The Great War of the Quartet (The Imperial Timeline Book 1) (20 page)

Makoto felt very proud to
finally have his very own tank. Sergeant Shibui, Akino, Mou, Kai, and Makoto had been assigned a Type-92/88 Battle Tank as their own chariot of war. It was a lumbering piece of steel of the kind that had been produced in the thousands just through the months of the fall and winter as a standardized battle tank to replace obsolete older models from the first generations of middle-sized armored vehicles. From what Makoto had learned from the instructors it was just about the greatest thing ever designed by man because of its diverse capabilities and reliability. The newer model of the Type-92 that had begun construction after the war began had a larger 88mm German gun than the original armament of the Type-92/75 which had the older 75mm gun which was both less potent and actually more difficult to make—it was funny how sometimes a better gun could apparently be easier to manufacture than a worse one.

It was a beautiful beast to look at, the top hatch painted with a large chrysanthemum in addition to the similar markings on the sides
that helped to identify it as Japanese to someone who did not recognize its outline. However, it was not a perfect weapon without proper training. If the Russians had anti-tank “rifles,” then even a single infantryman was a danger to the tank, and so far they had spent much of the past week getting to know how they were supposed to cooperate with the infantry in combat to reduce the risk of the tank being immobilized or destroyed by infantry. Airplanes and artillery already were horrific threats—not to mention tanks and tank destroyers—and the myriad of natural and Russian dangers out there could kill them instantly if they did not take all the precautions the instructors were going on about until they were blue in the face.

The whole day had been spent taking the tanks out for a maneuver on the open field outside the fortified encampment
together with the other components of the division. This whole part of the Altay region was crawling with tanks, guns, and soldiers and it was hard to imagine anyone being able to fire a shot into the distance without hitting some poor bastard from Anki, Kanton, Shisen, or some other faraway land that had provided endless thousands of men to the army.

“You think you’re gonna be able to hit anything?”
Kai asked Mou with a wide grin after they had crawled inside the big army yurt they shared with the rest of the section.

“Sur
e I am,” the gunner replied confidently.

Mou
was not the finest marksman there was, but he had done decently at the depot and at the barracks when they got to practice in one of the training tanks. The instructors had said that they could waste ammunition in Mongolia since there was so much of it, but in Russia they better make every last shell count, and Mou hadn’t fired a single actual shell since they reached Shinkyou and linked up with the division. All the exercises out here were just combat games that included coordination between units, so it was mostly Lance Corporal Akino and Sergeant Shibui who got all the exercise since Akino had to mind the radio and the sergeant had to take responsibility for the tank following the orders over the radio.

However, Makoto had caught a bit of diesel on his boots today, and the smell he had grown fond of filled the yurt from his boots and from other men and garments that had been exposed to that very familiar liquid. It was quite an appealing smell somehow, like a kind of samurai perfume.

The short Mou Takenosuke was just barely above the minimum height the service required, and he had a very boyish face to boot which made him look the youngest in their crew. It was hard for Makoto to think that the little Mou had married right before the mobilization was announced across the country, and he had had to leave his apprenticeship at the local Peasants’ Union bank. He was actually two years older than Makoto, despite looking like he would be the younger of the two.

Sergeant Shibui
, Akino, and Mou were the most intellectual of the crew from civilian life while the other three were just ordinary peasant types—albeit Kai was an urban peasant. While Mou had attended a public academy prior to working at the bank, Shibui had been accepted into one of the imperial universities before the war and had actually volunteered after being deferred by his local military authority. Makoto was vaguely aware that you had to be very clever to be accepted into a university, and that alone made it apparent that Sergeant Shibui was much more intelligent than him when it came to books.

Sergeant Shibui was tall and looked rath
er handsome with a fair complexion, like how you expected officers to look—like brave samurai from the North. Makoto knew that he was neither intelligent nor handsome by contrast, so it seemed unfair that the sergeant had both natural resources in significant qualities. But then, since when was life fair?

Mou had told Makoto that he
’d better stay on good terms with the sergeant, claiming that he was bound to become an important official in the county or even the prefecture after the war—and maybe Makoto could try to talk him into marrying one of his sisters and he could expect all sorts of kind favors. Makoto didn’t know whether Sergeant Shibui was in the New Japan Front or not; he had never seen any Party symbol or slogan on the sergeant’s clothes. Of course, he had never seen him without his uniform, and on that he wouldn’t wear an armband or some other symbol of the Party even if he was a member. It was hard to tell when exactly it had started, but these days it seemed like an awful lot of senior officials had started to wear armbands or pins that identified them as members of the New Japan Front, and Makoto still hardly knew what a party even was supposed to be in the first place, let alone what it meant to be a member. He had never really involved himself with politics, and he was only vaguely aware of the Party from posters that proclaimed its inception as the collective vessel of Celestial Imperialism. He almost never interacted with the sort of people who might be members—apart from the sergeant.

Before he was called up he had seen that the schoolmaster
in the small village school had started to wear a Party armband, but it was difficult for Makoto to know how he would have been a different teacher and human being if he had not been a member of the New Party. It was apparently supposed to be a sign of integrity and devotion to the country, but that seemed unfair to non-members who had the full measure of all those things the Party was meant to be.

After the long day of sitting inside a cramped tank for the most part, Makoto looked forward to falling asleep, and he tucked himself in under the blanket, not having to watch over the stove until later during the night. The men took turn sitting at the stove, and Makoto wouldn’t be on until close to dawn. In the name of fairness they would rotate through the night to put in fresh fuel, and also keep guard in case there would be an alarm—the large base was well behind the lines, but they still followed field regulations.

There wasn’t much banter once the men had tucked themselves in, and most of them were probably exhausted from the long day of “combined arms” exercises together with the artillery, infantry, and the rest of the 24,000-odd men making up the division. It didn’t take long before they started to doze off one by one, and it would no doubt be a long day again tomorrow. Catching as much sleep as possible was essential so they would stay sharp.

Takenosuke looked at the picture, his eyes having adjusted to the poor lighting
after the men around him had settled down under their blankets to sleep. The big yurt was filled with heavy breathing and snoring which indicated that men had started to fall asleep, and only then did he dare to take it out to look at. He was a little embarrassed to have the photo of her, but after she had gone through the trouble of asking her cousin to take the pictures of her for him he could hardly complain. In the picture she leaned forward with her legs to the side and one arm down towards the base of her legs while the other covered most of her right and a bit of the left breast. It was a bold parting gift, to accompany the far less seedy charms and reminders of the nobility of his duty and her hopes that he would conquer the Russians. However, this was not a bad reminder. His first time had been with Shouko, and he could hardly wait to return back to her. The horrible cold felt like it would freeze off his fingers, and he had to shove rags and paper down his boots to keep his feet warm in this horribly cold mountain land where still he could see no trace at all of spring. Fortunately they had been given winter boots several sizes too big for that very purpose of stuffing them, and it was actually a lieutenant who had told the men to make sure to keep their boots filled with pretty much anything—hay, rags, strips of paper, whatever. It was part of standard procedure, just like tying scarves over the ears to stay warm.

In the yurt the warmth was kept in part by the isolating felt, but also with the stove that they took turns watching over and refilling to keep the fire burning. As he looked at Shouko, he half closed his eyes, his hand sneaking into his underpants as he imagined what he would enjoy again when he came back home.
He already missed her so bad, and he couldn’t wait to be back with her and touch that small, tender body.

Daryn scribbled notes on the paper, writing down coded names for different things next to the light from the small kerosene lamp. The little room had no windows and no source of light other than the lamp, and Meryem huddled up next to him, watching every stroke of the pen like a little child watching her daddy at work. The unit numbers were put down as counters of sheep and other livestock rather than as military formations, and he wrote them all in that strangely unintelligible script that didn’t mean anything to her—stupid white writing. He had told her that an infantry division was a bull, a brigade was a ram, a regiment was a lamb, and a battalion was a cow. The 103rd Infantry Regiment was written as 103 lambs, the 39th Infantry Division as 39 bulls, and so on. The document looked more like an inventory than a list of identified military formations.

“Can I come with you tomorrow?” Meryem asked when he was done adding to the list and folded it up again and put it away.

“No,” he said, just glancing over her for a moment, his voice curt and decisive. “Will you get me some tea?”

Rather than argue, she quickly crawled over to the samovar, eager to show how useful she was in the hope that he would reward her for her efforts. The tea was hot, and she poured it into a cup for him and crawled back to him to present the cup. He took the cup and drank from it, not saying anything. Ever since they had arrived to the boardinghouse he had been out so much, only ever coming back to sleep. She was only allowed to leave the little room for the freezing outhouse behind the dilapidated building, and it felt like she was going insane from being alone so long in the small room. She was talking to herself, fantasizing about being somewhere else—anywhere else really. It was pretty disconcerting, but she didn’t want to worry Daryn, and she was embarrassed that she was so bored that she was talking to herself when he was out.

She felt like a dirty troll, isolated in a cave of sorts from the outside world, and she hated it. It was unnatural, and there was no wonder that her mind was wandering to faraway places, and she had been fantasizing a lot about returning to Shinkyou. She liked the name Sensho, written with the characters for “war” and “victory.” It was a good patriotic name for a boy. Then she could call him Little Sho, in contrast to the country’s great victory. Oh, how she loved funny name puns! She had dozens of other possible patriotic names from slogans or just simple patriotic phrases like “strong country,” “supreme army,” “sunny future,” and so on. There was no shortage of good names like that. She wouldn’t ever run out of them unless she had like a hundred sons, and that wasn’t very likely…

She imagined that once Sensho was born, Daryn would laugh and praise her for both coming up with such a good name and for raising him inside her in secret while Daryn was left to deal with his important duties and not worry about her. Even if she wasn’t allow to help him, she could still focus on minding Little Sho until he was born.

“We’ll have to be leaving soon,” he said as he emptied the small cup and handed it back to her.

Dutifully, she crawled over to refill it and returned it to him. The small cups kept her crawling back and forth, but her body was so full of energy that she didn’t mind letting off some steam after a day of almost complete physical inactivity. Just obsessive thinking and talking to herself. That was all she expended her energy on in the day when he was out snooping around, and she didn’t just feel like sitting around and poking her stomach all day,

The city was still a mess
long after the frontier had been safely pushed back far from it. Through the past year the rubble had remained in place, and temporary shelters from scrap metal, felt, and blankets had been built by the skeleton population as well as the outside people who had flocked to the city from the desolate countryside to escape the Russian advance and who had since remained. Altay City had not been destroyed, but it had been bombed and shelled enough to leave the fresh wounds to the concrete visible, and the evacuation of most people had left a glaring deficit in the need and manpower to clean up the city.

Makoto read the writin
g on the wall of the—for its purpose—relatively small building. A city this big was bound to have had tens of thousands of children prior to the Russian invasion, and the high school in Shinuoga was probably about the size of this building.
“Altay City Second General High School
,
”
the sign proclaimed. It was a concrete building, and he was a bit anxious to stand outside it together with Kai after they had been directed there by another member of their platoon.

It was not a particularl
y large city, and it was situated very close to the prewar border—relatively speaking—Shinkyou Province was an enormous place. Makoto and Kai had pinned their slips on the coats that had been signed by the company commander as well as an NCO from Regiment to prove that they had been temporarily released from duty to enjoy a day away from the base outside the city, but apart from the bars crowded with soldiers there was not a great abundance to do in the town but to look at the bleak ruins. Children and widows were pestering some of the men for money, and Makoto had given an old woman five rin in a fit of compassion.

It was
already dark, and small fires, the stars, and the occasional streetlight combined with the snow made it easy to see the sign that had been put up near the doors. The school had apparently been closed for the duration, like so much else in the bombed out city. The city had become little more than a military city with a small civilian population that hadn’t been evacuated along with the rest.

“Are you sure
about this?” Makoto mumbled, hesitant to follow Kai.

It had sounded like a good idea, but when he was finally here he hesitated to go through with it. It just felt too weird.

“Oh, come on! Who knows when we are being sent off into the tundra?”

Kai
pulled Makoto along, and he trailed him inside the doors into the building. The temperature was a bit more bearable inside than the freezing evening outside, but it was still pretty cold and not very cozy. Like modern buildings in the cold parts of the country the school had been insulated, but the temperature was far from comfortable. At what looked like a teacher’s desk placed in the hallway sat a middle-aged woman wearing a rustic fur coat over a colorful kimono. The woman looked like a nice old lady, and it didn’t do much to alleviate Makoto’s growing concerns.

“Good evening, sirs,” she said politely, bowing her upper body towards them
after getting out of the chairs when she saw them come in.

“Good evening, ma’am,”
Kai said and bowed while Makoto just shyly gave her a nod. “We were just passing by and decided to stop for a visit.”

“It’s one yen and fifteen sen
each,” she said.

“Sounds fair,”
Kai said as he dug into his pocket.

Fair?! Robbery! When was the last time Makoto paid that kind of money for anything? He wanted to tell Kai no, but Kai just
got out the even sum and put it on the table without appearing the least bit concerned. Was Makoto the only one of the two thinking that this might just be a bad idea?

“Thank you,” she said as she took the mo
ney and put it in a metal box.

She han
ded him a small wooden tablet and turned her head to look at Makoto. He felt bad about her looking so nice. This wasn’t what he had expected. Nervously Makoto reached into his pocket and counted out the money and handed it to the lady and he received another tablet in return.

“It’s the room straight down the hall to the ri
ght. It may take a while I’m afraid. Please enjoy yourself.”

“Will do, ma’am,”
Kai chirped over his shoulder as he started to leave in the direction she had pointed.

After they had settled down to wait in silence it didn’t take very long, and Makoto was really nervous to be separated from Kai who was really the one who knew about these things.

The girl Makoto got had a very light complexion, and she wore a dress that had to be absolutely freezing in this place. It was hard to tell exactly, but Makoto would have bet that she was fourteen or so, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less. Her dark brownish hair was arranged in two long tails tied into loops and hanging down past her ears, and she looked very pretty—like a tender little peasant bride from a motion picture.

The classroom had been divided by screens, but he could hear the whining and grunt
ing as she led him to her “room” between too other. It was a bit warmer as the classroom was presumably a bit closer to the heater than the hallway, but it was not the kind of temperature he enjoyed, and he almost wanted to suggest that she should put on a jacket to cover her bare arms.

He just stood the
re and watched as she untied the belt holding her skimpy dress together and started to undress, and he couldn’t help but stare. Her small breasts were pale with distinct dark nipples and as if she felt him ogling her, she stopped removing her dress.

“Won’t
you undress, sir?” she asked.

She didn’t seem the slightest bit ashamed to have bared her chest in his presence, and she was halfway to being completely naked.
Sure, he had already seen a fair bit of her skin with her bare arms and the tight, cut dress that left her legs half-exposed before she exposed them entirely.

“Y—yes...”

He fumbled with his belt, his pulse rising and his dick twitching inside his pants. He had masturbated, and he had seen his sisters and mother naked, but he had never been this close to a naked woman he would be touching. Not even seeing his sister-in-law was like this. It was embarrassing to get his uniform off, but the girl neatly folded each article of clothing so that it was almost as if she was a relative just doing everyday chores—like a sister being good to her brother and putting away his clothes as he was going for a bath.

It was a little cold at first when she wiped him down with the moist wet towel. He could feel his dick move when she was close to his balls, and he was embarrassed to have a stranger see him like this.
Once she had washed him down, she crawled over to a small box. Her naked little butt was cute, and as she rummaged through the box he could just faintly make out part of her sex under the dim light from the lamp. That was the place, right?

She crawled back to him
with something in her hand. It looked like a small piece of paper which she ripped open and took out a small square from it. He had never seen one before.

He almost jumped when her
hand started to stroke his penis and unfurled the small, tight bag over it, and he stared as she leaned forward and put the rubbery package inside her mouth. The vodka that had helped lubricate his resolve earlier might still have some numbing effect on him, but he looked down at the pale-skinned, naked girl sucking on his dick with amazement. Unfortunately, the pleasure was interrupted.

“You want to fuck me, right?”

She didn’t bother with euphemisms, and the shamelessness of it all made him blush slightly when the virgin girl talked like that. He carefully nodded once, prompting her to sit up. It was clear that she understood that he was not the most experienced man out there, and she moved him over and laid herself down on the mattress. He didn’t bother about the cold anymore. It was the first time he had seen one up close.

She reached over to pull him towards her, and her hand steered his dick into her oddly textured body.
The feeling through the rubber bag of her small, warm fingers made his dick strain even further, and he felt about as horny and confused as he’d ever been. If she could tell that he was not as assertive and expert as he should have been, she at least did not say anything. He knew enough about animals—and humans—to hump while she was lying under him, looking up at him.

“Long live Mr. Hero,” she chirped with a smile, playfully throwing up her arms as if it had been a proper
banzai
cheer. “Make me a baby, Mr. Hero!”

She was just about the
cutest thing he had ever seen, and it didn’t take long for him to finish, pretty much before he had even figured out what he was doing.

When he was out of her, Eichou removed the condom, and she smiled at her customer before she gave the wet little penis a kiss while it shrunk back again. She turned away to take the towel to clean up the semen and sweat from the soldier. She followed a routine like she was supposed to for sanitary reasons and put away the used condom and wiped the man clean.

“You liked Eichou?” she asked as she was finishing cleaning the fluids away.

He nodded awkwardly, his sense of shame starting to return after its brief suspension. They were after all both naked. And they had fornicated. This was what it was like, huh?

“Please, would you give Eichou a present sir? Eichou would be very happy,” the girl said quietly, looking down at the floor as she knelt beside him after she had cleaned him up.

Eichou tried to play off on her youth, and be as sweet as she could and talk like a little child. That way, she might get more presents. She still wasn’t quite sure what men wanted, so she had to play it by ear and figure things out over time from experience.

Makoto looked at the naked girl sitting there. He was still feeling weird after the whole thing, and surprisingly disoriented. What did she mean?

“Eichou’s an orphan
,” she said, looking up at him through her fringe for a moment. “Her family would be very happy if Mr. Hero would give her a present.”

She was clearly much more embarrassed to ask for money than to have sex with him
, but unlike a random beggar, it felt like he had some kind of obligation towards Little Eichou. He hadn’t given her anything, had he? He just paid to the old lady outside, not to this beautiful little girl. Makoto crawled over to where she had put his uniform and managed to find the pocket with his money. He got out a big one-yen coin and handed it to the girl.

“Thank you, sir,” she exclaimed as she pressed the coin between her hands
, bowing deeply, excitedly even to get such a big coin. “You are a very generous man. Eichou will pray for you, she really will, sir! You’ll win and make Eichou proud to have been conquered by the noble hero!”

Makoto couldn’t help feel sorry for the girl
as she helped him get dressed. Part of him thought that it had to be a bit disgusting to work as a whore and how disgusting she was to her ancestors, but he felt very good about himself for being so generous to a young girl, even if she was a dirty little whore who’d mate with anything that paid her. It annoyed him to think that the pretty girl was not a virgin—he would have so wished to have a wife this nice and sweet.

“If you come back, Eichou would be happy to be ravished by you,” she said, bowing her head to see him off.

She was still a little confused about how to act. Usually she was acting more girlish and embarrassed with her men, but this boy was more difficult since he lacked initiative. With older men she could be more natural and passive, but if she was passive with a virgin it would take all night. She was only paid five sen per customer, so she wanted to be as efficient as she could be, hopefully making a whole yen every day if they were quick, although she probably usually only got about eighty or ninety sen in regular earnings on a good day to cover room and board.

Even after giving the whore a whole yen, Makoto still had almost four
yen left on his pocket, and he doubted he would have time to spend it all. His savings and the small pay he had received had been left almost completely unspent before today, so almost three yen for a night of drinking and becoming a real man with the help of that cute young girl seemed like a decent tradeoff.