Chapter 2: Prologue 2

Captain Belov spent 20 years serving in the military. For some people that would be a long time, for him the service was closer to his hobby. While he had to endure a lot of hardships, in the end they were nothing in comparison with the joy he received from being a soldier.

“I am colonel Nikolai Pavlovich Gruzdev, from now on you will be serving in my unit and I hope we will have no issues in the future.”

“I am captain Alexandr Ivanovich Belov, nice to meet you, sir.” They shook their hands.

After the colonel brought Belov up to speed and said where to go, he said one last thing.

“I hope you know how to handle ‘hard cases’…”

“Yes, comrade colonel.” Even if something in this phrase was fishy, Belov was not in position to question the orders.

He was assigned to be the 2^nd company’s commander and went straight to their location.

While he could’ve visited the barracks first, Belov decided to check the vehicles of his company.

A row of clean and well-painted T-90 tanks was looking both intimidating and exciting. Any boy would want to see a tank, and most surely will have his blood boil from driving a tank. Even if Belov was seeing tanks for the entirety of his service, he was still happy to see the armored vehicles in front of him. The only thing that drew his attention was the last tank. The commander’s vehicle.

It was looking like nobody ever cleaned its armor, even its gun, the part which should always be well-maintained, was covered in soot. Even if he seen many dirty tanks but to see the commander’s tank in such condition was simply shocking.

The first thing he did after he entered the barrack of his company was to ask: “Where is the first tank’s crew?”

Two soldiers ran towards him and saluted. One of them was as old as Belov himself, while the other one was a young lieutenant.

“Your tank?” Belov walked to the window and pointed towards the dirty machine.

“Yes, sir!” Both responded affirmatively.

Belov flinched and barked at them.

“WHY IS THE TANK DIRTY?! Go and clean it, right now!”

“Yes, sir!” And off they go.

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After Belov checked all the papers his predecessor let pile up, he decided to look how the two lazybones were doing. When he approached the place where the tanks are washed he saw them, doing their best to clean the tank. They took a lot of washing chemicals and were scrubbing the armor.

Belov took off his uniform jacket and approached them.

“Sir, want to help us?” The younger guy smiled at him and passed him a sponge.

“Where can I start?” The guys know their tank better so he allowed them to tell where to start.

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“You can start with the turret, sir. We will be continuing with the tracks.” Older guy calmly said where to go.

While the tank looks an impossible task to clean, when 3 people start working without fooling around, it becomes easier.

By the time the sun set, the tank was more or less cleaned.

“Good job, sir. You surely know how to use the sponge.” Young guy, Dmitriy, was having fun.

“It is nice that we cleaned the tank but… sir, didn’t you have some work to do?” The older guy, Alexandr was more worried about Belov’s work.

“It’s fine, I should’ve arrived tomorrow. The work will not become worse than it is now.”

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Belov realized how wrong he was when yesterday’s pile of documents became twice higher.

While he was accustomed to office work this was still his least liked part of the work.

Only two days after that Belov was able to get into the commander’s hatch.

His crew consists of gunner, junior lieutenant Dmitriy Zhukov, nicknamed Jester for his constant jokes and stupid phrases, and driver, senior lieutenant Alexandr Ivanov, nicknamed Old man because he was the eldest in the regiment’s crews.

While Belov was fine with such a weird crew, he still was not used to working with them.

Today’s exercise was just driving through a forest and firing a couple of rounds. Because of this all tanks were loaded with combat munitions.

“Old man, do you know where the shooting range is?” It was Belov’s first time navigating in this area so he asked the more experienced driver where they will be heading.

“It’s fine, sir. I’ll just tell you where to go, it’s not like this place changed in one day.” Jester’s words made Belov wonder if he knows better but in the end he decided to rely on a more experienced Old man.

Their tank should’ve been the first to go but instead it became the last because Belov couldn’t command where to go, and because it took a lot of time to start the engine.

They were driving through a forest when the tank hit something and have fallen from some sort of a height.

“Where is the road?” Belov was forced to react when he heard the driver telling such a weird thing.

“What do you mean?” He was confused.

“Erhm… what the hell happened… and why our captain was replaced with a little girl?” And Belov became even more confused after Jester said that there is a child in the tank.

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