Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China, August 2035

The neon lights of Guangzhou flicker above like electric constellations, reflecting off the glassy façades of skyscrapers that stretch endlessly into the humid night. The air is thick with the scent of street food aromas, engine grease, and the faint metallic tang of summer rain that dried too quickly on the pavement.

The bar isn’t a bar—not in the way the city’s glossy rooftop lounges would define it. It’s a food truck, squat and unpolished, parked defiantly at the edge of a bustling public square. Hundreds of Plastic stools and tables, the same flimsy red and blue kind that have populated China’s night markets for generations, clutter the space. Patrons lean over plastic tables sticky with condensation, their voices a low, drunken hum that ebbs and flows with the clinking of beer bottles.

Decades have passed, yet nothing here has changed. The future arrived in glass towers and AI concierges, in automated taxis and seamless payment systems. But not here. Here, the past sits stubbornly under the neon haze, drenched in cheap beer and cigarette smoke.

Deng Wei, a half-empty Tsingtao dangling loosely from his fingers as he lit up yet another cigarette with his other hand. His gaze flicks up as I approach, scanning me with the same weary sharpness of a man who’s seen the city change a hundred times and stayed exactly the same.

“We made it to Odessa in one piece. Like Bourgas in Bulgaria, the city was a natural choke point, wedged between the Black Sea and two vast lakes to the north. A perfect funnel. We crushed the crabs under our treads, pushing through with the tanks, and when we reached the city, the Ukrainians poured inside of it. We swung west, encircling Odessa until we hit the airport and dug in.

That’s when the U.S. Marines landed. They had fought their way up from a beachhead south of the city and linked up with us at the airport. For years, we had trained to kill each other. Now, I was sprinting across the tarmac alongside a kid from Georgia—barely twenty, carrying a Javelin on his back. I ran ahead, guiding him to a fighting position where the missile was needed.”

“For the tripods?” I ask, turning the Tsingtao bottle in my hands, trying to make sense of the label.

“We saw them moving toward us and thought they were maybe a kilometer or two away—just from how massive they looked. But then we realized they were still five kilometers out.” He shakes his head, exhaling sharply. “That’s when it hit us—just how huge they really were.

He takes a sip of his beer, eyes flicking to the distance as if seeing them again. “We called that variant ‘a Dutch.’ Everyone did. First spotted near the Netherlands, sure, but mostly because they were so damn tall—like the people.”

(Author’s Note: Wei’s English isn’t the best.)

Me and the Marine ran toward a half-destroyed wall, the other PLA soldiers shouting at us to hurry. A Marine fire team joined us, moving fast. When they saw my sergeant, they gave him a funny look—the severed crab head strapped to his backpack was hard to ignore.

He sat down by the wall, legs crossed, Javelin in hand. His sergeants knelt beside him, helping set up the weapon. The tripod was getting closer. Every second, it loomed larger. We had never seen anything like it—100 meters tall, its core as big as a ship, with so many arms you couldn’t even count them.

I heard the kid yell, “Back blast clear!” just before he fired. The missile shot forward, its engine kicking in as it arched toward the tripod.

Then, the tripod turned. Its massive core spun like it was looking at us. A single, huge white eye locked onto us before shifting to the missile streaking toward it.

Wei takes a long drag from his cigarette, exhaling smoke into the humid night. He yells something to his boy, who’s kicking a football a few meters away with the other kids.

“Did it hit?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “It swatted the missile. Like a whip—one of its arms just lashed out and smashed it.”

Everyone gasped. Panic set in. The American was desperately reloading the Javelin, hands moving fast, but we all knew the truth. It was still too far for small arms. Not like our bullets would do anything anyway.

One second, the kid was there, fumbling with the Javelin. The next, he was gone—just a flash of white light and a plume of ash where he had been sitting. Half of the sergeant went with him, the rest of his body crumpling like a discarded rag.

We panicked. Everyone did. The gunfire erupted, a desperate, useless roar against something that didn’t care. My sergeant was screaming into the radio, calling for support, for anything that could help.

Our tanks and armored vehicles were fighting to the east, where the crabs from the city were swarming toward the airport. But we were on the west side—alone—with a goddamn tripod picking us off one by one.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Its heat rays sliced through the dark, three meters wide, burning white-hot. It fired in bursts—five seconds of hell. Then ten seconds of silence before it could fire again. That was the window. That was all you had to move.

I felt its warmth on my right, a searing, unnatural heat against my skin. I knew better than to look. I turned away from the light.

It wasn’t our proudest moment.

Everyone ran. No orders, no formation—just raw survival instinct. We sprinted down the line, desperate to put anything between us and that thing. The woodline was our only hope, a thin patch of trees barely enough to call cover, but we ran for it anyway.

The tripod followed, relentless. Its laser sliced through the dark, picking us off one by one. A flash—then a scream cut short. Another burst of fire—another man gone.

The ground shook with each of its steps. Closer. Closer. I didn’t look back. I just ran.

The air reeked of scorched earth and burning flesh. Every few seconds, another flash of light, another burst of searing heat—and another voice cut off mid-scream. I kept my head down, lungs burning, boots pounding against the dirt as I sprinted for the trees.

The woodline was barely cover, but it was all we had. Some of the guys dove behind tree trunks, others collapsed into the undergrowth, gasping for breath. I slid behind a thick oak, pressing my back against the rough bark, heart hammering against my ribs.

Then silence.

The hum got louder, that sharp, electric whine that made my skull vibrate. The tripod wasn’t just looking anymore—it knew.

The Marine next to me was shaking, mumbling something in Spanish. I had no idea what she was saying, and I didn’t ask.

I risked a peek around the tree.

There it was, standing at the edge of the airstrip, huge and patient, like it had all the time in the world. Its massive core spun slowly, those creepy, skeletal arms twitching like it could smell us.

Then came the whine—that awful, high-pitched build-up we all recognized.

It was about to fire.“MOVE!” someone yelled. She tried to stand—I grabbed her and yanked her back down. “Stay put!” I hissed.

Two guys panicked and ran. Big mistake. A flash—gone. Just like that. One second they were there, the next? Nothing but heat and dust. The dirt where they’d stood was still glowing. The air smelled like cooked meat.

The Marine next to me started crying. So did some kid from Shanghai. Nobody told them to stop.

Because deep down, we all knew.

This was it.” Wei lets out a rough laugh, shaking his head as he exhales smoke into the night air.

“I was thinking about my wife and my parents,” he says, tapping his cigarette against the table. “Figured I’d never see them again.”

Then came the crack—sharp, violent, cutting through the air. A tank dart slammed into the tripod.

“No idea who fired it,” Wei continues, smirking, “but it hit hard enough to make that thing flinch.”

Like clockwork, a few hundred meters away, a line of LAVs opened up, their cannons hammering the beast from the side. The tripod twitched, confused, spinning its massive core, trying to figure out where the attacks were coming from.

Another shot from the tank. More rounds from the LAVs.

The bastard was getting torn apart from both sides.

I spotted the tanks a few hundred meters away—two ZTZ99A’s, our guys. For a split second, I felt a grin creep onto my face. But then, one of them got hit.

A beam from the tripod slammed into it. The tank cooked instantly.

The turret hatches blew off, and the ammo inside detonated, sending a fireball shooting ten meters into the air. The turret spun in wild circles as if it was trying to unscrew itself from the hull, but it was already done.

The tank reversed, its tracks screeching against the dirt, but it was just stalling for a few seconds. Then, it exploded in a violent flash, sending debris flying.

The other tank didn’t stick around. It fired smoke canisters and started pulling back, retreating as fast as it could.

I threw myself up, heart racing, and sprinted toward the Shanghai kid—Deng, the one I told you about. Poor kid was curled in a ball, crying. I didn’t think, I just acted. I ripped the PF 98 rocket launcher off his back and took off through the trees, pushing past the bushes, my legs burning as I made my way to the other side of the treeline.

I hit the ground on one knee and armed the damn thing. The tripod was still out there, tearing apart everything in its path. I glanced back. The few who were still alive were huddled behind the trees, just trying to take cover.

But if I fired, I’d tear them apart with the backblast. I stood up again, almost on instinct, and sprinted a few meters farther from the others.

The tripod was still taking hits from the LAVs and tanks, but it didn’t flinch. Its closest leg was maybe 200 meters out, and every time it moved, the ground shook like some kind of earthquake. I nearly lost my balance from the vibrations.

I steadied myself, aimed at its hull, and looked down the sight. The thing was getting hit by everything—25mm rounds, APFSDS shells from the tanks. None of it was penetrating. It was like we were throwing rocks at a damn wall.

Then I looked down. The leg. More like where the ankle would be if it had one.

I squinted my left eye and lined up the shot with my right. My hand was shaking, but I didn’t care. I squeezed the trigger.

The rocket screamed out of the launcher. I watched it fly, the white streak cutting through the air in a perfect arc. For a split second, time slowed. The tripod’s leg was in my sights, and everything else—the sounds, the fear, the chaos—faded into a dull roar.

Then, impact.

The rocket slammed into the tripod’s leg with a deafening crack. The whole thing shuddered. It was like watching a skyscraper in slow motion—tall, unstoppable—and then watching it crumble as it lost its balance. The leg buckled, the massive structure groaning as it collapsed forward, crashing onto the tarmac with a thunderous roar. The ground shook beneath me, sending tremors through the air, the shockwave throwing dust and debris into the sky.

For a moment, it was almost quiet. The tripod, now crumpled in a heap of metal and burning wires, was still.

Even as we sat on top of one of our tanks, pulling back the way we came, I couldn’t stop staring at it—the tripod, still crumpled on the tarmac, smoldering. It was down, but we were out of ammunition, and there were five more of those things coming toward us, along with who knows how many crabs and beetles.

The entire push from the Dnipro had been a nightmare. Weeks of fighting, countless bodies left behind, all for nothing. The crabs had pulled some kind of trick out of their hats. Operation Volodymyr. Operation Ramadan. Both were a failure. Worse than that, they were a total waste of people and resources.

“The Dutch were that bad?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around it.

Wei spins the ring on his finger, his eyes distant, the memory still fresh.

“Not just them,” he mutters, voice low. “We knew the crabs were drawn to heat. They’re more active in the warmth, and they had the numbers to back it up. In conditions like that... you don’t plan two offensives. But the brass wanted to wrap this up as quickly as possible. They didn’t want to wait for winter like everyone else had told them. Just wait.”