"GAS!"
Tanya's scream shattered the dawn's eerie silence. On the beach below, Weber's hands froze on the rangefinder, coffee cup slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers. The high-pitched whistle of incoming rockets pierced the morning fog, their trajectory a mockery of the mathematical precision he'd once found so beautiful.
"Masks!" Schneider bellowed, but even as the Iron Chorus moved with practiced efficiency, Tanya knew it wouldn't matter. The modified M9 platforms weren't launching conventional gas. The rainbow-stained mist carried something far worse.
The first rockets landed with anticlimactic softness. No explosions, no dramatic thunderclaps - just gentle thuds and subtle hisses. Mueller's laugh carried a hysterical edge. "Is that all they've-" His words cut off in a choking gasp as the first traces of cyanogen chloride reached their position.
"The masks won't..." Tanya's warning died in her throat as horror unfolded below. The gas found every imperfection in their protective equipment, every tiny gap their drills hadn't accounted for. CK didn't play by the old rules of chemical warfare. It turned their blood itself into a weapon, betraying them from within.
Schmidt was the first to fall. His perfect posture, drilled into him through countless hours of training, crumpled like paper. The rangefinder clattered from his hands as he clutched his throat, eyes wide with terrible understanding. His last words came out as a bubble of blood: "Colonel... the numbers..."
Weber tried to reach him, his movements still carrying that mechanical precision they'd all learned to prize. But the gas was everywhere now, invisible tendrils seeking every breath. He made it three steps before his legs gave way, body betraying him with the same efficiency he'd devoted his life to.
"Stay high!" Tanya screamed, her tactical mind still functioning through waves of horror. The CK gas was heavier than air - those on elevated positions might have precious extra seconds. But even as she gave the order, she saw Krause stumble at his gun position, the match he'd been about to strike falling from twitching fingers.
The Iron Chorus, her perfect battery, dissolved into chaos. Men who had moved like components in a grand machine now thrashed and gasped, their bodies fighting for oxygen their blood could no longer use. Werner, who had spoken of her with such reverence, fell across his gun sight, blood streaming from his nose and mouth.
More rockets whistled overhead, the British gunners maintaining their precise bombardment schedule. They'd learned their lessons well, using her own meteorological calculations against her forces. Each launch targeted the complex wind patterns she'd mapped so carefully, turning her understanding of atmospheric conditions into a weapon of mass murder.
"Withdraw! Withdraw!" But there was nowhere to go. The gas followed them, guided by the very wind patterns she'd studied so meticulously. It flowed around obstacles, filled trenches, sought out the hiding places that might have offered shelter from conventional weapons. The Americans had transformed the very air into an instrument of death.
Mueller stumbled past her position, no longer the confident soldier who had spoken of her calculations with awe. Blood ran from his eyes like tears as he reached toward her with desperate hands. "Colonel... can't... the numbers don't..." He collapsed mid-sentence, body twitching in a grotesque parody of their once-perfect drill movements.
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Tanya felt her own breath growing short, the sweet scent of CK gas caressing her nostrils. Her brilliant mind couldn't stop calculating even now - measuring dispersal patterns, counting the seconds until cellular death, quantifying the breakdown of everything she'd built. The mathematical precision she'd worshipped had turned against her with perfect, terrible efficiency.
Through burning eyes, she watched her men die. The Iron Chorus, who had sung hymns to efficiency and found beauty in systematic destruction, ended with desperate gasps and bloody foam. Their bodies fell with savage randomness that mocked all their careful training. Even in death, they reached for their guns, trying to maintain the discipline she'd drilled into them.
"Colonel!" It was Weber's voice, somehow still alive despite the hellish cloud enveloping them. He appeared through the mist like a ghost, blood streaming from his nose, eyes crimson with burst vessels. "The wind... it's shifting..." His warning saved her life. She stumbled backward as a fresh wave of gas rolled toward her position, its rainbow patterns beautiful and lethal.
Her legs gave way as the gas found her, sending her crashing against the observation post's wall. Her lungs burned with each breath, blood turning to poison in her veins. The mathematical hymns that had once filled her mind dissolved into screaming chaos. She could taste copper on her tongue, feel the precise moment cellular respiration began to fail.
Below, the beach had become a graveyard. The men of the Iron Chorus lay where they'd fallen, their bodies arranged in a terrible new geometry of death. Schneider sprawled across his rangefinder, one hand still reaching for the coffee cup they'd shared in those last peaceful moments. Schmidt's body lay twisted beside his gun, fingers frozen in the act of calculating trajectories that no longer mattered.
Darkness crept at the edges of Tanya's vision as the CK worked its way deeper into her system. The Americans had engineered it perfectly - a weapon that turned the very mechanisms of life against itself. Her veterans, who had embraced the beauty of systematic warfare, died with the same efficiency they'd lived by.
The last thing she saw before consciousness faded was Werner's body, slumped over his gun sight. His last words echoed in her mind: "She's what happens when war achieves consciousness." But consciousness was leaving her now, along with all her perfect calculations and systematic dreams. The rainbow patterns in the fog blurred and twisted, nature itself seeming to mock the perversion of science they represented.
Time lost meaning as Tanya drifted in and out of awareness. Sometimes she heard voices - Mueller reciting trajectory calculations, Schmidt singing their battery's hymns, Weber passing coffee in the pre-dawn light. But these were fever dreams, her dying mind trying to impose order on chaos. The real voices had been silenced, transformed into statistics by American ingenuity and British precision.
A change in the wind saved her life - a random variable she hadn't accounted for in all her careful calculations. The gas lifted just enough, just long enough, for a rescue team to reach her position. They found her half-conscious, blood streaming from her nose and eyes, still trying to calculate dispersal patterns with fingers that could barely move.
The Iron Chorus was gone. Weber, Schneider, Mueller, Schmidt, Krause, Werner - men who had transformed themselves into instruments of mathematical precision, now lay silent on the beach below. Their bodies would be recovered later, still arranged in the perfect formations she had taught them, their faces frozen in expressions of horrible understanding.
Tanya survived, though the rainbow patterns would haunt her dreams forever after. The brilliant commander who had sought to turn warfare into a perfect equation had witnessed its ultimate solution. The poems died in her throat, replaced by the memory of her veterans gasping out their last breaths. She had achieved her goal - warfare reduced to its most efficient form. The price was everything that had made her human.
The beach fell silent as the gas dispersed, carrying away the last breaths of the Iron Chorus. No more hymns to efficiency would rise from their guns. No more would they find beauty in the mathematics of death. The sun rose fully now, painting the sky in colors they'd learned to ignore, while below, the men who had transformed themselves into components of a perfect system lay still, their efficiency finally, terribly complete.