Berlin, August 2034
Jungnyeong (Captain) Park Ji-eun, a seasoned veteran of countless battlefronts throughout the war, awaits me at the café opposite her office. Her remarkable service has earned her battlefield commissions after commissions, despite still being in her late twenties.
“How I ended up in Warsaw? Well, I took a nasty fall down a set of stairs while carrying boxes. I was in the ROK Marine Corps at the time. Thanks to that, I ended up behind a desk for the rest of my military service. Then there were those loan sharks I owed, thanks to my father’s debts that I inherited. And to top it off, my boyfriend ditched me for some girl set to inherit her old man's business. But even now, I’m sure it had something to do with my looks.”
I signed up to be a military attaché in Poland—a gig that involved bridging the gap between our military and theirs. With Poland buying loads of gear from us, they needed some Koreans on-site to handle the nitty-gritty of communication and sharing sensitive military intel. Being the newbie on the team, my role often boiled down to making calls back home to our defense contractors, gathering intel the Poles dished out daily. From the radar cross-section of our aircraft to which motor oil our K2 tanks should steer clear of, it was all on my plate.
With just me left in the office, the place felt eerily deserted. Two of my colleagues had taken off for vacation back home, while another had left earlier due to marital issues just before the shit hit the fan. As I sat there pondering my next move, news of the advancing enemy forces weighed heavy on my mind. The Crabs, relentless in their assault, had breached every defensive line set up by the Poles and our European allies. With the outskirts of the city already under threat, I knew it was time to head to the South Korean embassy. Partly to offer support, but also to seek solace among my own people.
As I was doing the 1,000 steps in our office trying to figure out where I left my gas mask, some Polish officer barged into my office. A fat and bald man with half his right arm missing and bandaged beyond recognition. He started blaring orders in Polish. I looked at him like he was an extraterrestrial being. As he realized the absurdity of his behavior, he pointed at me.
“You drive?” he said while mimicking a steering wheel.
I just nodded.
“You follow me.”
Before I knew it, I was out the door with my vest and my backpack.
He threw me some keys as we made it through the Ministry of Defense building. Folks were running around in panic. Some soldiers threw papers from the windows; as they landed outside, they were put in a singular pile of fire—as if the Crabs could read. It was as if there was a plan.
Despite the chest-thumping, they didn’t intend to stay in Warsaw. Word ran fast in the morning that they wouldn’t be able to hold it. Our only advantage over those beasts was close air support from our jets and helicopters, and massive artillery strikes. We were losing jets and helos so fast because of those Banshees that they had to pull them back, and the supply of artilley shells was running low.
The general who ordered the withdrawal had locked himself into his office after giving the order and had shot himself. Partly because of the shame he felt and also because his family, who was being evacuated by helicopter, had been shot down from the sky.
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It was mayhem. There were still a lot of folks stuck in the city. There were endless lines toward trucks and train stations to get out. I distinctly remembered a guy at a red stop flashing a Rolex watch in exchange for me driving him and his family out of there. Me and the Polish officer paid him no mind as we were waiting for our turn to cross the road.
I was driving the Humvee, filled to the roof with ammunition. We had to deliver those to a subway station near the district where most of the embassies were. It was a win-win situation for me and him. He was in the passenger seat, juggling the radio and his mobile phone, trying to get his men in order. I had complained I didn’t have a rifle when we made it to the parking lot, and he simply gave me one from the trunk with a box worth of mags and ammo. That’s how desperate the guy was for a hand. The sky exploded on top of us as the first wave of Banshees made their way over the city. There were gun positions all over the capital, trying to take enough of them down so that our air assets could be called back in—everything from CIWS to Cold War flak guns. All the while countless jets were roaring and in roller coaster dogfights against the banshees.
Our saving grace was that those Banshees were blind as bats and didn’t seem to fly for too long. We knew they had to refuel often. Turns out, their way of filling their tanks involved landing and soaking themselves in a huge bath of that hellish fluid. Once in a while, you’d hear the loudest bang you could possibly hear followed by a flash of light in the distance—that was our HIMARS hitting those fuel pools, as we called them. At first we thought they were nukes.
As I turned at an intersection, one of the cops directing traffic dropped his radio and lifted his rifle in the air. As he and his colleagues started shooting their rifles at a low-flying Banshee, anyone who wasn’t armed threw themselves behind cover as it came crashing down. Must have been hit by an incendiary round the way it was burning even before hitting the ground. It crashed maybe fifty meters in front of us, vaporizing a row of parked cars as it came down. Our windshield exploded from the blast, like all the other windows in that street.
“Szybki!” the officer yelled as I hit the gas pedal while trying to remove debris from my face. As some magma burned on our hood, I prayed that none of it made its way inside our car—with all the ammunition we were carrying, it just needed one spark for me and that fat officer to be turned into a crater.
Park waves to a woman passing by; they exchange a few sentences in German. She must have explained who I was and what I was doing since she looked at me, awkwardly smiled, and said goodbye to Park before walking away.
“We got to that damned station. Some soldier ran to the middle of the road and flagged us down. As I stopped, I caught a glimpse of my reflection: cuts on my face, just like my passenger—both from the windshield. I barely had time to gather my thoughts before half a dozen men surrounded our vehicle. The officer got out and started barking orders. All the boxes were unloaded and carried down to the subway station. It looked like we had brought them ammunition for a last stand. Before I could approach the officer, who was carrying two boxes himself, a Polish soldier grabbed my shoulder.
“You’re trying to go to the Korean embassy?” he shouted in my face, mostly due to the damage to his eardrums instead of bad manners.
I simply nodded.
“Those heathens broke through; they could be anywhere on the north side of the city by now. The embassy is on the second street to the right. Take the car—we won’t need it anymore.”
He ran towards the subway entrance before spinning around and yelling, “Good luck!”
They could have escaped. Had they taken their vehicles and trucks, they could have...
Instead they'd bunker down in the subways and sewers for months. Fighting the damn bugs in their own terms, coordinating air strikes. There were about 2000 men and women in those tunnels. Yet at the end I remember the voice of that officer. He was the last one radioing information out of the city. Not begging for a ride out or a rescue. No, his last message he was asking for the air force to bomb a public park the crabs used to refuel their banshees.