“The situation in the Empire of Kusari continues to deteriorate. A major pocket of 120,000 MN troops had been created by CFN forces during the retreat of the Kusari Army in the Laresh region. Defense Minister Pristina Dubois has affirmed that the Royal Guard of Orland ‘will do everything’ to relieve the trapped Kusari troops. Chief Air Marshall Zimmerman and Admiral Halberd of the Orlish High Command have also reiterated during a press briefing that the Orlish Navy and Air Force will keep ‘air and naval’ supply routes to the Laresh region open, with the ONS Rebenslof and ONS Cuirassier confirmed to be near the Laresh coastlines, keeping a constant stream of emergency supplies open to the port cities of Lujal and Gehra.”
- Geopol Press
+++
Northwestern Kusari
July 4, 2025
3rd Knights Detachment Unit
2nd Combined Arms Battalion
H Company
Captain Henrietta Lurois struggled to sleep as she shivered at the cold. Her tank was now parked in the same place that it had been parked for the last eight hours, just hiding behind a tree line, just like most of Helix Company’s vehicles that were dispersed in the abandoned town just behind the important bridge near an equally important highway.
It’s just us here now. Henrietta thought as she watched the bridge. Their turret was aimed in its direction, keeping a vigilant watch, but Henrietta imagined that Corporal Freya Blum, her gunner, had already fallen asleep at this point. Perhaps the same was true with Private Linze Esser, her loader, and Private Jeanne Graf, was the same. After all, it’s already 3:00 AM.
Tiredly, she glanced below her to confirm her suspicions.
Indeed, her two girls were now snoring tiredly on their posts. Henrietta just sighed. She told them to remain awake at all times, but, the past days had taken a toll on them. Only now were they in a somewhat “peaceful” posting. Besides that…her unit had taken extreme losses to her standards. Two of her Löwe tanks from 1st and 2nd Platoon were now out of commission, taken out during the fighting yesterday.
Their crew was also not with them anymore, with half of them dead, and the rest taken from the frontlines for treatment. That, and another one of her M8 IFVs were also taken out of action, and she lost a total of twenty soldiers from her company’s 3rd and 4th Platoon, with eight dead.
I really need to ask the major for more ammo tomorrow. Henrietta wanted to bang her fist on her tank’s roof armor, but she was too tired to bother. Damn it…why is this war such a…
She looked up at the stars in the sky, as she sighed.
“Hey!” She looked to her side, then down of her tank. Below, was Lieutenant Hannah Veraldine, her executive officer, waving at her, a cup at hand. “Still awake?”
Henrietta just massaged her temples.
“Yeah,” Henrietta said. “I’m keeping watch for the girls. They’re tired, you know?”
“My crew’s still playing cards with each other,” Hannah chuckled. “Wanna have some coffee?”
“No tea?”
She shook her head.
“We ran out of it.”
Henrietta sighed.
“Yeah, we did too…alright, I’ll have some.”
Soon, the two were near one of the houses where both of their tanks were camped, huddled together as they sipped their coffee. The farmhouse offered them some nice benches to sit down on, as they chatted endlessly. Still, Henrietta kept herself alert from any radio report from her assigned observers keeping watch, as she sipped her coffee.
“You know, do you regret joining here?” Hannah asked curiously.
“Regret?” Henrietta chuckled. “That’s…not something a citizen of the Kingdom who volunteered to fight a war that her Queen called her for should feel, I think.”
“Hmm…” Hannah looked at the abandoned shack in front of them, the toilet still visible with its open wooden door. “I don’t know. This…kinda sucks. And you can die. Some of our girls are now second-guessing things. I can hear them sometimes, complaining.”
“Anyone will complain if they have to keep fighting,” Henrietta said, as she crossed her legs, leaning her back fully on the bench to relax. “You know, I imagine, the guys on the other units are the same. They must have been complaining for years already.”
“Well…think we’d be the same?”
“Hopefully not,” Henrietta answered, as she looked at her cup. “But, if we have to, then we just have to accept it. I joined in because I believed in Her Majesty’s words. And because it’s my duty. To fight…side-by-side with them.”
Henrietta’s vision flashed for a second, the memories of broken-down T-96 tanks employed by the Kusari Army on that highway. She never really understood the Kusari language, but…unlike in Orland, Henrietta saw a strange sort of camaraderie between their men and women, even if they were losing badly.
Not that it changed anything.
Henrietta thought.
They still died there all the same.
She took another sip of her coffee.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“I heard the Marines are joining us in force for the counter-offensive,” Hannah said, poking Henrietta’s side as she pouted. “Come on, can you spill some news, please? Everyone’s so secretive nowadays, that I wonder how we’re even fighting well.”
Hannah chuckled.
“Yeah, they’re joining us,” Henrietta said. “Those guys are veterans, so maybe they’ll do well. I imagine their tankers are quite something, I heard. Running all those older Löwe EP2a variants. Yet they have higher kill ratios than us.”
Hannah pouted further.
“Come on, we’re just as worthy of the veteran title as them,” she huffed and looked away, crossing her arms. “I mean, sure, they’ve been fighting for much longer, but we have shinier equipment and better training! We have Löwe EP4bs. The latest of the latest variants. The cream of the crop. With…with the best armor and sensors, and everything. And it’s not like we’re bad. We lost two tanks, and killed fourteen already.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Henrietta smiled. “We’re learning quite well, slowly. But, maybe we’re just lucky. I Company for example is now reduced to five tanks. J Company is down to six. Our battalion as a whole…isn’t really doing stellar.”
Hannah frowned.
“It’s why they sent us here for now, no?”
“The Major has no choice,” Henrietta said, as she sighed. “The rest of the battalion needs to recuperate and wait for the replacements. She said in two days, the new ones will arrive. Same for us. We’ll get…two new tanks.”
“That’s slow…”
“It’s fast,” Henrietta corrected. “We’re…priority. On the other hand, I heard that in the OAF, entire companies could be down to four or three tanks, but they’re expected to fight on for weeks alongside other shattered units until they receive new tanks. Sometimes, they don’t even have tanks or vehicles left once they’re rotated out. They’ll just be…rebuilt, from scratch, with the old survivors, usually.”
She shook her head.
“In comparison, for us, they don’t want us suffering any needless losses, so our formations…will always be a priority for the best equipment, and replacements.”
“I didn’t know that,” Hannah said. “I thought it was bad…”
“All of this could be worse. Much…much worse.”
“Helix Actual! Contact established!” Henrietta’s radio suddenly buzzed. “Unidentified AFVs on the highway, three kilometers away!”
“Well…it begins then…”
+++
Henrietta’s crew woke up rather quickly when she called them up. Freya, Linze, and Jeanne were clearly still sleepy, but her three crew women all rushed to their duty stations, with Freya already eyeing the distant vehicles in her gunner’s sight.
And Henrietta was the same, watching them from her commander’s sight. She switched to thermals to see the outlines of the enemy vehicles, as Freya moved the turret left to right.
“I’m seeing…I think those are BTPs…BTP-4s if I’m not mistaken from those newer turrets,” Freya said.
“BTPs?” Linze asked as she gulped. “How many?”
“There’s more of them coming,” Henrietta noted, watching the wheeled CFN APCs as they arrived. “Definitely not Kusari vehicles. They’re dismounting infantry to assault us. Dispersing. They’re the enemy.”
“Goddess…” Linze breathed out.
“This is 2-1 to Helix Actual, we’re awaiting orders to engage. My platoon has their targets.”
“1-1 confirms that we have our targets picked and confirmed too.”
In just seconds, however, gas began appearing on their displays as a few of their BTPs deployed it on their dismounting columns. Henrietta frowned, as many began disappearing from her sights. She should have ordered them already to open fire, but alas, it wouldn’t have helped to expose herself prematurely anyway.
Not that they don’t know we’re here.
“Alright, all units, just keep yourselves focused on taking your targets. Be ready to move out at once. I think they’re gonna deploy their artillery once they spot us.”
“Copy.”
Unfortunately, within seconds, the gas seemed to have dissipated enough, that their newer thermal sensors began picking up the advancing column, still being masked by the lead BTPs. Henrietta immediately pulled out her radio.
“There’s more of them coming, we can see them,” Henrietta said. “If you can take targets now, take targets now. Fire at will. Their entire column is exposed.”
“1st Platoon engaging!”
“We’re engaging too!”
Immediately, the first shots from Helix Company opened fire—slamming at two BTPs rushing through the road. Henrietta ordered Freya to take her target, a BTP that made the mistake of stopping too early on the road. With a HEAT round prepared, Freya pushed the button to open fire on the gunner’s sights, and Henrietta watched as the BTP took the hit.
“Good hit!” Henrietta said before her eyes widened as she spotted a speeding T-96 on the thermals. Her heart rate spiked, as it always did whenever she saw another vehicle that could take out her Löwe. She immediately shouted her orders. “Gunner, sabot, tank left!”
Linze opened the blast door for their ammo from behind, grabbing an APFSDS round and slamming it at the gun breech as Freya turned their turret to the left, acquiring the target in her sights. In a second, Freya pushed the button again, firing it straight at the offending CFN tank. However, a burst from its ERA lit up on the thermals, and Henrietta watched as their shot shattered on its turret in vain as it stopped.
“Driver! Back! Back!” Henrietta ordered as the enemy T-96 turned its turret straight at her tank. “Reverse now!”
“On it!”
But before Jeanne could pull their tank into an immediate reverse to cover, a shot from the enemy tank slammed straight into the armored cheeks of Henrietta’s tank. Henrietta watched as sparks flew straight into her turret’s interior, their lights shutting down for a second before turning back on again.
“Everyone alright?!” Henrietta asked as Freya and Linze both shouted yes from below her. The trio then looked at their ammo storage’s blast door, which had a blackened impact crater. Yet, somehow, the armor was unpenetrated by the enemy round that managed to enter their turret.
“That was…close,” Linze breathed out, touching her Kevlar vest a bit, as she was only a few inches away from those sparks.
“Thank goddess for the new spall liners,” Freya commented with wide eyes before Henrietta barked her orders.
“Load sabot again! Take it out!”
Her two crewmates immediately sprang up into action, with Linze slamming another sabot round on the breech, and Freya reacquiring her target in the gunner’s sight. Henrietta watched as Freya made no waste of time, firing immediately into her target—this time, the brief flash of light produced by their round slammed in between the turret and hull of the enemy tank.
Straight into the turret ring?
In seconds, a violent explosion rocked the battlefield, with the CFN tank’s turret being blown up violently. Henrietta finally managed to look at the rest of the battlefield, as the enemy’s soldiers began retreating back to their BTPs, most of which began driving away. The gunfire from both sides lasted for a few more minutes until Henrietta and Freya could only see the results of the brief skirmish.
Two enemy tanks on the road were destroyed, alongside six of their BTPs. Victory was on Orland’s side for now.
For now, Henrietta finally collapsed on her seat, as she ordered her units to cease firing. Their artillery is sure to come next time.