The frost had returned to the Meuse Valley. Not the soft frost of October, but the biting, iron-laced kind that stiffened fingers and turned rifle bolts into frozen levers. The men called it "la morsure blanche", the white bite. Trench fires were forbidden, so they huddled for warmth and dreamt of spring. But in Emil's foundry, spring had already arrived — not with flowers, but with flames.
The second prototype of the Libellule, codenamed Alpha-2, stood suspended in chains like a steel insect waiting to be birthed. The improvements were obvious: a reinforced frame of lighter molybdenum alloy, a swivel turret compatible with either a Chauchat machine gun or a 37mm infantry cannon, and most crucially — an integrated coil-wrapped radio transceiver hardened against jamming.
Emil stood beside it, chin tilted upward, eyes gleaming.
"This one won't just scout," he said. "It will sting."
Rousseau, arms crossed, frowned at the machine. "You're turning your insects into predators."
"No," Emil replied. "Into bait."
Fournier entered carrying a bundle of blueprints, dust still clinging to the edges. "The design is complete. Five units can be field-assembled from a single flatbed shipment. Tracks, wheels, ammunition pods, fuel drums. We've tested assembly time — sixteen minutes by trained crew."
"Faster than field artillery," Emil mused. "And faster than their response time."
"Where do we deploy them?" asked Rousseau.
"Near Saint-Juvin," Emil said. "Where they least expect armor, and where their engineers have just begun bridging operations across the Aire. We'll strike their logistics, not their front."
Fournier raised a brow. "A deep strike?"
Emil smiled faintly. "No. A surgical infection."
He called the mission Operation Scalpel.
The plan was elegant in its brutality. Five Libellule units would bypass German lines using forested trails and dead railway beds. Their goal: to reach the rear-echelon camp at Croix des Vaches — a supply hub nestled between two hills and defended more by terrain than troops.
What made the mission so daring wasn't the route, but the silence.
The attack would use no artillery. No prelude. No support.
Only speed. Surprise. And the sting.
Captain Marchand was selected again to lead the strike.
"They're going to call you insane," he said as he read the orders.
"They already do," Emil replied.
Marchand's face darkened as he stepped into the cockpit of the Libellule. "I buried two more men last week, Emil. We can't keep losing them like this."
"Which is why we don't lose this one."
They moved under a moonless sky, the engines of the Libellules wrapped in cloth and grease to muffle their whine. Each vehicle carried a crew of three: driver, gunner, and saboteur. Marchand led from the front, his turret fitted with a custom twin-barrelled Chauchat variant that Emil had personally modified to reduce jamming.
They reached the perimeter of Croix des Vaches at 0430 hours. The German sentries were asleep, warm in bunkers, confident in their rear position. The French scouts crawled through frozen brush, marking targets with chalk.
At 0453, Marchand gave the signal.
The Libellules roared to life.
The first burst of fire came not from guns, but from spotlights — mounted on the chassis and aimed directly into German tents and watch posts. Blinding. Disorienting.
Then came the sting.
Explosive rounds tore through fuel drums. Gunners poured fire into ammo crates. A cookhouse exploded in a plume of flour and fire. Two German trucks tried to flee — one flipped, the other caught a sabot round and vanished into flame.
By 0512, it was over.
Thirty-four German soldiers killed. Four officers captured. Six French wounded. Zero dead.
And a message carved into the side of one smoldering truck, written in soot and grease:
"We learn. You burn."
The aftershock rippled far beyond the Aire.
Berlin issued a formal inquiry into the collapse of the Croix des Vaches depot. General von Lutwitz, the regional commander, was relieved of duty. The High Command demanded countermeasures. One of the intercepted communiqués referred to Emil's machines as "Verdammte Schmetterlinge" — cursed butterflies.
The French Ministry, now fully aware of Emil's growing cult of battlefield success, reacted as bureaucracies often did: with hesitation and envy. Auditors arrived. Uniformed officials took inventories of shell casings. Engineers were reassigned "for standardization purposes." Even Emil's requisition requests were slowed.
He noticed immediately.
"What are they afraid of?" Rousseau asked as he watched a line of officials wander the foundry floor, clipboards in hand.
"Victory without permission," Emil replied.
Amélie Moreau returned again, this time with a briefcase of documents and a new set of eyes — a young legal attaché named Gérard Lavalle, whose only combat experience was likely in duels over wine pricing.
"We're restructuring oversight," she said, seating herself across from Emil in his planning room.
He didn't look up from the map. "You're building a cage."
"We're building a fence."
"For what?"
"For what you might become."
He did look up then, eyes steady. "I'm not the danger. The war is. And I'm just keeping up."
Lavalle cleared his throat. "There are rules, Monsieur Laurant. Even in war."
"There are outcomes," Emil corrected. "And consequences."
That night, Emil walked the assembly line alone. Sparks flew from welders' torches. Hammers rang. Grease-streaked faces nodded in respect as he passed. These were his people now — not just workers, but co-conspirators in a different kind of war.
He paused beside a completed Libellule. On its side, a mechanic had painted a dragonfly with bayonets for wings. Underneath it, in chalk:
"Silent. Swift. Savage."
He didn't erase it.
Instead, he added one word beside it in charcoal:
"Truth."
The next morning, a supply train arrived bearing Ministry observers.
They found the line fully operational.
They found blueprints — clean, revised, documented.
What they didn't find was the third prototype, hidden beneath a false floor and being modified for something else entirely:
A heavier turret.
A diesel-electric hybrid engine.
An armored skirt.
And a name etched into its unfinished hull:
Chimère.
Not a dragonfly.
But a myth.
A monster.
Emil's next move.
A promise.