Brussels, European federation, April 2035

Due to problems regarding my research grant and Emre Erdogan health problems neither me or him could travel. Our interview happened through a single phone call.

"I was on my knees. Could’ve been a blaster, could’ve been the so-called “friendly” artillery that had been pounding us for half an hour straight. Didn’t matter. I was trying to catch my breath—had been trying all afternoon. From the moment I climbed out of our M113 until now, it had been nonstop. Running. Shooting. Dragging the wounded back. Shooting again. Hand-to-hand fighting.

I got two of them with my bayonet. Lucky they were half my height, though all muscle. You had to kill them quickly—no drawn-out struggles. If you couldn’t drive the blade between their shells fast enough, or if a squadmate didn’t put a bullet in them while one was on top of you, you were dead in under thirty seconds. That’s how they got Furkan.

I’d shot two trying to close the distance, but when I turned, Furkan had one on him. I raised my rifle, squeezed the trigger—nothing. Empty. By the time I fumbled in a new magazine, that crab had ripped off Furkan’s arm. I don’t know how they did it, but they always managed to take the whole shoulder bone with them.

There was no time to mourn. My squad leader was screaming at me, voice barely cutting through the artillery. He wanted me to grab Furkan’s machine gun. I stumbled through the rubble, past Furkan, who was still moaning, his voice drowned by the explosions.

Bourgas was a funnel. The Black Sea to the east, a lake the size of the city to the west. The entire country was a funnel for the crabs, and Bourgas was the culmination of it all. Before the war, the city was beautiful. But now, kneeling there, bleeding, burned, gripping Furkan’s MG3 on a shattered window ledge, all I saw was smoke, dust, and death.

I should’ve invested in some ear protection. At the time, tinnitus was the least of my worries. Now, every night, as soon as my head hits the pillow, I’m back in Bourgas. My wife stopped asking why I only go to bed when I’m either exhausted or drunk.

I thought I’d find some redemption for Furkan through the other end of his MG3. But with every burst I fired, I only grew angrier. They kept coming. Furkan was only 21. Loved stray dogs. Every time we went out, he’d save leftovers for them. We used to laugh at it. Now, whenever some stray brushes against my leg looking for scraps, I want to kick it—for reminding me I’ll never be half the man Furkan was.

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I just kept firing. They kept coming. Hadn’t they conquered enough?

Then the sergeant screamed something.

“Gas! Gas! Gas!”

The squad echoed it. I dropped the gun, ripped off my helmet—oversized toilet pot, useless thing—grabbed my gas mask, and prayed my filter was still good. Too few to go around. By the time I checked my seal, I saw the jet streaking north over the square. F-4s. Greeks.

Some of the canisters opened in the air, releasing a heavy, sinking cloud a hundred meters away. Others malfunctioned and crashed into the old town like cannonballs. I looked at my suit—scratched, patched with duct tape. If those pilots had released just a second too early, I’d be choking to death in the rubble.

Nerve agents bought us time—ironic, I know. If you cleared out the ones who got too close before the cloud hit, you had twenty, maybe thirty minutes to breathe. Time to check your gear, count your ammo, run for more, drag the dying back.

That’s when the officer showed up. Military police with him.

“Cross the square. Retake the north side.”

Didn’t matter that our CBRN suits were old, torn, held together with tape. Orders were orders. Tape it up, triple layer, fix bayonets. You didn’t want the MPs dragging you into a basement.

So we went. I walked forward, mumbling the prayers I barely remembered from school. Only stopped to put down the occasional crab—or a stray dog taking too long to die.

We set up shop a hundred meters from where the sarin hit. The crabs were too dumb to take shelter inside the houses. Not that any houses were left.. They bolted north and waited for reinforcements. Those things could march 50 kilometers a day and still have the strength to fight.

Command thought we’d won. Until the artillery stopped—no more shells. The airstrikes stopped—no more bombs. And the crabs came back, in numbers. We got pushed south, and the whole thing started again.

The Jewel of the Black Sea. And we shat all over it.

Artillery. Gas. Nerve agents. Our own filth, once a day, when nature called.

The city was rubble. A mountain of shattered buildings. You couldn’t drive anything through it. Even their tripods struggled. We’d spend an entire morning climbing what used to be an apartment block, just to reach the top—only for the crabs to launch another attack.

Endless push and pull.

Instead of thinking, one more week and we’ll be relieved, we thought, just twelve more hours and we’ll get fresh ammo, filters, and cigarettes.

White phosphorus was the most fun. Napalm worked better, but by then, we barely had any left.

We’d fire a red flare, and the f4 phantoms would strafe from east to west. The canisters landed, then the inferno swallowed everything. When the smoke cleared, nothing was left but blackened logs that used to be bodies. The ground smoldered. Bricks cracked under the heat. If someone was unlucky enough to get hit, you’d see them roll, screaming, as their skin melted like candle wax.

You had to be quick. The only way to get napalm off was to scrape it away—use a jacket, a brick, anything. But it tore their skin off with it.

We kept going because we had no other choice.

Because if it wasn’t Bourgas, it would be Çorlu. Then Istanbul. Then Gebze. Then Izmit."