Hellhole
Ralf Winkler was arranging his equipment when he became aware of a commotion behind him. The burly machine gunner, known somewhat incongruously as "Princess" approached him, having several dwarves in tow. These guys refuse to leave until we rescued their comrades in that hole-and they want to help. Do you have any idea for them before the cause more of a ruckus?
The medic had a long look at the assembled dwarves. Despite their obvious malnutrition they were powerfully muscled and their body language spoke of a spirit less broken than that of most human slaves he had seen so far. The legendary resilience of dwarves against poison might have something to do with that.
"Ok, why not. If you put somebody in charge with them they can man some of the rescue lines and help carry the stretchers."
"If you think it`s ok, then we`ll do it. That way we can make this place a little more secure."
Ralf then took a rescue line and showed it to his fellow medic. Ok Thorsten, no big deal about this. Take about that much rope, like me. Now put the short end behind your neck, cross the line behind you back-yes looks good-and now make a Manrope knot in front-see, done.
"I go down first, than you can have a look again how I did it." Making sure that the rope was led over a tarp to prevent fraying and that the 3 soldiers which let him down had grabbed the ropes right he stepped backward into the hole.
His Coat prevented the ropes from cutting him too badly and he was lowered into the hole at a good speed. Arriving at the bottom he undid the knot and took a quick scan of his surroundings. There were 6 dwarves in there, all injured to some extent, but two were in a bad way.
He went to the dwarf in the middle of the group who seemed to be the worst off. "Hello guy. I am Ralf and I want to help you. What hurts worst?" He got no real answer from the dwarf but one of his friends answered in somewhat understandable Reikspiel: "Ulf is in a bad way, sir. He broke his legs when they threw him in and yesterday he started to get this fever"
"Ok, thanks for the info. Let me check him please."
The semi-conscious dwarf did not stop him when he checked for pulse, skin tone and temperature and patted down the dwarf for injuries. While he was not so familiar with their physiology-most joints felt like having arthritis in a human but seemed mobile enough-his check seemed to confirm the dwarfs intel. A quick pinch into a toe and Ulf`s wince confirmed that the spine was still in one piece. By then his co-medic had also reached the bottom and had sorted the equipment which had been lowered after them.
"I would say we give him a drip-feed, put him into the vacuum matrass and give him priority-what do you think?"
"Seems about right, let`s do it."
The two medics could not fix the neck with a brace as would be normal as there was no brace in their arsenal which could have coped with the short, broad neck presented to them. They adjusted the length of the shovel stretcher and parted it lengthwise. Next they arranged the vacuum matrass on the normal stretcher and then pushed the two halves of the shovel stretcher under their patient without moving him much until the two halves met. After that the swearing started-even in his state the dwarf weighted 100 kg easily and so they had to work hard to lift him without any sudden movements until they could rest the stretcher again on the vacuum matrass.
Parting the shovel stretcher they could pull it out under Ulf and Ralf pulled both long ends of the vacuum matrass while Torsten used a small pump to evacuate the air from the matrass. Being quite pliable when they had lowered the dwarf inside and taking his form it now became quite hard and inflexible. This would stabilize the broken limbs during transport and still dampen vibration and similar.
While Ralf put a drip feed into a vein on the back side of the dwarves hand Torsten started fixing a rope around the stretcher and the dwarf starting at the feet. Building up several rounds of the rope around the stretcher and their patient he fixed the dwarf well enough that they could have put the stretcher the wrong way down and their patient would still remain where he was.
Torsten was good at this and had to deny any private interest in bondage whenever they practiced this on the trip.. Too bad, one of the nurses seemed to be interested…
All of this had taken about 5 Minutes and then they could call for the team on top to pull the stretcher in. They guided their patient as long as their arms could reach and then took a new stretcher for the next patient.
"Amusement suite" inside the slave pens
The inside of this currently empty suite was an amazing mixture of a lounge, a sybarite's bedroom and a torture chamber. It´s entrance into the slave pens was well hidden, as those who used this room wanted some discretion.
While Druchii society was willing to overlook practically everything which was done to slaves and others not of their race there were things which even the Dark Elves thought better to keep quietly, either because their cravings would seem too gauche or because they would indicate alliances better not shown to the greater populace.
These rooms were made to cater to the needs of the Druchii with such interests.
The instruments in the torture chamber part of the suite was filled with instruments of exquisite workmanship. They had about as much in common with the crude instruments of torture used by humans as an Orks cudgel with a finely crafted Elven sword. Works of art, darkly beautiful, elegant and showing their purpose in ways that would make a human cringe with empathy.
Lady Morith had entered the room via a small side entrance which did not connect with the corridor that was under control of the German troops. She looked at the "furniture" of the room approvingly, using the sight to pull forward memories of deeds done in these rooms for which humans did not even have names even if they were done to them.
She took the memories and the feelings they evoked to connect herself to the warp and ultimately to her master. An observer would have seen her cringe and sway under emotions caused by things he could not see, but were obviously felt my the Dark Elf.
Finally her eyes showed their pupils again and she breathed more regularly. She used what she had been given and pushed against the fabric of reality itself. Under this pressure in several places close by the air seemed to rip and ovals of something appeared. Out of them jumped strange hybrids between a beautiful woman and an emperor crab. Slanesh had seemed fit to grant her several covens of Demonettes. Most went after whatever targets they could sense while some arranged them around Lady Morith like a bodyguard.
Having composed herself she broke in a run-whatever happened now, it would surely not be boring.
Causeway
Paul Müller just hoped that whatever had caused the successful magic attack some time ago was now out of the picture. He had his medics check on the mages he was to protect before speaking to them himself and some where in a bad way-while others were out cold.
That was not even considering the poor soul that had so obviously died. "Herr Flammbach-what happened?"
The wheezing voice that answered him showed how much the fight had taken out of the mage.
"We got hit by a very basic spell backed up by terrible force. It must have been the best Mages Hag Graef has, and they probably sacrificed one of their number to push it through-it felt like that. But if I am wrong, don`t worry too much, if the best mages have not yet joined the fight we are dead, so need to concern yourself. Is it possible that you hit the mages somehow-I felt them go very suddenly!".
"From what my superiors tell me we wiped some mages at approximately the spot where the magic was coming from."
"That would be good if true. We will do our best to avoid a repeat-sorry for what happened." "Forget it-we are grateful to have you along. Sorry, I have to go!"
He was waived over by his Lt. who pointed out a new strange assault on the causeway. Paul was amazed to see that the front rows of whatever was coming this way seemed to carry torches.
"Tell me what you see, Müller"
Focusing his Binox on the front ranks he had to look twice before his brain accepted the sight. The front ranks were composed of Humans, many of them women and children, of Dwarves and what seemed to be some High Elves. Most of them wore collars and Chains but were not chained together.
They were coming forward slowly and were obviously herded forward by closely following Druchii with spears. While not fast they would reach their position in about 5 Minutes.
"Front rank is slaves, Sir. The assholes use human shields" "Scheiße, that is the same than I saw. OK, I kick this upstairs, you brief the men. This is going to be real hard."
Slave Pens, Mouth of connecting tunnel
Ulrich Stoiber watched the progression of the Dark Elf soldiers through his infrared sight. "Persistent buggers that lot" This was the 3rd try of the Dark Elves to gain entry to the Slave Pens via the Tunnel he guarded. This time they did not show any lights or carried large heavy shields. Instead they tried to approach without showing any bright metal and had probably darkened their faces.
Well, they were still radiating in the infrared spectrum and for that they would pay. Waiting until the Spitzohren had closed to 300 meters he triggered the Coax. Keeping the fire to 1-2 second bursts to keep barrel temperature down still hundreds of rounds went downrange. Bunched up like the Dark Elves had to be in the tunnel most of them hit something right away. Even the bullets which managed to miss usually hit a wall at a shallow angle and then bounced back into the mass of soldiers deformed into shapes their designers did not dream of. They ripped wounds which would have impressed even the Dark Elves if they would not have been so busy dying.
He would have loved to keep firing into the retreating survivors, but was aware that he had to conserve ammo. When he was sufficiently sure that the "Spitzohren" were gone he twisted backwards from his coupola in order to change the ammo box for the Coax. This is why he was the first to see the new threat.
In the tunnel he saw a group of slaves being led to the exit by a squad of 4 Paratroopers. Suddenly from the door of a cell Ulrich was sure to be cleared of enemy and fried alike emerged a sight he could not place right away. They seemed to be women of strange statue and gait attacking the group of Germans and Slaves from the flank.
He dropped back down into his seat and twisted the turret around so that he could use his optics and weapons. Giving the order to the second Wiesel to keep watching the Tunnel he called his driver to drive backwards slowly.
When he had the fight in focus of his sight he froze. About a dozen of these beings were tearing up the group-literally. Some of them seemed to have crab-like pincers which they used to pinch off limbs and heads while other used whips to deadly effect. The sight was made worse by the fact that the victims did not seem to fight back. Only one soldier managed to fire his assault rifle and downed one of the attackers, but was overwhelmed and torn apart quickly.
Demonettes-that was what these beings were. He remembered his briefings and with this insight he started to get rid of the strange Paralysis the view of these Demonetts has caused him. When they had liked their last victim he was ready. He triggered his Coax first which killed 2 of them but seemed only to anger the others. The ammo for the machine gun quit quickly as he had been unable to reload earlier so he switched to the autocannon.
Unbelievingly the demonettes attacked him, obviously angered by his machine gun fire. The autocannon made short work of that. It was the same type autocannon which had brought down Dragons without too much fuss-here it was bloody overkill. Not that Ulrich minded at all.
Hellhole
Ralf Winker emerged from the Hellhole last, having made sure that all injured and all material had left the hole. His Co-medic had already arranged for stretcher parties from the not injured dwarves and some Paratroopers. Besides the stretchers they had taken with them they were using the remains of a bench to carry those who no longer could walk by themselves.
He was about to pick up his backpack and for that shifted his rifle to his front when the air itself seemed to rip apart with a strange sound. He was still trying to make sense of what he saw when several demonettes emerged from the rift. They should have looked simply bizarre with their androgynous figure and the Crab pincers which often replaced a hand, not to speak of scorpion like tail. But they held his mind in a way he could not explain. It was like his brain was caught in an endless loop which tried to figure our weather to fight, flee, experience lust or be disgusted, keeping him from any sensible act.
He was not the only one who was effected in such a way, most Dwarves and the Paratroopers were paralyzed as well, taking no effective action against their strange attackers.
Ralf watched helplessly when one of the demonettes eviscerated one of the paratroopers and another seemed to close her pincer about the arm of a dwarf in slow motion. It was the Demonette which applied her whip to the Dwarf they had gotten out of the hole first who saved them.
The thought "Nobody attacks my patients" cut through the Chaos in his mind like a blowtorch. His breast seemed to burn at the point where it touched his amulet.
He brought up his rifle in what seemed to be slow motion, fumbling the fire selection switch downwards and pulling the collapsible stock out. One of the attackers seemed to realize this and started to move in his direction.
She was less than two meters away when he fired a short burst directly into her chest and head. The head came apart like being stuffed with explosives, splattering him and his surroundings with whatever matter which made up his attackers.
When he had described his G3K as "quite a handful" he had not been joking. The rifle was a short barrel version of the venerable G3 rifle and firing the powerful 7.62 round in a short barrel in a closed room makes quite a commotion.
The shock of this and the consternation of the demonettes galvanized the rest of the Germans into action. While the medic started shooting at the next target the machine gunner of the troop started to scream like a madman and fired his MG3 from the hip into the still open portal. While nobody ever knew what he had hit a stream of something which might be blood in another world leaked from the portal which closed quickly. A second burst at close distance ripped another pair of Demonettes apart at their middle.
The other surviving Germans also joined the fray. Arcane weapons against assault rifles at hand to hand range made for a bloody battle which could have made Khorne happy.
Ralf Winkler acquired a new target which was quite too close and pulled the trigger. The click of the bolt of the empty chamber was louder to him than all the other sounds of the attle and he was rather sure that this was it, at least for him.
To his astonishment the Demonette all of a sudden stopped before her pincer could reach him and dropped inelegantly to the ground. The Dwarves had found their spirit enough to join the fight and mostly used what chains they still wore to good effect.
Smashing them on limbs and heads with all the force an angry dwarf could muster caused nasty injuries and as soon as the demonettes hit the ground they were riffed apart. While he still fumbled a new magazine into his rifle Ralf incredulously saw how a dwarf ripped up the tail of a demonette and then used his huge fist in a way which had to hurt even a creature of Slanesh. Blowing her head off seemed like a mercy killing.
And then it was over, with the demonettes either dead or vanishing like they never were. Shaking their heads against the ringing sound the Germans organized the party again. Several of the dwarves appropriated Hammers and other tools as weapons and went in front of the rifle toting Germans and the injured. Ralf had a look at them and felt sure nothing would come at him if not right through the dwarves-and equally sure that his rifle could take care of anything moving in here. Jesus, this thing had a punch.
Rubbing his shoulder he joined the march back to the gates.
Swedish Foreign Ministry, Stockholm, Sweden
Carl Bildt, foreign minister of Sweden, read the fax in his hand twice, then let his gaze wander to a staple of memos already worked through. He was unable to believe the diplomatic crisis brewing over Sweden.
Stockholm had been very relieved when the problem with the chinese, oh, cathayian city of Shenlong and her attempt to conquer Falkenberg was solved without a single shot fired. Nobody could have assumed that the problems were just beginning. Considering the strong similarities to an old chinese city, China pressured Sweden for some time now to hand over control of the city to Peking. It was clear, that China tried to use the problematic world situation to win more influence.
The situation became more tense when the Cathyians declared to consider China traitors against the Emperor and the heavenly order. Shenlong would resist any attempt of China to take control of the city and would charge any person of the so called People´s Republic setting just one foot into Shenlong with High Treason. If they, the Chinese really are their otherworldly brothers and sisters, then so reasoned the Cathayian, China was part of the heavenly mandate. And what China had done was a clear breach of the mandate, their crime obvious for all to see.
That the chinese leadership was not pleased with this stance, was an understatement. That China was really contemplating to send a task force to Sweden was the beginning of a crisis no one in Sweden wanted. But the mayor of Shenlong had officially asked Stockholm for asylum for the whole city. Even if the situation would be different, Sweden simply could not let herself be pressured over things in her borders, it would open the door to other blackmailing attempts. How on Earth could this crisis be solved?
Seeadler
Admiral Lerbs was trying his best to keep his dismay off his face and his voice. whe Wireless calls by the Paratroopers showed the same thing as the helicopter drone which watched the causeway: The never-to-be-sufficiently damned Spitzohren used a lot of the slaves which were kept in the city as human shields.
Fortunately this situation had been anticipated in Berlin and orders had been cut to cover this situation. It did not make going along with them easier.
He watched again the big screen which showed the situation at the causeway. It was sure that the last of the slaves was away from the city side sufficiently.
"Gentlemen, this situation is not going to be any better by waiting. Open fire as per plan!"
Sachsen
The crews inside the gun turret had the advantage that they did not know what target they were shooting at-all they shot at were sets of coordinates which were transmitted directly from the bridge.
For maximum effect the crew shot a fast series where the first shell was lobbed at a high, slow trajectory with each following shot at a lower trajectory with a stronger propellant charge. All shells would arrive at the same time at their target, their overlapping shock waves and fragments doing maximum damage. "Hessen" did the same thing at the same target, whereas "Hamburg" was firing laser guided shells.
After the first salvo the guns went to maximum rate of fire, pumping 10 rounds per minute into a very small target area. Whatever was there would at least die quickly.
Hag Graef City, close to Causeway to the harbour
Malus Darkblade watched the advance of his troops with elation-finally something was working right. When he saw that the Germans took away the slaves he had concluded correctly that they did not want to use them for themselves but for whatever reason had a soft spot for them.
He already hated the Germans guts for what they had done to his city and his power base. He had to win some sort of victory, otherwise his hold on government would be threatened. And his new tactic seemed to work. Surely, many Druchii had protested as they did not want to waste their property and so promises of recompense had to be made, but so what.
If he could capture even a few of the weapons the Germans at the Quay used so efficiently on his troops he would still be stronger after this than before, even with all the damage done and slaves lost.
He was totally surprised when his body, seemingly by his on violation, turned and started to run past the next building. He just started to get angry when he heard Tz'arkan, the demon he unwillingly shared his body with "Run Fool, we…."
8 155mm Shells arrived practically simultaneously, making all explanations moot. From then roughly 1 shell impacted on the causeway and it`s cityside terminus every 2 seconds, with the explosions closer to the beings on the causeway markedly smaller.
While the Druchii just behind the slaves were mostly unharmed there would be no reinforcements as long as the barrage continued.
The Hague, Netherlands, Earth
"So, Mr. VanderSchanz, you and your companions believe it to be possible to reach out to your Homeworld with magic?"
"Yes, we do. We are the most innovative School of Magic in Marienburg, beyond and in the Old Wo- this world definitely. This is simply a-"
"Grandmaster Wim, you mean we can rectify this mess?"
"No, unfortunately. President Hollande, Prime Minister Rutte, Chancellor Faymann, Prime Minister Di Rupo, the Winds of Magic blow weakly here. They are still usable if you know what you do, but any kind of solution can only be made from Home. And I have to say I am not sure, such an undertaking would be successful. Never in recorded history had there been a magical storm of that magnitude. The Tower of Hoeth in Ulthuan has the oldest and most powerful mages of Elvenkind, some of them several thousand years old, but even they are seemingly incapable of rewinding the situation. Because if they could, they would already have done so to rebalance creation.
What can be acomplished, not today or tomorrow, but in a reasonable timespan is to communicate with Home, say 3 hours. We might even be able to, if wizards over there work with us, to send something or someone between worlds, but it will not be permanent. Maybe an hour or so and any kind of action will be reseted after the ritual ends.
And you all should think carefully about what you want to speak about, since with Earth´s weak connection to the Winds, we will be able to this around once a century. From Home or Warhammer, as you call our birth planet, they might be able to initiate it a bit more often, maybe once a generation."
The words of the Master Wizard of Marienburg stunned the political leaders of France, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. This was not what they hoped for, but better than feared. Even now, more than a year after the Event, not all regions of Earth had been accounted for. The changes had been too vast. But maybe the Lost Ones of Earth still lived on Warhammer. This had to be tried, just to bring some kind of peace for relatives and friends of those who had vanished that fateful day.
Hag Graef, Quay
The automatic grenade launcher sounded like a starting motorcycle when it fired it`s shells toward the oncoming column. Paul Müller winced when he saw that and promptly started to run forward. He was immediately having problems drawing breath through his mask but had to bear it as now dozens of 40 mm shells discharged CS aerosol over the Slaves and their Dark Elf slavemasters.
Without the protection of this mask he would have experienced the same as them: tears in the eyes, nasal discharge, coughing, restricted breathing and sight: What every experienced demonstrator knows when the police is fed up with them. Here it was amplified by two things: a frightful concentration and the fact that it was completely unknown.
Pushing his way through the helpless slaves he started to fire on the equally helpless Spitzohren as soon as he had an unobstructed line of sight.
Having connected 3 magazines together he was able to discharge the first and second magazine in controlled bursts. This would have been wasteful normally, but from a range of less than 3 meters in some cases, against an enemy that stood shoulder to shoulder, the effect was brutal.
By the time he was at the 3rd mag there were so few targets left that he reverted to single shots, killing the enemy one by one as quickly as he could pull the trigger.
Behind him another platoon pulled, pushed, kicked and carried the slaves forward to the German lines.
Paul Müller did not know it yes, but the Paratroopers had indeed fulfilled their mission: less than 10 Slaves died and no Spitzohr came closer to the German lines than 150 meters. Walking backwards to the German lines he still poured fire into his helpless foes as he went.
During the planning for this Operation this situation in one way or another had been anticipated and the Paratroopers had trained for this several times. It had never run as smoothly as now.
By now the causeway was covered with Druchi, or bits of Druchi, enough that these was practically no road to be seen anymore. Paul considered it job well done when he was back to the German lines. He would start to worry about this a few days later, which was a good thing.
Slave Pens
The attack of the demonettes had been a bad surprise for the Germans who had considered the slave pens cleared of the enemy. Several squads who had been too busy moving the slaves out of the pens and not busy enough with keeping contact were massacred right away. What saved the Paratroopers was that the thoroughfare was under German control right from the start so that the victorious groups could not meet up with the groups less lucky.
Given a little respite the Paratroopers coalesced into useful combat formations around their officers and noncoms. The Wireless traffic was quite excited for a while until the situation became more clear.
It still took some more minutes until the Germans started to move groups about which actively hunted the demonettes while others protected the slave, or in the areas already cleared started to move the slaves outside again.
An additional platoon from the Gate reinforced this hunt and quite soon the demonettes learned a few new lessons. Like that the small balls the German soldiers tended to throw into rooms did indeed explode very nastily and that they were not immune to these explosions. Or that soldiers that are not suddenly confronted with them showed a far smaller tendency to "freeze" when they spotted them and that assault rifles made it nearly impossible to get into hand to hand range.
It did not take very long for the losses to mount up for the demonettes and then a strange thing happened.
When the old roman army decided that a unit had been cowardly the traditional punishment was a "decimatus"-every 10 man unit so sentenced had to cast lots and had to kill the looser using clubs. This punishment has stayed on in military language, and units which have losses exceeding 10% is considered decimated ad less efficient.
Losses exceeding 30% normally cripple a unit and it has to be pulled from combat and rebuild. The demonettes had lost more than that and were still a going concern-this was highly unusual, normally they would have vanished into the warp long before.
The reason for this aberration was approaching the gates to the slave pens.
Gate to Slave pens
Ilthies was frustrated and bored. He had tried to get the attention of the German commander responsible for the drop-off point, but he seemed to be overwhelmed by handling the slaves evac and the assault by the demonettes in the slave pens.
He had approached a Lt. next who had taken note of his warning that an attack was imminent, but seemed powerless to order the retreat from this post which Ilthies though indefensible against the assault he had seen.
Before he could insist further he felt that now was the time and without further ado dropped into a lotus seat. He was not bothered by the Camera which was pointed in his direction or the sudden shooting from the perimeter of the drop-off point-he had seen this during the last minutes already in several variations.
It would be nearly boring to play through were it not for his opponent.
Ilthies more felt than saw the black beam that was somehow visible even against the night sky. It connected a barren patch of ground beyond the wrecked warehouses with a transport helicopter which had just taken off from the drop-off point. It hit the helicopter in the tail and destroyed the aft rotor.
The Ch53 immediately started to spin about it`s axis, completely out of control of it`s pilots. It crashed only a short way from the perimeter and the fire which quickly started illuminated the demonettes that assaulted the germans.
So far the paratroopers were able to handle the assault, but Ilthies knew that this would change soon if he did not interfere with the designs of Lady Morith. He knew it was her, haing seen her in several visions and knew he had no chance against her.
He was a powerful mage and only not known better than some of his contemporaries as he had spent more time teaching and learning at the Tower of Hoeth than trying to influence events more directly.
Still, his opponent was a near-immortal being who had a much more direct connection to the powers of the Winds than he ever would dare and a vast knowledge of arcane lore.
He felt that his opponent readied a spell which would have everybody inside the German perimeter screaming in insane pain and lust, leaving them helpless before the demonettes.
Being outclassed did not keep him from trying to stop his opponent. Elves are very good at banishing hostile spells so he managed that without undue effort.
He localized his enemy quickly enough and casted his own spell which denied the winds of magic to her. The renewed magic attack which he countered just in time showed him the error of that.
Having to banish every spell which was flung his way made things immeasurably harder. Normally this should have been it quickly, but Ilthies had one more card to play. Him having spent so much time in the Tower of Hoeth might have denied him much fame and some experience, but provided him with access to the magic lore of millennia.
More than a hundred years before he had found a really ancient tome which had shown a way to wield much more power than normally possible. At first greatly enthused he had read on and both his reading and certain experiments showed him why this technique was best forgotten.
When he had finally grasped the problem itself, he had shuddered at the thought and had quietly shelved the tome again, making sure it would not be found anytime soon.
Now the situation obviously called for desperate measures so he send his mind into the metal yoga position it needed to accept more and more power from the empyrean. He did so just in time as a new wave of magic waved over his position. Stopping it would have been impossible few minutes ago for him, now it was nearly easy.
Council Chamber of the Order of the Heavens, Altdorf, the Empire, weeks earlier
"Unacceptable! This is heresy, against the order of the universe, this-"
"Enough! How dare you?! You have seen the vision yourself too! I find this equally disgusting, but can you give us an alternative?"
"...No! But if we do this, can you imagine, Caspar, what it will do to our reputation?"
"For someone of such magical power you are far too hasty, my friend. This cannot be one of our wizards, this must be a German. Look at the clothes, his demeanor..."
"What?...but... that would be the solution! The Germans might be progressive enough to get this operation going. A lucky one, that guy, such magical talent is a gift!"
"Yes, but I pity him as well. The things he will have to learn, in addition to his normal Wind, not to speak of the things he will have to do, poor sod."
"That might be, but a gift is a gift. And a gift which might bring us a victory we would never get otherwise! The sacrifices he will have to make are for the wellbeing of the Empire and in extension that of Germany and our new almond-eyed friends."
"Right, but if that is such a consolation on a personal level, hm?"
"Still, the talent for magic is strong in him. That is gift from the gods. He is an option we never had before when facing Chaos. and more, if the vision comes to pass, magic will make a development jump I and I think we all want to be part of. Working with the Germans already helped us immensely. The Jade Order is convinced, this might bring us the societal breakthrough we want. Even if he fails."
"If he fails, times will get interesting. We might survive it, but I have my doubts with Norsca and Kislev. But that is the future. Before we can discuss our find, we need to make plans for the Storm of Chaos looming on the horizon. If we loose against that onslaught, we can forget about this german guy, because we will be all dead. By the way, does anyone know who the man is?"
"I think I know, not defnitely, but I have a feeling. It is one of those german "Experts on Warhammer" as they call our world. A friend of this Markus Ruhdorfer, I met during a visit in Germany. I remember then talking with someone who looks like the one in the vision."
"Good, Werner, see to it that you travel to Germany soon and find him. The entourage is yours to assemble as you like."
Tiger UHT, over the Battlefield
The pilot of the Tiger helicopter was badly shaken still from having seen the shootdown of the Transport helo. The rage that somebody had shot down a helo evacuating slaves and injured troopers and the need for revenge battled against the need for caution. The latter was especially strong as he had no idea what had gotten the sturdy CH53, so defending against it would be doubly hard.
He was shook out of his reverie by new orders, they had detected a major use of magic close to the drop off point. He decided to have a look with his mast mounted sensors while hovering behind the ruins of some harbor buildings.
He could see the drop-off point-a real light show. Again and again something like black lightning seemed to strike at the comrades, just to be averted by an invisible dome. In addition to that the Paratroopers were pouring fire into enemies which assaulted their position.
His gunner checked the coordinates given by Seeadler in the infrared. " I only see a couple of ruins at that position, but nothing viable. We have to fly over the mole, from there we can check the back side of them."
The pilot was unhappy to leave cover, but still flew his helicopter to the new position, keep very close to the waters. Pulling up to give his gunner a view he was about to scold him for leaving them in an exposed position when he heard "Got something! There are two infrared contacts in the area, profile fits a humanoid and some riding animal. Lets take them out."
The pilot dropped closer to the waters again and flew laterally to their contact for a kilometer in order to come from a new direction in case he was detected. Pouring more than 2000 horsepower into the flight the Tiger accelerated like a scolded cat.
His gunner still found the time to shower the area with 8 70 mm missiles, causing the target area to erupt with smoke and flame.
The pilot was just debating whether to turn around and make sure or take a bigger detour when he heard an almighty "whang" and his beloved tiger lurched. The sudden drop in power and many red lights in his worry board told him the same story: He just lost an engine.
Deciding that his helo was too valuable to risk more and being nearly out of ammo he set course to the "Seeadler".
Close by
Lady Morith was livid with rage. Inhapeth, the Pegasus which had accompanied her for millennia lay in front of her in a heap to steaming offal, being slain by the strange flying machine she had sensed too late. That her Pegasus had died while shielding her from the brunt of the German attack was little consolation for the unexpected end of such a long relationship. She was even more livid when she failed to bring down the attacker. On top of that the puny mage who had withstood her for far too long already had the gall to send spirits her way when her concentration had faltered momentarily during the German attack.
Now she was surrounded by a horde off luminescent wraiths who screamed at her, posed in front of her, tried to hurt her and touch her in even more intimate and offensive ways. None of this was doing her concentration any good.
She used her rage as a point of concentration and again drew deeply from the warp than she had done in thousands of years. She would show these mere mortals why they should fear her betters. The punishments she would inflict on the Germans would be legendary.
