Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 736: The Somber Sky
Chapter 736: The Somber Sky
Captain James Mallory stood at the edge of Bagac Bay, his boots sinking into wet sand as the tide rolled in.
The Thompson hung loose across his chest, the weight familiar and indifferent.
Ships came and went through the harbor, black silhouettes against the dying light, but Mallory wasn’t watching them. His eyes were fixed on the horizon. On Siam.
He couldn’t see its shores, but he knew that’s where they’d be sent soon enough.
The Royal Thai Army had grown into something dangerous over the last twenty years, especially the last ten.
Replacing Japan as the new power of Southeast Asia, they were loyal to Berlin, armed and trained by it.
The Reich had poured steel and science into Siam like holy oil: rifles, uniforms, armor, even warships.
Some were stamped “Made in Bangkok,” while others were born from German blueprints.
Germany had made a proxy. And America…. Well, Mallory didn’t care.
Politics weren’t his business. He wasn’t a philosopher or a grand strategist.
He had earned his stripes putting down riots in New York, shooting at men who believed that “freedom” meant burning banks.
Right or wrong didn’t matter, orders did.
But the heat did. The damn heat of this god forsaken tropical hellscape.
Now that… that was something he found to be irrefutably evil.
A wet slap echoed as he crushed a mosquito against his cheek. Its blood smeared his palm.
He scowled. “Goddamn jungle flies…”
If the locals had been friendlier, maybe he’d find some comfort here, a girl, a bottle, a night without sweat and hate.
But the Filipinos looked at them with a disgust so intense he might as well be the incarnation of the devil itself.
It wasn’t that long ago, after all that Americans burned villages to the ground in the name of maintaining control over this land.
He smoked in silence, staring at the orange reflection of the sun bleeding across the bay, until boots crunched behind him.
“Sir!” a young lieutenant saluted sharply, out of breath. “Orders from battalion headquarters… reconnaissance planes report unusual activity from Siam. It appears the enemy is preparing an invasion. You’re to report to Manila immediately, sir.”
Mallory didn’t move.
The boy hesitated, his voice rising. “Sir! The orders are from Lieutenant Colonel Moore himself!”
Mallory finally turned, the cigarette clinging to his lower lip. “Relax, son. You’ll live longer.”
He snatched the paper, skimmed the seal, and crumpled it before the ink could dry in his mind. “As you were, corporal.”
The young man stiffened, saluted again, and left, muttering something about “career suicide.”
Mallory just stared blankly with disdain, flicking ash into the sea. “Dumb kid. He won’t last five minutes when the bullets start flying.”
He shouldered his Thompson, started down the pier toward the city, and didn’t look back.
Behind him, thunder rolled faintly over the water, a distant growl from the west.
It might’ve been a storm. Or the first echo of something worse.
—
The drive to Manila took him three hours through checkpoints and barricades.
The closer he got to the capital, the more the air felt wired. Too many boots, too many rifles, too many men pretending they weren’t afraid.
Manila wasn’t a city tonight. It was a wound with lights in it.
Searchlights clawed at the sky, fingers of white slicing through the humid dark.
Convoys rattled past every few minutes, their headlights blacked out, their drivers hunched low over the wheels.
Anti-aircraft guns loomed on rooftops like nervous gargoyles.
Somewhere distant, the whine of an air-raid siren stuttered and fell silent again.
Mallory stepped from his jeep and lit a cigarette.
He’d barely taken two drags before someone shouted.
“Hey! You there! What unit are you with?”
A sergeant in a sweat-darkened uniform jogged up, rifle slung and helmet crooked.
The man’s eyes darted over Mallory’s gear before settling on his shoulder tabs.
“Captain… Christ, sir, what are you doing out here?” He didn’t wait for an answer.
“German bombers have been detected heading this way. We’re under alert. Command’s preparing for an air strike!”
Mallory just blinked, the smoke curling out from between his teeth.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, sir!” the sergeant barked, nearly shouting over the chaos. “We’ve been ordered to clear the streets and direct all personnel to designated shelters. There’s an emergency command briefing forming under Fort Santiago…”
Mallory exhaled, slow and unbothered.
“You go on ahead, Sergeant. I’ll find my way.”
The man hesitated, clearly torn between protocol and disbelief. “Sir, with respect, it’s not safe out here.”
Mallory gave a humorless smile. “It’s the army, Sergeant. It’s never safe.”
Before the man could argue, Mallory turned away, walking down the narrow street toward the waterfront.
The sirens started again, steady this time, full and shrill. Soldiers ran in every direction. Somewhere, a dog barked, frantic and pointless.
He passed a group of civilians huddled behind sandbags, their faces pale in the intermittent light of burning oil drums.
The smell of fear hung over everything, sweat, gasoline, and the faint, metallic tang of anticipation.
At the end of the street, the sea waited.
He followed it like a memory.
The beach was empty now, save for the faint hum of the tide and the distant thunder of engines.
Out on the water, the horizon was black, until it wasn’t.
Tiny flecks of orange began to bloom, then fade, then bloom again. Like fireflies.
He knew that pattern. He’d seen it more times than he could count.
Flak bursts.
“Right on schedule,” he murmured.
Behind him, Manila’s lights dimmed as the power grid shut down.
The city went dark, a silhouette waiting to be carved by flame.
He could hear the first distant detonations, dull, rolling impacts that crawled up from the sea.
The bombers had arrived.
Mallory sat down on a broken seawall, resting his Thompson across his knees.
The cigarette burned down between his fingers, the ash trembling with each concussive thud.
The sky flashed white, then red, then orange again.
The air itself seemed to warp, carrying the echo of collapsing buildings and screaming men.
He didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch.
Somewhere, a formation of fighters roared past overhead, Allied interceptors, too late and too few.
Their contrails twisted in the strobe of tracer fire, beautiful in a way that only death could be.
Mallory took another drag and let the smoke linger in his lungs.
“Guess this is it,” he said softly to no one.
Another blast rolled through the harbor.
The ground trembled beneath him. Flames reached into the sky where the oil tanks used to be, painting the waves in molten gold.
He looked toward Siam again, or the dark stretch of sea where it waited, unseen but inevitable, and smiled bitterly.
“Go ahead,” he muttered, tossing the cigarette into the surf. “Let the bastards come.”
The next explosion drowned out the sound entirely.
