“Today, I took my first ‘kill’. It was an armored car that passed through my gun sight, nearly a thousand meters away from my concealed position. I feared pulling the fire trigger. I feared revealing my position. I feared death. I feared to kill. Yet I pulled the trigger after my CO shouted and chastised me. She called me a moron, a coward, and that she’d personally shoot me should I not fire. I panicked and pulled the trigger. How stupid. How pathetic. I have nothing to say, except watching them scramble out of their burning vehicle from the thermals—it may have changed something in me.”

- Excerpt from Lieutenant Hoffman’s Journal Entries.

+++

+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++

Unknown

Light.

Peace.

And flowers.

That was the first thing that Hans saw and felt after his consciousness returned, as the HUD in front of him booted up and showed what was ahead. For many moments he merely stared at the beautiful scenery around him, captured by the high-quality cameras of his mech.

His mech was idle alone in a flower field that seemed to stretch into the distance. The ground and the distant hills almost seemed like a carpet of purple from the flowers that covered it. It was a beauty that Hans had never seen. His life had only been the almost cold megacities of the Confederation.

Or the rubble-filled battlefields of his homeland. Or the burning trench lines that seemed to stretch into infinity. The muddied roads filled with craters. So much so that the mere sight of it left him in a silent puzzlement.

Why…why am I still breathing? He asked, his hands subtly touching his legs and forearms, as he remembered the painful shrapnel that once embedded deep inside of them. I’m supposed to be dead. He looked at the HUD. It was working perfectly. His controls. There were no holes in his mech.

No damage. No injuries. Even when moments ago, he could still vividly feel the pain of slowly bleeding out. When he couldn’t even pull his control sticks. And even his final moments…

He breathed out, shaking away the tugging terror that he felt. It hurt. It definitely hurt. It hurt in ways he couldn’t describe. He didn’t want to feel it again.

He popped his hatch open, climbed out of his cockpit, and emerged atop the chassis of his mech. His mech’s turret was turned to the side—its main gun, still slightly aimed at the pinkish skies. Strangely enough, it was almost as if it was downed…in an almost strikingly similar position that it held in its final moments.

Yet instead of a cold coffin on broken asphalt, now, it looked as if his mech, a machine of war that shouldn’t be here, was lying peacefully on a field of flowers. As if it had finally found its resting place after a long journey—a journey through war and death, as Hans’ vision of the peaceful landscape suddenly changed back into the grayish fields, with bullets, craters filled with mud, and dead everywhere.

A small surveillance drone passed over him, the type of drone used to spot targets, just to take them out with loitering munitions, or an anti-tank missile. Hans always feared seeing these things, yet in just a split second, he realized he was merely looking at a butterfly that was about to land on his turret.

Straight to my insignia, huh? Do you like that name?

The butterfly seemed to choose exactly where his namesake and insignia were placed. His insignia was really just a simple peace symbol, which was ironically placed just above the nearly four dozen of the small Confederation Army’s cross pattée emblem stickers that were used to denote kills in their company. He didn’t really like the idea of bragging about his kills and placing a stupid decal on his turret (when he already had kill rings on his main gun), but his last CO was a controlling, prideful woman. Showing off the aces of her company was her thing to show off her “commanding skill” and he didn’t have the right to cross her desires.

I should probably remove that soon. He thought to himself. It looks pretentious.

He jumped down his chassis, trying to carefully avoid stepping on the flowers, but eventually, he gave up, choosing to simply walk forward. It seemed that he indeed was in a flower field, in the middle of nowhere.

Where the hell am I? He asked, staring at a flock of distant white birds that were seemingly migrating en masse somewhere. Must be doves. He thought to himself. So perhaps he was still in Terra? Well, of course, he was on his own planet! What the hell was his mind thinking? There were no other worlds discovered.

Ridiculous.

He’d probably have to find a settlement or something to figure out where he was. Regardless of where he was, he needed to contact High Command and find his way back to his company. Unfortunately, there were no comms, and his GPS maps weren’t working for some reason. Perhaps his mech wasn’t as undamaged as it seemed?

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

He looked back at his Wanderfalke Mech, still in that awkward position when his mech’s legs lost power during the fight, and it collapsed on the ground. It must have already finished restarting everything. Hans thought, taking a deep breath of the seemingly fresh air around him—untainted by gunpowder and the smell of death. He shook his head, and made his way back to his mech, climbing down into his cockpit as his hands returned to his control sticks, and his feet on the pedals.

He’d have to find his way back alone. It probably shouldn’t take long, he thought, as his entire world was at war. Two great alliances, locked in a conflict said to be so apocalyptic, that if one side lost enough, nukes would rain hellfire on Terra. Which was the strangest thing about all this. It seemed…silent. Too painfully silent for a world at war.

He really wondered where he was.

But most of all, he wondered why he was alive…when all of that seemed too real.

+++

His mech had been driving for thirty minutes already. So far, it has been nothing but empty land, except for flora and fauna. In fact, he had never seen as many animals in the wild as he did today. Was this how the countryside looked like before the war? He seriously doubted that. Most of the native biospheres of the Confederation and the developed world had been long overtaken by humanity.

Farms yes, but wild untamed lands…that didn’t really exist. Which meant he was perhaps further away from the Confederation and the front than he had expected. And what made it worse was when he found an unpaved road right beside a massive lake, nearly an hour into his journey.

His mech stopped just beside it, as his turret turned to the side, straight into the direction of the lake. He popped his hatch once more and personally took a look to see it for himself. No, his camera wasn’t lying, it was a massive lake that stretched beyond his range of vision. And the worst part, he took his own map of the Confederation with him. He knew the answer already, yet he double-checked it. There was no lake with an area greater than ten thousand square kilometers in his country. Neither were there any lakes of that size in the Imperium.

He pulled out his binoculars to watch the serene lake, as his denial grew and grew. It was impossible. He was in Haubliz City, fighting with his company. He could still vividly remember everything. Why? Why was he suddenly here? It made no sense. No one could transport a destroyed mech like that from a battlefield, much less revive a dead man.

I must be dreaming. He said, watching a lone fish jump from the water, as it fell back. It was impossible. He couldn’t be alive. He was dead. They dropped three grenades on him. He was bleeding before it all. Those moments splashed back into him, as his binoculars looked at the puddle of water after the fish landed.

Instead, it turned into a muddy puddle, just after the mech of his old friend, a buddy that he had in his first week, detonated after being shot point blank by an enemy mech while he was stuck in the crater’s mud. His cries of help snuffed from his platoon-wide comms, as Hans pulled back in fear—still too inexperienced to face the enemies he was fighting.

Hans placed down his binoculars…wondering to himself…

“Did I die…?” He asked. “Did I really die, like them? Then where am I?!”

His shout was heard by no one, aside from two birds perched on a nearby tree that flew away after hearing him. There were no enemies in sight for his sensors. No enemies. Nothing. The fact that he was idle in a seemingly flat plain, on a field where an enemy Flandrian mech or tank could easily snipe him from kilometers away, didn't seem to matter.

His combat instincts protested it. It went against every training he had. But none of it mattered. There were no attacks. No sudden anti-tank round or an artillery shell headed for him. Nothing. Even the wind, which seemed to breeze by him, seemed to whisper that for now…perhaps he was safe.

Away from the battlefields he was used to.

Well, what now then? He really wondered what he could do. High Command was gone. No friendlies, no enemies, nothing. There was just nature around him. He’d still yet to see a single human being. It was almost as if he was far away from civilization itself. All but the unpaved road served as its trace for him.

Hans seriously debated his options. Should he prioritize regrouping with the Confederate Army, or should he desert? Should he even search for them? And what if he wasn’t in Terra anymore?

It was a ridiculous proposition, but something told him that things weren’t normal. Just earlier, he saw a horned white horse in a forest he passed through. He didn’t remember a horned horse species existing in Terra. However, he debated if his eyes lied or not since the creature ran away and disappeared before he had a good look. Naturally, his mech must have scared it away when it saw a metallic spider that cruised at sixty kilometers per hour with its six legs.

I’d have to confirm that theory first though. But, it hardly made sense. Did he perhaps die and find himself sent into a different world then? In that case, was it perhaps divine intervention? Did the Goddess somehow pity him?

No, the first question is if she’s legit. Hans thought. He was a nonbeliever in the divine. Which made it worse, because if she did exist and he never prayed—

He slapped himself. He needed to focus. There was a road in front of him. That meant it must lead somewhere. Perhaps, he might even meet someone on the way. Maybe he could even ask a thing or two if they didn’t find themselves spooked by his Wanderfalke.

But what if a Murat MBM ambushed you on the road? Yeah, that’d mean you’re a moron! The other part of his mind condescendingly shouted. No, shut the hell up, stupid! There’s literally no one around us!

“Our COs sure sucked except for Captain Wittenstein, but damn it, I could help to have some of their wisdom at deciding here…”

On second thought, he pushed it down. Only Adelyn’s wisdom would have worked here, considering how braindead her predecessors were. And that left him wondering. 1st Platoon. Hedwig. Franz. The Captain. Did they make it out alive? He certainly held them for a good while. Surely…surely they’d have escaped.

He hoped they did.

Hans pulled himself back down into his cockpit, closing his hatch as he returned to his seat. His mech’s legs stood up, just as his turret returned to its default orientation—forward.

Whatever happens…happens.

Once more, he drove his mech to the one option seemingly available for him—forwards.