Yassin sat on a worn plastic chair, his face etched with deep lines that told tales of a hard life and countless experiences. His skin, tanned and weathered by the sun, had the rugged texture of someone who had spent years exposed to the elements. His hair, once jet black, was now streaked with gray, and a neatly trimmed beard covered his jawline, also showing signs of age.

“I remember the drive there. We had been set up at the outside of our city for the last few days. Sitting there waiting for the order to either take back control of the city if the situation grew too dire. Tensions were high the first day, but after a few days we spent the day just playing football, cards, talking to the refugees who just arrived. We watched all the footages from Europe. The scenes from the battlefield, Poland turned into ashes as the Aliens advanced deeper into central Europe and western Russia.

They woke us up at 3am. Telling us to check our vehicles and to load up all our equipment. You can imagine our surprise as we were ordered to drive to the harbour. Some men were impatient to land into Europe. They were itchy to fire their tanks shells into enemy tripods or crabs. They were impatient. Those men hadn’t seen war. They hadn’t fought in the Sahara like me and the other guys in my Abrams.

Some other protested. One young guy became hysterical and threatened to shoot himself rather than save the Europeans. His brother had died five years earlier trying to cross into Spain for a better life. Apparently, his boat with 20 other immigrants capsized and the Spanish coast guard hadn’t bothered to save everyone. Not sure all of this was true, but I understand his rage. I don’t know what our company commander told him privately, but it calmed him down. The smart boys, knowing it was inevitable damn near looted a local shop, packing up as many cigarettes and mint leaves as we could.

Our battalion was fitted with the latest M1A2 Abram’s tanks, we had seen combat a year before with them in the Sahara. Lost a few and some very good men, but we had learn that we could rely on those vehicles.

We saw the refugees exiting the ferry we were about to board. Among them was a single woman carrying a child on her back and a baby in front, struggling with two huge pieces of luggage before a policeman stepped in to help. That sight alone moved even the staunchest isolationists among us. We loaded up our vehicles in the ferry.

The civilian ferry, was ordinarily used for transporting passengers and their cars across tranquil waters in the summer, I don’t have to remind you it wasn’t made for this. The decks were crowded with soldiers. People were sitting anywhere there was room, in the lounge, hallways captain’s bridge. Smoking and checking their equipment. The crew quickly abandoned the idea of telling those grunts not to smoke. People were lost in conversations on what to expect, some played cards, some sat quietly lost in their thoughts.

The lower deck was full to the brim with Tanks, APC’s, Trucks. You call it. I still have no idea to this day how they managed to fit an entire armoured company inside one of those.

The scent of diesel fuel combined with the waves made me vomit more than once. As a gunner on the Abram’s, I had already done all my tasks. I had done my maintenance at the outskirts of the city and after we loaded on the ferry. My commander was sleeping on top of the tank and the rest were around somewhere. I tried to distract my thoughts about the coming war with Fatima which I had just met at the port.

“How was the long drive from Tarifa to the front line?”

We only drove for about half an hour before we reached a railyard, and the whole time we were buzzing with excitement. People waiting for the ferries were cheering us on, thanking us as soon as they realized we weren’t even from the same continent, but were there to help save theirs. They clapped and cheered while our tanks and vehicles squeezed through the narrow streets. It was like the footages of American GI’s liberating France and the low countries. Hell some drunk Danish woman tried to kiss me more than once as a dozen of them had jumped on our tank as we had halted briefly. The thing was, they didn’t know they were safe in Spain. The Pyrenees were even more treacherous for the crabs than the Carpathians. Yet everyone wanted to put a sea between them and the crabs.

That first day, we loaded everything—vehicles, equipment—onto the trains, and then we spent the next week riding along. Honestly, we were lucky—it took some others twice as long to make the same trip.

We arrived at Munich. Our officers took the plane. They had to arrive earlier to organize with the Europeans. We didn’t have the same doctrine, radio systems or even the same rations as them. Everything had to be organized. They didn’t trust us with manoeuvre warfare so we were tasked with defensive tasks at first. The arrival in Europe was rough. From a distance, the battlefield stretched out like a somber, chaotic landscape against the horizon. We’d ofcourse knew what Germany looked like before this. But this wasn’t it. It was as if every tree had gone and escaped to Africa as well. You’d smell the battlefield from Kilometres away. The air had was heavy with the acrid smell of gunpowder and burning debris. Even do most of us weren’t used to this cold, the sight of the front-line kilometres ahead was too heavy for us to turn our backs to. We had olive uniforms and our vehicles had desert camouflage. With the snow and mud in backdrop It was an interesting sight to the retreating allied soldiers.

We had made it north of Nurenberg. We were expecting the crabs any day now there. So we sat on and around our vehicles, watching as a column of battered soldiers trudged slowly across the scarred landscape. Their uniforms were torn, caked with mud and grime—proof of the brutal conditions they’d just been through. Most looked utterly drained, their faces streaked with dust and sweat from the hell they were leaving behind.

The column moved in a ragged, disorganized way, with some soldiers lagging behind. Their gear was battered and worn—helmets dented, rifles hanging loosely over their shoulders. The air was thick with the smell of sweat, gunpowder, and that faint, metallic tang of blood.

We tried to help them. Offering water, making our meds check them out. They only responded to cigarettes. They moved like zombies.

They didn’t need much care—they just wanted to get out of there. It turned out they were a battalion of French soldiers who had abandoned the nearest town. They had orders to retreat, and we were the armored shield meant to hold back the crabs chasing after them.

I saw a kid, guy must have 20 but his face looked like he had lived for 50 years. He was carrying a heavy machine gun, it rested on his shoulder and he held the barrel in one hand.

His face lit up as he saw us. As he saw our desert tinted vehicles and the Moroccan flags on our shoulders. ‘Marhaba!’ he said as he smiled. ‘What took you so long?’ another said. We didn’t know if he was being ironic or not. Some shaked hands with our man, most just looked at the ground and trudged through the mud.

Our lieutenant left the officers tent along with all the other officers quickly came to our section and yelled out. “Everyone check the NBC filter in your tanks and make sure you have your gasmask on hand!”.

We were taken aback but this day was a day of new. We of course knew of the nukes but even then everything felt surreal.

Two hours later, we were lined up, holding the east. We’d dug dirt-filled boxes as makeshift cover. We could see over them, but we had to move forward to fire. We couldn’t wait to spot the enemy on our screens. A company of British infantry arrived and dug in between us. Our English was poor, so communication was strained. But somehow, we understood each other just fine. They loved their tea just as much as we did, but theirs couldn’t compare to ours. In broken English, we joked to ease the tension, laughing at how our tea was always superior. It was a small comfort amidst the rising pressure.

But as the artillery grew louder, we knew those crabs were closing in. The air seemed to vibrate with every thud. It was then that the weight of it hit me. What were we supposed to do? Hold. That was the order. Win time. Hold until relieved. A sick joke, really. It was like being overrun was part of the plan.

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“They’re coming,” the radio crackled. “Two kilometers out. We’re the only thing standing between them and Nuremberg. We’re all there is until the French tanks arrive at 0600. Allah ya‘awn-na. Takbir!”

“Allah ouakbar!” Every crewmember in every tank shouted back to our platoon commander.

“Takbir!” his voice came again, urgent and steady through the radio. We echoed back, “Allah ouakbar,” as if he could hear us.

Behind me, the loader whispered a prayer, his arms raised, eyes closed, his fingers gently tracing his face. I’ll never forget the look on my tank commander’s face. His optics were focused over the hill, his gaze unblinking. He was locked in, more focused than I’d ever seen him. The screen lit his face with a ghostly glow, the only light in the surrounding darkness.

"Were you scared?" I asked.

"Less and less, by the second," he replied, his voice steady. "In that cabin, sitting in my seat, I had made my peace. I knew that, worst case, I'd die for a good reason."

"Hassan, advance!" My commander’s voice crackled through the microphone.

Hassan didn’t need any more encouragement. As we crested the hill, I understood why my commander had looked so tense. Beetles, tripods, hundreds of crabs—all about two to three kilometers away. I didn’t even know where to aim. But my commander didn’t hesitate. With the hunter-killer system, he locked onto the target, and my turret moved on command.

“Tripod, 2,000 meters!” he shouted.

“On!” I replied.

"Fire!" I didn’t need to be told twice. I squeezed the trigger, and the tank lurched as the round rocketed forward. The breech slammed back as the shot tore through the air, hitting the tripod directly. Its main body jerked violently as our APFSDS penetrated it like a knife through butter.

“Loader, load HE. Driver, move back!” the commander barked. Both Farid and the driver responded immediately. It always made me laugh even in combat how Zayd our commander switched between calling us by our names and roles. We were supposed to remain invisible until the moment we fired, to avoid being targeted.

Our platoon opened fire in unison, moving left and right, each tank executing the same maneuver.

“Loaded!” Farid’s voice rang out behind me, his hands already at work.

“Driver, forward; Gunner, again!” the commander ordered. The first round had cut through the tripod, doing damage inside but not enough due to minimal spalling. But I wasn’t about to miss. I quickly lasered the target again as the tripod began turning its focus toward us.

I squeezed the trigger once more. The round flew out, hitting the tripod squarely. Seconds later, it erupted in a massive explosion, flames igniting from the alien fuel. The tripod crashed to the ground, its fire consuming it—and a few dozen crabs beneath it—in a fiery blaze.

"Load HE, Gunner, target tripod, 2,000 meters left!" Zayd shouted. I swung the turret to the left, locking onto the target.

“On!” he yelled, his voice sharp with focus. I waited for Farid to give the all-clear as I lasered the tripod. It fired a beam in our direction, missing by a hundred meters. But the way it landed told me everything I needed to know—I didn’t want to be in its crosshairs.

“Loaded!” Farid’s voice rang out. The man was handling 20-kilogram shells with the precision of a machine. You could hear the strain in his voice with each shell he loaded.

Shell after shell, his breath grew more desperate, and with each round, I could feel the weight of it too. We had forty rounds at the start, and in five minutes, we were down to thirty. We had taken down four tripods and one beetle, but there were still plenty out there. They were out of range for the British infantry, but we didn’t want them anywhere near striking distance.

“All Berber units, verify the status of your CBRN filters and mask up. Everyone outside of a vehicle, mask on.” The voice crackled over the radio. I later realized it was the British colonel in charge of our battle group.

I knew what it meant. And for the first time that night, a cold rush of fear washed over me. I knew what was coming.

Then, artillery landed. We had stopped the constant moving, given up trying to save time. We were now locked in, with front-row seats to the carnage about to unfold.

The crabs—about five hundred of them—were sprinting as fast as they could, charging through the fields in front of us. Their bodies moved over the roads and scattered farms like a tidal wave. We watched as shells landed, sending up clouds of smoke and debris in their wake. We were at the center of it all, helpless but ready.

We were about one kilometer away when the first crabs appeared on the horizon, their legs twitching in unison as they charged across the open fields. The artillery hit moments later, the shells landing with an earth-shattering boom. But it wasn’t just the explosion that caught our attention—it was the thick, greenish-gray clouds that billowed out of the shells upon impact.

The sarin gas spread quickly, a silent death, moving like a creeping fog across the fields. It wasn’t a blast; it was a suffocating, invisible wave that settled over everything in its path. The crabs, still sprinting toward us, didn’t even seem to notice the toxic mist as it enveloped them. Their movement slowed at first, as if they were stumbling, their legs buckling under them.

Within moments, the gas started to take its toll. The crabs’ bodies spasmed violently, their legs jerking in unnatural directions, some twisting completely around as though their joints were no longer functioning. The air was thick with the stench of chemicals—sharp, acrid, and metallic—as their exoskeletons darkened, the muscles within them frozen by the poison. The once-coordinated rush became a chaotic collapse, a wave of bodies crumpling to the ground, twitching and contorting as life was swiftly drained from them.

The fog of sarin spread further, turning the field into a graveyard of twitching carcasses. Those that managed to stagger a few more paces before succumbing were nothing but crumpled husks. The gas worked fast—too fast for the crabs to escape or even understand what was happening to them. Their bodies twisted grotesquely, the spasm of their final movements sending ripples through the horde until the ground was littered with motionless shells, all lifeless in a matter of seconds.

The greenish mist began to dissipate, leaving behind a silent, toxic wasteland. It had done its job. The crabs were no more.

I looked at Zayd. The same look in his eyes as mine—frozen, staring through the eye holes of our gas masks. The silence between us was suffocating, more deafening than the explosion. There were no words left. The crabs were gone, reduced to twitching corpses by a poison that we had unleashed, but it didn’t feel like a victory. It felt like a question we couldn’t answer. We were watching life blink out of existence in a matter of seconds, with no way to stop it, no way to process it.

Farid’s voice broke through the haze, distant but sharp. “Loaded!” His hands were steady, but there was a tremor in his breath now, a crack that hadn’t been there before. I could hear it in his voice—this was no longer just a fight for survival. It was something else. Something darker.

Zayd gripped the turret’s controls tighter, his knuckles white. I could see the muscles in his jaw flexing, trying to fight off whatever was rising inside him. He didn't speak, but there was no need. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife.

I turned my attention back to the field, the fog still hanging over it like some terrible mist from a nightmare. The crabs were gone, but the thought of what was to come—the consequences of what we had just done—made my stomach churn.

The radio crackled again, the voice of the British colonel booming over the comms. "All units, maintain position. Prepare for further artillery strikes. The enemy is not finished." It felt like an order, but I could hear the fatigue in his voice too. We were all in the same battle now, and no one was untouched.

I adjusted my sights, but it wasn’t the enemy I was focused on. It was the image of those crabs, twitching in the gas, that kept replaying in my mind.

Zayd’s hand moved to the microphone. “We’re ready,” he said, his voice low but steady. He didn’t need to say more. The weight of what was happening hung between us like a storm we couldn’t outrun.

The shells would fall again. And when they did, we would be ready to pull the trigger. But as the minutes dragged on, the question I couldn’t shake gnawed at me—were we fighting for something we still believed in? Or were we just waiting for the storm to consume us all?

"You do know what sarin gas does to a body? The image of those crabs twisting and writhing in agony is still etched in my mind.”

“Sarin isn’t just a poison—it’s a killer. Every muscle spasms, contracts uncontrollably, then cramps up. The body’s natural reflexes to breathe are overridden, but the chest can’t expand, no matter how hard you try. Your lungs burn from the effort to breathe, but you can’t. It’s like drowning in your own body. The crabs—they already had it bad. The difference in atmosphere between their world and ours was already messing with their systems. They were nauseous, disoriented, struggling to breathe even before we released that hell into the air.

Now, we gave them something worse. A pain no one could possibly describe. You could see it in their bodies, the way they jerked violently, as if they were being torn apart from the inside. Their legs locked up, bent in ways no creature’s legs should bend, while their bodies convulsed, every movement a final desperate attempt to escape the pain. But they couldn’t. Not from sarin. Those things were smart. Do they acted on instincts you knew there was something inside of them other than animal like eyes. We weren’t taking out ‘rabid dogs’ as some people described. Death is already bad as it is, I don’t think we needed to bring Sarin into the mix”.

“I looked back at Zayd. His face was tight with the strain of what he was seeing, his jaw clenched beneath the gas mask. There was no victory in what we’d just done, only a reminder of how powerless we were against the forces we’d unleashed. It was a fight for survival, yes, but at what cost?

The crabs were nothing but twitching shells now, each one a testament to how fast and merciless the gas was. The field in front of us was littered with their bodies, like a harvest of death. The gas wasn’t just a weapon—it was a statement. A cruel, final statement that no one could ignore.”