Chapter 57: The Shattered General Star

Enshrouded in the icy mist stood a steel masterpiece, the pride of the Soviet military: the 45mm anti-tank gun M1932 (19-K).

Through Walter's vision, the cannon emanated a frigid, deep blue hue. Thanks to its flat trajectory and a high muzzle velocity of 760 m/s, it could precisely pick off light tanks within a range of 1,000 meters. At closer ranges, its extraordinary accuracy had earned it the nickname "The Sniper Gun."

"Follow me. Keep it quiet," Walter whispered the order.

The four men crept cautiously toward the anti-tank gun. During his previous NCO training, Walter had handled these heavy pieces captured by the Finnish Army. However, in the heat of actual combat, standing within a Soviet position and using Soviet weaponry against the Soviets themselves, this was a first.

He quickly searched beside the gun carriage. This type of artillery was typically supplied with three types of ammunition: high-explosive fragmentation (HE) shells, canister shot, and armor-piercing (AP) shells.

The HE shells were devastating, equivalent to several hand grenades, a true nightmare for infantry. The canister shot effectively turned the cannon into a giant shotgun; a single blast would turn the area ahead into a slaughterhouse, acting as the battlefield's grim reaper. As for the AP shells, they utilized solid slugs designed for the head-on task of tearing through armor.

"Damn it, only armor-piercing," Walter muttered, his heart sinking as he pushed aside two wooden crates near a snowdrift.

Two boxes in total, fewer than twenty AP rounds. This meant he lacked wide-area fragmentation; he couldn't simply blow an entire tent sky-high with one shot. He would have to harness the terrifying kinetic energy of the AP rounds and "snipe" the high-value targets inside the tent directly.

"Quick, man your stations!" Walter assigned tasks with rapid efficiency.

Walter took charge of spotting the targets and determining the bearings. Vatanen sat on the left, managing the traversing and elevating handwheels. Ojala crouched on the right, operating the breech and loading the rounds. Lindholm was responsible for ferrying the shells and helping to steady the gun.

"Squad leader, the damn thing is frozen solid!" Vatanen, responsible for the traverse, cursed under his breath.

In the extreme cold of -40°C, the lubricating oil had thickened into something resembling industrial-strength glue. Vatanen tried to turn the left handwheel to adjust the horizontal aim, but it wouldn't budge an inch.

"Lindholm, help him! Both of you, turn it together!" Walter growled, his eyes fixed on the glowing orange silhouettes inside the tent.

Lindholm dropped the shell he was holding, and the two men gritted their teeth, their heavy gloves gripping the rim of the handwheel with white-knuckled intensity.

Creeeak—Screeech—

The harsh sound of metal grinding against metal felt exceptionally piercing in the silence of the ice fog. Walter held his breath in tension; it was the sound of the frozen grease being forcibly displaced. As the handwheel slowly rotated, the heavy barrel shifted rightward millimeter by millimeter, until the thick muzzle was leveled at the red-lit tent thirty meters away.

"Ojala, stomp the ground flat! Don't let the recoil flip us over!" Walter commanded.

The men frantically packed down the snow behind them with their boots, wedging the spade of the gun's trail into the cracks of the permafrost.

In the mist as thick as paste, Vatanen and the others were effectively blind. Aside from the patch of frozen earth cleared at their feet and the cold steel of the gun before them, everything beyond five meters looked like it had been coated in a layer of white paint.

"Squad leader, what exactly are we aiming at?" Vatanen's voice shook violently as he clung to the freezing handwheel, not from fear, but from the bone-deep cold. "All I see is this wall of ice fog."

"Shut up and just follow my lead." Walter leaned against the carriage, his eyes bloodshot.

In his vision, the world had long since been deconstructed into a tapestry of warm and cold colors. That command tent looked like a massive red lantern in the dead of night. At the center of that crimson glow, two orange-red figures were leaning over a heat-emitting table. Those had to be the high-value targets.

"Left wheel, push right! Put your back into it! This hunk of iron hasn't woken up yet!" Walter roared in a low voice.

Vatanen and Lindholm threw their entire weight into it, using every ounce of strength they possessed. The glue-like oil protested again, shrieking between the gears.

Zhi-ya—Zhi-ya— Every inch of movement felt like the iron wheels might snap under the strain.

"Stop! Right wheel, bring it down! Lower the muzzle! A bit more!"

Walter stared intensely at the brightest core in his thermal imaging. At a distance of thirty meters, this 45mm cannon wasn't just artillery anymore; it was a sniper rifle of an absurdly large caliber.

"Squad leader, will an AP round really work?" Ojala asked, cradling the cold shell with trepidation in his eyes. "This thing doesn't explode. If we miss by even a hair, we're just poking a hole in a tent."

"If the shot is true, no one survives." Walter's teeth were clenched, the red light in his eyes growing more brilliant.

According to his calculations, this AP round would slice through the tent canvas like a knife through butter, punch through the table, and pulverize the high-value targets sitting behind it. The power of this "sniper rifle" was enough to skewer a whole row of men like a kebab.

"Elevation locked! Bearing locked!" Walter felt a wave of discomfort as the side effects of the Eye of Death began to manifest.

Ojala slammed the breech handle open. The sharp clang echoed far through the mist. He shoved the AP round into the chamber, and the breechblock snapped shut automatically with a heavy metallic thud.

Clang!

In the icy fog, the sound was like the Reaper chambering a round.

"Vatanen, watch your footing on the pedal. Don't slip."

Walter's right hand rose slowly. His gaze had already pierced through the layers of fabric, locking precisely onto the two chests pulsing with heat in the center of the tent.

This was likely the most insane sniper shot of the Winter War.

…

Inside the tent, the flickering light of a kerosene heater forcibly painted a layer of warmth over this frozen hell.

Colonel Sergey Iovlev huddled tightly in his sheepskin coat, his withered fingers pointed at an unfolded map. The edges of the paper were curled from moisture and cold, and the blue and red arrows on it looked jarringly prominent in the dim light.

"...We can no longer count on air drops." Iovlev's voice was hoarse. He looked up at the Chief of Staff across from him, whose eye sockets were so sunken they looked like two pitch-black holes. "If we don't retreat now, what's left of the 97th Rifle Regiment won't even have the strength to dig their own graves in the snow."

As the Chief of Staff prepared to speak, Iovlev waved a hand, signaling a nearby aide.

"Get me some water. Add a sugar cube, if there are any left."

the young staff officer hurried to grab the aluminum canteen beside the map table. A wisp of steam from the spout wavered before the bright kerosene lamp. Iovlev watched the steam, his mind drifting in a daze.

"Colonel, your water."

The aide tilted the canteen, and a clear stream of water poured into the cup.

In that exact instant, the world tore apart.

BOOM—!!!

For a 45mm shell with a muzzle velocity of 760 m/s, thirty meters is covered in less than the blink of an eye.

The people in the tent first heard a roar like a thunderbolt striking the earth. Immediately following, an unspeakable amount of kinetic energy smashed through the thick canvas flap and the wooden beams supporting the tent. The two-kilogram solid AP shell, carrying a scream that tore the air, entered in a precise, flat trajectory.

Colonel Iovlev didn't even have time to register shock.

In the eyes of the aide pouring water, he saw only a blurred black shadow instantly pierce the chests of both the Colonel and the Chief of Staff. The immense kinetic energy didn't just pass through human flesh; at the moment it struck the table, it shattered the thick wooden planks into countless flying splinters.

The bodies of Iovlev and the Chief of Staff were no longer biological entities in that moment; they were transformed into two clusters of red fragments, completely pulverized by the massive shockwave. Their upper torsos were struck as if by an invisible sledgehammer. Amidst the dense sound of shattering bone, a massive cloud of thick, steaming blood mist sprayed backward.

The shell's momentum was far from spent. After crushing the two high-value targets, it sheared through the spine of a guard standing behind them before exiting the rear of the tent and vanishing into the depths of the frozen forest.

Clatter!

The sound of the canteen hitting the ground was drowned out by the thunderous collapse of the tent. The aide was thrown to the floor by the pressure wave. He stared blankly at the spot where the Colonel and the Chief of Staff had been sitting.

There was nothing left but two broken chair legs and a flurry of blood-soaked map fragments dancing in the air.

Outside, from Walter's perspective, the scene was even more jarring and surreal.

Through the thermal vision of the Eye of Death, the two brilliant, upright red figures had, at the moment of the shot, exploded like red ink caught in a hurricane. Those vivid red patches lost their form instantly, turning into countless tiny, flickering orange sparks scattered across the icy blue background.

The heat, the signature of life energy, spread and decayed rapidly within seconds.

Walter watched as the two high-brightness targets in his field of vision flickered out completely, turning into lifeless, deep-purple remnants.