Rennes, Bretagne, European Federation August 2034
Late in the evening, amidst the pulsating lights and thumping beats of the rave, I was invited by Seb. "La Pompe," as it was affectionately known, stood as a beacon of counterculture even before the war. It nestled within the walls of a once-abandoned funeral home, now a sanctuary for a motley crew of individuals: hippies, punks, anarchists, and all those who dared to defy the status quo of mundane existence. Some were here as a statement of their anti system way of life. Some, like Seb were tired and broken by life itself and just needed a warm and dry place to rest, smoke, drink and read. Despite the baja hoodie, the beard, and the joint in his hand, the only giveaways that he's a special forces veteran are the scars on his face and the French paratrooper tattoo on his right arm, ironically next to a miss match of Anarchist tattoos. Sebastian, or Seb like he likes to be called spent the entirety of his career in the renowned 13eme regiment de dragons parachutists. The regiment was a special reconnaissance unit of the French Army.
He leads me outside to the communal garden to talk away from the deafening music. I ask him to describe what his unit was. He looks in my direction with a blank stare as he talked.
“Our mission was always to acquire human intelligence at any time and in any hostile environments be it from the water, mountain peaks, jungles.” He recited, as if reading from a pamphlet. “They trained us and made us go above and beyond. During my training we started with 48 and only four of us made it. I still wake up shaking sometimes, be it from the war or thinking I’m back during those training ruck marches where we walked for days and slept out in the cold and wet. They trained us for “misery you couldn’t imagine’ they said. I still believe half of the misery they put us through was to fill their sick urges”
“the sergeant’s you mean?”
“Our cadre during training, be it the sergeants, the soldiers who helped or even the platoon commander. Sure they wanted us to be tough but when they’re smiling at you after they had you run 10 km with ballistic plates and a gasmask, daring you to hit them. It’s not just because of the love of the regiment. We’d walk for days with 40 kilos on our back. Take position somewhere hidden. Often swamps because the enemy never expects anyone to be dumb and courageous enough to hide in a mosquito infested swamp. We’d dig in, make spider holes for us to hide in and then relay what we see to higher command.”
He walks forward and kneels down in the dirt. He lifts up a vegetable from the ground and inspects it.
“Not ripe enough” he says as he pushes it back in the ground with his joint between his lips.
“They had woken us early in the night. I’m not gonna give you the ‘bla-bla’ about how we were surprised we weren’t going at war with the Russian. We picked up our gear and left for the airport of Bordeaux, loaded up on our A400m and we were off into the night.”
We’re interrupted by two young girls exiting the building. They ask Seb a string of questions in French and he points to the second floor. They were gone as fast as they came.
“We knew we weren’t fighting the Russians but we still had no reliable communication methods with them. Our AO was the Suwalki gap, we didn’t know if they would be nice enough not to shoot us so we were dropped high and far. HAHO, High altitude high opening. It was before the enemy ‘sling shots’ We drifted on our parachutes for two hours and gained about 40 kilometers. We saw in the distance the gun fire, tracers of small arms and anti air guns alike dancing in the night sky. Explosions and fighter jets buzzing above and under us. Miraculously we landed right on the mark. The last thing we needed was for my section to be scattered. There were 6 of us. Not more. We had no idea when we would be extracted and even if it would happen. We set position deep in the woods, we had to keep eyes on the E67 highway connecting Poland to the Baltic states. Last we heard, they landed in northern Lithuania and Latvia. Some of them had already moved into Poland. We dug deep. In an hour we already had dugged two holes big enough for all of us to hide in. A real spider hole, with a roof with layers of trees, dirt, foliage’s. A small hatch to enter, which we could close if they were about to walk on top of us.”
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Seb took a last drag of his joint and threw it in the ashtray. He removed his baja and sat on the bench next to me shirtless.
About an hour later, those 'enemy elements' started making their way down the highway. It's still mind-boggling how those things understood what a highway was all about. They were surprisingly sharp, you know? Can't believe I'm saying this, but we all took turns spending five minutes glued to the window just to watch them. The crabs, man, they ranged from about one-and-a-half to three meters tall. We tried figuring out why there was such a height difference, but no luck. And get this, the smaller ones sometimes carried these massive cannons that could take out a tank, while some of the big dudes had these tiny pistol-sized cannons. It was like a cosmic joke.
It wasn't just a couple of crabs, either. It was like the first ones made way for this massive crowd of 'em. Must've seen tens of thousands just on that stretch of highway alone. And they had beetles too, naturally, though they preferred cruising through the fields. But those tripods, man, they were the stuff of nightmares. Imagine this: the shortest one was like twenty meters tall, and the tallest? Who knows, maybe hundreds of meters. They scanned the landscape like they were hunting for prey. Creepy as hell.
We were in the dark about a lot of things. Didn't have a clue if they had thermals, or any sort of command structure. Shit, we weren't even sure if they were operating as a hive mind or if each one was its own unique entity. That's why we were there, remember? Human intelligence in the midst of a hostile environment. Right smack in the middle of their territory. We radioed back, describing the endless stream of them pouring down the highway. We even took pictures that we transmitted thanks to our satellite communication. I learned later on that the pictures I personally took found their way all up to NATO high command in Brussels and also to the Kremlin. The polish defense minister had send it to Russian ambassador in Poland with the “Signal” app of all things. That’s how badly coordinated we all were. There were cases of artillery positions on both side firing on designated targets if ww3 broke out and jets here and there being shot by air defences. But we were lucky to avoid a three sided conflict on that first day. It helped that our ambassadors, ministers and diplomats knew each other on first name basis.
Unlike the infantry and armored guys we were in the thick of it without even having our safety off. At that point in the night this was like every exercise we ever did. Scout and spot targets. Two of those American jets locked onto their targets and unleashed eight GBU bombs. We were only about 2 kilometers away, but the sheer force of the explosion rattled our entire hideout. I hadn't even thought to put on my ear protection, and let me tell you, my ears were ringing like crazy afterward. The A10s came back and fired their guns on the top of the column. The sound of the cannons was enough to give us a hard on. The shit eating grin on all of us, you could have seen it through our balaclavas.
That smile quickly left after the third HIMARS strike. They just kept coming. And we simply didn’t have enough bombs, missiles, artillery shells available.
We prayed that wave would stop, but nothing. They just kept coming. I can’t even tell you about the march back to the coast where a submarine was waiting for us. I was that exhausted. I didn’t even remember when we actually walked into the marshes were hundreds of those were hibernating. I barely had time to drop by backpack as one of them grabbed a hold of it. It disappeared into the murky water along with the rest of my friends.