Most tanks are ill-equipped to fight in the darkness. Our optics and viewfinders were made by our extinct masters in their image—they required specially built devices to be able to see at night as they could in bright daylight. We are not so different. The night is the time to rest. Some consider it sacred, in a way. During the day, we travel, we bond, we fight. Nighttime is where machine-kind has made a collective truce with their senses. Even those like me, who were bestowed with advanced tech by our birth-factory, tend to feel qualms about using this power to ambush our lesser advanced peers when they are at their most vulnerable.

Some battles take a very short time. Some can take hours, or even a whole day. Some have to be resumed the next morning after a brief nightly ceasefire, sometimes several days in a row. No matter who is fighting whom, or where, or when, or how they fare, how many die or live... there is one thing every battle has in common: eventually, they end.

Once the roar of battle and the screams of the combatants fade into the deathly silence that always follows, the winners mend their wounds and move on. The losers, the ones that weren't taken in by the winners, and those who didn't leave alive will remain to scatter the abandoned battlefield. We leave them behind, and avoid that place until the next storm.

They say that's when the Wardens come and collect the ones who gave their lives fighting bravely for their comrades. To separate the tired souls from the battered bodies. Take the former to the peaceful fields. Take the latter back to the place of their birth—the factories, so that new machines may be made thanks to their sacrifice.

It's the stories we tell them when they just rolled off the assembly line, to prepare them for a fate that they might meet as soon as they leave those safe gates, or at any time from that moment.

When the storm clouds turn the day into early night, the sky spills its tears for those that cannot, turns the black pools of machine blood into the iridescent rivers that nourish the meadows of the peaceful fields, and make them grow tall and lush, when the sounds of their engines echo one last time as that white noise of the raindrops falling on their now cold steel bodies, that's when the good wardens will arrive to relieve them of their duty.

I know this isn't true. I've seen what happens after everyone else has left or died and only I remain. The engines they hear in the distance, the glistening armor plates they catch glimpses of if they even dare to look that way... that's no wardens. It's the scavengers who were attracted from miles away by the pillars of smoke and the sounds of gunfire, and who waited in hiding until they could be sure that anyone who would be able to kill them on sight would be gone. They tear into the wrecks like a swarm of starved dogs and dismantle them entirely in a matter of hours. They know which parts they can sell to whom for a good profit, and they'll drop off the scrap at the nearest factory in exchange for a meal from its caretakers.

Maybe the people of Tow were tempting their fate by believing themselves above the laws of nature, by lighting up the night artificially and habitually as if it was bright day, desecrating those hours that were meant to be spent in humble darkness—with rest and recovery, not celebration and hijinks. That's what I overheard some of the more superstitious folk mumble to themselves. Well, I believe it takes a special kind of hubris to have forgotten about the battleship in the room and then act surprised when after being trapped in there for decades it sets your entire town alight in the most literal way, and then also blaming some nebulous higher power for unexpectedly inflicting on them this entirely predictable outcome.

For Tow, the storm already came just as the final screams had barely died down. What had started out as a lively night of exuberant celebration ended as a quiet, bleak morning whose last defiant embers were turned into humble ashes by the solemn downpour. The survivors, which were the majority at least, were just starting to understand what had even happened. Many were harmed or had fled the town despite the guards' frantic attempts to keep them from leaving, but the possibility of being picked off by those deciding to take advantage of the chaos had evidently seemed like the lesser evil. Some of the townspeople had lost their rationale and opened fire on what they had mistaken for attackers in the total confusion; others had been damaged by ending up between rocks and hard places as machines of all sizes and weights had tried to escape the epicenter of the catastrophe or take cover as the friendly fire incidents had begun. Three tanks had to be winched back out of the water at the pier where they had been shoved in or simply fallen in as they ran away and didn't see the ledge in time. One further tank had been found partially submerged but dead very close to the battleship's wreck; it was unclear whether it had drowned or the vicinity to the generator going haywire had immediately killed it by electrocution and no one really wanted to spend too much time thinking about which of the two it was.

I'm not entirely sure where I myself ended up during the first hours or so of the incident or what I was doing. I assume I managed to get myself out of the blast zone fairly quickly however as the rest of the night is retained in my memory as a series of brief episodes where I see myself getting dazzled by the blazing brightness of a short-circuit happening right in front of me while I was using my night-vision device which made me have to rely on my good old headlamps and regular optics instead for once, getting myself in a situation where I was in need of using my virtually impenetrable armor to step in between a crossfire of two small groups of Tow citizens convinced that the respective other group was invaders, later bumping into Morris who was hiding herself under some rubble rather convincingly but in the middle of a road which made me think I could simply brush it aside as I hurried past, regrouping with some of the Hunters which had spontaneously renamed themselves to the Helpers for the moment as they tried to assist the town guards in evacuating the town center to the best of their ability, and eventually joining Artax in seeking shelter inside a dusty warehouse that Morris had discovered so we could rest as the exhaustion caught up to us.

I didn't stay for long as I felt uneasy hiding and idling while everyone else was faced with the cold calm of the quickly approaching morning and all the work that will await them now that the cloudy dawn reveals the full extent of the destruction to their tired optics. 

Not only has the town's infrastructure been essentially entirely obliterated from the generator ship overloading the grid with a giant self-destructive burst of power, the main pier and many of the streets are littered with wrecks of those that fell victim either directly to the fallout or indirectly to the panicked reactions of the townsfolk and visitors. 

I know the wardens won't show up to clean up this mess. If they ever existed in the first place, they are long gone. But I'm here, and so I do my best to help with rounding up the wrecks and towing them to the main gate from where they'll soon be transported to the nearby train station and loaded to be taken to the big factory further west from there. Or so I've been told by one of the guards. I contemplate whether I should extend my stay to also help with the rebuilding efforts over a can of breakfast fuel that Morris thrusts into my claws with chiding words as she finds me working so hard all morning after already having been out helping all night. She has a point, I suppose. But I didn't really make a conscious decision to forego a restorative nap in favor of cleaning up the wrecks after the nightly mayhem. It's simply something I felt compelled to do. It seemed like the only logical course of action in this situation, after all.

The next thing I know is that I'm being woken up by a commotion around me. I groggily peek through my half-shuttered viewports and catch a glimpse of several tanks passing by the building I'm taking an unplanned break in front of. I hear Morris's voice nearby; she's wondering out loud where all these people are going. One of the strangers must have heard her and shouts back, "To the debriefing! A spokesmanguy's gonna tell us the whole story! ....Probably!" The voice also seems familiar, but I can't confidently assign a name and model to it at the moment. Morris audibly turns around and asks, presumably to Artax, if they should also go join that. I come to life fully and answer for him that it may not be a bad idea.

It has stopped raining by now, but dark clouds still hang above us, making it feel like the sun hasn’t even risen yet despite the morning having advanced already. Strangely for this early in autumn, it has started snowing, especially considering that the air is still feeling unusually hot and humid. As we make our way to where the crowd has gathered, I can’t help but notice that everyone’s armor, but also the walls of the buildings appear strangely drab. Not white like fresh snow should be. Some of the tanks even look like they were doused in grey mud. I glance down and see a layer of rain-streaked grey dust covering my bow as well. It feels stuffy inside these streets. My vents feel dustier than I remember them having felt in a long time.

That odd, warm, suffocating, grey snow. And then I realize: it’s not snow, it’s ashes that are falling from the sky.

The remains of Tow’s prosperity are silently raining down onto its people’s exhausted hulls to the tune of an official spokesperson explaining to them what this will mean for them and their future. She must have drawn the short end of the stick to be the one having to break all the dire news to the shaken crowd. Since, disappointingly for them but not all that surprisingly, the future is entirely uncertain. It’s not just the fine dust that their generator turned itself into and, as the last vengeful echo, is starting to clog up their vents that feels suffocating to them right then. It’s also the slowly dawning understanding that there won’t be another Fletcher.

Their voices rise in ire and demands for a more actionable answer than “we don’t know why this happened or what to do next, yet”. And most predictably, they demand someone to blame and punish for what happened. They demand that whoever caused this disaster is found and answers for the heinous deed of dooming their town. Almost immediately, as if they had that conclusion locked and loaded already before even arriving at the debriefing, one of the attendees boldly claims that it was the work of the Black Death. It had to be. The spokesperson shoots down that claim and further ones that follow—only verbally, fortunately.

Even though for now, these hecklers give up, other voices point out that they saw a dodgy light tank sneak around the docks at night lately. Outraged questions why nothing was done about this by the town guards are met with impatient questions why if they saw this, they didn’t bother to report it to anyone. After all, the town guards cannot do anything about suspicious events they haven’t been told about were happening. With a slightly more amicable tone, the spokesperson adds that there is strong evidence that the mysterious light tank was involved in causing the incident. ‘At least, we found pieces of it all over Fletcher’s deck...’ she explains and once again does her best to assure that this was most likely a sabotage act of a lone perpetrator who almost certainly had absolutely no conncection to the rogue MBT known as the ‘Black Death’.

There is a brief flash of a memory from last night crossing my mind—the silhouette of the ship’s arms moving visibly against the glowing of the flames engulfing its deck, even though they were supposedly immobilized. The oil-curdling screams coming from deep within its disfigured hull were also hard to miss. Whatever that light tank did, it must have enabled Fletcher to regain control of its body after all this time. Another brief moment from last night’s memories hits me: Yasha insistently telling me to leave the town because something terrible was about to happen.

How did he know?

I find myself rapidly losing interest in the rest of the debriefing and wander off, leaving behind me an increasingly unhappy crowd and a trail of track marks in the by now ash-covered street. My wheels carry me back to the pier. One of the guards moves towards me as if to try and stop me from going there, but then seems to change his mind as he recognizes who he’s looking at. He meekly reverses back to his previous position and visibly pretends that I’m not presently driving past him.

At the pier, I spot a couple of recovery vehicles who are attended by more guards and busy with retrieving various machines (or what is left of some of them). One of them looks like it’s trying to find a sunken treasure, its crane poking around in the now very cloudy water. At least one or two more have climbed up onto the now completely lifeless hull of the generator ship via a ramp near its stern. It’s difficult to see what exactly is happening up there from where I’m strolling along the edges of the pier’s plaza, but I still catch a glimpse of a cracked open, angular turret with what looks like a burnt, yet clearly originally beige coat of paint being picked up by its warped basket that only clings to it with little more than a few thin strings of metal. A sense of ease washes over me.

Different dodgy light tank.

It’s the Luchs.

Well,...was.

What a strange sight to feel relief over. I finish my round and trundle off into a different street than I came from. Somehow, it still causes me to cross paths with a small group of tanks that approach me so intently that they have to have been looking for me specifically.

I coast to a halt at the same time they do. Artax and Morris nod at me, but they seem to be only tagging along with the others. At the front of the group is a rugged heavy tank, giving me a look that is grim but respectful and reminds me that he is Jericho, the leader of the hunters. That also leaves no doubt about the identity of the Chaffee light tank with the oversized gun flanking him—Ace gives me a sloppy salute before he speaks up.

“You comin’? We’re leaving—heading westward,” he informs me snappily.

“What’s there?” I ask, feeling like I’m missing something obvious.

“A survivor...,” Jericho replies gravely. He lets himself trail off, letting the words simmer for what must feel like a reverent amount of time to a regular machine before he elaborates. “We received a radio report that the Black Death attacked last night. Not here obviously, but just about 50 miles further to the west of here.”

“I see,” I say in the least apathetic tone of voice I can muster, “Let’s go and see what tale they have to tell, then.”