“Fire!”

“Target!”

A sabot round slammed right through the Type 99. The rod of depleted uranium penetrating through the lower side plate as the thermals lit up with the jets of fire blasting out of the now blown open hatches.

Now left before Mathew’s Abram was a field of blasted out tanks. A once quiet Beijing street now left in ruins after the brief encounter. The tank company and army Rangers cutting the ill fated counterattack to pieces. The action leaving the crew compartment filled with the smell of smoke and sweat.

His heart could not stop pounding and it was the same for his crew. Jenny had her eye on the sights still, just in case one more AFV rounded the corner and tried to take a shot at them. Oliver the loader and Gillian the driver weren’t in too much of a better state either. None of them were after facing off against so many tanks and seeing a squad of their own blow up.

“I-is that all of them?” Oliver asked, slamming the ammo store door closed, finally vocalising what they were all thinking.

Mathew swallowed, “I… I think so.”

They let themselves rest for a moment, trying to settle their nerves, before new radio commands came in from the company commander.

“Driver,” Mathew said, his voice still shaky, “Move forwards along the street and stop by the burned-out Type 14."

“Yes sir,” came the reply as the turbine wined into motion, jolting the crew as they trundled down the street. The tank starting to slowly weaving between the wrecks as Mathew stuck his head back into his sights. Nothing was on thermals other than the fires of some of the vehicles. All of the civies must have run off, or were conscripted and thrown against the infantry a few blocks over probably.

Mother fucking Jesus Christ where had everything gone wrong? One moment over half the world was going to come together and unite, then the other moment China and Russia had started a global war over it, and everything had to be put on hold. A move that he swore had caught them as off guard as it did everyone else.

Now he, an ex Foreman, was a tank commander in China after seeing all there was to see in North Korea while trundling along in an armoured vehicle. Well at least he was seeing the world now. As a war-torn battlefield.

“I guess their commanders are as stupid as they say they are,” Jenny laughed in a way that only someone with enough adrenaline to give a elephant a heart attack could, “We should be thankful to the lord for that, shouldn’t we?”

“Yeah, yeah… You sure as hell got ’em!” Gillain yelled, his unusually happy hilly Billy voice soothing Mathew’s nerves a little, letting himself laugh a little before looking back out of the tank.

He looked at the flashes that arced across the sky from out of his periscopes, wondering what the hell could be going on now? The Independents’ fleets had been out of earth’s orbit for most of the war so what was going on? They surely couldn't be that desperate, could they? He shook his head, reminding himself that they were now doing the unthinkable. Invading the heartlands of China.

Sure enough, several kilometres up in the sky, the Russian and Chinese fleets had done that unthinkable action. They were trying to break into earth orbit, rockets rushing up over the launch sites that were still operational in China as all the government and military officials that could tried to flee the planet. The only remaining forces being broken and crushed in a dramatic turnaround not seen since the Russian collapse at the start of the war.

Every UN ship in Earth orbit, operational, under repairs or barely ready to exit dry-dock was being rushed into the clash. All as the final battle commenced to keep the anti-ICBM network active and stop the raid. Every commander desperate to achieve their objectives at all costs. The war would be over soon, but not until hundreds were floating in space; frozen, fried and asphyxiated.

But when that war was over, there would be no more conflicts on earth. It would all be under one democratic federal government. The peaceful and successful decolonisation of Africa, the 1951 founding of the European Union, the 1953 founding of the ESA, Space Station Freedom, the year 1996 founding of the International Moon Base, the North American Union, the technological leap forwards in 2014, the 2018 UN unification vote and finally the 2025 Unification war. Which while devastating China, the middle east, central Asia and Russia, let the International Federal Commonwealth rise out of those ashes. Now into space and into the deep unknown where the first tendrils have been let outwards beyond the solar system to unpredictable results…