Bali, Indonesia, June 2035

Budi Santoso leans against the worn wooden bar of his modest dive, a place that has seen better days. Once a lively hub for tourists, Bali now lingers in the long shadow of the war. The conflict shattered global travel, and even years later, the island has yet to reclaim its former glory.

Gone are the endless crowds of sunburned backpackers and Instagram influencers chasing the perfect shot. The streets are quieter now, the beaches less trampled. These days, the occasional Australian, Chinese traveler, or rare European or American still finds their way here, but Bali is no longer the endless parade of tourists it once was.

Budi doesn’t mind. In fact, he prefers it this way. The island’s charm feels more authentic without the constant churn of disinterested visitors. Instead of mass tourism, Bali has become a refuge for regional travelers and a handful of foreigners looking to surf, embrace nature, and disappear for a while. The island may have lost its never-ending wave of tourists, but in Budi’s eyes, that wasn’t such a bad thing.

In his early forties, Budi carries the weight of a past that feels both distant and ever-present. He was among the first Asian soldiers to set foot on European soil during the war, a deployment that left an indelible mark on him. As he pours a drink for a lone customer, his mind drifts back to those days.

“The deployment ceremony was chaos,” Budi recalls, his voice steady but tinged with emotion. “Our battalion commander stood there, trying to look composed, but we could all see the fear in his eyes. The entire battalion was assembled on the parade square, families and civilians kept hundreds of meters away by military police. They’d been ordered to sit, but it didn’t stop the cries and shouts. For every five weeping mothers—or even fathers—there was one who turned violent. No one wanted us to go.”

I lean in, curious. “Were they scared of a second impact?”

Budi shakes his head. “Not really. Sure, that was part of it, but mostly they knew what awaited us in Europe. It was a meat grinder, and no one wanted to send their sons into that. As we stood there, trying to hear our battalion commander and the defense minister over the noise, it was almost impossible. The shouts from the civilians outside the fence drowned everything out. And then there was the gear—or lack of it. We were told May in Europe wasn’t so bad, that the Europeans would provide us with jackets. Can you believe that? We were leaving without proper winter gear.”

He pauses, his gaze distant. “The worst part was the mothers. Some of them lay down in front of the buses, trying to stop us from leaving. It was heartbreaking. We were a world away from Europe, and yet we were being sent into the unknown. At the airport, it was no better. Four Garuda Indonesia airliners for 600 of us, plus three cargo planes for ammunition and equipment. We sat on the tarmac for hours, waiting to board. And when we finally took off, the flight path was a mess—layovers in Dubai, then Athens, before we ‘put our game faces on,’ as they said. We flew over the Balkans, Italy, Switzerland, and finally France before landing in Luxembourg.”

"How was it there?" I ask.

"A madhouse." He exhales sharply, shaking his head. "Looked like a mosque exit after Friday prayers. Chaos everywhere. Battalion staff running around, trying to figure out where to camp their men. Some poor bastard’s plane lost an engine—completely out of action. You know what they did? Just towed it off the tarmac and dumped it in the grass like a broken-down car."

He gestures vaguely, as if picturing the scene all over again.

"And the rest of us? We were just sitting there—rows upon rows of soldiers, lined up by platoon, company, even battalion. Us, the Indians, the Nigerians, half a dozen other countries. Packed together in the damp grass like human cattle, waiting while our officers scrambled to figure out what the fuck was going on.

"The airstrip was barely holding together. Planes coming in and out, landing to drop off men and material before cycling back and taking off again. The stink of fuel and sweat mixing in the humidity. Supply trucks weaving through the crowd, kicking up mud. Every so often, someone would run past with orders that probably didn’t make sense five minutes later.

"And through it all, we just sat there, soaked, exhausted, watching the sky like it held the answers. But no answers came—just more planes, more men, more confusion."

No one knew how long we’d be there. Some had been stuck for hours, others for days. Planes came and went, roaring overhead, dropping off supplies or more men, then lifting back into the sky, bound for some other war-torn airstrip. Cargo was unloaded, officers barked orders, but to the men on the ground, it all blended into the same endless cycle of waiting.

A few soldiers smoked, sharing cheap cigarettes with guys from units they had never met. Others just sat, arms crossed over their knees, heads low, catching whatever rest they could steal between bursts of shouted commands. Every now and then, a group would be called up, their officers waving them forward, disappearing into the organized chaos near the terminal.

We’d play football. We had organized a tournament of sort between the nations. They’d sent their best teams and we just played one match after the other. World war three or not, we were bored out of our mind. Do we all got dragged back into reality during the semi finals when our company leader arrived and explained the situation. It was about 5 in the afternoon.”

“Coblence, north of Frankfurt has collapsed and crabs are pouring in. We go now to stop their advance.” Guy said those words as if he could pronounce the cities. We assembled by platoon, checked our equipment. And then some Belgian army trucks arrived.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"You didn’t have your vehicles?" I ask.

"No. They were still on the boat, on their way to Antwerp. A lot of units didn’t get their vehicles until their entire platoons were wiped out at the front." He lets out a bitter laugh. "Logistics guys called them ‘ghost shipments’—armored vehicles arriving with no one left to receive them. That’s why, as the war went on, you saw things like Venezuelan soldiers driving Malaysian armored vehicles, just to give one example."

He pauses, eyes distant as he recalls the memory.

**"We drove all evening. It was night, but the horizon was lit up with the glow of fires and explosions, towering columns of smoke stretching into the sky. As we got closer, we started to hear it—artillery shells landing, gunfire, and fighter jets roaring overhead. We passed by the few civilians who hadn’t evacuated yet, rows of them walking the other way, carrying everything they could on their backs.

We hadn’t been briefed properly, and as the sounds of battle grew louder, we all just wanted to stop, get out, and stay as far away as possible from whatever the hell was coming."**

"That was the battle of Rathaus, right?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says, nodding slowly. "Coblence, as the Germans called it, was on the Rhine, running north to south. But there was another river that ran northeast to southwest. Frankfurt was a few hundred kilometers south of it. The crabs didn’t seem interested in it, though. If they had crossed that river, they would’ve flanked Frankfurt from the north, and the French and American forces there wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing but face the curtain. The crabs were focused on pushing southwest into Luxembourg and the Belgian Ardennes. Rathaus was one of the few hills standing between them and that push. So, naturally, it became the place where the Belgian army and the new allies would make their first and last stand in Germany."

He exhales slowly.

**"When we got within a few hundred meters of Hill 32, we saw it. The largest artillery bombardment since World War I. It was pitch black except for the flashes of explosions and fire behind the hill. Even though we were behind it, we could feel the earth shake beneath us. There was one moment where it felt like our eardrums would burst, the sound was so deafening. We all just stood there, staring up at the hill like scared puppies, wondering if we’d really be ordered to climb it, as a flight of Belgian F-16s screamed overhead right above our heads. It was a miracle they didn’t hit the hill. With the banshees you either flew as low as possible or as high. No in-between. They dropped their ordinance and flew off into the night.

The crabs were a few kilometers behind the hill, but we didn’t know how much time we had. We gathered in a circle, said a prayer. The Belgian army truck drivers who brought us there, some of them were Muslim, and they joined in. That’s where that famous photo came from—the one where my platoon leader is standing in front of us, facing us, with the hill and the fires behind him. The sky kept flashing from the heavy explosions hitting it. We finished the prayer, put on our helmets, and lined up, forming a baseline. Then, we started the trek up the hill."

There we were—300 Indonesians, a few hundred Belgian infantry, and a company of American Abrams. They’d come straight from Frankfurt.

I remember the tank commander’s face clearly. He was standing tall, one hand pressed against his helmet's earpiece, his face bathed in the flickering glow of countless fires and explosions as his tank rumbled forward. The guy was missing part of his upper lip, a scar that added a permanent grimace to his face. His tank had clearly seen better days—yellow, desert-toned, the paint chipped and scratched by countless impacts. What struck me most was the dead crab hanging off the lower plate on the front. At first, I didn’t notice it, but when I did, it struck me as bizarre. I suppose they believed that dead crabs would scare the others off or something, it was one of the countless theories that run through the ranks.

There I was, trudging up the hill with the tripod for the .50 caliber on my back. Adhi, my colleague, carried the heavy .50 cal itself in its backpack. Each step was a battle nefore it had even started for us, my legs growing heavier with every move. We finally reached the summit just as the vehicles did. They didn’t hesitate for a moment—they opened fire the instant those tanks hit the top. The crabs had given them more than enough targets.

Even now, I can’t fully describe the valley below us. It was like the surface of the moon, barren and scarred. There was something so raw about it, something that made my stomach twist. From a distance, I saw shapes moving across the land, and for a moment, I couldn’t believe they were crabs. They looked like a wave of pebbles, rolling across the fields, decimated by tank fire and artillery strikes. Each time an artillery shell landed, you'd see their distorted bodies flung into the air, a grotesque mix of dirt and shattered limbs.

What struck everyone the most was the sound. It was relentless, deafening. You couldn’t hold a coherent thought without it being shattered by the thunder of a tank firing or the bone-rattling impact of artillery landing too close. Officers had to scream into each other’s ears just to be heard.

My task was simple—set up the tripod for the .50 cal. I had done it a hundred times before, but for the first time in my career, knowing that we were about to fire real bullets at real targets, my hands felt slow, clumsy. It took me twice as long.

We were out of range of their blasters. The tripods could reach us, but they couldn’t poke their heads up before getting obliterated by the tanks. We thought we were safe—until one of our Abrams got hit.

I don’t know how far the shot came from, but when it landed, it cooked the tank. The hatches blew open, and flames shot out. Two crew members leapt from the burning wreck, screaming as fire clung to them. They hit the ground, rolling, slapping at themselves, but it didn’t matter. I looked away. I just couldn’t watch. Instead, I focused on preparing the ammo boxes, forcing my hands to stay busy.

After half an hour, the crabs got within range of our machine guns—right as the tanks started running low on ammo. They pulled back, waiting for another company of Bradleys to replace them. But the Bradleys weren’t there yet, and we had no idea if they ever would be.

It felt like we fired all night. The barrel of the .50 cal was glowing red-hot. Artillery landed closer and closer. We just kept firing into the valley, into the wave of them, using everything we had. Fires burned across the battlefield, and the sky flashed with artillery blasts and flares. All we could do was hold the line. We did as we were told. Our saving grace was the steady stream of ammunition and relentless artillery support. At times, the valley would be completely empty, as if we had wiped them all out. Then, half an hour later, more would pour in—so many that they’d be only a few hundred meters down the hill.

In those moments, everyone grabbed a weapon. Our battalion commander fired his FNC, still clutching a radio headset to his ear. A Red Cross medic emptied a G3 rifle like he was just another soldier. Even that American journalist attached to the Belgian unit—the story everyone thought was bullshit? It was real. That guy was firing a rifle like the rest of us.

We had every right to be scared. At one point, I thought we were done for. Their blasters got more accurate with every meter they closed in. Then, through the chaos, I heard it—a faint rumble at first, growing louder. It was in the clouds.

I looked up and saw them.

Twelve attack helicopters—French Tigers, I think—swooped in, firing their entire payload of rockets into the valley. They must have killed thousands. Then they pulled back into the clouds, circled, and came in again, ripping through the crabs with their autocannons before vanishing once more.

They saved us.

The Bradleys arrived soon after, their cannons tearing into the wave from kilometers away. The tide that had seemed unstoppable slowed to a trickle. By sunrise, there were none left.

Then came the fresh units.

Hundreds of French and Spanish vehicles poured in, pushing east. They didn’t even stop at the hill. They were the ones who took back Coblence. The crabs had thrown everything they had at us. We weren’t the only ones—there were three other hills, three other defensive lines like ours.

We had just been lucky.

Lucky that the ammunition reached us in time. Lucky that we weren’t overrun. Because if we had been, the French president had already given the order—if the crabs took the region, the entire area was to be nuked.

Better yet we heard we were ordered to stay here, wait for ammunition and just be on standby. So we had all the time in the world that morning. We ate breakfast, talked with the Belgians. Played cards and mostly we had the best sleep of our lives.”