Danev
Nearly a week had passed, and we still had yet to make contact with the enemy.
One would think that the lack of an enemy attack would have meant a certain loosening of tension around the camp of the 29th brigade but the truth was far closer to the opposite. We were waiting, and nobody knew what for.
Even the trenches we'd dug, six feet deep into the ground, slowly but surely being fortified by wood and steel, we could hardly feel a morsel of security. We all saw where the 32nd wound up, and none of us wanted our foxholes to become our graves.
In that sense, hardly any of our time was spent at ease. We spent the days fortifying our trench lines, working hand in hand with our benders such as Mano to ensure the walls were sound, the ceiling wouldn't collapse on us in the night, etc., etc.
Every second was spent in anticipation of when the hiding enemy might reveal themselves. We had no shortage of theories: they were hiding in the woods behind, they had a trench line in front of us, bordering the wall, that was slowly creeping towards us, or they were beneath us, tunneling through the ground.
Each theory was more outlandish than the last, but what more was the mind to do when we'd seen the result of underestimating them before and what it'd done to five hundred soldiers before us.
All the same, we tried to keep things pleasant with a small degree of success, now holding a pool on where the enemy may be and where we might be attacked from first.
The majority consensus was split between two prevailing opinions: that the enemy was entrenched with artillery right by the wall, nigh within striking distance, and that they were hiding in the forest, waiting to attack us from the rear. There were even some scattered theories that the Earth Kingdom had allied with Air Nation survivors in preparation to attack us from above, as well as some of the opposite saying from below–a theory that Mano in particular subscribed to.
He'd been jostled considerably since he'd quite literally felt the final moments of a few hundred men dying beneath his feet. He could swear he still felt them move from time to time.
We didn't exactly have to gamble. Those who hadn't been smart enough to spend the last of their pay on their last shore leave in Citadel wagered with that while those of us who'd known we wouldn't exactly be exposed to a civilized market for some time at least wagered with food or equipment. I still had some dried venison that was considered the same value as twenty silver pieces.
I hadn't even shown them how much I really had, just a portion instead.
It'd been a tough decision to choose which horrible death to put my money on. A part of me figured that the most boring and standard operational option was the most likely–that they were entrenched a few miles in front of us, by the wall, waiting to open fire.
From behind us was an option, but unlikely. In the woods, while they would have the element of surprise, it would have been best used attacking us early. A week plus spent away, they'd have lost the element of surprise, and would only be suffering from a lack of fresh supplies. And from the sky or beneath the ground, those were just silliness, though a few scattered soldiers put their money there.
We made the most of our circumstances, and hoped that it might distract us for the moment from the dread of an upcoming attack.
And we made no mistake. An attack was coming. We just had no way of knowing when.
So we kept our eyes open from the moment the sun rose from behind the forest in the east and set behind the wall to the west, and even beyond then too. Nights for that first week were often restless, spent staring up at the stars in the sky wondering when we might see streams of smoke trailing behind flaming boulders hurled at us from Earth Kingdom catapults.
That was one advantage I couldn't complain about. We remained out of range of their catapults and trebuchets while our black powder howitzers still could reach them from all the way out here.
Notwithstanding, we were on the frontlines of our position. Though we had no idea where the enemy was, the one certainty was that Ba Sing Se's wall was closest to us, and from wherever the Earth Kingdom would end up attacking us if ever they did, we would be the ones caught in the thick of it.
As such, it was a relief when the week finally ended, and we were being rotated.
We'd been informed via our lieutenant proxy that brigade command would not be rotating us so frequently in the future, but that now, shifts were being shortened. As such, we were being taken away from the frontline and instead to the forests to harvest wood.
Wood was in short supply and high demand. We originally would have harvested enough for the first month while marching here, but the lieutenant general's haste had gotten the best of him once again, and so we now paid the price.
It was a shame for those of us who were just starting to get comfortable, what marginal sense of that there was. We'd been delivered some marginal supplies of construction materials that'd gone towards supporting the trench walls, propping up shelter for when it rained, and doing what little we could to keep ourselves secure. It was hardly anything, but all the same, it was where we'd slept and lived for the last week.
That sentiment would end up being lost, however, for the next week away from "home," but I imagined once we were right back in there, it would feel the same all over again.
But for now, we were on a field trip, and so on the first day of the new week, we were woken up well ahead of departure time as a courtesy. Nobody in Dragon squad could blame the lieutenant for this as he was just as miserable as the rest of us for the early rise. It wasn't just Dragon being rotated however, but the entirety of the 59th Infantry Battalion, pending replacement by the 42nd.
Interestingly enough, however, though lieutenant Aozon was right with us in being woken up in the early hours of the morning to be sent to the woods to chop down trees for the next week, the company commanders: Yuzeh, Amala, and Isuke, stayed right where they were. Clearly they were in the exclusive club of not following around with their men that Aozon hadn't quite achieved membership to just yet.
I wasn't sure who I felt worse for. Him, or us because we all knew from early on that it was going to be us he'd take it out on.
"Pick up the pace, Dragon! " he yelled at us as we were ushered through the siege lines past the men of the 112th who seemed somehow even more miserable than we did. "Lag behind and you'll be walking to the woods!"
His threats went largely unheard to his men though who seemed more content to make mocking remarks at soldiers from the 112th as they passed by.
"Oh don't worry!" Tosa'd said to them in passing. "Left the mud nice and warm for you!"
They were unamused.
It only made sense, all things considered. They were being sent to the front line of trenches, and as we passed through their section of the siege camp, we gained an even better understanding. Rather close to the epicenter of the siege camp, supplies and material had been made far more readily available to them. They'd already set up tents, fortifications, and even had some primitive barracks and housing constructed for themselves. Now they were being forced to give it up in exchange for our lousy trenches of mud and muck.
"It won't last," Chejuh observed. "They'll be back here in a week's time, and back to stay."
"Well good for them," Tosa shrugged off.
"And shit for us," Mahung added. "If they're here, then guess where we'll be."
Stuck on the front line. It was to be expected. We were the slumdog cannon fodder after all, just like we'd been told time and time again. That same mud and muck we'd been complaining about for the last week was, whether we liked it or not, where we would find ourselves for a great deal of time longer.
Best we get comfortable then.
We would have to get comfortable another time though. Because right now, I could already hear the engines of the Fire Nation trucks roaring in the distance, ready for us to board.
The majority of the 114th was more than happy to be given a free ride rather than being forced to march the many miles back to the woods for the sole purpose of gathering wood for fires and minor construction projects.
I was not of that majority, however.
I'd never so much as ridden on a carriage before, but it seemed I was skipping a few tiers and being put immediately on a vehicle I couldn't even begin to comprehend the workings of.
So as we were ushered along with one half platoon to a truck.
I didn't understand it. I understood how wheels worked as I wasn't an idiot, and had seen more than enough carriages come through Citadel down the grain street in my time. So too had I seen, in the last year, tanks and trucks roll down those very same streets, but in a manner that still befuddled me. I couldn't comprehend what powered them, how they held themselves together, supported this much weight.
It was at nearly that exact moment that I would be faced with even more of these confounding vessels, a whole group of them passing nearby-tanks.
The 62nd? I wondered. Fluke's unit?
I wondered if he was in one of those tanks now. I'll catch him on the way back, I decided, hoping that a week from today, he wouldn't already be gone once again.
Aimuro tried explaining to me that they operated similar to how the Fire Nation's tanks worked, which didn't particularly help me much as I didn't even know how those did. I cursed myself for choosing to ask how exactly they did work as we boarded, thinking that it might help cool my nerves for the ride.
Unfortunately for myself, it only brought my stomach nearer to the edge of puking my guts out as we jolted into motion and began to move.
Aimuro, intelligent though he was, wasn't quite as smart when it came to people, and so seemed incapable of realizing the position I was in, just seconds away from puking my guts out over the side of the truck.
How the hell does Fluke do this every day? I wondered to myself while Aimuro talked to me about the fundamentals of a steam engine. How it wasn't actually the coal in the steamer at the front of the truck that made it move, but that it simply was a material that heated very quickly, boiling water, which produced steam that spun a turbine, connected to other moving parts, that made the truck move.
Is this the shit I missed by not paying attention to classes? I wondered, suddenly regretting having excused Fluke from tutoring me late at nights on account of wanting to give him more time to sleep before his firebending practise the following mornings.
I should have been more selfish, I thought. I should have asked him to teach me this shit. If only so I wouldn't need to deal with Aimuro lecturing me on it now.
Supposedly too, the concept was simple enough to recreate to the point it was being used all across the Fire Nation for their tanks, trucks, and even trains.
"What are trains?" I asked to try and distract myself from throwing up.
"They're like these trucks, except much bigger, and they travel on these rails that go across the mainland. Apparently, they're even faster than these trucks.
Faster? At such a point, it became difficult to hold it in much longer, and I was forced to turn around and stick my head over the metal barrier of the truck before puking my guts out onto the ground. It disappeared behind us in mere seconds though the taste in my mouth would last a lot longer.
"I'm not gonna have to ride on a lot of these, yeah?" I asked Aimuro in little more than a groan as I slowly returned to my prior sitting position.
He shrugged. "Probably not. We just get these because it's quicker to transport the wood by them, but they're expensive to make. Who knows though, in maybe just a few decades after we've conquered the Earth Kingdom, everyone could have one.
As I'd known before, not the most emotionally intelligent. I would end up throwing another time before we finally, thankfully reached the woods.
The 112th had done a good job of clearing the outer edge of it, and so we had to drive past a wide assortment of mere stumps before finally reaching where the forest was whole was something unbelievable about how much the 112th had really thinned out the forest in just a week.
"112th hardly left anything, huh?" Murao observed from where he sat, looking over what was left of this segment of the woods with something that almost seemed to be remorse.
Mykezia put the comment aside, responding, "Still plenty left for us."
"Missing the point," Murao said. "Going to fuck up the entire forest at this rate."
"What you want us to do?" Mykezia asked. "Cut only four out of every five trees?"
"'D be a start."
An annoyed groan was her only answer before the truck finally came to a halt.
The door of the driver's canopy at the front opened, and from it emerged Aozon, smacking his gauntlet against the side of a truck with a loud clang to exclaim, "Been on your asses long enough! Everyone out!"
We all stood, not needing to be told twice. Whether we were glad to stretch our legs our glad to put the motion sickness aside for a while, as was my case. There must have been around dozens of trucks all gathered here, ten alone for our company. We'd been driven to all different points, likely to make sure we didn't get in the way of one another.
"Alright!" lieutenant Aozon announced. "You all know why you're here! Siege needs wood, and you're the lucky bastards who get to do it."
You mean 'we,' I would have liked to have said, knowing full well that the lieutenant had no intention of swinging an axe along with us. He'd lost out on being able to stay in the siege camp with the company commanders, but he would still gladly spend the next week wrapped up cozily in the driver's cabin with a warm cup of tea.
The prick.
"Large trees, small trees, makes no difference. Bring 'em down! We need what we can get!"
Because unless we wind up being stuck here in this siege for years longer, it won't be our problem to deal with.
All the same, complaining was going to do me no good, and when it became clear Aozon was just waiting for us to leave so he could be to himself, I took the initiative and gave the order.
"Dragon platoon!" I called out. "With me!"
They followed quickly enough after that. We could see the other platoons and companies entering into the forests as well with the equipment obtained from the backs of their trucks: wheelbarrows, axes, simple material for just as simple machines to bring down the trees safely, &c.
That was the case for all of us except a number of soldiers we could see roughly in the distance entering with nothing but bows and loaded quivers.
"Where the fuck're they going?" Mahung complained.
"54th ranged," I identified, finally able to make them out in the distance. "They get to hunt."
"Those fuckers get to hunt?"
"What do you expect?" Chejuh asked rhetorically. "For them to put bows in our hands to hunt instead of the ones trained for it?"
"So they think they're better than us because they know how to shoot?"
He was now arguing for the sake of arguing. Man had lost any claim he had to the argument numerous stupid questions ago.
"That," Chejuh said. "And that they're not slumdogs, but mainlanders and colonials instead."
"Fuckin' mainlanders," Mahung said. "And colonials too."
I chuckled. The best thing any of us could do was to let him get it out of his system now rather than when we were actually in the thick of things.
One thing did become clear soon enough though. Being out here was considerably nicer than out trenchline. For one thing, we were away from the mud and shit of our foxholes, not met with the foreboding wall only miles ahead of us every morning. It was an improvement both on the eyes as well as the nose.
For another, at least if we were in the faction that didn't expect an attack from the forest, we were out of harm's way for the moment, which was somewhat good for morale. We did have those among us though
And lastly, becoming clear after a few eyes of minding our own business deforesting the area, was that we didn't have Aozon yelling into our ears every hour or so to prove to us he was still in charge.
Needless to say, as long as we weren't anticipating earth kingdom rangers to be jumping at us from the trees at any moment, the 114th was in relatively good spirits.
At least, most of us were.
By the end of that first day, we'd done our jobs, and we'd done it damn well. The trucks were sent back that night while we established camp in the woods, surrounded by bare stumps left in our wake. It was impossible to tell how many we'd brought down, but my estimate was in the hundreds if not the thousands. On one hand, we were doing well, certainly better than the one-twenty-second, but all the same, something about it felt wrong.
What did feel wrong was put in words to me the day after, when midway through, Mano had caught me where I was assisting Mykezia in felling a particularly large oak.
"Staff sergeant?" he asked, alerting me instantly that he was serious as times were rare otherwise when he would use my rank in place of my name. I wondered for a split second if the impossible had actually happened and we'd suffered an Earth Kingdom attack, but I imagined that he would have been in much more haste had that been the case. No, this was serious, but on a personal level.
"Private Mano," I answered, choosing to match his tone lest I insult the severity of the matter he was bringing to my attention. "Is there something I can help you with?"
"There is, sir. I was talking with Murao and, well, this seems kinda wrong, don't you think?"
"Oh brother," Mykezia said from behind me, rolling her eyes, seeming to know already where this was going. I had a general idea too, but that was hardly going to stop me from hearing him out.
It hadn't surprised me that Murao had gotten to him. The two'd been close since early on in training when Murao had helped Mano through some of the earlier physical exams when the latter had been more on the larger side. That wasn't to say he wasn't large now still, but the proportion of fat to muscle had shifted significantly in the other direction, at least to the point that I occasionally, now being no exception, felt the need to speak softly around him lest I put myself in physical danger.
Not that he was the type to use his size to bully his way into or out of things, which brought up the second account on why this wasn't unexpected from him. He had a good heart. I just worried it was too good for his own good at times.
"You mean bringing down the trees," I said. "You don't want to do it.
"I'm not a tree hugger, sir," he brought up defensively as though I was questioning his commitment to the task at hand. "I know we need the supplies and I'm happy to do this, but…don't you think we could be doing this a smarter way? I mean, why bring down the small ones. They're hardly doing us any good by harvesting them."
"We were given orders," I said, remembering Aozon's wording very well considering I'd actively thought him a prick for them. "Small or large. Doesn't matter to him."
"Who cares if it does?" he asked exasperatedly, wondering just how the lieutenant's opinion could be of any value. And while from a metaphysical standpoint, nothing the lieutenant would ever wind up believing would be of use to anyone anywhere, a pragmatic standpoint said the opposite, and so I hushed him as he said this.
"Mano," I said as sternly as I could. "The lieutenant sees we're not doing the job the way he asked, it's the entire platoon that'll have hell to pay. I'm not saying I disagree with you, but we don't have the luxury of choosing what orders we choose to follow and which we don't. We're soldiers, and orders are orders. I won't let the platoon suffer because some of us have reservations about what we're doing."
"Danev," he said, pleading.
"No!" I felt bad for him. I really did, but I couldn't entertain the notion that we had a say in this. Not with somebody like Aozon at least. Maybe if it were Rulaan, things would be different, but this wasn't Elephant platoon, and he wasn't our lieutenant, sad as I was to admit it.
He actually was with his men in the brush, bringing down trees the same as them, only having a say over his men not because of the stripes on his shoulder, but because all fifty of his men knew that he wouldn't ask them to do a thing he wouldn't do first himself.
Instead, we had Aozon, and orders were orders. Or were they?
Mano didn't seem to think so, asking now, "Can we at least replant the branches?"
"What?" I asked, confused.
"They can act as saplings. Branch wood is shit for working with anyway. We can replant them, and they'll grow again into trees."
That works?
"It works, sir," he said, as though reading my mind. "Promise."
"How would you know?"
He shrugged. "Taught us in Citadel."
Damnit. I really should have paid more attention.
Overall though, assuming it did indeed work as he claimed, there was no harm in it, and so I conceded. "Fine," I said. "We'll replant the branches. I'll give the order now."
And just like that, a wide smile formed on his face that actually made me feel rather good about an order I had to give for once. I was more used to giving the unpleasant ones as a proxy for Aozon, but now, something that was my own decision, and for the better to, it felt good. At least to see Mano's relief.
It was extra work, sure, but overall, nobody in Dragon platoon complained. At least not vocally. We replanted as we cut, and by the end of that night, we walked back to camp through a waist-high forest of branches erected in the ground, waiting for new life on the assumption they would make it past the winter and fall.
I supposed we would find out come next Spring if we weren't all home by then. Or dead.
Our wood yield that day was lower than the day prior, but still higher than the 122nd, and still highest of the other platoons of the 114th with the exception of Elephant.
It was a selfish motive at first, I admit, but one I later justified to myself as for the better good, and it was. I'd creeped my way over to Elephant platoon's camp shortly before lights out, had made my greetings to the soldiers there I recognized–the vast majority of them, Eraim, Gimor, and all, and sat down to talk to Rulaan, gathered around the fire with his men.
I brought up to him what we were doing with the trees. That it would help to make sure there would be more growing after we were gone. The admission had attracted some scattered chuckles from Elephant that Rulaan quickly suppressed, but it was no sooner that, before I could even propose he do the same, he actually said himself, "Huh. That's clever. Think we'll start doing the same then."
And sure enough, they did. On the third day, just like us, they replanted where they cut. Far as we were from their foresting location, we would have no confirmation until the night when scattered remarks about it could be heard from the soldiers of Elephant as we all gathered to retrieve our food to bring back to the camp. Most were indifferent, some were hostile against the extra work, and some laughed at the idea, calling it 'needlessly sensational,' but more still actually could be heard saying that it made sense and it didn't feel quite as shitty anymore at least.
And that did indeed put a smile on my face as well as the other soldiers of Dragon platoon who grew to call themselves to ones to start doing it first, especially as other soldiers across the company began picking up on doing the same, some for honest reasons, some out of peer pressure, and others because they saw enough doing it that they thought those were our orders.
Even some of the other platoon lieutenants such as Raza and Ruzen decided not to question things, thinking maybe some order from command had come in that they'd missed, and so the initiative went uncontested, least of all by Aozon who, though he seemed to take offence to us acting with a sense of autonomy, said nothing, figuring it would only further hurt his standing amongst us.
And he would have been right too.
With the week's end though, we were on our way back with trucks now loaded with men rather than tree trunks and game carcasses. We had the spirits to thank that there was more wildlife to hunt out here than on the trail during our march, likely startled by the roar of the engines and marching of our boots from miles away.
It was a strange feeling to be back at our siege camp. Conditions had improved, albeit marginally. All the same, it seemed a step in the right direction. By the epicentre of the siege camp, small structures had been erected as well as a clear division where the command section was separated from the common soldiery, likely where the lieutenant general Deming had positioned himself.
As with last time, we passed by the 62nd armored's staging area, met sadly with a lack of armoured units, told in passing, "already headed out on patrol."
I sucked it up, albeit rather dissapointedly as it'd take some time longer to see Fluke again. All the same, we kept moving.
We encountered a 112th Battalion in much better spirits than when last we'd seen them, one soldier from the 37th company even commenting as he passed by us, "left some presents for you."
We had no way of knowing what this 'present' entailed until Shozi had been the first one to leap into our trench, and exclaim shortly after, "Oh what the fuck! Are you kidding me!"
We let ourselves down in the trench shortly after, just in time to watch him lift his boot from a squashed pile of faeces. And of the human variety.
"I'm gonna kill 'em," Shozi seethed. "I'm gonna fucking kill 'em!"
"What happened?" Eraim asked from further down the trench, fortunate enough not to have stepped in a pile of shit himself.
"Fucker from the 112th shit in my hole!" he exclaimed, thinking the dilemma limited only to himself, but if the smell was any indicator, that was far from the case.
"They shit in all our trenches!" Tosa answered back with an honest chuckle, clearly finding some amusement in this all despite it being our sanitation at stake.
I could hardly bring myself to be too angry though. So long as we cleaned it out, didn't drink the mud water, and acted like the adults we were wearing the uniforms of, the smell would be gone by evening.
However, it seemed that shitting in our trenches was not the extent of the gift left for us. So too did we realize that the 112th had taken it upon themselves to relieve us of what few fortifications and construction material we had, hauling it off to their own trench system deeper in the siege camp to improve their own conditions.
"Selfish fucks," Mahung exhaled, and for once, I couldn't disagree with his complaining.
All the same though, spirits were high all things considered, finding the whole situation more amusing than dismal. We laughed about it, some of the more immature soldiers even throwing piles of shit from the ground at one another in a battlefield version of a snowball fight.
Spirits were high, and, somehow, it felt almost good to be back, if anything so we could rest our weary limbs after a week spent cutting down trees.
So we embraced the moment, and found joy while we could in a return to normalcy.
And then, that was when the first shell dropped.
Fluke
In hindsight, I realized, I really should have taken some of the books from Citadel. I don't think I'd ever been so bored even in Citadel. There, I'd always had something to do. Granted, the something entailed doing whatever was in my power to secure a meal for the day to ensure I didn't starve to death, but notwithstanding, it'd kept me occupied, on my feet, and my mind active. And as nice as it was now to have meals provided to me rather than needing to put myself at constant risk just to scrape by, it was growing tiresome. The most action we saw was the occasional perimeter patrol, the greatest excitement having been when Gan nearly struck an ostrich horse that'd gotten loose and we'd had to corral it back to the camp.
Beyond that, however, there was absolutely nothing of interest going on, which made it all the more surprising when Dojai had knocked on the side of my turret, waking me from a nap, to announce to me as well as the rest of the crew, "Orders just came in. We're moving."
"Moving?" Gunji asked, stirring from where he'd been lying on the floor of the tank with only a small fire burning in the engine, just enough to keep us warm from the cooling Autumn days. "Moving where?"
"Some elements of the 62nd, the 6th platoon, has failed to report back from patrol. 2nd platoon's being mobilized to find them and bring them back."
Seeing as how we were of the 2nd platoon, that meant us. I would have asked more questions, but as I was just now waking, they didn't come particularly quickly to my mind, which was why I relied on the others, Gan in particular, to ask that which mattered.
"We know what happened to 'em?" Gan asked, already in the process, however, of starting the pre checks for the tank while instructing Gunji to do the same from his end. "They defect? The enemy?"
"Command doesn't know," Dojai said. "Only what their patrol route was."
The engine already running, it didn't take much time for additional heat to be added, and for secondary and tertiary systems to start their functionality.
"Rally point A," Dojai said, indicating to us where the 2nd platoon was to join their vehicles before setting on a direct path to the objective. I figured we would be following the same patrol route as them, and indeed, that seemed to be the case once the tank units of the 2nd armoured platoon had rallied, and we began moving.
We were on our formation's right flank, furthest east southeast. We were close enough to observe the distant other vehicles of our column, but far enough too that Dojai ensured Gan was remaining on course. Such was the role of the tank commander after all-to navigate, and I had to admit that he wasn't altogether bad at it. Where I knew that he lacked in real world experience, much more handling himself in a crisis similar to us slumdogs, he made up for in being able to keep a cool head, and remained professional. I imagined such was the merit of an actual Fire Nation upbringing-something the rest of us sorely lacked.
"So let me ask something," Gunji said from the rear of the tank after we'd been driving for around an hour without incident. "How is it that the entire 6th apparently goes missing? No way the entire platoon got lost, yeah?"
"Could've been an attack," Gan suggested.
"That took out a whole platoon. These fuckers are fast. Least one of them should have gotten away."
It would be Dojai who'd interrupt, however, saying, "Clerical error most likely. Command had a mixup and thought the patrol was supposed to come back earlier, or the platoon ran into some delays and failed to get the word out. Kind of thing happens all the time."
And that they do, or at least that's what Dojai was telling himself. I didn't so much doubt the truth in what he was saying as much as I did his confidence. He was telling himself this was simply a clerical mistake as much as he was telling it to us. He was frightened by the thought of us rolling into the middle of a battlefield without even realizing it. As such, he was quick to accept that we would find nothing but command confusion, and so too were the others.
I was less so. I straightened my posture, and kept my eyes looking out of the firing port of my turret, seeing now only empty plains and other friendly tanks in the distance, not knowing though what might be in my sights by the end of today.
As we neared afternoon, however, the answer to that came closer and closer to 'nothing.' The sun was still high in the sky and the wall that it would eventually set behind in due time was closer than ever it had been before. If it hadn't been foreboding before, stretching from one end of the horizon to the other, then it certainly was now, tall enough even to hide whole stretches of the sky behind it.
Save for that though, there was nothing more but empty plains and…
The hell?
"Hey, guys," I said, looking ahead to what was little more than a blot in the distance that still struck my attention, becoming more clear with each second as we rapidly drew closer to it. "You see that ther-?"
"Yeah," Gan interrupted. "I see it."
Dojai did too, his breath catching in his throat before finally mustering the will to say, "Get closer. Don't do anything until we verify what we're seeing."
And so we did, confirming what in fact it was–a lone Fire Nation tank, abandoned without a crew to operate it, little more than an empty husk.
What the hell happened here? I asked myself as our own tank finally came to a halt beside its lifeless corpse.
"Fluke!" Dojai said. "Any sign of survivors?"
From my turret position, there sure as well was none. I spun it in either direction, scanning all three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of my field of range before ascertaining that we were alone out here. To verify, I opted for a better view, grabbing my helmet and placing it atop my head with one hand as I opened the hatch above me with the other.
Even with my helmet on, it was a breath of fresh air to be out in the open for the moment, scanning my surroundings however well I could through the eye slits of my helmet. It was clear. We were alone out here.
"I see nothing, sir," I said.
"Check inside!" came the following order.
Well shit.
I was hardly paranoid, but I would be the first to admit that I'd much sooner stay inside the tank than get on the ground to check what could very well be the coffin of four other soldiers just like me.
But then again, it was either step out for a few seconds now, or disobey a direct order and have hell to face back at camp rather than here.
Besides, I thought. If these men were in fact dead, then their tank had done nothing for them. Staying inside would do me no good, and so I did as I was ordered, and raised myself out of the tank, scanning my surroundings one last time to ensure I wasn't in direct view of an Earth Kingdom marksman not too far off.
I saw nobody, and so, stepped out. I had to make this quick. The rest of the 2nd armored platoon's column was moving on without us, and would need to be alerted as to what we'd found here before they were too far off.
I could smell it before I was even at the tank-a familiar stench. I knew what to expect long before I climbed up the side of the tank and looked down the hatch. It was exactly what I expected–four dead corpses in Fire Nation attire, dead in place.
What made little sense to me though was the circumstances of their deaths. They were all still strapped in their seats. They showed no signs of injury, be them lacerations or blunt force, and aside from their bodies and stench, the tank was filled with something else.
Is that…dirt?
"Private!" I heard called from the tank. "What do you see?"
"They're dead, sir!" I called back. "All of them."
I left the 6th platoon's tank there, returning to my own to crawl up the side and back to my spot as I heard Dojai curse to himself before saying, "Let the rest of the column know. Launch a flare."
Gunji didn't pick up immediately, however, on his part in the task, too focused seemingly on me where I'd settled back down in my seat, as though I carried the curse of the dead with me.
"Gunji!" Gan called out, catching the boy's attention, finally turning it away from me. "Flare."
Gunji nodded, and did as he was told, accessing the firing bay tube from where harpoons and grappling hooks were usually fired, offloading the next one in the chamber before replacing it with a flare cartridge.
"Red," Gan reminded him, receiving a nod in confirmation before it was done, the flare loaded and chamber closed, and a thumbs up given in response.
To his position again, Gan directed the firing port up at a perfect ninety degree angle, and fired. A much smaller munition, the tank didn't move an inch as it was fired as it would frequently do with the grappling hooks. Instead though, a stream of red smoke was left in its wake, immediately obscuring the front driver's viewport, and even appearing now through the empty gunner's bay hatch like a firework headed towards the clouds.
The rest of the 2nd would be here soon. The flare couldn't be missed. And that, in part, was what worried me.
Soon enough, a perimeter was formed around the abandoned 6th platoon tank and the prevailing question became obvious. Where is the rest of 6th platoon?
Our platoon commander, lieutenant Torai, scanned the wreckage, noticing the same intriguing detail that'd caught my eye too. There were no other tracks. Not in front of the tank or leading up to it. The ground was clear but for the tracks we'd just made now. Prior to our arrival, however, there'd been nothing.
How?
How did these men die? How did they wind up here? Where are their tracks, and, most importantly, who killed them?
The more time we spent here, the more the popular opinion became that we would find none of those answers here. And so, lieutenant Torai backed away from the 6th platoon tank, announcing to the rest of the 2nd, "Nothing to find here. Let's m-"
At least, he would have finished his order had he not been interrupted. The opinion that we would get no answers here would prove to be wrong as it took just a single second of our lieutenant speaking for it to become clear that he was our commander, and so the first rock launched from the ground found him.
He could have been wearing the most expensive armor the Fire Nation had to offer and it would have made no difference. He was standing there one second, doing what commanders do and barking orders, and the next, he was just a red stain on the ground.
And the delay between that first attack and those that came after was none.
"Holy shit!" Gan barely had time to say before I bore witness to a tank disappear beneath the ground, belonging to another soldier I knew-Luhing, and felt something against my head, a hard force that, by merit of my helmet, simply knocked me down from where I'd been sitting on the lip of my tank's hatch and back inside, the helmet landing by my side with a noticeable bent right on the back.
Amidst the sound of rocks being thrown and arrows fired outside against the steel of Fire Nation armor, I put a hand to the back of my head, feeling for a bump similar to that which adorned my helmet. I found none to some relief, though it would hardly last.
We were being attacked.
"Fluke!" Dojai yelled. "Close the hatch and get on your gun! Gunji! Get the engine going! Gan, get us moving!"
I clambered up to my seat as Gan yelled in response, "Gan! Get the engine up!"
I found my footing in my turret, turning back to see Gunji, huddled on the ground, eyes wide.
"Private Gunji!" Dojai yelled again. "Get the engine-"
"Down!" Gan called out, interrupting the tank commander, though not soon enough.
The tank rocked with a resounding thud that nearly threw me from my seat, not buckled in just yet, but did far worse to Dojai than it did to me as a boulder impacted against the front of the tank, right on the front viewport, exploding into dozens of earthen shards than instantly embedded themselves into Dojai's face and upper body, killing him in an instant.
Oh fuck.
Gan himself, who'd just barely ducked in time, bore a look of horror on his face that far outmatched my own, stuck there for a few seconds before making a key realization in his head–we move now, or die.
"Get us cover!" he yelled, and I knew to me. I'd been hunched down as well, same as anyone with sense in the tank, but I'd seen the ones outside, swallowed in a moment, and as I felt the tank shudder, the earth moving around us, I knew that exact same fate was waiting for us. We had to move. We had to fight. And we had to do it now or we were all dead.
I stood amidst Gan's cries for Gunji to get the engine going, found my position by the turret, and turned it to try and catch sight of whoever it was that threatened to bury us alive. Past I quickly turned my turret past the sight of dead Fire Nation soldiers, tanks already being burnt out from within, and others being buried beneath the earth, and caught sight of him–a lone earthbending soldier in green and tan, wearing a burly beard and rounded helmet, eyes trained on us, angry, dedicated, fully intent on burying us all alive.
I understood the dirt we'd found in the 6th platoon's tank now, merely a lure to draw us in so we might all suffer the same fate. My heart faced, I let instinct take over, raised my arms in front of me, felt the fear, the energy flow, and fired.
The shot was direct-unmistakable, piercing through his leather armor, through his chest, and into the dirt behind him.
He was dead.
I killed him.
And I felt his stranglehold on us loosen, and our tank settled back onto the ground, free.
"Gunji!" Gan yelled again, and to no effect.
I abandoned my seat, leaving us defenseless for the moment to do what needed to be done. I shoved past Gunji where he was huddled on the ground, able to be mistaken for a corpse were he not quivering and muttering terrified nothings to himself.
It was thankful I'd paid attention in our classes, and so found the lever that would feed coal into the flame, closed the furnace, and turned the knob that would feed the steam to our tank, and yelled as the vessel around us hummed to life, "Go!"
And we did. It was a struggle to maintain my footing with how quickly we accelerated into motion, but found my way back to the gunner's seat in time for Gan to yell, "On the right!"
I felt a clang of a rock against our starboard side just as I found my turret again, turning it to face at 76, 79, 84 degrees facing right, and fired another bolt of flame from my hand. This one didn't quite hit, but at least threw off the bender's aim enough for his next shot to miss, streaming directly overhead as observed through the hatch that was still for some reason open.
I closed it above me and closed the latch to lock it shut as Gan declared, "In front of us! Left!"
I turned, fired and missed by much more of a wide area, allowing the bender to get a shot off at us that hit us by our port side tread, messing with the machinery beneath our feet, resulting in a grotesque grinding of steel against dirt as it dragged against the earth, slowing us down.
"Brake's damaged!" I yelled.
"Gunji!" Gan yelled. "Disengage it!"
But there would be no response from him, as I knew, already on it to fill his shoes, finding the lever that activated our break. I attempted to raise it, but the mechanism itself was broken, leaving no other option but to plant a strong kick against it, knocking it loose. Still, it grinded beneath us, requiring another solid kick to break it free, falling to the ground beneath us before being effectively run over by our treads, now picking up proper speed once again.
"Right!" Gan called again as I returned to my seat and fired another shot, this one slightly better, finding the attacker by his right leg, not quite hitting him, but the blast enough to knock him to the ground.
Then came one in front of us, an archer yet again who fired, barely missing the firing port of my turret, myself narrowly evading an arrow that could have easily taken myself had I been a second slower in turning my turret. The haste wouldn't stop there though as we narrowly found our way out of one attack in the next until, finally, it came to an end.
It was impossible to say with certainty how long it'd all lasted, the moments of firing, of adjusting the engine and mechanics, and covering us once again all blending into one until, finally, somehow, the fighting was over, and we were gone.
By the end of it all, our left tread was grinding against the ground, my turret was disabled, the hydraulics broken enough that I couldn't turn it, and we were leaking oil. But we were alive, and we would make it.
I didn't dare stick my head out though to ascertain how many others of the 2nd platoon had made it out along with us. I could tell by the silence alone that it was only us.
The others were dead. All of the 2nd platoon, same as the 6th. That tank had been a lure. They'd known we'd come looking for our friends. They'd set up an ambush, and it'd worked. Assuming we truly were the only ones left, they'd successfully ambushed and killed thirty-seven Fire Nation soldiers, eliminated an entire platoon, and quite possibly all of the 6th before then. Nearly eighty dead. In just a day, and we, out of them, were alive.
How?
I could now finally feel the beating of my heart, and the sharp pain in the back of my head where I'd been hit, the adrenaline finally wearing off.
We're alive.
And not one of us could believe it. Not one of us could, nor would say a word until we were back with the rest of the 29th, fearing whatever we had to say might jynx us and get us killed in the span of a second, because today had proved that was more than possible of happening to any of us.
The sun had set by the time we found our camp once again, myself forced to retrieve the map from Dojai's corpse, his face unrecognizable to me now on account of the earthen shards that'd lodged themselves there, and help Gan navigate us there.
And when finally we were there, the sun set behind the wall, we were not returning to safety, to solace, to an oasis in the midst of this hell, but a battlefield, or at least the aftermath of one.
Bodies littered the plains, fires raged in the siege camp, and Fire Nation soldiers scrambled to get their bearings, and as Gan and I helplessly watched from our tank as our allies were just barely holding their own against the enemy, one thing became clear–the wait was over for us.
The battle for Ba Sing Se had begun.