THE FIRST HALF OF JANUARY, UNIFIED YEAR 1928, REPAIR YARD, EASTERN ARMY DISTRICT REAR
The Imperial Army had many captains.
Among them, there was one sad captain who, after barely being allowed any time at all in the capital over New Year’s, was cruelly thrust back into the East before his champagne glass had even run dry. That man’s name was Captain Ahrens, the leader of Salamander Kampfgruppe’s armored forces.
Being worked to the bone comes with the territory for middle management, no matter where someone may be, but Ahrens also had the privilege of being overworked as a cog in an organization.
It was time for redeployment to the East, and it was the middle management on the ground who were left to implement the whims of higher-ups.
Thus, before Captain Ahrens knew it, he was being shuttled off to the East at breakneck speed. On top of that, while the Kampfgruppe’s main force was ushered along to a spot near Eastern Command—as if borne along by an angry wave—due to the state of their tanks, the armored unit was held back near the rear, alone.
If Captain Ahrens had been the type who preferred to avoid the front lines, he would have likely celebrated and counted himself lucky. But unfortunately for Ahrens, he took his role as a tanker very seriously. Furthermore, he was also the type of man who was extremely well suited to the Salamander Kampfgruppe.
“Why are we the only ones stuck back here?!” cried Captain Ahrens after realizing that he had been left behind at the eastern repair yard.
“This makes no sense! Just give me different tanks! I’ll use them better than anyone else out there will!” he said. “What do you mean, there aren’t any reserves?! Then just fix the running gear on these for now and send us back to the front! The rest of the Kampfgruppe is already there!”
Captain Ahrens was indignant. He ranted and raved. “Faster! Do something!” He was desperate to see the timeline for getting his unit back to the front pushed forward even a millimeter. However, he could butt his head against that bureaucratic wall as hard as he liked. It was getting him nowhere.
In the first week of January, Captain Ahrens and the bureaucratic structure soon found themselves at loggerheads.
“Sonofabitch… Why does nothing go the way it should? When is it going to be my turn?” The tank commander threatened and wheedled, intent on getting his way, but under the circumstances, he was forced to recognize that it was hopeless. After all…
Captain Ahrens chewed silently on the butt end of his cigarette as he took a good look around. The yard was already piled high with countless vehicles, all marked for repair.
Whether they were husks good only for spare parts or damaged tanks that would likely be refurbished, the repair yard had essentially become a graveyard.
However, despite how early it was in the year, a myriad of repair staff were already busy at work. It was all hands on deck around the clock, with the men working in shifts. They had even brought out real chocolate, sent in by special shipment—probably to keep up morale. It showed how serious the higher-ups were about getting those tanks out.
With so many people and parts available, Captain Ahrens had felt hopeful at first. As long as they had parts and workers to fall back on, the repairs needed for his tanks should have been relatively easy.
To his surprise, however, Eastern Army Command was harder up than even Ahrens had imagined, for tanks and fuel both. All these engineers and all this fuel were still a far cry from what was needed to meet demand.
Efficiency had been thrown out the window. This facility for the recovery and refurbishment of abandoned tanks had long since been transformed into a round-the-clock hub of activity.
As a result, the eastern army repair yard was already pulling its hair out to secure tanks for its own forces. They had no interest in fielding requests from an outsider.
“Depending on our schedule, we might be able to discuss the possibility next month…but I wouldn’t expect much.”
The fearless Captain Ahrens, commander of Salamander Kampfgruppe’s armored force, frowned, ready to scream, but he could see things from their point of view. General Zettour had uprooted the whole force and transferred it to Ildoa, leaving the eastern army’s tank situation strained, to say the least. With a deficit in armored forces and a grave shortfall in numbers, Ahrens understood why the eastern army would be greedy for every last tank it could get its hands on.
With so much on their plates already, the yard hardly wanted to add more unnecessary work to their roster. And besides, Salamander Kampfgruppe was part of a force that had been taken out of the East and sent into Ildoa. Not that the Salamander Kampfgruppe had done anything wrong, but the facts were the facts. People were already waiting their turn in the East, making them none too keen to let the Salamander Kampfgruppe, which had only just returned from southern operations, cut to the front of the line.
Thanks to the General Staff’s stamp of approval, Ahrens’s unit technically came at the top of the totem pole. But as his unit needed a full overhaul rather than just simple repairs, there was only so much the yard could do.
“Isn’t there some way…?” Captain Ahrens pleaded. The yard inspector simply pursed his lips and turned away. Ahrens had his answer.
The days passed, gloomy and uneventful, with Captain Ahrens chafing at the bit. Once he heard there was fierce fighting on the front, he couldn’t take it anymore. When he was told of the Federation Army’s attack on January 14—what would later come to be known as Operation Rising Dawn—the pressure reached a boiling point and Captain Ahrens exploded.
He was, quite literally, bursting with fighting spirit. Understandable, of course. Ahrens was a panzer commander down to the bone. What respectable tanker could stomach lounging about in the rear while there was fighting to be done? No, tankers were a particularly proactive breed of Homo sapiens—the kind that treasure direct action and saw boldness and intrepidity as the ultimate virtues.
With the typical directness of a tanker, Ahrens approached every door available in search of tanks. Obviously, he would have preferred his own trusty tanks, but seeing as they weren’t available… Officers accustomed to the front lines tend to look for whatever they can get, and this was no exception. Ahrens was going to have to make do with whatever he could procure on-site. And the truth was, there was one particular inventory that had captured Captain Ahrens’s eye.
It was not, however, the yard’s. After all, driving tanks directly for long distances tended to damage running gear. The inventory Ahrens was after was one found much closer to the front and the unit’s main force.
If there were just tanks waiting around to fall into Ahren’s lap, then surely the Empire couldn’t have been so hard up in the first place, could they? That is a fair point. But Salamander Kampfgruppe’s special status meant there was a supply source tailor-suited to their needs located exactly where they needed it. Specifically…Ahrens was thinking of the inventory under urgent maintenance at the arsenal attached to Eastern Army Command.
Eastern Command’s secret stash.
Captain Ahrens had quickly sniffed out this prize.
Naturally, this armory was one of Eastern Army Command’s prized possessions. To be precise, after the armored units were redeployed and command was left in the lurch, they had gone around to every corner they could to make ends meet, collecting damaged tanks and repairing captured equipment in order to steadily build up their meager armored force into something halfway decent.
A single tactical unit, at least… In the end, however, they only managed to scrounge up less than a company’s worth of tanks.
If Ahrens asked to borrow those tanks, it was pretty obvious where they would tell him to shove it. But that didn’t matter right now. All Captain Ahrens cared about at the moment was that there was a company of tanks just sitting there, ripe for the taking. The details could be worked out later. Ahrens had already been clamoring for command to lend him those tanks even before the Federation attack had started. Could he just borrow them? Just for a little while? The real waste was for them to just sit there not being used, wasn’t it?
On the fourteenth, when shelling began, Ahrens had begged his hardest. If they were already using the tanks, that would have been the end of the story, but if they weren’t, then by all means, let Ahrens have a go at it!
But no. Once it became clear that neither telephoning nor telegrams were going to get Ahrens anywhere, then, by God, like the true man of action that he was, Ahrens was just going to have to go in person.