Foreign Dominion

Chapter 6 - To All of You (American Tanks)

Ayame was alone in the Tankery garage working on repairing a return roller, wondering about the exchange students. They were probably barely functioning after flying in the other day, seeing as they were all from distant time zones. As she ratcheted down the last bolt, she heard the side door open and unfamiliar voices come in. There were four of them, with wildly different accents. Was it the exchange students wanting to look around the place? Ayame's eyes widened in fear. What if they saw the tanks and thought the team was some kind of joke? What if they saw her working alone and thought only a poor captain would do repair work? Terrified, she clambered up the side of her tank and dropped herself into the TC's seat, leaving the hatch open so she could hear the visitors. She could tell they had started looking around.

"What the hell?"

That voice had a heavy accent. Scottish? They had to be looking at the CTMS-1TB1 that was parked at the far end of the line, closest to the door. Another voice, this one sounded American, but not like any American she'd heard.

"It looks like the Stuart's dropout cousin."

The girls laughed, and Ayame had to hold hers in. That was a fair assessment of the light tank, and it was probably the best description of the CTMS she'd ever heard. A voice she could tell was Russian said, "I bet you can get some wonderful flanking attacks with it though."

"Actually, the CTMS isn't as fast as you might think. It's speed kind of sucks for a light tank. In fact, everything kind of sucks. It failed its trials miserably and the reports are the funniest Army-related document you will ever read outside of Skippy's List."

"So it's a total reject tank then?"

"I mean, it's still got the 37mm from the other American lights."

She could hear them marvel over the Greyhound, and the Stuarts and the Locust.

"Now this is what you'd want for a flanking attack. I've seen someone kill a Panther with one once."

"Oohhh, look at that M8! I told you they'd have a TD! Looks like they've welded a Stuart roof to the top to make it match-legal."

Then the group milled around the M3 Lees that were right beside her, joking around and making fun of the vehicles in a way that wasn't mean-spirited but rather just happy to be around the American steel. Eventually, they turned to her own tank.

"Okay, I thought the CTMS was strange, but what is that."

"It looks like someone gave the Locust an enlargement pill and it had a wild night with a Sherman."

Ayame couldn't hold it back any longer and laughed extremely loud.

Oops.

Delilah jumped a solid foot into the air while Amy just kind of stared at the tank trying to form words.

"Um. What the hell?"

A girl rose out of the commander's hatch, smiling and laughing. In between laughs, she said, "What you're looking at is an M7E2 medium tank."

"And who is in the tank and why?" asked Yelena.

"I'm Ayame, the captain of the Dominion Tankery Team. I heard you come in and got kind of nervous about meeting you."

"Were you working on your tank?" Mia asked as she gestured toward the ratchet, still on the bogie.

"Yeah, I was worried you'd think it was strange for a captain to be doing maintenance."

Delilah frowned. "Strange? I do just as much maintenance as the rest of my team."

"I don't know... I'm just crazy nervous. I know Dominion isn't a crack team and we aren't as good or well-equipped as other schools. I figured you guys are crazy good and would think less of us."