Chapter One: "Deceit"
Darjeeling internally voices her suspicions and kicks down anxiety.
The match begins, first blood already.
There is something odd about this match.
As always to the perspective of others, her squadron and her crew. Darjeeling is the picture of calm and collected, a cup of tea rested on a holder by her side and she sipped from it intermittently as she waited for the countdown for the battle to begin.
She was doing her utmost to not show how nervous she was, her stomach already rejecting the tea she had to drink to show who she was to her crew and her voice a perfect picture of the idle upper class English.
On the inside though, she was desperately searching for answers. Just three weeks ago she and Kay, the Saunder's commander had accepted a broadcasted "friendly match" with a transfer school that was set up in the United States, while that was strange enough they had then requested the match be sorted into what they called a "expenses match" where it didn't matter how many tanks or equipment you bought into the match, only that it matched or was below a certain cost value. To Darjeeling that should have been red flag number one.
Red flag number two should have been raised was when she spotted the enemy commander, someone called Washington handing rifles with some sort of telescopic sight to her commanders, number three was the number of tanks the other side, the "All-Americans" had bought. Just five compared to her and Kay's fifteen. Normally she'd be jumping for joy (collectively of course) not since Ooari had anyone been so badly outnumber before and being able to bring three entire squads of whatever they chose into a match was interesting enough it begged the question of what exactly did the other side bring and what kind of ghastly equipment did they have stuffed into their tanks to justify a three to one .
She had enough tanks, enough firepower and enough numbers when she brought them all into the pre match to be confident of a victory even over Black Forest Peak. Her own squad had three Churchill's Black Prince's ritted with seventeen pounders guns and a pair of M36's with ninety millimeters with Naomi ,Kay's sniper as back up., Kay's own squadron had three Easy Eight Shermans with enough armor to withstand a shot even from a Tiger and a pair of Achilles tank destroyers and lastly as a scouting force there was Rosehip with three Cromwells and two Hellcats. Nobody in their right mind would even consider matching that kind of force with just five.
And then the look on Kay's face when that American , a tall brunette in aviator shades and a paratrooper's jacket gave both of them the willies. The All-Americans line up consisted of nothing but prototype tanks, a pair of horrific looking Pershings that were outfitted with bolted on armor strapped everywhere and coupled with the longest barrels Darjeeling had ever seen. Then two (what she presumed were) T-20 mediums that the US army had as a replacement for the Sherman. Stout and short with a fat barreled cannon.
To bring it up was some kind of nightmarish looking beast, a sloped and super heavy monster. Kay had called it a T30 and wanted to jump on it. A crew of five adorned it with their commander, a driver, radio operator,gunner and loader.
What begged the question, a one-twenty cannon only needed one loader, and then even looking at the barrel that was decorated with white paint hurt her eyes.
Red flag number five was the map and terrain, Washington had let her and Kay go first so naturally they picked the most advantageous map they could think of, one decorated with tall elevations to break up the (presumably sniper) style of the opposite school, jungles so the Pershings and T30 wouldn't go in , jungles to give Kay and Rosehip's squadrons enough cover to last for hours and of course there was the odd piece of flat ground but that didn't matter. In short,a three lane map with two jungles at the left and right with flat ground in the middle.
Washington's sub commanders, California and Texas, simply replied with a "okay" and that was enough of a red flag to make it number six.
Number seven was when Darj saw the enemy tanks in detail, they were practically loaded with smoke grenades and external viewing ports and there was even a barrel of what she presumed to be extra fuel strapped to the back of them. What kind of person would bring a mix match of snipers and scouts to a jungle and then prepare for it to be a day long battle?
The countdown reached zero and Kay's radio interceptions had already worked out the enemy positions, the T-20s sat at the front of each jungle with a Pershing behind while the T30 sat actual kilometers away , 2 per side compared to five and with a overwatch. She'd expect that from a newbie school and the proverb "who defends everywhere, defends nowhere" came to mind. And even the best one-twenty shell couldn't reach that far, even though they could technically see each other.
So what gave? Why were the Pershings moving to the tallest elevations and why were the T20's charging into the jungle.
Her tea's actually making her uncomfortable, the humid temperature's already beating the upgraded ventilation system and Darjeeling squeezed her thumb.
"Hey,D orders?" Kay's upbeat voice, casual and always conversational cracked in her radio headset. That's right she's in charge and this is her responsibility, like a good noble and someone who's never cracked, Darjeeling relayed the orders ,consisting of map controls and a simple but effective decapitation strategy she had conceived before the match.
"Light squadron, Rosehip. You're orders are to take the east jungle, proceed and destroy the T20 and block off that side of the arena"
"Medium squadron, Kay. Take the west jungle and do the same"
"Heavy squadron, hug the edges of the jungle. We'll proceed to cross fire the Pershing's and then the T30, we're out of range so even the best 120mm guns'll bounce off"
Darj relayed her orders and sat back, listening to and letting the hum of five massive engines in her squadron and then the five from either side rumble into action and slowly move away. The British army always practiced a simple plan and she admired that, so she followed it.
"Miss Darjeeling"
"Rosehip? Have you found the T-20 already?"
"We've found a gas barrel. Probably the T-20s but it isn't one. Its a smoke barrel and we can't see anything infront, requesting orders"
Before she can respond with a clarification, Kay's worried punches into her ear.
"Oi Darj, I cant see shit. And we'v-"
"Kay?"
"SHIT"
An explosion tore the quiet rumble of the afternoon match and a icon, one of the Achilles tank destroyer's floated into the "destroyed" bracket of the match line up, a kill mark then appearing under one of the Pershings.
"Darj? How did they see us? its thick as fuck in here with leaves and smoke everywhere"
She doesn't have the answer, could the other team see through smoke and jungles or something? Was there an item she couldn't see or overlook? Not even tea was helping the anxiety build.
And then things got worse. The T30 from four kilometers away fired, its tiny silhouette in the distance betrayed a massive muzzle blast and Darjeeling popped open her hatch to observe the slow moving shell slowly complete its orbital pattern and crash into one of her M36s.
In no possible way was that just a one-twenty..
They had smoke barrels and the Pershings, T-20 and T-30 were all missing now, all covered in smoke and the wind at top of the elevations had carried it down to flood the valley, soon Darjeeling squadron wouldn't be able to see anything either.
They'd been had, and that radio operator was actually a loader for a monstrous one-fifty-five millimeter cannon.
Darjeeling digs her nails into her hands for anxiety relief and quietly swears as everything goes to shit.
"Commander Washington, Arizona here?" Washington clicked the receive button on her headset and keyed in.
"Have you approached the east jungle?"
"Yeah, smoke barrel away and we've buried ourselves into a good ditch, they wont see us until we want them to"
"Nevada, report"
"Same here commander"
"California and Texas, are you into position?"
Two rogers came in, confirmation that her Super Pershings were looking straight down into the jungles, right now they couldnt see anything but that would change in about fifteen seconds.
"In position"
"Ready"
Washington slipped her sunglasses off and peered into the scope, four kilometers away sat the most dangerous vehicles, American ones of course in the distance. The M36s could penetrate her T-30s side at any range, everything else needed to get close.
"Target M36 on the left, load AP and fire when ready" She commanded her gunner and her pair of loaders, even with their beefy arms they struggled to load the massive howiziter sized shells into the gun barrel, at best they had a rate of fire of two per minute so every shot would count.
She didn't wait for the gun to fire and instead grabbed her M1 Garand and popped the hatch, laid it onto the roof of her tank and then reached down for a gas mask.
"Washington here, California, Texas, Nevada and Arizona, ready your rifles and switch on thermal sights, use the ballistically matched rounds. All crews, gas masks on. Don't get asphyxiated"
The idiots on the other side probably didn't even have gas masks, then again she wouldn't blame them, who else would cover an entire battle arena in smoke, use thermal sighted rifles to guide tank cannons and have everyone equipped with a gas mask?
Her T30 finally fired, pushing a nearby tree back and uprooting soil into the air.
She keyed in a final curt command to her tanks. "Washington here, you have your orders. See to them"
That was it, no more commands. Her commanders, were free to do as they wished, hopefully they'd be bait and knock out as many tanks as possible - she has plans after all and dragging so many people from across country would be a losing match even with a full win.
"M36 knocked out commander" Her gunner reported with the same ease as one would have ordering food.
First blood to them.