Florence, European Federation, May 2035

Kato Nalubega is a long way from his native Uganda. In the technical booth, he oversees the commands of the robots on stage, in front of the packed concert hall. The lifelike recreations of the ABBA band members are so advanced and realistic that they are secured each night behind multiple locks and keys—both to protect their immense value and to guard against attention from unsavory figures. Kato had found his way traveling through Europe with the "band" by accident, a chain of events that began in a hospital in Geneva, where he was being treated for his wounds sustained on the battlefield.

"Yeah, the kids will be alright for a while, everything's going according to plan. Mario, take over, please." He says before stepping away from his command table. We head outside to smoke.

"We knew something was up when we saw the Jaguars, Leclercs, and Leopards 2 roll past the assembly area. We were in Metz, waiting to head out onto the battlefield—me and my company, fresh out of Uganda. We'd gotten the two weeks of training in Marseille on how to fight the crabs—the basics. Where to aim to takke them out in one or two shots, where to bayonet, how to recognize if a tripod or beetle was in the area. All of it given by vets, each missing a limb or an eye. We could tell right away that they didn't take us seriously. Even our interpreter, they sent us the wrong one. Needed him to translate from the French, and one of the guys in our platoon had to translate from him. A lot of things got lost in translation.

We were loaded onto buses, two days of driving before we arrived in Metz. I was lying in the grass when I heard the tanks. Top-of-the-line stuff—Jaguars that had just rolled off the factory floor. Mind you, the French mostly drove around in VABs, AMXs, old Cold War-era equipment that could be wasted without a second thought. But those Jaguars? They couldn't waste those. We knew what it meant. They only brought those out for major offensives that couldn't fail—pre-war equipment, kitted out with extra gear. Pre-war French and German troops. It hit me then. We weren't just there to reinforce the line. We were going to be at the vanguard of the offensive everyone knew was coming to push into Germany.

Our platoon assembled. We just sat on the curb, our lieutenant a few meters ahead, having a conversation with a French captain. Or rather, it wasn't much of a conversation. The captain was dictating things to him, and our lieutenant was scribbling everything down. Meanwhile, troops walked by, some with that dumb smile on their faces as they saw us. Sure, our equipment and looks weren't as flashy as theirs, but we didn't get why they just smiled at us like that. Some looked at us with pity. Most just walked past, not giving us the time of day.

One time at the mess, one of our guys—loudmouth, a Casanova type, sure—but he was just talking to some girl serving breakfast. Barely a minute in, and she told him to fuck off. Next thing we know, four French guys just dragged him out. Nearly started a riot. And when the MPs arrived, I'll let you imagine which unit took the blame.

We didn't get any punishment, mostly because we were going to set off that afternoon anyway, and that in itself felt like enough of a punishment. They had given us VABs. They taught our guys that week how to drive them, me and a few others how to man the .50 cal on top. And that was it. The lieutenant got his orders, and we set off along the demarcation lines.

We started seeing men walking back, battered and exhausted, some lightly injured, with machine guns slung over their shoulders. They'd drop their munitions at an ammo dump on the line—where troops heading to the front would stop if they were running low. We did the same. We only had two single-use rockets in our platoon, and the machine gunners were down to 50% ammo. Those .50 cals I told you about? At 20% capacity. Something didn't add up.

There were Jaguars, shock infantry, the guys with foliage on their helmets, ballistic glass that served as protection against shrapnel but also doubled as battle management displays. Top-of-the-line German Leopards 2A8 platoons. All waiting in line, letting us pass in our 1980s-era vehicles. And there we were, with even less than hand-me-down equipment. The officer in charge of ammunition, an American, didn't want to give us more. Told us we had enough for our objective and that we should be glad we only had one.

They let us pass. Even worse, they started manning their posts once we were through. Engines roared to life, sergeants seemed to receive their last orders, as if we were the signal that they would be leaving very soon.

The only thing that went our way that day was that the road leading to the border village we were supposed to capture wasn't completely bombed to hell. The soil, thanks to the summer heat, was hard, making it easier to move. And the air force had bombed some targets, but when our lieutenant asked in perfect English where the bombs were landing, he didn't get an answer. We passed the actual front lines, where long lines of trenches sat. The guys in them gave us funny looks, like they couldn't believe what they were seeing. They were just a few kilometers from the village, though.

I forgot its name, and I'd rather not remember. It sat at a crossroads. That war and its damned crossroads, man. We had to take it before advancing into Germany. It was in a small valley, right in the sight of the trenches. As we rode past, I waved at a French soldier manning a sandbag position. He was African like us, behind the .50 cal, looked like my brother but wore a different flag on his shoulder. He waved back before opening his palms in front of him, whispering something, reciting a prayer. For who or what, I found out soon enough.

As we drove down into the valley, past the destroyed armoured vehicles on the road, dead beetle skeletons in the field, and countless dead bodies no one had bothered to clean up, I heard the sound of tanks. I turned to see the Leopards and Jaguars taking position atop the hill. They didn't even bother trying to keep us out of the kill zones. Their barrels were pointed straight at the village we were driving toward.

I cocked my .50 cal machine gun, repeating the prayer that was being whspered out loud in the vehicle's cabin. I barely finished it when I saw a red flash coming from the village. Three VABs—ours was the middle one. The lead vehicle got cooked instantly. Something heavy hit it. The flash blinded me for a few seconds, and our vehicle stopped. I struggled to keep my footing, my heart pounding in my chest. The guys upfront, driver and gunner must have gotten killed instantly, besides the front cabin was a blaze.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I opened fire, but my shots were too low. I watched the tracer rounds hit the field in front of us, kicking up dirt. I adjusted my aim, lined up the house where the crab anti-tank weapon had come from, and squeezed off a few bursts. The survivors of the first VAB scrambled out of the back, three men, completely on fire. One of them—his arm was severed, hanging by a few strips of skin and muscle—lost it as he rolled on the ground, desperately trying to put the fire out. The sound of his screams, muffled by the roaring of the flames, hit me in a way I couldn't shake off.

Everything else felt like it slowed down, the air filled with smoke and the scent of burning metal. My fingers tightened around the trigger again, but I could barely focus, the chaos spinning faster than I could follow. My mind kept flashing back to the prayer I'd recited as someone was yelling for everyone to disembark.

Everything else felt like it slowed down, the air thick with smoke and the sharp, acrid scent of burning metal. My fingers tightened around the trigger again, but I could barely focus, the chaos spinning faster than I could keep up with. My mind kept flashing back to the prayer I'd recited, a faint echo in the cacophony. Someone was yelling for everyone to disembark, but it barely registered.

I fired. And fired. And fired. My fucking helmet chin strap got in the way of my mouth as I struggled to keep the damn thing on my head. A few brave men went left, trusting their training, lying down on the warm summer asphalt and grass, shooting potshots at the village. What we were shooting at, I don't know. Whatever had fired back had disappeared. Either my .50 cal cut them down, or they had moved.

I cursed when I ran out of ammo, yelling at the driver, who was yelling at the lieutenant, asking if he should dismount as well. I knelt down to grab another ammo can, and when I got back up, I saw something three houses away light up. Barely had time to stand on top of the VAB before it hit. The blaster round penetrated through the windscreen and set the interior ablaze, driver included.

My boot caught some of that liquid fire as I jumped off, the searing heat burning straight through my boot. It didn't take long for the whole vehicle to ignite. Ammunition started cooking off, loud pops and bangs filling the air, sending shrapnel everywhere. I turned back, watching some of the platoon members sprint toward the last VAB, which was reversing at full speed, hauling itself up the hill.

But then I noticed our comrades on top of the hill, in the trenches, and inside the tanks. They weren't shooting. They were just standing there. Watching.

I saw two men trying to catch up to the VAB, frantically waving at it to stop, only to be cut down by a burst of bolt rounds. Those crab improvised machine guns, firing metal rods, not explosive but devastating enough. Unless you're wearing ceramic plates, the thing will lodge itself in your organs and break your ribs on the way in. One of the men dropped instantly, the other stumbling before collapsing.

That's when I realized I didn't have my rifle. Not that it mattered. Half my squad was already dead. I didn't hesitate. I sprinted toward the lead VAB, or what was left of it. I grabbed the AK from one of the men who had died trying to put out the fire—his body still cooking. The weight of the rifle in my hands felt like a cruel reminder of the chaos I was trapped in, but there was no time to think. Just act.

What was left of my squad was huddled in a ditch, half-exposed if you laid down, but aside from the burning VAB with loose munitions cooking off, it was the only piece of cover in that fucking valley. The roar of explosions and gunfire was deafening. Our lieutenant was desperately trying to call for help on the radio, but it was no use—nothing was getting through. Everyone around me was either screaming, firing, or trying to survive.

More and more blasters—those crab fuckers—were pointing in our direction. I threw myself into the ditch along the road just as a high-explosive incendiary round slammed into the ground a little further down the line, igniting everything in its path. The heat from the explosion seared through the air. Still, no one was coming. It was either we made it to the village or we were dead.

The village was only about two hundred meters away, a short sprint if we could just push through. If we had started running the moment we dismounted, we might have made it. Alive or not, I didn't know. But Lieutenant wouldn't hear it. I yelled at him, telling him we needed to move, but all he was doing was calling out imaginary targets. It was as if he couldn't see what was right in front of us: that we were fucked, and nothing was coming to save us.

Lieutenant finally snapped out of it, his voice cutting through the chaos. He managed to rally the survivors, shouting for us to move, to run for the village. There wasn't time for anything else. We were out of options.

We sprinted forward, shooting from the hip as we ran. My legs burned, my breath came in ragged gasps, but the only thing that mattered was putting distance between us and the open ground. The blasters were still targeting us, tracer rounds buzzing past our heads, but we didn't stop. We couldn't.

I caught glimpses of the men around me—some running fast, some stumbling, all of us pushing forward with what little strength we had left. A few of them didn't make it. One went down with a scream, a high-pitched cry that ended in silence. I didn't look back. Didn't want to know.

The fire from the village grew closer, the frontlines just ahead. We were so close—so fucking close.

Finally, the tanks, armored vehicles, and machine guns on the hill opened fire. You can imagine what it feels like when a 122mm tank shell flies just over your head, hitting a building barely a hundred meters ahead. The force of the blast sent a shockwave through the ground. We all ducked deeper into the ditches, scrambling for whatever cover we could find. I threw myself behind a well, the earth trembling as the air above cracked with the fire of rounds soaring just over our heads. It felt like the whole hill was alive with gunfire—tanks, machine guns, everything hammering the village.

And then, it hit me. A sickening realization that twisted in my gut. We had been used as bait. We had drawn the crabs out, made them show their positions, gave away their hand. The tanks, the IFVs, started to move down the hill, some advancing, others still firing, covering their comrades. The battlefield shifted in an instant.

My mates and I were screaming, the sound raw, like we'd lost our minds in the chaos. Only a few of us still had the presence of mind to fire our guns. The endless barrage of tank shells and gunfire kept coming, landing dangerously close—just a few hundred meters away. Every second felt like a lifetime.

Soon enough, the blaster shots stopped. The crabs stopped peeking out of windows, but then again, there weren't any windows left, or facades for that matter. The relentless barrage had obliterated everything. The IFVs stopped a few hundred meters away, their guns covering them as they positioned themselves. Infantry poured out in an organized, almost casual manner. One of the sleek Leopards pushed past us, effortlessly rolling over the remains of the lead VAB. I watched in horror as the tracks of the tank crushed the body of one of my comrades, flattening him into the dirt like a ragdoll.

The infantry sprinted past us, not sparing us a single glance. They were too focused on their mission, too consumed by their own survival, to care about the men who had just served as their bait.

Simple economics, I suppose. We had maybe 100€ worth of equipment on us—if you rounded up. Those guys, on the other hand, were kitted out in gear worth around 4,000€. Average. To raise a child from my country to adulthood costs about 20,000€, but for a French kid, it's ten times that.

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