The Last War - A Post World War Dieselpunk Quest

For a moment you considered the offer of the stormtrooper again. The thought of coming home to a burning city laid heavy on your mind, but at the same time, you wanted to come home in the first place. It had not been a day since you left the last army you were forced to join and immediately signing up for another one willingly held little appeal.

"We have a deal," you said to the short man while holding out your hand.

"Glad to hear that, boy," he answered while shaking on it. "Name is Arno and these two are Gottlieb and Heinrich." Both nodded when they names were called, flanking Arno as if they were guarding him. Unlike him, they were tall and bulky and from how closely they resembled each other, they seemed to be brothers.

"Maximillian."

"Alright, Maxi." You glared at him for using that bloody nickname and got only a slight upwards twitch of his lip in response. "Then go ahead and have a look."

They stepped aside and you began to look over the engine. Not one you had ever seen before, but trucks were hardly something fancy. The biggest problem seemed to be that there was more mud than engine. "What about the three on the truck bed? Who are they?"

"Didn't introduce themselves," either Gottlieb or Heinrich ground out.

"We are helping each other. That's all," said Heinrich or Gottlieb.

You merely hummed in response and kept cleaning the engine for a while longer. Once the mud was gone, the problem was quite easy to spot. "Seems the carburettor took some shrapnel. I could patch it up, but I think we should find a good one in one of the other stuck trucks. Can you two check a few for me? This here is the part I need."

The two brothers were off at once, leaving you alone with Arno, who stared at you with an unreadable expression. "There's more to it, isn't there," you asked him straight out.

"The three made a good offer for our aid. Not the talkative sort though."

"Well, and I'm fixing up your truck," you said and wiped your hands on your uniform before leaning against the still broken vehicle.

He stared a while longer before finally smirking. "I like you, Maxi. Fine. They promised us some money if we bring them to the east side of the Rhein at Coblenz. If you ask me, they have something to hide. Maybe they are form a penal unit or something. Don't care though. Mark is Mark."

"Those still worth something?"

"No idea. They are paying in gold though, so that shouldn't be a problem. I'll cut you in for 20 if you get this thing to run and drive us to Coblenz. Just don't get too close to those three. They are twitchy since I asked for proof that they actually got the money."

You just scoffed while starting to remove the busted part. "Not surprising in the least. People seem to be stealing whatever they get their hands on."

"You been out for a while, right? Seem a bit lost."

You mulled what to answer for a moment. Arno didn't seem all that trustworthy, but on the other hand, you were his best way to see his deal go through. "Woke up just today in a dugout. Seems people thought I was already dead, so they tossed me there with the others."

"He. Ain't that true for all of us? It's the 20th of Mai by the way."

It took a while to remember the date of the ill-fated attack. The memory still felt quite fuzzy. "Two and half weeks then," you said more to yourself than to Arno. "I should be dead after so long."

"Probably. Seems you owe someone. I guess they lost track of you when the Frenchmen were gone, and everything went to shambles."

"That's something I was wondering. Where are they?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. One morning, they were just gone. There wasn't much fighting the week before, so it was hard to even notice at first. Even the brass wasn't sure what was going on and that was the first sign for most of us that they were just as clueless as we. Seems we are one of the last stretches that noticed that nobody was calling the shots anymore."

As he spoke you kept staring at the damaged carburettor as if the answer was somewhere in it. It was just a piece of metal though, no matter how much you wished it to be a crystal ball. "None of this makes sense. A war isn't just… stopping."

When you rose from the motor and leaned against the truck, Arno did the same next to you. "Not as if anyone ever explained something to us front pigs. Doesn't matter though. What matters is that you fix that truck, that we reach Coblenz and then all go our own ways, pockets a bit heavier."

That sounded like a fair enough plan for now.

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20.5.1919

Fixing the truck turned out to be easy enough with a spare parts and a bit more searching even turned up an extra cannister diesel. You left right that evening, Arno and the brothers urging to not stick around for the stormtroopers comrades to arrive. After a few kilometres driving by moonlight, you reached a small forest. One with actual trees, not just blasted apart stumps rising from the muck, and you made the choice to spend your first night away from the trenches in a small clearing at the roadside.

The three passengers kept to themselves, all of them eyeing the four of you with distrust and even going so far as to sleep in shifts. You were not quite sure if you really trusted everyone around you either, though neither Gottfried nor Heinrich seemed to be the dangerous sort. Not that you learned much about them. The talk around the campfire was just as shallow as the one in the trenches. Boasting about women. Complaining about the food and the weather. The kind of shallow prattling that passed the time without getting unduly attached to someone that might get torn apart by a grenade tomorrow.

There were no grenades in the forest though. Just an owl and a few stars peeking through the leaves above. The quietness was deafening. The air smelled wrong without the sharp stench of cordite lingering everywhere. You did not sleep well that night.

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23.5.1919

After two days of careful movement, you were finally close to your goal. There were plenty of other soldiers around on the larger roads, and they left few friends in their wake. Abandoned farmsteads and even entire villages were not uncommon these days as the need for farms had diminished and the draft cleared out those left behind.

But abandoned farms did not set themselves aflame. None of you had an interest in finding out what your former comrades had done, or how much the peasantry would like to take some recompense out of your hide for sharing the uniform, so you stuck to the less travelled paths even if that added some time to the journey. It also cost you more diesel though and soon the reserve was dwindling. And yet worse was the sight when you came close to Coblenz. Smoke was rising from the city.

Armed with a pair of binoculars he had borrowed from your passengers, Arno volunteered to scout ahead, while you were studying the map they too had provided and tried to your best to guess how long the diesel would last. Originally, you had considered to cross over the new at Remagen, reasoning that it was safer than getting close to the city, but now it seemed the fuel wouldn't last that far. The other options were to either drive straight trough Coblenz to the east and cross over the bridge there, or move north instead and try the nearby bridge at Urmitz. Both of those would have left you with enough diesel to cross over and drive a few kilometres more before having to ditch the empty truck. Assuming nothing went wrong.

Of course, it was not that easy. When Arno returned, he reported that he had seen armed men moving through the streets of Coblenz and some smoke rising from fires in the city centre. What was burning, he could not say though. You had a feeling though that it was connected to the soldiers that he had spotted at Urmitz. Well equipped soldiers at that. He had seen one Spider walker standing guard near the village entrance and what he suspected to be a hidden machinegun emplacement right at the bridge itself.

What now?

[] Try to drive to Remagen and travel onwards on foot if the fuel runs out before you get there.

[] Talk openly with the soldiers in Urmitz and see if you can get passage over the bridge.

[] Attempt to sneak into Urmitz and gather more information about the soldiers there.

[] Approach Coblenz openly and talk with the armed civilians guarding the city.

[] See if you can sneak into Coblenz to find out what is happening there.

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AN: Unless otherwise noted, you can always use approval voting when multiple options appeal to you.