Captain Jas Mallory stood knee-deep in the jungles of Eastern Visayas, rain pouring down in thick sheets that blurred the world into shifting green and gray.
The water was warm, filthy, choked with rotting leaves. Every step felt like wading through blood-warm soup. Mosquitoes clung to his neck and shoulders, biting straight through sweat and wet skin.
Behind him, his n slogged forward in a broken line, no helts, no jackets, no insignia. Their frogskin tunics had been torn apart, the camouflage strips tied into headbands or wrapped around rifles to keep the tropical rust at bay.
Half of them were shirtless, skin sunburnt and bitten raw. Their weapons were held above their shoulders to stay dry, cradled across the back of their necks as they moved through the black water like ghosts of a defeated nation.
After the evacuation of Manila, Mallory and his company had fled. They were the first to do so, and Command had branded them deserters and traitors, but Mallory disagreed.
As far as he was concerned, the entire goddamn United States governnt was filled with traitors, and he’d simply chosen to stop bleeding for them.
He had picked up a rifle when Roosevelt mobilized the Army to crush the constitutional crisis back ho. He had fought when protesters were gunned down in the streets of Chicago, and when labor strikes were declared acts of rebellion.
His loyalty however, ended the mont it beca inconvenient to do so. He had chosen the winning side back ho, and had no qualms about it. But now?
Now Roosevelt had decided to ship the survivors of that political purge across the ocean to fight a war France had already lost in a single week. And when that mont ca, Mallory started planning his exit.
Luzon fell faster than anyone expected. The Germans weren’t just good, they were inevitable. Superior technology, rigid discipline, and doctrine that was still making the Pentagon’s collective heads spin.
It was no wonder France had lost so quickly. Throughout all of it, Mallory and his company made excuses... equipnt failures, logistical errors, "accidental" delays.
And when the fighting turned catastrophic, they shed their uniforms, slipped into the jungle, and didn’t look back.
Now Luzon was gone. And Mallory had no intention of dying on so other island for a dood Republic, if it could even be called that anymore.
Their Filipino guide moved ahead of them with effortless grace, a Reising submachine gun tucked in his shoulder and a cigarette dangling from his lips. A pair of scuffed Army Air Corps aviators hid his eyes.
Mallory switched to Spanish, the only other language he knew well enough to attempt in these circumstances.
"How much longer until we reach your village?"
The guide opened his mouth to answer, but instead froze, holding up a finger to his lips.
He pointed sharply into the jungle.
That was when Mallory heard it.
Not thunder, not planes, but sothing sharper, crueler, like a nest of tal hornets screaming across the sky.
"Down," Mallory hissed. "Now."
The n dove into the brush, slipping on wet roots and collapsing beneath giant ferns. Leaves trembled overhead as the rotor wash pressed the canopy downward in rippling waves.
The sound built into a shrill, tallic hum, too fast for a utility helicopter, but too smooth for a plane. Then shadows sliced across the treetops.
Three helicopters tore through the sky in tight formation, their silhouettes flashing between gaps in the canopy. Sleek, narrow-bodied, and predatory.
Their twin engines scread like tortured jets. As they banked, Mallory caught the glint of their nose-mounted cannons, the wicked curve of a retractable tri-barreled rotary 20mm, like a stinger poised to strike.
The Filipino guide muttered a prayer in rapid Tagalog.
Mallory whispered, "Wespen..."
The helicopters didn’t circle, they simply cut across the jungle with surgical violence... low, fast, and rciless.
The last one dropped almost parallel to the canopy line, skimming the treetops. Its fuselage was painted in harsh black-and-grey segntation that made it look like an actual wasp streaking through the air.
Stubby wings carried rocket pods and anti-armor missiles. Its searchlights flashed briefly through the leaves, probing, but didn’t linger.
Then the sound vanished, drowned by the jungle’s uneasy silence.
Only then did the guide breathe.
Mallory rose, wiping mud from his forearms.
"Well," he muttered, "glad they weren’t looking for us."
The Filipino stared at him. "W-what were those?"
Mallory smirked humorlessly.
"The Wasp. Wespe, as the Krauts call it. New kind of Close Air Support. We’ve got nothing like it. Flies low. Flies fast. Eats armor alive."
He pushed deeper into the foliage, talking as he went.
"You haven’t seen them hit tanks up close. We have. We were dug in outside Tarlac, a full company of AMCs, good solid position. Thought we’d repel another German drop."
He shook his head at the mory.
"Those Wespes ca out of nowhere. Rockets first, blew the Liberty clean off its treads. Then the 30mm started chattering." He snapped his fingers. "Two minutes, and the entire armored line was gone."
The guide swallowed hard. Mallory saw the tension in his shoulders, the sa tension people got when they realized their world had just changed.
Then the jungle exploded.
Distant detonations shook the earth. A rolling echo of fire and thunder washed over them.
The Filipino flinched. Mallory didn’t.
"Sounds like they found sothing," he muttered. "Probably what’s left of an armored platoon trying to regroup."
He clapped the guide on the shoulder.
"Co on. If we get to the village before they loop back, we’ll be safe. Germans don’t care about the locals, they just want the Aricans gone."
They pushed onward, deeper into the jungle.
The humidity grew thicker; vines hung like ropes from the canopy. Birds burst from the branches overhead in frantic flocks. A half-collapsed Liberty sat half-subrged in a pool of stagnant water, hull lted inward, Wespe work. Mallory didn’t stop walking, only pointed.
"They don’t leave survivors."
They slogged past as thunder grumbled again in the distance.
The trees eventually thinned into foothills. Mallory slled woodsmoke. Heard faint laughter. The guide slowed.
"We’re close," he said. "My village is hidden between the hills. Quiet. Safe. If you follow my lead, the people will take you in."
Mallory didn’t trust in safety, he only trusted in motion. But a village ant food. Shelter. Maybe even a plan.
His n fanned out behind him, weary but alert. This was as close to hope as they’d seen in weeks.
Halfway up the slope, Mallory stopped again, this ti at the edge of a crater. Burnt foliage, churned mud, scraps of twisted tal. Another Wespe strike, probably less than an hour old.
The guide turned pale under the sweat and gri.
"Dios mio..."
Mallory stepped around the crater and kept moving.
"Welco to the new war," he muttered. "Now co on. Before the hornets return."
And together, they disappeared into the jungle’s green embrace, deserters, survivors, and n without a country, hurrying toward whatever fate waited in the hidden village ahead.
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