Forward

This story contains both Pro and Anti-Communist propaganda. In order to keep everything, concise unfamiliar terminology or acronyms with be marked with a number like thisowo. The Appendix at the end of the chapter will provide basic explanations for each of these terms if you’re interested.

For scenes where multiple characters are speaking to each other through military radios I’ve opted to use a dialogue format that reflects the way military signallers typically log conversations, rather than He said, She said. It will appear as such:

Character Name: ”Dialogue”

(Character actions occurring during or between sentences)

My hope is that this will increase readability and make it easier to differentiate between characters that are speaking via radio vs characters that are present in the scene.

Ch 1: Forward unto The Maw

To think there was a time when I didn't have to worry about this shit...

He stood at attention waiting for The Captain1 to call him into the office. His Sergeant instructed him to show up 15 minutes early. Presumably his superior, a Warrant, had given the Sergeant a timing that was also 15 minutes early. The Warrant had received the order from a Lieutenant. Up and up it went receiving a 15 to 30 minute grace period at every step in the chain of command. This is how Corporal Yang Sairento was both on time and 2 hours early, at the same time.

He thought about how this was likely why he couldn’t feel his feet anymore and many other things. His thoughts were the one thing about himself that he still had control over. When he considered how much time-wasting bullshit the army could throw at him it seemed quite nice of them to still allow free thought during said bullshit. Free speech no, people always had ways of shutting you up but the military had yet to master mind control. So at least for the time being, his thoughts were still his. Unless the topic of communists came up. Thinking about them really got his blood boiling. How much of that was the propaganda he didn’t know, but it was because of them he was wasting his time in this hallway staring off into the middle distance.

He could feel his face heating up, the commies, the pencil dick Captain in the next room, the war, all of it existed simply for the sake of wasting his time. He thought about the days before the war. When wasting time was something he did on purpose. Suddenly his thoughts took him back home, far away from the constant threat of death and court-martial.

In the late summer evenings, he’d walk through the college campus contemplating whatever issues had caught his attention that day. More often than not it was geopolitics. Now Geopolitics are just us and them but back then It was particularly interesting. With the arrival of the gates, the political landscape of the world had changed. Warring states across the world had suddenly been flooded with more resources than they knew what to do with. While this led to more fighting at first things slowly settled down as new generations were born into a world that didn’t know scarcity.

He smiled at the thought.

"Corporal!" The Captain yelled out into the hallway.

"Sir!"

Yang took a step forward and winced, it felt like walking on a bed of nails as the blood rushed back to his feet. Trying not to waddle into the office he managed the best march he could and came to attention again in front of the captain. The awkward display seemed to cause the Captain physical pain.

"Corporal this is a final review in regards to the events that occurred on the night of November 3, 2065."

"Final review, Sir?"

"That's Correct."

"I was already questioned and gave my statements regarding McKinnon’s disappearance... Sir."

"And that's the discrepancy we wish to resolve. Corporal McKinnon by all accounts is not 'missing' he was killed in action. It won't do well for his family or your unit to be spreading false information."

"They found his body then."

The Captain paused for a moment shifting uncomfortably in his chair. "That line of questioning is not aligned with the force's current operational goals. Hence why you're here. You will sign this form which verifies that you witnessed The Corporal's death and your previous statements were made in error."

"But I didn't see anything, Sir. He was there one minute then… he was just gone."

"The front lines can be very stressful Corporal. We understand if you're unable to come to terms with the death of your team member, or possibly misremembered as the result of stress-induced psychosis. The military is fully prepared to admit you into psychiatric care if that is the case."

So that was it then. He would sign on the dotted line or get thrown in the loony bin for not pretending to witness someone's death. The military couldn't be bothered to deal with the possibility McKinnon could be dying in the desert or worse defecting to the commies.

He didn't like McKinnon but he deserved better than an empty coffin. As a Corporal, though he couldn't do anything about it. Between being shot at and going to the military hospital it was hardly a choice. He'd take his chances with the commies and who knows maybe McKinnon would stumble back with a shit-eating grin on his face. Yang signed the paper, gave the sloppiest salute of his military career, and left the office. He navigated his way through the empty corridors of the large airport terminal.

He stepped out into the desert heat and looked up at the red sun hanging low in the sky. Acrid smoke from the city fires burned his eyes, it was worse than usual today. He reached down to grab his mask off his belt loop but he snagged one of the mask straps in the process, ripping the electrical tape that was holding it together.

“Shit.”

He tightened it as best he could to his face and started walking across the base to his unit's tent. Dust and smoke painted the already drab military buildings tents and sheds the same brown color making it harder than usual to see through the small scratched lenses of the mask. It seemed impossible to him that a place so monotone could exist but here it was. As he walked he began to think again, trying to send himself back to that place. If he tried hard enough he could almost imagine he was back home walking through the campus park.

The world before The Gates closed was so full of color. While it was not without strife, resources both material and human were abundant. The global population exploded and for the briefest of moments, humanity had entered a golden epoch. Within a few decades, every nation in the world was brought into the information age and to be poor in the developed world was a choice. But this period of abundance would mark the beginning of humanity's descent into hell.

Just when humanity had adjusted its social and bureaucratic systems to accommodate the gates, it happened. They vanished. Every resource-poor country in the world was plunged into chaos and famine overnight. The artificially bloated populations of arid countries and island nations spilled out into the wider world like hungry peasants marching on the capital. It was slaughter on a global scale.

A vast migrant horde marched across the world overwhelming one country after another, like locusts stripping the land bear. The citizens of the newly fallen countries would join in the march adding to their numbers. Satellite images would track the largest groups on every continent and news agencies would report on the progress daily. At first, The Horde was mostly civilian but every time a country was picked clean the number of soldiers, criminals, and seized military assets present increased. Warlords quickly rose to command marauder armies larger than the general population of most cities. At this point, any country with a sufficient stockpile left shifted its industrial capacity to the military in preparation to meet The Hordes. The world watched high definition as the first large-scale combat operation against The Horde was carried out. But the first countries to fight the horde quickly realized conventional military weapons paradoxically lacked the necessary capacity to kill.

Many antipersonnel weapons like land mines and 5.562 machine guns lacked the necessary penetration capabilities to handle a crowd several million people deep and hundreds of miles across. So in a last-ditch attempt to save themselves, people and governments abandoned their humanity. Embargos, war crime conventions, and restrictions on military weapons were lifted and the remaining countries banded together in the largest coordinated military effort in history.

The fallout effects of large nukes were too far-reaching so they were used sparingly. To make up for this every chemical under the kitchen sink was weaponized, long-dead diseases were resurrected, and radioactive material was loaded into bombers. In a global pissing contest of weapons development, each country crafted its own flavor of atrocities with the horny fervor of a drunken teenager. But resources being what they were, elegant solutions to killing quickly became too expensive to maintain.

When they ran out of bombers they requisitioned crop dusters. Missiles were eventually substituted with passenger planes and fire trucks were converted into flamethrower tanks. The Horde was eventually eradicated but vast areas of the planet were left uninhabitable. With their biggest threat gone each country still had one problem. Each other. At that point, not even the plumbing was safe as pipes were melted down and turned into artillery.

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.

The artillery snapped him back to reality. Since they were all firing at the same time it must almost be time for supper. He started to pick up the pace. His meeting with the captain had sucked up a lot of time and his unit was supposed to go into the black tonight. He still needed to eat and get his truck ready.

He arrived at his unit’s tent. As he undid the zipper and stepped in he was greeted with the ass of an airborne 250lbs man. The sideways man’s buttocks slammed into Yang’s chest knocking the wind out of him and sending them both careening back out into the dirt.

“What… the fuck!?” Yang couldn’t breathe, his eyes went wild as he gasped for air and slapped at the person now lying on top of him.

“Oh shit, yang!” A look of surprise swept over his face “Are you alright man?!”

“Jesus Mark, Get the fuck off me!”

“Right, sorry man! Didn’t expect you to be there.” Mark got up and helped yang to his feet in turn.

“What the hell were you guys doing?”

“Oh yea me n Dusty were just, uh… Getting the dust off, ya know?”

Dusty popped his head out of the tent. He was covered in sweat and wore the same stupid look of surprise that mark had.

“Oh shit,” Dusty eyed up Yang for injuries. “You alright?”

“You idiots almost killed me.”

Dusty laughed.

“Ah if you’re that energetic you should be fine. We were just sparring and things got a little… well you know.”

Mark and Dusty raised their shoulders up and shrugged at the same time. Shit-eating grins started to form on their faces as they looked at each other. Dusty’s hand burst out from inside the tent and pinched Mark's nipple. Mark yelped in surprise but before he could retaliate Dusty had already disappeared back into the tent. Mark dashed into the tent behind him and Yang was once again alone.

He entered the tent with more caution this time. To one side of the tent, Dusty and Mark had each other in a position that could only be described as homoerotic. Yang thought it was a judo hold but each had elected to use one hand as a nipple clamp, so it was hard to tell. To the other side was everyone else trying their best to ignore marks squeals while they played poker around a small milk crate table. Kilo, Huan, Zim, and Leonard looked up at Yang as he approached.

Kilo was a combat engineer and the squad leader; he was the first to speak.

“How’d it go with dickhead?”

Yang shrugged.

“Bout as good as it could’ve, I suppose.”

“Well, that’s the way things go.” Kilo looked back at his hand of cards “You doin’ okay?”

“Well the whole thing rubs me the wrong way, I didn’t get along with McKinnon but he deserved better than being written off. I lost a magazine one time in training and we spent two days looking for it. Now an entire person is gone and they don’t give a fuck.”

“We all feel the same I think, but I was more asking about when you caught Dusty’s better half.”

Zim grunted and shifted the chewing tobacco in his mouth so he could speak.

“That was a good catch. But yea I’d say ’Kinnon wasn’t that bad, just never shut the fuck the fuck up.”

Leonard rolled his eyes and nursed his cigarette before chiming in.

“Zim you just didn’t like him because he was the only one who talked more than you did.”

Zim scoffed and reached for his spit cup.

“The fuck’ that supposed to mean?”

Huan shook his head and smiled.

“He’s saying you never shut the fuck up Zim.” Huan said this as if explaining something to a child.

“Oh yeah? Well if you’re so smart Huan, why are you so shit at poker?”

“Says the guy who’s losing.” Huan started pointing at the pile of PX3 vouchers in front of him “I’m gonna clean you out with my next hand.”

“Yeah right!” Leonard bellowed “Your hand’s so shit I can smell it. So real talk Kilo, any word on a fill-in for ‘Kinnon yet?”

Kilo paused for a second while looking carefully at his cards.

“Na not yet. I told them to reduce the convoy so Dusty can be on gun need be, but the higher-ups got better things to do than listen to me. Looks like we're running a man short tonight.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Yang shook his head in response. “Great, soon each of us will have to drive two trucks at the same time.”

Huan pointed at Yang and made a serious face. “Don’t you say that shit near the Captain, he might start getting ideas.”

“Sorry boys, not tonight.” Kilo dropped his cards on the table.

A cacophony of slurs and foul language erupted from the group. He began collecting the pile of bills in the middle.

Zim covered his face with his hands in despair.

“Shit! I was gonna buy the new porn mags from the PX with that.” Zim exclaimed.

Leonard looked surprised. “Magazines huh? So that’s what those stone tablets used to be.”

“It’s not my fault,” Zim explained. “I’ve been fappin’ to the same girls for so long it feels like I’m married to ‘em.”

Huan nodded in approval. “I’d be best man at that wedding for sure.”

Everyone cracked a smile. They threw their cards in the middle and began to tear down the milk crates and stools. Once they were done everyone gathered in a semi-circle around Kilo as he set up a small whiteboard and started scribbling maps and symbols. Once he was done he opened a clipboard and hand each person a printed spreadsheet with their name on it.

Kilo cleared his throat. “Alright! Listen up! Tonight’s run is to FOB Copperhead. We’ll be heading out at zero dark stupid into The Black as per the usual. Once on the other side we’ll meet up with the boys from Copperhead, call sign Zulu.

They will provide escort and fire support as we proceed up the northern route. It is paramount we get out of The Black as soon as possible for the RV with Copperhead. If the commies catch us on the way we are categorically fucked. More so than usual. He was a pain in the ass but without McKinnon, we’re short the only man dumb enough to be a gunner. Once big daddy Copper has us it should be clean sailing though. Int ops say the artillery saturation along the northern route has been working. They’ve pushed the Commies back 25 miles in some points.

Once in Copperhead, unload the supplies and start on your maintenance lists. Zim, there are about 3 trucks that need repairs. Verify you have the parts again before we leave, and If you need help steal Dusty. Once he signs off on the supplies he should be free.

Mark, there are some AA guns that need TLC, once your done they got a few guys who need training on the new LAM (Loitering Attack Missile) systems. Que up with the CO and he’ll get them together for you.

Leonard… The Crusty Colonel has locked himself out of his email again. Get him a new password, write it down somewhere he won’t lose it and for the love of god teach him how to use a computer. This is the 3rd time. There’s a bunch of other techno bullshit I don’t understand just read your list.

Dusty... Help Huan and stay out of trouble.

Yang. A sniper got a lucky pot-shot off on the radio tower. Guys on the ground say it’s a broken cable to the antenna ‘bout 50ft up but who knows. Last time the radio wasn’t plugged in. Verify your climbing kit, and do what you usually do.

Any Questions? …No? Alright, everyone head over to the mess and get your last supper. Be back here no later than 21:00 for your rules of engagement, and weapon pull. Yang you still gotta sort your shit out correct?”

“Correct.” Yang replied

“Alright, get yourself unfucked. I’ll get one of the boys to bring you a doggy bag.”

The guys all reviewed their lists with open mouths, the same look of stupidity as they looked through the sheer number of things that needed to be fixed. Yang’s list by comparison was only one item “Fix HF Antenna”. Yang was an Army Telecom Technician which on paper seems like a very glamorous and technical occupation. Yang had thought so too when he was drafted. As it turned out though, when you really broke it down all Telecom was either hanging very high in the air or buried very deep in the ground. Most of the job was literally just getting to the place where the work had to be done.

All of the technical training he had received just boiled down to how to identify which wires go where and when. Why the wires went in a specific direction, he didn’t need to know. The “why” side of the equation was for the computer guys like Leonard to figure out. He just needed to fix them, it just so happened this time that the wire was going up a 100ft cell phone tower close to front lines. Next week he could be up 200ft with a wrench or deep underground in a steam tunnel with rats that love to eat wire and spiders that love to eat rats. Because of this people had always told him they could never do his job. Usually, something along the lines of “I can’t do heights,” or “You couldn’t pay me enough to go down there,” But Yang liked it.

For one he didn’t have a choice, he was drafted, and being a miserable bastard wasn’t good for anyone. This was certainly part of it. But the main reason is that from the moment you join the army, you eat, sleep, work, shit, and shower around other people. People like Zim get addicted to porn mainly because rubbing one out in the portable toilet is the closest thing to alone time one can get. But when Yang was high in the air or down in the tunnels he was alone for those brief moments. In the tunnels with the rats and spiders, the war seemed so far away. From high on a tower looking out over hundreds of miles, the world seemed so big and full of mystery. He wasn’t without regrets though, he had been in college for Information Technology when he got listed for the draft. If he hadn’t run away then he would likely be in a position like Leonard’s working with computers or at some desk in the rear. By the time the police caught him all the desirable positions had been filled and Telecom Tech was the only computer-related job with a high enough causality rate to still have openings. So there he was.

It was almost night, purple rays of the sun still peeked through the holes in the sheet metal walls of the large garage. Yang was in the dimly lit vehicle bay inspecting equipment and looking through his Clack. The “Clack” was a large all-purpose construction vehicle, which more resembled a tractor than a truck, the name being derived from the noises it makes while driving. In the front, it had a large stub nose and flat windshield. Behind that was a three-seat cab with a canvas roof and armored doors, behind the cab, was a flat deck with large toolboxes lining either side. From the toolboxes, racks and tubes protruded outward for floodlights and attaching things like ladders or cable reels.

All of this was bolted together in a way only military engineers could take pride in. It was loud, slow, uncomfortable, and prone to losing pieces of itself in transit. The redeeming qualities were that it always started and when standing on the flatbed the entire vehicle was the greatest mobile work platform devised by man.

Yang was checking for loose pieces when Huan walked in carrying a paper bag. The rest of the unit all had huge boxes and crates double stacked on their arms.

“I know you guys care but I can’t eat all that.” Yang said pointing at the boxes.

Leonard scoffed “Funny guy. The rest of our trucks are full you’re the only one with any room left. Don’t worry Dusty said you didn’t need to sign for it.”

Yang looked at the group scrupulously “Sure, whatever. If it sits it fits but my trucks got a flatbed, not my fault if we lose something on the way.”

Huan chimed in. “Ah, I’m sir old Uncle Sam would forgive us for losing a little box. He misplaced McKinnon after all.”

Kilo wanted to get this over with and dropped his boxes on the floor. “Enough chatter, we’re going to miss our window. Hurry up and make sure to strap it down good.” He started walking out of the vehicle bay “Meet me at the vault when it’s done.”

Everyone jumped on the truck, loading the boxes in any place they could. Any organization Yang had managed was undone as Rations were dumped out of crates into half-empty toolboxes. Boxes of ammo were placed in block towers across the flat deck, and the empty ladder rack bent under the weight of LAM4 crates. By the end of it, the Clack looked almost menacing in its stupidity. A Tractor loaded to the brim with every military provision a taxpayer could name, and a few they couldn’t. Yang thought if the Commies ever saw this they might just take pity on him.

Weapons were drawn and ROEs5 were distributed. The ROEs at one point were quite complex and took local tactical situations and civilian populations into account. Now they amounted to little more than shooting anything that’s painted red, looks like a Commie, or has a gun. After they took the oath to obey the ROEs, they checked each other over, loaded into their vehicles, and headed out to The Black. They arrived at the waypoint 10 minutes later, a single traffic light standing in the middle of the desert. A Crimson light bathed the vehicles as they fell into a neat single file line and rolled to a stop.

The flats before them were at one point a normal desert with foothills that led up to a vast mountain range. But when the gates disappeared they also took everything else with them. Within a 20 mile ring of every gate, all that remained was a perfectly flat plain. The military base sat on the southern edge of the ring, and on the opposite side 30 miles away was a clean circle of thousand-foot cliff faces. Cut into the cliffs were roads that winded through the mountains that led to various bases closer to the front lines. During the day the mountains just looked creepy but at night when the distant flashes from firebombs cast sharp red shadows across the mountains it looked as if the flats lead into a demon's mouth. Yang swore this place was closer to hell than anywhere else on earth.

Most gate rings are perfectly safe to traverse. But The Black was exceptional if nothing else. During the Horde days, the commies in a brief moment of intelligence had used the cliff faces as artillery camps. When the horde marauders had moved north into the flats, the Commies unleashed every chemical and biological agent man had devised to that point. Over a decade later the sands of the flats are still full of radioactive and persistent biochemical compounds. Normally the winds sweep the sand east and west with the prevailing winds turning it into a death trap. But some clever military weather guy state-side noticed that during a window of 30 minutes right around midnight the winds die down and the dust settles enough to make it “safe” for traversal. That weather guy’s clever idea was what Yang and so many others risked their lives to execute. Every night at midnight convoys race across The Black in a straight line. Returning trucks empty, departing trucks full of supplies for the northern front.

Kilo was a little paranoid so they usually got there early, but soon the other convoys began to fall in. This was Yang’s favorite part. One after another he watched as vehicles of every make and model began to fall into his left and right. Around fifty rows, each row a convoy with a different destination. He checked for familiar vehicles to see who was out tonight. If he got lucky he would see the 403rd’s station wagon, not tonight though. Kilo started squawking on the radio.

Kilo: “This is Alpha, Lights about to pop. All units radio check.”

Mark: “Bravo Check.”

Huan: “Charlie here.”

Dusty: “Delta.”

Leonard: “Echo, 5 by 5.”

Zim: “Foxtrot here, uhh Golf. lick my nuts over.”

(Yang tried his hardest to hold in a laugh as he sounded off. He could picture Kilo beat red in the lead truck. Zim was gonna pay for that one later.)

Yang: “Uhh Golf here, Foxtrot, 1 by 1, say again over.”

Zim: “Golf, I say again, Lick my nuts. OVER.”

Kilo: “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

(Oh, they did it now. Forget beat red Kilo was about to boil over.)

Kilo: “Golf, Foxtrot, you’re on shit can duty when we get back. Lights Poppin’ unfuck yourselves. Over.”

Yang expected as much. Still, if any signallers were scrolling through the squad nets he and Zim could become legends.

The light went yellow. Every truck in the convoy revved simultaneously. The sound of 300 shit boxes with rusted mufflers filled the air and rattled the ground. Green. Row after row the vehicles launched and soon Yang was up. He popped the clutch and the Clack howled. Every arcane mechanism and gear under the hood fighting to move the overloaded vehicle. CLACK,CLACK,CLACK! Faster and faster, as he moved deeper into The Black.

Yang soon caught up to his convoy. The fast start was really just a government-funded dick measuring contest. In order to keep the killer dust out of the cabin from other vehicles in the convoy, the big holes were taped up, but that would only help so much. The real challenge was that each row had to create its own slipstream by tailgating each other. This made it so the dust didn’t have time to kick up for the rear vehicles, it also helped Yang and other large vehicles at the back maintain the speed necessary to cross. In order for this to work, they needed to follow close. Really close. Having to keep the Clack within 6 feet of Zim’s ass for 25 minutes was no small order but he trusted Kilo to maintain a steady pace and the rest of them had done this at least a hundred times. For the first half, everything was going as well as it normally did.

The first bad omen was when they crossed the point of no return. Normally Yang would spot a slightly smaller group of vehicles returning from the north side offset to the east by about a mile. Leonard was the first to radio it in.

Leonard: “Alpha this is Echo, Not seeing the usual return traffic.”

Kilo: “This is Alpha, I noticed the rest of the trucks on platoon net are saying the same. Switch to NVGs. Conoy’s going dark 1 mike.”

This wasn’t good. Yang pulled his helmets Night Vision monocle over his left eye and got ready to kill his headlights. A minute came and every vehicle disappeared into the night. The monocle adjusted painting the night with white phosphor. Through his one eye, he could make out Zim’s truck through the dust and the occasional flash from the mountains in the distance. With the convoy dark he could now make out tracer rounds firing in the air from the other side.

For the first time, it occurred to Yang how dangerous this whole affair actually was. In the hundred or so times he had made the run the Commie presence was low enough to allow headlights. His depth perception faded as his brain lost its frame reference, Yang white-knuckled the steering wheel. Now he and 300 other vehicles were careening through the dark at 70 miles an hour. The only thing stopping them from rear-ending each other was a gut feeling. He stared forward afraid to blink, just another 15 minutes and it would be over. They could use their brake pedals. Then it happened, a massive explosion from the middle of the group reached into the sky.

Zim: “The hell! The Commies found us!?”

10 feet to his left he caught the flash of another vehicle. It was heading in the opposite direction. Oh. Fuck. It wasn’t the Commies. In that moment Yang’s stomach dropped. The radio started squawking.

Mark: “KILO! WHAT THE FUCK! WAS THAT A TRUCK FROM THE OTHER SIDE?!”

Kilo: “IGHT EVERYONE STAY CALM AND STAY ON MY ASS!”

Kilo: “CO’s6 row is down! Can’t Squawk the other convoy!”

Yang slapped the switch on his dash radio to bring up the platoon radio net on his spare speaker. The CO’s row was the only one with the radio keys7 to talk between convoys. It was Chaos the 50 lead cars we’re yelling at over each other arguing about what to do. Yang heard bits of Kilo screaming in the cacophony. The returning group must’ve been spooked and gone dark before veering into his convoy’s path. Somewhere in front of him was the oncoming convoy, Yang was completely dumbfounded. At this exact moment, 600 densely packed vehicles were hurtling toward each other in the dark with no way to stop.

Yang started hitting his steering wheel. How could the army fuck up this bad!? Wait, no! This is exactly the kind of shit the army fucks up! He had read entire papers on it! A burst of flames erupted from the convoy 2 or 3 rows over. The lead car impacting what must’ve been a fuel truck, the 7 trucks behind it all rear-ending each other. The ammo they carried added to the inferno with secondary explosions and cook-offs. Rockets free from their storage crates ignited and began shooting wildly in arks through the air. Other rows across the line illuminated the desert as they burst into brilliant star fire with increasing frequency. Kilo’s screaming voice burst out of Yang’s radio.

Kilo: “YANG, THROW ON THE LIGHTS!”

LIGHTS! Yeah! Yang had a lot of those! Keeping his eyes forward he began blindly pushing and slapping every button and switch across the cabin. The first light switch he managed to find was the roof-mounted tow truck lights. Certainly not ideal. 1000 watt Flashing yellow and orange lights were the first to cut through the darkness. At that moment the Clack became a golden beacon of hope for everyone in the convoy. 100s of people rubbernecked to stare slack-jawed at this idiot in a big flashing construction truck. Yang found the other switches across the dash and every floodlight, and turn signal on his truck burst forth into the night. He waited for the rest of the convoy to follow his lead but before they could Kilo’s voice boomed across the platoon net.

Kilo: “Everyone stay dark! Stack up and provide cover for the idiot in the tow truck!”

Shouts of excitement and elation rang out through the platoon net. That’s when Yang realized what Kilo was doing. The oncoming convoy needed to know they were there, but the Commies didn’t need to know about every vehicle. The best option was to use the one vehicle with the most lights, the Clack. Kilo’s thinking was very logical given how screwed they were. If Yang wasn’t the target of that pragmatism might be impressed but as it stood he was a giant neon sign that every Commie and low earth orbit satellite in the neighborhood could see. But it was working; elsewhere the explosions continued but the oncoming vehicles swerved between the rows that were catching occasional light from the clack. The remaining vehicles of the convoy quickly fell in. They had 10 minutes left to get to the other side.

The neat rows that they departed with had turned in into an unruly glob with Yang in the middle. The flashing yellow construction lights glinted off the mounted guns of adjacent vehicles. All across the group crazy bastards wearing hazmat suits were popping the roof hatches and manning the .50 cals. One of them turned to Yang and waved his fists in the air. They could still make it. Whatever the other returning convoy was running from they would be ready for it. Machine gun tracers erupted out from the darkness in front of them. They bounced off the lead vehicles and scattered into the night. Everything with a barrel rotated to face the origin of the gunfire.

Appendix*

1. Military Ranks: The military ranks in this story are based on a mix of CommonWealth ranks, not the American ones.

2. 5.56: The standard caliber of NATO Ammunition

3. (PX) Postal Exchange: Essentially a military shopping mall.

4. (LAM) Loitering Attack Missile: Set and forget automatic and intelligent missile launchers.

5. (ROEs) Rules of Engagement: Documents or flashcards that tell soldiers what targets they are allowed to shoot at and when.

6. (CO) Commanding Officer: Not necessarily the highest-ranking person but the one person or group designated to be in charge of a specific operation.

7. Radio Keys: Cryptographic encryption keys that are used to secure radio communications. Different nets can run different keys to limit the risk of all nets being compromised by an enemy. Radios on different keys cannot talk to each other.