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The Front
The Defence (AKA Yasha)
A/N: I have chosen to write this story chiefly in the style of Metro 2033 (the game) so imagine the nazis and commies looking like they did in that game. Reviews and responds are much appreciated.
Quiet, all quiet, nothing but the cool stale breeze from the metro air conditioning system and the crackling of the fire behind him. He was leaning of the scaffold next to the machinegun, smoking. A trolley had arrived from Tverskaya with more ammunition and Dima had gone to fetch more for the machinegun, he stayed behind to stand watch, not that it was really necessary, but it never hurts to take precautions. Only a few days ago a Red spec ops team had tried to sneak under the bridge to outflank them; one of the poor bastards had tripped over one of the tripwires down there and alerted everyone. He had spotted for their snipers on the bridge with the spotlight on his machinegun and even gunned a few of them down himself. Regardless, a couple of them made it through and tried to sneak through the pipes and up behind them, but it was a reason there was a guard post right by the exit of the pipe. To be spec ops, those guys were some mouthy motherfuckers, the guards heard them from miles away. They shot the first guys face off with a few shotgun pellets to the face and kept shooting down the pipe to flush them out; the snipers finished them off while they tried to flee. Just a single wounded guy was left in the pipe ones the smoke cleared; the guys from the guard post didn't see the point in dragging him out and send him to the stalag so they just slit his throat and threw him and his comrades out of the pipe.
"Hey Yasha, I'm back," the distinct sound of Dima's voice called behind him. He turned his head and saw Dima lugging a box of ammo for the machinegun behind him. Yasha threw the cigarette stump out into the wasteland under the bridge and went to help Dima. He and Dima dragged the box over to the fire so they could better inspect the content. Inside the box a long belt of greased up 12.7x108mm rounds laid nice and neatly in row.
"How much?" Yasha asked his companion.
"Two hundred rounds," Dima answered. Yasha nodded with satisfaction and the two lugged the box over to the machinegun. "Just what the doctor ordered, eh?" Dima asked jokingly as they sat back down by the fire; Yasha laughed in return and poured some tea water into the kettle hanging over the fire. In a few minutes the kettle wheezed out the familiar warming sound that anyone in the metro would appreciate. The tea was the good stuff from Exhibition, that little station was making quite the name for themselves with their tea.
Yasha saw a familiar figure walking towards them from the bridge. Yasha stat up strait and raised his head as the figure approached them.
"Hey guys," the man said.
"Oh hey there, Ivan didn't see you there," Dima who had had his back turned and thus hadn't noticed him coming was surprised at Ivan's appearance.
"Sit down, man," Yasha said friendly and Ivan planted his rear on one of the boxes around the fire. Yasha handed him a cup and filled it with tea. Ivan blew on the cup a bit before taking a sip; his entire body shrugged in delight as the tea went down the drain.
"This is some damn good tea," Ivan exclaimed after he was finished drinking, "Say, have you guys heard about the troubles at Exhibition?" Ivan asked the two others,
"Yeah, some mutant attack or something like that," Dima said unsure.
"Oh this is not some regular tunnel trash lurking in the tunnels, this is some real shit. They call them the dark ones, all of them over two meters tall, jet black skin and black eyes deeper than hell itself," Ivan told the story with a sinister voice and an even more sinister face clouded in shadows of the fire, "With bare paws they can rip grown men apart and their howls rings so loud the guys on guard go insane just by listening to it." Ivan eyed at Yasha towards Dima who was listening to the story so intently that he forgot to drink his tea. Yasha understood what he meant and slowly and quietly started to move towards Dima. "But that's not the scary part, oh no, the scary part is that they are some stealthy freaks, slowly moving closer, closer, ever closer until," Right then Yasha sprung the trap; he grabbed both of Dima's shoulders as hard and fast he could. Dima screamed in terror and fell off the box he was sitting on, Yasha and Ivan laughed hysterically at the terror in their friend's face.
"Oh you guys," Dima said a little bit angry but quickly calmed down and joined in on the laughter. Just then they heard a huge roar from the other side of the tunnel accompanied by heavy machinegun fire.
"Move it people! Everyone to their places!" the Hauptmann yelled from the main machinegun position over the tracks.
"A shit, here we go again," Ivan said while swinging the rest of the tea down his throat and picking up his sniper rifle. Yasha and Dima scrambled over to the machinegun and checked that all was ready. Yasha manned the gun while Dima supported him with a Kalash and helped him reload.
"Get ready everyone, here they come!" The Hauptmann yelled and ducked behind cover. The sandbag position in front was lined with riflemen, supported by three machinegun positions; one above the tracks and two to either sides of the bridge, the left position of which was manned by Yasha, Dima and Ivan. The lights illuminating their positions went off and spotlights, some mounted on the machineguns and some not, went on illuminating the path the commies had to go in order to get to them.
The ground started trembling from hundreds of boots trampling the ground ahead of them. Soon the first of them came into view charging blindly ahead like a rat swarm. It became very apparent that this wasn't just some probing action; this was a full flung assault.
"Hold your fire!" the Hauptmann yelled, "Hold your fire!" he kept yelling. Yasha and his comrades were getting nervous; the tidal wave of meat was bearing down on them very fast. "Open fire, cut the swine down!" he yelled when they were only ten meters from the forward position. The entire frontline lit up in a shower of muzzle flames and hot lead pouring into the wall of meat in front of them. Yasha aimed his gun into the center of mass and opened fire. The commies was shredded like cabbages as 12.7mm rounds tore through them from the front, left and right. The sandbag line opened fire with Kalashes and Uboinik shotguns. Most of the commies were armed with little other than Bastard carbines and double barreled shotguns and desperately fired back from what cover they could find.
Ivan was picking off commies in the two digits with his sniper rifle until he saw an officer taking cover behind a metro car on the bridge, shooting anyone who dared turn back with his Makarov pistol. Ivan put a bullet right above his left eye before he could shoot a poor soldier who had dropped his gun and was running back to the Red side. Ivan didn't bother shooting the poor bastard and concentrated on more pressing targets. The commies were almost breaking through the sandbag line, and the situation wasn't made any easier when Yasha's machinegun ran out of ammo.
"Shit, Dima help me reload!" Yasha yelled at Dima. Dima turned from laying fire down on the commies to help Yasha reload. As Yasha and Dima were connecting the new ammo box onto the machinegun, Dima suddenly screamed in pain. Yasha looked at his comrade squirming on the floor in pain. Yasha inspected him and saw a black pool forming on Dima's chest. "Man wounded!" Yasha yelled as he laid pressure on the wound.
"Yasha, get him back! I'll cover you!" Ivan yelled over the shooting and screaming. Yasha picked Dima up over his shoulders and started running to the back. Bullets flew past him and landed next to him causing chips of concrete to hit his legs. Yasha ran under the elevated machinegun position and dropped Dima on the ground behind cover. The Hauptmann was running down the stairs with a wounded man himself and placed him next to Dima.
"Those commies are going to break through if we don't do something blin!" Yasha said to the Hauptmann.
"We are, we're bringing in Kleine Karl," The Hauptmann answered. Right then a droning trailer horn could be heard in the depths of the tunnel. Out of the darkness a bright spotlight poured through and a lumbering behemoth came to view. Reinforcements moving down the tracks towards the front stopped and cheered as the Panzer rolled by. A loudspeaker on the Panzer started blaring out the Reich's marching tune as it lumbered up towards the sandbag line.
"Hail Reich!" the soldiers started chanting as the Panzer fired explosive rounds at the commies. Yasha was running up to the sandbags with the reinforcements armed with an Uboinik and threw himself down behind the sandbags. The commie assault started to crumble under the weight of Kleiner Karl's fire. The Hauptmann stood on top of the machinegun position over the tracks with a megaphone and started talking through it,
"Soldiers of the Red Army, you are throwing your lives away for nothing! Look at how many of your comrades have fallen to the might of the Reich! Your struggle is useless and your deaths are in vain! Your leaders, who are concerned with nothing other than keeping their power, despise you and hate you; they are throwing your life away so they don't have to feed you! Comrades, join us! The army of the Reich is the most professional fighting force in the entire metro! We don't throw our soldiers away in greedy scrambles for power! Together we will avenge our fallen comrades and show that cowardly liar Moskvin who really holds the stick!" The Hauptmann's speech was almost drowned by the explosions from the Panzer and the gut wrenching screams from dying commies.
In the end all the commies were either dead or running back to their positions; the day belonged to the Reich… again. The victory had not come without a price though; twenty three soldiers of the Reich were dead or wounded, among them Dima. The wounded were taken to a field hospital behind the frontline on a trolley; the dead were ceremonially cremated on the front with full military honors.
Several men had been sent into the no man's land to throw the dead commies off the bridge so they wouldn't obstruct the way. The ones who weren't too badly wounded was sent behind the lines to be "reeducated" while the ones too heavily wounded were gutted with bayonets and thrown off the bridge with the rest. Right behind the lines the crew of Kleiner Karl was celebrating with the some of the regular soldiers. Laughing and joking went back and forth along with the vodka bottles.
Yasha however walked back to his machinegun position where he found Ivan covering the guys in the no man's land. Yasha walked past him and checked that the machinegun was all in one piece.
"How's Dima?" Ivan asked while still looking through his sniper scope,
"He'll make it," Yasha answered while checking the gun. After finishing checking the gun, Yasha sat down by the fire; Ivan joined him once the last soldier was out of the no man's land. Ivan sat down on his box and produced a field canteen filled with vodka. He poured some into a cup and handed it Yasha.
"Hail Reich," he said enthusiastically and raised the canteen.
"Hail Reich," Yasha said in a similar fashion before downing the strong beverage down his throat.