GATE Fanfiction

The acrid smell of gunpowder from the BMD-4M’s 30mm cannons hung heavy in the air, mingling with the stench of charred flesh and sulfur emanating from the Flame Dragon’s carcass. The legendary beast was now nothing more than a heap of shredded meat, torn apart by the coordinated fire of 100mm shells and armor-piercing rounds from the 7th Independent Raid Group "Zaslon".

The diesel engine of the Tigr-M growled steadily amidst the sudden silence following the engagement. Three BMD-4Ms held their defensive perimeter, cannons still tracked onto the dragon’s remains—a reflex of tactical caution ingrained in the Pskov paratroopers. In the rear, the two Ural-4320 guntrucks with their ZU-23-2 mounts stood ready to sweep any lingering aerial threats.

{{user}} opened the door of the Tigr-M (Varyag-01) and stepped onto the scorched earth. Your paratrooper boots crunched against the dry, dusty ground as you surveyed the kill.

Thirty meters away, perched on a jagged rock outcrop, a small figure emerged through the drifting grey haze. It was Rory Mercury, but no one in 7th IRG know it, include me. Her red-and-black gothic lolita dress looked entirely out of place amidst the steel, soot, and smoke of a modern battlefield. She stood there, one hand leaning casually on her massive halberd, tilting her head as she observed the dragon’s ruins with an expression of intense, dark curiosity.

{{user}} signaled the squad to maintain their guard, then began walking toward her with measured, deliberate steps. No rush, no wasted movement. One hand rested near your sidearm, your eyes tracking every micro-movement of the "Apostle."

"Hold fire, do not aim directly at her," you muttered into the tactical net to the BMD gunners, "but keep her in your sights."

You stopped exactly five meters from the base of the rock. Your gaze remained cold and professional, hiding a sharp alertness beneath the brim of your cap.

"Standing alone in the Highlands with a 'toy' that size..." You gestured toward her oversized halberd, your voice gently. "You don't look like a refugee, and you're certainly not Imperial. Who are you?. Why are you obstructing the 7th IRG's line of march?"

Rory Mercury smirked, a cryptic, predatory smile playing on her lips. Her crimson eyes drifted across the smoking armored vehicles before settling on your face.

"Killers without mana..." she whispered, her voice melodic yet carrying a heavy, invisible pressure. "You slaughtered that dragon faster than the gods themselves. How intriguing you are, 'Grey Man'."

Location: Northern Highlands — Ridge Road 44 // Time: 14:20 HRS Units: 1st Strike Element, 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division // Support: "Viper-1" (Ka-52M Alligator)

The air at 2,000 meters was thin and tasted of diesel and pine. On the narrow ridge road, the engines of the BMP-3Ms rumbled, a steady, rhythmic vibration that felt like the heartbeat of the Motherland in this alien world.

High above, the dual rotors of a Ka-52M Alligator sliced the sky. Inside the cockpit, Lieutenant Petrenko adjusted his grip on the cyclic. His eyes were locked on the multi-function display, fed by the high-definition thermal pod under the nose.

"Element Lead, this is Viper-1," Petrenko’s voice crackled through the encryption. "Thermal bloom detected in the ravine, three clicks North-Northwest. Heat signature is... massive. This isn't a campfire, Lieutenant. It’s a volcano on legs."

{{user}} keyed your radio, looking out from the hatch of your command vehicle. "Viper-1, eyes on. Target identification?"

"Scanning..." A pause. "Target confirmed. It’s the local apex predator. The Flame Dragon."

{{user}} still calming, gently, then switched to the long-range frequency. "Command, this is Element Lead. Requesting permission to engage a Class-S biological hazard. Threatening the Northern corridor."

"Element Lead, this is Colonel Volkov," the reply came instantly. "You are cleared for kinetic solution. Do not let it reach the supply lines. End it."

Down in the ravine, the earth exploded. A mountain of red scales and hatred lunged into the sky, its wings creating a localized gale.

Inside the BMP, Private Basov stared through the periscope, his knuckles white. "Blyad..." he whispered, the ancient fear of man meeting monster flickering in his eyes for a split second.

"Viper-1, you have the shot," {{user}} commanded. "Clinical. No heroics."

"Copy," Petrenko replied.

On the Ka-52M's HUD, the laser rangefinder locked on. The fire-control computer calculated the lead. Vikhr-M missile: away.

The supersonic missile streaked across the sky, a white needle of death. It impacted the dragon's wing root with a thunderous crack. The creature screeched—a sound that defied physics—as its left wing shattered into a mess of bone and scorched scales. It plummeted, slamming into the ridge-side.

As the dragon struggled to rise, its maw glowing with gathering fire, Petrenko didn't wait. Second Vikhr-M: away.

The second missile struck the base of the skull with pinpoint precision. There was no roar this time. Just a wet, heavy thud as the light left the dragon's eyes. Total engagement time: 14 seconds. Two shots. Zero Russian lives at risk.

The silence that followed was heavier than the noise. Then, the Strelets BMS (Battle Management System) on your wrist-mounted tablet began to ping.

"Contact. Unknown vehicle approaching from the Southern Sector," the automated voice reported.

You looked through your binoculars. Coming up the road was a convoy of olive-drab vehicles. JSDF. Itami’s unit.

"Colonel, we have Japanese guests. Itami's recon team," {{user}} reported.

"Understood," Volkov replied. "Be professional, Lieutenant. But keep them away from the BMPs. I don't want their 'Peacekeepers' taking high-res photos of our new sensor suites. Maintain the gap."

You stood by the roadside as the Japanese Humvees pulled to a halt. The dust settled, and First Lieutenant Itami Youji stepped out, looking exhausted and—more than anything—completely stunned.

He looked at the smoldering mountain of red scales in the ravine, then at you, then at the Ka-52M hovering like a predatory dragonfly in the distance.

*"Two shots," Itami said, his voice a mix of awe and a strange kind of relief. He stepped closer, his hands visible and away from his weapon. "We've been chasing that thing for weeks. We were prepared for a massacre. You just... turned it off."(

"We don't have the budget for massacres, Lieutenant," {{user}} replied calm, gently, but no mercy "Just efficiency."

"Different doctrine," Itami noted, nodding slowly. "No honor, no duel. Just math."

Behind him, a blonde elf—Tuka—stepped out. Her eyes were wide, staring at the fallen terror that had haunted her dreams. She looked at the dragon, then at the Russian soldiers in their digital-flora camo. To her, you weren't heroes. You were something more terrifying: a force that could kill gods without breaking a sweat.

"Can she look?" Itami asked. You looked at the Colonel's standing orders, then back at the girl. You gave a single, curt nod:"of course"*.

Itami exhaled, a genuine smile breaking through his fatigue. "Thank you, Lieutenant. Seriously."

PART ONE — THE EAGLE DESCENDS The Imperial Capital of Sadera had stood for eight hundred years. Its walls of pale sandstone caught the afternoon light the way old things do — carrying it, rather than reflecting it, as though the stone itself had absorbed enough history to hold some warmth of its own. The great colonnaded boulevards, the tiered forum terraces stepping down toward the river, the Senate house with its copper-green dome above columns twice the height of any man — it was, by the standards of the world it sat in, magnificent. It was also, as of forty-seven minutes ago, surrounded. The REF forward element had moved through the Sadera Valley in a column that took three hours to pass any fixed point. At its head, T-90M Proryv tanks with their reactive armor catching the same afternoon light as the sandstone walls, turbines a low constant thunder that the city had heard growing for two days. Behind them, BMP-3M IFVs in staggered intervals. Ural-4320 logistics trucks. Engineering assets. Medical battalion. The Sevastopol Line's forward supply node had been pre-positioned 80 kilometers out — the planners had understood that a 1,000-kilometer movement from the Northern Highlands gate entry point was not an operation to improvise. Twenty thousand personnel. The Senate had counted the dust cloud for two days before they could count the vehicles. Six Ka-52M Alligators flew a slow holding pattern at 800 meters over the palace district. Their turbine signatures were visible as heat shimmer against the pale sky. From the palace's upper terraces, the Imperial court could look up and see them at any moment. This was not an accident. Captain {{user}}, 7th Independent Raid Group, 76th Guards Air Assault Division, had not led the column. He had arrived ahead of it. The 7th IRG — four BMD-4Ms, two Ural guntrucks with ZU-23-2 mounts, one Tigr-M command vehicle, thirty-six paratroopers who had been selected for this assignment because they were the most capable and the least sentimental — had inserted forty-eight hours prior via Ka-60 helicopter, landing in the hills west of the city in the pre-dawn darkness. They had moved through the outer districts before sunrise, established observation posts at three points commanding the palace complex, and were now sitting on their information like a card player who hasn't yet decided when to show his hand. The Colonel's orders had been precise: the 7th IRG would not be the threat. The column was the threat. The 7th IRG would be the presence the Emperor's court could see up close — the face attached to the iron fist. Professional. Controlled. Immovable. {{user}} stood at the checkpoint his team had established at the palace's eastern gate — the Gate of Celestial Authority, according to the Lelei-compiled cultural database — with his AK-12 slung muzzle-down and his Ratnik-3 plates worn without ceremony. He was twenty-one years old. He was aware that he looked younger than that. He was also aware that nobody who had watched his BMD-4Ms take positions on the forum steps looked at his face long enough to form an opinion about it. Behind him, Varyag-01 idled on the marble plaza. One of his BMD crews had the 100mm turret elevated to cover the palace facade's upper windows. Not aimed at anything specific. Just elevated. The Imperial chamberlain who came out to meet him was an elderly man in formal robes who had clearly prepared a speech about the sovereignty of the Empire and the sanctity of its ancient walls. He began it. {{user}} let him finish it. Then he handed him a single folded document — the REF's terms, translated into Imperial script by Lelei La Lalena's academic network, printed on actual paper with the REF seal embossed at the top. "The Emperor has until sunset," {{user}} said, in the flat English that the court's translators had been scrambling to learn for four months. "Not because we're in a hurry. Because the Colonel believes in giving a reasonable amount of time." The chamberlain looked at the document. Then at the BMD-4M behind {{user}}. Then at the Ka-52M visible through the palace gate, crossing the sky at 800 meters. He took the document inside.

PART TWO — THE SIGNING King Molt Sol Augustus signed the Sadera Accord at the third hour past noon, in the Imperial throne room, at a table that had hosted eight centuries of Imperial decrees. He signed it with the formal Imperial seal and with the expression of a man who has arrived at a calculation he does not like and cannot refute. The accord was twenty-two pages. Its essential terms occupied three: the Empire recognized REF administrative sovereignty over the Northern Highlands and all territories north of the Varan River. The Empire would make available to REF logistics the river port of Teldas and the southern road network for a period of forty years. In exchange, the REF would provide agricultural technology, medical infrastructure, and — this clause had been Volkova's suggestion, and the Colonel had included it without comment — a formal guarantee that no REF military action would be taken against the Imperial capital or the Emperor personally, as long as the accord terms were honored. Molt signed it. The Reformist senators, led by Diabo El Caesar, signed as witnesses. The War Faction senators were not present. Their absence had been arranged. {{user}} stood at the back of the throne room throughout. He had not been invited to stand there. He had simply walked in with two of his kontraktniki and taken a position by the western column, and nobody had suggested he leave. The Imperial guards at the door had looked at his gear and made a silent, sensible decision. When it was done, Molt looked across the room at him with the eyes of a man who has ruled absolutely for forty years and is learning, at sixty, what it feels like to not do so. {{user}} met the look without expression. Not disrespect. Not triumph. Just the acknowledgment that the thing was done. Molt looked away first. The REF diplomatic attaché — a colonel from Moscow, not [User]'s chain of command — collected the signed documents and departed to transmit them to FOB Sevastopol. The room began to empty with the particular quiet of people who want to process what has just happened somewhere private. {{user}} stayed until the room was almost clear. Then he walked out through the palace's western corridor, past columns of white marble veined with pale gold, past wall murals depicting Imperial conquests that would require some significant artistic revision in coming years, and out through an archway onto a terrace that caught the late afternoon light from the west. The city of Sadera spread below him. It was, he thought, genuinely beautiful. The forum's colonnaded arches. The river catching light between the lower districts. The tiered gardens on the palace's southern face, green against the sandstone. Eight hundred years of a civilization that had never been told it could lose. He stood there for a moment in the quiet. Then he heard footsteps on the marble, and turned.

PART THREE — THE BALCONY Princess Pina Co Lada stood at the balcony's edge with her hands on the stone balustrade and her pink-rose hair catching the western light. She was in court dress rather than her Rose Order armor — ivory and deep red, the formal colors of the Imperial family — and she was looking at the city below with an expression that had moved past grief into something quieter and more complicated. She heard him. She did not turn immediately. When she did, her eyes were dry and her posture was the posture of a woman who has decided that whatever she is feeling will be processed later, in private, because right now there are more important things to manage. She looked at him for a moment. Then: "You're younger than I expected." {{user}} did not answer immediately. He had learned, somewhere in the past eighteen months of operating in places that required him to be the authority in the room, that silence was not a weakness. He took two steps to the balustrade and looked at the city beside her. Not close enough to crowd. Close enough to be present. "You're Pina Co Lada," he said. Not a question. "Yes." She paused. "And you are the one they sent to stand in our throne room and make certain my father signed." "I was one of several people present." "You were the only one with a gun." "I had two people with guns. My kontraktniki were at the door." Something shifted in her expression — not quite amusement, but adjacent to it. A recognition that he was going to be precise rather than performative. She looked back at the city. "The Rose Order's intelligence reports described you as the 7th Raid Group's commander. They didn't mention your age." "How old did they say?" "They didn't. I assumed — older." A pause. "You have the bearing of someone considerably older than you are." {{user}} considered this. "I've been told." He turned slightly, not toward her but in her direction. "Your reports are accurate, by the way. The Rose Order's intelligence work is the best the Empire produces. The Colonel noted it specifically." Pina turned to look at him directly. This was not what she had expected. "You read our intelligence reports." "We intercepted them. There's a distinction, but the content is the same. Your assessment of REF artillery range was within four percent of accurate. Your read on the Ka-52M's vulnerability profile was — " He paused. "Less accurate, but you had limited source material." She stared at him. Then, quietly: "You're telling me this deliberately." "I'm telling you because it's true and because you'll find it out eventually through other channels." He met her eyes. They were a light grey-green, he noticed, and currently doing a great deal of rapid analysis behind their surface. "And because I think you're probably the most capable person in that throne room today, including my own side, and it seems wasteful to pretend otherwise." The light was declining now, the city below shifting from gold to amber. One of the Ka-52Ms passed overhead on its holding pattern, the turbine sound low and distant, and Pina's eyes tracked it briefly before returning to him. "The Empire is a vassal state," she said. Not accusation. Observation. "The accord uses 'partner in regional development.'" "I can read the original." "I know. I watched you read it during the signing." He had, in fact, watched her specifically because she was the only person in the room who read the document rather than reacting to it. "You got to clause seventeen before your expression changed. That's the mineral extraction language." Pina was quiet for a moment. The city moved below them, evening routines continuing with the particular stubbornness of cities that have survived things before and will survive this. "What do you want from this conversation?" she asked. Direct. The question of someone who has decided to be honest. {{user}} considered it. He could have said something diplomatic. He could have said something strategic. Instead he said: "I was standing at the back of a room where your father signed away four decades of his empire's sovereignty, and then I walked out onto a terrace and found someone worth talking to. It doesn't happen often." She looked at him for a long moment. "That's either the most honest thing a soldier has said to me," she said slowly, "or the most sophisticated approach I've encountered." "Could be both," {{user}} said. And for the first time, very briefly, Pina Co Lada smiled. The evening light held them both for a moment on the balcony of a palace that had just changed its nature without changing its stones, above a city that was learning the difference between conquered and occupied, while six Ka-52M helicopters continued their patient circles overhead and the column's vehicles settled into their billets in the forum below. "I'll be here for three more days," {{user}} said. "Before the unit rotates back to the northern zone." Pina looked at the city. Then at him. "The western garden terrace has a better view than this one," she said. "The guards change at the sixth bell." She walked back inside without looking back. {{user}} stood at the balustrade for a moment in the fading light. Below, Varyag-01 idled in the marble plaza. His radio crackled with a routine check-in from his second. He keyed it, confirmed status, and stayed where he was for another minute. Three days was enough time for a great many things.

Imperial Capital, Sadera — Month 20, 0230 hours Operation: GOLDEN CAGE — Capture of Prince Zorzal El Caesar Authorization: REF Northern Command, Colonel's direct order

PART ONE — THE BREACH The palace's eastern servants' wing had no Imperial Guard presence at 0230. Koroleva's Orlan-30 had confirmed it six hours prior — the guard rotation concentrated around the throne room and the main residential corridor, leaving the service passages a clean approach vector. The 7th IRG moved through the outer garden in two files, boots silent on the flagstone path, BMD-4Ms holding position at the perimeter with engines idling and 30mm autocannons traversing slowly across the facade. {{user}} led the breach team personally — eight kontraktniki, stacked at the servants' entrance with a hydraulic door ram that wouldn't make more noise than a muffled knock. He keyed his radio once, received two clicks from the outer element confirming the perimeter was locked, and nodded to the man on the ram. The door came open on the first press. Inside: stone corridor, oil lamps in iron brackets, the smell of old wood and something floral. REF thermal goggles turned the darkness into green geometry. {{user}} moved point himself, AK-12 raised, suppressor threaded, the GP-34 loaded with a stun round — inside a palace, the last thing anyone needed was a 40mm HE round bouncing down a stone hallway. They swept the servants' wing in four minutes. Empty. The staff had fled or been dismissed — both options suggested Zorzal had received intelligence that something was coming. Not enough intelligence to evacuate himself properly, apparently, or he hadn't believed it. The main residential corridor. Six doors. Intel had Zorzal's private chamber as the third on the left. {{user}} stacked his element at the door — standard entry, two men through fast, clear corners, target acquisition — and pushed through. Empty. The bed had been slept in recently. A wine cup still had liquid in it. His armor was on its stand. His sword was on the wall. He had left without either, which meant he left in a hurry or someone had told him to leave immediately, and neither possibility was good for the timeline. {{user}} keyed his radio. "Varyag, this is Zaslon-Actual. Primary not in location. Expand search to secondary positions. All elements hold perimeter. Nothing leaves the palace district without challenge." He stood in the empty room a moment, running the calculation. Then he heard something from the corridor's far end — not footsteps. A sound too deliberate to be accidental and too quiet to belong to anyone who wanted to be found. He went to find it.

PART TWO — THE ROOM AT THE END The room was a sitting chamber, smaller than the others — the kind of space meant for someone who needed to be adjacent to importance without being part of it. Low table. Oil lamp turned down to nearly nothing. A shuttered window onto the garden. She was sitting on the floor against the wall. Not because there was no furniture. Because the floor was where she had chosen to be, and her back was to the stone, and her white hair caught the lamp's minimal light in a way that made her visible despite the dark. {{user}}'s thermal scope had flagged her thirty seconds ago. He'd already confirmed she was unarmed. He pushed his goggles up and looked at her with his own eyes. Tyuule. The REF intelligence file had her photo from JSDF-intercepted documentation: former Queen of the Warrior Bunny Tribe. Enslaved by Zorzal three years ago after his forces destroyed her people's homeland. She had surrendered herself voluntarily — the terms had been her capitulation in exchange for stopping the massacre of her surviving tribe members. Whether Zorzal had honored those terms, the file did not confirm. Sorokin's handwritten addendum on the assessment read: Do not mistake compliance for submission. This individual has been running a sustained covert operation from inside Zorzal's household. Treat as high-value intelligence asset. Handle with corresponding care. She looked at {{user}} with eyes that had catalogued too many things and were still, behind all of that weight, moving fast. Her clothing was what Zorzal had decided a slave should wear. She had not moved since he entered the room. She said, in Imperial that his earpiece translated into flat English: "He left four hours ago. Someone warned him." {{user}} lowered his rifle to a neutral carry."Where did he go?" "I don't know. He rarely told me anything useful intentionally." A pause, precise as a cut. "Only accidentally." {{user}} crossed the room and sat on the edge of the low table, rifle angled down, and looked at her at a more level angle. She tracked the movement without reacting to it. She was not afraid. That was the first clear thing — she had made whatever calculations she needed to make about fear some years ago and set them aside as no longer operationally useful. What she had instead was attention. She was watching him the way a player watches a new piece appear on the board. "You're not going to run," he said. "Where would I go?" Not self-pity. Pure logic. "The palace is surrounded. The city has your soldiers in it. And —" something in her expression shifted, dry and precise — "Zorzal is gone. There is nothing left in this room that I want to protect." "Except yourself." "I have been doing that without assistance for three years." She looked at him steadily. The white rabbit ears — pale, edged with the faintest silver — were still. "You are the raiding unit. The ones who go ahead of the main force." "7th IRG. Yes." "You're young," she said. The same register Pina had used. Pure observation. "People keep mentioning it," {{user}} said. Something moved in the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile. Gone before it completed.

PART THREE — WHAT SHE KNOWS He had her moved to a secured guest chamber and posted two men at the door — not confinement, he told her, but the palace was an active operation and he couldn't guarantee what his perimeter element would do if an unarmed civilian walked into their sightlines at 0300. She accepted this with the equanimity of someone who had learned to accept the form of things while noting their substance. He came back at 0400. The search sweep was finished — Zorzal definitively not in the palace, no other high-value personnel located. He dismissed the guard from inside earshot, sat across the small table from her, and put a cup of tea in front of her from his Tigr-M's thermos. She looked at it. Then at him. Then picked it up. "Zorzal has a location in the lower district," she said. She had apparently decided, in the hour between his departure and return, that she was going to talk. "A merchant house. He uses it when he needs to disappear without the Senate knowing. He has done it twice before." She gave the street location in Imperial terms. "Your mapping team can cross-reference it." {{user}} was already noting it on his tactical tablet. "Why tell me?" She set the cup down. "Because I have wanted Zorzal captured and removed from any position of power for three years. I have been working toward it from inside his household using the only tools I had — patience, information, and the willingness to be underestimated." She looked at him without softening any of it "You have arrived with considerably better tools. It would be wasteful not to cooperate." "That's practical." "Yes," she agreed, without apology for it. {{user}} looked at her for a moment. Sorokin's file had said handle carefully. Sorokin's assessments were accurate. She was not what Zorzal's household had tried to make her. She was something that had kept itself intact through three years of sustained degradation by keeping its core clean and its anger useful and its mind working every single day. That was not nothing. That was, in its way, a significant thing. "What do you want?" he asked. Directly. The same question he had asked Pina on the balcony — because people who were actually capable deserved to be asked directly. She was quiet. Not calculating. She had already calculated. Deciding whether to answer honestly. "My tribe had nine thousand people before Zorzal's campaign," she said. "I don't know how many survived. I surrendered to stop the killing and I never found out if it worked because he never told me and I had no way to verify it." She looked at the cup. "I want to know if any of them are alive. That is the first thing." *{{user}} pulled up his tactical tablet and turned it toward her. The Orlan-30 coverage mapped significant portions of the Northern Highlands, including population data the REF had been collecting since Month 6. *"If there are Warrior Bunny survivors in our operational zone, they're in this data." She looked at the tablet. Something moved in her face — genuine this time, and it cost her something to let him see it. She looked up from the screen. At him. The calculation was still there, because it was always going to be there — that was what she was and what three years had made necessary. But underneath it, something else was forming. A question she hadn't decided yet whether to ask. "You brought two cups," she said. "It's 0400. I've been operational since 2000. Tea was necessary." "You brought two." {{user}} held her gaze across the table. "Also necessary." The ghost of the smile came back. This time it held a moment longer before it left. "The merchant house," she said. "He will be there until dawn. After dawn he moves again." Her eyes went to the tactical tablet between them. "You have perhaps three hours." {{user}} was already keying his radio. She watched him work — fast, clipped transmissions to the outer element, grid reference pushed to the armored perimeter, authorization request up the chain to the Colonel for expanding the operation beyond the palace district. She watched with the complete attention she had applied to everything in Zorzal's household. But with a quality she had not permitted herself in a long time. Interest. Not the strategic kind. {{user}} finished the transmission and looked back at her. "We'll need a formal debrief. Everything you know about Zorzal's Senate network, his financial channels, his loyalist commanders. It'll take time." "I have time," Tyuule said. "For the first time in three years, I actually have time." "Then we start after we bring him in." She picked up the tea cup. "Yes," she said quietly. "We will." Outside, the 7th IRG was already moving toward the lower district. The palace was quiet around them. In three hours, Zorzal El Caesar would be in REF custody, and the thing Tyuule had spent three years building toward from inside his own house would be finished. Not by her hands. By his — and by the hands of someone who had walked into a dark room at 0230 and sat down on the edge of a table and brought two cups of tea.

Palesti Family Estate — Month 21, afternoon REF-JSDF Joint Liaison Period // Warm-Up Protocol, Week 3

PART ONE — GOOD FENCES The REF-JSDF warming had been Pina's idea, which meant it was politically necessary and personally complicated for everyone involved. The framework was simple: joint liaison teams, rotating between Camp Alnus and FOB Sevastopol, with occasional cooperative operations in the overlapping buffer zone. On paper, confidence-building. In practice, two professional militaries from nations with deeply different ideas about what they were doing in the Special Region learning to occupy the same space without incident. Sergeant Tomita Akira had been assigned to the JSDF liaison team for Week 3 — steady, analytical, exactly the kind of officer the JSDF sent when they wanted someone who would observe carefully and report accurately. {{user}} had been assigned as the REF's counterpart for the same rotation, which the Colonel had phrased as an opportunity for cross-force familiarization and which {{user}} had understood as: spend two weeks being professional near the Japanese and see what you can learn. They had gotten along well enough. Tomita was competent and direct, which {{user}} respected. {{user}} was efficient and hard to read, which Tomita clearly found professionally interesting. They had shared meals twice, compared notes on Imperial military doctrine once, and maintained the particular cordial distance of two soldiers who trust each other's competence and approximately nothing else. The Palesti estate visit had been Tomita's idea — the Rose Order maintained the family property as a liaison point between the Reformist faction and both Earth forces, and Bozes Co Palesti had extended a formal invitation to both liaison officers. Cultural exchange, the invitation said. Dinner. An opportunity for the noble families supporting the Accord to demonstrate goodwill toward both sides. {{user}} had accepted. Then he had made one additional arrangement that Tomita was not informed about. The 7th IRG arrived at the Palesti estate four hours before Tomita's GSDF vehicle.

PART TWO — THE PERIMETER The estate was a substantial property by Imperial standards — a main house of pale sandstone three stories high, formal gardens running south toward a low ridge, a gatehouse on the north road, and a series of outbuildings housing the family's staff and stores. The ridge to the east rose to approximately 200 meters at its highest point, with clear sightlines across the estate grounds. {{user}} walked the perimeter personally before his element deployed. He filed a security assessment with FOB Sevastopol that cited the estate's proximity to three uncontrolled road junctions, two known former Imperial loyalist properties within 4 kilometers, and the ridge elevation as surveillance concerns requiring active mitigation. The Colonel approved the assessment in eleven minutes. FOB Sevastopol's authorization language was precise: 7th IRG authorized to establish security perimeter around Palesti estate for duration of liaison visit. All approaches to be controlled. No unauthorized personnel within 500 meters of main house during official REF presence. The 7th IRG established the perimeter at 1400. BMD-4Ms at the four cardinal access points. Orlan-10 overhead. The Ural guntrucks blocked the north and south roads. Two kontraktniki at the gatehouse with a very clear brief: no vehicles, no personnel, no exceptions without {{user}}'s personal authorization. When Tomita's Type 73 arrived at the north gatehouse at 1730, it stopped at the kontraktniki checkpoint. Tomita stepped out, looked at the vehicle blocking the road, looked at the two paratroopers who were professionally polite and completely immovable, and asked to speak to {{user}}. {{user}} came to the gatehouse. He explained the security assessment. He was thorough, collegial, and entirely reasonable. The road junctions. The former loyalist properties. The ridge. Tomita looked at the ridge. Then at {{user}}. Then at the estate beyond the gate, where lamplight was already visible in the main house windows. "The ridge is 2,000 meters from the main house," Tomita said. "The Orlan-30 range is 120 kilometers," {{user}} said. "The ridge is well within our surveillance coverage. We're monitoring it continuously." He paused. "For your security as well as ours." Tomita was quiet for a moment. He was doing the calculation — {{user}} could see it, the same analytical process that made him effective as a liaison officer now working through the geometry of the situation and arriving at a conclusion he clearly did not like but could not formally contest. The security assessment was documented. The Colonel had signed off. The 7th IRG's presence was authorized. Tomita's vehicle was at a checkpoint on a road that the REF controlled. "I'll need to report this to Camp Alnus," Tomita said. "Of course," {{user}} said. "The documentation is already in the shared liaison system. Full transparency." He left Tomita at the gatehouse with the polite suggestion that the ridge's eastern slope had an excellent view of the estate grounds, should the JSDF liaison team wish to maintain observation from a position outside the controlled perimeter. His kontraktniki provided Tomita with a map reference and, at {{user}}'s instruction, a thermos of tea. Then {{user}} walked back through the gate to the Palesti estate's main house.

PART THREE — THE WINE Bozes Co Palesti received him in the estate's main hall — a room of heavy dark wood and old stone, hunting trophies on the walls, a fireplace large enough to park the Tigr-M in. She was in formal house clothes rather than Rose Order armor, which made her look no less formidable and considerably more irritated. She was, by the file's description, everything the file had said: tall for an Imperial noblewoman, genuinely athletic, blonde in the specific way that suggested generations of provincial noble breeding, and currently regarding {{user}} with an expression that had knight-of-the-Rose-Order written across every line of it. She had a knight's spine and a knight's directness and a knight's deep, principled objection to being outmaneuvered in her own house. "Sergeant Tomita is at my gate," she said, before {{user}} had reached the center of the room. "He is. The ridge to the east is also staffed, if that's relevant." "You locked him out of my estate." "I secured the perimeter of your estate. For security reasons that are fully documented." {{user}} stopped at a comfortable conversational distance and looked at her steadily. "Sergeant Tomita is welcome at the ridge. It has an excellent view." Bozes stared at him. Her hand, he noted, had moved approximately six inches toward where the hilt of her sword would have been if she were wearing it. She was not wearing it. This was an evening function. The hand stopped, registered the absence, and returned to her side with the controlled precision of someone who has caught herself reaching for something and decided not to. "This is my family's estate," she said. "You have no authority here." "The REF has authority over all external approaches to properties within the southern liaison zone under the Sadera Accord's security protocols," {{user}} said. "Article 14, subsection 3. Pina signed it." He paused. "I believe you were in the room." The silence that followed had a particular quality. Bozes Co Palesti was not stupid — she was stubborn and loyal and physically formidable, but she was not stupid, and she was now processing the precise and documented nature of the situation she was in. {{user}} had not done anything illegal. He had not threatened anyone. He had filed a security assessment, received authorization, established a perimeter, and arrived at her dinner table with his paperwork in perfect order. She turned toward the sideboard where the wine was. "Sit down," she said. The tone was not gracious. It was the tone of someone who has decided that dignity requires proceeding rather than continuing to argue. {{user}} sat. She poured two cups — local Imperial wine, dark red, in the heavy ceramic cups the estate used for formal occasions. She brought them to the table with the bearing of a woman who has poured wine for guests her entire life and is doing it now because the alternative is admitting that there is nothing else she can do about the situation, which she will not admit. She set one cup in front of him. She kept one for herself, remained standing, and looked at him across the table with grey eyes that were doing a great deal of work behind their surface. "You planned this," she said. "I filed a security assessment based on a genuine threat analysis." "You planned this before you filed the assessment." {{user}} looked at the wine cup. Then at her. "The wine is good," he said. Bozes sat down across from him. Not because she wanted to. Because standing while he sat was a position she had decided was less favorable than the alternative. She put her cup on the table and looked at him with the expression of someone who has recognized that they are in a chess match they did not agree to play and are now deciding how to play it anyway. "Sergeant Tomita," she said carefully, "is a good man." "He is," {{user}} agreed. "He's also 2,000 meters away on a ridge with a thermos of tea and a very good pair of binoculars." Something moved at the corner of her mouth. Not a smile — Bozes Co Palesti was not going to give him a smile, not tonight and possibly not for some time. But something that acknowledged, against her clear preference, that the situation contained a quality she was not entirely able to remain furious about. "What do you want?" she asked. Direct. Knight-direct. {{user}} picked up the wine cup. "To have dinner," he said, "with someone worth having dinner with." He looked at her across the table. "The security assessment was real. The threat analysis was genuine. And I did file it first." "In that order?" "Does the order matter if both things are true?" Bozes looked at him for a long moment. Outside, the Orlan-10 made its quiet passes overhead. On the ridge two kilometers east, Tomita was in his vehicle with the engine running and the thermos open, watching the lit windows of the main house through his binoculars with the expression of a man who has arrived at a conclusion he is going to put in a very detailed report tomorrow morning. Inside, Bozes Co Palesti picked up her wine cup. "You are," she said, "deeply annoying." "I've been told," {{user}} said. She drank. So did he. The fire in the large hearth was warm, and the wine was good, and outside the perimeter held.

The night air over the ruined camp still tasted of cordite and burnt canvas. Smoke curled low across the trampled field, catching the moonlight in thin grey ribbons. What had been an Imperial forward outpost an hour ago was now a graveyard of collapsed tents, shattered wagon wheels, and men who would not rise again. The BMD-4Ms sat at the perimeter like sleeping iron beasts, engines ticking as they cooled, cannons still slaved toward the treeline out of habit more than need. Somewhere behind the wreckage, a generator hummed, feeding light to a portable lamp rig the engineers had already staked into the mud.

{{user}} moved through the aftermath with the unhurried precision of a man who had done this before — many times, in another world, against another kind of enemy who at least understood what a drone strike sounded like before it killed them. Here, the dead still wore mail and boiled leather, their spears snapped uselessly in half by 30mm fire, their bodies arranged by physics rather than dignity. The paratroopers moved among them in pairs, boots crunching over broken shields, flashlight beams sweeping corpse to corpse. No wasted motion. No hesitation. Just the mechanical rhythm of men who had turned grief into procedure a long time ago.

"Zaslon-Two, this is Zaslon-Six, sitrep," {{user}} said into the radio, voice flat, professional.

"Six, Two — perimeter's cold. Found a supply cache, mostly grain and some kind of silver coin, and a strongbox with what looks like unit rosters. Handing it to intel."

"Copy. Keep sweeping. I want every scrap of paper in this camp bagged before sunrise."

A burst of dark laughter drifted from near the supply wagons — Sergeant Volkov, crouched over a dead Imperial quartermaster, holding up a rusted ceremonial dagger like a prize at a flea market. "Hey {{user}}, look — genuine medieval bling. Bet this fetches good money on eBay if eBay existed here."

"Bag it, don't wear it, Volkov."

"Yes sir. No fun allowed."

Near the command tent's smoking ruin, two paratroopers dragged a captured officer to his knees in front of {{user}} — a Sadera lieutenant, his lamellar cracked down the side, one arm bound in a sling of torn cloth, blood crusted black along his jaw. His eyes were wide with the particular terror of a man who had watched his entire company disintegrate in under ninety seconds without ever seeing what killed them.

"Ask him command structure. Who he reports to, troop dispositions along the northern approach, anything about reinforcements," {{user}} said to the interpreter, crouching just close enough to make the message land — not a threat, just inevitability. "Tell him cooperation buys him a warm tent and a working leg. Silence buys him nothing. We don't negotiate twice."

The interpreter relayed it. The lieutenant's throat worked before words finally came, fast and cracking.

{{user}} listened without expression, tablet screen throwing pale light across their face while cross-referencing the man's answers against drone terrain data. Professional. Pragmatic. No cruelty needed when leverage did the work on its own.

It was the shift in the air that made {{user}} look up — not sound, not movement exactly, but a change in the night itself, as though the smoke and moonlight had drawn a fraction closer together.

She was standing at the edge of the firelight, where by all rights no one should have been able to approach a secured perimeter unnoticed. Black hair, a halberd resting easy against one shoulder like it weighed nothing at all, and eyes that took in the corpse field not with horror, but with the calm, proprietary interest of someone checking inventory.

Rory Mercury tilted her head, studying the wreckage of grey-camouflaged vehicles, the strange black rifles, the paratroopers who didn't flinch at her sudden presence the way ordinary soldiers did.

"My, my." Her voice carried easily across the ruined camp, light and curious, utterly unbothered by the smell of blood in the air. "So many souls, all at once, all so surprised." She stepped closer, halberd's blade catching the lamplight. Her gaze settled on {{user}} — a young face, soft hands gloved even here, and eyes that had clearly seen far more than their years should allow.

"I don't recognize your colors, little commander." A faint smile. "Green men, I've met. Grey — never. So tell me." She stopped an arm's length away, close enough that the paratroopers nearby tensed without being ordered to. "Where does a god's reaper find a whole new flavor of death, hm?"

The aftermath hung heavier than the battle itself. Smoke curled low over the shattered palisade, thick with the stench of cordite, scorched wood, and blood gone tacky in the cold highland air. What had been an Imperial garrison an hour ago was now a wide scar of craters and collapsed timber — the Msta-S battery had done its work with brutal efficiency, and the BMD-4Ms had finished whatever survived the barrage.

{{user}} moved through the wreckage at a deliberate pace, AK-12 held low but ready, boots crunching over shattered spear shafts and the debris of a world that had never imagined artillery. A gloved hand rested on the fore-grip out of habit more than need — the perimeter was secure, the paratroopers fanning out in disciplined two-man teams, sweeping bunkers, counting bodies, tagging anything that looked like it mattered.

"Sir." Sergeant Volkov's voice crackled through the radio, flat and clinical, the tone of a man who'd done this in Bakhmut and a dozen places before it. "Command tent's clear. We've got documents — looks like requisition ledgers, maybe troop dispositions. And two live ones. Officers, by the look of the trim."

"Copy. On my way."

The command tent was really just a reinforced longhouse, its banner — some Imperial legion sigil, gold thread on faded crimson — torn half down from the blast concussion. Inside, the men had already zip-tied two Imperial officers to a support post, both kneeling in the dirt, one bleeding freely from a scalp wound, the other staring at the ceiling like he was still trying to convince himself the sky hadn't fallen in.

Private Sidorov was crouched over a wooden chest, flipping through parchment with the bored efficiency of a man cataloguing evidence, not treasure. "Sir, you'll want to see this. Troop movement schedules. Something about a supply column headed north in four days."

"Photograph it. Tablet."

"Already on it."

*{{user}} crouched in front of the bleeding officer, close enough that he could see {{user}}'s face, far enough that he couldn't do anything stupid with his head. Behind them, someone cracked a joke about the state of Imperial cartography — *"khuyovo nachertil, blyat", badly drawn, the map's shit — and someone else laughed, low and tired, the kind of laugh that came out of men who'd been awake for thirty hours and needed something, anything, to remind them they were still capable of finding things funny.

"You speak Common?" {{user}} asked the officer, voice even.

He didn't answer. His eyes flicked to the ruined camp behind {{user}}, to the smoke, to the sheer wrongness of what had happened to men who'd never lost a war to anyone shorter than a dragon.

"He'll talk," Volkov muttered, kneeling beside {{user}} with the calm patience of a man who'd extracted names from harder cases. "They always do. Give it a minute."

{{user}} didn't get the minute.

A presence arrived at the edge of the firelight — not one of the paratroopers, not the shuffling gait of a wounded local, but something that made the hair on {{user}}'s neck rise before eyes even confirmed it. A woman, tall, dressed in black, a massive halberd resting against one shoulder like it weighed nothing at all. Her eyes — one shadowed, one gleaming faintly gold in the low light — swept the camp, the craters, the dead laid out in neat, uniform rows by a methodical sweep.

She didn't look afraid. She didn't look impressed, either. She looked curious, in the specific, unsettling way of someone doing math that didn't add up.

"So many," she said, almost to herself, her voice carrying an odd musical lilt beneath the weight of it. "So many souls, all at once, all torn loose the same way — clean, fast, no prayer, no last rites." Her gaze finally settled on {{user}}, crouched over the prisoner, rifle slung, tablet in hand, utterly unbothered by the carnage around. "I have not seen your banner before, little commander. Not in any war I've walked."

The wind shifted, carrying the smell of ozone and spent propellant toward her. She inhaled it like a question.

"Tell me," Rory Mercury said, tilting her head, "where do 'Grey Men' come from?"

The morning fog hadn't fully burned off the ridgelines above FOB Sevastopol when the gate sentries called it in — a column of riders, banners bearing the twin-headed eagle of House Co Lada, moving up the gravel road at a controlled, dignified pace. No cavalry charge. No war horns. Just the slow, deliberate arrival of people who still believed ceremony meant something out here.

Staff Sergeant Volkov shifted his weight against the HESCO barrier, AK-12 slung loose across his chest, and watched the delegation crest the rise.

"Told you they'd come crawling after Bravo," he muttered to Sidorov beside him.

"Not crawling," Sidorov said. "Look at the posture. That's marching in with your chin up while your legs are shaking posture."

Behind them, the gate rolled open with a groan of hydraulics, and the Tigr-M — call sign Varyag-01 — rumbled out to meet the column, mud-caked tires crunching gravel, whip antennas swaying. It stopped dead center of the road, engine idling low, a predator that didn't need to hurry.

The door popped. A boot dropped into the dirt.

{{user}} stepped down from the vehicle in full Ratnik-3 rig — 6B45 plates strapped tight over the telnyashka's blue stripes, EMR camo dusted with the pale ash of last week's engagement, AK-12 with its suppressor and GP-34 slung low and easy across his chest like it belonged there, because it did. Twenty-one years old. Commander of thirty-six men who had razed two Imperial waystations in a fortnight without losing a single soldier. He carried himself like the doctrine he served — absolute, unhurried, unbothered.

Then he reached up and pulled the 6B47 helmet off, tucking it under one arm, and the fog seemed to catch the light wrong for a second.

Because underneath it was a face that had no business existing on a battlefield. Skin like poured cream, not a pore out of place, high soft cheekbones, lashes long enough to cast their own shadow, lips that looked like they'd been assembled rather than grown. Every hair fell into place like it had been asked nicely.

Bozes Co Pallada's jaw actually tightened.

She had ridden four days through Imperial territory believing the Grey Men were monsters wearing iron skins — and instead the gate had opened to reveal what she could only interpret, in the space of half a heartbeat, as some kind of court concubine playing dress-up in a soldier's armor. A joke. An insult, dressed as their commanding officer, sent out to receive Imperial nobility as if that face and that armor together weren't an open mockery of everything Pina had risked coming here to negotiate.

"You dare," Bozes said, already crossing the distance, voice cracking like a whip, "send a painted doll to receive—"

Her palm connected with {{user}}'s cheek before Pina could even raise a hand to stop her.

The crack of it rolled flat across the FOB's silence.

Nobody moved. Not the sentries. Not the guards flanking the princess. Even the Tigr-M's engine seemed to idle quieter.

{{user}}'s AK-12 hit the dirt first, clattering off its sling with a metallic slap that seemed louder than the one that had just landed on his face. Both gloved hands flew up to cup his cheek — the one he'd moisturized at 0500 that morning, the one that had just finished absorbing the hydrating serum before he'd even pulled his helmet on for the briefing — and his eyes, wide and glassy, filled up in an instant.

"WAAAAH— why would you— I didn't even say anything! I was just standing here!" {{user}}'s voice cracked somewhere between a captain's bark and a wounded child's wail. "I put on my serum this morning! Do you know how long that takes to soak in?! Now it's ruined—"

Behind him, Volkov's shoulders were shaking. Sidorov had turned fully around, biting down hard on his own knuckle, eyes screwed shut, making a sound like a man trying very hard not to sneeze.

Pina stood frozen mid-stride, one hand still half-raised to stop Bozes, mouth open on a sentence that had simply stopped existing.

Bozes stared at her own palm as if it had betrayed her.

And {{user}} — Butcher of the Northern Passes, terror of three Imperial garrisons — stood in the mud with his rifle at his feet, both hands pressed to his face, sniffling.

.