Perhentian Islands, Malaysia, June 2035

Klaus Steiner and me walk on the beach, the fallout of yesterday's bachelor's party apparent as the staff tries their best to usher the fallen party members back to their lodge

North Koreans were never ones to make friends. "Juche," their guiding philosophy, was rooted in self-reliance above all else. They sought independence in every aspect, from economic development to military defense. Two major events had left them feeling abandoned. The first came in the 1990s, when the USSR collapsed in on itself like a dying star. Gone was the aid from the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans died from starvation and the lack of basic necessities.

The second blow came in the second half of 2020. The world was on the brink of war, with tensions rising, and China distancing itself from Russia, taking North Korea along for the ride. Kim Jong-un, in his mind, might have believed he was acting out of his own volition. However, deep down, he likely understood that a heavy chain around his neck — extending all the way to the Chinese politburo — meant the Chinese would step in whenever he threatened to cross a line.

And then came the death of their dear leader from cardiovascular disease, followed by a succession crisis. South Korean intelligence and surveillance had advanced so much that they were practically running circles around North Korea. It seemed like the regime was on the brink of collapse. They had opened up a little in recent years, but there was no turning back. Not until Kim Jong-un's sister was placed in power — not the one everyone expected, but another sister, born from Kim Jong-il's numerous affairs.

Her ascent to power didn't even make the second page. Kim Ji-yeon's rise to the throne was barely a blip on the radar, mentioned only in passing, 30 seconds before the end of the news bulletin. It came right after footage of bombs falling from aircraft, thermal images showing endless swarms of Crab mobs being decimated from the air, our fighters engaged in brutal room-to-room combat with them. There was also the usual segment on the Ministry of the Economy, presenting nice graphs showing how artillery shell and food production were on the rise, followed by footage of orphans receiving gifts from abroad.

They had already sent a brigade-sized unit to Russia, nothing much to write home about. It was the same story during the Ukrainian war; they had sent some fresh special forces there to help Russia, as you know. A slaughter. Everything the Russians and Ukrainians had learned from two years of going at each other's throats, the North Koreans dismissed it, sending men on foot across vast open fields in Kursk, just asking to be picked off by artillery and drones.

I hate to be that guy, but one of my subordinates saw it coming—fact-finding mission. She was on the eastern front and had seen the way the North Koreans acted. They were more like spectators than belligerents in the conflict.

She said the North Koreans didn't behave like active combatants. Sure, there was some self-defense involved sure, when they were directly threatened, they responded, or when an important Ukrainian or Belarusian part of the front was about to collapse they'd send in their reserves and stabilize the area. But overall, they seemed to be acting more like intelligence gatherers than belligerents in the conflict. They weren't there to push frontlines or secure key objectives. Instead, it seemed like their presence was more about observing, collecting information, and understanding the dynamics of modern warfare.

They moved carefully, almost strategically avoiding direct engagement unless absolutely necessary. Instead of launching aggressive attacks, they focused on positioning themselves where they could watch and learn. She described how they would remain just out of reach of other units, blending in with the chaos but rarely getting involved in the real fighting. It was as if their primary goal was to study the tactics, to assess the strength and weaknesses of both the humans and crabs.

It was strange, almost unnerving. These were not the actions of soldiers committed to a cause or victory; these were the actions of people gathering data, waiting for the right moment to make a move. They weren't there to help; they were there to learn, to adapt their own strategies for whatever lay ahead.

Americans vetoed their request to send men and equipment to Western Europe. Alien invasion or not, they weren't setting foot on US bases.

I remember that conference call — some US commander in charge of a sector in Luxembourg, me, and the head of the North Korean delegation.

"Special forces?" the North Korean asked.

"Not a chance," the American responded.

"Okay, what about a handful of officers?" he replied.

"What for?"

"Intelligence gathering."

"..."

"What for?" the American asked, even more confused.

They weren't dumb. They knew that, despite the vast expanse of Siberia and Eurasia, the sheer magnitude of force the crabs had would eventually catch up to them. North Korea itself would be at risk. Not in months, not in years — but in a decade or so. But it would happen. They didn't just pull out their troops without a plan, not to be involved for the sake of it. There was logic behind everything they did.

My colleagues and bosses didn't agree with that, though. They saw it as hesitation or indecisiveness. But when the South Korean satellites and spy planes picked up a massive naval buildup in Chongjin, Wonsan, Nampo, and a few other places I can't remember or pronounce, I was vindicated.

When their massive navy — a mix of everything from modern Chinese-made destroyers to Cold War-era frigates and civilian boats, all numbering in the thousands — sailed past the Strait of Malacca, Suez Canal and then through the Danish Strait, we all started to panic.

It wasn't just the sheer scale of the operation that set off alarm bells. It was the unmistakable sign that they were mobilizing, positioning themselves for something far bigger. The North Koreans had made their move, and the world could no longer ignore what had been building for years. The moment those ships passed through, we all realized how much closer we were to something catastrophic. Either a hail mary or a calculated gamble, depending on how you saw it. Depending on what your biases were — be it against their way of running things, their ideology, or even for some of my colleagues, their ethnicity. Some saw it as a reckless, last-ditch effort, a desperate move to avoid being left behind in a rapidly changing world. Others, driven by their own prejudices, saw it as a sign of just how dangerous and unpredictable North Korea could be.

Worst of all is when they used that clip of the Americans blowing them off, they yankees had done exactly what they wanted, vindicating them for their next move on the chess board.

=============================================================================================================================================

Caracas, Venezuela, November 2035

The streets of Caracas were packed. People everywhere, cheering, waving flags, and chanting. "¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!" The words bounced off the walls of the buildings as if they were alive, filling the air with energy. The celebration was wild, but there was a tension underneath it all, a mix of joy and uncertainty.

It was the big day, the formation of the United People's Federation of America. The streets here, and in cities all across South America, were filled with millions of people celebrating this new union. Some were genuinely excited, while others, though not visible today, were already making their discontent known through protests and rebellion. You could feel it, even among the cheers. Not everyone was happy about this.

I pushed through the crowd, dodging people dancing and shouting, trying to make my way to the hotel where Björn Ólafsson, the famous war journalist, was waiting for me. His reputation was well-known, and I had been eager to meet him ever since I got the assignment. But now, navigating through the madness of the street felt almost impossible. People didn't seem to notice me as I bumped through the crowd, a sea of faces all caught up in the celebration.

The sounds of the chanting grew louder as I moved, the energy of the street overwhelming. "¡El pueblo unido!" I couldn't help but hear the song echoing in my head, even as I tried to focus on my destination. I kept moving forward, hoping the hotel wasn't too far off.

It was hard to tell what people were really feeling, if they were truly happy or just swept up in the moment. The streets were alive with energy, but behind the smiles, I could sense the doubt. It was all too easy to get lost in the chaos.

Finally, I spotted the hotel in the distance, just a few blocks away. But the road ahead seemed even more crowded, and I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep going without getting caught up in the celebration myself.

"Sorry I'm late, think the local football team won," I say as I reach the top floor of the tower where the hotel's bar is located.

"Just got here myself!" Björn laughs. The Reykjavík native looks down from the tower, like a lost kid, before we both take our seats.

One beer later, his tongue loosens.

"Yeah, it was some bullshit assignment. The Associated Press had lost a lot of journalists over that year and a half of war. Me, still being young, with two legs that worked and a camcorder, they really put the mileage on me. Learned to sleep on planes. On trains. Boats. You name it. I was in Copenhagen for some bullshit story about war rationing in the capital, the Danes who hadn't left for Sweden and all of that.

Used the occasion to visit the front as well. Just a beach, some bunkers, and the strait. Jutland across the water with its crabs watching from a distance. Endless miles of barbed wire and mines stretched out in front of me. You should've seen the interviews I did with the conscripts there. After an hour and a half, I nearly got them to admit the water was cold.

Got back to Copenhagen after a full day of travel. Insane to think about before the war. I tried to drown my sorrows while ignoring texts from my editors. Ended up in a bar where only sad officers who'd lost all their men came to drink. Wouldn't you know it, in walks some beauty. I was at least thirty centimeters taller than her, but she walked in like she owned the place, looked around, and locked eyes with me.

"Björn Ólafsson?" she asked, the accent giving her away instantly. Definitely East Asian. And in that moment, I wasn't sure if I was about to be handed child support papers or shot in the head. Honestly, the latter would've solved a lot of problems.

"Yeah?" I stuttered like a dumbass.

She forced a smile and sat next to me. If I'd known that the literal scoop of the century had just walked into that bar and offered me a drink, maybe I wouldn't have spent the first few minutes trying to flirt while she rattled off my credentials to confirm I was who she thought I was. How many Icelandic journalists she figured were hanging around that bar, I don't know. And I still have no clue how they found me.

Next thing I knew, as I was still trying to process what she'd told me, I was being led outside to a black Mercedes from the nineties. The kind Russian mobsters used to toss people in the back of. They drove me back to my hotel. The two French journalists I was rooming with just stared as I barged in, grabbed my leather jacket, changed pants to something more practical, packed my backpack with the essentials, and checked the status of my camera.

The funny part? They were working on a piece about the Korean armada spotted in the Danish strait. They had no idea how close to the real story they actually were.

She was talking to the two men who sat up front as I walked out, all three smoking cigarettes without a care in the world. One do, the type I would have taken for the bad cop winked and smiled as he saw the black leather jacket I wore, similar to the one he had. Half an hour later we were waiting at a beach over looking the strait and Sweden behind it. Watching the armada of ships in the distance, wondering what the fuck I had gotten myself into as I sent the text message she recited me to send to my editors. The paragraph I sent shut them up. Giving them a rough timeline of what was about to happen and at what time I was going to be broadcasting life.

Barely pressed send that I heard the rumbling of the helicopter in the distance get closer. I had gotten in situations in life where a sane person wouldn't have gone without a gun, I thought of that as I was guided towards that scrap of Soviet metal pretending to be a helicopter, North Korean markings, flaking red stars, and fading Hangul stenciled on its rust-flecked fuselage.

It was a Mil Mi-14, or what was left of one a fucking relic from the Cold War, probably traded for rice or oil back when the USSR still pretended to be generous. The thing looked like it had survived a dozen typhoons and at least one hard crash into the Yellow Sea. Its rotors groaned with every revolution, the kind of mechanical screech that didn't inspire confidence but warned you loud and clear: you were now somewhere you didn't belong.

The tail boom wobbled with a suspicious flex, and the wheels had clearly been replaced with whatever was lying around. The pilot, or what passed for one, wore a leather helmet straight out of a 1950s comic book and a uniform two sizes too large. No smile. No small talk. Just a nod.

My handler was swift, she made me duck beneath the blades, my heart hammering louder than the engine. The metal skin of the chopper was hot under my hand as I climbed in—like touching an oven door. Inside, it smelled of kerosene, mildew, and something distinctly feral. There were no seats—just a rusted bench bolted to the side and a nest of tangled wires hanging from the ceiling, swaying like jungle vines.

"NORTH KOREAN AIRCRAFT, YOU HAVE ENTERED RESTRICTED DANISH AIR SPACE, JETS ARE ON STATION AND WILL ESCORT YOU TO KASTRUP INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT!" Some clipped, stern voice crackled through the static, shouting through the open channel. I reached for the nearest headset—beat up, the foam padding half gone—and jammed it on, heart pounding like it was trying to punch its way out of my ribs.

On the other side of the cockpit, one of the crew muttered something sharp and rapid in Korean. I couldn't tell if it was a prayer or a curse, but either would've been appropriate. The radio went dead, silenced with a flick of a switch. Then, without warning, the helicopter lifted off again—lurching into the air like a wounded animal refusing to die, dragging itself one more mile out of sheer spite.

I could feel the tension bleed into my spine as we climbed. I pictured the Danish fighters—probably F-16s—forming up on either side, trying with all their might to fly as slow as possible, loaded to the teeth and just one bad decision away from lighting us up. I imagined the cockpit of one of those jets, some young pilot squinting at us through his HUD, finger brushing the trigger, wondering who the hell flies a decades-old North Korean relic into Copenhagen.

The helicopter rattled and pitched in the wind. The pilot gripped the stick like it owed him money, his eyes locked forward, expression carved from stone.

I didn't have any answers. Just a head full of regrets and the distinct feeling that today was not the day to test Scandinavian trigger discipline as I gripped by backpack like it was my lifeline out of this.

My handler just smiled at me before laughing, telling her colleagues something which apparently was funny enough for the pilot to look away from his cockpit and towards me.

The deck of the ship didn't look like it was made to accommodate landing helicopters—hell, it barely looked like it could accommodate itself. A patchwork of rusted steel plates welded at odd angles, slick with seawater and streaked with oil, it was more scrapyard than flight deck. No markings, no lights, no guidance—just a square of relatively flat surface surrounded by a few tired-looking sailors with chipped helmets and cigarettes dangling from their lips, watching us with the kind of disinterest that comes from having seen one too many near-disasters.

As we descended, the chopper bucked in the wind, and for a second I thought we were going into the drink. The pilot didn't seem phased—he just grunted, wrestled the stick, and dropped us like a sack of concrete. We hit the deck with a thud that rattled my bones, skidding a few feet before finally settling with a metallic groan. No arresting cables, no netting, just gravity and grit keeping us from sliding off into the North Sea.

The moment the rotors started winding down, crew members scrambled out, ducking under the blades, barking to one another in Korean and waving us off like we were bad luck they didn't want hanging around too long. I unbuckled, muscles tight and aching, and stepped out onto the deck. The sea air hit me like a slap—cold, sharp, and real.

From here, everything smelled like salt, diesel, and secrets. Didn't have time to stare amazed at the countless ships around us sailing in the same direction before I was ushered below deck by my handler. She didn't say much, just a curt nod and that cold, bureaucratic efficiency you only find in people who've buried the last of their empathy beneath protocol.

Her colleagues flanked us, one ahead, one behind. The whole thing felt less like an escort and more like a quiet arrest.

We moved through the ship's guts—narrow corridors, overhead pipes sweating condensation, bulkhead doors left ajar like open mouths in a too-tight space. It had that fake clean look. Hard to describe exactly, but it was like the place had decided it was clean through sheer force of will. Like you could hide the rot if you just scrubbed hard enough and ordered the crew to polish the brass twice a week. The rust still bled through the paint, and the fluorescent lights buzzed with a dying flicker, but the floors gleamed with military shine and every corner smelled faintly of industrial-grade disinfectant.

There were cameras in the corners, half of them real, half probably just there to keep people guessing. Sailors passed us in silence, some with dull eyes, some with the sharpness of men who knew not to ask questions. No laughter, no chatter. Just boots on steel and the low hum of the engines rumbling through the hull like a heartbeat too slow.

I didn't know where they were taking me. but it was clear I wasn't here for sightseeing.

Became even more clear as I was escorted into the captain's office—if you could call it that. It looked more like a storage room someone had reluctantly repurposed for authority: a battered desk bolted to the floor, a map of the region tacked up with thumbtacks and creases, and a photo of Kim Jong-un staring down at everything like a silent threat. The walls were metal, the air stale, and the fluorescent light above flickered just enough to keep your nerves on edge.

My handler stayed at my side, arms folded, face unreadable. Her two colleagues, waited outside the door like stone statues, leaving us with the two men inside.

The first was clearly the captain—immaculate in his Korean People's Navy uniform, every button gleaming, medals in rigid order, posture so stiff it looked painful. His face was lined with discipline and decades of sea air, and his eyes never quite met mine, as if acknowledging me too much would be a breach of something sacred.

The second man, though… He didn't wear a uniform. He didn't need to. A sharp, dark suit, barely wrinkled despite the ocean around us, and a thick cigar smoldering between his fingers. The smoke curled lazily toward the ceiling, giving the room a haze that stung my eyes just enough to make blinking feel disrespectful.

The way he looked at her—my handler—told me everything I needed to know. Not just authority. Ownership. Like she was a line in a report he'd already read twice. He didn't nod. Didn't speak at first. Just exhaled slowly, let the silence hang.

The captain seemed to unfreeze—mechanically at first—then stepped forward and extended a hand. We shook. His grip was firm, practiced. He smiled, almost warmly, but the moment lingered just long enough to reveal the truth: he didn't speak my language. Not fluently, at least. Maybe not at all. The gesture was rehearsed, ceremonial. A courtesy to mask the underlying discomfort of my presence.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Then the man in the suit—the one with the cigar, the real authority in the room—spoke without standing, like standing for me would be a waste of perfectly good energy.

"Has Eunji explained everything in detail?"

"Yes," I answered, trying to keep my voice level, my posture neutral. My palms were still sweating from the handshake.

He looked at me—eyes narrowing slightly, not with suspicion, but with calculation. Like he was measuring something I hadn't even realized I'd offered up.

"Eunji will keep a hold of your camera and your phone," he said, matter-of-factly, like it was already done. "You will then be escorted to your quarters, where—for your own safety—we would like you to stay for the time being. Tomorrow morning, you will be brought to the mess for breakfast and instructed on the operation."

No room for negotiation. Not even a pause to ask if I understood.

He nodded once toward Eunji. She moved like she'd been waiting for the cue.

With swift precision, she stepped beside me, unzipped my backpack, and slid it off my shoulder without a word. Her hand came up, palm open, fingers lightly curling toward her—the silent, practiced signal for me to surrender the phone.

For a split second, I considered hesitating. Then I thought about the captain's tight smile. The man's cigar. The dozens of ships surrounding us like a steel forest.

I placed the phone in her hand.

Got to my quarters just as the two sailors who had lived there were clearing out the last of their belongings. One of the guys from earlier was tucking in the last corner of a fresh sheet with surprising care, while the other stood in the hallway, arms crossed, waiting like he couldn't get out of there fast enough.

No words were exchanged. Just the quiet efficiency of people following orders.

As the door clicked shut behind me, the air changed—less tense, but not exactly welcoming. Just still. Heavy in that way only confined spaces at sea can be.

The room was sparse. Two bunk beds bolted into opposite corners, their metal frames chipped and scratched. A single table with a plain metal chair next to it—more of a suggestion than furniture. And two lockers on the wall, their doors ajar, freshly emptied but not fully erased.

I stepped closer and peeked inside one of them.

A few photos still hang to the interior wall with strips of yellowing tape. The first: a family portrait—stiff but warm. Parents and siblings, maybe, all standing in a tidy row, with one of the sailors in his cleanest uniform front and center, trying not to smile too much. The second: black and white, older, faded—a man who looked eerily similar, standing proud in a 1950s military uniform. Maybe a grandfather. Same jawline. Same eyes. The last was the most human: a snapshot of the sailor, out of uniform for once, grinning awkwardly next to a woman—probably his girlfriend, maybe his wife—her hand resting on his chest like he really belonged there.

Barely had time to take it all in—the beds, the locker, the quiet ghosts hanging in the corners—when the door creaked open again.

Same guy as before. Leather jacket, hard eyes softened just enough by the casual confidence of someone who'd done this too many times. He stepped in holding a metal tray, balancing a bowl of steaming noodles, a pair of chopsticks, a fork and spoon set, and a juice pack—orange, the kind with the little straw glued to the side.

He smiled. It wasn't warm exactly, but it wasn't hostile either. Just enough to say "you're not a prisoner, but don't push it." He set the tray on the table with a light clink, then stepped back, slipping one hand into his jacket pocket.

Out came a soft pack of cigarettes. He held it out wordlessly.

I took one without hesitation—my first real act of gratitude since boarding this floating contradiction of a vessel. "Thanks," I managed, the word feeling strange in my mouth after so much silence.

He nodded, like that was enough. Like we'd had a whole conversation.

Then, just as silently, he turned back to the locker. Pulled the remaining pictures down—carefully, like they mattered but weren't his either. They weren't meant for me to see after all. He didn't fold them, didn't crumple them. Just stacked them neatly in one hand and walked out.

The door clicked shut behind him.

A few hours later, I woke up disoriented—dry mouth, full bladder, that confused moment where you forget where you are and wonder if you're still dreaming. The hum of the ship was constant, a low industrial growl that vibrated in my bones. Everything smelled faintly of metal, oil, and the sour tang of military-grade cleaning chemicals.

The cabin was dim, lit only by a dull red emergency bulb above the door. I swung my legs down from the bunk, feet meeting cold steel, and shuffled toward the door, trying not to wake the silence with the groan of the floor.

Twisted the handle. Locked.

I knocked—once, twice, not too loud. Just enough to be heard.

Ten seconds passed. Then twenty.

Finally, the door cracked open. One of the two guys from earlier—the handlers, guards, shadows, whatever they were—stood there, backlit by the harsher light of the hallway. Same expressionless face. Same unreadable eyes.

He didn't speak. Just looked at me.

"I need to use the toilet," I said, voice rough and low.

The man turned his head, said something quietly in Korean to the guy sitting on a fold-out stool just a few feet away. That one rose, straightened his jacket, and stepped up behind him. Within seconds, the first one opened the door wider and motioned for me to come out.

They flanked me without a word—one in front, one behind—like I was radioactive and needed constant escort. We moved through the hallway, the sound of our footsteps strangely loud in the middle of the night. The ship creaked every now and then like it was muttering to itself.

The bathroom was a cramped, sterile closet—metal toilet, cold sink, a mirror that had seen too many faces trying not to flinch at their own reflection.

They didn't follow me in. But they stood just outside, close enough to hear everything.

I took my time, not out of spite, but because I needed those few moments of privacy, however thin they were. When I stepped back out, they didn't ask anything. Just resumed the silent formation, walked me back to the cabin, and locked the door behind me with a soft click.

Back in bed, I stared at the ceiling for a long time.

Those guys were keeping guard all night?

Even with everything on their plate tomorrow, they still had them pulling guard duty outside some foreign journalist's temporary quarters like I was the key to a warhead. Shouldn't have surprised me, really.

KPASOF. Korean People's Army Special Operations Forces. If the stories I'd been told were even halfway true, these weren't just elite troops, thy were the bogeymen of an entire peninsula. The kind of people whose job wasn't just to win battles. Recruited young. Orphanages, mostly. Children with nothing, shaped into something the regime could point at and say: "This is loyalty." Decades of conditioning, muscle memory, and indoctrination. Their minds wired as tightly as their trigger discipline. Ttrained not just to fight, but to vanish, infiltrate, eliminate, and disappear again.

I'd heard whispers, thriugh reporters who'd covered the DMZ, defectors, analysts who half-believed what they said. These were the people you called on to sabotage nuclear power plants in the South. The ones with kill lists that included ministers, CEOs, military brass. People trained to commit mass shootings under false flags, to stage terror attacks, uncarring if they would bomb a military barracks full of conscripts or a bullet train full of civilians. If tomorrow ever turned into The Day, they'd be the first ones over the border—already there, maybe.

And now they were babysitting me.

All that ran through my mind as I saw Eunji pack in front of me the next morning. She moved with that same efficiency, not an ounce of wasted energy in her actions. Alongside her were Chul and Dong—names I couldn't be sure of, but the same cold, silent faces from the night before. The same ones who kept guard all night, who followed every order with the same mechanical precision.

I had a job to do now. The camera came out. I recorded them as they prepared. The rhythmic sound of metal and fabric as they suited up in camouflaged spetsnaz suits. I watched as they methodically filled magazines for their Russian AK-12 rifles. The sight didn't shock me—it was the way they handled those rifles with such casual familiarity, like they'd been born with them in hand.

Where they'd gotten them, I didn't know. Lots of the high end material in the country came "falling off a truck". Maybe it was just another part of the puzzle that made no sense but still fit perfectly in the madness.

I was pulled out of my recording when the first rumbling came from outside, deep, low growl of engines that didn't belong to the ship.

I stood up, my body stiff from the tension of the last day, and walked to the door, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. When I stepped out onto the deck, the scene hit me like a punch to the gut.

Ships. Everywhere.

I saw them all as the sun rose, stretching across the horizon. Warships—massive, steel-grey vessels—cut through the waves, their outlines sharp against the morning fog. Then came the missiles. Countless projectiles shot up from the decks, whistling through the air with a sharp sound. The roar of their launch was deafening, leaving trails of smoke in their wake. Gunboats and destroyers hammered the coastline with heavy gunfire, shells ripping through the air like a swarm of angry hornets. The sounds of the explosions as loud as the speakers, blasting pre recorder propaganda speeches, here and there interrupted by the voice of a man shouting commands.

I filmed it all, unable to look away, unsure if I was watching a war or something worse. The ships kept firing, their guns booming, missiles hitting their targets in the distance. They were aiming at the Świnoujście peninsula, the core of the operation. It was a perfect choice.

Świnoujście sat right on the German-Polish border, protected on the south by a lagoon twice the size of Berlin. The west had a series of islands that connected only to Germany through bridges that were being destroyed as I recorder the missiles leaving their racks vertically and flying in the air. And it had a narrow land corridor right in the kill zone of their warships. The city itself was split by a river, narrowing any army into a tight corridor before another wide river connected it to the rest of Poland. Świnoujście, or "Swinu" as the Koreans called it, had a large port that could land even non-amphibious troops. If they managed to catch it. Due to the Marsh like area, crabs who resided there loved it. It was now only a question of cleaning the area of its squatters and securing the zone to land more troops. I saw the amphibious landing crafts leave the ships from the front of their bowels. Far away, but those huge inflatable ships were a sight to see. Got dragged out of this sensory overload by Chul tapping me on the shoulder, handing me my press vest, helmet and a Makarov pistol. Not that I would have hit anything with that. Unlike his colleagues with their slick AK12's he had an RPK machine gun. The three of them guided me to the zodiac hanging on the side of the boat, and we were dropped into that madness.

I half expected it to be like so many times before. With some officer who wasn't trusted with real combat guiding me through a battlefield that had gone quiet hours ago. I'd do a few interviews, get a few staged shots of soldiers firing into empty buildings, then head back. But this time was different. Our zodiac overtook the landing crafts and air cushions, heading straight for the beach. And instead of some officer I was with a handful of enlisted men from their nation top tier special forces group.

Chul was up front, lying down with his machine gun aimed forward in case someone decided to take a shot at us. Dong was at the controls, trying not to let the waves flip us. Eunji sat in the back, going over a map. I thought about asking them to slow down, but clearly I wasn't in charge here. I turned around and looked back at the sea. The ships were still firing, emptying their arsenals at targets I couldn't even see. Then a pair of Gripens shot overhead, fast and low. The North Koreans had somehow managed to drag the Swedes and half the world into this.

The lead jet fired one of its big anti-ship missiles. They'd been modified since the war started—now they were used against the Beetles. That's when it hit me. We might be dealing with one of those on the beach. I looked at Eunji. She was already watching them too. For a second, her usual calm dropped and something real flashed on her face. Then she went back to her map, told Dong where to steer.

Even among them, the strain was showing. Chul kept glancing left and right, his knuckles white around the RPK's grip. Dong's jaw was clenched so hard I thought he might crack a tooth, steering the zodiac with rough, jerky movements until we hit sand. Eunji barely looked up from the map, but her fingers tapped a nervous rhythm against the plastic casing of her radio—too fast, too sharp, a dead giveaway. They weren't panicking. They were doing what all real soldiers did before the fight: getting quiet, getting small, tensing every muscle like a spring about to snap. No one spoke. No one joked. Even with all their treaning and experience they look strained, you'd see it just by looking at their eyebrows. Whatever we were about to walk into, even they weren't sure we were coming back from it.

He didn't slow down until we were almost on the sand. The zodiac slammed into the beach. They jumped out and sprinted toward a dune about a hundred meters ahead. None of them looked back. Either they trusted me to keep up or didn't care if I didn't. The sand felt like it was swallowing my boots. I struggled to move while jets, helicopters, and shells flew overhead. That "PRESS" vest on my chest didn't mean a thing to stray fire or Crabs. Be it some crustacean that was just handed a blaster or a pilot of one of the numerous MI24's flying overhead.

Chul and Eunji reached the dune first. They were already radioing in, focused on something they saw in the city ahead. I turned back to the water. The landing crafts were getting close. That's when I felt a blast knock the air out of me. Something exploded maybe five hundred meters to our right. Smoke and sand flew everywhere. When it cleared, I saw it. One of the Beetles, moving awkwardly, pushing through the wreckage on its way to the beach. A few ships were firing at it, but they weren't doing much more than kicking up dirt.

The landing crafts were maybe half a kilometer out. If that thing didn't go down soon, everyone inside whatver ship the beetle wanted to target would be dead before they even hit land, not a quick death either, imagine 100 of them stuck shoulder to shoulder while burning alive by its napalm. As I filmed, something flew right over our heads—fifty meters above at most. I ducked instinctively as that flying piece of metal flew overhead, then watched it hit the Beetle on its side. It was one of the missiles from the Gripens. The jet flew over me just as the explosion tore the thing open. Magma and fire burst from the hole, a mix of liquid napalm and something worse pouring out. The Beetle crumpled, almost split in half, more liquid oozing from its side. I shifted my focus back to the landing crafts.

You should've seen the landing troops. The moment the ramps dropped, they sprinted out. Holding their rifles by the front end, running full speed through the surf. Be it if they came out of those huge landing air cushions, amphibious landing crafts or even out of old BMP1's that had in some miracle managed the sail from the ships to the beach. One, two, three—I lost count. At least three dozen landing crafts hit the beach. Infantry, jeeps with anti-tank gear, IFVs, tanks. Everything hit the sand.

The first waves hit the beach like a living hammer. Platoons of North Korean infantry surged forward, boots splashing through the foam, water and sand, rifles clutched tight as they fanned out across the sand in disciplined bursts. Some, the machine gunners dropped flat the moment they cleared the waterline, covering the next wave that sprinted past them as they fired burst after burst. Officers, barely distinguishable except for the colored bands on their arms, barked orders over the din, pointing towards the dunes and broken seawalls that dotted the coastline. IFVs roared off their landing crafts, their tracks digging deep scars into the beach, turrets swiveling wildly, as its vehicle commanders looked out of their hatch for targets. Jeeps outfitted with recoilless rifles bounced over the uneven ground, their crews barely holding on as they raced to set up firing positions.

Some tanks—old Chonma-ho, North Korean variants of T62's, jury-rigged with welded armor plates and camo nets—lurched off the ramps and drove straight up the dunes, engines screaming as they tried to get eyes inland through the wet sand. Through it all, the Crabs kept coming and took position on the promenade, a few hundrerd meters behind the sand dune me and that team took position behind, monstrous shadows that made the soldiers' charges even more desperate.

Despite the chaos, the Koreans moved like they'd rehearsed this nightmare a thousand times. Groups broke off instinctively, laying down covering fire, pushing into the smoke and mist without hesitation. No fear. No slowing down. Just momentum, pure and brutal, carving a foothold into the continent one bloody meter at a time.

Then the Crabs showed up.

Swinu was just a few kilometers south. The bombing had been light so far, probably to protect the port. In their great wisdom, the North Koreans had left it standing. They expected to win, so why wreck what they'd need later?

There was a promenade between the beach and the city, lined with hotels and high-rise apartments. That's where the fighting started. They fought like hell for that stretch of sand, a few men had died on the beach itself from blind blaster shots coming from the promenade. We'd see a blaster round hit the sand, explode and you'd see a poor bastard collapse to the floor, holding his leg up high, desperatly trying to apply a tourniquet as his comrades continued the sprint forward. Those guys were either sprinting or shooting, often both at the same time. Eunji had cursed when an assault rifle burst hit just five meters from where she was.

Then came the cheerleaders. That's what I called them. A crew of twenty-something women in military uniforms. No rifles. Just pistols and loudspeakers. They shouted at the men on the beach, promenade once they got onto cover behind the dune me and the rest were at. Shouting about a sacred missions and the will of the Great Leader or whatever. Eunji was trying to direct naval fire while one of them screamed next to her like it was a concert. Eventually Eunji snapped. They argued for half a minute before Eunji stomped the speaker under her boot. That was that.

The few brave crabs on the promenade didn't last long. They had hundreds of rifles, tank barrels and ships aimed at them. But when the ships firing had stopped once the North Korean marines arrived at the promenade, the fight got tougher. With support so close to them ceasing, tanks unable to make their way up the dunes, out of the beach and onto land and marines tiring up, the crabs had the upper hand again. The city itself was supposed to be already cleared by then. Instead you had anti aircraft guns firing their four barrels onto the promenade. Someone had messed up the intel. Badly. They didn't expect that many Crabs.

The naval fire slowed down after one of the cruisers exploded. I still don't know what hit it. There weren't any tripods in the area. Maybe someone screwed up and dropped a shell inside it. Maybe things just go wrong in war.

The cruiser didn't go out in a blaze. It died slow. One explosion, external, then a second, then one internal. Even I knew what that meant, folks inside that ship were toast.

At first, there was just a puff of smoke rising from its midsection. It then started listing, turning just slightly off its line. The kind of drift you don't notice until it's too far gone to fix. Its remaining guns on the part not affected went quiet. All of them. One second they were hammering away at targets inland, the next they were just dead weight.

The ship began veering starboard, the bow swinging wide, the whole thing moving sideways through the water like it had lost all control as we saw sailors on the deck rushing to get on the life boats. No course correction, no emergency signals. A lifeboat broke off early and hit the sea with a splash, tumbling in the waves before being literally run over by the out of control ship.

We stood on the dune and watched it twist in the water, slowly pointing toward land. The flames started licking higher up its rear deck. Black smoke poured out in thick columns. It wasn't turning out to sea. It was coming in.

It picked up speed—not because the engines were working, but because the tide and momentum were doing the job for it. A drifting wreck on fire, and the worst part? It was heading straight for the beach. Not miles away. Just a kilometer down from us.

Someone cursed behind me as it got closer. I couldn't tell who. The ship scraped into the shallows like it was dragging itself onto land for one last breath. Metal screamed against sand as I felt the earth shake below me, hull groaning under its own weight. Then the front half of the cruiser struck the beach. Hard. Sand and water burst up around it. The rear lifted slightly before crashing down again with a low, booming thud that we felt in our chests.

We could see it clearly now. The whole front deck was buckled and scorched, flames still rising. No one on deck. No one coming off. Just the ship, burning, buried halfway into the beach. A dead hulk with its own battlefield carved out in fire and steel.

Chul said nothing. Eunji kept her eyes on it, like she expected something worse to come crawling out of the wreck.

Battle raged in the city as more landing craft and helicopters started disbarking ammunition, supplies and empty stretchers. Didn't take long before those were filled. Row by row you had men and women carrying the wounded from the city towards the landing crafts. Far enough that we didn't see what injuries they had but close enough to hear the screams. Tried to lift the camera towards them, but I caught the look Chul gave me. Not one of "This will not be approved by the censor officer." But more one of "They're suffering enough, they don't need their faces on tv."

So I lowered the camera. Some things didn't need to be filmed. Instead, I watched in silence as more stretchers poured out of the haze—makeshift ones, sometimes just doors ripped off houses or tarps tied between rifles. Blood mixed with seawater around the landing crafts, turning the foam pink. Medics moved in frantic bursts, dragging, lifting, shouting for help over the endless pounding of artillery. No ceremony. No dignity. Just speed. Some of the wounded never made it past the dunes; you could see the stretcher bearers stumble, then quietly set the bodies down and move on, too overloaded to waste time. The helicopters overhead kept coming, unloading pallets of ammunition and crates of water, then loading in as many injured as they could. No one celebrated the landings anymore. The beach wasn't a beach now. It was a conveyor belt, grinding flesh and steel in the name of momentum.

Tanks pushed south and east as the infantry finished wrapping up in Sinu. It was a sight, walking through that city. Even for a coastal town, it was packed with four- and five-story commie blocks. At first, I didn't understand why so many of the buildings were coated in strange colors—until I saw Dong reach for the knife strapped to his chest and scrape the wall. The layer peeled off like old paint. It was biological. Earth-like. I learned later it was crab excrement. They loved to coat the walls of wherever they nested with that shit. Half the building would be covered, inside and out, anywhere they could reach.

Inside, you'd see stacks of empty shells—the ones the crabs had shed—piled up in the corners of abandoned rooms. If they weren't burrowed underground, they slept indoors like that, curled up under their own filth.

We walked the street toward the city center while vehicles rumbled past, men marched by, and fighter jets roared overhead. Occasionally you'd hear gunfire, but that was just soldiers tying up loose ends—marauders, stragglers, young crabs left behind. Most of the real fighting had been at the coast, near what was left of the promenade.

The city felt wrong. Not dead, exactly—just... wrong. Like it had been abandoned mid-step. Grass had overtaken the sidewalks, left-behind cars, everything the crabs hadn't marked with their filth. Time hadn't stopped here. It had rotted.

Nearly every apartment and shop had been stripped clean—no supplies, no personal belongings. The train and bus stations were piled high with suitcases and bags people had been forced to leave behind. Some of the North Korean grunts picked through them at first, until a commissar came by and ordered them to knock it off.

The four of us didn't need a translator to figure out how to break into a corner shop. No one stopped us. We stuffed our pockets with cigarette packs like it was just another day.

Eunji had managed to explain, as best she could, that the battle was over. Besides a few strays and marauders still lingering on the outskirts, the city had been cleared. And that the North Koreans were now setting up shop, with the two "kill zone" funnelling the crabs over here west and east.

Four hours after the landings, I found myself in a makeshift mess hall—what used to be the local train station—going over the footage I'd recorded with another Korean officer. The cook had already taken over the place, serving up fresh food like it was a permanent base now.

The officer assigned to review my footage looked too clean. Not a scratch on him. I caught Chul, Dong, and Eunji making fun of him from across the room. Even without understanding the words, I could see it in the way they mimicked his stiff posture and the way his face flushed red.

It all stopped when the guy's superior showed up to approve the "final cut."

If only they knew: the real footage—the parts they didn't want shown—was safely backed up on another SD card tucked in my sock.

Last time I saw them was outside that place, just an hour later. Funny how different things felt after the battle. We sat on the train station steps and talked for almost an hour. Not about the fate of humanity. Not about where the crabs had come from.

No, we talked about life.

One of them tried his best to explain, half in broken English, how his father used to sell black market Chinese and Russian cigarettes, same qualities as the ones we were smoking. Dong told me how he'd been on the verge of a football career—a transfer to a prestigious Chinese team—before the war shattered everything. Chul and Dong kept teasing Eunji, laughing about her engagement to an Air Force officer, of all branches. How they had spent too much time protecting her from officers and grunts alike only for her to marry a fighter pilot of all things.

It was the most human thing I'd seen in days. Maybe weeks.

A BTR arrived and stopped in front of the train station. Some guy reloading the gun atop signalled to the trio. They simply stood up in silent. Put their balaclavas down, hoods up. Checked the state of their weapons and made their way to the vehicle.

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