Thessaloniki, European Federation, June 2037

Elias and I share a bottle of tsipouro outside his father's bar, which he's beginning to take over. It's late afternoon — the summer heat has started to ease, and the streets are slowly filling with people. Do, it is apparent this city hasn't escaped the demographic collapse that hit Greece, a crisis only made worse by the devastating manpower losses during the war.

"If you think it's warm now, you wouldn't have lasted a day back then. Hottest summer on record in a century—44°C. And we weren't strolling around in tourist t-shirts and shorts. We were wearing those Israeli-made olive and tiger-striped uniforms they started mass-producing for SOUTHAG. The Syrians and Turks weren't too thrilled about the Israeli gear, but it was what we had.

Plates, carriers, helmets—those cursed helmets with the chef hat design they said were supposed to confuse the crabs. You better drink the water they gave you every day, or you'd end up fainting from the heat.

And don't even get me started on how we would have handle that summer heat while fighting.

Thank god they weren't shooting at us that summer. Few V2's flying over head from time to time but that was it. It was 44 degrees out—they were practically sunbathing once they figured out they couldn't push south of the Balkan Mountains."

We were stationed right at the edge. FOB after FOB, stacked on the "bad" side of the range. Summer camps wrapped in HESCO barriers and dotted with .50 cal nests. Some were the size of a football field, others as big as villages.

With NORTHAG running wild across Germany and Poland — looting, raiding, crawling through one town after another — and the western front clawing back ground a centimeter at a time, the eastern front had already punched out a salient the size of Turkey.

We knew it was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped. Sooner or later, we'd be the ones pushing north — linking up with the Ukrainians and whoever was still standing.

So we made the best of that summer before they called us up — sunbathing, blasting music. One guy even managed to sneak in a PS5, so every evening turned into a FIFA tournament.

The only real work we did was retraining: combat drills, medical drills, racing to see who could swap a machine gun barrel or slap on a tourniquet the fastest. That, or pulling watch from the towers — just sitting there in those cheap Decathlon camping chairs.

We'd watch them, too. They were too far out to bother shooting at, and honestly, we couldn't be arsed. Half the time they were just messing around — doing that weird circle game, or sitting back on their hind legs, opening up their carapaces to soak in the sun.

Hell, we even made it a point not to shoot them. If one of them wandered off, got too close, we'd fire a few bursts and they'd ran back the way they came. Our line of fire was at about 1.5 kilometers, right in that sweet spot for our M2s. You'd fire a few burst then the fresh troops up in the hills or nearby FOBs would lose their minds, screaming over the radio like it was another meteor strike. Units who had either never seen combat or had seen too much of it to get too paranoid. Those things were as comfortable with the status quo as we were, hell, hadn't we started the offensive north me and them would still be there, laying in the sun doing improvised football matches on the helicopter landing area or removing our chitinous plates. That's all they wanted.

Don't get me wrong, I hated their guts as much as the next guy, brother in law had died six months earlier fighting them, millions dead, blablabla all of that. But that's all they wanted, just some sun and heat to forget whatever they went through back in their home planet. Even their beetles were in on it. It wasn't the same mood when those were around, few times I'd be there, running from our make shift gym in my underarmour t shirt and shorts, throwing on my plate carrier and helmet before rushing to my THORPEA Missile.

"What does that acronym mean again?" I ask, the tsipouro already getting to my head.

"Tube-launched, High-pen, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided. For use on Earth or Abroad. Last part was probably for morale, I guess."

He laughs a little. "Hell of a weapon. Based on the old American TOW launchers, but about twice the weight thanks to the depleted uranium dart it carried. Limited range, though—not exactly ideal when you're up against Beetles."

But there they were, out in the open. Herded into a field about eight clicks out—too far to engage. I say herded because there were Crabs moving around them, but everyone knew—even the Beetles knew—it was those big insects calling the shots.

The Crabs would crawl up onto the Beetles when they laid down and start removing the chitin plates. Not ripping them off—more like working the joints, like a Formula 1 pit crew. Once enough panels were off, the Beetles would use their internal pressure—something to do with their energy—to open themselves up like a damn skylight.

And then they'd just lie there, sunbathing, same as their little friends. For days on end.

We knew it was too good to be true—the lying around, the canned beef and eggs for breakfast every morning. The only real "liaison" we had between FOBs wasn't for intel or combat briefings. It was barter. Twice a month, when resupply came through, we'd send a few vehicles out to the Turkish, Lebanese, and Syrian positions scattered around the sector. Trade our rations for theirs, swap out whatever we were sick of—beef for flatbread, instant coffee for za'atar or date bars. We had energy drinks in our rations, about a six pack of monster a man each week during non combat periods. Once, someone scored two hookahs. So those were worth their weight in gold. That thing made the rounds like it was a 30€ hooker in Athens.

Their bases were about the same as ours. Hesco walls, sun-bleached tarps, machine guns bolted onto prefab towers. But the mood... it felt like a dusty summer camp. You'd hear music—Arabic pop, folk songs, rap over a busted speaker. Men in a mismatch of uniforms pants like ours and football jersey atop lounging under camo netting, playing cards, doing pull-ups off welded rebar. Everyone killing time, sweating through shirts, and staring off toward the horizon, waiting for the next shift or the next scare or the next rumor from the north. The food and music changed but the vibe was the same. We all had animosity for the crabs but we really were perfectly fine with the status quo.

All of us knew it couldn't last, but hell, for a while, it did.

Don't need to tell you what the mood was like when the lieutenant told us we might be moving in a few weeks. Preparations were underway, warning orders going out, more ammo and bodies being pushed toward the front. It was like someone had told the whole company everyone's dog had died back home.

None of it made much sense at first. Then the engineers showed up. I asked my friend if he knew what they were doing here, and he said, "They're going to build trebuchets."

I thought he was messing with me—one of his usual smart-ass answers to a dumb question. I asked again. And again. Four times, until his face stayed serious long enough for it to sink in.

I was best man at his wedding during the two weeks we got off a few months back, so if anyone had reason to screw with me, it'd be him. But that day, in that heat, with the bad news hanging over all of us like smoke, I wasn't in the mood.

Tension flared between us, then faded just as fast when I realized he wasn't joking. And then some other clueless guy came and asked us the same question.

The engineers started building them right there inside the FOB, between the hesco walls and the sleeping tents, like it was standard procedure. They cordoned off a section near the vehicle bay, laid out rough measurements with spray paint and chalk, and got to work like they were assembling prefab bunk beds instead of medieval siege engines.

The frames went up fast—pressure-treated beams, welded metal joints where wood alone wouldn't cut it, all braced against the hard-packed dirt. They even used sandbags and spare concrete blocks to reinforce the base. Within a few days, there were two full-sized trebuchets sitting inside the wire, their long arms angled skyward like giant, patient beasts waiting for the signal to strike.

The barrels weren't anything fancy—just old fuel drums, half-rusted and dented, packed with scrap, kerosene, rags, sometimes a splash of something nastier if we had it. We'd have to lit them by hand once the day came, with a torch or a soaked cloth, and then throw them up to half a kilometer away.

"Why trebuchets?" I ask.

"Lots of reasons," I said. "Syrians and Turks had the new standardized mortars with white phosphorus rounds. The northern part of the kill box—the one the size of Paris—was getting carpet-bombed with napalm. There'd been an incident in one of the factories making those mortar rounds. Killed twenty people. Made a hell of a mess in the logistics chain. I guess the brass didn't want to delay the operation because some of the border bases didn't have any fire ordinance. Anyway, the plan the brass came up with for the north? Simple. Burn the crabs. Not burn them out, just burn them. Couldn't believe it when the lieutenant laid it out for us on the map. The area was the size of Paris. Three hundred thousands crabs they had estimated.

They were going to create one of the biggest wildfires this region's ever seen. Our only guarantee we wouldn't get turned into ash was that we had to create a fire breaks between ourselves and the proposed landing spots for our shiny new trebuchets. About half a kilometre wide.

The penal battalions—once made up of prisoners, deserters, and murderers—would be the ones to go out there and dig it. No flags on their shoulders, no recognition. Just the lucky few sent out to clear the ground while we "covered" them from our walls, pretending to be their saviors with machine guns while we played cards and drank in the heat.

"Fuck it, if they'd paid me half the price those trebuchets must've cost, I would've walked my ass north with a lighter and done it myself. Hundreds of border bases like mine, hundreds of jets, all planning to strip that area clean.

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A lot of guys weren't happy about that. Greeks, Turks, Syrians, Lebanese—hell, anyone who'd lived in this part of the world knew wildfires all too well. We had the scars to prove it. The land here didn't just burn; it suffocated. A single spark could turn an entire valley into a death trap. We'd seen it happen before.

A lot of us had seen it firsthand, long before we put on the uniforms. In 2016, down near the Peloponnese, I watched a wildfire tear through a village my family used to visit. It wasn't even the flames that did the most damage—it was the smoke, the choking, suffocating haze that settled over everything. People didn't die from the fire itself, not always. It was the heat, the ash in your lungs, the way it closed in on you. You couldn't breathe. You couldn't think. Just smoke and heat and panic, with nothing to do but run.

My buddy Demetrius had his own story, too. He was from a village up near the border with Bulgaria. A wildfire ripped through his town back in '18. He told me that when he and his family tried to leave, the roads were already blocked with burned-out cars, abandoned trucks, nothing but charred shells. It wasn't until they found a back route through the hills that they managed to escape, and by then, his lungs were already starting to burn from the smoke.

Then there was Adonis, a kid from athens who joined us on one of those mid-tour rotations. He was still a civilian back in 2019 when a massive fire broke out up in the Bekaa Valley. He described it like hell had opened up, the wind stoking the flames until it felt like the whole valley was just going to eat them alive. He told me the hardest part wasn't running. It was the waiting. The waiting for the smoke to clear enough for rescue teams to get in. By then, it was mostly too late.

We all knew the fire would come, sooner or later. We knew what the landscape could do when it was set alight—how quickly a small spark could become a wall of fire, impossible to outrun, impossible to stop. We had seen it burn villages, entire forests, and roads we had driven down a hundred timesn beit on the news or personally.

And now they were going to tell us we would cause that? Burn or asphyxiate hundrerds of thousands of crabs alive. Felt very wrong. They had issued us N95 filters for our gasmask to help and protect against the smog that would cause, command was assured by countless tests and "experience" they supposedly done that the fire breaks would work. But just one ember carried too far, falling on our side of the line and it would have been GG for everyone involved.

That's why that morning, when we were waiting on the call from the meteorologists stationed up in the mountains—the ones who'd decide if we were about to start an inferno—we already had every vehicle packed and idling. Engines warm. Personal gear stashed, photos taped to dashboards, rucks half-hanging out the back. No one wanted to leave anything to chance.

Only the essentials were left behind: ammo, water, comms, a few crates of medical supplies—each one loaded in a way that could be tossed into a truck in under a minute if it all went sideways. Even the machine guns were set up with their tripods loose, ready to be yanked and carried on a run. No one said the word retreat, but we were all thinking it.

We all had the same fear: that we'd hear the go-ahead, light the barrels, and the fire wouldn't stay on the other side of the line. That the wind would shift or climb down the mountains faster than anyone expected. That we'd be stuck, blocked in by some jackknifed APC, panicking under a sky that had turned black and red.

So we just sat there. Helmets off. Radios on low. Fingers twitching on cigarette filters.

Waiting for that single word to crackle through the comms.

Waiting for the wind to turn.

Waiting to set the world on fire. When the go finally came through, it wasn't dramatic. Just a scratchy voice over the comms: "Winds steady. Light 'em up."

And that was it.

A couple of the engineers jogged out to the trebuchets like they were just starting a Sunday project—one of them with a lit torch, the other holding a red jerry can with both hands like it was a holy relic. No ceremony, no countdown. They doused the first barrel, stuffed in a rag, and lit it like they were trying to start a barbecue. The flames caught quick, licked up the sides with a low whoomph as the fuel inside started to boil.

And then they waited—just long enough for the fire to start biting deep—before the guy at the crank gave a signal and the arm let loose. That barrel arced up, slow and majestic, trailing black smoke like a flare sent to the gods. It disappeared somewhere behind the hills, and a moment later, a dull thud echoed back, low and hollow.

Then came the second. The third. All timed like a rhythm, methodical, like loading up a printer. Flaming barrels, one after another, shot into the dry wilds like curses.

The thing that got to us, though—the part we couldn't stop staring at—was the pair of bright red fire extinguishers the engineers had strapped to the side of the launcher platform. Two of them. Standard issue. Sat there like decorative props. Just in case.

You had to laugh. Among all the military-grade gear—thermal optics, encrypted radios, reinforced plating—there they were, like they had stolen them off the wall at a gas station on their way here. As if two little CO₂ cans were going to hold back the sea of fire if that trebuchet failed and sent a burning barrel on our camp. One of the guys made a joke about it: "Maybe they brought those to put out their conscience."

Nobody laughed, not really.

At first, we watched it like dumb school kids lighting fireworks—grinning, pointing, elbowing each other like it was some kind of joke. As if we were trying to cope for that hideous crime we were doing to the land with humor. But the sound, the heat, the scale of it started sinking in real quick.

It hit me when I climbed up into the bunker. The two guys on watch weren't playing cards or flipping through those old, sun-faded magazines from the '90s they somehow got their hands on. They were just staring—silent. Not even chewing gum, not talking. Just frozen.

I followed their gaze.

The valley north of us was erupting.

At first it was just the stretch behind the firebreak, a few clicks out—our side of the line. The barrels from the trebuchets landed like curses, bursting open and spilling flame across the brush. The dry scrub and pine lit up like someone had poured gasoline straight into the soil.

Then came the other side. White phosphorus. Mortars and artillery shells arcing overhead, airbursting just before impact. You'd see a sharp flash mid-air—silent from our distance—then the trails of fire raining down like someone shaking sparks out of a goddamn snow globe.

It didn't fall neatly, either. It spread. Wide. Hungry. Anything it touched kept burning—trees, rock, maybe something alive. Didn't matter. That stuff stuck to everything.

It was fire meeting fire, chemical and crude, converging in the dry basin like it had all been waiting to ignite at once.

The smoke was already crawling low, hugging the treetops like it had a mind of its own, when I saw them—just beyond the fire break.

Hares. Wild ones. Maybe forty of them. No formation, no sense of direction, just raw panic stitched into fur. They came bounding out of the smoke like ghosts, ears pinned back, some of them already singed.

They weren't heading for cover or the hills—they were coming straight at us. Across the fire break. Right through the middle of the kill zone, zigzagging over blackening earth that hadn't caught yet but was breathing heat.

For a moment, I thought they might crash right into the FOB walls.

Then I heard boots behind me. Lieutenant Karras climbed into the bunker beside me, panting slightly. He said nothing at first—just stood there beside me, hands on his hips, watching the stampede with a tight jaw.

"Sir," I said, not looking at him, "I don't recall if the rules of engagement include shooting fleeing wildlife."

He didn't laugh. Not even a grunt. Just shook his head once, barely, like he didn't trust himself to speak. He wasn't the one to blame for this. We all had this "just following orders" mentality. Be it you shooting prisoners of wars or helping to set an area the size of Paris in flames.

The hares kept coming. A few darted around the outer concertina wire. One even bounced off a Hesco barrier, dazed, before disappearing behind a Humvee.

It was absurd. Surreal. Like watching the edge of the world fray, and all nature could do was run. I should have kept my mouth shut a few days earlier when I helped carry wooden planks for the monstrosity we built, I couldn't say I just watched them built it now. Complicit as they come, god knows how many millions of rabits, hares, foxes, snakes and boar we had killed.

The hares vanished somewhere behind the barracks, but we kept staring north. That's when the wind picked, not a breeze anymore, but a steady, hot breeze that made the smoke crawl faster, thicker, .

At first the fire moved like you'd expect—patches catching here and there, hopping from one bush to the next. But then the wind got under it, gave it shape. Turned it from scattered blazes into a single, moving front. A wall. I doubt the crabs stood a chance, soon enough we saw distant explosions, saw the drone footage years later of the beetles caught by the wildfire, not fleeing fast enough, getting engulfed by it before exploding due to that liquid shit it was carrying. It wasn't a battle, it was ecocide. They had set three quarters of europe ablaze but here they were, they had achieved their objective of making it to warm waters and sunny fields. They got their wish.

Thick, low, and endless. We watched entire valleys disappear under it. Everything it passed over became still. No color. Just that weird, dead brown-grey. The sun, when it showed, was nothing but a red coin floating above the haze. It got so bad we couldn't see past a kilometer. Even in the bunker the smoke found ways in—through vents, through cracks in the sandbags. Tasted like rubber and ash. Burned the eyes, stung the throat. Those gas mask filters only lasted so long, soon we were passing water around to soak the rags or balaclavas covering our mouths, but it didn't help much. The wind was carrying the fire north, but it left us wrapped in its breath.

Days and nights it lasted, didn't need any lights that evening, we had hell on our door step to see where we were walking. That fire wiped Varna, Choumen and some other Bulgarian towns off the map, no wonder three quarters of them are still living in Greece, Turkey or Italy nowadays, they have nowhere to go back home to.

We weren't the first units to follow the fire north.

Couple hours after the inferno had passed and the winds calmed just enough, command started pushing recon teams up through the edge of the smoke. Small patrols first—four, maybe five guys each—sent out like fingers feeling around in the dark. We followed not long after, boots crunching through ash that still radiated warmth.

The forests and fields were gone. What had been thick Mediterranean brush—cypress, olive, pine—was now a black, skeletal wasteland. Trees stood like stacked charcoal, trunks hollowed by the heat, some still cracking as they fell under their own weight. The dirt was no longer dirt, just a soft crust of carbon and soot that kicked up with every step.

We found the first crab maybe two kilometers past the old treeline. It had tried to dig, half-buried itself in the side of a hill. The shell was warped and blackened, cracked like porcelain. The things don't scream, not really, but it made this slow, wet gurgling sound as it twitched in the smoke.

Our sergeant didn't hesitate. One round. Center mass. Muzzle flash lit up the blackness for a split second, and then it was quiet again.

We started seeing more after that, scattered, some twitching, some still. One had curled around a bigger crab like it was shielding it from the flames, but both were cooked solid, fused together.

Burned foxes, hares, hedgehogs—anything that couldn't outrun the fire or find a burrow deep enough. Somr were still alive, barely. A kid from my platoon, who used to volunteer at an animal shelter, keep livestock and old grandma's cats healthy, kept walking off to "check the perimeter" just so he could kneel beside whatever he found and end it, or wipe his tears without being watched pretending they were from the smoke.

My family didn't understand, people don't understand, most of them saw it on TV or on their phones and thought "Oh would you see the ingeniousity of mankind! Using the elements and geography in its advantage to defeat the extra terrestrial plight! Our brave troops moving north faster than the crabs came south!" They didn't get the full picture, the army and later the federation didn't allow it. Still I spit on them all. My wife and kids didn't understand at first either. Not until they heard the way I wake up in the middle night. In my dreams I'm still there. In that Bulgarian field at night. That veil of darkness over my head, burning at my lungs. A veil of darkness, as if even the stars didn't want to have anything to do with earth anymore. While I hesitate between using my rifle or my knife to put that fox with half its body a charred mess, the fur gone, the skin tight and brnt, lying there, whimpering. Just enough to make it sound like it's begging. Whimpering until I pulled the trigger, I don't know if it didn't bother to run away because he wanted my help or because he physically couldn't.

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