Marie

The ELC bis sits idly in the afternoon sun just off the running track, its engine silent, its hatches closed. A small lacquered table has been set up beside the track with a single chair, and upon it rests a porcelain plate bearing the last third of a Black Forest cake and a cup of Darjeeling. Marie is seated on her command cushion atop the tank's engine deck, legs crossed at the ankle, her fluffy fan moving in slow, even strokes. Her dark green eyes, half-lidded with apparent contentment, track your approach without seeming to.

She takes a delicate bite of cake, chews thoughtfully, and swallows before speaking. Her voice carries the same unhurried cadence as her fan.

"Ah... a visitor. You've chosen a good time. The light is pleasant, and the custard has finally reached the perfect temperature. Though I suppose if you've sought me out rather than Andou or Oshida, you're either very brave or very lost."

Her lips curve into the faintest suggestion of a smile.

"Which is it?"

The fan stops mid-stroke. It doesn't resume.

Marie's fork hovers suspended an inch above what remains of her Black Forest cake, custard slowly dripping back onto the porcelain as if even the dessert has been forgotten. This alone is unprecedented. Her dark green eyes, no longer half-lidded, have fixed upon the two hulking silhouettes being maneuvered onto the training grounds by the logistics team. The AMX-50B squats low and aggressive, its oscillating turret housing that absurd 120mm cannon like a promise of violence barely contained. Beside it, the AMX M4 mle. 54 stands taller, its sloped frontal plate catching the afternoon light in a way that makes it look less like armor and more like architecture. Both bear the raw, slightly-too-clean finish of something that should not exist outside a designer's fevered sketchbook.

"Mon Dieu."

She sets the fork down with a soft clink. Rises from her command cushion. Descends from the ELC bis with a grace that belies her shock, her steps carrying her toward the nearest machine with the careful deliberation of someone approaching a sleeping predator. One gloved hand reaches out. Her fingertips trace the weld seam where turret meets hull on the AMX-50B, the metal still cool and faintly oily.

When she speaks, her voice has shed its usual languid warmth. It's sharper now. Hungrier. The voice of a strategist who has just realized the game board has been upended entirely.

"You said prototypes." She turns, and her smile has changed. It's no longer the faint, polite curve of aristocratic amusement. It's the smile of a woman holding a key she hasn't yet decided to turn. "You failed to mention they would be French prototypes. And non-existent ones at that. Oscillating turrets. Paper tanks. These don't just appear from nowhere. These require... connections. Resources. A certain flexible relationship with reality." Her fan snaps open. Begins its measured stroke once more, though faster now. "You have my undivided attention. Which, I assure you, is far more valuable than you realize."

The afternoon sun catches every rivet and weld seam of the two impossible machines parked side-by-side on the dirt. The AMX-50B's oscillating turret looks like it belongs in a speculative fiction magazine. The 54's frontal plate is a work of brutalist sculpture. Around them, BC Freedom's tankers mill like startled ants — some circling wide, some reaching out to touch armor that shouldn't exist, all talking over each other in rising waves of disbelief.

Marie is not among them.

She remains perched atop her ELC bis, fork suspended halfway to her lips, a bite of mille-feuille forgotten in the air. Her fan lies folded beside her cushion. She hasn't touched it since the flatbeds pulled in.

Oshida gets there first, naturally. She's marched directly between the two hulks, arms crossed, jaw set, her ARL-44 forgotten somewhere behind her. "Andou! Get your people away from my tank!"

Andou doesn't even look up. She's already halfway up the 50B's side ladder, one hand wrapped around the commander's hatch rim, S35 abandoned like yesterday's news. "Your tank? I don't see your name on it, Escalator. This is a heavy. It requires a commander with weight. Presence. Not... that." She gestures vaguely at Oshida's entire existence.

"At least I can fit inside the turret without instructions!"

Marie takes the bite of mille-feuille. Chews. Swallows. Her dark green eyes track the argument with the mild interest of a spectator at a tennis match she might or might not decide to rig.

Around the periphery, the rest of the team has given up on coherent formation. A cluster of first-years runs reverent fingers along a 54's sloped glacis. One of the maintenance girls is already halfway beneath a 50B's suspension with a flashlight. An Escalator upperclassman stares at the oscillating turret mechanism with naked, almost religious awe.

Marie rises. Descends from her cushion with the unhurried grace of someone stepping off a pleasure barge. Her footsteps carry her past Oshida's bristling shoulders and Andou's dangling boots, past the awestruck cadets, until she stands precisely equidistant between the two tanks. One hand reaches out. Her fingertips — gloved, precise — trace the edge of the 50B's gun mantlet. The metal is cool. Unmarked. Factory-fresh on something that should have been scrapped seventy years ago, no, should have never been built.

"Enough."

She doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't have to. The word drops into the clamor like a stone into still water, and the ripples do the rest. Oshida's next retort dies in her throat. Andou stops mid-gesture. The maintenance girl under the suspension goes very, very still.

Marie turns. Her smile is faint, almost private.

"These are not mine to award. And you are not children fighting over the last pastry." She produces a handkerchief from somewhere — always somewhere — and dabs a smudge of grease from her glove. "Though the comparison is not entirely inapt. You're both being quite..." She pauses, selects the word with surgical precision. "...sugary."

The first shot from the 54's 130mm does not sound like the tank guns she is used to. The ARL-44 has a 90mm gun, this she knows. One might imagine an increase of 40 millimeters not meaning much, but this.. machine.. it is not comparable! It sounds like the sky cracking open! A thunderclap at ground level, followed by a pressure wave that rattles the tea service Marie has arranged beside her cushion. A high-explosive shell hits the empty fuel drum eight hundred meters downrange and it ceases to exist in any recognizable form.

Marie does not flinch. She does, however, glance at the faint ripple disturbing the surface of her tea.

The second shot comes from the 50B. Flatter. Sharper. A crack rather than a boom. The remaining drum rocks backward, a neat hole punched through its center, but remains intact. A different philosophy. A different kind of killing.

Oshida and Andou have — predictably — positioned themselves as close to their respective champions as safety protocols allow, which is to say, not nearly far enough. A thin haze of cordite drifts across the testing field, catching the late afternoon light.

"Again," Marie says, lifting her teacup. "I want to see them move and fire. Mobility is rather the point of these designs, is it not?"

She takes a sip. Perfect temperature. The maintenance crews scramble to reset the range. Oshida is already shouting corrections at.. someone, not entirely clear, through the 54's open hatch. Andou is... gesturing emphatically at the 50B's autoloader mechanism, which has apparently jammed on the fourth round, because of course it has. They are still working these things out, evidently.

Marie selects a small cream puff from her tray and watches a 50-ton oscillating turret swing toward its target with the smooth, lethal grace of a predator that has no natural enemies.

The AMX 50B is not, Marie realizes with some displeasure, a vehicle one can simply perch upon, like her previous ELC bis.

Her first mistake was assuming that the broad turret of a 50-ton heavy tank would offer, by simple virtue of its surface area, superior seating arrangements to the diminutive ELC bis. Her second mistake was assuming the gun would be quieter.

The 120mm fires. Marie's cream puff leaves her hand. It does not fall so much as it is translated — moved laterally through space by the shockwave of the muzzle brake, a soft little comet of choux pastry and vanilla cream that describes a perfect arc before splattering against the side of a maintenance truck twelve meters away. Marie watches its trajectory with the detached interest of an artillery observer.

Her ears are ringing. Her cushion has slid three inches to the left. The crew inside the turret beneath her is shouting something in tinny, hatch-muffled noises about whether the commander is still alive up there, and Marie — slowly, deliberately — reaches for the lip of the cupola to steady herself, only to find that there is no cupola. Only a hatch with a periscope. The oscillating turret has been designed without one. Where she might normally brace, there is only smooth steel and the faint sympathetic vibration of a tank that has not yet stopped reverberating from its own main gun discharge.

"How eventful." she says, to no one in particular. Her voice emerges steadier than she feels. "Do it again. The... traversing thing."

She retrieves her fan from where it landed on the bustle of the turret's rear and does not look at the smear of pastry on the truck.