December 22, 1908.
Snow fell lightly over the firing range outside Berlin—thin flakes drifting across churned mud and barbed wire like nature trying, and failing, to make the place look peaceful.
Today the range was closed.
Not closed in the polite sense of a sign on a gate.
Closed in the imperial sense: fences watched, towers manned, entrances sealed, and every man on duty briefed as if the next mistake might be the last he ever made.
It wasn't paranoia.
It was necessity.
The guest list alone demanded it—top generals, ministers, industrial chiefs, and the Kaiser himself. If anything went wrong on a day like this, the Empire would not merely be embarrassed.
It would be wounded.
And there was a second reason, more dangerous than pride.
The weapons.
The prototypes laid out here—rifles, machine guns, mortars, strange mechanisms that looked too modern for 1908—were not products. They were state secrets. If even a single drawing slipped into the wrong hands, it would become a gift to every enemy Germany would ever face.
So the range wore security in layers.
The first layer was obvious: Royal Guards and Eternal Guard units at the gates, along the perimeter, around the viewing platforms—gray armor and black uniforms standing like statues with rifles ready. Faces hard. Posture perfect. Eyes missing nothing.
The second layer was the one most guests never noticed at all.
Hidden along the outer edges—among leafless brush, in shallow snow, behind earthworks—Eternal Guard marksmen lay in concealment. Their camouflage was crude by future standards, improvised cloth and netting dressed with winter weeds, but it worked. They didn't look like soldiers.
They looked like the ground.
If a spy tried to get close, he would not be arrested.
He would simply stop existing.
Gustav Krupp arrived early, as he always did when the stakes were high. He paced the vast testing grounds with brisk steps, coat collar up against the cold, breath fogging white.
"Faster," he snapped at the engineers and workers unloading the trucks. "Arrange everything. His Majesty and the Crown Prince will be here soon."
Men hurried.
Crates were hauled into position. Ammunition boxes stacked. Targets set. Straw dummies in steel helmets were dragged into the trenches—some crouched behind parapets, some left foolishly out in the open, as if preparing for the kind of heroic charge that would later become a cruel joke.
Even the terrain was a lesson: three bands of trenches and wire laid out like a future No Man's Land. Mud, stakes, scattered debris—an ugly rehearsal space for a war most of the old generals still refused to picture clearly.
Krupp stopped beside a table where several weapons lay under canvas. He looked to a senior engineer.
"Are you certain there will be no problems today?" he asked quietly.
The engineer didn't flinch.
"Chairman," he said, "everything is ready. The weapons have been thoroughly tested. There will be no failures."
Krupp nodded—satisfied, but never relaxed. A businessman did not stop worrying. He only moved from one worry to the next.
At nine o'clock, the first line of automobiles rolled through the gate.
They came in a neat procession, tires crunching frozen gravel, engines humming with the soft confidence of machines that had already replaced horses in the minds of the powerful.
All of them were Muscle Motors A-Class.
Even here—on a muddy range built for steel and gunpowder—the A-Class looked like what it was: the Empire's rolling luxury.
The price alone made it absurd. A motorcar costing tens of thousands of marks should have been ridiculous in a world where many men still thought "automobile" meant an unstable carriage with an engine bolted on.
But the A-Class was not that.
It was warm inside—heated in winter like a civilized room. It rode smooth. It ran quiet. It was engineered with a refinement that made rival manufacturers feel as if they were building toys. And it cost fifty thousand marks, which meant it didn't merely transport a man.
It announced him.
Its existence carried another quiet insult, too.
Across the ocean, Henry Ford had released his Model T this year—cheap, boxy, practical, destined to change America.
In another timeline, that would have been the beginning of Ford's easy rise.
In this timeline, Oskar had arrived early and built the habit first.
Ford's car was affordable, yes. But it was still a rough machine in a world that had already seen something better. People bought it—because not everyone could afford German perfection—but the dream, the obsession, the status…
That belonged to Muscle Motors.
Oskar hadn't destroyed Ford.
He had simply made the climb steeper.
And history, as always, punished latecomers.
The lead A-Class stopped near the viewing platform.
Wilhelm II stepped out first, uniform immaculate, moustache sharp as a blade. Oskar followed—so massive the car's suspension rose slightly as his weight left it, an absurd detail that made more than one officer blink and then pretend he hadn't noticed.
More cars arrived behind them, unloading high command: ministers, generals, admirals—the Empire's old guard coming to witness the newest heresy.
Gustav Krupp moved forward at once.
"Your Majesty," he said, bowing. "Good morning."
"Good morning, Mister Krupp," Wilhelm replied, cordial.
The Kaiser's gaze lingered on him for half a heartbeat too long. Not anger—Wilhelm did not waste anger on what could not be spoken cleanly—but something quieter.
A complicated sadness.
He knew.
Everyone who mattered knew about Bertha's secret relationship with Oskar.
But the Empire's machine demanded silence.
So silence remained.
Krupp turned to Oskar.
"Your Highness."
Oskar nodded once. "Mister Krupp. Is everything ready?"
"Yes, Your Highness. Please rest assured—everything is prepared."
Oskar looked out across the range.
The trenches. The wire. The scarecrow dummies. Targets waiting to be shredded. Viewing platforms reinforced with crude bullet-resistant panes—built not for comfort, but for survival.
This ground had hosted his earlier lessons.
First the motorcycles.
Then the trucks—machines crushing wire, turning infantry transport into a doctrine the old men had refused to name.
It was also the only training ground built specifically for the Eternal Guard—his private laboratory for the soldier of the future.
And now, once again, it would host something special.
This time, the tools of Germany's future infantry.
Oskar nodded slowly.
"Good. Let's begin." he said.
By the time the officials settled into their seats, the firing range had already done its work.
It looked like the future.
Three bands of trenches cut the earth in parallel scars. Craters pocked the ground between them like rotten teeth. Barbed wire lay in snarled belts, half-buried in frost and mud. Scarecrow dummies—straw bodies in steel helmets—waited in the open and crouched in dugouts as if preparing for an attack that hadn't happened yet.
Off to one side stood a small, broken brick building—half wall, half rubble—placed there on purpose. Not for realism alone, but for imagination. A little piece of ruin to help old men's minds accept what their pride didn't want to accept:
War would not look like parades.
War would look like a butchered landscape.
Above the benches of generals and ministers, under the reinforced viewing platform, Wilhelm II sat high in the imperial seat. Oskar sat beside him—calm in posture, but feeling an unexpected hollowness in his chest.
Last time, the platform had not been so quiet.
Last time there had been Imperiel on his knee. Durin on the other. Heddy beside him, trying not to look terrified as engines roared and the old men below pretended not to flinch.
Today there were no babies. No laughter. No Heddy.
No Karl.
Oskar's eyes drifted once to the far edge of the range, to the gray line of trees and the hidden snipers he knew were there, and then—uninvited—his thoughts slid somewhere else entirely.
To the palace.
To warm rooms and breath held tight.
To Heddy, who had gone into labor this morning.
Karl would be with her now. Tanya and Anna too—his women, his children, the whole loud, crawling household pulled away from the world for one reason that always mattered more than guns.
A birth.
Oskar felt the absence like a missing limb.
He was happy for Karl. Truly. Durin would have a sibling. Heddy would be safe with half the palace around her like a fortress of women and midwives.
Still…
A small, selfish part of him wished he were there too.
The irony tasted bitter: he was about to demonstrate weapons designed to keep men alive in the mud, while the people he loved were welcoming a new life into the world without him.
He forced the thought down.
This was also his duty.
If the future came, the future would not care that he missed a birth.
So he sat straighter, looked at his pocket watch, and waited for the signal.
At 9:30, Oskar rose.
The range went still.
Snow drifted through the air, and the silence beneath the viewing platform felt heavy enough to crack.
He gave only a brief speech—no grand oratory, no sermon—just the clean statement of a man who preferred results to poetry.
"Gentlemen," he said, his voice carrying easily across the range, "thus far I have shown you the future of the German soldier's protection—helmets and equipment designed to keep men alive rather than merely brave."
A few heads nodded.
"You have seen how reconnaissance will change," he continued. "No longer limited to horses and tired scouts, but extended by motorcycles—faster, farther, and less dependent on exhaustion."
More attention now.
"And you have seen the future of logistics," Oskar said, gesturing briefly toward the parked trucks. "Not wagons. Not animals. But machines—able to move men, ammunition, and firepower together, on time, and under pressure."
He paused.
Then his tone shifted—not louder, but heavier.
"Today," he said, "you will witness the beginning of a new age of infantry warfare."
The words settled like frost.
"The next war will not be decided by how many men stand in line," Oskar went on. "Nor by how well they march, nor by how loudly they shout orders, nor by discipline alone."
A few of the older generals stiffened.
"It will be decided," Oskar said evenly, "by who brings superior and overwhelming firepower to the point of contact—and who can apply it faster, longer, and with fewer men."
He let that sit.
Then he gestured down toward the trenches and wire below.
"Look upon the field," he said. "What you are about to see is not a theory."
His hand lowered.
"It is what the world is becoming."
He sat.
And the demonstration began.
A sharp whistle cut through the air.
On the left flank of the range, five heavy military trucks rolled forward in formation.
They were not charging.
Not yet.
They advanced at a controlled pace, engines steady, tires biting into cold mud. Each vehicle was configured the way Oskar preferred his machines: practical, repeatable, scalable.
Driver in front.
A second man beside him, rifle ready.
And in the middle of the cab—rising through a reinforced hatch like a man emerging from a steel coffin—an Eternal Guard gunner, heavily armored, already braced behind the mounted weapon.
The truck beds were covered, canvas stretched over ribs. The infantry inside could not be seen. They waited in shadow, silent and ready—presence implied rather than displayed.
The weapon on each truck was the first star of the day.
A new gun, produced under Imperial Weapons Works.
The MG09.
Oskar did not call it a "heavy machine gun."
He called it what it was meant to be: an all-purpose machine gun—something that could move with troops instead of living and dying in one fixed nest.
The trucks rolled to a stop well short of the first belt of wire—close enough to threaten it, far enough to remain safe.
The gunners raised their barrels toward the trenches.
Targets waited: straw bodies in helmets, some hunched behind parapets, some standing foolishly in the open like heroes from old war paintings.
Then, on the second whistle—
The gunners squeezed the triggers.
The world erupted.
The MG09s spoke in a brutal, steady rhythm—fast enough to blur into a single tearing roar.
Muzzle flashes stabbed through the cold air. Spent brass clattered and sprayed into the mud like metallic rain. The bullets swept into the trench line like a storm.
The dummies didn't "fall."
They came apart.
Straw burst into pale explosions. Helmets jumped. Mud and splinters flew as rounds chewed through parapets, through wooden supports, through anything pretending to be cover.
In seconds, the "enemy" positions looked less like trenches and more like shredded scenery.
A 650-round belt vanished in a little under a minute.
The barrels glowed hot. Heat shimmered above them like a mirage.
Up in the stands, several officers stared as if they had just watched a new species reveal itself.
The MG08—proud old beast of the German Army—suddenly felt ancient in their minds.
War Minister von Falkenhayn leaned forward, genuine surprise breaking through his discipline.
"Your Highness," he said, voice tight with interest, "is this… the machine gun your company developed? Its rate of fire is extraordinary—an obvious upgrade over the MG08, which fires barely four hundred and fifty rounds per minute."
Oskar nodded once.
"Yes," he said simply.
"Mister Krupp," Oskar said, turning slightly, "please explain the performance."
Gustav Krupp stood with the controlled pride of a man who knew he was about to watch old prejudices die.
"Yes, Your Highness."
He faced the Kaiser and the gathered generals.
"Your Majesty, Your Excellencies," Krupp began, voice firm, "the MG09 gun body weighs 22.5 kilograms. With tripod and accessories, approximately 40 kilograms—less than one third the weight of the MG08 system currently in service."
That alone drew murmurs.
"A strong soldier can relocate it with his squad," Krupp continued, "instead of treating it as a stationary fortress."
He went on, laying out the figures like blows from a hammer.
"Muzzle velocity: 820 to 850 meters per second. Effective range: up to 2,000 meters in tripod fire. Belt-fed. Sustained fire. Maximum cyclic rate: up to 650 rounds per minute."
The generals shifted.
Not just impressed.
Uncomfortable.
Because the moment a man understood what this meant, he understood something else too:
A battalion that faced this without comparable firepower would not be heroic.
It would be erased.
Below, the five trucks sat idling again before the first barbed wire fence, barrels steaming faintly, waiting for the next phase.
The old men in uniform sat very still.
Some looked impressed.
Some looked offended by how impressed they were.
And the Kaiser—who loved nothing more than a weapon that made other men nervous—watched with a pleased, predatory calm.
War Minister von Falkenhayn turned slightly toward Wilhelm II first, voice measured but unmistakably satisfied.
"Your Majesty," he said, "without a doubt this is an excellent machine gun. It is far superior to the MG08 heavy machine gun our forces currently use. Not only is the rate of fire higher, it is lighter—meaning it can actually accompany troops in attack, but also importantly it will be overall much easier on our supply lines to transport in general."
Wilhelm II nodded.
He knew the problem well. The MG08 was a beast: effective, reliable, and heavy enough to make a squad curse its birth. It was a weapon so heavy that it needed to be carried by horses, or multiple men. In battle it became a stationary shrine of firepower—useful, yes, but slow to move and slow to save when the line shifted.
Compared to that, a 22.5-kilogram general-purpose gun felt like heresy made portable.
Around Falkenhayn, other generals gave small nods. A few muttered approval to themselves, as if embarrassed to praise something that came from Oskar rather than from the "proper" old procurement channels. Although most still weren't sure if using trucks in the front lines was smart or just playing insane.
Only Moltke the Younger, Chief of the General Staff, remained stone-faced.
He sat as if the display had been competent—nothing more.
In truth, his mind was racing.
How is this possible? he thought, watching the steaming barrels below. An entirely new arms venture… and it produces this?
He could already see the future consequences.
If Imperial Weapons Works gained contracts, Mauser and Rheinmetall would bleed. Their influence inside the Army would weaken. And every weakened supplier was a weakened faction.
Also—Oskar's influence would expand inside the Army, and Moltke's own position would narrow.
He had already accepted Oskar's improved steel helmets and safety reforms—those had been politically and financially survivable. But this?
This was control of the infantry's teeth.
And teeth not only decided who ruled, but Moltke like a great many other men had investments in those other weapon companies. Their stock prices and values would surely fall if these weapons were fully adopted.
Moltke said nothing because he had not yet found a clean way to stop it without revealing that his objection was not military—but personal, financial.
So Moltke stayed silent.
And the show went on.
Oskar then rose and spoke without drama, like a man calling the next act in a demonstration rather than giving a speech.
"Now," he said, voice calm and carrying, "behold Phase Two."
He pointed down toward the trucks and the wire.
"What you will now see is what a future assault on enemy trench lines looks like, when we stop treating infantry as an expendable herd… and start treating it as an expensive tool."
He sat back.
A whistle shrieked again, and Phase Two began.
The five trucks, still idling before the first belt of wire, did not move yet. Their mounted MG09s stayed trained on the trench line, barrels tilting in small, disciplined corrections—micro-adjustments so precise they looked almost mechanical.
Then the firing resumed: controlled bursts, suppression fire. Not meant to "win," but meant to pin—to make every head behind that parapet duck and stay down.
The canvas at the back of each truck flexed.
Side flaps snapped open.
And men emerged.
Not a chaotic flood.
Not a heroic charge.
They disembarked like a modern raid team—fast, low, purposeful—using the truck bodies as hard cover the way a professional uses walls. Two squads per truck, ten men each, twenty men per vehicle, flowing out in practiced lanes. No bumping. No shouting. No wasted movement.
Even the sound of them was wrong for 1908.
No clatter of dangling gear. No loose straps. No men screaming to be heard over the engines.
Just boots hitting mud in a steady rhythm, metal kept tight and quiet, breath controlled.
The first thing the old generals noticed—almost with irritation—was the order.
These were not platoons in blocks.
These were small teams.
And the Eternal Guard didn't "advance."
They cleared.
At the front moved the squad leader—built like a wrestler, calm as a surgeon. He wore a reinforced helmet and a steel chest plate over a heavy coat, shoulder guards layered like scales, knee pads strapped tight, gloves dark and thick. His silhouette screamed expensive and deliberate: a man designed to stay alive.
In his hands was a short semi-automatic carbine—compact, quick, modern-looking in a way that made the older officers' eyes narrow. It was inspired by future concepts: light enough to handle fast, deadly enough to dominate at close range. He didn't raise his voice once.
He didn't need to.
He signaled with his hands—flat palm, clenched fist, two fingers, cut left, cut right—simple gestures that carried meaning like an entire shouted paragraph. The squad responded instantly, without discussion, without hesitation.
Behind him came the two-man machine-gun team, moving like a single organism.
The gunner carried what Oskar called the MG10-E—a light machine gun with its bipod folded tight, muzzle dipped until the instant it would rise. Its profile was unmistakably future-born: compact, ribbed, brutally practical, the kind of weapon designed for sustained fire and quick movement rather than parade-ground dignity. Oskar had built the squad's kit around ideas stolen from wars that hadn't happened yet—late-generation doctrine, the brutal clarity of the coming century—because he cared less about what looked proper and more about what kept men alive.
At the gunner's hip moved the assistant, half a step behind and never drifting. Rifle in hand, ammunition boxes strapped across his back and belt, he looked like a walking supply line made flesh. When the gunner stopped, he stopped. When the gunner shifted, the assistant was already there—feeding belts, calling targets, watching angles, shielding the gunner's blind side.
It didn't look like two soldiers.
It looked like one weapon with legs.
Then the riflemen fanned out—six of them—spreading to the sides in a controlled arc, spacing themselves with the cold instincts of people trained to fear grenades and machine-guns more than God.
One carried extra belts and long-handled grenades. One moved with his rifle already half-raised, eyes fixed on the trench lip, ready to fire into any gap the moment it appeared. Another kept his head on a swivel, not scanning like a nervous recruit, but checking angles—like he was clearing a building, not crossing a field.
And last was the grenadier.
He carried a rifle like the others, but slung across his chest was a separate tube-like weapon—a break-action grenade launcher inspired by what Oskar remembered from future wars. A tool that let one man throw explosive force precisely where rifles couldn't reach: behind parapets, into dugouts, around corners.
To the watching generals, all of it looked like sorcery made industrial.
Every man wore the Eternal Guard's signature mix of practicality and intimidation:
reinforced helmets, some with attached eye protection
steel chest plates over heavy field coats
shoulder and thigh reinforcement
knee pads, hard boots, thick gloves
gear strapped tight, pouches standardized, nothing dangling
They weren't dressed like parade soldiers.
They were dressed like men who expected to take fire and keep moving.
And unlike normal troops, they carried themselves like they belonged to a different century. Their heads stayed low. Their spacing was disciplined. Their eyes never stopped working. Each man seemed to know exactly where the others were without looking—like a pack that had trained together until awareness became instinct.
They looked modern.
Dangerous.
And, most of all, deliberate.
Expensive, yes—every plate, every weapon, every custom strap system screamed money.
But to Oskar, it was worth every mark.
He had seen what "cheap infantry" looked like in real war.
He had seen men bleed out in mud because someone decided protective gear was "too costly," or because commanders treated soldiers as a limitless resource.
Here, he refused that logic.
To him, even one dead soldier was not a statistic.
It was a failure.
So he built the Eternal Guard like the future built its best units: trained, equipped, and structured to survive the job.
And as the squads flowed out from those trucks with their modern calm, the old men in the viewing stands began to understand, that this could indeed possibly be the future of infantry.
Then the trucks moved.
They rolled forward at a crawl.
The chains wrapped around their tires bit into mud and ice. The MG09s kept barking in short, disciplined bursts, chewing the trench lip and parapets so that anything behind them—real or straw—would have stayed flat.
Then the trucks reached the wire.
Barbed coils snarled up toward the wheels like teeth.
The trucks did not slow.
They climbed.
Rubber and chain met steel and stakes. Wire buckled, snapped, and wrapped around the tires. For a heartbeat, machine and obstacle wrestled.
Then the obstacle lost.
The trucks punched through, dragging broken wire behind them in black ribbons.
And right behind the holes they created, the infantry squads flowed forward—slipping through the torn gaps as if they had been waiting for that exact second all their lives.
The first trench line was taken the way it would be taken in reality.
Not by bravery.
By fire and violence at close range.
Rifles cracked in controlled bursts. The squad machine guns chattered—short, brutal cycles that kept the trench line suppressed. Grenades followed—quick throws, professional throws—vanishing into corners and dugouts.
Straw bodies jerked. Helmets leapt. The trench became chaos, then order again, as the Eternal Guard dropped in like a system descending into a scar.
Within minutes the first trench line was "conquered."
And the point emerged with ugly clarity:
A mechanized force could break the wire, deliver infantry, and seize ground before defenders had even finished deciding whether to send reinforcements or not.
The trucks, their task complete, began to reverse—engines rumbling, chains grinding, barbed wire wrapping around their wheels like dead vines dragged from the earth.
They did not retreat far.
As expected, the wire fouled the tires, snarling tighter with every rotation until the vehicles ground to a halt. At once, the crews dismounted—drivers, passengers, and gunners moving with practiced speed—breaking away and sprinting back toward cover.
The trucks were left where they stood.
Not lost.
Finished.
The infantry remained in the trench.
Oskar did not miss the flicker of reaction among the watching officers. He rose slightly and spoke at once, voice calm, matter-of-fact—cutting off any misunderstanding before it could form.
"Yes," he said, "the wire fouls the wheels. That is expected."
A few heads turned.
"These trucks exist for one purpose here," Oskar continued. "To deliver infantry under armor and to break the wire. Once that is done, their job is complete. Trucks are, at heart, logistical tools—not assault vehicles. What you are seeing is a concept, not a parade piece."
He let that settle.
"A truck costs money," he added evenly. "Infantry costs lives. I know which I prefer to spend."
That ended the question.
Below, the infantry had already shifted roles.
The assault was over.
Defense began.
Machine-gun teams claimed the best firing angles. Riflemen redistributed ammunition. Squad leaders positioned men to cover approaches, intersections, and blind spots with quiet efficiency.
The captured trench hardened.
Ahead of them, the untouched second and third trench lines lay waiting.
Enemy territory.
Then came a brief, deliberate pause.
More straw dummies were hauled forward. Civilian trucks rolled along the firing lanes in front of the second and third trench lines, workers unloading the scarecrows with practiced speed. The figures were arranged in dense ranks—straw bodies packed shoulder to shoulder, steel helmets pulled low, wooden rifles clutched forward.
From a distance, they looked disturbingly real.
A mass of men surging across open ground. A crowd reclaiming lost trenches. A sight every officer present knew by heart from old paintings and older memories—Sedan, Gravelotte, the long bloody advances of 1870.
Oskar rose just enough to be seen.
"Now," he said, his voice carrying easily across the range, "In phase three you can watch and see what happens when the enemy goes on the attack against my Eternal Guard infantry."
The workers withdrew. The civilian trucks backed away. The field lay silent beneath falling snow.
Then the whistle blew and phase three began.
From the first trench line, the Eternal Guard opened fire.
Not in a frenzy. Not to impress.
They fired to sustain.
Rifles cracked in steady cadence. Machine guns chattered in controlled bursts, barrels traversing methodically across the advancing mass. There was no pause, no dramatic lull—just an unbroken wall of lead.
The straw dummies did not "advance" for long.
They came apart.
Helmets flew. Straw burst into pale clouds. Whole sections collapsed at once, as if scythed down. What had looked like a charging crowd moments before became a shredded field of debris in seconds.
The fire did not stop.
It continued.
In the stands above, a slow, uncomfortable understanding spread among the old officers.
This was not about killing attackers.
It was about making the attack impossible.
There was no moment where courage could assert itself. No point where momentum might carry men forward.
Any force that tried to retake that trench would simply be erased long before it reached the wire.
The first trench line was no longer just ground you captured.
It was a fortress you stole—
And then turned outward.
A whistle shrieked again.
Cease fire.
A strange calm spread across the range, the kind that always came after violence—snow drifting through smoke, the torn straw settling back into the mud, the barrels of the MG10-E—light machine gun steaming faintly like beasts forced to rest.
It was then that once again men in work coats and heavy gloves ran out at once, moving quickly and low, as if the field itself might still bite. They dragged out fresh straw bodies and propped them upright in the open ground between the trench lines—dense clusters, spaced like a real assault formation crossing No Man's Land. Steel helmets were jammed onto straw heads. Wooden rifles were shoved into straw hands.
Then the workers fled back behind cover, disappearing into the dugouts and behind berms.
The field went quiet again.
Up in the stands, the old generals leaned forward without meaning to. Their hands tightened on railings. Their eyes narrowed, hungry to see the next trick—because by now they all felt like little children against watching something truly, and utterly stunning. While the MG09 had been an impressive looking upgrade, these infantry squads with their own lighter machine guns looked futuristic, beyond the old generals understandings.
Another whistle cut through the cold air.
Phase Four.
But the infantry in the trench did not fire.
Instead—
A helmet snapped off a dummy's head and spun through the air.
Then another.
Then another.
Not in a burst. Not in a spray.
One by one, as if an invisible hand were plucking them away with cold precision.
A helmet jerked sideways and tumbled into mud. Another flew clean off, flipping end over end like a thrown plate. A third jumped straight backward as if struck by an angry god.
For a heartbeat, confusion gripped the viewing platform.
A few men blinked, leaning forward, searching for the source.
Then the truth settled over them like frost.
Someone was shooting from far away.
Someone they could not see.
Oskar's voice cut through the stunned silence, calm as a commentator calling a match.
"Those are not lucky shots from some unseen place," he said evenly. "That is my Eternal Guard sniper section, hidden in the bushes and trees."
Heads instantly turned toward the tree line, but they couldn't see anything.
There was only brush. Only snow. Only distance and emptiness.
"They operate in pairs," Oskar continued. "Spotter and shooter. Camouflaged. Patient. They do not win battles by themselves—"
He paused.
"—but they decide battles by removing the right men at the right moment, and causing fear in the enemies hearts."
Wilhelm II's mouth twitched into a faint smile—like a man being handed a new instrument of state violence and approving the craftsmanship.
Some generals nodded—impressed even though they still couldn't see a single shooter.
Others looked… unsettled.
Because the implication was simple, and ugly:
In the next war, leadership would die first.
And "leadership," in their world, meant sons of nobility. Men with titles. Men raised on the idea that rank protected them.
A few of the older officers shifted in their seats as if their collars had suddenly tightened. One glanced sideways at another—an unspoken exchange of the same thought:
If I can't see who's killing me… what exactly am I commanding?
Oskar saw it on their faces.
He didn't hide his satisfaction.
He sat like a man who had already lived in the future they were trying not to imagine, watching them finally begin to understand that their old rules were about to expire.
Wilhelm II's mouth twitched in faint approval, like a predator admiring a new hunting method.
Then another whistle cut through the cold.
Phase Five.
Three trucks rolled forward—not five this time, but three—tight formation, engines idling, exhaust curling into the winter air in pale ribbons. They halted behind the first trench line, just beyond the torn wire.
Canvas was thrown back.
And for a moment, even the confident men in the stands had no language for what they were seeing.
Because it did not look like artillery.
And it did not look like infantry equipment either.
It looked like something in between—something that belonged to no comfortable category in their minds.
A short, thick steel tube.
Mounted on a circular baseplate.
Supported by a simple frame—legs, adjustments, crude angles like a machine designed only to do one brutal job efficiently.
Around it stood a four-man crew—moving fast, professional, quiet.
One man with binoculars and a range board, calling numbers like an accountant reciting death.
One man at the controls, hands steady on the aiming mechanism.
One already holding a shell like a priest holding incense.
One kneeling by a heavy crate of ammunition, calm, methodical, feeding the weapon like a furnace.
Someone in the stands murmured, unable to stop himself.
"Is that a… miniature artillery piece?"
A few men chuckled under their breath.
Not because it was funny—
because they were trying to reassure themselves.
Trying to force the strange thing into familiar shape.
Oskar heard them.
And he let the silence stretch just long enough for their uncertainty to become discomfort.
Then he spoke, voice smooth.
"Mobile mortar transport," he said, almost casually proud. "Because carrying steel tubes through mud is slow…"
His eyes flicked across the stands.
"And I dislike slow."
That line landed with a few irritated breaths, a couple of grudging smiles, and one or two looks that said:
This boy enjoys this.
Down in the trench, the Eternal Guard shifted instantly—no panic, no scrambling—just that clinical, rehearsed movement of men who had drilled this exact moment until it was instinct. Helmets down. Bodies low. Hands over ears.
Then—
Thump.
The first mortar fired with a sound that didn't crack like a rifle or roar like a cannon.
It punched.
A dull, deep cough of force.
The shell rose into the air in a high, lazy arc—almost gentle.
Then it landed in the second trench line and turned a section of earth into a violent burst of mud and straw.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
More shells climbed. More impacts struck.
The second trench line dissolved into chaos—parapets shredded, straw bodies flung apart, helmets skipping across the mud like kicked pots.
Then the third trench line began to vanish in the same methodical way.
The dummies out in the open—the "attackers"—were hit hardest.
Not because the mortar was accurate.
Because it did not need to be.
Area fire did not care about bravery or posture.
It cared only that men were there.
Up in the stands, a few officers stared with a kind of reluctant horror.
They had imagined trenches as protection.
This showed trenches as targets.
Oskar waited—just long enough for that realization to settle into their bones.
Then another whistle.
The mortar crews dismounted like a machine changing configuration.
The tubes were lifted off the trucks—heavy, but manageable—and carried forward toward the captured trench line. Men climbed down into the earthwork with them, positioning the baseplates into the mud like planting iron seeds.
And from inside the trench—protected, stable, low—
the mortars fired again.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Now the lesson was unmistakable.
Once you took a trench, you did not merely occupy it.
You turned it into a firing platform that could destroy everything ahead of it—including the next trench line, and the next.
Indirect fire.
Safe fire.
Fire that punished defenders for hiding.
A few older generals swallowed hard.
This wasn't just a new weapon.
It was a new relationship between men and earth.
And then came the final taste of the future.
Not grand artillery.
Not noble cannons.
But simple infantry tools—small, brutal solutions that let a squad reach out and kill without standing up and dying politely.
More straw bodies were positioned in the open again, arranged in tight clusters—like an attack bunching up in confusion, like men huddling for comfort in the open the way real men always did when they were afraid.
Oskar leaned slightly forward, voice carrying.
"Each squad has a grenadier," he said. "One man. One device. And suddenly you don't need to rush a cluster of enemies with bayonets to solve the problem."
On the whistle, the grenadiers fired.
The launchers snapped open, shut, and barked.
The grenades arced out and dropped into the clustered "attackers."
Explosions tore through straw ranks.
Helmets flew.
The cluster ceased to exist.
Even without blood, the message was merciless:
Concentration was death.
And a squad that could mix rifle fire, machine-gun suppression, indirect mortar strikes, and explosive grenades—
…was not "infantry" the way these men had grown up understanding it.
It was a toolbox.
A self-contained problem solver.
Expensive, yes.
But worth it—because it could do the work of many ordinary men with fewer ordinary corpses.
Oskar let the smoke drift across the broken ground like a slow curtain.
Then he turned slightly toward the viewing benches and spoke with quiet certainty.
"Your Majesty. Gentlemen," he said. "These weapons were built for squads and platoons. If we equip our troops properly—if we train them properly—then our infantry will not merely match the enemy."
He paused—letting them sit with it.
"They will overwhelm him."