The wind off the Marne was sharp that morning, rolling through the eastern fields and scouring the frost from rusted barbed wire. The land here was scarred but not yet ruined, unlike Verdun or the Argonne. There was still grass between the trenches. Still birds in the trees. A deceptive quiet — the kind that made men believe the war was pausing.
It wasn't.
At the edge of the 7th French Army's forward command, Emil Laurant stood over a large sheet of acetate layered atop a detailed map of the Marne sector. His fingers traced over pencil marks and grease smudges, pausing on a section labeled Lisière de Fer — "The Iron Edge." It was a narrow corridor of exposed road between two low ridges, flanked by sparse woodland. The Germans had used it to move supply convoys by night, shielded by trees and predictable moon cycles.
"Every third night," Emil muttered, eyes narrowing. "Like clockwork."
Beside him, Fournier adjusted his glasses. "How sure are we they'll use it again?"
"They're not expecting us to be mobile," Emil said. "Especially not after the Chimère stunt."
Rousseau leaned over the map. "And we strike with what? Artillery?"
"No," Emil said. "With steel. Up close. Fast."
He turned to the engineers gathered around the planning table.
"We deploy the Libellule platoon here, along the treeline," he said, tapping with a grease pencil. "But not all at once. I want two units staged as decoys, hulls stripped to half-weight for speed. They'll act as chasers. The rest will hit from the flank."
"What about air support?" Fournier asked.
"No flares. No planes. No smoke. I want the night itself on our side. Absolute silence until impact."
Rousseau exhaled. "You're going to drive steel through the heart of a moving convoy, in darkness, with five light vehicles?"
Emil smiled faintly. "Not just steel. Surgical steel."
Operation Scalpel II was greenlit under total radio silence.
Five Libellules, codenamed Fang-1 through Fang-5, were deployed via flatbed into the Bois de Vinets under cover of darkness. The crews were veterans now — lean, hollow-eyed men who had survived too many miracles to fear one more. Their machines had names: Chasseur, Guillotine, Sélène, Basilic, and Vesper. Emil had insisted each crew name their vehicle, to make them less like tools and more like wolves in formation.
Captain Marchand, ever the spearpoint of Emil's experiments, took the lead in Chasseur.
The convoy came just after midnight.
Ten German trucks escorted by two armored scout cars and one half-track with a mounted 20mm autocannon. Their lights were hooded, their engines low. They moved in a line like a snake of steel and fuel.
At 00:14, Emil gave the silent order from the relay post: a flashing mirror code across the trees.
The wolves moved.
Chasseur and Basilic burst from the woods, their engines growling with barely-restrained torque. Guillotine followed on a parallel arc, swerving between brush and cratered earth. The Germans panicked immediately. The convoy stopped. Then restarted. The half-track swiveled its cannon toward the sound.
That was its last mistake.
Vesper had been waiting on the ridgeline. It launched a shaped explosive charge from its side-mounted tube, hitting the half-track dead center. The vehicle flipped, fireballing into the lead truck.
The line collapsed.
Guillotine tore through the rear guard, firing incendiaries into tires and fuel tanks. German soldiers screamed in confusion, unable to tell how many attackers there were.
It was over in six minutes.
Nine trucks destroyed.
One captured intact.
No French casualties.
Marchand emerged from Chasseur, his uniform black with soot and powder. He pulled the German officer from the captured vehicle and shoved him toward Emil.
"Found your worm," he said. "Colonel Hans Bitterfeld. Logistics command."
Emil looked the man over. Thin, spectacled, soft-palmed.
"You're not a field officer."
"I am an administrator," Bitterfeld said, shivering. "I sign schedules. I do not fight."
Emil tilted his head. "Then you're more dangerous than a general."
The truck they recovered was loaded with sealed crates. Inside: machine parts, reinforced axle rods, and barrels marked Panzerlaufwerk B.
Fournier squinted. "That's not for trucks."
"No," Emil said. "It's for something heavier."
The Germans were preparing armor production.
And they were close.
That evening, Emil summoned Amélie Moreau to the forward station. She arrived in a black automobile, the kind used by Parisian ministers and undertakers. Her coat was clean. Her eyes were not.
"You've made quite a mess," she said, stepping over spent shell casings as she joined him by the recovered truck.
"I've made a statement," Emil said.
She examined the crates.
"You know what this means," she said softly.
"Yes," Emil replied. "It means the next war begins within this one."
She didn't deny it.
Instead, she handed him a folded note.
"From Lavalle. He's filed a motion to strip you of autonomous command. Claims you're building a private army."
"I'm building weapons that think," Emil said.
"He thinks you're becoming one."
Emil unfolded the note, read it, then tossed it into the fire barrel nearby.
"He can watch from Paris. I'll send him a postcard from Berlin."
Amélie smiled faintly.
"You're going to need more than dragonflies for that."
"I'm building something else," Emil said, his gaze turning east.
"The Chimère?"
"No," he said. "Something that doesn't just sting. Something that survives."
She looked at him for a long moment, then said, "Whatever you build next… make sure it remembers why."
Far across the river, in a bunker carved beneath the hills of Ardennes, Wilhelm Rainer read the report on the Marne ambush. He tapped the edge of the paper against his desk. Slowly. Rhythmically. Like a metronome before an aria.
He turned to his aide.
"Ready Projekt Höllenwagen. We test it on the next push."
"And Laurant?"
Rainer's smile was cold.
"He'll come to us. Once he realizes what he's provoked."