Reincarnated: Vive La France-Chapter 109: "They’d warm to a brick if it killed fast enough."

The train pulled into the Reims.

Moreau stepped down with a crate cradled carefully between his arms.

The box was plain but weighty, reinforced at the corners with brass latches and labeled in pencil.

"PAP Prototype. Experimental."

De Gaulle stood waiting on the platform, trench coat buttoned high, eyes scanning the station.

"You didn’t tell me you were bringing home toys," he said dryly.

"I wasn’t sure I’d come back with anything worth showing," Moreau answered.

De Gaulle raised an eyebrow. "And did you?"

Moreau looked down at the box. "We’ll find out."

Back at the base, word spread fast but not fast enough to cause noise.

A group of hand-picked soldiers four tank crewmen, three sappers, and two recon NCOs assembled behind the storage depot where Moreau stood with Chauvet and Gualle and a clipboard.

"This is not a sanctioned field weapon," Moreau began. "You won’t find it in any manual. No brass has blessed it. And if you drop it, I may bury you with it."

A chuckle rolled through the group.

He pulled the lid open.

Two compact, matte-black automatic weapons lay inside simple, brutal, elegant in their own way.

Short barrels, side-charging handles, box magazines clipped in beside.

"This," Moreau said, lifting one, "is a Pistolet Automatique de Proximité. Close-quarters. Quick action. Minimal training curve. It’s not for sniping or parades it’s for kicking in a door and still being able to shoot after."

Corporal Rémy, the oldest of the scouts, leaned in and squinted.

"It’s ugly as sin."

"Good," Moreau replied. "Beautiful things break. Ugly things survive. Prime example our Republic."

Everyone laughed.

Private Marchand nudged the man beside him. "Looks like something my cousin tried to build out of plumbing parts."

"That cousin still alive?"

"Barely."

Moreau grinned. "Then maybe he was on the right track."

The first test drill began the next morning.

A section of the field had been mocked up into a crude village wooden frames for buildings, doors salvaged from demolished barracks, narrow lanes that twisted into blind corners.

Targets straw dummies with red sashes for "kills" were scattered throughout.

Each fireteam took turns. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm

The riflemen moved in disciplined formations, as trained.

But when they reached corners or tight rooms, the bulk of their weapons turned into dead weight.

Reloading required kneeling.

Maneuvering demanded awkward sidesteps.

Private Aubert swore audibly after jamming his Lebel against a wall for the third time.

"This fucking antique’s longer than my mother-in-law’s gossip!"

"You want to talk it to death or shoot it?" Chauvet snapped.

Then came the PAP team.

Two men.

Short commands.

Tight angles.

One cleared a corner while the second provided cover with short, vicious bursts.

When one magazine ran dry, the other laid suppressing fire.

The reload was done in three seconds flat.

Inside forty-five seconds, they cleared three rooms and a trench line.

From the hill, Gualle watched with folded arms.

He muttered, "It moves like it thinks."

One of the observers beside him whistled. "If it thinks, it’s smarter than half the men we’ve got."

Between drills, a small crowd formed around the weapons crate.

Sergeant Malraux picked up the PAP and tested the balance.

"Feels like a toolbox."

"Yeah," said Private Giraud, cradling it. "But it doesn’t snag on your belt when you crawl. The Chauchat makes you feel like you’re giving birth."

"Recoil kicks, though."

"Then grow some wrists, you piss-sponge."

Moreau stepped in. "Keep talking. I want complaints. This thing needs to survive you before it survives combat."

"Recoil’s manageable. But I’d love a padded stock."

"Magazine’s a bit stiff."

"We could use a sling loop."

"Sight alignment’s weird if you’re crouching."

Moreau nodded. "Write it all down. The gun isn’t sacred. The job is."

Chauvet arrived with coffee and leaned over. "They’re warming to it."

"They’re soldiers," Moreau muttered. "They’d warm to a brick if it killed fast enough."

That night, they ran a fog drill.

Lanterns dimmed, trench smoke pumped from small barrels.

The teams moved under red-filtered lights.

Visibility was cut in half.

Communication dropped to hand signals.

The PAP squad was inserted second, after a standard rifle team failed to breach the central building due to a magazine jam and a dropped rifle in the crawl.

Inside the smoke, the PAP men moved like water.

Low, fast.

The burst fire sounded like punctuation short, sharp, precise.

Ten minutes later, three rooms were cleared, and no team members were "killed."

"Holy shit," Giraud whispered. "It’s cheating."

"No," Chauvet said beside him. "It’s called evolution."

One of the quartermasters, watching from the rear, scribbled quietly in his notebook: "Fast breach, effective cover and insane noise."

By midday Moreau sat in his tent, ink-stained fingers writing up a tactical report.

"Preliminary field results suggest squad-level integration of PAPs at 1:3 ratio can halve room-clearing times and improve trench survivability. Recommend equipping assault platoons with two units pending approval."

He underlined "pending approval" twice.

The tent flap opened.

Gaulle stepped in, holding a sealed envelope.

"You’re going to love this."

Moreau took it and broke the seal.

FROM: MINISTRY OF WAR

TO: COMMANDER, REIMS TRAINING SECTOR

SUBJECT: OBSERVER DISPATCH, EXPERIMENTAL UNIT REVIEW.

ARRIVAL DATE: MAY 12, 1935.

OFFICER: LT. GEN. DUPRÉ (GS, STRASBOURG)

Gaulle read it over his shoulder. "We’ve got five days."

Moreau folded the letter.

"Then let’s make sure this bastard sings when they watch."

That evening, back in the armory, the PAPs were cleaned, disassembled, checked, and repacked.

Corporal Rémy ran his hand along the grip.

"You think they’ll approve it?" he asked Chauvet.

Chauvet shrugged. "You’ve used it. You tell me."

Rémy grinned. "I’d marry it if I could."

"Careful," Chauvet said. "Moreau might make that regulation."

Private Aubert piped up from the back, wiping mud from his boots.

"Whatever keeps me from dragging that fucking Lebel through a doorway again, I’ll vote for it."

"You don’t get a vote," Chauvet said, grinning.

"I get a gun though, right?"

Chauvet tapped the crate. "Earn it."

And somewhere on the other side of the horizon, a General was already packing his bag.