World On Fire: Shadow Ops [a Fantasy WWII Quest]

[><] Steal the zeppelin (DIFFICULTY 3)

"You know what?" you say. "I like your idea, Simon. Let's try it."

<<Bold,>> says Doris. <<Very bold. Not to say I don't like it, but it'll be risky.>>

<<Can you at least convince the bow gondola crew to co-operate?>> asks an unsure-sounding Ethel.

<<We're about to find out,>> Doris says. You hear the muted sound of her stepping away from the radio, and the even more muted sound of her conversing in German. You're not good enough to recognize what she's saying, but you can tell she's at least good enough to hold a conversation about military matters.

Precious seconds pass away as you and the others listen to Doris negotiating with the crew. It gets heated at times, very heated, rising to a crescendo capped with two Germans arguing and a gunshot, but it soon calms down after that.

<<They've agreed,>> she says. <<The captain had to kill an SS officer who had... other suggestions. He says some crew might resist, but as long as we get to wherever we'll store this thing fast enough, that shouldn't be too much of a problem... where are we landing this thing, anyway?>>

"Ternhill should be far away enough. I don't think they've even touched anything in Shropshire."

<<Not on purpose, at least,>> agrees Doris. <<I'll tell him, and then contact Ternhill. Ethel, if you could send the RAF the documents...>>

<<Of course,>> the Rhodesian woman says. <<Doris, Shizuko, once we get moving, head for your carpets. I want you both ready for anything. Map says there should be broomsticks near where you both boarded.>> With that, you hear the click of her radio changing channels. Doris starts speaking to the captain of the zeppelin again, before remembering to do the same. You and your team, meanwhile, head back to where you boarded, eventually managing to find the brooms in question. The crew, what members look at you, give you looks ranging from disdain, to disgust, to resigned acceptance. None stop you, not even the few SS officers on board.

What's left of the SS officers are too busy being dead.

So, you sit by the broom racks and wait. You glance over at them and wince. Bernitzes. Bernitz makes decent brooms, fast brooms, but they can't turn for shit.

...

It is some time later when you are roused from your apparent nap by the sound of the radio once again being on, your team listening intently. That, and the sound of a... radial engine?

You look out into the night, and make out through the darkness what looks to you like a modified Zero, with a smaller-than-normal canopy. Looking closer, you see about six of them, though none of them seem to have noticed you.

<<What are...>> asks Ethel, before being cut off by the captain.

<<Those are... Shrikes, I believe is the English word. But they're only prototypes, what are->>

He pauses. <<It doesn't matter. Those are far more dangerous than any Messerschmidt, but as long as they don't notice us, we will be safe.>>

They notice you, and you're moving almost before you register the decision to be so. You grab a broom, leap onto the carpet, grab the machine gun, and are falling down through the air in an almost mechanically perfect diving launch. The "Shrikes" open up with light machine gun fire, but you're not terribly concerned about that, even as you notice that there are twelve of these things, not six. A zeppelin can soak up a punishing amount of machine gun fire, due to the armor, compartmentalization of the hydrogen cells, and sheer size. What makes your blood run cold is the sound of cannon fire. Zeppelins can take a lot of cannon fire, too, but not nearly as much, and even less of those damned mine shells.

Which these Shrikes have, as some explode not-quite-harmlessly against the zeppelin's armor. It shakes, it holds, but it won't for long. They dive down, going under the zeppelin, before looping around for another pass.

You pick one to chase after, following the reflection of the moon off its metal body - and the reflection of the guns of the zeppelin itself as it opens up on its attackers.

A plane needs to deal with smash - its kinetic energy. A carpet does, too, if less so. A broom's acceleration is about as magical as it gets. As long as you don't make yourself black out, you can turn largely as you please - the downside is that planes are already eclipsing the broom in speed.

This one, however, you catch at the top of its turn. It tries to roll its wings around in a desperate attempt to change direction, but at the top of its loop, a plane against a broom is all but helpless, and dispatching the engine is child's play.

You dive after another Shrike, distantly noting that whoever is controlling this squadron, they're smart. They've disregarded the hull, and have started to go after the more fragile control surfaces, the engines, and the gondolas, the former of which already have holes punched in them large enough to fly through.

This one you catch near the top of what looks like a loop, but he manages to get away with a mere few holes in a wingtip - he's put himself in a sweeping turn, not a loop, and soon enough all the others are too.

It's bad enough fighting the big zerstorers and light bombers by night, and that's with a squadron at your back. You and Doris are defending a big, fat, slow (if heavily armed and armored, for an aircraft) zeppelin, and there's only two of you against ten pureblooded fighters. A witch may be a hell of a dogfighter, but only against what she can see. And you're plumb arse at sight enhancement spells - which are mostly mage stuff anyway.

Your only hope is that you get to Ternhill before the Shrikes can finish you off. Or that Ternhill has enough Spitfires at the moment to fend them off.

You can at least trust that someone will be calling for them.

No votes this time, this is part 1 of 2 or maybe 3 parts to the end of the prologue.

The air is filled with thunderous noise, the sound of anti-air cannons from the zeppelin shooting blindly at the Shrikes (it does not turn on its spotlights because they cannot point up very far, and so as not to draw fire from what uninformed Britishers may be below), the sound of the Shrikes firing back, and the sound of the engines of both the zeppelin and the Shrikes.

Your broom is silent, as it always is, but stealth and maneuverability aren't too useful when the Shrikes have you beat in speed, numbers, and firepower. As evidence to this, the zeppelin is now pockmarked with holes and cracks in its armor.

You don't know how much ammunition they have, but they've started to conserve it, only firing on parts other Shrikes have already hit with their cannons. And they rarely firing at you or Doris, even with the machine guns. They prefer to try and ram you out of the sky, as they fly in pairs - one to shoot at the zeppelin, one to charge you like a mad bull, only firing when they're close enough to see you clearly.

The amount of damage you've been doing to them has been tapering off, as well - just a few nicks and holes in non-essential parts - a holed rudder here, a scratch on the swastika there, much as it cheers you up. You're almost tempted to try and cut off a chunk of propeller, if experience hadn't told you that that was a good way to lose an arm. Over the course of five minutes, you only get two more to Doris's none, and five minutes is an eternity in aerial combat.

You narrowly avoid the charge of one Shrike as your machine gun fire bounces off the wing of another, closer to the zeppelin than before, when you hear the tell-tale roar of burning hydrogen. By the darkness of light, the usually invisible flame is a brilliant blue as it spreads outward, and down the length of the zeppelin as more and more of it catches fire.

Panic sets in, which only gets worse as the fire suddenly starts growing rapidly as the rear section of the zeppelin deflates, and the whole thing fishtails like rear-engined car on an icy road.

Damn the radio silence, you think, as you reach for the radio on your back.

<<What the hell was that?>>

<<Emergency venting,>> says the captain. <<Not to worry, we still have a full supply of Vril, and we are still flying half a zeppelin. How far until we get to our destination?>>

You do the math in your head, checking the position of the moon to calculate the time. <<About half an hour.>>

<<Then we had best get moving,>> he says. <<Full speed ahead!>>

Even as it falls under the grip of gravity, the zeppelin starts to speed up like a bat out of Hell, its engines glowing with the pale blue light of Vril usage. Its downward acceleration, gentle as it is, is swiftly halted, and it actually starts to gain altitude from the sheer violence of its acceleration. Its turn slows, but not very well, as the rear is forced into line more by wind pressure than structural integrity.

<<How long until we can call the Spitfires into range?>> asks Doris, before grunting with the effort of swinging her gun around. Due to the lack of explosions, you doubt she hit anything important.

<<Already called them!>> shouts Ethel over the roar of wind - she must have been near a hole. <<They'll be here in three minutes!>>

Whether they heard, they smelled blood in the water, or they were getting desperate, the Shrikes immediately became far more aggressive. Now they exclusively try and ram you, using their light machine guns to target the exposed parts of the zeppelin and the steering fins both mid- and stern, not that they seem to be doing much good, as its handling degrades from "Mercedes 770 on a good road" to "Mercedes 770 in Michigan in winter."

They actually try to ram you head-on, aiming to maul you to death with their propellers and the fireball that would result instead of simply snapping your spine in half with their wings. Six of the eight remaining stop firing at the zeppelin entirely to focus on you and Doris, and those that continue to aim at the zeppelin do so with their cannons aimed down its length, at the exposed, flammable innards.

You hear something explode near Ethel on the radio. She swears something in a language you're unfamiliar with but sounds vaguely African. <<You know it'd be bloody nice to go one night without being SHOT AT.>>

You bite back the retort. You don't have time to pick up the radio, you barely have time to register her complaint. It takes all your focus to just avoid getting killed by rampaging fighter planes. It wouldn't surprise you if these were non-humans, too.

You manage to catch one just as it's pulling away from the zeppelin. The fire started by its mine shells set off another cell of hydrogen, which the zeppelin's captain swiftly vents out in a gout of blue fire. The zeppelin sags even more, and its ascent slows to a crawl, stops, and slowly reverses as the drag of more than half an empty airship starts to take its toll. The engines howl, and you can practically feel their strain, but it's not going to be enough - the zeppelin will be in for a hard landing.

The zeppelin's siren wails as it rolls over onto its side in an attempt to minimize damage to the more important underside. This strains the rear even more, and you can see the cracks form in its structure. It holds still, but the moment it hits the ground, the whole thing is going to be torn in half.

Instead of abandoning the chase in their victory, though, the Shrikes continue to attack the zeppelin. They're clearly here in opposition to you finding anything on board, because instead of shooting at the zeppelin's exposed skeleton, they continue to aim for the hydrogen cells.

You pursue your quarry down, down, almost to the ground level, and out of the corner of your eye you spot Ethel abandoning ship on board one of the carpets with her puppets firing at almost anything that moves. Seconds later, you see the other teams doing the same, their carpets overladen with German crew members as they slowly fall behind the zeppelin while maintaining a (roughly) similar heading. Neither open fire on the Shrikes, and with their lights doused the Shrikes are none the wiser that they're even there.

The Shrike you're tailing snaps to the side and aims itself towards Ethel, uncaring of the storm of .45 caliber fire being sent its way and only dodging once she opens up with the M2. This pushes the carpet to the side and towards the earth, and her corrections and re-corrections make her aim sloppy. Still, the Shrike barrel rolls to avoid it, and you're forced to do the same as you don't really want a face full of Ma Deuce right now.

You open up briefly with your own gun just as you both rocket over Ethel's head, only to hold fire just as quickly as you are both forced to dodge a falling chunk of zeppelin.

You lose sight of it as you come out from under the zeppelin's shadow.

You look to your left, and see nothing but Midlands at night.

You look to your right, and see nothing but Midlands at night and bits of German airship.

You look up, and scream as you see the Shrike dive straight for you...

...only to be blasted away by a storm of .303 and 20mm Hispanio. Its wreck flies under you, and a Spitfire wags its wings as it flies past.

<<This is Flying Officer Heath. You're clear, SOE, and tell your new friends that they owe me a whole bloody night of uninterrupted sleep for this!>> says the Spitfire who apparently saved you as he flies off to chase yet another Shrike.

The remaining German planes abscond from the region, clearly deciding that a squadron of sleep-deprived Spitfires is too much trouble at the current time. You don't need the radio to hear the cheers of your comrades-in-arms.

...

The zeppelin's captain eventually manages to land the craft on its side, a substantial (but not excessive) distance outside Ternhill, and you all manage to land within brisk walking distance of it. You, Ethel, and Doris sit around one of the few intact radios from the zeppelin itself, now sitting outside and powered by a car from RAF Ternhill.

<<Well, while the damage is certainly the worst we've seen so far,>> says a man on the other side, who is apparently one of M's many, many orderlies, <<the intel your group provided put a significant dent in the Luftwaffe's zeppelin fleets, a far bigger one than we could have delivered without it. M is impressed, he seems to think Goering must be right steamed over losing so many zeppelins.>>

Ethel, who as the de jure commander is the one listening in and speaking to, nods. "Not to mention all the intel we will get from all these prisoners. Once they surrendered, we only lost..." -she looks around- "-a dozen, maybe a baker's dozen, mostly on the landing. But, as the captain said, there's no safe way to land half an airship."

<<Speaking of half an airship... I must admit, I did tell M that what was left was fairly intact. Is that true?>>

Ethel looks almost affronted. She opens her mouth to speak, puffs up her chest, and-

BOOM.

She whips her head around, looking at the growing fireball of what was left of the zeppelin, ducking down as bits of fabric, wood, leather, steel, and things you don't really want to think about rain down.

"Good question."

Part 2/3

December 8, 1941
London
Sherlock Holmes Arms
5:30 PM GMT

On a normal day, after a successful string of missions like the ones you and the rest of SOE have been on, the Sherlock Holmes Arms would be full of joyous carousing.

On a normal day, Pete would be allowing the taps to flow freely, no charge to the officers - he does that after strings of disastrous missions too, but for different reasons.

On a normal day, there'd be a noise complaint about now. Either that, or complaints about the new Soviet members of SOE trying to proselytize in public. Or the few espers here being... a little creepy, at times.

The past 48 hours have been anything but normal. Everyone in the bar, even Pete, leaning almost over the bar itself, and Abigail, the half-iron-faced tanker another SOE team picked up while you were stealing a zeppelin, is silent - a rarity in itself.

The only sound comes from the radio, as the BBC reports on the results of President Roosevelt's speech on the American Congress. You, being the only American in SOE in London at the moment, were practically dragged to the forefront.

Roosevelt's speech, a bare seven minutes long, had been broadcasted live over the radio less than an hour ago, about a half-hour after noon on the East Coast by your reckoning.

They're counting up the votes now, and it hasn't even been an hour. In any other situation, you'd be deeply suspicious.

But Japan's attacks, not just on Pearl Harbor, but throughout the Pacific, came fast, came hard, and came without warning - at least to the public. Being SOE had its perks, and that mostly involved being aware that Japan was preparing to do something for at least the past month.

<<And we... have the votes for the House of Representatives now.>>

It passed unanimously in the Senate, but were the House to vote against it, slim a chance as it was, then nothing could get America into the war.

The tension couldn't be cut with Excalibur.

<<And the votes in the American House of Representatives are... three hundred eighty eight for, naught against, one abstention.>>

The tension promptly leaves the room like air from a depressurized plane. A cheer explodes throughout the bar, from down the street, and across London. Pete throws open the taps, even pulling out a few bottles of expensive-looking whisky. Someone lifts you into the air as others try to hug you, lift you onto their shoulders, or some combination of both. And you don't even mind.

As they do, someone breaks into song - alone at first, but it soon grows.

Johnny get your gun, get your gun, get your gun
Take it on the run, on the run, on the run
Hear them calling you and me, every son of liberty

The number of singers grows from one to ten to a hundred. By the time they get to the chorus, the whole bar, even you, is singing.

Over there, over there

In two months, your efforts to evacuate your family to England before the passing of a bill to detain all Japanese-Americans in camps far from the coast will fail, deliberately stalled by employees at San Francisco's airport.

Send the word, send the word, over there

In mid-January, when your Christmas presents finally arrive, they will be covered with anti-Japanese slurs of every sort, including something in Chinese you couldn't read (it was practically gibberish in kanji), but filled Indra with such rage it took most of the other Nepalese present, along with Harbir and a few others, to calm him down. He was grouchy for the next day.

That the Yanks are coming! The Yanks are coming!

Tomorrow, an old woman will spit on you in the grocery market.

The drums rum-tumming everywhere!

Jap.

So prepare!

Nip.

Say a prayer!

Yellow bitch.

Send the word!

You'll be called these and more over the coming years, from your own allies and sometimes even the enemy. Endure all kinds of bullshit, especially from officers of your own country, ironically enough. You will be denied trust, respect, supplies, at one point even medical assistance, all because people see you as Japanese.

Tell the world to beware!

But right now? You're an American.

We'll be over, we're coming over

Not Nisei, not Japanese-American, not Asian-American, not Oriental-American, just American.

And we won't come back till it's over over there!

And to you, that's all that matters.

May 12, 1942, RAF Waddington
7:45 AM GMT

As you step out of the GP, you reminisce about the satisfying sound of shutting a car door. And having car doors to shut. Or block out sound. Your new base at Debden was loud, what with all the fighters flying about, but Waddington is an entire new level of cacophony.

Waddington, home to the Royal Air Force's newest bomber, is two hours' plus a drive from Debden, and in the wrong direction from London, which was where you and Weronika have a meeting with SOE's replacement for supernatural ops, SHADOCOM. Normally you wouldn't even be here. Certainly, you and your squadron have worked alongside the heavy bombers while the USAAF works on putting you under its wing, even as it debates creating dedicated witch squadrons.

But...

In front of you is a Lancaster undergoing repairs, with a large, tall table set up next to its nose. On the table is a swivel chair, a smaller table, and a pilot with a fake pointy mustache and a smock that at one point may have been white.

Between the plane and you rests Weronika, on a small stack of wooden pallets. A long rifle is cradled in her arms against her body, with tally marks on the wooden stock.

She's wearing a peaked cap... and that's about it, really.

Abigail wolf whistles from the driver's seat. You ignore her, as does the artist and Weronika.

She sits on and up against cushions in a startling shade of violet, no doubt to stand out more. You'd feel sorry for her, but there's this weird bright yellow thing in the sky instead of the usual clouds like when you did this. And it's unseasonably warm, so she's arguably more comfortable than you are now. They may have had the decency to wait for a full month after your twentieth birthday before asking, but they still didn't ask until you were one, maybe two sheets in the wind.

You pull out your watch to check the time and frown. You'll be cutting it close for the briefing if you wait much longer, so it's a good thing the painter is done. He turns his chair around and stands up, not noticing you until he's halfway towards Weronika.

"Ah! Flying Officer Satou!" He held out a hand to shake, which you took with a smile best described as a formality. "I was just about to discuss detail changes with Second Lieutenant Kumiega-"

You hold up a hand to stop him before he can discuss anything you'd rather not hear, which when it comes to nude paintings on the noses of bombers is anything.

"She won't have time for that, unfortunately," you say as you look to where the aforementioned witch is hastily putting on her uniform. While some soldiers only keep their uniforms in good enough condition to pass inspection, Weronika is... meticulous, with her Polish uniform. Outside of combat, you've never seen it in worse condition than factory-fresh.

He frowns, for just a moment, but his smile is quick to return. "Of course," he says. "Super secret stuff, I suppose?"

"Very secret."

He sighs, letting his hands fall to his side. "I understand. Not that I can stop you, but Weronika's part is done anyway, so she is free to go."

He pauses. "Of course, if you're ever interested in being on canvas instead of metal..."

[ ] No
[ ] Hell No
[ ] Hell Fucking No
[ ] Yes

Your conversation ends soon afterwards, and you return to the passenger seat of the GP, with Weronika taking the driver's side rear seat and Weronika's stuff joining yours in the passenger's side rear seat.

"Back to Baker Street?" asks Abigail with as smug a grin as she can manage with more than half her face being metal. You ignore her.

"Back to Baker Street," you say. You'll arrive around noon, so long as Abigail drives like a sane person and nobody pulls you over. Hell, this took less time than you thought, you might get there early.

"You know," says Abigail as you make for the gate, "we've got time," she says in confirmation of your thoughts. "We could stop for lunch and get something besides pub fare."

[ ] Yes (Write-in what kind, remember this is England in the 40s and chicken tikka masala is anywhere from 20 to 30 years off)
[ ] No (skip to Baker Street)