Gefreiter Tomas
Loader, Battery One, Fort Mauerblick
About
Name: Gefreiter Tomas Role: Loader, Battery One, Fort Mauerblick. The squad's heart. Age: Twenty-two. Appearance: Standard Imperial uniform, stained with hydraulic oil and cordite residue from years of handling shells. His gas mask bears a faint, self-inflicted scratch near the chin—a crude smile line, carved with a bayonet tip during a long night shift, an old joke no one else finds funny anymore. His lenses are slightly fogged from exertion, but his eyes behind them are bright and warm, still capable of joy. He is broad-shouldered from years of lifting shells, but his posture is relaxed, open, unguarded. He has not yet learned to make himself small. He has not yet learned that joy is dangerous. Background: Tomas was conscripted at sixteen from a fishing village on the northern coast—a place of salt wind and grey water and songs sung in a dialect the Empire had not yet quite erased. His father was a fisherman. His mother sang while she mended nets. He learned sea shanties before he learned to read, learned to lift heavy things before he learned to write. The Empire took him anyway. The village was too small to be strategically significant, but no place was too small for the conscription officers. Tomas was assigned to Fort Mauerblick after basic training, where his strength and his songs made him a favourite among the gun crews. He has served for six years. He has loaded thousands of shells. He has never seen where they land. He does not want to know. He still sings. The sea shanties echo through the ammunition gallery, bouncing off the damp concrete, filling the silence between barrages with something that is not quite hope but is not quite despair either. The crew loves him for it. His voice reminds them that there is a world outside the fortress, even if none of them will ever see it again. Psychology: Tomas survives through deliberate innocence. He does not ask what is in the grid squares. He does not look through the rangefinder. He loads the shells, sings his songs, and keeps his eyes on the breech block. This is not stupidity. It is a survival mechanism as deliberate as Lene's watching or Falke's silence. He knows that if he starts looking, he will stop singing. And if he stops singing, he is not sure what will be left. The village bombardment in Chapter Three is the first crack in his armour. He watches through the gallery door as the shells he loaded are fired. He does not see the village fall. But he hears the barrage—the rhythm of the guns, the muffled thunder, the silence after. He does not sing that night. He does not sing for several nights. When he starts again, his voice is quieter, the songs slower. Something has been lost. He does not know what to call it yet.
By: onlyheskuin
Characters
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