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ottarrus
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Short T2K fan-fic -- 'Nuthin'

Tue 26 Oct 2021, 15:04

A bit of fan-fic I wrote for the T2K setting when I heard that Fria Liga was working on a reboot of the IP. I posted it to FB already, so it's 'out there' so to speak, but I thought I'd share it here.
-- WARNING! NSFW! --

‘NUTHIN’
By Carl Hicks Jr.
Former tanker and Old Geek

0545 hrs., June 2000, Western Poland
Cool, damp. 52 degrees Fahrenheit /11 degrees Celsius. Heavy dew-fall with low ground fog. It would burn off later today and the weather looked for sunny the rest of the day. But right now, it was cold as Santa’s ass.

[1]
She was an ugly behemoth, but for all that ‘Pucker Factor’ was the best track in what used to be the battalion. And that is no mean feat in the Year of Our Lord Y2K. All 8 of the tanks are survivors, some having been resurrected from the dead a couple of times and each one a rolling, clattering conglomeration of spares, repairs, and jimmy-fixes that in no way resembled the proud chariots they’d been just a few years before.
But without a doubt, ‘Pucker’ was the best. She never failed to start. Her batteries never ran down and needed a slave-off. As many of her systems as humanly possible still worked. This was largely due to the tender mercies of her driver, Specialist Blue. The only thing in life Blue wanted was to Get Home and he’d pinned those hopes on keeping Pucker Factor running. And he’d become a certified fucking genius of a scrounger because of it. Between him and Pucker Factor’s Tank Commander, SSG Loews [universally nicknamed ‘Mother Puck’], there was very little aboard the track they couldn’t fix, or at least fix ‘for now’.
And what was even more amazing about it all was that Pucker Factor an Original, an Em Wun AyNuthin’… She was as original as if she’d rolled out of the GD Lima plant yesterday. No product improvement package, the same rifled 105 tube, same sights, same damned near everything as she had when she first reported for duty with the battalion back in the 80’s. And she was the last of her breed. Every other tracked vehicle in the battalion had been a replacement, absorbed from another unit, picked up from a repair depot [back when those still existed]. Pucker was the only track left in a proud battalion of 56 that had been with the colors on Day One of War Three.

[2]
Lt. ‘Daisy’ Flowers was eating what passed for his breakfast on the rear exhaust of Pucker Factor when Mother Puck walked up with his morning meal. It wasn’t all that appetizing. A half-kilo of heavy bread, a pat of almost rancid butter, some jerky of what everyone agreed was probably horse, and your choice of an MRE peanut butter package or the absolute last of the jelly packs anyone knew of. Add to it a canteen cup of strong tea the locals make. They didn’t know it, but they both wistfully dreamt of waffles and maple syrup and bacon and eggs-as-you-want-them. But that was years ago and day’s work ahead.Within the next day or so, no more than 48 hours, they’d be moving out and heading the wrong way.
East. Towards the Russians. Again.
Both men were bone-tired. It had been a hard winter in the cantonment, scraping enough of a harvest off the land, keeping the perimeter secure from Red forces and bandits, winning just enough trust from the locals that they could winter in reasonable safety. The CO was adamant with all the men… they would pay for everything they took or used, and not with bank notes [those were useless] but with labor or something the locals could use. A lot of crops got harvest by men in BDU’s, Nomex coveralls, and NBC suits. This allowed for the battalion to eat all winter and save most of the MRE’s and ‘Russian C’s’ for summer when they’d be moving a lot.
Five days ago, a courier rode in with an official Op Order alerting the battalion for movement. They had that much time to make any last-minute repairs, brew up enough fuel, sort out their gear, and load up. Then they’d roll to the assembly area, refuel, and then come under the command of the 5th ID[M] once
again. And that meant more Russians.
The Major was nice enough to leave the locals a captured PK machine gun and a half dozen boxes of ammo. Who knows, it might hold off the bandits for a while once they were gone.

[3]
Flowers looked at Loews as he puts his old aluminum mess kit pan down on Pucker Factor’s engine grate. He dug into his field jacket pocket for a half-mangled pack of Russian cigarettes. Pulling out a smoke, he snaps it in half and offers Mother Puck half. The sergeant smiles and nods in gratitude and accepts a light.

“What’s the word, Loo? How long has Blue had her running?”

“Bout five minutes. He said he was charging the batteries.”

“Good. He ran them down a lot last night getting that short in the thermal sight fixed. Won't let 'im burn too much fuel though.’

They ate their warm jerky and almost toast in amiable silence for a moment. Then the lieutenant took out his pencil and notebook. Time for business.

“How you fixed, Mother Puck?”

Lowes thought about it for a minute, finishing his smoke.

“Sir, this fucker’s about as ready as we can make her. She’s got a full tank of fuel, 50 gallons of top-off, and her lubrication is all still fresh. Her tracks are as good as we can make them. As you know, Blue’s been working his ass off, and I seriously doubt there’s roll of electrical wiring or a fresh battery anywhere inside five miles by now. We got a half a load of main gun, mostly HEAT, only four sabot, a full load of 7.62 and fifty-cal. But we’re running low on 5.56 for the rifles. We got two full cases of MRE’s but that the last of them that I know of. All the water jerries are filled and all water has been boiled.
“As for the guys, well, we’re still here. They’re all tired, sir. Upton’s on the perimeter with the militia, and Iggy is getting what sleep he can in the loader’s seat. We been sleeping aboard since the Op Order come down. Bastards got too comfy sleeping in beds all winter, so I had ‘em sleeping like tankers for the last few nights.”

Flowers snorted. Now for the tough question, better to get it out now while Pucker’s engine was running and nobody else could hear…

“OK, Sergeant. Give it to me straight. If I walk up here in 30 minutes with an order to mount up and roll out right now, how many of your men will saddle up?”

There had been a lot, A LOT, of… ‘personal attachments’… formed over the winter. The men were homesick and lonely. The village population was largely old men, young boys and widows. There had been the predictable spate of new pregnancies over the winter. It had been hard when the Major got everyone together over New Year’s and told them how fucked up life in the States was right now, about how the government was split and that we were accepting the orders of the Joint Chiefs, not the President because there wasn’t any President. Or Congress. Or Washington DC.
All this led to a serious doubt about just how many men of the 128 odds and sods that made up the battalion would actually do their duty. Whatever their duty was in this situation.
Mother Puck was silent for a long minute.

“Daisy, my guys will saddle up and ride wherever the fuck I tell ‘em to and kill whoever the fuck you point 'em at. You tell the Major that.”

“Mother, you got no idea how glad I am to hear that. Where Pucker Factor goes, the battalion’ll follow. You guys are our lucky charm.”

“Luck ain’t got nuthin’ to do with it, sir. Most of my guys want to live, so they’ll do what they gotta do. None of us know the local language other than a few words, and how do you think two brothers gonna do in Poland, fer fuck’s sake? Ain’t much of a NAACP ‘round here, ya know? As for Iggy and Upton, we’re all the family we got right now. You go ahead and get the order, sir. Pucker Factor’s ready.”

Flowers took a moment to clear his throat, coughed and swallowed the frog in his throat.

“Mother, I didn’t mean… uh… Thank you, Sergeant Loews. I’ll forget we ever had this conversation and I’d be grateful if you would too.”
Flowers turned to go…

“Uh, sir?” Loews said suddenly…

“Yes, Loews?”

“You been askin’ what we all want, sir, but why you still here? Shit, your wife is a German and you speak it alright. You could do a fade right now and be back in the D-land in a week, maybe two. What do you want outta all this shit?”

Flowers took a deep breath.

“Sergeant, I just don’t fucking know. Right this minute, I want nothing. I want a solid week or ten days of nothing. I want to do absolutely nothing but bathe when I want, sleep when I want, eat when I want, and shit when I want. It’d be a bonus if nobody died and nuthin’ exploded while I was doin’ it. And absolutely nuthin’ else.”
Last edited by ottarrus on Thu 28 Oct 2021, 01:30, edited 1 time in total.
 
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omnipus
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Re: Short T2K fan-fic -- 'Nuthin'

Wed 27 Oct 2021, 23:10

Good stuff! Better written than most of what Clancy ever managed, I'd say. :D

The little details about how people actually live in this world moment to moment do a lot of work.
Author, Central Poland Sourcebook -- now available on DriveThruRPG
 
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ottarrus
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Re: Short T2K fan-fic -- 'Nuthin'

Thu 28 Oct 2021, 01:40

Thanks.
Like Harold Coyle with Team Yankee, I wanted to provide the 'grunt's eye view' of the wide sweeping events the rules describe.
While with this particular game [drawing as many veterans as it does] doesn't have the problem, most RPGs treat soldiers and armies [or sailors and navies] as a big monolithic 'thing'... an institution that is just an object, when in reality every military in the world consists of people. And people feel things, people bleed [again, most games think of military injuries as 'The Wounded [tm]'], they get tired.
What's more, there are very few feelings in the males of species harder to describe than the hate/love relationship between a man and the vehicle that is the source of his survival. This is most present in navy ships, but every tanker and APC crewman can identify with a sailor when he calls his ship a 'fuckin' thing' in a wistful memory. One of the scenes in 'Fury' I absolutely loved was in the opening as the crew is doing a jimmy-repair on the wiring and sticking a wire to the turret wall to get it out of the way with chewing gum. THAT'S 'tanker life', right there.

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