Snow blanketed the hills beyond Saint-Mihiel like the war had paused. White drifts smothered trenches, concealed mines, and softened the horror of the last three weeks of shelling. The French called it a respite. Emil Laurant called it camouflage.
Inside the forward logistics depot, the air was hot with ink, sweat, and machine oil. Maps covered the walls. Chalkboards listed unit rotations, fuel shortages, and kill counts. But all eyes were on a narrow ribbon of territory that arced from the Meuse to the eastern heights: the Furnace Line.
It wasn't named for heat.
It was named for death.
A month ago, the Germans had overrun the outer trenches. In their place, they established mobile strongpoints every 400 meters, protected by interlocking fields of fire, buried flak cannons, and telegraph-wired mortars. They didn't push deeper. They held. Hardened. Waited.
And then came the rumors.
"They've deployed something new," Rousseau said, dropping a folder onto Emil's desk.
Emil flipped it open. Photographs. Grainy. Night shots. A silhouette of something large. Not artillery. Not a railgun. Something… mobile.
"We intercepted field chatter from the 3rd Prussian Guard," Rousseau continued. "They call it Feuerhund. The Fire Hound."
Emil studied the images. "How fast?"
"We don't know. But the ground teams say they heard it breathing."
That wasn't poetic exaggeration. Emil understood what they meant. Engine cycles. Steam venting. Armor expanding in the cold. The Chimère did the same — exhaled heat like a living thing.
The Germans had built their own monster.
Command ordered reconnaissance. Not by air — the sky was too choked with fog and flak. Not by cavalry — the ground was frozen, mined, and suicidal.
So Emil proposed a different idea.
"Let me walk it."
Fournier looked up from the design table, aghast. "You want to stroll into a machine kill zone?"
"Not stroll," Emil corrected. "Approach. In Chimère. With forward scouts cloaked in capacitor-static. No transmissions. No heat trace. Just silent approach and observation."
"They'll see you."
"Maybe," Emil said. "But I'll see them first."
The plan was set in motion by nightfall.
The Chimère was prepped with an updated masking system: dual-phase chemical dispersion through the side vents to mimic fog and conceal exhaust. Emil insisted on a minimal crew: himself, one driver, and a spotter. No heavy munitions. Just speed, armor, and cameras.
They rolled out at 02:17.
The snow was deeper than expected, but the tracks held. With its improved torque system, the Chimère moved like a glacier with a will — slow, relentless, implacable.
By 03:12, they reached the lip of the Furnace Line. Craters pocked the hills. Burnt tank husks protruded from drifts like skeletal ribs. Not a soul in sight. But the pressure in Emil's ears told him everything.
Something was watching.
Through the narrow vision slit, Emil caught it.
Not a silhouette.
A shadow.
The Feuerhund sat behind a collapsed church wall. Its hull was sloped. Angular. A different design language altogether — not French modularity or Russian excess, but German elegance. Practical, cruel, and focused.
The barrel of its main gun tracked the horizon in slow arcs, like the eye of a predator following scent. Its turret was inset, like a hammer waiting to drop. No open rivets. No vulnerable plates. The treads were narrow but reinforced — urban design, Emil thought. Not built for speed across fields, but for brutal close-quarters clearing.
Then it moved.
Silently.
Deliberately.
The Feuerhund rotated on its axis, bringing its flank to bear. Emil could see cooling vents — hexagonal, retractable, and glowing faintly red. Not a combustion engine. Steam-electric hybrid? Or something worse?
He whispered into the speaking tube. "Driver. Mark that vent pattern. Get the camera on it."
The spotter leaned over and cranked the shutter.
The Feuerhund stopped.
Turned.
And stared directly at them.
"No transmission," the driver hissed. "How did they—"
A shockwave rocked the snow.
The ground cracked.
The Feuerhund fired.
The shell missed by meters, but the concussion tore through the fog like scissors through silk.
"Reverse!" Emil shouted.
The Chimère lurched backward, its treads spitting snow and frozen earth. Another shell slammed the ridge, then another. Trees collapsed. Metal shrieked. The Feuerhund advanced, slow and certain.
It didn't pursue to kill.
It pursued to warn.
And then, just as Emil reached the fallback trench, the Feuerhund halted.
Its turret lifted.
A hatch opened.
And a figure stepped out.
Coated in black. Clean. Deliberate.
Even at that distance, Emil recognized him.
Rainer.
By dawn, Emil had returned to the forward command.
He laid out the photographs, the drawings, and the readings from the heat sensors.
"They've mastered indirect cooling," he said. "Layered hull baffles. No smoke. Minimal heat. Precision optics. It's not a tank — it's a duelist."
"Can we match it?" asked Rousseau.
"No," Emil said. "We have to break its rhythm."
Fournier frowned. "How?"
Emil walked to the blackboard and drew a circle.
Then a second.
Then a third — overlapping both.
"Formation tactics," he said. "Three Libellules working as a triad. One acts as bait, one as relay, one as hammer. We confuse its targeting. Disrupt its focus. Divide its sensors."
"And if that fails?"
Emil looked at the diagram of Carapace hanging on the far wall.
"Then we introduce it to something heavier."
That evening, Emil called the foundry crew to the old vault.
He stood atop a scaffolding beside the second Carapace unit, still half-assembled.
"I've seen the future," he said. "It has treads, teeth, and no mercy."
The men watched in silence.
"The Germans believe this war will be won by steel alone," Emil continued. "We'll show them what happens when steel remembers it was born from fire."
He stepped down.
"Tonight, we finish the second Carapace. Tomorrow, we bury a myth."
Far away, in the silent heart of the Ardennes, Rainer wrote one line in his journal:
"I saw the Chimère today. It blinked. Next time, I tear out its eyes."