“Atyla… Atyla!”

He opened his eyes, expecting to be met by Ersulp’s face, but was instead met by a stranger, staring at him from the circular hole above; not a stranger, the gruff man was the guard of the supply station that his squad was staying over. He still hadn’t come around to learn the guy’s name.

“We are chugging Ersulp into the plants. You cried yourself to sleep last night, I heard, he must be a close one of yours. I figure you will want to be there.” The man said before disappearing from the hatch door.

“How’s the sunlight?” Shouted Atyla.

“I don’t know! One plus I’d say! Get out of there and figure it out yourself!” Answered the man from outside. The inside of the tank smelled funny, like someone had spilled ink in here. Sergeant Wuvalis would never allow her tank to be so filthy as to smell, so Atyla had no idea just where the smell had come from; it took him a few moments to realize that it came from the outside. He stood up and crawled out through the hatch door.

The sky was gray, but not dark, so it was on the plus side, Atyla just wouldn’t call this a one plus, maybe point-five plus. A gust of wind blew just past them, carrying a whirlwind of dust and dark snow with them. The horizon could not be visually separated from the skyline, so it was definitely not a one plus.

“Private! Help carry comrade Ersulp out of the pit!” Wuvalis shouted, standing over a dug open pit with a small shovel in her hand. As Atyla finally sauntered over to where she was, she muttered: “Come on, lad. I’m sure Ersulp would have wanted you to do the deed.”

No, he wouldn’t. Atyla wasn’t even that close to Ersulp; not really, they had been squad mates only for three months. Atyla wasn’t crying over the loss of a close friend -- he wasn’t really crying at all, he only sobbed voicelessly -- he was crying over the loss of an interesting person. Ersulp was a funny guy, with a funny voice and a funny-looking face; he also liked to do funny impressions of famous people, from saints all the way to their general; even Wuvalis, an officer infamous amongst her company for how much of an uptight bore she was, would chuckle at Ersulp’s entertainment.

And now Ersulp was lying supine in the snowpit, eyes closed, holding a stock of ivy by the chest; he was dead, as dead as anything could be the moment a 9mm hollow point bullet tore through his left femoral artery, dead within minutes. The tank squad had just arrived at this station, and a stray band of bandits, who had been following them for the past few days, decided to do a drive-by assault; nobody knew the reason for it, the bandits didn’t score anything, not even a box of ammo, they seemingly just shot up the station because they had nothing else to do.

And this innocuous act of sheer boredom took a man’s life. The shoot-up happened two days ago, the bandit was long gone by now, probably returning northward as they didn’t seem like Eastern tribesmen, and they would probably never face any repercussions for their action; while Ersulp was dead.

As Atyla slowly pulled Ersulp’s body out of the pit and dragged it all the way to the station’s fertilizing plants, he was starting to tear up again; the sound of Ersulp’s corpse grinding against the snow was loud, the snow was crunchy this morning. The wind whispered louder as Atyla and the station’s male private chugged the body down the grinder’s hole, where Ersulp would be ground into a paste and become the station’s newest batch of fertilizer. He saw the greenhouse earlier, the lichen and moss in there looked malnourished, a dab of human meat paste was probably exactly what the plants would have wanted.

“Sorry for your loss,” the female supervisor of the station shook hands with Sergeant Wuvalis, “I’m sure Private Ersulp was as competent as any other soldier in the Republic. May he join our every antecedent in quiet extinction.”

“Thank you,” Wuvalis simply said; since Ersulp’s death, she hadn’t made a single remark that even remotely indicated any sadness over her solider’s demise. But Atyla knew the truth; when the opportunity for reassignment came, what most people would take as a chance for promotion, sergeant Wuvalis asked for border patrol, precisely because she would be commanding a significantly smaller squad and, comparatively, had fewer dead comrades on her command.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I would offer you some men, but I think as you can tell,” the female station supervisor offered Wuvalis a cigarette and lit it for her, “I only got one guy with me now, and he is my liaison with the clerks. I can’t let him go.”

“It’s alright. My squad was usually three-mened anyway. It wasn’t meant to be… I shouldn’t have asked for a fourth man back at C-4…” Wuvalis paused herself, “But then again, maybe I should be glad that I did it, or else I would be operating a two-man squad by now.”

“You still have a long patrol ahead of you, comrade, and Lemons don't drive by themselves. Don’t let this death get into you.”

It should’ve gotten into somebody! Atyla thought with sundering rage as he looked over the women’s shoulder to the murderer in question: Umsil, the new corporal they picked up back at station C-4, was standing guard on the outskirt of the station; standing guard, might just well call it what it is, a murderer washing his own fucking hands clean! Didn’t even have the good grace to show some condolence; he didn’t help with the snow bury, he didn’t file the report to the church even though private Ersulp was technically under his command when KIA, he didn’t even help chug Ersulp's body down the grinder. He just, quote-unquote, stood guard, with that usual shit-eating full-of-himself facial expression of his.

Atyla hated the man ever since he was onboard back at station C-4, and he hated him even more now. He was fantasizing about chugging Umsil’s body down the grinder’s pipe, and it felt borderline euphoric; maybe when they got back into the tank, he should shoot Umsil in the face. Atyla reached for his revolver in the pocket; only got one shot, wouldn’t want to waste any bullet.

“Send my greetings to those at C-6. With any luck, I would be heading home by the end of the month,” said the female supervisor, “take care. Arykdis be with you.”

Wuvalis simply nodded, “alright boys! We’re taking off.”

“Wait!” Just as the three were about to return to the tank, the female supervisor shouted, “you guys wouldn’t by any chance have seen the Pales coming around here, right?”

“You are almost fifty kilometers (30 miles) from the ice cap!” Wuvalis shouted, “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you!”

The female supervisor seemingly still wanted to say something but decided against it and simply gave them a wave. The three of them climbed back into the tank. Sergeant Wuvalis sat in the driver’s seat, Private Atyla sat in the gunner’s seat, while Corporal Umsil sat just behind him at the reload breech. It was extremely cramped, everyone’s limbs and torso were virtually entangled with everybody else’s, and despite the earth-splitting start-up sound of the tank’s hybrid engine, they could still hear each other’s breathing echoing between the metallic walls.

The Lemon tank, specifically designed for chronic snow-ground traversal, was a dwarfed version of the infamous Ivy tank that helped secure several key battles against the Eastern tribes. The Lemon tanks were small, operable with only three crew members, and weak in combat due to their main armament being downgraded from armor-penetrative explosives to simple hollow-point cannons that only fared well against infantry. However, it more than compensated for its combat ineffectiveness with two advantages: mobility, a Lemon tank could make sharp turns that no other tank on Terra could even dream of making; and fuel efficiency at the cost of speed, with a full tank of hydrogen and oil it could cover nearly one thousand kilometers (600 miles) of distance so long as the tank doesn’t exceed 12 kph (7mph).

A machine perfectly designed for border patrol.

If it was three years ago and Atyla was still thirteen years old in vocational university, he would have been impressed by all its intricacy and technical marvel; now he simply found the thing ugly, and uncomfortable to operate. When Ersulp was still alive, four people cramping into such a tight space almost gave Atyla an asthma attack.

Thank Arkydis for medicalism. Atyla thought to himself; for a man with asthma, medicine sure seemed like the most progressive field of study humanity could take. The cigarette smoke was starting to get to him.

“Open the lid,” he said, not even bothering to address Umsil’s corporal, “let some air out.”

“Is my cigarette bothering you?” Asked Wuvalis whose eyes hadn’t left the periscope since they got in here; with over thirty years of operating experience, sergeant Wuvalis was one of the most decorated tankmen in the Republic.

“No… well, a little, madam. The ventilation duct probably needs a good scrubbing later…” Wuvalis killed the cigarette, and the hatch door was still closed. Atyla turned back to see Umsil still sitting there, looking at him with his sharp, stoic eyes. Atyla was fuming: this bastard is going to pull his rank on me, isn’t he? So goddamn green he is, does he not know that when a tank is moving, there is no rank inside the tank other than the tank commander?

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence as the two men stared into each other, Corporal Umsil climbed up from his seat and opened the hatch. The cold wind thronged into the tank with vigor.