Chancellery, Berlin
"Hello Angela, you look great. How are you these days?"
"Much better Thomas, much better. It is a good thing no longer to make decisions about who lives and who dies."
"I know what you mean Angela. In some ways it was much easier when I could confer these things to you. But I am lucky, you convinced everybody that attacking us and the Reiksbund is suicide, nobody really tries at the moment."
"Yes and no."
"Sorry, what?"
"Thomas, I was contacted by King Thorim Grudgebearer last night. He contacted me as he is still not really comfortable with this democracy thing and that new leaders pop up all the time. He has called me "Friend of the Dawi" after Skavenblight, that might play a role too. Be that as it may, he asks us to help to make good a mistake by the King of Karak Azgal….
Red River Valley
Skritznik sat on the biggest, most dangerous spider the Gobins could remember, carrying weapons of great might. He was surrounded by a group of spider riders hand-picked for loyalty and behind him the greatest hordes he had ever seen in one place rested after the last days march, a green might to overrun everything in its way.
Before him he could see only few humans, spot a score of low-slung vehicles and was very sure he was intensely watched by many more whom he did not see. None of this was impressive and yet he was about to ask a people whom his folks had raided just last year for help.
He had one of his lads wave a near-white flag about and just hoped that this really meant that he wanted to parley. He had heard it worked with these new humans from the tribes that had traded their spiders with them. These humans should be Imperials, not the new humans, but they did not look like them. They dressed in green and gray colors, they wore strange weapons and nobody had ever seen vehicles just as the ones before him.
There was a group of humans that stepped in forward. Nothing fancy about them, their dress looked like all the others, yet that they were in some sort of command was obvious to him. He would have liked to ride his spider just besides them, but suspected he might not make it alive, so he clambered off and made his way forward. He stopped when several barrels went his way and resumed his march when the tall guy in the middle lifted his hand and waived them off.
"Greetings humans warrior, I am Skarsnik, you might have heard of me. We need to talk, you and..."
That was when the shots from the valleys far side erupted.
Castle Sumeto, Sumeto, Nippon
One difference between Sumeto and Shirasagi-Onsen was the general location. Unlike Shrasagi-Onsen, which was an interior city with a comparatively just average harbor at the River Kaga, Sumeto was a coastal city with one of Nippon´s biggest ports.
The Nipponese capital, whose name could be loosely translated as Imperial City, was Nippon`s most populous metropolis. The sight from the westernmost towers of the Castle over the sea of houses, the harbor and the Bight was breathtaking. The man enjoying this view now was of obviously high station. His Yukata was made from quality silk, the color patterns clearly the work of a master artisan.
Shinsuke Katato, the Treasurer of Nippon, enjoyed the view, but his mind was largely elsewhere. And his working mind focused his view on the harbor and sometimes he turned a bit to another part of the city, where the mast and shed of the Zeppelin anchorage could be seen.
Reaching for the horizon, the ships of a German-Imperial convoy leaving the Sumeto Bight could still be seen, getting smaller all the time. Shinsuke´s view returned to the harbor proper, where a rather bipolar picture could be seen. On one side the Junks and boats of the fishermen and traders filled the harbor basins, a steady stream of people going on and off the various ships. The main moles were made of stone, but the majority of moles were wooden.
On the other side of the harbour were War Junks in the Imperial Fleet Naval base, together with an "Altdorf"-class ship Nippon bought in Germany as fleet flagship. But much more attention-grabbing were the rows and rows of containers on the stone moles and storage sheds. He actually contemplated to call several very traditional daimyo to Sumeto to see this sight, before their contents were shipped throughout Nippon. The veritable mountain of containers was a visible sign that the world had changed.
The Treasurers look fell on another building. Due to it´s foreign design, it stuck out. The multi-turreted stone building with the many iron tracks would not have been out of place in Gründerzeit Germany. Once, he actively argued against erecting it, considering the expense hideous and unneeded. After the advisors from Germany showed him what could be accomplished with trains, he reluctantly began to start building a test railway to the next halfway important city. After half a year of testing, Shinsuke´s opinion had changed. Being told something was simply not as impressive as seeing it yourself. The sheer mass of goods and people which could be transported regularly was nothing short of a miracle.
He had to admit that he underestimated the effect of the railway, but that was something he would not do again. Shinsuke became not only the primary driving force behind the railway building in Nippon, but one of the most dedicated supportrs of a modernisation.
Today, Sumeto was connected with the 6 other most important cities in the country, but there was still a way to go. Especially in areas with very conservative daimyos the situation was less well. But in the regions connected by ship and train it was a milestone. Within years the stuff sold to Germany and the Empire had increased by an order of magnitude and this year it might rise by another order of magnitude. Nippon was now the by far main supplier of the Old World with rice. Other important export goods were for example tea, wood and sillk.
And that was not the end of it. While Germany and the Empire were now the main customers, Nippon´s coffers flush with Old World money enabled Sumeto to expand other trade as well. Across the Far Ocean, the ships with the Rising Sun flag became a common feature.
This rise in importance did not get by unnoticed. Other nations strong in trade, like Kathay, Jeguk or Pattkog wondered how the Nipponese did it. And in some capitals plans were developed how to stop this rise.
ed River Valley, Empire
Lord Hrothgar had planned to stride purposefully from the tunnels mouth, taking command of the situation in a pose that would leave no doubt who was in charge here. Instead he had to sprint as fast as his short legs would carry him to the cover provided by some rocks while his soldiers kept shooting at various rocks not too far away. Despite the best they could do he still heard the sound of bullets passing not too far away.
Hrothgar bend to get his head below the rocks between him and the shooting and ran through any gaps that lay between them. He was unhurt but for his pride, something that could not be said for his aide-de-camp who managed to keep his reaction to a grunt. He maned to catch glimpses at dead DawiZharr and humans along the way. The humans were a very curious sight, clad in grey-green cloth that would make them hard to see, a cloth-covered armored vest and strange-looking rifles. Hashut damn him, this could be the humans he was ordered not to engage. The party stopped when it reached a small depression that housed a few very busy DawiZharr.
"Company Leader, report."
"My Lord, when we exited the tunnel we ran into these feral humans. They refused to surrender and shot back when we wanted to claim them. We pushed to this place but then their fire became too much. The humans shoot very fast and they have grenades too."
"I see. Hold for the moment Company Leader, you`ll get your orders soon."
Getting back to his command group Hrothgar went for the only member of the group that did not hold a rifle. Pershid`s grey skin tone told the story of a DawiZharr mage, the warp gave him power but slowly turned his body into stone. The young mage was far from that state, yet his face was oddly motionless already and his hands clumsy. His mind was a very different story indeed.
"Pershnid, I need to speak to Lord Gholam, now."
"Yes Lord."
The mage dropped into a position that would have been cross-legged if not for short, stiff limbs. He mouthed words that could be heard even above the din of battle as they were not perceived by ears alone. His eyes rolled inwards before the pupils became visible again. His facial expression could not change much and the nuances of his speech were swallowed by the shooting around them, yet nobody present could doubt that Pershnid was no longer at the helm.
"What is it Lord Hrothgar?"
"My Lord, we have made our sally on time and at the right exit, yet we do not face the Goblin but feral humans. They engaged the vanguard without provocation so we had to defend ourselves. They are armed with quick-firing rifles and resist us. Shall we continue to subjugate them?"
"Your unwillingness to follow orders has been noted Hrothgar. We can see some humans too, we have encircled them together with the Goblins."
"So what are your orders my Lord."
"Done is done Hrothgar. Dead humans do not tell tales and slaves without a tongue do not blabber. See to it that you close of the valley at your end, then make sure nothing comes of your mistake."
"I hear and I obey Lord Gholam."
"See that you do this time."
Hrothgar spent the next 10 minutes catching glimpses of the firefight before him and the battlefield beyond that. The boulders that dotted the valley close to the walls thinned out after a couple of hundred meters, revealing a line of humans that stretched all across the valley. Most of them where trying to take what little cover there was and he could see movement here and there, but there was no sign of a front against his troops yet. Good, he needed to take the flank of these ferals as long as it was still available to his troops. He would make two assaults, one to clear sufficient place for the rest of his regiment to exit the tunnels, then to push the humans deeper into the valley.
He crawled back as fast as he was able to, orders needed to be issued and killing to be done.
It took longer than he liked and the only thing that saved his plan was that the human reinforcements had to cross a stretch of ground without cover. The fire of his lead company and two machine gun teams made sure that they could not advance quickly or at all.
He was about to ask for time again when he heard the "thump" sounds behind him and the explosions that walked over the area where the enemy was hiding in. More than a hundred rifles and a brace of machine guns fired at their best rate to keep the human heads down and it was hard to imagine how anything could survive amid the flying lead and the detonations.
The shrill whistles sound managed to pierce even that din and many stumpy figures started to run to his right, bent forward as if moving against a storm. Their screams were frightening enough and the points of their bayonet were sure to make the enemy flee before battle was joined for real.
Just that it did not happen that way. When the mortars ceased fire evil blinking lights could be seen between the rocks, firing rounds like his vaunted machine guns, yet stopping more often. In at least one place a gun fired with the sound like a ripping cloth and he winced when a squad of his soldiers dropped like puppets whose strings had been cut.
More of his stout DawiZharr fell, some screaming, some still forever. And then there was the sublime moment when his assault stopped for a brief second, when the grenades were thrown and the screams of the enemy could be heard in the second before his soldiers stormed the rocks.
It was over soon and Hrothgar could see that he had pushed the humans from this side of the valley. Now he had to push for the walls on the far side and maybe send a company or two into the center. The humans were sure to have a baggage train, supplies and healers there, the tents and vehicles he could see said so. The sooner he rounded these ferals up the better.
Ines Kramer was bent over the wounded soldier before her to check what could be done about him. His left arm had been hit twice by something that was probably a high-powered rifle. Large parts of the biceps were missing and the humerus was splintered. She had not checked precisely but she was pretty sure that an inch or two of the bone were missing. Somebody had put a tourniquet on the arm close the shoulder which made the doctor scowl, yet it had stopped the bleeding sufficiently to allow the injured to survive.
So that he could continue to do so she had no choice but to amputate. If she were a "real" doctor in a "real" hospital with a well-trained crew she might have saved the limb, but not here and now.
Her glasses misted up when tears dropped, yet she never stopped what she was doing, not even when the hellish smell of a sawed bone assaulted her nose. Nothing would stop her from saving as many lives as possible, not the sounds of battle outside, neither the screams and whimpers of the wounded nor the primitive means that she had to use.
When she closed the stump she caught a glimpse of her assistant shooting another patient full of nightmares. She did not have the training and equipment to run standard anesthesia, among other things as this would have meant that the wounded had to be on assisted breathing. She used Ketamine instead which even steadied respiration which was a good thing here and now. Since it was a close relative to LSD it would also subject the soldiers to hallucinations on top of whatever horrors they had experienced to gain admittance into her tent.
She could not allow herself to care, any second that she wasted on empathy would cost lives. She would not rave that she was just a dentist, not a proper surgeon and not supposed to do this as it would keep her from helping. She would cry her eyes out for all the errors she would make and the lives she would lose despite doing her best later, if there was a later to be had.
Heinrich Hemmler asked himself how things could go so wrong so fast for about the tenth time in the last 30 minutes or so. One hour ago this had been a pretty cut-and-dried situation, unusual only as the Greenskins wanted to negotiate. All of a sudden the Dragoons was assaulted from the flanks by an enemy that had was armed with rifles and artillery. He had been caught with his pants down as his troops were in the very wrong places for the assault they now faced. Strung across the valley in two very slender lines he had been expected to stop badly-armed Goblins with superior firepower if needed, not being attacked without warning by an enemy much better equipped than anything from a direction not anticipated.
He had wasted time trying to make sense of it all. His instincts told him to take his command staff with him and ride to get an idea of the battle and rally the troops. His recent training said otherwise and so he did his best to extract the situation from the fragmentary reports he received by wireless and the few things he could see from where he was. The Goblins had fled the scene as soon as the shooting started and he could see the great horde farther back mill about like an anthill destroyed by willful children. There was a lot of shooting to be heard from the far side of the horde and something big could be seen moving towards his lines. What the bleeding f…..
"Loader, I need AP. Driver, halt before that rock."
Nathan Kerenski was usually less than happy with the turret of his combat car. It was too small for a three-man crew and the had to do the gun-laying himself. It distracted from commanding his vehicle and his unit which was a bad thing.
For the briefest of moments a smile formed on his face when he considered what he would have told the non-existent gunner "Gunner, target Battlemech at 11 o`clock?"
Instead he turned the wheels to the side of the gun himself till the cross-hairs were centered on the chest of something that looked like a life-sized version of the "Crusader" Battlemech miniature he had played with when he was much younger and that still rested in a chest at his parents' home. Like the miniature the "Mech" before him had company, he could see several others through his range finder, some with a similar look than the one in his sights while two others resembled the "Marauders" he had owned when there was still an Earth to be had.
"AP up"
"On the way"
Nathan and his loader were shaken like rats inside the tiny turret, the 105 mm was a lot of gun for such a small vehicle and the muzzle brake reflected lots of the blast right back at the frontal armor, such as it was. The round flew nearly true and dug a deep furrow into the side of the right torso, leaving a faintly glowing scar in the armor. The "Battlemech" stopped in its tracks, turned its head towards the Black Window`s vehicle and screamed before charging.
"AP up"
"On the way."
This time the shot went a bit lower and hit the right leg slightly below the hip. The round punched through the armor, leaving a hole and dropped the Mech on its face when the limb refused to work.
"Gottcha you bleeder. Loader, oh shit, errr…give me AP."
In Nathan`s sights a dinged up Mech clambered back up, dropping grass and soil all over and managed to look absolutely pissed. When it resumed its charge it did so with a pronounced limp, but it moved nevertheless. And it was not the only enemy that did. Nathan punched the wireless button while his loader went to work.
"All Widow gunslingers, target the Mechs-err Golems, whatever in front of us. Don`t let them get too close. Gunslinger 2 on me 3 and 4 move when we shoot."
"Yessir."
"AP up."
"On the way."
This time the shell hit the same side of the torso and this time something gave. The arm on the Crusader dropped as if bereft of all power and the Mech listed to the side, slowing down even more.
Yet it still came and other had closed the distance while Kerenski engaged the other one. An explosion in front of the rock that partially shielded his vehicle was probably from the smoking gun atop a Marauder yet Nathan had few time to speculate as a salvo of rockets exploded all around him. Battered by a rocking combat car and the shockwave he could just listen to the sound of fragments that struck the armor around him. This was definitively too close.
"Driver, back to the rocks at 7 o`clock, now."
Nathan could just hold on as his car bounced back at breakneck speed and he was pretty sure that at one time there were less than four wheels on the ground. Still the made it into new cover so that he could shoot these strange things again. How many hits would it take to kill one? Time to find out.
Ines Kramer stepped out from the part of the tent that housed her surgery into the part that held the wounded that one of the medics had decided had a decent chance to profit from her craft. She knew that she must have been a frightening sight with blood splattering her tunic and eyes that probably reflected her despair, yet the soldiers that were still conscious looked at her as if she was holding the keys to salvation.
She checked on one of them when the shooting outside rose to a new level and the screaming changed from orders to cries. Before she could make up her mind what that meant the flap closing the tent was ripped away and four stumpy beings entered the tent.
They were not what she had expected-short but immensely broad around the shoulders, wielding rifles that were nearly as long as their not-so-considerable height, clad in dark-grey cloth and mail and topped by steel helmets. Their faces were half-hidden by greasy beards and their speech harsh. One of them took a look at the wounded that lay on the stretchers in two rows and grunted something short to the others.
To her absolute horror the intruders started to bayonet the wounded methodically. She watched for a few eternal seconds as they murdered their way down to her when something in her head snapped.
Her hand found the pistol that rested on the hip of the soldiers in the stretcher in front of her and to her amazement the first shot actually found a target, removing a steel helmet and parts of the head below it. She stepped into the aisle, never considering taking cover and emptied the magazine of her pistol into the three others.
She screamed for her medics to evacuate the wounded while she ran outside of the tent just to find hell in session. A great mass of enemies were milling before the tents of the Dragoon`s train shooting at anything that moved and sticking their bayonets at anything that did not. The few Dragoon`s that had provided security to the casualty station here still on the ground or nowhere to be seen. She was looking at death in the making and she stopped in her tracks wondering what shape it would take. And then she saw something she knew, something that she could do but die uselessly.
She dropped to the ground and crawled the few meters forward till she could pull the bodies aside so she could pull the butt against her shoulder. Twisting her body into the prezel shape she had been taught she aimed for the biggest group of enemies and pulled the trigger.
They were very very close and there were a great lot of them. It did not matter.
When the machine gun opened fire the sound and recoil nearly overwhelmed her, yet the same strength that had pulled her through the hell in the tent behind her kept the muzzle on target. She could hardly miss and the gun in her arms displayed all too graphically why it had been call "buzz-saw" in an another world. Spitting out 20 bullets per second the MG3 literally ripped some of the DawiZharr apart and dropped many more in the first brutal seconds.
The belt in the gun was spent in less than 10 seconds filled with fury and death and the silence that followed was all the more terrifying for it. She ripped the cover open and looked for more munition when a bloody hand pushed the next belt to the right place. She looked into the wide-open eyes of the medic that had provided Ketamine, nodded once and pulled the handle back twice.
By now the first shots came in their direction and the first enemies crawled in her direction. The next salvos drowned out everything the DawiZharr did and wherever she put her gun death followed. She felt something tugging the fabric of her tunic, she felt something hot rip a crease in her shoulder, small fountains of dirt threatened her eyes and it did not matter.
When she helped to reload she burned her hand on a barrel that should have been exchanged at least once already, barely winced and resumed her grisly work. Something punched her left arm and it did not seem to work right anymore. Blood threatened to seep in her eyes and she had problems seeing where her shots had to go.
She had to fumble for the next belt as her helper was not in her restricted field of view and when she wanted to close the lid an icy pain radiated from her back. She wanted to draw breath, scream and could not, she wanted to turn and her body refused, she wanted to see and darkness claimed her.
Heinrich Neidhard brought his plane besides Eberhard von Roon`s while both descended into the valley. The voice of Colonel Hoppe crackled in his earpiece.
"Eagle 3 and 4, your targets are infantry in the open. Look for two columns of purple smoke-attack between the two. Be careful, friendlies are close, repeat close."
It took more doing that Heinrich had anticipated, the battlefield was an absolute chaos of explosions, out-of-control fires and many flashes. Great lots of tiny figures ran here and there while titans moved across the valley like gods of war.
"Smoke at one o´clock, low."
Eberhard had his uses, that was for sure. Even when he was an insufferable fool and arrogant to boot, he was no stranger to the battlefield.
Both pilots adjusted their course so that they would pass through the first smoke pointing their warbirds at the second one.
Heinrich turned a selector to on of several detents, saw the green light, and pressed the trigger when he had barely cleared the first marker for their run. Below him lots of soldiers in dark uniforms moved in sprints and stops, trying to keep in cover as much as possible and to close with the Dragoons.
When Heinrich and Eberhard opened fire their wooden craft were vibrating from a set of weapons not seen in two words for a long time. Flames came from two cylinders underslung under the "Falke`s" wings and tracers connected them to the ground. Every pod contained four machine guns who were angled downwards and set for dispersion of shots. As long as their ammo lasted each plane put out more than a hundred shots per second and below them a battalion of DawiZharr writhed like a beast in pain. The bullets penetrated the little armor worn by the DawiZharr with ease when they hit not ricochet from the rocky ground and boulders when they did not.
Both pilots released their triggers after very few seconds as they had passed the second marker. Pulling up sharply to get above the fighting slowed the two planes considerably. They were about to turn back to the carnage below when several disk-like craft appeared in their field of view. While the two were still trying to make up their minds about them the disks lit up with muzzle flares at several places.
Red River Valley
Uli Hemnir had no time to marvel how much his job had changed. From physically hauling a two-ton gun around he now sat in a chair, looking at several screens which told him the status of his battery, connected him to several observers and allowed him to monitor the four guns under his control. All of this was a miracle, nearly as much as him having mastered all that more or less during the last two years. It was not easier as his guns ripped the very air apart with their salvos that went to an enemy who had appeared much too close. His seat and the tiny place for him and his tiny staff was assaulted by shockwaves and sound and the recoil of the old 155 mm pieces shook him like a rat.
He could not see what his guns were doing to the enemy, but from experience he knew that the 50-kilogram projectiles were absolutely lethal. He was about to shift the battery's aim when one of his aides caught his attention.
"Sir, some sort of fliers approach, we have not seen their likes before, but certainly not ours."
"Get sweeper one and two on it."
"Yes Sir."
Hemnir had weathered air assaults the very first time he had taken artillery to battle at the Siege of the Quarry when Screamer demons had tried to kill him several times. He had done his level best to attach two anti-air trucks to his battery. Based on the same hull than Nathan Kerensky`s gunslingers they were armed by a quadmount of 0.50 machine guns and if anybody knew what kind of havoc they could wreck it would be him.
"Sir, Sweeper one reports hitting the enemy, but no results."
"What the fuck..."
Heinrich Klement needed less than a second to make up his mind about the strange disks that hung in the sky before him. They looked unnatural and as if they were held aloft by the most evil of magics, the fire that poured from them was just cinching it. He pulled the trigger set into his joystick for the briefest part of a second, swore when useless machine gun bullets were spilled all over creation and switched over to the much more capable autocannons.
By that time the flying disks were very close indeed and there was only time for a very short salvo. Still the half-second burst sent more than five kilogram of steel and explosives at the target. Hitting the rim of the disk at an acute angle, with many of the shells bouncing off without exploding while others sent their shrapnel into the sides without much effect. At the same time the disk pointed several weapons at him, releasing three streams of tracers that chased after his plane. Two streams were fast and consisted of many small projectiles, the other emitted fewer, slower and heavier ones. For a moment Heinrich heard a sound that was close to the jackhammer that had demolished the road in front of his father's kontor.
There was a sound like a bunch of stones impacting on his craft. He had a nasty moment till he realized that his Falke would not drop from the sky. He looked out for his wingman who was slightly behind him. The sight of another pair of Falken who attacked infantry reminded him that they were not alone in this fight.
"Eagle lead, this is Falke four, we have encountered several enemy aircraft of unknown origins. They are armed with machine guns and cannon, are much slower than us but heavily armored. What are our orders, Sir?"
"Eagle Four, this is Lead. There are several disks threatening our arty at the west end of the valley. Destroy them."
"Eagle lead, will do."
If he could figure out how to do that. Switching to another channel he got Eberhard von Roon.
"We are to go after the disks at the west end of the valley. First round was not so good, any ideas?"
"Take a bigger hammer."
"So we get a bit closer."
"Much closer."
"Sounds good to me, lets do this. I take the right disk, you get the left one."
"Let`s do this."
Heinrich switched weapons again before changing course. A few quick looks revealed that the disks they had shot at first had fallen behind to the point where he could barely see them, so he could concentrate on the ones before him.
The disk that started to fill his HUD was not maneuvering much, seemingly more intent to hunt for a truck that frantically maneuvered to avoid being hit. He put the strange craft into his sight and watched the small circle that was the aimpoint settle. Having endured several blistering rebukes from the Colonel he knew that shooting from any sort of range would waste the best attack that he had, not to speak of the friendlies nearby. His guts were pretty sure that he would crash when his mind finally decided that it was time. Pulling the trigger he released half the rockets that were stored in two pods under his wings.
They were not equipped with electronics, were not guided by anything but aerodynamics, gravity, skill and luck and half of them did not even have explosive warheads. Still they were special enough. The hot gasses from their engines met metal vanes set and an angle and started turning the weapons before they had even left the pod that housed them. Unlike others of their kind they were already pretty stable from spinning when they cleared Heinrich`s plane and accelerated quickly. The motors were still burning when more than half of them missed the disk and buried themselves into the ground, ripping huge fountains of dirt from it. Two glanced of the acute angles presented by the steel, two hit fully and managed to penetrate the armor presented to them. Fire shot from the hole they made and some other openings and the craft broke into several pieces when it dropped to the ground.
His claim of victory mixed with the cursing from Eberhard. Hitting with the missiles was not easy and Eberhard relied on his flying much more than his gunnery.
Both pilots made wide turns that carried them over the rim of the valley, allowing them to reacquire their targets and to set up good runs. By then the second air-defense vehicle had been destroyed and one of the disks moved slowly away from the battle, listing to a side. Several others made their way towards the artillery pieces and the machine guns that fired on them from the truck`s cabin`s seemed a futile as cursing.
