>FOB camp construction site, Safe Harbor_
Captain Robert Drake looked over the thousand-strong collection of men before him, and fought off the encroaching feeling of dejection as the pale, reflected sunlight from the world’s triplet moons shone down upon them, aided by the artificial glow of a handful of gas-generator powered floodlights.
The crowd of young men mainly consisted of US Army personnel, but there was a fair amount of sailors present as well.
Perhaps it would have been more proper for them to be addressed by their actual commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Speirs, but Drake felt that they deserved to hear directly from him, as it was his decision to sail onward through that storm in the first place.
The very air around them hung with a morose, palpable silence that none dared break.
They had their first casualty. Private Henry Mitchell was found dead a few hours ago, with a self-inflicted bullet wound under his chin, one hand grasping, presumably, a photo of his fiancé or wife, the other still holding the service pistol he used. A victim of despair.
It came with the emergence of the cursed triple-moons over the horizon, the gripping despair that Robert knew was coming. He had hoped that the work of setting up their forward operating base, on top of the planning, organizing and unloading of cargo, and the energy being put into the translation efforts would provide distraction and stave it off for a time, but that was not to be.
Almost simultaneously, Robert heard, people seemed to take in the sight of the rising triple moons, the land around them, and the weight of their shared true situation sank in.
Personally, he wasn’t fully sure why. It wasn’t as though this was their first day here. Rather, it was their third, the third time seeing those blasted moons rise. What was different about today? Perhaps it was that there had never been this many people ashore yet, maybe because yesterday their attentions were entirely captivated by the novelty of the new people they had found, as well as the appearance and subsequent destruction of the small group of black dragons. Maybe still it was just a delayed reaction. Drake knew not.
According to what he’d been told, construction had been running smoothly, the soil relatively easy to pitch tents in. The only interference or any real obstacle being the rather large trees that surrounded the town, and a few local townspeople that worked up enough courage to attempt to inquire about the nature of what the soldiers were up to, and the small number of jeeps and half-tracks they were using to aid in transport. The interpreters-in-training from both sides did their best to explain anything they could, which wasn’t all that much.
However, when everyone seemed to notice the appearance of the three moons, they slowly stopped what they were doing and stood with shell-shocked expressions, gazing up at the moons or towards each other with thousand-yard stares. A silence you could almost taste spread over the area.
Drake heard that many began to break into tears, pulling out memorabilia and keepsakes from people dear to them they had on their persons and crying out.
The chilling symphony of despair was only broken when the sharp crack of a pistol discharging rang out, loud enough to be heard over the FOB site and likely across the town as well.
In a sad way, Private Mitchell taking his life did a service to the rest of his comrades, as the gunshot snapped nearly everyone out of the pit they were descending into, and prompted action from them before things could get any worse.
Everyone had jumped to action, checking on the well beings of their fellows and assessing the situation. Many locals came from the town to see what was going on.
A proper funeral and burial service was going to be held for Private Mitchell tomorrow, but Drake wanted to say something to the men while they were still gathered together as soon as feasibly possible in order to arrest the ever-worsening morale of his sailors and these troops.
To that end, he was going to try to give a speech.
He stepped onto the flatbed of one of the half-tracks, giving him enough elevation to look over the gathered battalion. LTC Speirs and several other officers stood on the ground beside him. The massive crowd of soldiers along with the few dozen sailors that had also been ashore stared back with wall-eyed expressions, not having lost their shell-shocked and dejected expressions.
“ATTEN-TION!” LTC Speirs cried out, his cadence befitting any meritorious commander of his young age and stature. He and other various officers beside him turned sharply and saluted Drake. The thousand-strong battalion present followed suit, but much slower and more lethargically than he knew they normally would. Nonetheless, Robert snapped to and saluted them all back.
“At ease.” He called out, and they slumped back into a more demotivated posture that wasn’t that different from their attempt at standing at attention.
He sighed, and raised his voice to address all of them as best he could.
“Hello, troopers.” He started, almost hollering so that everyone could hear him. “Most of you may know me, but for those of you that don’t, I am Captain Robert Drake. I am the commanding officer of the convoy’s lead escort ship, the USS Sampson.”
It may have been more fitting for him to say this aboard his ship through the intercom, but he wanted to be in front of these people in person. His words would be broadcast back to the naval vessels via radio, anyway.
“First of all… I want to apologize to you all for something. It was my decision to sail through that anomalous storm now only three days ago. It certainly feels like far longer than just three days, but here we are.”
“I didn’t, and still don’t, know anything about that storm, but I have to assume that it had something to do with us being brought here. I had intended to sail through it in order to evade any potential U-boats tailing us, not knowing what the consequences of that decision would be. It’s arguably my fault that we’re stuck here, and for that I’m sorry.”
Most of the expressions in the crowd remained blank, devoid of emotion.
“I don’t know why we’re here. I don’t know how we are here. I especially don’t know where here even is. And I haven’t the slightest clue if, much less how, we can get back to our Earth. Back to our homes.”
He sighed again, and continued.
“But despite all that, I have not lost hope. And there are a few things that I know for sure. I know that every single one of you boys are brave. I know you all knew what you were getting into when you joined up. Whether for the Army or Navy. We’re a nation at war. War is deadly. Ain’t none of us didn’t know when we signed up that there was a chance that we would not come back.”
He paused and shook his head briefly for effect.
“Maybe that’s just it, isn’t it? Maybe we were all doomed to die in a mass wolfpack strike that night until that storm showed up. I'm sure many of you heard rumors and stories, as I have, about what can happen to convoys like ours when U-boats converge on them. Maybe… maybe this is a sort of strange second chance for all of us.”
His throat was getting a bit hoarse from having to shout like this, he would need to wrap this up soon. Fortunately, it looked like many in the crowd were getting something from his words.
“Another thing that I think I know is why you men enlisted. You, your brothers, your friends, those next to you right now, all joined up because you wanted to stick it to the maniac fascists in Europe and the imperial lunatics in Japan, and all the suffering they were causing for millions of innocent people. The reports and tales of murder, looting, pillaging, rape, unjust conquest and much, much more lit a fire in your spirit, and you decided to jump on a boat and cross an ocean to go make that fire they started their problem.”
He could see a small bit of life return to the gazes of many who were watching him.
“We clearly aren't in Europe. Once again, I have no idea where we are. As much as it hurts to say it, and it truly does… I don’t know if we can make it back there to help the rest of our brothers in arms bring the fascists to their knees.
Not that our help would have been the cornerstone on whether or not we win or lose; we are just one supply convoy among many, after all. But it is a shame that we probably won’t be able to join in on the fun.”
He smirked slightly. Slightly humorous quips can also be a boon for demoralized troops. There was one last point that he wanted to make with his speech.
“I also know this, and I think that those of you who have spent time trying to talk with the locals will know this too.
The people here are suffering. I have heard stories relayed to me of local towns just like this one being burned to the ground by the great flying dragons that we all saw and fought against. Stories of human beings, of young men, women, and children, being hunted and eaten, of families being shattered. The people here fight their own war against dragons. Dragons that roam this continent in huge numbers, dragons that the locals have little practical defense from…
“Dragons that we ripped to shreds with our guns!
“...Maybe that’s why we were brought here. Both as a second chance at life, and so that we could lend these people a helping hand. So that we can bring the flying monsters that torment these people to justice!”
“I propose that we do whatever we can to help these people. We come to this land standing upon the shoulders of giants! With our technology, our tools, our steel, our industry, our knowledge, our weapons, we can make a massive difference in this world. We can show those people and these creatures our spirits!
Maybe in doing so, perhaps we can also answer the age-old question of how the great warriors in the ancient myths that slew dragons would have fought if they had a good ol’ rifle, and some brothers-in-arms alongside them!”
Robert cut himself off there. It wasn’t a very long speech by any means, but he feared that if he went any longer his voice might give out. The soldiers and sailors that made up the crowd before him, while not exactly looking rejuvenated, looked just that little bit brighter, harder, more alive.
More determined.
Lieutenant Colonel Speirs raised his voice once again. “BATTALION! ATTEN-TION!” He cried out. He saluted Captain Drake, and the thousand soldiers snapped to attention with a synchronized stomp that sounded more akin to the boom of thunder.
The handful of locals that had come to watch the commotion and observe the speech all jumped, startled by the noise. The soldiers, and sailors, all whipped their right hands up to their brows in salute. This time with much more vigor than before. Robert once again snapped to and saluted them back.
He stepped off the half-track platform and joined the small group of subordinate naval officers that had been nearby, while LTC Speirs made his own way up onto the half-track to perform his own speech, give information and hand out directives to the entire battalion.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
What Drake had said was true, several interpreters-in-training had informed him that the locals had a very low opinion of dragons. Also, attacks such as the one that had been attempted on the town yesterday had happened to other human towns across the landmass (which was basically the entire known world to these people) and had much different and more catastrophic results than what had transpired here.
If it weren’t for the Allied ships and their AA guns being here, this very town they now anchored at would have most likely have been destroyed too.
The interpreters also told him that a not insignificant percentage of local residents at this town were actually refugees from other villages that had been burned, and that they apparently had some pretty awful testimonies to give.
He fully intended to leverage whatever they had to help these people.
Which, given their relatively limited resources– at least compared to what an actual nation-state would need to function– would mean that they will need to rely more on the spread of knowledge and skill rather than brute force to provide these people an actual bulwark against the dragons.
Despite how yesterday went, there is absolutely no way they would be able to fight off an entire continent’s worth of dragons on their own.
They will need help. Alliances.
The people of this town, Safe Harbor, seemed to be a pretty safe bet at this point on whether they would be long-term partners. They already have a pretty large amount of goodwill towards the allied sailors, which hopefully will only improve as they really begin to share their modern tech with them.
All those future plans of cooperation would need to wait, though, as they need to overcome the language barrier first.
After that, establishing trade connections and relationships with other humans across the landmass would be the next step, but they'll cross that bridge when they get to it.
One other thing that they had to worry about was that dragon scroll that they had found. It was clear that the dragons they were going to be fighting against were at least intelligent enough to have a writing system.
That gave Drake some hope that perhaps the dragons could be reasoned with, which would be an alternate path to securing the safety of not only the local humans, but also his men, rather than through just fighting.
Although, that also opened the question as to why these dragons, if they were intelligent, were attacking humans like this in the first place.
If the dragons were territorial (which was likely) and some people, intentionally or not, encroached on their turf and were killed for it, that would be somewhat more understandable.
Not exactly diplomatically acceptable, but at least there would have been a quantifiable reason that could be identified and worked around.
However, from what Robert had been told, dragons did not only kill people that strayed too close to what was probably their territory, but actively went out of their way to burn human villages and kill anyone they came across, no matter what.
Were the dragons hyper-territorial, saw the entire continent as their territory, and saw fit to exterminate any humans they found?
Were they just evil, and killed people because it was… fun to them?
The interpreters also told him that the locals relating their stories to them made it very clear that the dragons frequently ate people they caught, so did they murder so many people because… they tasted good?
If that’s the case… we’ll just have to see how good they think high-velocity lead tastes. Robert thought darkly.
Whatever the case, be the dragons intelligent or not, territorial or nor, evil or not, capable of being reasoned with at all, the humans were going to need to demonstrate a significant show of force in order to shake the existing status quo up enough so that the dragons would even consider breaking their habits.
It would take time before such a show could be prepared and put up. They are going to need a lot more information on the wider situation around the continent and especially about the dragons themselves and what makes them tick before they can figure out what exactly would be effective against them on a strategic scale.
Drake sighed, this place, at first glance, looked far more peaceful and more idyllic than the 20th-century war-torn land they were en route to. In reality they were probably in as much or more danger than the troops stationed in Great Britain, who had to deal with relatively frequent Luftwaffe air raids.
At least these dragons flew a lot lower and slower than Heinkel bombers and Messerschmitts.
Before any of that could happen, however, they need to be able to verbally communicate with the locals effectively. More than just the mish-mash of random words that they currently had.
Deciphering that dragon scroll they found would also be useful, but was a lower priority for now.
Until then, all Captain Drake could do was coordinate what could already be done and plan for what was to come.
***
>Excerpt from Signalman Darren Olson’s personal journal._
~
Today was a rough day.
A hard wave of cold despair and homesickness crashed through the Army troops and many of the sailors. I guess the realization that we’re stuck here finally sunk in. Me and most of the other translators have just been trying to drown ourselves in our work to avoid the pain. I think that was the captain’s original plan for everyone, but it clearly didn’t work for very long. Can’t blame him for trying though.
…One of the Privates committed suicide with his service pistol. The gunshot was what broke everyone from their tailspins into darkness. I feel bad for him but- I don’t- I just- I-
Don’t get me wrong, subconscious, I get why he did it. We’re all feeling the same pain, after all. But you just don’t betray your brothers like that. Like I said, we all feel the same pain, but we’re also here for each other. When in pain, solace can be found in shared suffering.
Even I can sense the effects that Private taking his own life had and will have on morale, and I can only imagine how horrible his squadmates and friends must feel right now.
We were all here for you, man. Taking the… the cheap way out doesn't help anybody, not even you.
I know this is a cruel thing to write about someone who’s dead by their own hand, and that I’m gonna be in trouble if someone gets a hold of this, but I can’t help the way I feel, not really. Putting my emotions and intrusive thoughts to writing helps me deal with and compartmentalize them. Which is why I have this blasted journal in the first place. It’s not like anyone’s gonna read this.
I hope.
On a less dark note, the other thing of note that happened today was that Captain Drake personally requested that I guide some machine shop officers and various personnel from across the convoy who were knowledgeable in metalworking and smithing through the town's own blacksmithing infrastructure to get a rough determination of what they're capable of producing, and get a guess as to their technology level and knowledgeableness. Tomorrow me and some farm boys are going to take a look at their farms to see what crops they are growing, how much they’re growing and start making plans for how to increase their yields. We’ll keep making those plans until we’ve learned enough of each other’s languages to properly communicate and discuss said plans.
Safe Harbor’s metalworking infrastructure consists of two tower-shaped buildings near the town’s castle. I believe the name the locals had for them was a hybrid word between “harbor” and “forge.” Harbor-Forges.
Each of the buildings were similar in design, and about 3 stories tall. Most of the interior space was taken up by a huge singular furnace that ran the height of the structure. I don’t really know much about metalworking, but the people with me obviously did. They said that the furnace looked like it was easily able to get hot enough to work iron, however hot that is.
The rest of the building’s interior was filled with equipment and tools to work the furnace and the metal it was made for.
The machine shop officers and various knowledgeable folk said that they were rather impressed by the local’s infrastructure. They said that, while it wouldn’t hold a candle to modern forgery facilities, it was rather good for their relative technology level. They also had good things to say about the actual size of the furnaces themselves, which would make renovating and ‘modernizing’ them easier.
They had less good things to say about the products the locals had come from those forges, however. They said that the locals' tools and weapons, which were either made from iron or bronze, were impure, unbalanced, and of overall low quality. One of the men present, who seemed to know a lot about metalworking history, said that they were more crude than the iron tools forged in Europe during the medieval period, which the town appears to be on a similar level to. Which was odd to him, as their furnace tech seemed to be better, he told me.
I related their… concerns to the local blacksmiths, who related back to me that they had grown inexperienced due to a rather critical shortage of new metal to work with. We can certainly remedy that, though we will have to upgrade their stuff to be able to work with steel rather than just iron. We have a lot of steel.
We also took a look at the local’s actual blacksmith workshops, which were huts situated around the Harbor-Forges. Unfortunately, the sailors were also not super impressed by those, either. But what else could you expect from people that were used to precision machining and modern industry? To be fair, the history nerd didn’t seem very happy, either.
I just thought it was cool to see an actual anvil, like in those new animated cartoons.
Oh, well. All that mess will come in due time. Namely when the translation effort I’m leading makes more progress. Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the farming situation. For now, I’m exhausted, and feel kind of dirty after my whole spiel earlier.
***
>Excerpt from Signalman Darren Olson’s personal journal._
~
We went to take a look at the local’s farming situation today, to make predictions on how much food they can have, are currently growing, and start sketching plans on how to increase their yields.
From what I could gather, there was increasing concern among the locals regarding whether or not they would be able to produce enough food to provide for everyone, given the comparatively massive amount of sailors, soldiers,s and even merchant mariners that came though that storm and are now here.
Well, after taking a look at some of the farms that surrounded the town, I for one would certainly say that those fears were well founded.
Their farms consisted of small crop sections, more like large gardens or plantations rather than proper farms, interspersed into small clearings in the forest which surrounds the town, and carefully concealed from the sky by overhead foliage and camouflage nets. It doesn't exactly take a genius to guess why the locals would do that. As it stands, there is no way they will be able to grow enough to feed everyone.
The actual crops they’re growing seem to consist mostly of tubers. Potatoes, Carrots, radishes, things like that. Nothing big and tall like wheat or corn. Actually, scratch that, they did have some wheat in a small field, but nothing significant. I guess bread is considered quite the luxury around here. The local with us also showed us to a grove of apple and orange trees, which I guess serve as a kind of orchard for them as well.
The good news, I guess, is that the main inhibitor of the local food production is not really terrain or bad soil. (The farm boys with me said that, other than the trees that would need clearing, the land actually seemed pretty good for growing stuff.) The biggest reason they can’t, or haven’t, upscaled their existing production is because they have to worry about keeping their stuff hidden from airborne threats.
I’m not super privy to what exactly is on all the transport ships we were escorting, but I know that, from what a couple of cargo grunts told me, we’ve got literally boatloads of machine guns and ammo packing.
That, on top of the existing air defense from the ships themselves, the battalion of army grunts and their toys, as well as the other small-arms shipments we were carrying; we not only have enough weapons for ourselves, but probably to arm all these townspeople to the teeth.
We can increase the productivity of the local farms by multiplying their size, and throwing out protection by concealment in exchange for just shooting the hunting dragon’s scales off.
The other, much less exciting way we can help the locals improve their food production, is by lending them more powerful tools. Right now, the locals appear to rely solely on hand-held farming tools and human labor. Hoes, scythes, sickles, all of it. Even I remember from history class how crucial beasts of burden were to agriculture-at-scale and the development of civilizations. After we returned to the town, the handful of farmers we were with showed us to a small shed near the Harbor-Forges, which had some rather impressive looking, old, iron plows and yokes, at least to my layman eyes. According to what I’m pretty sure they told me, they apparently used to have oxen-driven plows that worked the soil, but they were all carried off by dragons from the swamp in a raid. (So apparently there are swamp dragons, too. Great.) The town also doesn’t seem to have any serious livestock either, probably for the same reason. However, I think one of the locals said that there are some typical livestock animals that roam in the wild far away from where dragons hunt. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s the message he was trying to convey.
Anyway, I heard from the machine shop officers I was with yesterday when we did the look-over of the town’s metalworking capabilities, that Captain Drake had proposed an idea to retrofit a couple of the half-track personnel carriers with plows and harvesters to use them as tractors. It’s not that crazy of an idea, and I’m pretty sure the first tanks and armored vehicles were based off of tractors anyway. Quite the irony. Added bonus is that most of those trucks already have machine guns bolted to them. Or multiple, in the case of the M16 motor gun carriages I saw earlier around the FOB site.
Speaking of tanks, I also heard from the cargo grunts that told me about the 50 cals that another one of the liberty ships was carrying armored vehicles as well, specifically tanks. M4A2 Shermans, to be exact.
I’m certain the Army grunts will exercise and demonstrate perfect discipline, self-control, common sense and responsibility with that kind of firepower at all times.
I know I wouldn’t…
That aside, I really want these language learning efforts to go as quickly as possible so that we can have actual tours by the locals rather than just this show-and-tell, just-a-step-above-charades game we’ve been playing for the last couple of days. If we could actually talk to each other, we could actually talk shop and plan for the future. Right now we can only make rough actualizations. Since I’m literally the guy in charge of that process, I guess all I can do is work harder. The guys with me have been putting in as much and more work than I could ask of them, and the locals have shown similar resolve.
The more I think about it, the more I think we ought to prioritize the locals learning English. As much as it pains me. There are just too many concepts and details that exist in the realm of specifics and technical details that surely don’t exist in their society yet. Is it easier to just get them to learn our own words rather than have them invent their own? Not only that, but I’m pretty sure that, between the battalion of soldiers, and all the sailors across the convoy, we actually outnumber the locals of this town by a fair amount. It isn’t a very big town, after all.
Another bonus is that the locals have a very funny sounding accent when speaking English words. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. (Which really shouldn’t be surprising)
I should quit writing this, as I have to finalize an official report on what we learned about the local’s farming and smithing infrastructure for the Captain. It turns out paperwork is another one of those constants throughout life, no matter where you are.