. Before he took off, he looked back and smiled, “Thank you, I’ll remember this!” he sprinted off, and I felt a bit better about all this. I rounded the building to go find Becket, but ran into Sanders.

“You alright, kid?” I asked.

“Yeah, just need to pee,” he replied.

I nodded, not thinking of it, and when I got about eight steps away.

*BANG*

A cry began at my six.

                                                                      You can’t have shit, it don’t matter if you in Detroit or not.