Sophia Ivanova, Red Bloc Commissar

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Mikail jammed the dark brown leather of his jacket against the scorching hot breech block of the "Object 279" Heavy Tank. The pitted handle groaned as it was turned in a rusty socket before giving way and allowing him to spin it. He pulled the breech block back, allowing the 130mm shell casing to fall out of the enormous rifled barrel of what was the former Soviet Union's most advanced nuclear war capable tank. By 1962, they had made over 10,000 of them for the second battle of Kiev alone. Rumor has it that not even Central Command knew the total number of them scattered across the scorching frontlines.

As the shell fell into Comrade Polchukin's waiting asbestos mittens, Comrade Le Marr (a true believer in the Cause from what was once France in the Stadt) slammed another round home. Comrade Mikail slammed the breech shut, tightened the handle, and held his ears as he heard the battered turret swivel; seeking Stadti steel across the smoldering plains of outer Moscow. The twisted steel wreckage from nearly two and a half decades of constant war had twisted the 10 kilometer zone at the outer edges to a mockery of a hellish Garden of Eden with ominous, long-blasted railroad tracks so numerous they rose into the sky from thousands and upon thousands of bombardments; the former rail yards now known as the "Iron Forest".

Mikail held his ears, but something was wrong. They had stopped moving. They should never...EVER...stop moving. But here they were, as still as a dewdrop. He cautiously opened his bloodshot eyes and ungritted his yellowed teeth before casting a glance at the man on the sights, Foreman Batmonkiin (A comrade from the steppes near Mongolia) sat back in his seat, and pulled the leather helmet from his head. Mikail's neck stretched at the sight. He'd never seen the Foreman waver in battle, not once. He tracked the gaze of his Foreman as his brilliant green, Asiatic eyes tracked over the grease stained, dismal interior of the tank until they rested on the hatch.

Mikail slowly slid his Romanian-made copy of the standard TK-60 7.62 x 30 mm pistol from its worn leather case. The bottlenecked round, sharing similar dimensions to the AK-47 and the much improved AK-66 but in a pistol length cartridge was more than capable of piercing even the best Stadti armor with its solid tool steel bullet.

He watched as the dust from the hatch being opened filtered down into the dim interior lights of the tank; the dust itself a combination of ash and rust. He racked the slide on his pistol and settled behind the breech, trusting its thick steel housing to protect him. The hatch opened suddenly, and Mikail pulled the trigger hard and fast, only to realize he had not taken the safety off. "Fuck!' he thought to himself as he fumbled with the gun. He found the safety, and leveled the gun again. To his shock, he saw long, pale legs slowly descending the steel ladder.

Mikail rubbed his eyes, but held the pistol steady. He opened them, now even more red than from the Vodka hangover he was fighting through, and saw the legs were long, and shapely, and disappeared under the tightest, blackest, shortest Commissar skirt he had ever seen. Mikail immediately lower his pistol.

Commissar Sophia Ivanova, the Terror of Moscow, was in his tank; and she was turning her lovely long neck to look at him with eyes as cold as Siberian snow.