Night Raid

The pair of guards at the side gate were joyfully drinking wine they had stole from the officer's cellar when their throats were slit, so their dead bodies almost looked like those of passed out drunks amongst the splashes of red liquid.

From the large horse-driven car they were inspecting, whose driver had claimed came to deliver food supplies, seven people had come down in total: two rather skilled men had sneaked out first, killing the guards smoothly and in noiseless fashion with daggers. The others came down soon after. The youngest amongst them, who was not 20 years old, was looking at the corpses, visibly disturbed.

"Johan! Don't zone out and come quickly with me!" whispered the one who was visibly the leader, a man in his thirties with a strong build and a three-day-beard. While the others were carrying muskets on their backs, the leader carried a large, mechanic tube which looked quite heavy.

"Y-yes, lieutenant!" answered Johan, who was wearing civilian clothes, just like everyone else.

They passed the gate and split into two groups: the two men who had killed the guards kept walking straight, while Johan, the lieutenant and the other three jumped into a shallow hole that led into a cellar.

"Alright. We're safe for now. Seems like the information we had was correct" said the leader, as he lit a cigarette. "Richard and Ludwig are going to clear a path for us now, slitting throats left and right, 'till those sons of bitches over those watchtowers are gone". He then looked at the driver, an out-of-shape and clumsy soldier who looked rather scared, though determined. "Franz, you're pretty much useless from now on, so stay here and set up some fireworks to help our escape. We'll need them. I'm just itching for the day when we can use machines instead of horses to drive back, so that we don't get ourselves killed".

"Yes Sir! I'll do my best Sir!"

"Well, gentlemen... you know why we're here. Until Richard and Ludwig are finished, we've got around ten minutes to go across the cellar and reach the storage from this underground structure that almost looks like these dumbasses made just for us to blow up their supplies. Once we're there, Robert and Hans will prepare the surprise, I'll get out and then... we'll see if this toy can do what we think it can do" he said, as he tapped the tube hanging on his back.

Johan remained very quiet. He was so nervous that he couldn't think quite right, and didn't want the others to notice. Franz had already began preparing something back at the entrance, and the others were already moving.

"The southerners aren't famous for their indiscipline for nothing. What a bunch of neglectful idiots" said Robert, laughing with Hans while they began to walk through a large, dark corridor past the cellar. Once they began disappearing from sight, Johan ran up to them, but still didn't say a word after catching up.

It hadn't been but a few months since he joined the military, and the whole situation was a little too much. He'd been recruited by the lieutenant for his special Engineer Corps after he had witnessed the way Johan had with machines. He was also well versed in the mathematical and physical advancements of the age, which combined had allowed for the creation of a variety of new machines, like some prototypes of a steam engine and more precise glasses for both astronomy and the nearsighted. The dragging out of the Great War had caused for many money-seeking men to try to refine weaponry, from large artillery to muskets, and the Northern Nation, which was probably the best in terms of science, had benefitted greatly in their efforts to resist the southern invasion.

Even so, both the government and the military were extremely conservative, and rank ruled above everything else. The idea of creating a specific, government-aided group just for weapon development seemed disgusting to many high ranking officers, who saw it as an unjustified privilege that disrupted the hierarchy. The lieutenant's group was an enthusiastic personal experiment which he had convinced the colonel to put into motion, under very specific conditions. Far from being privileged and excluded from daily military activities, they were forced to basically double-time, in hopes that results would eventually result in better funding. That's why it consisted of only five people (Richard and Ludwig were the colonel's personal guard, appointed specifically for this mission), who were mostly either idealists like Franz or a little mad, like Robert.

This bizarre incursion into enemy territory was also enthusiastically accepted by the lieutenant, even though nothing similar had been tried before on the frontlines, due to the extreme difficulty of escaping once the damage had been done. The man clearly wanted to prove his idea's worth the quickest and most spectacular way possible, no matter the risk.

Even though up until that point the Corps' technological achievements were little more than a few powder tricks here and there, more flashy than practical, they had recently developed a secret weapon which could turn the tide of war, as the lieutenant cockly told the colonel. This weapon was what the lieutenant was carrying on his back.

The difference maker had been Johan. He accepted to join the lieutenant's group out of a sense of acknowledgement. Back in his home village, the priest (who was the one who taught Johan math) couldn't follow his thoughts all the way through, yet here he found people not only willing to listen, but to put his ideas into practice. Before his arrival, the dynamic of the group had been thus: Robert would come out with ideas for larger and more dangerous powder explosives from time to time (and he'd be happier about it than he should), while Franz and Hans would sort out the details (the lieutenant was a purely military man, and had nothing more than a superficial, user-like understanding of mechanics). The resulting state of affairs was a bunch of very powerful but totally useless explosives, which had so many problems when it came to using them on the battlefield that the only thing they were good for was empowering Robert's twisted imagination.

Johan soon approached them with rather simple ideas to make things work, the kind that left the others thinking "why didn't I see that before?" He first managed to change a musket's internal mechanics to be able to fire one of the weakest explosives long-distance, and from this basic idea he began perfecting the mechanism, until he had created the so-called "secret weapon", which could fire terrifyingly powerful bombs with great force. Or so was what the lieutenant proudly told the colonel, which led to this semi-suicidal mission being proposed in the first place; but Johan was rather shy about it. He knew it was but a shaky first draft of a weapon, and wasn't sure it wouldn't malfunction at any given moment.

"Don't worry, I have faith in you!" the lieutenant had told him with a smile, after he boldly accepted the colonel's proposal. "Your little baby will win the nation many battles, and us our funding!"

More so than his talent, his comrades had faith in the quality of his creation due to his work ethic. Not only did Johan work double time like the others, but he had stayed up most of the night for many weeks, barely sleeping while designing and building his weapon, never losing a beat either during daytime. The lieutenant viewed this as great concern and dedication to excellence, but that was so far from the truth that it made Johan feel like a fraud. He felt indeed flattered by the acknowledgement his talent was getting, and that's why he was even risking his life beyond the frontlines right now, even though he could've easily avoid it; yet the real reasons for his night shift had nothing to do with this sense of acknowledgement, much less with dedication or work ethic.

He used it as an excuse to stay awake on purpose in order to escape the dreams, the dreams that had been plaguing him non-stop for months now, which led him to join the army in the first place. He needed to get away from them, he needed to find someone, somewhere that he could talk to about them; and a peasant boy like him had no better chance in these times of meeting new people and new knowledge than in the military, and everything that had happened since he joined the Engineer Corps was proof of that. Many nights he worked until he fell asleep on his desk, and the energy he showed during the day was nothing but the nervous activity of a constantly worried man.

He was thus lost in his thoughts when his companions suddenly stopped. The lieutenant, who had lit a candle to guide them, pointed towards the ceiling, signaling that they had reached their destination. Robert and Hans began working on their "surprise". The lieutenant began climbing the stairs upward and looked at Johan.

"Alright, kid. You come with me, as planned. Stay right behind me" Johan assented, too scared to talk. The lieutenant smiled and, half jokingly, half serious, told him: "This way, if your baby blows up in my face, you're coming down to hell with me!"