Chapter 1
— The Deal —
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Rancorous shouts and jeers filled a shower room, punctuated by dull thuds of punches and stomps. Twenty men in prison rags gathered there in a circle, shouting and cheering like savages.
In the middle of it all, under the cold sprinkle of a showerhead on full tilt, Altare Regis squared off with another man.
He held his clenched fists high and kept his footing wide like a prize-fight boxer. His face shimmered with mist, sweat and blood, some of it his own.
"What's wrong, Pavie-lover?" One of the men spat, "Can't fight without your clothes? Clothes are for true-blooded Elysians, you daft fuck!"
Altare ignored him. He clenched his callous fists and kept his bloodshot green eyes forward - as wide open as he could keep them, at least.
"Look at this limp-dicked joker." His opponent lashed out at him this time, "You talk tough, but your bruises are as big as my balls, little man!" His eyes strayed down to his feet, "And you're getting your blood all over my boots."
Altare's furrowed his brow. He watched his opponent's every move. Down to the last detail. He shifted his weight and made the wet bathroom tiles squeak beneath him. Then, he lunged forward and threw a lightning-fast haymaker.
His opponent fell back with an unceremonious splash, his thud on the dirty tiled floor silencing the room.
The shouting turned into snarls, gritting of teeth, and growls.
The circle of giant men closed in on Altare. The musky, grimy ring of muscles and blood tightened like a noose.
"You weren't supposed to do that." Another man, a towering baldie, warned. He cracked his knuckles and stepped over Atlare's downed opponent. "Pavie-lovers like you should be shot, but we can put you out of your misery ourselves."
He turned to the other inmates and commanded them.
"Hold him down! Let's show this Pavie-lover what true-blooded Elysians think of them."
Altare braced himself for a battle that he could not win.
Together, they swarmed him mercilessly.
The mass of muscle surrounded Altare and threatened to crush him in one fell swoop. Altare's body, lightning-fast in response, moved on its own. A jab to break bone and tear flesh, a sweep to throw those around him off their feet, he threw punches and kicks and took them tenfold too. Grunts and roars echoed in the tiled shower room, punctuated by the deafening spray of flowing shower heads.
He was caught in this downpour for what seemed like forever.
"JUST FUCKING SLEEP, PAVIE-LOVER," shouted a man outside his peripheral. When Altare turned, he could only see a calf cutting through the air towards his face.
Thud... Splash...!
That kick to the head did him in. Altare fell beside his first foe, along with nine of the other men he took down with him. Through bruised eyes, he saw the ten others looming over him like hawks.
How he wished he could have taken out more of them.
Altare tried to pick himself up, but his adrenaline gave out. His vision darkened. He saw the trail of blood sloshing down the shower drains as the prison guards swooped in, dragging their feet every step of the way.
Another Sunday at the South Elysium Penitentiary, Altare told himself.
He blacked out after one last mirthless chuckle.
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When Altare came to, he was back in his prison cell sprawled out on his splintery wooden cot like a corpse on an undertaker's wagon. "How long was I out," he wondered.
Not like anyone in there would have told him the truth, though.
His wounds stung from beneath the bandages that messily covered him. Some of them were so shoddily done that they were already coming undone before his wounds had sealed. He felt the new change of itchy, rough-spun prison clothes wrapped around him. "One size too large, as always," he sighed.
With a grunt, Altare gritted his teeth, braved the pain, and sat upright on his cot.
From there, he saw the tray of cold food on the floor: days old turkey garnished with something viscous and bubbly. Probably prison guard spit. Altare grumbled as he lazily kicked the tray to the corner of the dusty cell.
"Looks like I'm not eating tonight again..."
He shook his head and reached under his cot. There, he found a small package of loose leaf papers and a pen. He knelt down slowly on the floor, taking care not to disturb his unraveling bandages any more, set down his paper on the cot, and started to write a letter.
By the stain marks on the cot, nobody would've figured if he'd been doing this either just since last week or for the last few months.
Altare's face twisted. His breathing went heavy. His heart seemed to sink. Tears welled in his eyes while he wrote. All the while, his hands trembled. A single drop of blood splattered on the page, but he soldiered on.
Just like he always did.
He paused, took a deep breath and willed himself on to write his familiar finale.
"...Until we meet again. Your useless brother, Ragus."
Altare lowered his head and set aside his pen. Then, he slipped that letter onto a small stack of letters beneath his cot tied with twine.
Ninety letters now. One for each day of his incarceration. He had written so many that the stack could probably stop a bullet.
Altare took the small mound of unsent letters in his hand, brushing every single one of them with his thumb. Cautiously, he looked over his shoulder through the bars of his cell, wary of voyeurs. When the coast was clear, he put the stack of papers away.
His stomach grumbled. A half-lidded gaze turned to the desecrated tray of food at the corner of the room.
Then, he heard a commotion.
Prisoners started murmuring and whispering until the entire prison block was abuzz. The shaking and banging of steel bars roused the block to life. Altare clung onto the bars of his cell to support himself and stand up and see what the hullabaloo was all about.
He heard the heavy thump of boots, timed and precise.
"Soldiers. Elysian. Four of them," he assumed, counting their steps.
When the marching stopped, it was about in front of his cell, albeit a few floors below it.
Their olive drab uniforms contrasted the black coats of the prison guards and the khaki rags of the prisoners. Altare's presumption was also correct. There he saw three men standing behind a shorter woman who, despite her small stature, stood rigid and sharp. From across his cell, Altare could see the woman's discolored skin stitched together like a patchwork or blanket. Her eyes shimmered in an unusual color too.
The woman stopped. She put her hands on her hips and spoke with a commanding voice that boomed and echoed throughout the entire block, silencing the whole room.
"Gentlemen! I am second lieutenant Ollie Kureiji, and I am looking for volunteers to fight for Elysium." She folded her arms, puffed up her chest and scanned through the cells around her, "I am offering everyone in this prison an opportunity for freedom."
Suddenly, cheers broke out left and right, breaking the silence once more. Convicts of every stripe started shouting and begging to be given the commission. But then, Ollie cleared her throat, her tone switching to a heavier one in the blink of an eye.
"In exchange," Ollie continued, "the volunteers will render service to the Elysian Army's Provisional Correctional Armored Company. The P.C.'s."
The excitement in the prison block dampened. Murmurs swirled throughout the cells.
"Oy, oy. That's the unit that goes on the suicide missions! Th' paper yesterday said they got fucked in another Pavie ambush," one man protested.
"They're the ones the army uses like fuckin' cannon fodder, yeah," another chimed in.
"Kureiji's a Pavolian name, innit? What's a fucking Turkey doing in our goddamned country acting like a patriot!?" a third shouted.
Those protests, however, were merely loud and very few. Many convicts still called out to Ollie and her men. Many of them roared, boasting about how eager they were to kill Pavolians on the battlefield. Many more begged for their freedom, no matter what the cost.
Ollie watched the fervor, but her expression did not change. She stood there stoically like the brazen Statue of Elysium.
Ollie's men started taking names of their new volunteers. They earmarked them like cattle and swine for the slaughterhouse. Ollie herself, however, sauntered on from the center of the prison block. She took some names from the cells she passed along the way, but she did not linger.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Moments later, Altare heard heavy marching towards his cell. A head of red stopped behind his bars. It was the second lieutenant herself. Ollie stopped and faced the bruised blue-haired man behind the bars.
"...To whom do I owe the pleasure, lieutenant?" Altare spoke, but he turned away from Ollie and closed his eyes, "There are men who want to kill Pavolians more than I do all 'round this joint."
"Are you not interested in my offer, Mr. Regis?" Ollie hummed.
"...Wait, how the fuck does she know me...?" he asked himself.
Altare heard the flipping of paper behind him. Turning around, he saw her sorting through a pile of paper on a clipboard. While rifling through its contents, she started, "You were an ex-cadet at the Commonwealth Military Academy. You've gone through officer school and scored top marks. You even qualified for armored warfare on our M3 Stuarts - our light tanks."
Her eyes sharpened, "If there's anyone qualified for tankery in this prison, it's you. And, boy, do we need armor out there."
Altare kept his silence. He opened his eyes and looked straight into Ollie's.
"...You do realize why they threw me in here, don't you, Lieutenant?" Altare growled, "You've got a lot of papers on that clipboard. I'm sure the top brass wrote it somewhere in there."
"I know why you're here, Altare Regis. And I know that this isn't where you want to be." Ollie stood firm, "And that's why I want you on my team."
"...What?" Altare asked.
Ollie turned to the side and showed Altare the red armband stitched to her uniform.
"I am a Pavolian defector to Elysium and I sympathize with you, Altare Regis." Ollie revealed. She faced Altare squarely again and continued, "If you accept my offer, then you have my word that I will use my resources to make sure that your sister, Kobo Kanaeru, is safe." Her eyes shimmered, "Kobo's ex-Pavolian too, isn't she?"
"...Can you really?" he asked, head lowered.
"Well, this is not just an offer from the Elysian military, but an offer from me. You're not the only one trying to earn their freedom here," she says, crossing her arms.
"Win my battles for me and help me end this war. Then, you will have my word that no harm will come to Kobo," insistently, she offered her hand to Altare through the bars of his cell.
"Do we have a deal, Mr. Regis?"
Altare paused again. He stared at Ollie's hand and regarded her shimmering eyes. Then, he hobbled over to his cot and retrieved his ninety unsent letters. Shakily, he handed those letters to Ollie.
"Deliver these letters to Kobo too, and I'll do whatever you say," Altare declared.
"...Consider it done," Ollie nodded.
Ollie shook Altare's hand and took the ninety letters from him. In their stead, Ollie handed Altare a small booklet.
'M3 Stuart Field Operations Manual' it read.
"You'd better start jogging your memory as a cadet." Ollie urged, "I'll arrange your transfer with the warden. When that's done," She continued, her eyes now sparkling, "you will no longer be a prisoner. You'll be a tanker in my platoon. A Provisional Correctional Armored Platoon, to be precise."
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"What the hell happened to you," asked Ollie, once again holding a clipboard.
Altare lazily raised his arm and waved the manual the second lieutenant had given him the other day.
"I had a few days with it. Sleepless nights too," Altare grumbled, stifling a yawn. Still, his eyes had a bit of a flame to it. It brought a smile to the proud lieutenant's face. "Including last night, of course, just to be sure."
"Hmm. Get in. Glad to hear you're excited to right get to the action, Regis," Ollie said, pointing her thumb to the inside of a troop transport truck and ticking his name off a list on her clipboard.
However, she stopped him for a moment, grabbing him by the arm. To Altare's surprise, she looked as if she were devoid of life, her steely gaze freezing the man in place.
"Ah, not to burst your bubble or anythin', just levelin' expectations here… but, soon, you won't be."
Altare stepped into the truck, his gaze not leaving the second lieutenant, whose tone had immediately reverted to the sharp and firm one that she had when Altare saw her first set foot in that prison. He'd eventually avert his gaze toward the olive drab uniform of the Elysian Army on him. "One size too large, as always," he sighed.
Fwwwwwwwt!
At the blow of a whistle, multiple truck engines roared to life. His truck, and many others like it, drove out of the South Elysium Penitentiary, the convoy flanked by Jeeps filled with prison guards and military police. Still, Altare sat quietly and gazed at his leisure. This would be the first time he got to see the world beyond the walls of that goddamned prison, after all.
What they saw there made his stomach turn.
In just ninety-three days, the town that surrounded the prison had become desolate. Through the opening at the back of his truck, Altare saw few people walking through the streets and even fewer cars plied the snow swept roads. Many stores were boarded up, but the factories continued spewing smoke up to the heavens. Trains cut through the ghost town, carrying wrecked hulks of Elysian armored vehicles towards the billowing smoke stacks.
"They'll be back on the battlefield before long. Those tanks out there, I mean," Ollie spoke loudly, seated at the front seat, which was right in Altare's line of sight. "The factories will refurbish 'em. Elysian Army regular units get first pickings. Then, the militias. Then... the PCAPs. If there's any left, that is. Though it feels like my Second Platoon's gotten the last priority," she laughed.
"What's harder to replace, however," she added, pointing at the men in the seats behind her, "are tankers. Folks like..."
Altare sighed. "That's where we come in, huh?"
Ollie nodded.
"Just like the factories, I will beat you all through unforgiving flames. Press you and roll you thin. It's how we make our tanks, gentlemen," Ollie said, watching the smoke rise up to the heavens. "And it's how I will forge you all into fighting men."
With that, the squealing of tires filled the air. Their truck came to a harsh halt, squeezing the men inside, who grunted and whined. It made the second lieutenant up front cackle. When Altare got off his truck, he regarded the shelled but barely operational train station before him.
Fwwwwwwwwt!
A whistle pierced the air, silencing the mumbling men around Altare. Before them, at the steps of the train station, stood Ollie Kureiji, as proud as when she had visited the prison.
"Just one more stop, one more ride! Your next destination: the front line!" Ollie declared loudly. Just then, as if timed perfectly, the chugging of a train entered earshot.
"Looks like our final ride's here, lads! Right on time too, as expected of Elysian trains," she laughed.
To Altare, however, it looked like the second lieutenant emitted an air of... insanity. He wondered if he'd end up like that soon enough.
One by one, Ollie and the other officers with her boarded her new recruits. Eventually, they parted ways with their police escorts and only the military escorts, armed with rifles and hand grenades, remained with them in the train. The massive locomotive, crammed like a sardine can full of men, came to life and chugged away.
Toward the front lines.
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KA-BOOOOOOOOOM– RATATATATATA!
Sleep interrupted, Altare jolted from his seat. Everyone in his train car, save for the redheaded second lieutenant and their military escorts, started ducking under their seats. The rattle of machine gun fire, the blasting of air-burst mortars and artillery, and a horrifying cacophony caused by other instruments of war drilled into the eardrums of every soul present.
After a moment, still heart beating at his ribcage, Altare opened his eyes. Their train wasn't harmed by any sort of weapon, to his surprise. Splinters weren't flying every which way. Blood didn't pool beneath him. Everyone was fine. He and the other recruits didn't see the fighting, but goodness – could they hear it.
What surprised Altare, however was the demeanor of Ollie and her men, who were laughing at the cowering recruits.
"Get used to the noise, boys," Ollie shouted to her recruits, still chuckling a bit. "You're gonna be hearing this shit for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! This battlefield is your home now. Gonna be so for the next few weeks. Welcome to the Elysian front lines – The Proving Grounds!"
There, under the watchful eye of Elysian military police, Ollie would condense two months of basic training into about three weeks. Exercises, lectures and maneuvers carried on to the tune of Pavolian and Elysian shelling.
Some of the recruits started tensing up whenever the shelling intensified. Others, still, couldn't eat, rest, or calm down when their duties were done. Altare, on the other hand, carried on like he did in the prison no matter how close the Pavolian shells landed to their camp. He took everything Ollie threw at him and soldiered through it all.
Just like he always did.
All the while, he kept to himself and ignored the existence of the others as best as he could.
They could be dead tomorrow for all I care.
Instead, Altare turned to his only solace: writing more letters, addressed to his sister.
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Three weeks passed. Ollie's crash course in tankery came to an end and the M3 Stuart light tanks of her unit finally arrived by train. Six refurbished beasts with thin armor, a weak main gun and just a powerful engine to make up for it all. Six less than what Ollie ordered from Army Ordnance.
"They're sending us to fight in metal coffins," Altare told himself.
The other ex-convict recruits regarded their underwhelming and short-changed machines with frowns and scowls. Probably thinking the same thing.
Altare laid his hand on one of the machines. He regarded the markings left behind by its past owners with a scrunched face.
"You like her?" Ollie approached Altare and the tank, "She's gonna be your new prison from here on out."
"Yes, ma'am," Altare answered, eyeing the tank from turret to treads, "It's funny how she's just like me. Fighting battles that she's not supposed to win."
"She's lost battles before. A lot of them," Ollie warned. She gestured to the other tanks. "They all have."
"But she can win too," Altare argued. He faced Ollie squarely. "I know she can." He pressed his hand on the tank's armor firmly. "She has to. That's why you keep fighting, isn't it, ma'am?"
Ollie smiled for a moment and scoffed, "No comment."
Then, she took a deep breath and mellowed down.
"Well, this one shall be your vehicle, Corporal Altare Regis," Ollie declared. "Command her and her crew well and do me proud. Win my battles so that you can win yours."
Altare stood in attention and saluted Ollie.
"Ma'am, yes ma'am!"
Ollie returned the gesture and made her way to the other ex-convict recruits. Then, she stopped halfway and turned around.
"One last thing, Corporal Regis." Ollie asked, "What name do you want on that machine?"
Altare shook his head.
"I haven't thought about it."
Ollie hummed.
"Think about it, then," she insisted. "If you make it back alive from today's mission, you'll have to pick a name. Easier to take track of casualties that way, y'see."
"...Ma'am, yes ma'am," Altare said as he saluted Ollie once more.
Ollie smiled and turned around. She took a deep breath, stood in attention and hollered.
"SECOND PLATOON, FORM UP!"
Altare and the other recruits formed ranks before Ollie and stood stiffly. Ollie watched the men gathered before her and continued to speak.
"Today is graduation day, gentlemen. You'd better have your big boy pants on." Ollie pointed to the dense forest beyond the barbed wire fences of their camp, "All of you are going on your first mission at 1300 hours. Second Platoon will be supporting First Platoon and Captain Hakos' Regular Army units to take a manor house past the forest. That's gonna be our staging point for our push into Xenokuni City."
Some of the recruits started to whisper amongst themselves. Altare, however, stayed silent.
"I have not finished talking!" Ollie snapped at the ex-convicts. She drew a pistol from her holster and raised it up for all to see, "Failure is not an option. You're gonna become PCAP tankers today or fucking die trying! AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR?!"
"Ma'am, yes ma'am!" The recruits answered loudly.
Ollie nodded. Then, she continued her briefing.
"Intel from the regulars say that there's a small infantry garrison protecting that manor house," Ollie explained. "The forest's thick, so they won't be expecting an armored unit to break through there." She patted one of the tanks behind her, "But that's what our Stuarts are made for. We're gonna catch those bastards with their pants down with a two-pronged attack!"
Once she finished, she brought out a clipboard.
"Corporals! You are the tank commanders," Ollie started. "Here are the privates assigned to you as your crew."
She started to read off names one by one. Her tone softened up a little bit, almost like she was reading from an obituary. Afterwards, the privates joined their corporals.
One of the men under Altare's command was the tall bald man, one of the men that assaulted him in the shower ages ago. He was going to be Altare's loader. His gunner and his driver were men who watched the whole affair and cheered.
Altare and the bald man glared at each other.
"If it isn't the limp-dicked Pavie-lover," the bald man scowled, casting his shadow over Altare. "Did the Pavie zombie take pity on you to make you a Corporal?"
"Remember your rank, private." Altare hissed.
Backing off, the bald man snorted. He gave a flimsy salute.
"...Sir, yes, sir," he grumbled. He spat on the ground by Altare's boots anyway.
Altare stayed silent, but he clenched his fists tightly.
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-TEMPEST-