Days Gone By Chapter 1

"...In the end, I think, war is what brings out both the best and the worst in us. It is brutal, and unforgiving, and pushes us past the very boundaries of our hearts, minds and souls, and it's in this that we find the most indelible of truths. We find that we are only who we choose to be."

-preface, Days Gone By, A Memoir from the Gallian Front

Chapter One

"Ngh... fuck!" I grit out, tears streaming from my eyes, hand wrapped tightly over the gushing hole in my side as I leaned against what was left of a brick wall, trying to get my breath back despite the lancing fire that shot up my entire body every time I inhaled. The air was heavy with the taste of dead meat, humidity and gunpowder, and I could feel it choking my lungs even as I gasped it in, but take it I did. Breath was life. Every single one reaffirmed that I wasn't down yet, out yet, so I pushed on.

I could hear the rattle of gunfire in the nearby streets, the rat tat tat of automatics and the screams of anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire, the thundering boom of tank shells, the crack of rifle rounds, all of it, all around me. I could feel the ground shake from the tank treads, the rattling of boots on cobblestones, the yelling! Fucking hell, all the yelling. Loud, panicked, desperate, words in three different languages, maybe more, drowned out by the cacophony of war.

I pressed harder on my wound. It was still dripping, still leaking, all the way down my MOLLE vest and into the tan rip resistant nylon of the pants I wore. Some lucky chucklefuck managed to get a round past the trauma plate in my chest, winged me in the side clean enough that it went straight through, leaving me with a ragged, bloody hole. It was leaking pretty bad before, but it's slowing down. I don't know if that's a good thing.

I don't know a lot of things, and here? It was killing me. Pain and fire and blood, mixing together in a way that you can't even begin to imagine. In a hell that only those who know it like an old friend could understand, and now... now I did too. I understood it all too well, and I wish I hadn't. It was ironic in a way. I'd always wondered what I would do, you know? In a place like this, a time like this, where people were trying to hurt me, kill me... I didn't really understand it then. How could I? What this was like. It was an out-of-context issue for me.

Not any more. This was just- It's impossible to describe it. Chaos. Insanity. Violence. God, so much violence. People were getting killed. Men, women, children, I'd seen them all. Cut up, shot up, blown up... man, you think you know. Think you've seen bad. Think, 'Yeah, I could take that. I could do that, if I had to.' but no. It's just...

My head thumped against the wall. It didn't help my headache, and I winced and grit my teeth harder. I could practically hear them grinding against one another but I couldn't stop. Every step sent waves of agony through me almost as cleanly as the bullet hole itself but, begging me to stay, to sit down, to rest. I knew I couldn't. Not now. I just... needed to swallow it. Choke it down. Ignore it. Anything else was death.

I let my free hand tighten around the grip of my rifle. It was the one thing, the only thing, that gave me any measure of comfort since waking up in this fucked up place what felt like years ago, even if it couldn't have been more than a few hours. Big, mean, with a futuristic look to it it did its job as advertised. You might know it, if you've ever played a World War 2 shooter. They called it the father of the assault rifle. A weapon with the range and accuracy of a rifle and the effective killing power of a submachine gun.

The Sturmgewehr Model 1944. A stamped steel monster at thirty-seven inches and weighing in at just under twelve pounds, it offered a selection of fire modes from semi to glorious full-auto, all at the tips of your fingers with an easy to reach thumb switch. Loaded with a thirty round stick mag it would suit all your killing needs. From poor single bastards to whole fucking groups of faceless mooks it made absolutely no difference who the barrel was pointed at. Armor, no armor, under cover or out in the open, it made little difference to the 7.92 Kurz rounds, and with the kind of accuracy you'd expect from a sniper rifle, well, this gun? It did work, son. Like you wouldn't believe. Like you couldn't begin to imagine. I couldn't. I dared not fucking conceive of it. But now I know, and God knows I wish I didn't.

It all went so wrong, so fast, you know? I wasn't prepared for this. Not any of it. The last thing I remembered was getting into my car, and the next thing I know I'm waking up in a field with my goddamn MOLLE vest strapped to my chest and my CCW at my hip. Moments, I had. Moments to wonder what the fuck was going on, and then... then I got shot. Then I killed a man. Then... I shook my head as I pushed myself off the wall with a grunt. I was drifting. Had to keep moving. Had to keep focused. I pulled back the receiver, checked that I had a round chambered and then sent one foot forward. Then another. Over and over again.

You know, it's kinda like those stories you read about. Some rando gets sucked away into a magical isekai adventure full of treasure and fun and an assorted box of pretty harem girls to ooh and aww over. Or they're some lord or prince or king or whatever, or they get blessed with Colonial disease and an encyclopedic knowledge of how to bootstrap a Medieval-era society to the modern age. Or they wake up in a fifty ton robotic Von Neumann murder machine and the power of super space skitzotech.

Except when it's not. Except when the rando gets dropped in the middle of World War fucking Two and all they have to work with is a hand with some fingers on it and a gun full of bullets. Not even a guess as to how he got there. Not a clue as to what to do. No present solution or chance to even plan the first step as not five seconds after consciousness returns everyone and their goddamn uncle is trying to kill them. And those are the lucky ones. Like me. I had an option, at least. Granted that option began and ended at killing people that were in turn trying to kill me.

And let me fucking tell you, they were trying really, really hard. These aren't barely literate fantasy guards with swords and shields, no matter what the armor might tell you. These were well trained, hardened soldiers with a deep, urgent desire to kill everything and everyone that isn't on their side. They were determined, dangerous, accurate and a hell of a lot faster than you might think a man in eighty pounds of rolled steel might be. Clever, too, and nasty. They didn't hold back. They hunted, and fought, and killed without pause or recompense and where they went, hell came with them.

Speak of the devil, and he just might appear. I flattened out against the wall of the alley, the pain in my side earning a sucking hiss as I tried to slim my profile and go as silent as a church mouse. There were footsteps down the alley over. The rattle of armor plates. The clanking of heavy boots. All sounds I'd grown to know very well over the last day or so. The sound of enemies. Of threats. I hugged my rifle to my chest, my gloves creaking against the handle as I waited.

I peeked over and saw them rush by, but I don't know where. I hauled off, moved to the next building. Moved on. The better part of valor, right? I didn't want to fight them, to kill them, and I didn't want them to kill me. I never wanted any of that. Better to avoid them when I can. If I can.

You know, when I first ran into one of them, I thought it was some kind of fucking joke. These guys, they looked like someone straight out of a fucking video game with their bucket helmets and I shit you not, medieval-era armor. Chest, shoulders, even legs, it was... it looked like something straight off a knight, and all he needed was the horse to round it out. Lined plates, thick looking, aggressive and intimidating but also strange. Out of place. I had trouble taking the man seriously.

I laughed a bit when I saw it, didn't really understand what I was looking at, what it meant. I thought it was kinda funny, all things considered. Then the bastard raised his rifle and shot me in the chest.

It wasn't very fucking funny then. Luckily, whatever composite that made up the plate under my MOLLE vest did it's job and despite the fact that I think it bruised a rib, the damn bullet didn't penetrate. It knocked me on my ass, but that didn't matter. I lived. Surprised the hell out of him that I was still kicking, too.

I blinked as I remembered it, the rifle in my hands chopping him up like so much meat, ripping through his armor like it was tissue, sending him slumping to the ground with a shocked look in his eyes. The full plate he was wearing didn't save his ass then. Didn't even slow the bullets down.

I didn't have the time to think about it, though. Three of his friends came bursting out of the woodline a half second later and tried to kill me right there on the ground. Managed to scatter them with a burst from the '44 and roll over a hill before they could really draw a bead on me, but that devolved into a running battle that drew more of the red-armored soldiers down on me. I was lucky that the area around here was all hills and that there were lots of trees in-between us. In open field I would have been a dead man a dozen times over.

It got bloody. Really bloody. Say what you will about the people who designed the StG 44, they knew what they were doing with this gun. It was effective. Very effective. Pinpoint accuracy on semi and auto, and a huge magazine besides, handling it was a dream. It ruined their day. Made a mess of things. People, too, in ugly ways, especially in the chaos. But it did its job, of that there was no doubt. Firing, moving, reloading... all so easy, so smooth, so simple. So easy a child could do it.

Still, I ended up losing one of my few magazines in the heat of it all. It was spent, yes, but I'd been trying to hold onto those, tossing them into my dump pouch. Never knew if or when I'd find a chance to get more. No time to worry about it though. They chased me hard into the town where folks in blue helmets and uniforms took up the fight, where I wound up holding that line for the better part of half an hour, no questions asked. My tee shirt under the MOLLE vest was blue. They wore blue. Since the Imps were shooting at me, that seemed to be enough for them, fortunately. They called themselves Gallians, and the ones in red, Imperials. It was nice to have a name to stick with the uniform, for what that's worth, even if that was all the time for introductions we had, and that was that. The war came snapping at my heels, and with it fire and thunder and blood.

More soldiers showed up on both sides and the fighting got nasty, all of it inch by inch urban warfare. They fought well, though, despite being under armed, understaffed and outgunned, and we held them for a time. We bled them good, made them claw and crawl and suffer for every street, every building, but it wasn't enough. There were just too many, and once the tanks started rolling up, blowing the shit out of the fortifications, we wound up pulling a fighting retreat, got scattered, and then... bam, shot through the gut.

I don't... I just...

It was a bad day.

I checked the mag I had in the gun. Half full. Good. I'd been plinking on semi for the most part. This thing was an automatic, it could eat up a thirty round magazine in seconds, but that didn't seem to help me at all. Yeah, it tore motherfuckers up, but I hadn't seen a single extra round the same size as what I needed for it.

All these rifles used 7.92 Mauser. This thing was loaded with the smaller, more compact Kurz round, the Mauser's baby cousin. Little weaker than the full shebang, but lighter on the whole and the recoil was reduced enough that I could get some truly compact grouping, but that wasn't worth a tin whistle if I didn't have any bullets to shoot. I was running dry and after that all I had was a 1911 with four mags worth of munitions. Fucked wasn't succinct enough a description for my situation, I thought bitterly.

CRACK!

My head shot up, my pupils dilating as blood sloshed around in my ears. My side screamed, but I forced it down, choked on it, as my shaking hands firmed up around my gun. 'Focus. Focus. Come on... focus', I chanted to myself, 'There are people trying to kill you. You need to keep your wits long enough to kill them first.'

I could hear gunfire going back and forth nearby, but I shied away from sticking my head around the edge. In the distance I could hear the roar of a diesel engine and the cracking of cobblestones under treads. There was a tank nearby somewhere and after I saw one of those boxy clunkers tear up a squad of Gallians with a heavy machine gun I wasn't going to poke my head out if I didn't have to. Not until I had eyes on it.

The alley I was crouching in was narrow enough to hide in pretty well. This place was surprisingly clean. No trash that I could see. It was a blessing. The last thing I needed was to have the hole in me get infected. I wanted to bandage it, but I didn't dare loosen the vest. It did well enough keeping me alive that I was too scared to open a gap enough to do more than shove a gauze pad in. The medical kit on my belt was compact, but it had the necessities to fix me up as best I could, including a few syrettes of morphine that I'd already taken a hit of. It helped numb the pain, barely.

I hugged my rifle tight before glancing around. The street was empty, and I didn't hear the tank anywhere. Looked safe enough to cross. There was intermittent gunfire, but it was moving away from me I think.

I hope. I lifted up the '44, ignoring the sharp spike of lancing fire in my side as I slid out of cover. The street itself was lined with abandoned sandbags, and I tried to hug those as much as I could as I slipped across as low to the ground as I could crouch. The pain was... not insignificant, but I was adjusting.

There were Imps in the distance, down the street but facing away from me. They were shooting at someone, but I don't know who. Probably militia. Hopefully not civvies, but I'd seen plenty of that too. Especially the dark haired ones. Those... died ugly. Better not to think about it. Not now. I could have nightmares about that shit later, assuming there was one.

It was then that I heard the rumbling of the tank again, this time getting closer. I ducked down behind one of the sandbag barricades, dropping back instead of pushing forward. Where was it? My head shot around as my heart hammered in my chest. The shaking was back, and I couldn't stop it this time.

That's when I saw it, cresting over a low wall, the already shattered brickwork disintegrating under it's vicious treads, chasing a dozen or so Gallians, cutting them down with it's HMG, the tracers leaving steaming holes in living flesh. The cannon reported, and the crater it left rained gore.

I abandoned all pretense of stealth and ran, sprinting all out across the street hoping beyond hope it didn't see me. The HMG roared, and I heard the screams of dying men as I hit the apex of my stride, dropping into a baseball slide behind the edge of a building opposite where I started. I fell, tumbling onto my chest and I all but dived behind the wall, scrambling away from the gun that was ripping into the militiamen just down the street.

"Ngh!" I grit my teeth so hard they ground as a nail of absolute agony punched through me. Sidled against the wall, sitting as I tried to make myself as small as I could, I seized as I almost bit my tongue off to stop the scream from leaving my lips. My hand shot to my wound, and it came back hot and wet with fresh blood, bright red and leaking down my vest in a fresh torrent.

The tank was coming closer. I heard the boom of it's cannon again, the rattling of it's gun, and more screaming. Tears tracked from my eyes from how hard I was trying not to let the white hot pain I was feeling override my senses, and I forced myself to inch to the edge. I had to see if it was coming, if I had to run, to hide. I glanced back, and I saw it. Fuck me, I saw it. Impossibly huge with two main guns, I watched as it rolled forward on massive treads before coming to a stop. Imperial troops with rifles were running up and down the street, and I could see more Gallian militia in the distance taking up positions behind the rubble, exchanging fire back and forth.

The tank paused, and I almost slipped back, afraid that it had seen me, but no, it started to turn, the two massive cannons on it's front slowly inching away from where I hid to point down into the town square. I let loose a soft breath. It rolled forward a bit, angling away from me. That didn't solve the issue of the Imperial troops that had taken up position on the street closest to me, but they were hiding behind sandbags, shooting at unseen enemies with their backs to me. I was safe.

But I could see that I was alone in that assessment. Across the way, hiding behind a blown out truck were two militia, one with a red scarf over her hair, and a plainclothes with a rifle, maybe a volunteer. They couldn't move with the tank there. They were stuck largely in the open, relying more on the tank's poor peripheral vision for concealment than anything else. Worse, with the Imps flush around it they were standing in front of a firing line that hadn't noticed them more on sheer luck than anything.

It was a bad position, and I could see it in their eyes that they knew it too. I could just imagine it. They run? They head straight into an entrenched wall of guns. They try to fight it out? Tank turns and kills them. Rock and a hard place. Staying probably wasn't an option either, and circling around... the Imperials had already turned this town into a maze of rubble, and going back meant trying to dodge Imp reinforcements coming up from the way I'd just left.

They were stuck, and with that tank ripping up the far end of the square, it was only a matter of time before their luck ran out. The clock was ticking down.

I was in a good position, behind the Imperial positions and their tank and on the opposite side of the road. I was safe, as much as I could be, but they weren't. I took a deep breath. I thought about it, about helping, but in the end I decided against it. What could I do against a tank? Here I was, in a place where I could run and live, even if they wouldn't. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't right, but it was smart. It was the smart thing to do, and besides, you know what they say.

Life is tragic.

I moved to stand, painful as it was, and that was enough. I glanced out, and the girl was looking right at me. She motioned back to the guy behind her, and he turned to look at me too. I stared back, wincing as the hole in my side bit me again, my eyes narrowed, blurred with tears. I don't need this shit. All I had to do was fall back. I was hurt. Nobody would blame me. But... I hesitated.

Isn't that what courage is? To act in the face of danger, of fear, in order to do the right thing? Or was I just being stupid? I was choosing to leave them to die. I was choosing to walk the easy path, to ignore what I thought I should do, what needed to be done, in order to hide. It's easy, I think, to believe that, to tell yourself that you had to look out for number one, that life was hard, and unfair, and wrong. If I left now, I would live, probably, and they would most likely die. I would be responsible for that. I would have to carry that weight.

Even as I realized it, I knew I couldn't shoulder it. I lived an easy life, so much as it could be called. A good life, safe from... from this. I called myself a man, and I told myself I could do this if I had to. Was I a hypocrite? Could I accept that? Could I wake up tomorrow and look myself in the eye, knowing that? Could I live like that? As a man who walked away just so he could keep on going one more day?

No, I knew. If I did, what would I be worth then? I drew in a shaky breath, gritting my teeth from the pain in my side. I was going to do this. I wasn't just going to run away, not now. Not from this. But the pain... was distracting. It lessened me, and I needed to be able to move, to focus, to do what I needed to without adding another factor into an already slapdash plan.

I fished out another syrette before sliding it under my skin and feeling the rush of numbness start to gnaw away at the edges of my wound as I turned back to the two behind the truck and held my hand up. Universal sign for wait. Then I tightened up the strap on my StG, so much so that it was flush against my chest instead of loose, like it had been. I didn't want it rattling around. My hand went around my knife.

There were three positions that the soldiers were in. One on each side of the tank, and one a bit farther back, covered by the rear of the tank itself. The one in the back had a man working a radio, alone, while the other two positions had two and three troops each, firing out across the town square. The idea was simple. Knife the radioman, take his grenades, toss them into the two nests and get around the corner before the tank could turn enough to ruin my shit.

So much could go wrong, I knew it, but I didn't think about it. I could... I could do this, help them, save those two. I owed it to the Gallians to at least try. They helped me when I was on the ropes before and now I couldn't shy away. I was a lot of things, but not a coward. Not now.

I steeled myself and slid out low, hugging the wall and inching around behind the radioman in the back. It was surprisingly easy, considering how much shit was on the ground crunching around under my boots. I got close, closer, my knife was in my hand and then-

The radioman looked right at me. He froze, and his eyes went wide. I dashed forward, just as his mouth opened-

The blade flashed-

His yell died in a gurgle as I rammed the single-edged dagger home clean into his throat, my eyes boring into his as I watched the light fade. He tried to speak, tried to scream, lips flapping open and shut as he weakly gripped at my arm but the knife had cut clean through his neck, and all that escaped were a few bloody bubbles. He slumped, and I ducked down behind the sandbags.

It was fast. So fast. I tried not to look at him as I rifled through his uniform. Finding the grenade pouch wasn't that hard, really. It was on the side of his pack, but it took a few moments, moments that I spent worriedly glancing at the two positions only a few meters away, afraid one of those riflemen would glance back and blow my whole plan to hell.

That didn't happen. They were too caught up in the firefight with the militia across the street to notice me. I got lucky there, but I ran into a snag trying to implement step two. The man I killed only had one grenade.

I growled an unintelligible curse. Things were never easy, were they? I drew the grenade, unscrewing the cap at the bottom and readying myself. There was no going back. There was only action, only purpose. Violence in motion. I threw the grenade, the long-handled explosive flying true, landing square in the middle of a group of Imps. It bounced off the pack of one, and he glanced down at it as I fell behind the barricade.

I heard a scream, and then a blast, and as I rolled to my feet carnage was what greeted me. I'd tossed the grenade into the far nest of soldiers, and between the wall of the building and the tank, the blast had been amplified. One man was just gone, pieces of him littering the ground in great, bloody chunks as another lay there, his insides blown out across the pavement as everything below his waist ended in bits of bone and strips of flesh. His helmet had been blown off, and his face... his eyes stared lidless into the sky.

I looked away.

My hands were already moving as the tank turned away from us, hunting, while I raised the 44 at the three in the opposite nest. My finger flipped the fire selector to 'Full', and I emptied out the mag. The two militia that had been hiding burst out of cover, taking wild potshots while the second nest of enemy soldiers descended into chaos. They tried to jump over their cover to put something between them and my assault rifle. Only two made it. One just slumped as I drew a bead on him, stitching him up with automatic fire and leaving him slumped against the sandbags. The others made it, but were open to the militia opposite us, and with the tank out of position?

Things went wrong for them. Quickly.

As for the two Gallians? Clean getaway. They dashed past the edge of the alley, and I moved to follow them, swapping out the spent mag and locking in my last fresh one as I cleared the fence and the road as a whole. That tank was still probably wondering what the hell just happened, heh.

I pointedly ignored the fact that I'd just blown two men to pieces, knifed another and gunned a fourth down.

The two were waiting for me. Looking at them... Jesus did they look young. Despite the battle grime and the dust and the dirt, they looked like what, late teens, early twenties at best? Fuck. But then, things aren't so different back home, are they? Kids signed up to join the military all the time, and this is their home. Would I be so quick to judge if it was mine? No. Respect where it was due.

"Thank you," The girl started, "for helping us. For a second there I thought we were goners." It went unsaid that she thought I was going to leave them. I could see it in her eyes. I didn't hold that against her though. I was going to, initially.

Still, it helped ease the pain. I gave her a weary grin as I plopped down onto a nearby crate, trying to hide the wince. The other, the man in plainclothes, gave me a nod of gratitude.

"Yeah. We were in a tight spot. That tank came out of nowhere." He smiled brightly. "I'm Welkin, and this is Alicia. She's with the town watch." Then he really looked at me. I mean, really looked. "You're hurt."

It wasn't a question. He turned to the girl, Alicia.

"Alicia, he's hurt." The words brought the girl over, and she pursed her lips. "Do you have any Ragnaid left?"

"No," She said, checking a pocket on her belt and frowning before glancing towards the far end of the alley, "I don't. We do have a militia aid station near the main gate though. What's left of the Watch is massing there to try and hold the line while the rest of the town finishes evacuating. If nothing else we'll have something we can use for him there." She turned to look at me. "Can you move?"

"Kinda have to. I'll manage." I gave her a dour grin. She nodded and turned back to the man.

"Then I'll head back to my house and grab Martha and Isara, and meet you there." He said after a moment of thought. "Plus something that should help with the evacuation."

"Alright. I'll dig in my heels and hold the line, try to stall them till then. Good luck, Welkin. Stay safe."

He nodded to her with a grin and ran off down the alley. I turned to the girl, Alicia, and stood.

"Shall we?" I asked with a hiked eyebrow. Her features smoothed over and she checked her rifle.

"Yeah." I let her take point. She knew the town better than I ever could, and it showed. We didn't run into any more Imps, not for lack of attention though. Probably regrouping somewhere before making another push into the town. Things had gotten ugly, fast. Looking around, there were a lot of dead civilians. Men. Women. Kids. Didn't seem like the Imps were discriminating, and a lot of these people were shot running away. More though were lined up against a wall and executed, Nazi style. It was clear what was going on here, and the Imps? Well, they weren't discriminating.

I turned away, facing Alicia, whose head was locked forward, not looking at the bodies. It wasn't lost on me that these were people she knew, she cared about. I didn't comment. I couldn't. It wasn't my place, but seeing this? I suddenly felt far less sorry about what I did to those men.

Something about that sat unwell with me, but I shook it off. This wasn't the time. I couldn't afford to get lost now, and I knew it, so instead I focused on the girl in front of me, and the hammering of our boots upon the stone.