So I came up with this while messing around in Fluoxetine's Discord and was further inspired by...
Wolfenstein: The New Heroes (A Wolfenstein Multicross feat. MCU, Disney's Atlantis and others!)
- Thread starter Vadrigos
- Start date
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 61
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 11
-
Statistics (11 threadmarks, 20k words)
User Total Vadrigos 11 Threadmarks Reader mode
Snippet 1
- Location
- San Francisco
So I came up with this while messing around in Fluoxetine's Discord and was further inspired by an aborted fic that approached the concept of Cap teaming up with BJ (which I can't seem to locate, though it only ever had one chapter). I decided to take things further and go nuts. The result is a mish-mash of MCU and other properties, with my having cherry-picked the best bits for the purposes of 'plot', insomuch such a thing can exist in such a gratuitous collision of fandoms. I don't know if this will ever be an actual 'full' story so much as a collection of random snippets and loredumps, but I thought I'd put it out there to gauge interest in any case. The story leaves out The New Colossus, though it may adapt some stuff from it, if I ever write those bits. In any case, here's the first snippet. Tell me what you think!
6:26 P.M. October 15, 1960
General Wilhelm Strasse's Personal Research Compound
Greater Fatherland (formerly Prussia), Europe
Of all the things Anton Leitgeb had expected to happen that day, a terrorist attack was not one of them. Oh, the propaganda posters scattered throughout the castle all warned of such things, and commanded vigilance at all times, but the truth was that in almost twenty years of operation, apart from a single desperate attempt during the closing days of the war that had brought the Reich to dominance over the world, no enemy of the Fatherland had set foot within a hundred kilometers of the place. It was an old stone fortress, reinforced by the best German engineering had to offer and defended by dozens of Ubersoldaten and Schwerer Roboter, who were in turn backed up by hundreds of infantry, all ready at a moment's notice to crush any threat, internal or external. Nothing could get in…
...but someone had.
It had started with the alarms. At first the scientist had assumed it was nothing more than a drill, designed to test readiness. They'd been getting more frequent over the past month, what with the various attacks going on in and around the heart of Germania (the news of which was all swiftly suppressed by the Deinst der Wahreit at the command of Herr Goebbels). He'd rolled his eyes, stood from his desk and fetched his coat, planning to complain to his supervisor about the frequency of these pointless affairs. How could they expect him to get anything done when they kept interrupting it with nonsense like this?
Then there'd been a strange sound, like the noise you got when travelling over the great bridges of the capital in winter, with their frost-coated suspension wires; like a violin the size of a building was having its strings plucked. With a mighty jolt, the floor had shifted like someone was trying to jerk it out from under his feet. His heavy wooden desk had jumped and scraped suddenly to the left with the motion, and the great stones of the old edifice groaned and cracked. In the cacophony that followed, distant screams and thunderous sounds of falling masonry echoed through the corridors. Irritation forgotten, face paling in fright, he'd stumbled through a gritty fog of dust, coughing and choking.
"What is this!?" he'd cried to no one in particular, "What in God's name is going on!?" No one answered, and with the silence came sudden clarity. "The lab!" he muttered, "Must get to the lab!" He'd rushed to the door, only to find it jammed by virtue of its warped frame. Had he been in a more cautious state, he might've hesitated, fearing for the stability of the stones around it. Right then though, he'd been more focused on protecting his project. If anything had been damaged, it didn't matter who was attacking them; General Strasse would have him torn apart by the castle's Panzerhund pack. With a swift trio of shoves, he managed to batter open the wood-paneled portal, then had rushed down the corridors beyond, subconsciously taking turns and steps that three years of practice had drilled into his psyche, all the while fretting at what might've gone wrong.
"No, no, no!" he muttered, "Please, dear lord, let nothing be wrong!" From somewhere outside his personal vortex of worry, he could hear the General over the loudspeaker system. He was taunting someone, the terrorists probably. It had to be terrorists. It lined up with all the news he'd been hearing through the rumor mill. Even the best informational control techniques were largely geared only towards keeping news from leaking out, rather than in, and so it was only inevitable that he'd heard about the attack on the Moonbase, the bombing of the great Gibraltar Bridge, and the loss of the Eva's Hammer. A sudden thought occurred to him, and he almost froze in horror. Could that have been how they'd gotten in? The land-based defenses-
He shook himself, hurrying on down another flight of steps. He had no time for such thoughts. His work came first. The General's wrath would likely extend even beyond the grave if anything happened to Project Eismann. True; he had many such projects, but in the past three years, none had held as much attention as this one, not even the mysterious metal their expeditions to the heart of Afrika had been finding in certain rocks.
Finally, he reached to the lab entrance, a large room with a sealed metal door sporting heavy electric locks guarded by four armed-and-ready soldiers at all times. They were there now, and immediately raised their weapons as he rushed towards them.
"HALT!" bellowed one, but Anton didn't slow. In fact the obstruction caused him to speed up slightly, his fear briefly suppressed by irritation; a boon that he took comfort in as he produced his lab credentials.
"Out of the way, dummkopf!" he snapped, "Else it'll be your head that the General takes, if anything has happened to his personal work!" This reprimand, delivered in a sharp and familiar tone, caused enough cognitive disruption for the soldiers to hesitate until he was close enough for his badge to be visible.
"Doctor Leitgeb!" exclaimed one, quickly lowering his weapon and indicating for the others to do the same, "What are you doing!? You should be in the disaster shelter!"
"I said out of the way!" Anton repeated, voice harsher than ever, before he suddenly skidded to a halt, face turning pale in the whirling strobe of an emergency lamp set to the right of the door. "Mein gott…" he swore, pointing at the light with a trembling finger, "How long has that been on!?"
The soldier who had spoken looked towards it, confused. "About ten minutes, sir. But it's not safe! Disaster protocol states that in the event of a terrorist-"
"Shut up!" Anton shrieked, stumbling forwards, regaining the momentum he'd lost at the unexpected sight. He forced his way past the guards to the control panel left of the heavy metal barrier, while behind him the men shifted from foot to foot in uncertainty, as soldiers are wont to do in the presence of a powerful civilian they know they're not allowed to shoot. Hands shaking as he jabbed the buttons of the numerical lock, the scientist realized he was sweating profusely from his hurried charge across the complex, and wiped his hand on his lab coat before slapping it hastily against the scanning panel that opened up in response to his code.
"Hurry, hurry! The cooling system must not fail!" he muttered, trembling, the faint sound of humming heat-exchange apparatus running on emergency power audible even beyond the large door. He resisted the urge to punch the panel as it slowly mapped and compared his fingerprints to those in its magnetic tape memory, while from somewhere far, far away, the sounds of gunfire and screams began to echo.
"Doctor, we should leave!" pressed one of the soldiers, reaching out to grab his shoulder. Anton slapped him away, panic having managed to reassert itself with the aid of the dread that had been building during the wait for authorization. Just as the man was about to make a second attempt, a green light came on below the strobe lamp, and the locks disengaged with heavy thumps.
"Sir, we must-" began the soldier apparently in charge of the quartet.
"Enough!" Anton bellowed, spittle flying from his lips in an excellent impersonation of the Furher, "Don't you understand, you imbecile!? If I don't restart the cooling systems, then we are all-"
He got that far and no further. Something came through the slowly-opening steel aperture of the lab, swift and sharp, stirring the clouds of cool fog that were billowing out with its passage. It hit the closest soldier in the face, punching through his gas mask's black lens and the skull behind it like an arrow, moving with such force it nearly ripped the attached head clean off. There was a moment of silent confusion as the guards stared in shocked bewilderment at their comrade before sense kicked in and they spun to face the door.
It was already too late.
Moving with the grace and skill of trained athlete, a figure lunged through the half-open door, hot on the heels of the metal projectile, which looked to be a piece of rebar or else some sort of handle. The soldiers were still raising their weapons as it rolled with the impact of its drop, coming to its feet to stand tall like an escapee from Hell itself, plucking the spike of steel from its victim as part of the motion.
"FIRE!" screamed the soldier who had been harassing Anton, his attention now totally elsewhere. His two surviving comrades did as ordered, pointing their assault rifles at the figure and squeezing the triggers. From there, it all went very badly. The escapee, now revealed in the strobe lamp and blue light of the chamber he'd just fled as a man with one arm and the body of a Greek god, turned sideways and lunged, sliding through the barrage of bullets like a dancer until he was in reach of the pair of stormtroopers. With a quick thrust he jammed his weapon into the gullet of one, then spun clockwise and rammed it up through the chin of the other on his left, dodging behind the dead body and seizing it by the neck as a shield while the remaining soldier sprayed his own weapon wildly into the body of his former compatriot.
Anton could hear himself screaming something, but it was drowned out by the gunfire and the last guard's screams. The one-armed man's meat-shield jerked and spasmed under the hail of death as he used it to rush the other guard with terrifying speed. When he was a meter from his target, he unwrapped his arm from the neck of the body, letting it fly by its own inertia onto the other guard, who fell backwards under its weight, spraying shots wildly as he fell, screaming all the while.
"Agghh! AGGHHH! DIE, DIE-" he howled, fighting to get up, but the amputated terror simply stomped down, shoving him back to the ground beneath his friend's corpse. As he did, he bent at the waist, plucked the knife from the body's belt and then dropped to a knee, forcing the struggling soldier beneath back again. With a vicious downward swing, he jammed the blade straight through the man's metal helmet, puncturing his cranium like a melon. Anton, frozen in terror, finally turned to run. He'd gotten three meters when there was the bark of a pistol and his left calf exploded in agony. He toppled to the ground, screaming in pain now, as well as fear.
Even disabled though, cursing and blubbering, he continued to try and escape, crawling and wishing he'd brought his own sidearm until a foot came down on his back, pinning him to the ground. "Oh gott, oh gott, don't kill me! Don't kill meee!" he begged in German, any pretense of pride or authority drowned in the ocean of terror filling him.
In desperation, he looked back over his shoulder, eyes blurred with tears, but still able to pick out the shape of the titanic youth, dressed only in a white, one-piece outfit that covered his torso. There were metal points across its surface where hoses had been ripped free, and even in his own shock, the scientist could see the man was still shivering slightly from the cold of the chamber, though not enough to disrupt his hold on the Luger he was aiming at Anton's head. Finally, after a few seconds, he spoke. His speech was in English, a language Leitgeb knew only because Strasse had demanded all his subordinates learn it for scientific purposes, and while his tone was tired and his accent strange, there was no mistaking the brooked fury in his words.
"Alright, Nazi scum…" he growled, "I've got two questions. You answer those and you can crawl away to your rat hole."
"Anything, anything!" Anton agreed, staring up into the face of his captor with abject dread, which he now also saw only contained one eye, the other having been sewed shut some time ago. Like the missing arm, this should've strengthened the scientist's will. After all, how dangerous could a cripple be to a grown man like himself? Unfortunately, he'd just seen that question answered, and with that information still fresh in his mind, his instinct for self-preservation was melting any sense of loyalty to the Reich, like the ice that had once held the monster standing atop him.
"First, where's Deathshead?" the man snarled, just as somewhere not that far away, something exploded, showering them both with dust. The screams and gunfire from earlier had redoubled, getting closer, apparently finally reaching the attention of his captor. In his moment of distract, some suicidal part of Anton's psyche tried to make him crawl further forwards, only to be jammed down as the youth quickly noticed, kicking him over onto his back and planting his foot on his chest with enough force to make his ribs creak and the scientist himself yowl with pain.
"And second," the Eismann continued, remaining eye gleaming with absolute rage, "where's my goddamn shield?"
--W--
6:26 P.M. October 15, 1960
General Wilhelm Strasse's Personal Research Compound
Greater Fatherland (formerly Prussia), Europe
Of all the things Anton Leitgeb had expected to happen that day, a terrorist attack was not one of them. Oh, the propaganda posters scattered throughout the castle all warned of such things, and commanded vigilance at all times, but the truth was that in almost twenty years of operation, apart from a single desperate attempt during the closing days of the war that had brought the Reich to dominance over the world, no enemy of the Fatherland had set foot within a hundred kilometers of the place. It was an old stone fortress, reinforced by the best German engineering had to offer and defended by dozens of Ubersoldaten and Schwerer Roboter, who were in turn backed up by hundreds of infantry, all ready at a moment's notice to crush any threat, internal or external. Nothing could get in…
...but someone had.
It had started with the alarms. At first the scientist had assumed it was nothing more than a drill, designed to test readiness. They'd been getting more frequent over the past month, what with the various attacks going on in and around the heart of Germania (the news of which was all swiftly suppressed by the Deinst der Wahreit at the command of Herr Goebbels). He'd rolled his eyes, stood from his desk and fetched his coat, planning to complain to his supervisor about the frequency of these pointless affairs. How could they expect him to get anything done when they kept interrupting it with nonsense like this?
Then there'd been a strange sound, like the noise you got when travelling over the great bridges of the capital in winter, with their frost-coated suspension wires; like a violin the size of a building was having its strings plucked. With a mighty jolt, the floor had shifted like someone was trying to jerk it out from under his feet. His heavy wooden desk had jumped and scraped suddenly to the left with the motion, and the great stones of the old edifice groaned and cracked. In the cacophony that followed, distant screams and thunderous sounds of falling masonry echoed through the corridors. Irritation forgotten, face paling in fright, he'd stumbled through a gritty fog of dust, coughing and choking.
"What is this!?" he'd cried to no one in particular, "What in God's name is going on!?" No one answered, and with the silence came sudden clarity. "The lab!" he muttered, "Must get to the lab!" He'd rushed to the door, only to find it jammed by virtue of its warped frame. Had he been in a more cautious state, he might've hesitated, fearing for the stability of the stones around it. Right then though, he'd been more focused on protecting his project. If anything had been damaged, it didn't matter who was attacking them; General Strasse would have him torn apart by the castle's Panzerhund pack. With a swift trio of shoves, he managed to batter open the wood-paneled portal, then had rushed down the corridors beyond, subconsciously taking turns and steps that three years of practice had drilled into his psyche, all the while fretting at what might've gone wrong.
"No, no, no!" he muttered, "Please, dear lord, let nothing be wrong!" From somewhere outside his personal vortex of worry, he could hear the General over the loudspeaker system. He was taunting someone, the terrorists probably. It had to be terrorists. It lined up with all the news he'd been hearing through the rumor mill. Even the best informational control techniques were largely geared only towards keeping news from leaking out, rather than in, and so it was only inevitable that he'd heard about the attack on the Moonbase, the bombing of the great Gibraltar Bridge, and the loss of the Eva's Hammer. A sudden thought occurred to him, and he almost froze in horror. Could that have been how they'd gotten in? The land-based defenses-
He shook himself, hurrying on down another flight of steps. He had no time for such thoughts. His work came first. The General's wrath would likely extend even beyond the grave if anything happened to Project Eismann. True; he had many such projects, but in the past three years, none had held as much attention as this one, not even the mysterious metal their expeditions to the heart of Afrika had been finding in certain rocks.
Finally, he reached to the lab entrance, a large room with a sealed metal door sporting heavy electric locks guarded by four armed-and-ready soldiers at all times. They were there now, and immediately raised their weapons as he rushed towards them.
"HALT!" bellowed one, but Anton didn't slow. In fact the obstruction caused him to speed up slightly, his fear briefly suppressed by irritation; a boon that he took comfort in as he produced his lab credentials.
"Out of the way, dummkopf!" he snapped, "Else it'll be your head that the General takes, if anything has happened to his personal work!" This reprimand, delivered in a sharp and familiar tone, caused enough cognitive disruption for the soldiers to hesitate until he was close enough for his badge to be visible.
"Doctor Leitgeb!" exclaimed one, quickly lowering his weapon and indicating for the others to do the same, "What are you doing!? You should be in the disaster shelter!"
"I said out of the way!" Anton repeated, voice harsher than ever, before he suddenly skidded to a halt, face turning pale in the whirling strobe of an emergency lamp set to the right of the door. "Mein gott…" he swore, pointing at the light with a trembling finger, "How long has that been on!?"
The soldier who had spoken looked towards it, confused. "About ten minutes, sir. But it's not safe! Disaster protocol states that in the event of a terrorist-"
"Shut up!" Anton shrieked, stumbling forwards, regaining the momentum he'd lost at the unexpected sight. He forced his way past the guards to the control panel left of the heavy metal barrier, while behind him the men shifted from foot to foot in uncertainty, as soldiers are wont to do in the presence of a powerful civilian they know they're not allowed to shoot. Hands shaking as he jabbed the buttons of the numerical lock, the scientist realized he was sweating profusely from his hurried charge across the complex, and wiped his hand on his lab coat before slapping it hastily against the scanning panel that opened up in response to his code.
"Hurry, hurry! The cooling system must not fail!" he muttered, trembling, the faint sound of humming heat-exchange apparatus running on emergency power audible even beyond the large door. He resisted the urge to punch the panel as it slowly mapped and compared his fingerprints to those in its magnetic tape memory, while from somewhere far, far away, the sounds of gunfire and screams began to echo.
"Doctor, we should leave!" pressed one of the soldiers, reaching out to grab his shoulder. Anton slapped him away, panic having managed to reassert itself with the aid of the dread that had been building during the wait for authorization. Just as the man was about to make a second attempt, a green light came on below the strobe lamp, and the locks disengaged with heavy thumps.
"Sir, we must-" began the soldier apparently in charge of the quartet.
"Enough!" Anton bellowed, spittle flying from his lips in an excellent impersonation of the Furher, "Don't you understand, you imbecile!? If I don't restart the cooling systems, then we are all-"
He got that far and no further. Something came through the slowly-opening steel aperture of the lab, swift and sharp, stirring the clouds of cool fog that were billowing out with its passage. It hit the closest soldier in the face, punching through his gas mask's black lens and the skull behind it like an arrow, moving with such force it nearly ripped the attached head clean off. There was a moment of silent confusion as the guards stared in shocked bewilderment at their comrade before sense kicked in and they spun to face the door.
It was already too late.
Moving with the grace and skill of trained athlete, a figure lunged through the half-open door, hot on the heels of the metal projectile, which looked to be a piece of rebar or else some sort of handle. The soldiers were still raising their weapons as it rolled with the impact of its drop, coming to its feet to stand tall like an escapee from Hell itself, plucking the spike of steel from its victim as part of the motion.
"FIRE!" screamed the soldier who had been harassing Anton, his attention now totally elsewhere. His two surviving comrades did as ordered, pointing their assault rifles at the figure and squeezing the triggers. From there, it all went very badly. The escapee, now revealed in the strobe lamp and blue light of the chamber he'd just fled as a man with one arm and the body of a Greek god, turned sideways and lunged, sliding through the barrage of bullets like a dancer until he was in reach of the pair of stormtroopers. With a quick thrust he jammed his weapon into the gullet of one, then spun clockwise and rammed it up through the chin of the other on his left, dodging behind the dead body and seizing it by the neck as a shield while the remaining soldier sprayed his own weapon wildly into the body of his former compatriot.
Anton could hear himself screaming something, but it was drowned out by the gunfire and the last guard's screams. The one-armed man's meat-shield jerked and spasmed under the hail of death as he used it to rush the other guard with terrifying speed. When he was a meter from his target, he unwrapped his arm from the neck of the body, letting it fly by its own inertia onto the other guard, who fell backwards under its weight, spraying shots wildly as he fell, screaming all the while.
"Agghh! AGGHHH! DIE, DIE-" he howled, fighting to get up, but the amputated terror simply stomped down, shoving him back to the ground beneath his friend's corpse. As he did, he bent at the waist, plucked the knife from the body's belt and then dropped to a knee, forcing the struggling soldier beneath back again. With a vicious downward swing, he jammed the blade straight through the man's metal helmet, puncturing his cranium like a melon. Anton, frozen in terror, finally turned to run. He'd gotten three meters when there was the bark of a pistol and his left calf exploded in agony. He toppled to the ground, screaming in pain now, as well as fear.
Even disabled though, cursing and blubbering, he continued to try and escape, crawling and wishing he'd brought his own sidearm until a foot came down on his back, pinning him to the ground. "Oh gott, oh gott, don't kill me! Don't kill meee!" he begged in German, any pretense of pride or authority drowned in the ocean of terror filling him.
In desperation, he looked back over his shoulder, eyes blurred with tears, but still able to pick out the shape of the titanic youth, dressed only in a white, one-piece outfit that covered his torso. There were metal points across its surface where hoses had been ripped free, and even in his own shock, the scientist could see the man was still shivering slightly from the cold of the chamber, though not enough to disrupt his hold on the Luger he was aiming at Anton's head. Finally, after a few seconds, he spoke. His speech was in English, a language Leitgeb knew only because Strasse had demanded all his subordinates learn it for scientific purposes, and while his tone was tired and his accent strange, there was no mistaking the brooked fury in his words.
"Alright, Nazi scum…" he growled, "I've got two questions. You answer those and you can crawl away to your rat hole."
"Anything, anything!" Anton agreed, staring up into the face of his captor with abject dread, which he now also saw only contained one eye, the other having been sewed shut some time ago. Like the missing arm, this should've strengthened the scientist's will. After all, how dangerous could a cripple be to a grown man like himself? Unfortunately, he'd just seen that question answered, and with that information still fresh in his mind, his instinct for self-preservation was melting any sense of loyalty to the Reich, like the ice that had once held the monster standing atop him.
"First, where's Deathshead?" the man snarled, just as somewhere not that far away, something exploded, showering them both with dust. The screams and gunfire from earlier had redoubled, getting closer, apparently finally reaching the attention of his captor. In his moment of distract, some suicidal part of Anton's psyche tried to make him crawl further forwards, only to be jammed down as the youth quickly noticed, kicking him over onto his back and planting his foot on his chest with enough force to make his ribs creak and the scientist himself yowl with pain.
"And second," the Eismann continued, remaining eye gleaming with absolute rage, "where's my goddamn shield?"
--W--
Please leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below.
Please leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below.
Snippet 2
- Location
- San Francisco
More content from my addled brain! Enjoy!
7:26 P.M. October 15, 1960
General Wilhelm Strasse's Personal Research Compound
Greater Fatherland (formerly Prussia), Europe
"I-*kaff-kaff*...will never kneel to you!"
B.J. looked down at the wizened, wrinkled thing in front of him. To call it a man would be too kind. Whatever it had once been, it had caused too much misery and pain to deserve that title. He seized the monster (yes, perhaps that was the only word that fit) by his pencil-thin throat and dragged him upright, pinning him against the wrecked chassis of the war machine he'd just crawled from, like some insect crawling from its egg sack. Around them, the roar of the flames and thunderous whistle of leaking valves made it almost impossible to hear anything, except perhaps the blood still pounding in his own temples.
"Then I will gut you standing." Blascowicz hissed, drawing his knife. Cinders and fumes clogged the air, just as memories fueled the fire inside him. The blade seemed already red with blood in the satanic glow of the collapsing chamber, and for a moment he hesitated, a sudden echo of anguish resonating through him as he realized he'd been here before; not in this room, but in this place; surrounded by enemies and fire, at the end of his wits and luck. This time though, there would be no devil's choice. This time, he'd finish what he'd started.
The first stab was weak, almost half-hearted. The next, not so much. Then he began in earnest, like a man punching holes in paper. B.J. thrust the knife in again and again, every squelch of metal puncturing flesh a catharsis all it's own. He'd done it. He'd killed the monster that had killed the world. He'd bled the man who no one thought could bleed. With an angry roar, he jammed the knife in one more time, right at the solar plexus, piercing the elderly man's ribcage with a vehemence that must've broke several ribs all by itself.
"S...s-s…" spluttered the aging Nazi, a perverse grin on his lips in spite of everything, red with ichor like a woman's lipstick, "So-*ulck*, so gullible!"
There was a ping of metal. B.J. looked to his right, eyes wide with horror. In his final moments, he cursed himself for not asking why Strasse had worked so hard to keep one arm behind his back, even as he had been ventilated from the front.
He had a grenade.
A grenade with no pin.
Anya…
Something hit him.
7:36 P.M. October 15, 1960
General Wilhelm Strasse's Personal Research Compound
Greater Fatherland (formerly Prussia), Europe
Fergus had joined the European theatre during the brief window after the defeat of Hydra, when it looked like the Allies might catch a break, what with Johann Schmidt busy freezing his arse off at the bottom of the North Atlantic. For a short, short while, it had seemed as if the war would indeed be over by Christmas, as that bugger Churchill had claimed. Then, just as things were calming down, the Reich had struck back, stronger than ever. Deathshead and his vicious machines had overrun the weary liberators, who had already been severely depleted from fighting one technologically superior enemy, so that they were in no position to face another so soon.
The point was that Fergus had seen plenty of good situations go bad very quickly, so that he'd developed a knack for telling when the tide was about to turn. It came as an ache in his left arm, though why this was the case, he couldn't say, since he'd never taken any wounds there. Sitting in the pilot's seat of the stolen Nazi stealth helicopter, escaped prisoners piling into the passenger compartment behind him, he could feel that ache, now more than ever.
"Come on, Blasko…" he muttered to himself, peering out the front-windshield in the pouring rain, trying to get a look up at the roof between the spinning blades. There'd been an almighty fruckus ten minutes prior, with lightning and indistinct shouting that had sounded all too familiar. Anya had radioed before it all to say that B.J. had gone to face Strasse. Fergus could only hope that the explosion that had ended the mess had been his friend putting that Nazi shit-stain in his place.
"Fergus!" The familiar voice caused the pilot to snap out of his frustrated ogling and look back over his shoulder. Anya was standing there, ready with a lamp in her hand. She looked beautiful, like a modern Lady Liberty, if Lady Liberty had worn a Nazi prison jumpsuit and carried an electric lantern instead of a torch. "Where is William? Is he still up there?" Her tone was frantic, strained. Fergus felt his fossilized old cantankerous heart twitch in sympathy with her anguish.
"I don't know, lass." he replied, looking back out the windshield and up, "He's-"
A massive explosion rocked the helo, and Fergus had to wrench the pilot's stick in the opposite direction to keep from plowing into the ground.
"Jehsus Christ onna crutch!" he shouted, "What the bloody-"
"Look!" cried one of the new passengers, "Mira!" Fergus spun his head briefly to see that the fellow in question was pointing up at the rain-soaked sky, specifically at the peak of the castle. Fergus followed his finger and blanched at the sight.
"Oh, bloody hell." he whispered. The crown of the ruined castle was in flames, smoke gushing from every window. Secondary explosions were going off as gas pipes burst and ignited. Whatever B.J. had done must've touched off something enormous, even bigger than the two blimps that had plummeted out of the storm earlier. "Everybody brace! There's going to be some bloody turbulence!"
With an almighty heave, Fergus twisted the yoke, lifting them off the ground, hoping everyone that had sallied out of the cracked foundation of the edifice in front of him was onboard. Given the way the craft handled, it certainly felt like they were. Another explosion roared through the heavens, and Fergus looked up to see a ball of fire rising into the night-sky, stitched with lightning. His eyes rebelled, threatening to snap their lids shut in self-defense, but against the backdrop of blinding brilliance, the old pilot swore he saw someone, or something, fling itself from a window.
"Holy shite!" he cursed, pulling back and away, moving out to sea just as rubble rained down on the beach, along with bullets and angry German curses. Struggling to control the helicopter, he looked up again, still nearly blinded by the lightning that was flashing across the black heavens as though God himself had come and was trying to scorch Strasse and his house of nightmares from the face of the Earth. Amid the strobing flashes, his eyes nevertheless picked out the falling shapes he'd spied, plummeting towards the sea. It was a person- no, two people, one holding the other. "Holy fuckin' shite!" he swore again, steering the aircraft further away from the beach. The whole castle, for all its uber-concrete reinforcement, seemed about to give up the ghost. Stones the size of trucks were sliding out of place and tumbling into the sea, along with screaming shapes and steel beams,
"William!? Is it William!?" Anya demanded. She must've seen the shapes as well, and Fergus gritted his teeth in despair.
"I hope not, lass. That drop would kill any sane man!" he shouted, just as the two figures plunged into the sea.
"Not William!" Anya protested. And frankly Fergus couldn't really argue with that. Billy-Boy had been blown up, shot, stabbed, poisoned, burned...really, he'd probably give that Russian bugger whasshisname a run for his money at this point. But even with this knowledge, Fergus' sane mind, at odds with his mad appearance in the lashing rain and gunfire, told him that no man could defy gravity.
"Bugger that." he muttered, jerking the yoke forwards.
"What are you doing!?" shrieked one of the refugees, "They'll kill us!"
"Shut yer gob and grab a rope! There's an injured man down there!" Fergus bellowed.
"What do you mean, yingele!?" demanded Set Roth from behind Anya, "Are we picking up Nazis now!?"
"I said shut yer gob!" Fergus repeated angrily, standing up before looking to Anya, "Take the wheel, willya?" The girl was quick to comply, and the old Scotsman thanked the heavens that he'd had the sense to show her how to work the damn Nazi contraption before all this. Hastily, he pushed past the elderly Jewish inventor as Anya took his place at the controls.
The next three minutes were a mad haze as Fergus shouted orders over the protesting voices of the refugees to try and get Anya to steer them closer to the spot where he'd seen the two bodies fall. All the while he internally cursed himself for a fool. No one could survive that drop, not even B.J.! He was risking all their lives to save one man!
A bundled-up rope-ladder proved to be a welcome find in the aircraft's storage pouches, and he swiftly unrolled it, letting the planks and cable flop into the waves below.
"What are you doing, meshuga baterd!?" demanded Set, "We need to go, and go now!"
"Blasko jumped." Fergus replied simply, "I'm not leavin' him ta drown!"
A hand shot out of the surf, bloody and bruised. An arm swiftly followed, hauling a body behind it. There was an awkward pause, followed by a mutual shout of anger.
"Scheisse!" shrieked the S.S. officer now clinging to the lower rungs of the rope ladder.
"Nazi scum!" roared Fergus, reaching for his pistol. The Nazi did likewise, hand scrabbling for his holster. Then he screamed and dropped out of sight, plummeting violently back beneath the water as if dragged. Caught off guard, Fergus nearly dropped his own weapon into the drink, and cursed as he got a hold of it.
"We have to go!" Set repeated, as loud as he could above the howl of the wind and the crack of distant sniper fire.
"Not-" Fergus began, intending to whirl on the old man in anger. The ill-advised motion was cut short when another hand gripped the lowest plank of the rope ladder. A figure emerged from the sea, white and...silver?
"Bloody hell!" swore Fergus, as a one-armed man hauled himself up out of the churning ocean and lashing rain onto the third rung of the rope ladder. He was clad in a one-piece outfit like a set of pajamas, which were soaked to the skin. Wrapped across his chest was a bandolier of sorts, made from strip of torn leather, sporting a circular metal disc affixed to the back. Meanwhile, the front sported an extra loop, which was tied around the bedraggled, blood-soaked body of-
"Holy SHITE! BLASKO!" Fergus shrieked, not caring that his surprise made his voice slide a couple octaves up the scale. The one-armed man mouthed something that was lost in the roar of the storm, but Fergus didn't need a dictionary to work out what he was asking for. "Help him! HELP HIM!" he bellowed back at the other passengers. The crew surged forwards, dragging the rope ladder up into the shaking passenger area, which had rocked violently at Fergus' scream. No doubt Anya was in a rush to see her boy back safe, but at least she had the stomach to hold off till they were back on dry land.
Working together, the band of escapees hauled the two half-drowned men into the wet flying metal box. The one-armed fellow coughed and spat out seawater as they laid him out, unfastening the belt holding the two together.
"Bloody hell! Bloody! HELL!" Fergus shouted to him over the wind and rain, "You just earned yourself a medal, my man!"
"Fergus!" Anya shrieked from the cockpit. Realizing he had another job to handle, the pilot quickly stood.
"Listen boyo, you hang tight! Anya will fix you up!" he explained, "We'll be back on dry land soon!"
The man didn't say anything, but snapped a weary, exhausted salute, before falling back and apparently passing out.
"Bloody hell…" Fergus muttered to himself one more time. This was going to need one hell of an explanation...
--W--
7:26 P.M. October 15, 1960
General Wilhelm Strasse's Personal Research Compound
Greater Fatherland (formerly Prussia), Europe
"I-*kaff-kaff*...will never kneel to you!"
B.J. looked down at the wizened, wrinkled thing in front of him. To call it a man would be too kind. Whatever it had once been, it had caused too much misery and pain to deserve that title. He seized the monster (yes, perhaps that was the only word that fit) by his pencil-thin throat and dragged him upright, pinning him against the wrecked chassis of the war machine he'd just crawled from, like some insect crawling from its egg sack. Around them, the roar of the flames and thunderous whistle of leaking valves made it almost impossible to hear anything, except perhaps the blood still pounding in his own temples.
"Then I will gut you standing." Blascowicz hissed, drawing his knife. Cinders and fumes clogged the air, just as memories fueled the fire inside him. The blade seemed already red with blood in the satanic glow of the collapsing chamber, and for a moment he hesitated, a sudden echo of anguish resonating through him as he realized he'd been here before; not in this room, but in this place; surrounded by enemies and fire, at the end of his wits and luck. This time though, there would be no devil's choice. This time, he'd finish what he'd started.
The first stab was weak, almost half-hearted. The next, not so much. Then he began in earnest, like a man punching holes in paper. B.J. thrust the knife in again and again, every squelch of metal puncturing flesh a catharsis all it's own. He'd done it. He'd killed the monster that had killed the world. He'd bled the man who no one thought could bleed. With an angry roar, he jammed the knife in one more time, right at the solar plexus, piercing the elderly man's ribcage with a vehemence that must've broke several ribs all by itself.
"S...s-s…" spluttered the aging Nazi, a perverse grin on his lips in spite of everything, red with ichor like a woman's lipstick, "So-*ulck*, so gullible!"
There was a ping of metal. B.J. looked to his right, eyes wide with horror. In his final moments, he cursed himself for not asking why Strasse had worked so hard to keep one arm behind his back, even as he had been ventilated from the front.
He had a grenade.
A grenade with no pin.
Anya…
Something hit him.
--W--
7:36 P.M. October 15, 1960
General Wilhelm Strasse's Personal Research Compound
Greater Fatherland (formerly Prussia), Europe
Fergus had joined the European theatre during the brief window after the defeat of Hydra, when it looked like the Allies might catch a break, what with Johann Schmidt busy freezing his arse off at the bottom of the North Atlantic. For a short, short while, it had seemed as if the war would indeed be over by Christmas, as that bugger Churchill had claimed. Then, just as things were calming down, the Reich had struck back, stronger than ever. Deathshead and his vicious machines had overrun the weary liberators, who had already been severely depleted from fighting one technologically superior enemy, so that they were in no position to face another so soon.
The point was that Fergus had seen plenty of good situations go bad very quickly, so that he'd developed a knack for telling when the tide was about to turn. It came as an ache in his left arm, though why this was the case, he couldn't say, since he'd never taken any wounds there. Sitting in the pilot's seat of the stolen Nazi stealth helicopter, escaped prisoners piling into the passenger compartment behind him, he could feel that ache, now more than ever.
"Come on, Blasko…" he muttered to himself, peering out the front-windshield in the pouring rain, trying to get a look up at the roof between the spinning blades. There'd been an almighty fruckus ten minutes prior, with lightning and indistinct shouting that had sounded all too familiar. Anya had radioed before it all to say that B.J. had gone to face Strasse. Fergus could only hope that the explosion that had ended the mess had been his friend putting that Nazi shit-stain in his place.
"Fergus!" The familiar voice caused the pilot to snap out of his frustrated ogling and look back over his shoulder. Anya was standing there, ready with a lamp in her hand. She looked beautiful, like a modern Lady Liberty, if Lady Liberty had worn a Nazi prison jumpsuit and carried an electric lantern instead of a torch. "Where is William? Is he still up there?" Her tone was frantic, strained. Fergus felt his fossilized old cantankerous heart twitch in sympathy with her anguish.
"I don't know, lass." he replied, looking back out the windshield and up, "He's-"
A massive explosion rocked the helo, and Fergus had to wrench the pilot's stick in the opposite direction to keep from plowing into the ground.
"Jehsus Christ onna crutch!" he shouted, "What the bloody-"
"Look!" cried one of the new passengers, "Mira!" Fergus spun his head briefly to see that the fellow in question was pointing up at the rain-soaked sky, specifically at the peak of the castle. Fergus followed his finger and blanched at the sight.
"Oh, bloody hell." he whispered. The crown of the ruined castle was in flames, smoke gushing from every window. Secondary explosions were going off as gas pipes burst and ignited. Whatever B.J. had done must've touched off something enormous, even bigger than the two blimps that had plummeted out of the storm earlier. "Everybody brace! There's going to be some bloody turbulence!"
With an almighty heave, Fergus twisted the yoke, lifting them off the ground, hoping everyone that had sallied out of the cracked foundation of the edifice in front of him was onboard. Given the way the craft handled, it certainly felt like they were. Another explosion roared through the heavens, and Fergus looked up to see a ball of fire rising into the night-sky, stitched with lightning. His eyes rebelled, threatening to snap their lids shut in self-defense, but against the backdrop of blinding brilliance, the old pilot swore he saw someone, or something, fling itself from a window.
"Holy shite!" he cursed, pulling back and away, moving out to sea just as rubble rained down on the beach, along with bullets and angry German curses. Struggling to control the helicopter, he looked up again, still nearly blinded by the lightning that was flashing across the black heavens as though God himself had come and was trying to scorch Strasse and his house of nightmares from the face of the Earth. Amid the strobing flashes, his eyes nevertheless picked out the falling shapes he'd spied, plummeting towards the sea. It was a person- no, two people, one holding the other. "Holy fuckin' shite!" he swore again, steering the aircraft further away from the beach. The whole castle, for all its uber-concrete reinforcement, seemed about to give up the ghost. Stones the size of trucks were sliding out of place and tumbling into the sea, along with screaming shapes and steel beams,
"William!? Is it William!?" Anya demanded. She must've seen the shapes as well, and Fergus gritted his teeth in despair.
"I hope not, lass. That drop would kill any sane man!" he shouted, just as the two figures plunged into the sea.
"Not William!" Anya protested. And frankly Fergus couldn't really argue with that. Billy-Boy had been blown up, shot, stabbed, poisoned, burned...really, he'd probably give that Russian bugger whasshisname a run for his money at this point. But even with this knowledge, Fergus' sane mind, at odds with his mad appearance in the lashing rain and gunfire, told him that no man could defy gravity.
"Bugger that." he muttered, jerking the yoke forwards.
"What are you doing!?" shrieked one of the refugees, "They'll kill us!"
"Shut yer gob and grab a rope! There's an injured man down there!" Fergus bellowed.
"What do you mean, yingele!?" demanded Set Roth from behind Anya, "Are we picking up Nazis now!?"
"I said shut yer gob!" Fergus repeated angrily, standing up before looking to Anya, "Take the wheel, willya?" The girl was quick to comply, and the old Scotsman thanked the heavens that he'd had the sense to show her how to work the damn Nazi contraption before all this. Hastily, he pushed past the elderly Jewish inventor as Anya took his place at the controls.
The next three minutes were a mad haze as Fergus shouted orders over the protesting voices of the refugees to try and get Anya to steer them closer to the spot where he'd seen the two bodies fall. All the while he internally cursed himself for a fool. No one could survive that drop, not even B.J.! He was risking all their lives to save one man!
A bundled-up rope-ladder proved to be a welcome find in the aircraft's storage pouches, and he swiftly unrolled it, letting the planks and cable flop into the waves below.
"What are you doing, meshuga baterd!?" demanded Set, "We need to go, and go now!"
"Blasko jumped." Fergus replied simply, "I'm not leavin' him ta drown!"
A hand shot out of the surf, bloody and bruised. An arm swiftly followed, hauling a body behind it. There was an awkward pause, followed by a mutual shout of anger.
"Scheisse!" shrieked the S.S. officer now clinging to the lower rungs of the rope ladder.
"Nazi scum!" roared Fergus, reaching for his pistol. The Nazi did likewise, hand scrabbling for his holster. Then he screamed and dropped out of sight, plummeting violently back beneath the water as if dragged. Caught off guard, Fergus nearly dropped his own weapon into the drink, and cursed as he got a hold of it.
"We have to go!" Set repeated, as loud as he could above the howl of the wind and the crack of distant sniper fire.
"Not-" Fergus began, intending to whirl on the old man in anger. The ill-advised motion was cut short when another hand gripped the lowest plank of the rope ladder. A figure emerged from the sea, white and...silver?
"Bloody hell!" swore Fergus, as a one-armed man hauled himself up out of the churning ocean and lashing rain onto the third rung of the rope ladder. He was clad in a one-piece outfit like a set of pajamas, which were soaked to the skin. Wrapped across his chest was a bandolier of sorts, made from strip of torn leather, sporting a circular metal disc affixed to the back. Meanwhile, the front sported an extra loop, which was tied around the bedraggled, blood-soaked body of-
"Holy SHITE! BLASKO!" Fergus shrieked, not caring that his surprise made his voice slide a couple octaves up the scale. The one-armed man mouthed something that was lost in the roar of the storm, but Fergus didn't need a dictionary to work out what he was asking for. "Help him! HELP HIM!" he bellowed back at the other passengers. The crew surged forwards, dragging the rope ladder up into the shaking passenger area, which had rocked violently at Fergus' scream. No doubt Anya was in a rush to see her boy back safe, but at least she had the stomach to hold off till they were back on dry land.
Working together, the band of escapees hauled the two half-drowned men into the wet flying metal box. The one-armed fellow coughed and spat out seawater as they laid him out, unfastening the belt holding the two together.
"Bloody hell! Bloody! HELL!" Fergus shouted to him over the wind and rain, "You just earned yourself a medal, my man!"
"Fergus!" Anya shrieked from the cockpit. Realizing he had another job to handle, the pilot quickly stood.
"Listen boyo, you hang tight! Anya will fix you up!" he explained, "We'll be back on dry land soon!"
The man didn't say anything, but snapped a weary, exhausted salute, before falling back and apparently passing out.
"Bloody hell…" Fergus muttered to himself one more time. This was going to need one hell of an explanation...
--W--
Vibranium is 100% vibration absorbent, right? So it should work as a cushion for falls, yes? Don't question my comic logic. In fact, don't question my logic. 
Last edited:
Snippet 3
- Location
- San Francisco
Bonus snippet tying the Atlantis bit into things. The origins of the Heart of Atlantis is going to be quite different...and it's power...limitless.
Excerpt from early draft of Chapter 3 of 'The Lost Empire: A History of Atlantis' by King Reagent Milo J. Thatch
'The rise of Atlantis was never a certain thing. Given their location some distance from the main coast of Europe and their even greater separation from the Americas, they might have remained simple fishermen until the time of Rome, or perhaps longer. Their status as an island society meant they had access to fewer resources than other emergent civilizations, and with the limited sailing technology available during the early Bronze Age, which confined most seafarers to sailing close to the coastlines of their homelands, long-distance sea trade on the scale required to support an empire was simply not possible. The divided nature of the early Atlantean city states, as discussed in the previous chapter, also contributed to the odds facing the emergence of any wide-spread organized society.
This changed with the discovery of the Heart, and the War of Union. While evidence is still being gathered at the time of this writing, forays into various regions of the sunken continent suggest that around 9000 B.C., a period of considerable military turmoil swept across the island continent. This correlates with what we have been able to salvage from the Imperial Hall of Records, whose cartouches and remaining scrolls form the basis of most of what is now known of the Atlanteans' Imperial Period. The following is a translation from one such cartouche, made with the assistance of sovereign Queen Kidagakash I*:
"...So it came to pass that in the Year of the Black Goat, the northern [city-state] Iokahm raised up Akadash Nedakh I to be their king, and with him, a new god; a god of blue light and shimmering stone, who demanded no sacrifices, and who granted the king and his scholarly advisors great wisdom and power, such as only the gods wielded..."
This turn of events was unprecedented in the history of the pre-Imperial city-states, who despite their frequent campaigns against one another, all drew from hereditary lines of Priest-Kings. Conversely, Akadash, according to numerous oral histories, was born a lowly fisherman, with no apparent education, during a time of prodigious trouble for Ioakath**. As for how the Heart came into his possession, there are many stories. Occam's razor would suggest that the tale of him catching it in his fishing net one day (quite by accident, as many great discoveries are wont to be) is the most likely, but given the Heart's unusual properties, it is still difficult to be certain. As it stands, the variation and complexity alone of the assorted accounts means we may never know for sure which narrative is the true one. What is more certain is the response Akadash's rise to power caused, as recounted in this next cartouche:
"...called this heresy, and declared war on the people of Iokahm, in union with [the peoples of] Larnekk, Asterkar, Koth and Cn'yon. Great armies were amassed to usurp the reign of Akadash, whom the Priest-Kings slandered and reviled without mercy, for it was their decree that no god should be held above the others, and that Great Akadash was a fraud. Their lies gathered many followers, and the destruction of Iokath seemed certain. But the new god spoke unto Akadash and his advisors, and instructed them in the making of great weapons to repel the invaders…"
The aftermath of the ensuing conflict, later referenced as the War of Union, marked the end of the reign of the Priest-Kings, and the rise of the line of Nedakh as hereditary rulers of the new unified kingdom of Atlantis. This was then further secured by the social and economic reforms of Akadash, which legend says he conceived during nine days and nights with the aid of his counselors. However long it took, they won him the hearts of even the most bitter of the conquered peoples, and ensured the prosperity of the Empire until his death five hundred years later, when he was succeeded by his son, Okashiim Nedakh.
Ultimately, this tale brings us back to the mystery of the Heart, and its origins. There are so many places in the historical landscape around it where legend mixes with history that it's enough to drive a man mad. If the true life of King Akadash is clouded with mud, then the history of the Heart of Atlantis might as well be an oil slick. Did it actually tell Akadash and his cohorts how to build those machines? Did it really fall from the heavens as some stories suggest? If the real history of our world, and Atlantis' great part in its shaping, is to ever truly be known, then facts must be untangled from fiction. And it must start with the Heart.
* My loving wife.
** Research into the few surviving oral histories on the subject suggest a famine, a plague, or a combination of the two which left the city-state without leadership and on the verge of collapse.
--W--
Excerpt from early draft of Chapter 3 of 'The Lost Empire: A History of Atlantis' by King Reagent Milo J. Thatch
'The rise of Atlantis was never a certain thing. Given their location some distance from the main coast of Europe and their even greater separation from the Americas, they might have remained simple fishermen until the time of Rome, or perhaps longer. Their status as an island society meant they had access to fewer resources than other emergent civilizations, and with the limited sailing technology available during the early Bronze Age, which confined most seafarers to sailing close to the coastlines of their homelands, long-distance sea trade on the scale required to support an empire was simply not possible. The divided nature of the early Atlantean city states, as discussed in the previous chapter, also contributed to the odds facing the emergence of any wide-spread organized society.
This changed with the discovery of the Heart, and the War of Union. While evidence is still being gathered at the time of this writing, forays into various regions of the sunken continent suggest that around 9000 B.C., a period of considerable military turmoil swept across the island continent. This correlates with what we have been able to salvage from the Imperial Hall of Records, whose cartouches and remaining scrolls form the basis of most of what is now known of the Atlanteans' Imperial Period. The following is a translation from one such cartouche, made with the assistance of sovereign Queen Kidagakash I*:
"...So it came to pass that in the Year of the Black Goat, the northern [city-state] Iokahm raised up Akadash Nedakh I to be their king, and with him, a new god; a god of blue light and shimmering stone, who demanded no sacrifices, and who granted the king and his scholarly advisors great wisdom and power, such as only the gods wielded..."
This turn of events was unprecedented in the history of the pre-Imperial city-states, who despite their frequent campaigns against one another, all drew from hereditary lines of Priest-Kings. Conversely, Akadash, according to numerous oral histories, was born a lowly fisherman, with no apparent education, during a time of prodigious trouble for Ioakath**. As for how the Heart came into his possession, there are many stories. Occam's razor would suggest that the tale of him catching it in his fishing net one day (quite by accident, as many great discoveries are wont to be) is the most likely, but given the Heart's unusual properties, it is still difficult to be certain. As it stands, the variation and complexity alone of the assorted accounts means we may never know for sure which narrative is the true one. What is more certain is the response Akadash's rise to power caused, as recounted in this next cartouche:
"...called this heresy, and declared war on the people of Iokahm, in union with [the peoples of] Larnekk, Asterkar, Koth and Cn'yon. Great armies were amassed to usurp the reign of Akadash, whom the Priest-Kings slandered and reviled without mercy, for it was their decree that no god should be held above the others, and that Great Akadash was a fraud. Their lies gathered many followers, and the destruction of Iokath seemed certain. But the new god spoke unto Akadash and his advisors, and instructed them in the making of great weapons to repel the invaders…"
The aftermath of the ensuing conflict, later referenced as the War of Union, marked the end of the reign of the Priest-Kings, and the rise of the line of Nedakh as hereditary rulers of the new unified kingdom of Atlantis. This was then further secured by the social and economic reforms of Akadash, which legend says he conceived during nine days and nights with the aid of his counselors. However long it took, they won him the hearts of even the most bitter of the conquered peoples, and ensured the prosperity of the Empire until his death five hundred years later, when he was succeeded by his son, Okashiim Nedakh.
Ultimately, this tale brings us back to the mystery of the Heart, and its origins. There are so many places in the historical landscape around it where legend mixes with history that it's enough to drive a man mad. If the true life of King Akadash is clouded with mud, then the history of the Heart of Atlantis might as well be an oil slick. Did it actually tell Akadash and his cohorts how to build those machines? Did it really fall from the heavens as some stories suggest? If the real history of our world, and Atlantis' great part in its shaping, is to ever truly be known, then facts must be untangled from fiction. And it must start with the Heart.
* My loving wife.
** Research into the few surviving oral histories on the subject suggest a famine, a plague, or a combination of the two which left the city-state without leadership and on the verge of collapse.
--W--
Hope you enjoyed, leave a comment to let me know you care!
Snippet 4
- Location
- San Francisco
More derangement from my addled imagination. Enjoy.
The first thing Steve Rogers did upon waking up was pretend that he was still asleep. The first rule of war was to never show your hand, and while his memory up until recently had more in common with a nightmare, he still retained enough sanity to remember the lessons war had taught him.
"-is he, William?"
"I wish I knew, darlin'."
Voice. Voices were good. Voices in English were better. He hadn't heard it spoken in a long time. There was a metallic resonance to them as well. Fuelled by this detail, he quickly picked up on the groan and creak of metal under pressure, and the low, deep rumble of engines; not airplane engines, but definitely something big.
Opening his sole eye just the barest slit, Steve tried to spy out his immediate surroundings. Blurry shapes formed quickly, his superior adaptation allowing him to recover from sleep more swiftly than any mere mortal. His assessment of being in an enclosed space was correct. A rapid glance covered a room maybe seventy feet on one side, with walls of plated steel that suggested the hull of a seafaring vessel. He shut his eyes again, trying to process through the rest of the sight. White beds; there'd been white beds and IV stands…so, an infirmary...probably.
"You don't need to pretend. I know you're awake."
The statement, spoken in the gruff male tone he'd heard most recently sent adrenaline rushing through Rogers' veins. Fear, anger and surprise; he pushed them all down, and allowed himself a small smirk.
"William, I don't-" This time it was the woman's voice, sounding confused, just as her partner cut her off.
"A sleepin' man breathes slower than that." he explained, "Our friend here's awake."
Steve opened his remaining eye all the way now. His earlier survey had been correct. It was indeed an infirmary, probably on some sort of ship. His senses now absorbed the full suite of sensations that told him this was so, along with the added slight pressure in his temples that told him they were underwater.
"So, you got a name, pal?" The question redirected Steve's gaze to the white bed across from his own, where its source sat in similar repose against a pair of pillows. He was a broad-shouldered man, tall and rough-shaven, with the buzz-cut of a soldier and the blue eyes of man who was on a first-name basis with death. There were bandages across his chest suggesting some broken ribs, but nevertheless, he looked unimpeded by the injury.
"Steve." Steve replied, throat feeling paradoxically too wet where he would've expected it to be dry as a bone. He couldn't have swallowed that much seawater, could he?
"No other name?" This question was from the woman sitting on a stool at the man's side. She was dressed in a blouse and men's pants, a very Rosie the Riveter costume. Her face was Polish though, as was her accent. Her eyes were softer, but no less deep. They reminded him of the eyes he'd seen on war prisoners he'd liberated, only worse. These spoke of not just of years of pain, but a lifetime of it.
"Rogers; serial number five-four-nine-eight-five-eight-seven-oh. Officially attached to the Strategic Scientific Reserve under Colonel Chester Phillips." he rattled off, refocusing on the man in the other bed, "You?"
"Captain William J. Blazkowicz, serial number oh-five-oh-six-one-ninety-nine-two, attached to the O.S.A. under Director Joseph D. Hassett." the man said grinning, albeit uncertainty. There was an awkward silence, neither of them having apparently expected such an answer. Steve knew he certainly hadn't. His mental image of the world was still uncertain, and until he'd broken out of that freezing chamber, he hadn't been certain if he was alive or in hell. All he'd really been sure of was that one way or another, he was going to kill the man who'd put him in there.
Suddenly motivated by the idea that he might've failed, Rogers stiffened in bed.
"Strasse, is he-...did you…?" he tried. His memory of that frantic few minutes was still blurred by the red and orange flames that had filled every square inch of it until he'd dived through the window, shield at his back and the man he'd saved tied to his chest.
"He's dead if that's what you mean…" Blazkowicz replied, now looking suspicious, "Most men don't survive a grenade blast if they're still holding it."
"We got him." Steve sagged back into his own pillows, a tired grin spreading across his face, the other man's words like aloe vera for his raw nerves. Slowly, his memory reassembled itself, confirming this fact. "God-damn but we got him."
"You, uh...you alright, pal?" B.J. asked, suspicion now replaced by the wariness reserved for the dangerously armed and mentally ill. Steve sucked in his breath and tried to recompose himself, but it was hard. Since that moment of terrible impact, when Schmidt's super-jet had plowed into the arctic ice, everything had become a dream-like twist of half-memories and madness. Sometimes he'd be dancing with Peggy, only to partially wake in that frozen hell with Strasse's ghoulish face grinning down at him, along with a bespectacled Arnim Zola.
"I thought...I thought I was stuck…" he murmured, "Stuck between heaven and hell, and I couldn't get out. I couldn't get out." He tilted his head back, eyes wandering around the ceiling. "Thought if I killed the devil they'd let me be…"
"I dunno what you've been through," Blazkowicz said, still eyeing him oddly, "but I figure I owe you for saving me."
"I was supposed to stop HYDRA…" Steve murmured to himself, more thoughts putting themselves back together in his battered brain. He sat up again, propelled once more by panic.
"Did we beat them? HYDRA, the Nazis. Did we win?" he gabbled out, the words falling over themselves in effort to escape. The pained look that crossed the other man's face was more of an answer than anything he could've said in response.
"I'm sorry, son." he answered, "We didn't." Steve stared into those glassy blue eyes, for a long time, until somewhere amidst the turmoil that had engulfed his soul with those two terrible words, he realized he was looking at a mirror, which somehow only redoubled the pain. He'd fought and given everything, just like him, and fate had laughed and spat on them both.
"I'm sorry, HYDRA?" asked the woman, looking confused.
"Before your time, darlin'." Blazkowicz said, breaking eye contact to put a hand on her arm, "Crazy bastards that ended up fighting the Nazis and us at the same time."
"But you beat them?" she pressed, still looking baffled. He gave her a sad smile.
"Yeah, but not before they beat the tar out of us too."
"Oh god, what is this?" Steve could hear himself muttering, "What the hell happened to the world?"
"The bad guys won." Blazkowicz stated, jaw growing firm while his lips drew tight, "But the fight's not over."
Steve looked up to meet his gaze again, and saw in those blue eyes something he could not longer feel in himself. Whatever it was, he fastened onto it, replenishing his spirit even as he struggled to repair his own mind.
"They used to call me Captain America…" he murmured, breaking the staring match and looking down at his one remaining hand, "Dunno how much use I'll be now. Was a goddamn circus monkey then...now?" He flexed his remaining fingers experimentally.
"Wait, Captain America?" demanded the woman, "THE Captain America? But they say you died!"
"Starting to wish I had…" Steve mumbled. Blazkowicz narrowed his eyes, the comment obviously not going unnoticed.
"Huh, and I thought legends were made of sterner stuff." he grunted, " Yeah, I've heard of you. Not many people who haven't. Didn't figure you for a quitter though."
The comment should've stung, but it didn't, because the truth was that Steve really was considering quitting. How could he not? When the universe had smashed all the things he'd held dear, and what had seemed like a nightmare had turned out to be real, how could he not? He-
-Bucky, standing by the railings looking out to sea, cap in hand with his dress uniform all starched and smart.-
-paused.
-"War isn't for everyone, Steve-o." he sighed, "It's not just about being strong here." He pressed his finger to Steve's chest. "You can be as strong as an ox and still get hurt or killed, not just dead, but in the way that matters." He looked out to sea again, shaking his head. "It's like my pa used to say: It's a crucible that tests your soul. And if you can't bend, you'll surely break."-
"Like I said, the fight's not over." Blazkowicz declared, glaring down at Steve from across the gap between their beds, "And I'm not going to be indebted to a whiny pansy."
"Who're you calling a pansy?" Steve growled. The haze of horrified recollection had sparked into flame with the aid of the memory of Bucky and B.J.'s words. The cold void inside was starting to grow hot, and with the heat came will. Throwing the sheets aside, Steve slid out of bed onto aching legs, clad only a hospital gown, but somehow no less menacing. He only froze when he saw Blazkowicz's smile; saw it reflecting his own anger back at him. He smiled back at him, a proud and furious smile.
"I signed up to fight bullies." he ground out, "I can do that with one hand tied behind my back." He clenched his remaining fingers into a fist, "Just gimme my shield and lemme at 'em."
There was another momentary pause, before B.J. stuck his hand out, a gesture of welcome. Steve took it and felt the rough, calloused fingers squeeze his own scarred digits as they shook.
"Welcome to the resistance, Cap." he said darkly.
"Glad to be here." he answered, "Even if freedom's dead, I figure America needs some avenging."
--W--
The first thing Steve Rogers did upon waking up was pretend that he was still asleep. The first rule of war was to never show your hand, and while his memory up until recently had more in common with a nightmare, he still retained enough sanity to remember the lessons war had taught him.
"-is he, William?"
"I wish I knew, darlin'."
Voice. Voices were good. Voices in English were better. He hadn't heard it spoken in a long time. There was a metallic resonance to them as well. Fuelled by this detail, he quickly picked up on the groan and creak of metal under pressure, and the low, deep rumble of engines; not airplane engines, but definitely something big.
Opening his sole eye just the barest slit, Steve tried to spy out his immediate surroundings. Blurry shapes formed quickly, his superior adaptation allowing him to recover from sleep more swiftly than any mere mortal. His assessment of being in an enclosed space was correct. A rapid glance covered a room maybe seventy feet on one side, with walls of plated steel that suggested the hull of a seafaring vessel. He shut his eyes again, trying to process through the rest of the sight. White beds; there'd been white beds and IV stands…so, an infirmary...probably.
"You don't need to pretend. I know you're awake."
The statement, spoken in the gruff male tone he'd heard most recently sent adrenaline rushing through Rogers' veins. Fear, anger and surprise; he pushed them all down, and allowed himself a small smirk.
"William, I don't-" This time it was the woman's voice, sounding confused, just as her partner cut her off.
"A sleepin' man breathes slower than that." he explained, "Our friend here's awake."
Steve opened his remaining eye all the way now. His earlier survey had been correct. It was indeed an infirmary, probably on some sort of ship. His senses now absorbed the full suite of sensations that told him this was so, along with the added slight pressure in his temples that told him they were underwater.
"So, you got a name, pal?" The question redirected Steve's gaze to the white bed across from his own, where its source sat in similar repose against a pair of pillows. He was a broad-shouldered man, tall and rough-shaven, with the buzz-cut of a soldier and the blue eyes of man who was on a first-name basis with death. There were bandages across his chest suggesting some broken ribs, but nevertheless, he looked unimpeded by the injury.
"Steve." Steve replied, throat feeling paradoxically too wet where he would've expected it to be dry as a bone. He couldn't have swallowed that much seawater, could he?
"No other name?" This question was from the woman sitting on a stool at the man's side. She was dressed in a blouse and men's pants, a very Rosie the Riveter costume. Her face was Polish though, as was her accent. Her eyes were softer, but no less deep. They reminded him of the eyes he'd seen on war prisoners he'd liberated, only worse. These spoke of not just of years of pain, but a lifetime of it.
"Rogers; serial number five-four-nine-eight-five-eight-seven-oh. Officially attached to the Strategic Scientific Reserve under Colonel Chester Phillips." he rattled off, refocusing on the man in the other bed, "You?"
"Captain William J. Blazkowicz, serial number oh-five-oh-six-one-ninety-nine-two, attached to the O.S.A. under Director Joseph D. Hassett." the man said grinning, albeit uncertainty. There was an awkward silence, neither of them having apparently expected such an answer. Steve knew he certainly hadn't. His mental image of the world was still uncertain, and until he'd broken out of that freezing chamber, he hadn't been certain if he was alive or in hell. All he'd really been sure of was that one way or another, he was going to kill the man who'd put him in there.
Suddenly motivated by the idea that he might've failed, Rogers stiffened in bed.
"Strasse, is he-...did you…?" he tried. His memory of that frantic few minutes was still blurred by the red and orange flames that had filled every square inch of it until he'd dived through the window, shield at his back and the man he'd saved tied to his chest.
"He's dead if that's what you mean…" Blazkowicz replied, now looking suspicious, "Most men don't survive a grenade blast if they're still holding it."
"We got him." Steve sagged back into his own pillows, a tired grin spreading across his face, the other man's words like aloe vera for his raw nerves. Slowly, his memory reassembled itself, confirming this fact. "God-damn but we got him."
"You, uh...you alright, pal?" B.J. asked, suspicion now replaced by the wariness reserved for the dangerously armed and mentally ill. Steve sucked in his breath and tried to recompose himself, but it was hard. Since that moment of terrible impact, when Schmidt's super-jet had plowed into the arctic ice, everything had become a dream-like twist of half-memories and madness. Sometimes he'd be dancing with Peggy, only to partially wake in that frozen hell with Strasse's ghoulish face grinning down at him, along with a bespectacled Arnim Zola.
"I thought...I thought I was stuck…" he murmured, "Stuck between heaven and hell, and I couldn't get out. I couldn't get out." He tilted his head back, eyes wandering around the ceiling. "Thought if I killed the devil they'd let me be…"
"I dunno what you've been through," Blazkowicz said, still eyeing him oddly, "but I figure I owe you for saving me."
"I was supposed to stop HYDRA…" Steve murmured to himself, more thoughts putting themselves back together in his battered brain. He sat up again, propelled once more by panic.
"Did we beat them? HYDRA, the Nazis. Did we win?" he gabbled out, the words falling over themselves in effort to escape. The pained look that crossed the other man's face was more of an answer than anything he could've said in response.
"I'm sorry, son." he answered, "We didn't." Steve stared into those glassy blue eyes, for a long time, until somewhere amidst the turmoil that had engulfed his soul with those two terrible words, he realized he was looking at a mirror, which somehow only redoubled the pain. He'd fought and given everything, just like him, and fate had laughed and spat on them both.
"I'm sorry, HYDRA?" asked the woman, looking confused.
"Before your time, darlin'." Blazkowicz said, breaking eye contact to put a hand on her arm, "Crazy bastards that ended up fighting the Nazis and us at the same time."
"But you beat them?" she pressed, still looking baffled. He gave her a sad smile.
"Yeah, but not before they beat the tar out of us too."
"Oh god, what is this?" Steve could hear himself muttering, "What the hell happened to the world?"
"The bad guys won." Blazkowicz stated, jaw growing firm while his lips drew tight, "But the fight's not over."
Steve looked up to meet his gaze again, and saw in those blue eyes something he could not longer feel in himself. Whatever it was, he fastened onto it, replenishing his spirit even as he struggled to repair his own mind.
"They used to call me Captain America…" he murmured, breaking the staring match and looking down at his one remaining hand, "Dunno how much use I'll be now. Was a goddamn circus monkey then...now?" He flexed his remaining fingers experimentally.
"Wait, Captain America?" demanded the woman, "THE Captain America? But they say you died!"
"Starting to wish I had…" Steve mumbled. Blazkowicz narrowed his eyes, the comment obviously not going unnoticed.
"Huh, and I thought legends were made of sterner stuff." he grunted, " Yeah, I've heard of you. Not many people who haven't. Didn't figure you for a quitter though."
The comment should've stung, but it didn't, because the truth was that Steve really was considering quitting. How could he not? When the universe had smashed all the things he'd held dear, and what had seemed like a nightmare had turned out to be real, how could he not? He-
-Bucky, standing by the railings looking out to sea, cap in hand with his dress uniform all starched and smart.-
-paused.
-"War isn't for everyone, Steve-o." he sighed, "It's not just about being strong here." He pressed his finger to Steve's chest. "You can be as strong as an ox and still get hurt or killed, not just dead, but in the way that matters." He looked out to sea again, shaking his head. "It's like my pa used to say: It's a crucible that tests your soul. And if you can't bend, you'll surely break."-
"Like I said, the fight's not over." Blazkowicz declared, glaring down at Steve from across the gap between their beds, "And I'm not going to be indebted to a whiny pansy."
"Who're you calling a pansy?" Steve growled. The haze of horrified recollection had sparked into flame with the aid of the memory of Bucky and B.J.'s words. The cold void inside was starting to grow hot, and with the heat came will. Throwing the sheets aside, Steve slid out of bed onto aching legs, clad only a hospital gown, but somehow no less menacing. He only froze when he saw Blazkowicz's smile; saw it reflecting his own anger back at him. He smiled back at him, a proud and furious smile.
"I signed up to fight bullies." he ground out, "I can do that with one hand tied behind my back." He clenched his remaining fingers into a fist, "Just gimme my shield and lemme at 'em."
There was another momentary pause, before B.J. stuck his hand out, a gesture of welcome. Steve took it and felt the rough, calloused fingers squeeze his own scarred digits as they shook.
"Welcome to the resistance, Cap." he said darkly.
"Glad to be here." he answered, "Even if freedom's dead, I figure America needs some avenging."
--W--
Hope you enjoyed. Leave comments if you have questions about continuity! I'll happily explain!
Snippet 5
- Location
- San Francisco
Sorry for the delay, been wrestling with job issues...friggin' temp agencies suck. Now, ON WITH THE SHOW!
--W--
3:40 P.M. October 18, 1960
SMS Eva's Hammer, Midships Command Center
30KM off the Coast of Greater Fatherland (formerly Portugal), Europe
B.J. found Fergus in a folding chair in the hall outside the submarine's large central command center. The old pilot was sipping on a bottle of something set between his legs, leaning sideways on the sealed bulkhead to his right and apparently singing sea shanties under his breath, which he stopped abruptly on seeing Blazkowicz.
"Blasko!" he bellowed, staggering to his feet and sauntering down the passageway to grip the bandaged hero of the hour in a painful bearhug. B.J. wheezed as he felt his ribs complain, which was apparently enough to get the soused soldier's attention. "Oh, right, sorry!" he grunted in embarrassment, stepping back and placing both hands on B.J.'s shoulders carefully, "Didn't hurt ya, did I?"
"Not more than Deathshead." B.J. answered, suppressing the urge to wince, "Don't worry. I'll be fine."
"You sure?" Fergus inquired, giving his old friend a questioning look, "Set said it'd be at least another week-"
"I'm done lying around." B.J. replied hotly, unable to keep from grimacing a little as his ribs protested otherwise before he shook off the pain, "Like I keep telling Rogers: The war ain't over. I'll be damned if I sit the rest of it out in a hospital bed."
"Still pretty damn surprised about that bit." Fergus muttered, changing the subject to avoid riling his comrade further, "You're sure he's THE Captain America?"
"The O.S.A. had some ties with the S.S.R. back in the day. Wasn't like we didn't know what they were up to. I tried testing him with everything I could remember." B.J. answered, shrugging as much as he dared, "Seems like the genuine article."
"How'n th' fuck did he get in that castle though?" Fergus swore, looking more confused than suspicious, "Last I heard-"
"He says the last thing he really remembers was crashing that HYDRA super-jet we all heard tell about." B.J. interrupted, shrugging again, "After that, not much else. All we've really been able to piece together is Deathshead was holding him for something."
"Aye, well you knew that man…" Fergus winced, "Getting his claws on Captain America must've made him awful happy given his pretensions about turning men into monsters."
"Like I said, he seems like the genuine article." B.J. repeated, shaking his head, "I figure it's safe enough to have him on board. Besides, having Captain fuckin' America could be a feather in our caps, pardon the pun."
Fergus let out a guffaw of laughter and nearly went to slap B.J. on the back, but held off at the last second, turning the motion into a handshake instead.
"Well, super-soldier or no, it's you I'm glad to see, Blasko." he chuckled.
"Likewise." Blazkowicz replied, before nodding to the porthole in the bulkhead behind his friend, "So, what's up?"
"That?" Fergus snorted, looking back over his shoulder at the shadows moving around beyond the little glass aperture, "Bloody henhouse it is. I had to get out before I started crackin' skulls. Last three days it's been nothin' but 'Where do we go? Where do we go?!'. I swear, if there'd been this much indecision during the bloody Blitz, London would've been a crater by the end of the first week." He waved his hands in a gesture of dismissal, bottle sloshing in one, before sticking out the hand holding the beverage container. B.J. took it and swigged, then coughed. Fergus laughed.
"Yeah, that's bloody moonshine, if that's what you're wonderin'." he cackled, "Me and the boys found a still in the crew quarters. Say what ya like about the Krauts, but they know how to make bloody beer."
"The hell did they make that out of!?" B.J. wheezed, the fiery substance still burning his throat, "Don't tell me they had hops on board."
"Honestly? Not a clue. It's definitely alcohol though." Fergus chuckled, before nodding back to the swarming figures in the light behind the door, "Either way, it soothes me nerves."
"Where are we going anyways?" Blazkowicz asked, leaning back against the wall while his ribs ached; the hot, fiery taste of the fermented substance trickling down into his chest and suffusing it with an odd glow.
"Ah, well that's the kicker, ain't it?" Fergus grunted. Before he could continue, the sounds of an angry argument began to come through the door. The words were inaudible, but the tone was unmistakable. Fergus shrugged, took the bottle back from his friend, then threw a glance towards the door.
"I suggest you ask them." he grumbled, "I just drive this thing." B.J. gave his friend a knowing smirk and pushed off from the wall, then grabbed onto the pressure seal of the bulkhead. With a jerk, he unlocked the wheel and dragged the door open, allowing angry voices to spill out into the corridor.
"-we give up and run off with our tails between our legs!? Deathshead is dead! The Nazi science division is crippled! Europe is in an uproar and not even Goebbels has managed to keep what we've done suppressed!"
"It was our technology that won the Nazis this war! Da'at Yichud technology! The longer we wait around, the more time they have to discover something truly damaging! That suit you're wearing is just one of a thousand treasures waiting to be unearthed, emer-kop! You want the Reich to have all of them!?"
"South America is-"
"B.J.!"
This last exclamation came from Bombate, who was occupying an extremely out-of-place armchair in one corner of the large, double-decked command center. He rose from his seat with a broad smile on his dark face, pure white teeth standing out against the color of his skin.
"Heya, pal." B.J. grunted, returning his grin.
"Hey, hey everybody!" the Nambian replied, turning to the rest of the bridge and making B.J. the center of attention, much to his chagrin, "Three cheers for the man who killed Deathshead!"
There wasn't so much three cheers as two-dozen, all from seperate throats. B.J. realized that many of the stations around the bridge were actually being manned not just by survivors of the Kreisau Circle in Berlin, but by some of the prisoners he'd seen briefly with Anya before his final confrontation with Strasse. They were all looking at him and grinning the same grin as Bombate, cheering and whooping and applauding in a cacophony of human excitement. B.J. felt his heart ache in his chest, not just from pride, but also something else, something he couldn't identify. He packed away the sensation for later examination, doing his best not to look embarrassed in the meanwhile.
"Alright, that's enough!" shouted Caroline from her place at the center of the room. She was standing behind a large square table with a shiny black surface coated in glowing red lines that formed a map of the globe. The gleam of the high-tech computer display on her gold and lead-colored Da'at Yichud powered armor made her look menacing, and the effect must not have been limited to B.J. because everyone quickly quieted down at her command. Despite her authoritative appearance, she still smiled at B.J. with that same grim yet welcoming smile she'd had when they'd first met after his return to the world of the living what seemed like a lifetime ago now.
"It is good to see you back on your feet, Captain Blazkowicz." she chuckled, her comment underscored by some barely audible Yiddish grumbling from Set Roth, who was sitting to her left on a metal stool with a grouchy expression. The subtle sound of the scientist's disagreement caused the resistance leader's smile to turn down at the corners and her eyes to flick over to him with a warning expression, before centering back on B.J. "I only wish it were at a better time. At present we're caught in a bit of a command disagreement…" she all but growled.
"Like I said, bloody henhouse." Fergus muttered from behind B.J., obviously trying not to snigger.
"So I gathered…" Blazkowicz replied, ignoring his friend's comment. He strode closer to the table, close enough that he could lean on it without looking infirm thanks to his ribs, which were slowly going numb with the warmth of Fergus' Nazi moonshine.
"Yingele, you should be in bed. Breaks like that need at least a couple weeks, even with your ape-like physique." Set chided. B.J. very nearly rolled his eyes, but let the old man's insular admonition roll off him like water off a duck. God knows he'd suffered enough of them since rescuing the old geezer from the concentration camp where he'd found him.
"I'll be fine." he answered, focusing on Caroline, "What's the situation now that Deathshead's six feet under?"
"As I was saying," she said, looking down at the red and black map of the world, "the Nazi research structure is crippled. Deathshead was the mastermind behind the reverse-engineering of the Da'at Yichud's technology. With him dead, and much of his research destroyed along with his compound, we've set the Nazi war machine back a good ways. Combined with our prior attacks on the Moon Base, the Gibraltar Bridge, and the capture of this sub, we've managed to grab the attention of some very nasty people."
"Lemme guess," B.J. grunted sarcastically, "Adolf."
"The Fuhrer himself has ordered a manhunt for your head. They know it was you at the London Nautica. They have camera footage of you taking out the London Monitor." Caroline replied grimly, "We're all on the Reich's most-wanted list, which is precisely why we need to intensify our attack. Push on while we have the advantage."
"I take it Set disagrees?" B.J. asked, glancing over at the bespectacled scientist.
"He wants to go to South America. He says there are a great many Da'at Yichud vaults hidden in the jungle that the Nazis were never able to retrieve. That, and he believes an old acquaintance may be hiding out there, one who could help us a great deal."
"Refresh my memory," B.J asked, looking down at the map pensively, "what's South America like these days?"
"Nothing pretty." Set grumbled. Caroline nodded in unhappy agreement.
"Most of our information was focused on the state of affairs in Europe." she explained, "It's only since we got this vessel that we've been able to put together a picture of what's been going on outside in the Occupied Territories and beyond." She tapped some keys at the edge of the table, causing the outline of the southern continent to expand rapidly until it filled the whole display. Dots of red light with tags in German began to pop up all over the eastern coast of the continent, with fewer on the west, and a thick cluster around the tip of North America where it joined at the Panama Canal.
"You probably already know this, but the Nazis never really intended to conquer everyone." Caroline explained, "They wanted to hand Oceania over to Japan and settle for ruling most of the Western Hemisphere, but after Deathshead opened the door to complete domination with his new technology...well, you get the picture."
"The Nazis took South America wholesale." Set explained, butting in with a look of criticism at Caroline, clearly expressing he didn't appreciate her beating around the bush. "If you thought Engel's camp was bad, you have no idea. The racial mixing down there has been going on since the Spaniards landed."
"The whole continent is essentially a giant slave colony." Caroline agreed, ignoring Set's look of scorn, "There's word that some resistance survives deep inland, on the slopes of the Andes, but the coasts have been cleared to make room for massive plantations, mines and oil refineries. They're stripping the place for all it's worth."
"The good news is that the schmucks don't have as much firepower down there. South America was never very powerful to begin with, so they've devoted less forces to keeping it pacified than the United States, or really anywhere else." Set explained.
"So they'd be less prepared for an armed and organized resistance?" B.J. inquired, examining the map further.
"Possibly, but then there is no guarantee." Caroline complained.
"There never was." Set growled, "Come, yingele. You know her. Talk some sense into her!" He gestured angrily at the map as if it had mortally offended him. "We cannot liberate all of Europe in one year! We struck a blow, yes! But we need to retreat and reinforce while we have the chance, while the Nazis lick their wounds!"
"We should capitalize on our victory!" the resistance leader snapped, "Twist the knife before they can pull it out!"
B.J. was inclined to agree with his old friend, but at the same time the odd undercurrent in his emotions that he'd felt earlier kept nagging at his senses, to the point that it was making it hard to focus. While Set and Caroline began to bicker again, he felt his mind wandering, struggling to comprehend the strange sensation. Eventually it dawned on him that it was humility, spiced with an understanding that he had underestimated his opponent. It was a sobering feeling, and in grasping it, he felt new doors open in his mind as questions he'd never dared answer, or even ask, began to crowd his mind.
Ever since he'd woken up in the Polish asylum where he'd met Anya, he'd been on a one-track mission to kill Deathshead. He'd spent sixteen long years focusing on that single goal, and now that it had been achieved, he was faced with the reality that while he'd avenged Wyatt and Pendergast and all the rest, he was still alive in a world that wanted to kill him and everything he held dear. He'd been wrong in telling Rogers that the war wasn't over, because it was. The war to save the world from Nazi conquest was over. He might've killed their top scientist, but so what? Goebbels was still alive. The S.S. endured. Even Adolf himself was still kicking. The Reich was more than one man, and killing Strasse wouldn't bring it down.
This bottomless feeling, like he was standing on thin air, frightened B.J. in a way few things ever had. The abyss he'd papered over with his mission to kill the mad General was now gazing back at him in all its terrible darkness, encompassed by a single question that he couldn't help but ask aloud.
"How do you kill an empire?"
"What?" Caroline and Set asked simultaneously, B.J.'s question cutting through their barb-filled exchange like a thrown knife. They shot each other a brief glance of mutual irritation, then looked back at the leaning soldier.
"I was always told that a few good men and women can change everything." Blazkowicz explained slowly, carefully examining each thought before voicing it. He was on uncharted ground here, and he knew if he misstepped, the whole thing, whatever it was, would fall apart.
"But that's not totally true." he continued, "Back in the O.S.A., I knew I was working behind enemy lines with the support of an army. Even if I didn't know it, I knew it. I took it for granted. All the supplies and gear and intel..." He looked at Caroline, who had folded her arms across her breastplate and was watching with interest, clearly fascinated with what he was saying. Maybe she'd just never heard him talk like this though. He was no speech-maker after all. Still, he carried on, afraid that if he stopped he wouldn't be able to start again.
"That's not the case anymore. We're alone in this fight. Strasse might be dead, and we might've tossed a wrench into the Kraut war machine...but they're still in charge. They've still got armies on every continent. Hell, on the fuckin' moon, even. Compared to them we're a damn wasp buzzing around the yard. We've given them a nasty bite, and it might itch and smart, but eventually it'll go away and the next time we try to sting, they'll have a flyswatter ready."
"So what do you suggest?" Caroline asked, still wearing that expression of bemused surprise, "One wasp cannot kill a grown man, but one wasp doesn't have a nuclear cannon either." For a while, silence reigned in the command bridge, and B.J. felt himself once again become the absolute center of attention.
"One wasp can't make a difference...but a swarm of them can." B.J. replied finally, "We need allies. Best way to get them is to stir up the hive." He pointed at the map, not at anything in particular, but in general aiming at the cluster of red dots which represented military assets. "They have their army. Now we need one of ours. And like theirs, it needs to be everywhere."
"A global resistance?" Caroline murmured, looking down at the map, "We had some contact with other cells back in Berlin...but rarely outside Europe…
"That needs to change." Blazkowicz replied, feeling steam building behind the idea, "Hell, even America teamed up with the French during the Revolution. If we keep doing what we've been doing; dropping bombs and running away; sooner or later we'll walk into a trap. If we go down, there's no guarantee that anyone's gonna replace us. But if we band together...and even the playing field?"
"Mr. Blazkowicz speaks true." Set nodded, "Caroline, we cannot fight this enemy alone. Anywhere we rise up, they will gather their forces and stomp down, hard. But if we were to harass them everywhere, at all times…"
"I understand." Caroline said irritably, looking down at the map between them all. She sighed, clearly frustrated, but obviously swayed by the argument as well. "And as much as I want to deny it, you're right." She tapped a few keys, and the map returned to a display of the whole planet. "It pains me to leave our work in Europe unfinished… but you're right." Her face twisted into a scowl as she glared down at the red outlines of her homeland. "Dammit, I'm the one who should be making that speech."
"Don't take it personal, lass." Fergus grunted, shuffling up to stand by B.J., setting the bottle down atop the glowing table, before spotting Caroline's glare and retrieving it while clearing his throat, "Our boy's been through a lot. Maybe gettin' blown up a second time knocked some genius into his noggin."
"Just some common sense." B.J. admitted, "This isn't the war I left. We've got to stop fighting like it is."
"Go big or go home, eh Blasko?" chuckled Fergus.
"Set a course for South America, Fergus." Caroline ordered, "Set, I want to know everything you can tell me about this...friend you say you have in Puerto Rico."
"As you wish, farbisn dame." grunted the scientist, before spinning on his seat to look at Blazkowicz, "Oh, and malpe, tell your one-armed, one-eyed friend I may be able to help him out with replacing his missing bits. I'm sure he'll love the idea of having his depth perception back."
"No problem." B.J. replied.
--W--
Didja like it? Which part? Tell me!
Last edited:
Snippet 6
- Location
- San Francisco
Terribly sorry, haven't been in much of a writing mood lately. Part of me wants to blame it on the heatwave and the doom and gloom that comes whenever I think of the future these days, but I know better: I'm just a lazy ass. Anywho, enjoy.
--W--
5:43 P.M. October 20, 1960
Secret S.S. Research Lab
Greater Fatherland, Island of Palma (formerly Spanish territory), Europe
HYDRA was dead. It had died with Johann Schmidt, when he'd vanished with his super-jet on course to North America, with bombs that would've removed America from the war permanently. It had been gutted and eradicated when, leaderless, its forces had been routed by the Allies, themselves doomed to suffer the same fate later when the newly-enhanced Reich turned its attention from crushing Russia back to its western coast. The organization's ideals and purpose were erased, or else absorbed by the new empire, folded into its mission of conquest and domination. Thus was HYDRA's place reduced to a textbook entry, where they were mislabeled as dissidents and followers of a counter-coup that attempted to overthrow the Fuhrer for the sake of maintaining the old order.
HYDRA was dead.
Long live HYDRA.
The men at the table looked at each other from the shadows. Illuminated only by a single low-light desk lamp, most of them were cloaked in darkness, with only their hands and arms visible, extensions of a greater whole. It was an ironic mirror of the principles that governed, but also necessary, as they could never afford to be spotted in one place all together. After all, many still had debts to pay in exchange for the amnesty offered them for their talents. Though the lion's share of their former comrades had perished or disappeared after the fall of their leader, they had all found ways to survive, even flourish under the Fuhrer's new order, all while maintaining their dedication to the goals that had once brought them together.
"So...Strasse is dead." grunted one of them, lacing his fingers together, "I mean, it had to happen sooner or later, but scheisse! I wasn't expecting it so soon."
"There will be a struggle now." agreed one of his comrades, "A rush to replace him. And what's more, we are no longer certain of being the ones to fill that vacuum."
"There's no point in whining about it, Lascombe." grumbled another of the invisible personages, "The best we can do now is work to salvage what we can.
"Indeed." stated a fourth figure, whose gold-rimmed spectacles glimmered in the dim light, "The chaos generated by these terrorists will be useful, regardless of our former plans. Shift the blame to the right scapegoats and our people can slide in behind them. And where blame isn't enough, well...the riots and bombings have been awfully severe since the London Monitor was destroyed." There was a little avuncular chuckle to accompany this statement. "One of the tripod's legs has given way!"
"I'm not sure I-" began the one called Lascombe.
"Fear; people had reason to fear until the Monitor fell. German invincibility has been damaged, and with it, their fear has faded. Now it will take a great deal of pain to restore it."
"I have no doubt the Fuhrer has that covered." snorted the third speaker, "And while that's all well and good in the short term, our agenda is somewhat bigger than that."
"Have a little faith, Herschel." This came from one of two sets of female hands on the table, distinguished by lacquered nails and slim digits, "Our objectives remain the same in the long run. Waiting a little longer until things settle down won't hurt."
"But will they settle down?" demanded the first speaker, "This 'Blazkowicz' character has already done a great deal of damage. If he wasn't killed at Strasse's compound and survives to spread more chaos-"
"Engel has been deployed with the Ausmerzer, by order of the Fuhrer himself. I think they'll find it hard to spread chaos with her breathing down their necks."
"Presuming she can find them. They disappeared after entering the Atlantic. Assuming their course is set for North America is a reactionary move. They could go anywhere!"
"I think you're missing something gentlemen. This isn't a catastrophe, but an opportunity." interjected the female voice, "Our goal has always been the establishment of a global order. The Reich has achieved that, but with the wrong ends in mind."
"There's no need to reiterate our charter, Frau Sinclair." sneered the bespectacled speaker, "Or insult our intelligence. Come to the point."
"Our objective was to dissolve the Fuhrer's cult of personality; put an end to this Aryan superiority nonsense and pave the way for the true supermen to emerge; men like Schmidt." continued the female speaker, apparently ignoring her detractor, "Replacing Strasse would've given us access to his inner circle; just one step beneath the Fuhrer himself, who is by all accounts already one foot in the grave thanks to his various and sundry infirmities."
"But we've no assurances the von Strucker boy can curry the favor necessary, not now!"
"Oh, but he can." snickered the female speaker, "He just needs to seize the spotlight."
"You would...ah, I see."
"See what?" demanded Lascombe, "I don't follow."
"Engel's hunt." stated the bespectacled character, "Blazkowicz is public threat number one. He killed Strasse; destroyed the London Monitor; damaged the Gibraltar Bridge; scheisse, even attacked the Moon Base if reports are to be believed. Whoever brings him down will doubtless curry more than enough favor…"
"Which means it cannot be Engel that catches him." finished the female speaker, "It must be us; specifically, von Strucker."
"So...a race, but in a different context than expected…" finished the first speaker, pulling one hand back to rub an unseen forehead. It came back into the light covered in sweat. "It is viable, I suppose. Though how we justify von Strucker's movements will be difficult."
"His hunt for Da'at Yichud caches has already bought him the favors and leniency he needs. And his closeness to Strasse as his chief supplier of artifacts will work in his favor when it comes time for the medals to be pinned on."
"It is a risky plan, given how much trouble Blazkowicz has caused already."
"Not Blazkowicz." declared the third speaker, chuckling, "'Terror Billy'; Goebbels will have a field day with it. When it comes time I'll also ensure he puts the credit in the right place. The man it an incorrigible sot. He'll do anything for a rare vintage."
"Zola? What are your thoughts?" demanded the one of the group who had not yet spoken. The bespectacled figured leaned forwards so the lamplight reflected off his glasses enough to make them into two circles of unnatural glare in the dim space.
"It is fraught with risk...but it is necessary. Schmidt never shied away from the necessary actions he made." he declared, accent thick but menacing, "We shall do it. We must do it. Are we in union?"
No voices rose to defy him. The shaky reflected light on his glasses passed around the shadows as he scanned them each in turn. When it passed the woman who had spoken, it revealed a ruby-red set of lips twisted into a grin. Mirroring that grin, the aging scientist leaned back into his chair.
"Very well then." he said, raising both arms in a gesture that looked like he was about to conduct a seance. "Hail HYDRA."
"Hail HYDRA!" declared the others in quiet but firm tones.
--W--
Wheels within wheels...lemme know whatcha liked!
Snippet 7
- Location
- San Francisco
AYE LEEEEEVE! Yes, it is I! Purveyor of awful fanfiction, returned to dispense more of my trashy writings! Sorry I haven't been around, but I just haven't had the urge to write a lot lately. Still, hopefully this sates your cravings for more Wolfenstein stuff!
--W--
November 8th, 1960Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico
Dear Diary,
It's another sunny day in Hell, here in Santa Isabel; another daily act of defiance, just writing in your pages, using my mother's own language. God, if she could see me now...but it's better that she can't. Better that her and Papa are gone, so they don't have to see what a mess the world's become.
We just received word today via telegram that Packard is dead; she died last month. With Whitmore gone and Cookie with him, that makes four now; four living people who know that there's a city, an entire lost empire, just off the coast of Europe.
Atlantis; just writing the word seems dangerous in times like these. We get plenty of suspicion from the S.S. branch here for our letters. After all, why should a lowly mechanic and her Negro husband have friends on the other side of the world? Still, whatever they suspect us of, they'll never know the truth; not from me, anyways.
Sweet is taking up gardening. He still sees some patients here and there, but he's mostly retired now. Neither of us have heard much from Mole or Vinnie lately. It seems like we're all just waiting to go, like Packard. I still can't believe she's gone. She seemed ancient when we first met, and yet she kept going through it all, like it barely phased her. She reminded me of my mother in some ways, or perhaps my grandmother. She certainly smoked like my grandmother. Either way, she just seemed like she'd last forever. Now she's gone, and we're left wondering who's next.
Sometimes I wish we'd stayed down there, with Milo and Kida. We could've avoided all of this insanity. Looking back it seems so obvious what was to come, but then none of us were very concerned with international politics, even during the Depression. We were just trying to make ends meet. And then one day the Nazis sailed into port and claimed we belonged to them. Part of me thinks we should've fought harder, but then what could we really have done? What could any of us do against Panzerhunds with our bolt-action rifles and sandbags?
Still, perhaps if we had done something, we might still have our children. Sweet tells me not to blame myself, but I do. If I had said something more, done something more, perhaps Pedro and Sara were both strong children; strong-willed too. Now one is dead, and the other...I don't know. She told me not to worry when she sailed away with the other hopefuls, thinking they could reach the mainland and hide out there somewhere. I should've dragged her back by the hair...but I didn't.
I suppose some part of me agreed with her. Sweet and I, we were too old; too tired to fight anymore. We'd seen two wars pass us by, and we'd had enough of fighting. But that's no excuse, not when the world that we're leaving her is this one; where people like her are treated as slaves because of who their parents loved and the color of their skin.
You're probably wondering why I feel the need to revisit old wounds when there are so many other more immediate troubles. Well my dear, it's rather complicated. You see, a man came to the shop yesterday, an American; tall and tough with a brown fedora (and a bullwhip of all things), but always looking over his shoulder, and for good reason as you'll soon realize.
At first I thought it was Packard's executor Wallace, since he said he might be seeing us at some point to discuss her affairs, especially since she wrote us into her will. When I asked though he said he was a doctor, and laughed when I said I hoped he hadn't come to replace my husband. He said he studied archaeology, not medicine, so I told him if it was ruins he was after he should head farther south, but he explained that he was researching something much more recent. Before I could ask more, he reached into his bag and pulled out the Shepard's Journal.
Now I know what you're thinking my dear: "How could he possibly have that book, when we both know that Whitmore was the last man to have it. It should've been destroyed when his mansion burned down!" And yet there it was, as plain as day, and as mysterious as when I first saw Milo reading it. I never thought I'd ever see anything connected to Atlantis again, not after we agreed as a group to bury the crystals that Milo had given us, so the Nazis wouldn't find them.
I'm still not sure how I managed to resist the urge to snatch it from him, but I did. He said he'd received it from his father before they'd lost contact some years ago, along with papers that mentioned the names of everyone on the expedition. If I had been afraid before, I was in an absolute panic then. I considered shooting him with Rosa, fearing he might be a Nazi spy or a plainclothes S.S. member, but before I could do so, I quickly received damning proof that whatever he was, he was not a Nazi.
There were shouts in German from outside, and before I could say anything to my visitor, he'd dived over the counter and was making for the back door. I almost reached out to stop him, but before I could, the police, (the real ones, not the S.S.) were inside and pointing guns at myself and Sweet, who had come downstairs to see what the fuss was about. I don't know if they caught my visitor, but I do know that I never want to spend another night in a cell if I can help it.
We were both arrested and held for a fortnight while they searched our house and both of my garages. I'm still not sure how I managed to convince them that we knew nothing of our guest, but I did, and broke two fingers doing it. We were told only that he was a known terrorist, wanted for crimes against the Reich during the war. They didn't explain what these 'crimes' were, but then I never expected them to. Part of me thinks the only reason we were let go was because they hoped he would come back and try again. Even now it seems like the drones hover especially long over our house during their daily patrols.
I'm not sure what that man thought he would find by contacting me, or what he hoped to gain. I don't know if I'll ever see him again, or if he's even still alive. I do know this though: There may be only four people left on the surface who know that Atlantis is real, but now there's another one who's actively looking for it regardless. The scariest part of all of this is that I hope he finds it. I hope he finds it and tells Milo what's happened. Someone needs to do something, before the Nazis kill us all, and wreck this world beyond fixing. Maybe Atlantis can help, and maybe they can't. But someone needs to do something, because I can't believe that my daughter fights in vain.Sincerely,
Audrey
--W--
So yeah, Audrey and Sweet are married, and life is shit. Not because of the marriage, but the Nazis, obviously. And who's that with the bullwhip?! I wonder...
Also, I am totally reshaping the continuity here...so expect me to go nuts in the next few updates.
Also, I am totally reshaping the continuity here...so expect me to go nuts in the next few updates.
Last edited:
Snippet 8 (Part 1)
- Location
- San Francisco
So I just got a second part-time job recently, which is going to cut further into my will to write. Thankfully I've got more ideas as to where to take this fic now, so it should be easier to keep going in that respect. Also, three guesses as to what I've been playing a lot of lately, and the first two don't count.
--W--
October 12th, 1959
Hatch 18, Ukraine-Ausschlusszone
Greater Fatherland (former territory of the U.S.S.R.), Eastern Europe
The thunderclap of an imminent emission woke Howard with a jolt, just like it had every morning since his arrival. Even now, months after his stranding in this god-forsaken wasteland in the midst of the Ukrainian wilderness, he wasn't sure if it was having an effect on him. Certainly, the sudden surge of adrenaline he experienced at the sound was still fresh and strong, but he couldn't help but feel like he'd grown used to it; like it had become part of his biological routine. He even wondered that if it were to be absent one day, he might still wake every morning with the same tingling in his hands and spine; tense as a wire, but not sure why.
"Предупреждение! Эмиссия неизбежна! Ищите убежище немедленно!" commanded a creaky old megaphone from somewhere nearby, its tones as warped as an old wax cylinder. As if its orders weren't hard enough to comprehend already, it was further drowned out by a wailing air-raid siren, which in turn was almost totally obliterated by the rumbling and thunderous crackling of vast torrents of energy. As he rolled out of bed and into a sitting position, gripping the iron bed-frame tightly, Howard found himself helplessly recalling the first and last time he'd seen the source of that sound. It had looked like judgement day, with huge arcs of lightning leaping among clouds blacker than pitch, which nevertheless were penetrated by an immense violet aurora that seemed to burn the eyes as it built to a terrible crescendo. He'd become a lost man that day; cut off from virtually everyone he'd ever known, left surrounded by people he barely understood, his goals reduced to that most basic of needs: survival.
In a word: another victim of the Zone.
Eventually the wailing of the siren shut down, along with the loud declarations of the warning system. Only the storm remained. Even here, ten feet underground in the concrete and lead-lined barracks of Hatch 19, he felt the low seismic rumble of the passing wave of cosmic energy as it rolled across him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up so hard they almost hurt, and his teeth vibrated in the most unpleasant manner as the discharge washed through him and the men around him, mitigated only by the sturdy Soviet construction housing them.
Mouth held slightly open out of ingrained practice, the former philanthropist gripped the bed until his knuckles went white, tensing with each surge so hard that he thought he might actually bend the metal out of shape. It lasted for only five minutes, but went on for what felt like hours. Amid the hellish din, Howard thought he could hear one of his bunk-mates praying in some Slavic dialect he didn't understand. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, which were clamped tightly shut. He'd given up on God the day New York had died...or he would've if he hadn't already been an atheist. Granted, there had been moments he thought he might believe in some divine plan, back in those glory days when Steve had still been alive, fighting the good fight. Losing the war had changed all that.
Eventually, the constant cracks and peels of thunder began to die down, dwindling to nothing as the wave of the emission spread, attenuated, and died. Once the buzzing in his teeth had stopped, Howard shut his jaw with a click, trying to get saliva back on his tongue, which had gone dry like his throat.
"Forty-shix." said a voice nearby. He turned to face the oriental features of the speaker, Jim Morita. He was gripping his jaw as if trying to pop it back into place, wincing at every motion.
"Sorry?" Howard asked.
"Forty-" he began, then paused briefly before continuing, wincing again, "Sorry, forty-six. That makes forty-six emissions so far this month."
"You've been counting?" Howard asked, raising an eyebrow. The man shrugged.
"Not like there's anything else to do in this shithole." he grumbled.
"Выброс закончился! Вернитесь к своим обязанностям! Если вы получили ранения, сообщите в лазарет о лечении! Вот и все!" blared the speaker system, cutting off anything else Morita might've been preparing to say. As if summoned by the announcement, the bolts of the room's air-tight door slid out, allowing the entry of a large bearded man in a repurposed and slightly tattered Red Army uniform. He was a familiar figure; one that had become part of Howard's daily existence since he'd arrived at Hatch 18. Unfortunately his name was one of those Slavic tongue-twisters that the former philanthropist had always had trouble pronouncing, to the point that he'd given up trying to pronounce it even in his head, just calling him 'Svyat'.
This had not sat well with the man, who seemed perpetually annoyed with anyone who didn't know Russian as a first-language, like they were somehow mentally damaged. As he entered, he was looking down at a clipboard in his hands, but looked up as soon as he'd crossed the threshold, a steely glint in his eye.
"Никифоровича! Петр!" he barked, pointing at two members of the crew of eight men occupying the chamber, "Ты в патруле. Миша, отвези Америку к Хэтчу 28. Нам нужно больше предметов снабжения и другого радиоприемника. Вчерашняя эмиссия вчера вышла из нашей последней." This said, he shifted his pointing fingers to two more men and continued with nary a pause, snapping out more orders. "Василий и Григори, ты на спасение! Мы до сих пор не закончили ломать эту новую машину, которую немецкая свинья отправила на прошлой неделе, а Ивану нужны больше деталей."
"What?" Morita asked peevishly. He'd made it clear he disliked being given assignments he couldn't understand, but apparently that didn't matter to Svyat, as every day since their arrival, he'd delivered his morning duty roles in Russian and left the English translation to his men.
"He say you come with me, American. We go to Station 28." explained one of the group, who had been picked out by the commander's roving fingers. While obviously grateful for the translation, Morita still looked like he wanted to protest. Of the pair of them, Howard felt that Jim had been the one least happy to have been drafted by this sorry band of survivors. He'd been a Howling Commando during the war, and sitting around scavenging for a living wasn't sitting well with him. Before Howard could try and provide any verbal support, he felt the commander's hand land on his shoulder.
"Stark! You are needed at Station 1. Doctor Vanko would have words with you." the burly old communist declared, his volume somewhat lowered, but his tone no less authoritative. Howard sighed, feeling the adrenaline from moments before draining away to be replaced by a sullen, tired sensation that made him want to go back to bed.
"Again?" he muttered.
"Yes." the commander replied, without humor, "Again."
--W--
Предупреждение! Эмиссия неизбежна! Ищите убежище немедленно! -- Attention, an emission is imminent! Seek cover immediately!
Выброс закончился! Вернитесь к своим обязанностям! Если вы получили ранения, сообщите в лазарет о лечении! Вот и все! -- The emission is over! Return to your duties! If you are injured, report to the infirmary! That is all!
Никифоровича! Петр! Ты в патруле. Миша, отвези Америку к Хэтчу 28. Нам нужно больше предметов снабжения и другого радиоприемника. Вчерашняя эмиссия вчера вышла из нашей последней. -- Nikita! Piotr! You're on patrol. Take the American to Hatch 28. We need more supplies and another radio. Ours has been broken since yesterday.
Василий и Григори, ты на спасение! Мы до сих пор не закончили ломать эту новую машину, которую немецкая свинья отправила на прошлой неделе, а Ивану нужны больше деталей. -- Vasily and Grigori! You're on salvage. We haven't finished breaking down that new robot the German pigs sent in last week and Ivan needs more parts!
(A/N: Sorry I had to resort to Google Translate.)
Выброс закончился! Вернитесь к своим обязанностям! Если вы получили ранения, сообщите в лазарет о лечении! Вот и все! -- The emission is over! Return to your duties! If you are injured, report to the infirmary! That is all!
Никифоровича! Петр! Ты в патруле. Миша, отвези Америку к Хэтчу 28. Нам нужно больше предметов снабжения и другого радиоприемника. Вчерашняя эмиссия вчера вышла из нашей последней. -- Nikita! Piotr! You're on patrol. Take the American to Hatch 28. We need more supplies and another radio. Ours has been broken since yesterday.
Василий и Григори, ты на спасение! Мы до сих пор не закончили ломать эту новую машину, которую немецкая свинья отправила на прошлой неделе, а Ивану нужны больше деталей. -- Vasily and Grigori! You're on salvage. We haven't finished breaking down that new robot the German pigs sent in last week and Ivan needs more parts!
(A/N: Sorry I had to resort to Google Translate.)
Last edited:
Snippet 8 (Part 2)
- Location
- San Francisco
Howard's adventures continue!! Also some big references dropped. What fun!
--W--
And so, after some dressing, some packing, and a twenty-minute hike Howard found himself standing at the entrance to Hatch 1, surrounded by firs and other evergreens beneath a slate-gray sky. As always, the whole trip felt like a fever-dream, though to be fair, most of his life had felt that way since the Nazis had nuked New York. Between running from S.S. 'recruitment squads' and helping Peggy (God bless her if he actually existed) organize some kind of meaningful resistance, those early days had been hell; a panicked, paranoid nightmare with no awakening. The days that followed hadn't been much better, but that was a different story.
That said, ever since the harrowing escape that had landed Morita and himself in this barrel, alien landscape, he often found himself wishing for a return to that dark interval. At least there, it had felt like he was achieving something. Granted, the Zone had its perks for those living there. For one, there were no death squads (usually), and the greenery hadn't been bulldozed to make room for heinously monolithic concrete edifices the Reich seemed to fetishize. Of course it DID have mines, radioactive debris from old experiments, and extremely lethal physics-defying anomalies.
Gently and without warning, a soft rain began to fall, dampening Howard's spirits as well as his clothing. He sighed in melancholy. Who was he kidding? Everywhere was dangerous these days. The only difference was that here, the danger was impersonal. Wearily, he watched while his guide knocked in a morse pattern on the weather-stripped and slightly rusty airtight door of the old Soviet facility. Another pattern replied, confirming authorization. A brief roll of thunder caused Howard to tense and look upwards, before relaxing when no other sounds followed. He chuckled at his own paranoia. Two emissions in twenty minutes would've been a record. As it was, they generally only happened in minimum intervals of two hours...so far anyways.
He hurried inside before that train of thought could go further, pausing briefly while the guards checked him for weapons.
"Really? Come on fellas; I've been here almost a year. If I were going to try something, I would've done it already." he complained, dripping slightly on the old concrete floor.
"Шуш, ты." grunted one of the guards, finishing his pat-down while his partner ran a Geiger counter over him. Finding nothing untowards, they eventually stopped, the first one waving down the hall behind him. "Продолжай. Ты чист." he declared. Howard took the hint and headed into the poorly lit and grim interior of the old Soviet bunker. As he did, he passed a map of the whole complex fixed to the stone wall, encompassing the former perimeter of the Zone and the facilities inside it. He couldn't read any of the Cyrillic text, but he knew the story.
Before the war, something had landed (Arrived? Appeared?) in rural Ukraine, on the edge of the border with Belarus. Stalin had naturally been interested, so interested that he'd taken resources away from trying to pacify internal dissent after his takeover to build a network of scientific outposts in the midst of the new and deadly region, which spread fifty kilometers in all directions around Hatch 1. There were thirty 'Hatches' in all, each performing its own function for the sake of the others, be that research, housing or supplies.
As he turned and walked on, leaving the map and guards behind Howard remembered how Anton had spoken of the network's construction; of how they'd 'conscripted' unfortunate survivors from the towns around the Zone devastated by the initial emissions to serve as labor, rather than allow them to leave and possibly spread word of what had happened. Most of those unfortunates had died, and those that had survived had never been allowed to leave anyways. It was only the cruelty of fate that had turned their imprisonment into a willing act, as the arrival of the Nazi military cordon which killed anything trying to get out of these fifty square kilometers had forced them to reevaluate the wisdom of escape.
Eventually, Howard found himself pulled from his swamp of recollection (which was fine with him, given some of the things living in it) by his arrival in the complex's administrative block. Working by a sense of direction honed over months of such visits, he wound his way through the mostly-empty offices until he reached the door he was looking for; a steel hatch identical to almost every other one he'd passed through so far in this labyrinthine bunker save for the brass plate nailed up next to it. Howard had no idea what it said, but he knew what it meant:
'DOCTOR ANTON VANKO - CHIEF OF APPLIED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT'
With a bone-deep tiredness and an expression that no doubt matched his feelings, Howard reached up to knock. Anton disliked it when people entered unannounced, which was somehow amusing given his current scientific obsessions.
"Anton, it's me!" he declared. For a moment there was silence, and Howard briefly wondered if his erstwhile 'employer' might be out at the moment. But then life was never that kind.
"Come in!" camed the muffled reply, offered in slightly accented English; a rarity in this grim, artificial underworld. Bolts slid back from behind the portal, which then creaked open slightly. Howard pulled it the rest of the way, allowing him to step into the cramped and cluttered space that was Anton's office. The man himself, dressed in a slightly dirty lab coat and elderly shirt and pants, was already squeezing his way back behind the small desk that took up most of the underground space.
"You are punctual as always." he commented, sliding into his seat with a grunt of effort, "Though I can still remember a time when you weren't…" He smirked at Howard in the manner of one who knows things about you that you wouldn't want your mother to know. The engineer rolled his eyes.
"You called. I came. What is it this time?" he asked, folding his arms. This response quickly smothered any fellow feeling Anton might've been trying to cultivate, his expression melting from sly friendship to sour sincerity.
"It's about this side project of yours…" he said after a few moments of silence, "The General has concerns about the resources and time you've been pouring into it." Howard resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but something else in his manner must've tipped Vanko off, because he pursed his lips in disapproval before continuing."
"He understands that you are an engineer first, and that you have ethical qualms about participating with us, especially given the nature of our research-"
"You conscripted Morita and me and gunpoint." Howard cut in, feeling a familiar and chilly irritation rising inside him, "You threatened to shoot him if I didn't work with you on your little project."
"Which is more than the Nazis would've offered." Vanko retorted, unable to keep from leaping at the verbal bait like always. A tight smile formed on Howard's face. It was one of the many features about him that had endured since their brief time together at Oxford all those years ago. The biggest was that, simply put, he was still an unrepentant asshole.
"That's debatable." he countered, sidestepping the argument that was threatening to erupt, "What exactly does the General have a problem with?"
"As I said, the resources and time you have been pouring into this code-breaking project are troubling him. He'd much rather it that you continue helping me with Project Baba Yaga."
"Look," Howard began, feeling irritation rising to replace his depression, "firstly, it's more than a simple code-breaking process. The Krauts' robots are advanced, yes, but they all run on the same set of rules."
"Understanding the inner workings of the Nazi's soldiers is an admirable task, but how will it provide us with a means of fighting back? That, ultimately is what we are doing here." Anton demanded.
"I don't need reminding." Howard answered, gritting his teeth and marvelling at how one man could have such an imagination, yet simultaneously be so bereft of understanding. "Look, I don't expect the General to understand-"
"He doesn't. That is why he has asked me to ask you." Anton interrupted, leaning back as much as he could in his metal chair, which creaked in protest, "This is your chance to convince him that what you are doing is worthwhile...and to be frank, Stark, you are making a very poor first impression."
For a brief instant, Howard felt irrational fury surge through him. He wanted to leap over the desk and strangle the smug bastard; show him what he really thought of him and his abomination of a 'Project', which would've made Abraham Erskine leap screaming from his grave had he still been alive to see it. But no, he couldn't, because that wouldn't just cost him, but Morita as well.
And for all his loathing of Anton's methods, Stark couldn't stop a sense of twisted understanding from rising to dampen the flames of his rage. After all, his home might be on its knees, but Anton's had been gutted, and had been so long before the bomb had fallen on New York. Hitler's treatment of the U.S.S.R. and its peoples had been merciless, perhaps more than any other nation he had conquered. The extermination of the Jews had been little more than a warm-up by comparison. Instinctually, his eye fell on the silver locket Anton wore around his neck. He knew what was inside, and the thought was enough to rob him of any righteous indignation he might be feeling.
Thus, clearing his throat and focusing his mind, Howard gestured to the only other seat in the room: a wooden chair that looked like it might fold under him if used.
"Mind if I sit?" he asked. Anton made a gesture that said he couldn't care less. Dragging the rickety construction over, the engineer turned it so it's back was facing he desk, then swung a leg over the seat and sat down, lacing his fingers atop the broad back-rest. He rested there for a moment as he thought on how best to explain the work he'd been doing so that Anton might both understand and sympathize.
"The Nazis caught us off-guard with their technology. That we can all agree on." he began, explaining in a careful, measured tone like the one Jarvis had often used when trying to explain why his latest absurd request was infeasible. "But what runs their technology?"
Anton gave no response to this question, and merely cocked an eyebrow in mild impatience. Howard gestured at the air, as if trying to shape the invisible dough of his thoughts into words. Eventually he struck upon an allegory he thought might work, and silently thanked the memory of Dr. Erskine as he continued.
"Do you know about the story of the Golem?"
"That's a Jewish myth, isn't it?" Anton inquired disinterestedly.
"Yes. A town is under threat from...something, bandits I think, so the priest, on orders from God, bakes a man out of clay. Then he writes the name of God on a slip of paper and puts it in the statue's mouth. The statue sits up and fights off the bad guys, who can't harm it because, hey, he's a walking flowerpot who can't feel pain."
"I assume you're going somewhere with this…" Anton sighed. Howard nodded, gesturing less wildly.
"The Nazi's war machines, all their computing machines, work on a similar principle. They're like the golem, except instead of the name of God, their…'life', if you can call it that, comes from a set of directives. A program made of mathematical computations, which tells them what to do and not to do. If this, then this. If something else, then that."
"A Babbage machine." Anton said, simplifying the description so swiftly that Howard felt slightly embarrassed by the comparison, which was miles more accurate than his own.
"Yes," he admitted, "you could put it like that. A very complex, sophisticated difference engine. The technology is wild stuff. But ultimately what matters is the information running it; the program." He gestured to a map on the wall above a set of elderly filing cabinets, which showed the known extent of the Nazi perimeter cordon around the Zone.
"If I can decipher the rules of the program, we can hijack their robots and make them fight for us. We could access their communications networks and learn their secrets again, like when they still used old ENIGMA machines, except faster and better."
"Hmmmm…" Anton said, his eyes shifting to the map, but also losing their focus as he apparently considered Howard's words. For a long minute, nothing was said between the two scientists. "An interesting proposal…" he finally admitted, "but still, not without flaws."
"I'm open to criticism." Howard replied hastily, gripping the back of his seat, "I'll admit it's not a perfect plan, but it's got to be better than-"
"Than relying on magic?" Anton interjected, cutting Howard off yet again. The engineer winced slightly, while his old colleague's face took on that same irritating smirk from earlier. "There's no need to be coy about it, Howard. I know what you think of the Project. I doubt even General Platonov has much real faith in my work. But then all emerging sciences have been dismissed in their time."
"Anton…" Howard began, unsure of what to say or feel, as he always was in these instances when his former college acquaintance began to ramble on about his field of research.
"You don't have to agree with me, Howard." the man continued, lacing his own fingers atop the desk, "Even though I suspect in some small way you do. Else you would not have elected to pursue such a project. But you cling to a materialistic view, when evidence that there is more to our universe than is dreamed of in any philosophy is sitting in a crater not three kilometers from where we now sit."
"Anton, just because a magic hammer fell from the sky does not mean you can use it to give people psycho-...psi-...psycho-whatsit powers."
There, he'd said it. And now Anton would shout him out of his office for daring to mock his work. Except he didn't. Instead his smirk took on an aspect of exhaustion similar to the kind Howard had been feeling mere minutes before. He shook his head slowly.
"Not magic." he said, "There is no magic. Only the known and unknown." He looked down at his desk, and Howard realized that on it was a picture which his preoccupied mind had totally missed during these past few minutes. It was of the Zone's center; the crater where the thing that the Hatch Complex's documents referred to as Item 53 had...arrived. The pit itself was almost ten feet deep and sixty feet across, it's sides made of hardened radioactive glass, fused into such by the awesome energies emanating from the thing at its center. Whoever had taken the picture must have used a long-barrel camera lens, since film that got too close to the location had a tendency to decay into blank whiteness before it could be developed. Whatever the case, the picture was still clear enough to get the details, and that was what mattered.
It was a hammer, but not just any hammer. The head was a pentagonal prism of silvery metal, but squashed so it was nearly trapezoidal in shape. The handle, meanwhile, seemed relatively short compared to the mass of the head, making Howard think that anyone trying to lift the thing would have a devil of a time using it. Of course, anyone trying that would also need to be wearing a lead-lined suit and be certifiably insane, given what had happened to the last person who had tried it. Along the beveled edges of the thing were carved runes, unmistakably Old Norse, with their alternating crosses, slants and vertical lines. Howard knew what it said, but still didn't quite believe it, and doubted he ever would. But then if Erskine's god could let the Nazis come to power, surely other deities (if they existed at all) could be just as absent-minded...right?
The sound of Anton clearing his throat brought him back from a confusing mental space to the equally baffling physical one.
"I respect your work, Howard, even if you do not respect mine. I will tell General Platonov to grant you special dispensation to continue your explorations of the Nazi robotics...provided it does not interfere with Project Baba Yaga."
The engineer sagged back, realized his seat was inverted, then turned the motion into a slump forward with just a bit of embarrassment.
"Thanks...I mean, thank you." he said, standing up when he saw that his old colleague was holding out his hand for a handshake. He took it and shook, unsure whether to feel relieved or frustrated. The truth was he wasn't sure his own experiments or plans would be any more successful than Anton's...but then he would've done anything to stop participating in the man's project...even if only for a while. There were some things even Howard would not sink to...and experimenting on children, even orphan volunteers, was one of them.
"Good. Now, if you'll excuse me," the rather portly Russian declared, glancing at the clock and easing his way back around his desk, "I believe I am needed at Hatch 17. Our next battery of tests is due to begin in an hour, and unless I am there, the girls will be very upset."
"We wouldn't want that." Stark muttered darkly. Anton apparently caught his words, but failed to grasp the dark sarcasm behind them.
"Well no. It would skew the test results." he started, then saw the dark look in Howard's eyes, only to again misinterpret it. He patted him on the back jovially. "Come now, Howard. It's not witchcraft, whatever you may think. Just science. Science is everything. Science will give us victory."
--W--
Шуш, ты. -- Quiet, you.
Продолжай. Ты чист. -- Go on, you're clean.
Next time: NAZIS IN THE JUNGLE! Or maybe just another lore/diary snippet or twelve. Don't judge me. This will proceed at its own pace.
Продолжай. Ты чист. -- Go on, you're clean.
Next time: NAZIS IN THE JUNGLE! Or maybe just another lore/diary snippet or twelve. Don't judge me. This will proceed at its own pace.
Last edited:
Snippet 9 (Part 1)
- Location
- San Francisco
So I haven't had a lot of time or energy lately. Job hunting and depression really got me down. However, writing seems to help with the latter, and I figured I'd come back to this as a little break from my more original non-fanfic work.
--W--
November 12th, 1960
Airborne over Guatopo Wildlife Preserve
70KM inland from Caracas, Venezuela (Colony of the Reich)
As the jungle rushed past below, BJ had to admit he'd rarely seen a sight more beautiful. Looking down at the rolling miles of emerald treetops, he felt as though he'd been transported to some other planet, like the explorers in those weird fiction magazines that had been so popular before the war. It was a stark contrast to the iron-gray and intimidating landscape offered by most of Europe, and a strangely comforting one too. Here he could almost believe that the Nazis were far away, confined to some other universe where their grinding machines of industry could not touch the natural splendor.
"Tis beautiful, isn't it?" remarked Fergus from the pilot's seat next to him, "Reminds me a little o' home...but with a bloody hell of a lot more trees." He paused, as if thinking, then added: "Bout the same amount of rain, mind you."
"I came here once…" BJ remarked, causing the scot to glance over at him in surprise, "Long, long time ago, before we ever met." He stared down at the carpet of vegetation, which stretched to the horizon in nearly every direction. "Gotta be honest; all I really remember were the mosquitos. Bastards bit everything they could reach and then some…"
"Hah!" guffawed Fergus, grinning like a schoolboy, "Never thought I'd hear you complain about anything so small!"
"Small's about the last word I'd use to describe those bloodsuckers." BJ replied, feeling a small grin creep over his face as well, before the reality of their situation crept back on him. "Course they're probably in good company now, what with all the goddamn Nazis."
An awkward silence fell over the cockpit after that, prompting BJ to look out the copilot's side window while more greenery raced past. In the distance the sun sank towards the horizon, the late afternoon glow serving only to enhance the color of the landscape. It was beautiful, yes...but it wasn't enough to dispel the memory of everything else he'd seen on this trip, or make him forget why he was here.
--W--
It had been a long but mostly quiet trip across the Atlantic, with only a stop in Puerto Rico to steal fuel from a U-Boat pen and perform a bit of misdirection as to their intended course to serve as an interruption. Most people had settled in, with the new faces rescued from Strasse's compound making themselves alternatively useful and comfy. The majority had also accepted the offer to join the Kreisau Circle and fight the Nazis, which had given BJ something to occupy himself with while while Caroline had struggled to find evidence of resistance activity anywhere in South America. In short, he'd trained the troops, and she'd looked for more, while the sub churned on through the abyssal depths of the sea.
Initially the quest for signs of resistance hadn't met with much success. As Caroline had explained at length when asked, while the war had been good for the continent's collective economy, the wealth produced by selling raw resources to the U.S. hadn't helped much in staving off crushing heel of the Wehrmacht after Germany had emerged as the conflict's victor. The various nations had put up a bloody fight (except possibly for Argentina) when the time had come for them to bend the knee, and thousands had died, with the Germans being forced to resort to such tactics as mass executions and firebombing the jungle to root out pockets of fighters.
Still, for all their sacrifices, in the end they had been forced to bow like everyone else, and to add insult to injury, the new yoke they'd been fitted with as colonies of the Reich had included a tiered citizenship system based on racial purity, with Europeans at the top and all the 'half-breeds' at the bottom. This relegated a vast chunk of the population in many regions to little more than slave labor, while a new aristocracy of state officials ran everything from the privacy of their luxurious mansions and ranches.
The result was a society of haves and have-nots; an eternal aristocracy and a permanent underclass. Technology was strictly regulated, with licenses being required for ownership of anything beyond basic farming and mining equipment. Universities were closed to those not of Aryan descent. Public schools were almost unheard of. The majority of children born after the Nazi conquest were, according to intercepted reports, illiterate save for a very few basic elements delivered through their local church, which themselves were just another arm of the Reich now that the Vatican and Papacy were under state control. In short, the Nazis seemed determined to reduce their new subjects to the level of animals, incapable of free thought and too ignorant or impoverished to resist.
And yet, for all the awful hopelessness of their situation, Caroline had persisted, continuing to comb Nazi communiques and ENIGMA transmissions for any sign of enduring resistance to the Reich. Anya had been at her side all the way through it, and together, they'd chipped and hacked and picked away at the monolithic wall of propaganda and disinformation until finally, a ray of light had broken through. On Halloween, Caroline had laid out the evidence, most of which revolved around an organization from the latter days of the continent's resistance efforts known as 'Los Muertos Inquietos', or 'The Unquiet Dead', which she subsequently tied to a string of bombings suppressed by the Nazi-controlled media, the latest of which had occurred that very night.
It had been a monumental moment of triumph, spoiled only by the fact that no one, not even Caroline, had been able to work out a means of contacting the group. S.S. reports suggested that they lived deep inland, just as Caroline's rumors had suggested, operating out of caves and nomadic camps on the slopes of the Andes. Most reports of encounters with them came from the local military forces assigned to eliminate them, and they seldom managed to take any of the insurgents alive. That they did at all though was what gave rise to the next step in the plan. It was Fergus who made the suggestion that they repeat their stunt at Eisenwald prison back in Berlin by breaking out members of the Muertos Inquietos. The gratitude they would win would make them the inroads they needed to begin building ties with the resistance.
Caroline had nodded her assent to the idea, as had everyone else. After that, it had just been a matter of digging up where the rebel prisoners were being held. That in itself had proved a problem of course, because it had quickly turned out that wherever they were, it was no normal prison. Only when Anya had tried looking into research and development reports had the final pieces fallen into place.
--W--
When the prison heaved into view, BJ was immediately reminded of the London Nautica in some respects. The gray, monolithic bulk of the structure was obtrusive amid the canopy of green leaves; an intruder that stood out as a tumor among the healthy jungle. However, despite it's obviously alien nature to the landscape, it seemed the Nazis had taken a little bit of creative liberty with this particular installation to make it fit the cultural setting.
The place was composed of five stepped pyramids; one central ziggurat forming the core while four smaller ones merged with it's corners to create a fractal effect. Huge spotlights shot up from the top-most levels of each structure, bright against the fading sun. It was a twisted fusion of German and Mesoamerican aesthetics, though once he got closer, BJ could see that the balanced leaned heavily towards the former, despite the multi-tiered central structure. Flak towers posted the corners of the lowest levels, which were actually walls topped by barbed wire. Crenellations on this outer barrier gave the effect of a European castle. A single road led up to the front gate, winding between the trees until it reached the main gatehouse, which extruded from the eastern face of the complex like a mausoleum entrance, with enormous crimson banners bearing the mark of Hitler's Reich.
"Huh, well given the location, I s'ppose it's fittin'." Fergus grunted. BJ looked at him quizzically, causing him to chuckle darkly, "If yer goin' to be practicin' human sacrifice, might as well tell ev'rybody who can as hear."
BJ didn't laugh back, but merely pursed his lips in solidarity with the disgust Fergus was expressing. His friend's quip wasn't that far from the truth to be honest. The only difference between the purpose of this more modern ziggurat and the ones out in the deeper jungle was that it's victims were being sacrificed on the altar of science rather than some god whose name he couldn't pronounce. It was just another reminder that the Nazis devalued everyone who didn't comply with their Aryan standards. To them, all other races were subhuman, and therefore disposable. That went double for rebels, which was why they sent everyone found resisting their rule in this region to this place.
"What'd Anya say this place was for again?" Fergus inquired, "Some sort of science lab, right?"
"Not a clue." BJ answered, "Did say they were shipping in a lot of weird stuff though."
"Like what?" Fergus pressed, "Besides human bodies obviously."
"Didn't ask." BJ replied, "We nearly there?"
"Aye." groused Fergus, annoyed at being left in the dark, "We're nearly there."
As he spoke he heeled the aircraft over to the left, approaching the enormous complex from the southern face. BJ took the moment to reach into the pocket of his side's door and retrieve the map they'd been provided, unfolding it enough to display the map they'd managed to snag during a silent convoy raid a week earlier.
"So I'm goin' in through the sewers?" he asked rhetorically, "Thought I'd had enough of swimming in Nazi shit in Berlin."
"Ah, but their arse is the last place they'd expect to be stabbed, no?" Fergus joked, trying to lighten the mood.
"Suppose so." BJ replied noncommittally, wishing for once he had backup. It wasn't that he minded being on his own. He'd fought through most of World War II that way. However, the reminder provided by a squad of fellows that he was not fighting alone would've been a comforting one. Alas, none of the rescues and other resistance veterans were in any shape to help right now. Most of latter were engaged in training the former in the finer points of being resistance fighters. While it pleased BJ that virtually all of them had pledged themselves to the Kreisau Circle's cause, it did leave him with the burden of carrying out most of the ground-work until they were ready to fight for themselves.
Idly, part of him couldn't help but wonder again if he should've brought Rodgers. Of all the men on the Eva's Hammer, he at least had truly known war, and while Fergus was handy to have in a pinch, it'd been a long time since he'd been anything but a lone wolf. However, Leda Fraiser, the woman who had essentially claimed the position of ship's doctor by right of stubbornness, had been dead-set against it. Seth had agreed, saying he needed more time to work out a means of restoring the Captain to his full integrity. Fighting with one arm and one eye after years in Deathshead's frozen lock-box was no way to speed recovery, even for a super-soldier. And after almost a month spent getting to know the man, BJ couldn't really disagree with either of them.
Right now, Rodgers reminded him uncomfortably of Wyatt, or what Wyatt would've been had he escaped Deathshead's horrible brain-extraction device. There was a pain of shattered idealism to him, of a man searching for a new direction. Until he got both feet on the ground mentally and a new arm to replace the old, he was in no shape to be fighting just yet. No, Captain America would have to wait, just like America herself it seemed. Before he could turn his thoughts back to the rest of the crew of the Hammer, Fergus cut into his thoughts.
"Alright, we're in position." he declared, "The operation is a go!"
BJ folded up the map and unbuckled his seatbelt as his pilot friend locked the helicopter into hover-mode, just barely above the treetops half a klick from the sewer entrance of the giant Nazi lab. The setting sun provided some visual cover, making BJ grin slightly. Hiding in the light was, in his experience, the best place to hide. He stood, checked his weapons and walked to the rear of the cabin, unlocking the port-side door and letting a sharp gust blow in from the craft's blades.
"I'll see ya on the other side, Fergus" he said, clicking his radio headset to make sure it was working.
"Aye!" was all the other man had to say, clicking his own radio to confirm the connection. BJ nodded one last time, then popped open the weapon's case strapped to the wall of the cabin. Inside, a new Lazerkraftwerk sat all shiny and new, courtesy of Seth's handiwork; a key for any door, including those without hinges. He grabbed it, looping it's strap around him, then retrieved and unrolled the rope ladder that had so recently been his salvation. He crouched down, swung himself out, and began to descend into the green hell below.
--W--
Last edited: