Well, it could be worse. Walter thought to himself as the line of tracks rumbled out the main gate, on their way to the frontlines. The guns slapped onto hastily welded turrets, some of which were occasionally swirling to one side like nervous ticks.

There’s a lot to be nervous about.

It had been a handful of months since he arrived at the base, and the situation on the frontlines had not improved since that time, if the seemingly continuous stream of broken kriegmeisters and sullen & depressed faces were any indication.

The silver lining was that it meant more resources and materials to work with, as there’s a consistent shortage of spare parts to fix up the kriegmeisters, and with meaningful reinforcements and resupply being nowhere in sight due to some internal political bickering in the neighboring estates… well, the stupid idea of arming the humble tractors began to seem almost reasonable.

Reasonable in the sense of getting rid of some undesirables and problematic people, Walter was under no illusions as to which category he’s in. With a sigh he crawled back into the turret of this track and shut the hatch. His own kriegmeister still not fixed as others had much higher priority. In any case, it wasn’t as if he would make much of a difference in a kriegmeister.

“Let’s go.” He muttered the order with a weariness that mildly surprised even him. He hasn’t been doing all that much in terms of physical work.

“Ja.” The driver acknowledged in a resigned voice as he gunned the engine and the command track rumbled forth, joining the rest of tracks on their way to almost certain death.

It’s hard not to be pessimistic about all of this. None of this has been tested, Not even the theories (whatever babblings of the shards of the other world is of no relevance here and now).There was simply not enough time for that nonsense. Heck, the idea of testing a new weapon system outside of the field of battle had been an idea of the shards, and equally nonsensical. The chaos of the battlefield is a far cry from the heavily sanitized tournaments that the nobility loves to amuse themselves with, just another part of their debauchery…

In any case, there wasn’t enough time or resources for that kind of thing, nor the inclination from the leadership, who balked at the concept of cuddling cannon fodder like that, not to mention almost everyone else’s distaste at the concept of the ‘armored struggle bus’ in the first place.

As the ceaseless rumble and clanking of the tracks continued on their way Walter began to ease in his seat and reflect on what they had accomplished so far. From the outside perspective it was childish: with turrets nicked from stationary redoubts and other fortifications, guns pilfered from the kriegmeisters who had given up the ghost, and other random dudads homebrewed in a way that’s beyond the cringe… but that’s just the problem with appearance, and outside of the eyes of their betters none of that matters.

According to the shards though, these lumbering examples weren't that bad, a bit oversized and overweight perhaps, but it’s a different world and more relevantly a far more different infrastructure and combined arms dynamic… Well, the part about the combined arms remains to be seen. In this case the shards were of little help, and the visions of abstractions of a world devoid of kriegmeisters as usual wasn’t useful.

“Are the forces in position?” Therese asked over the comms. The question snapped him out of his fruitless musings, and dragged him back to the mission at hand.

“We are.” He replied as he squinted at one of the displays, where the IFF signals of the tracks were mostly in position. Low tech as the tracks are, they are reasonably fast in comparison to the infinitely more expensive kriegmeisters, at least, over long distances. Burst jumps and jet boosts tend to skew the equation on the battlefield side though…

Now the question remains as they are of any use in the actual fighting.

“Good. May you die with purpose.” Therese replied crisply as she cut the link. Walter assured that she was also in position. The situation has deteriorated to the point that she was the only kriegmeister around that could be spared.

Walter hopes that she’s right. The shards screamed the opposite but for all its imbecilic screeching it had little control over the matter. For all his patheticness Walter still knew and experienced more actual combat than the shards, and after a while, as always, the shards conceded the point: experience trumps theory, at least on the small scale.

It was still needlessly annoying though, which already makes the waiting more tedious than necessary. Thankfully the ramblings were only a problem in his head, everyone else simply had to deal with dreaded anticipation that comes with the waiting. Dying glorious in battle is a privilege reserved for their betters in the kriegmeisters, not for the common fodder.

But duty is god, and so they stood.

After what seemed to be forever but probably was only a handful of hours when a voice cracked over the comms.

“Enemy kriegmeister sighted.”

The tracks suddenly became animated as their crews began the process of target acquisition. Turrets turn with the whines of the gears and barrels tilt upwards. After a handful of seconds a series of booms echoed as the guns fired.

“Hit!” The words echoed from the various gunners as they found their mark. The actual sounds of the rounds impacting being drowned out by the general chaotic sounds of battles, the din of the tracks moving, the crunching of vegetation, and the beeping of various machinery and displays.

As he popped open the hatch and looked out he dared hope for the best, only for said hope to be dashed to pieces immediately: the enemy kriegmeister was barely scratched, and it looked merely inconvenienced if anything. Even as the tracks began to disperse the kriegmeister brought its gun to bear.

Once again he felt that sense of pained helplessness as he watched the tracks being blown up one by one, even as they desperately fired back while evading as best as they could. Yet it was as if they were throwing pebbles at the mountain. Bigger pebbles than before perhaps, and sometimes even having an effect, but pebbles all the same.

They were certainly living up to the name of the struggle. Not really the armored part yet, and it looks like he’ll never get there either.

Before he knew it he saw the massive gun barrels of the enemy pointing at his track, and even as the driver made a split second turn he knew it was too late as the guns fired.

It was an almost miss, one of the rounds slammed into the front of the track and obliterated the entirety of the front. The turret was thrown into the air as if it was a child's toy. As luck would have had it Walter was thrown out of the turret, slamming into the ground with an impact that most certainly shattered bones.

As he lay there in pain and wished for the sweet release of death, he saw the enemy kriegmeister staggered back, rocked by an explosion from some powerful weapon.

Took her long enough. He thought to himself as he lost consciousness and everything faded to nothing…

------​

“Congratulations, you failed.” Therese said in a cheerful mocking tone. Walter simply stared back at her with dead and empty eyes.

It wasn’t as if he could do much else, given his body, or rather what’s left of it, was wrapped up in a bio cast. While normally someone of his status would have been given the use of one of the more advanced regen-pods he was still disliked enough by Marshal Kurt that he was denied such a privilege. Only those who won glory on the battlefield are entitled to such luxuries, so the reasoning went.

It was all fine with him. They weren’t wrong about him being a failure. At the end of the day it was still Therese who fired the killing blows, thus preserving the status quo.

“It’s still too early for you to die.” She continued, “You still have some unfinished business in this world. Your honor, your dignity, your vision.” The last two words came out in an almost whisper, as if she doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

He merely snorted, then coughed as the simple action brought quite a bit of pain to his chest. She simply nodded, as if understood what he wanted to say.

“It’s going to be a while until you can leave that casing. Don’t worry, your little vanity project is safe… for the moment.” She frowned. “The supply situation is still in rather tight straits, to put it mildly, but fodder and scraps are plentiful so Kurt wants to put that into use somehow. Be glad there’s a lot of people wanting to die the good death.”

With that she turned and left the field hospital room, leaving Walter to stew in his thoughts along with the shards. It was just as well since the shards had been raging a storm, sending stabs of pain all over his head and causing the headache of the ages.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, they weren’t supposed to be annihilated, panzerkampfwagens are supposed to be so superior as a concept that they could close the technological gap of a thousand years.

Then again, it’s not the end, but the beginning. There will be more chances, and perhaps in the end he might even get what he wished for: a chance at redemption.

For some reason the shards weren’t too happy with that.