Skarsnik's office, World's Edge Autonomous Zone
Goobla the Squig was a beast, two meters of muscles, claws, teeth and cruelty. It was kept on a leash that led to a quick-release latch on Skarsnik's desk and had, on more than a few occasions, been released to gobble up a visitor which had annoyed the administrator sufficiently.
It intimidated anybody but Skarsnik and the Goblin leader used that for all it was worth. Which, with his current visitor, was exactly nothing. Whether the diminutive, 40-something woman before him was simply hiding her fears well or if she lacked the imagination was not clear to him. Whatever it was it annoyed him mightily and from what she told him that annoyance was about to become worse. Worst of all, he knew exactly that releasing Gobbla would have consequences that did not bear thinking about. The insight she might count on that increased the irritation level another notch.
"Administrator Skarsnik, as you are aware there have been complaints about the conditions in your factories. There seem to be an inordinate amount of accidents and even deaths related to these conditions."
"Lies, all lies and defamations spread by my enemies. I treat my works as my own offspring Frau Wolf."
"Be that Aldi and Metro both have requested that a neutral third party audit your production facilities and further orders will only be forthcoming if and when your factories receive a clean bill of health. The "
"I assure you that you will find nothing Frau Wolf.."
"That remains to be seen Administrator. I had a very short look at your boot factory on the way to my accommodations yesterday. From a first glance the facility is neither sufficiently lit nor ventilated and floor was littered enough to be dangerous. I will start my audits later today and will give you a preliminary report by next Bäckertag."
By the time Anneliese Wolf had left Skarsnik's office he had imagined 21 painful ways for her to die. He had not found any which would allow him to keep the orders vital to his commercial empire.
Beach close to Soreil, Republic of Bretonnia
The cliffs that made up a lot of Couronne's coastline had been ripped apart by some calamity eons ago, allowing access to a comparatively small beach full of white sand bordering a cove that moderated the huge waves that often broke on the cliffs.
It had become a favorite spot in summertime for the displaced French who had thrown their lot in with the Breton rebels and stayed when victory was assured. There were a few clouds that led a bit of welcome shade, a bright blue sea and a lot of more-or-less bronzed bodies enjoying the day off.
One sturdy beach chair was filled by a tall, well-shaped woman in a single-piece bathing suit sipping something fruity from a frosted glass through a straw. She was definitively not overweight, but the chair somehow still gave signs of being filled to capacity and strained under the load.
A wiry middle-aged man sat beside her.
"Do you have an idea, any idea, how alien this is to me or this world?"
"I can hardly imagine it Milady. The beach and the sea needed no improvements by us, they could be enjoyed at any time, no matter the level of technology."
"Didn't we settle on Leah Pierre? Be that as it may, the idea of days off is unknown to most people on this world, let alone my brave Bretons. We have our holidays off course, but they are given to religious services mostly. And given that our gods actually listen, as you should be aware of, people tend to take this seriously. And if, by some special miracle, there is a day when there is nothing to do then it was best to look occupied lest some overseer takes notice. Even for the nobles time off either means what you call networking or things like the joust. Just lounging off at the beach is unheard off and acquiring a tan is roughly the last thing people want. Having a tan is what the people who have to be outside a lot. Whoever can afford it tries to keep as pale as possible. It shows that you can afford it and are not a part of those who have to grub in the dirt.
Mind you, I start liking this and can see why people would do this, but you said that you wanted to present an idea."
"Oui MI…Leah. You know that we need to generate for foreign income. Now that the war is over donations are slacking off, and while the Germans will provide for things like clean water they will not pay for the Republic's development. We need to earn our own money and this might be an answer."
"Lounging in the sun will earn us German marks?"
"Not while we do it, but if we can get Germans to do it here we can make serious profit."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Dead sure. The Germans spent some 6 billion Marks on Cruises and foreign holidays in 2532 and even a relatively low percentage of that money would go a long way to balance our accounts."
"That much money just for lounging off?"
"Remember that the Germans are so much richer than we are. When you wages cover decent food, accommodation and transport you look for ways to spend your money. Germans have a long tradition for spending their holidays travelling. Actually, their word for experienced is "erfahren", well travelled.
These days the German economy is looking up and while their home country is surely nice there are enough people fed up with that. They long for new sights and we can give them that. We might either give them this, these beaches and the sea for less than the Club Estelias or we might offer them a tarted up version of Bretonnia so they might feel the explorers."
"Tarted up?"
"Well, they will prefer a decent toilet and bread that does not abrade the teeth."
"Didn't you say you want that for our people as well?"
"Oui. And wouldn't it be nice for the Germans to pay for that?"
Ahrensburg, North Germany
Maximilian Müller was about to abuse Nathan Alper's work and he would certainly not be alone in that. One of DLR's newest projects and one of the most popular ones had being establishing a swarm for relatively cheap satellites in low Warhammer orbit. They now provided a comparatively lag-free broadband internet to most people on this world below the two poles. It was used by German students, Imperial traders, Cathayan philosophers and Slann mages. It provided Ottokar Proktor's colleagues with a wealth of information.
Several companies had taken advantage of this enlarged network and had set up servers far from German's staid laws. One of them, "Megaupload Reloaded" was financed by a fat German by the name of Kim Dotcom. Everybody could upload whatever they wanted into it and share the contents as they saw fit. Users who wanted to download in volume and at speed paid a monthly fee for that.
Maximilian had finally gotten around to pay for it, had searched for appropriate links in a forum for all things porn and had downloaded more that a few files. He was now alone in his room with this week's haul and a pack of tissues.
He had worked himself through some porn that was older than the Weltensprung, had seen something of the newer stuff which had left him in high spirits already when he opened a file called Rule 34.
There were several scenes in there which left him rather incredulous. The Druchii would surely not do..that and did this really excite them? The stuff with that Norscan in there left him green with envy. He found that short, bearded women were not his thing.
His brain was still trying to decide if he had read the next title correctly when he saw that he indeed had. He barely managed to get his wastebasket out and that thing was blessedly watertight. There was indeed something like Nurgle porn and it managed to cause projectile vomiting without any bacteria involved.
Office, Dorotheenstr. 93, Berlin
The offices given to the Kaiserlichen member of the Bundestag were old, actually built in 1936 for the Ministry of the Interior. The party had protested of course, disliking the history of the place and the awkward architecture that was hard to modernize. Yet the Bundestag had many more members with all the new territories that had been attached to Germany during the Weltensprung and office space close to the Reichstag was in short supply. The Kaiserlichen had buckled down and made it work.
And while the rooms were hard to heat and many of the modern amenities were tacked on instead of integrated the rooms had some of the style that had disappeared and was missed by some. The high ceilings, the long windows and the materials were a throwback to times when temples and palaces had been the exemplar for the architects instead of factories. It lent the rooms a gravitas missing from more modern ones.
One of the corner offices was furnished to fit. Old, heavy oaken furniture matched the oil paintings of landscapes and portraits. A corner of the room held leather seats and sofas, a table between them some refreshments. And while the area could have seated nearly a dozen people only two took advantage of them presently.
They were a study in contrasts. One had shrunken with age, a gray skin blended into equally gray hairs. He was tired from a long day and he looked like it. On the opposite side of the table a massive man less than half his age sported a lustrous, well-groomed beard. Both represented their own fractions of the party which led to a certain tension which was not helped by the fact that the older man led the party. That he would not do so for much longer added to the problem.
Alexander Gauland sighted inwardly and asked himself if he had been that naive at Damian Lohr's age or if the leader of the Kaiserlichen young turks had let his emotions steamroller his mind. He needed to find a way to curb that without using his position, that was going to backfire badly.
"Alexander, you have said it at times, but you do not act like you mean it. Yes, the Nazi years were a horror and they should never be repeated. But they are 12 years out of more than 1000 years of German history, a mere bird dropping on a success story. We cannot be held by that any longer. We should not have been on Earth and for sure not on this world. Look what we have achieved on Earth after the war and look at what we have done here. We have managed to keep ourselves a technological civilization when so many said it could not be done. We have managed to remain a democratic state of law when others said we would end up with a military dictatorship. We have allied ourselves to the mightiest nation on this planet, we have protected all from the Hordes of Chaos. We heal the sick, we feed the hungry, we beat back Chaos. Germany has a space program second to none, we control this world's trade. We are what the decent nations of this world aspire to be. And we refrain from doing from what needs doing as we do not want to be seen as our bad old selves. Rubbish, we are better now and we finally need to act that way."
"You are right with every word that you say Daniel. It is just the conclusion that is off. We cannot go and wage war on those who do not attack us, especially not for the purpose to establish German colonies there."
"So you would have us wait until the bleeding Spitzohren and the damned Chaos stumpies are strong enough to be a proper threat, till they can kill many Germans and not just a few. Why do we have to accept that they enslave humans, that they torture and kill fellow men? Why do we have to see backward yokels refuse clean wells and the most basic hygiene so that the very majority of children die before they are even five years old. We could change it and that means we have the damned duty to change that. A duty that we shirk I may add."
"Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen Dirk? (The world shall recover from German character)"
"Damn right, it should."
"And you want to promote this character by force of arms?"
"Do you think the stumpies or the Spitzohren understand anything else? And do not tell me that we could not beat them easily."
"Yes, I think that we could beat their armies, even if easily might be a bit too much, given the distances involved. I am pretty sure that was what Dick Cheney thought too."
"Who?"
"Dick Cheney was the US Secretary of Defense and Vice President under the two presidents Bush respectively. He strongly promoted the US invasion of Iraq with arguments that were not too different from yours. He landed the US in a quagmire that was not resolved when we had the Weltensprung. He was right, the US could beat the Iraqi forces easily. They could not hold down the country without a huge costly occupation force and they could not achieve peaceful conditions to the point where they could rebuild the country properly. They left the country in shambles and it could be argued that the average Iraqi was better off under the bloody dictator Sadam Hussein than they were when the US forces went home. A bloody mess and not what we should repeat in any way, shape or form."
"This is one example, there have been so many successful ones. Look how the UK could hold down India for centuries or what the Netherlands were able to do in Indonesia."
"They had local allies that we might lack and they used methods that we would never step down to. You would not order bombers to the village next to an ambush or kill ten innocents for any soldier murdered by insurgents, wouldn't you Daniel? Or maybe erect fortified villages, that worked so well in Bretonnia recently. And these bloody horrors were a feature in so many colonies when they fought for independence. We want to promote the German ways Daniel, not kill what we stand for."
"There have to be better ways."
"And how many of our soldiers are you willing to kill till we found them? Let's cut the crap Daniel, you need to keep yourself and your allies under control, now more than ever. We have a decent chance to be part of the ruling coalition after the next elections. The "Realo" Greens are in uproar about the proposal to make a couple of species disappear, at least from our parts of the Old World. The left wing of the SPD is calling for moving onwards to socialist paradise now that the news about the Nanites are out and the party is looking bad from keeping that under wraps for so long. The Freisinnigen see the disaster coming and want no part of it, they would be willing to jump ship. So there is a chance to get into a coalition with the good old CDU and inject some sense into government again. And the last thing we need is to look like the second coming of von Trotha."
"Whom? Oh, that guy that went to war with the Herero. Alexander, if you are so sure that we will do so badly, what will you say when the Druchii or the DawiZharr start carving their empires`? They managed to modernize better than many others. Do you think they will think of such niceties or will they simply be themselves? What would you tell the Cathayans or the Hung they enslave? That we were too frightened of ourselves? But yes, I will get my guys and gals to keep a low profile, at least till the next election. But we really need to do something then, not just talk about it."
Alexander Gauland sat in his chair long after Lohr had left it. He had no idea how long he was for this world, but the next four years would be the last he would be in parliament, that was for sure. And who would then keep Lohr and those like him from wreaking havoc in Germany's name? He might not be the most respected party leader, but he had his feeler out to his colleagues still. And they all had the same problem in various ways. The new people, those who had grown up since the Weltensprung were different. They had to be to survive in this world, asking others to do the jobs needed doing was no longer an option. They were not used to be equal partners in an intricate network of peer competitors, they were used to be the top dog. They were convinced that technology solved problems, not created them, that doing something was better than debating it. What could he do to make them see a little wisdom before they made a hash of it?
Teotihuacan, Mexico
Mathis Lambert was carrying roughly 20 kilograms of equipment into battle, and he had it easy. He was lugging that weight through narrow tunnels where the walls, the floor and the ceiling might birth an enemy at any second and he still had it easy. He was seeing only the bright spots left by his unit's lights and the blackest shadow which might hide anything and he had it easy. He knew he had it easy as Gotrek had told him so and Felix had filled the gaps in the Dwarf's taciturn one-liners.
"No warpstone everywhere."
"No Jezzails."
"No pestilence monks."
"No undead on your own side."
"No Skaven."
He had not known what to make of it when the two had tried to pass on their Skavenblight experience till they spoke about the thing that confirmed it.
"No masks, no suits."
Thinking about doing what he and his men did in Level 4 MOPP gear brought the sweats to the French soldier. This was difficult and dangerous enough without fighting for every breath through a filter, trying to make something out through eternally fogged glasses and sweating like a hog under garments that made sweating useless as they prevented evaporation.
It left him exploring deadly tunnel after, wondrous, murderous cavern. Some of them were empty for a few snakes easily dispatched by shot, boot and ax. Some held traps that were usually triggered by their drones and by his men if things went really bad. Most held ambushes by Naga who shot arrows that might very well penetrate the softer parts of his armor would they connect and snakes that followed them like dogs would follow their masters. They had already learned that flashbangs did not faze them, that CS gas inconvenienced them less that the masks did him. There was a rather limited amount of thermobaric grenades which did kill the Naga and anything else in any given room. It also threatened the stability of tunnels probably made when Teotihuacan was not even built. He had to use them sparingly and that meant doing it the old fashioned way.
The cavern before him should be special. It was the last one echolocation could make out and it was somewhat bigger than the others. Maybe the mystery that was the source of the scaly invasion was about to be revealed now.
By now there was a routine for assaulting these chambers. There was use to assign anybody as point than Gotrek, decision making started after that. Grenades were out this time, he would not be trapped underground by tons of rock. Several troops of his former paratroopers formed up, signing their readiness.
And then there was the moment when all decisions ended and the madness began.
"En avant" made them all move. His legs propelled him forward without conscious thought, his eyes were on the search in the assigned sector. There were Greek-looking columns, there were statues of things he did not take the time to identify and there were the Naga. Arrows zipped from many places, most from cover and some from Naga who slid around at a speed a man could hardly match by running.
The Slayer briefly crossed his field of view. As always he made a beeline for the greatest concentration of enemies, his war-cry enhanced by loudspeakers made in another universe. Mathis had no time to watch him and Felix, but he had seen them in action before. The Slayer was simply a fast moving death sentence, killing with no regards for cover nor parry. There were a couple of things that let him get away with that, his speed, his power armor and Felix.
His ax cleaved through armor, flesh and bone with equal ease and stomach-turning results while behind him an ancient G3 banged away at anybody who tried to close from behind. Mathis had his own battle to fight. The buckshot from his shotgun found the broad chest of another Naga, went through the leather armor presented with ease and dropped the otherworldly enemy. The next shot removed an arm and filled the cave with otherworldly screeching. He barely managed to move the barrel in the way of a dagger that moved his way. He deflected it up and out. He held the shotgun at an awkward angle when he fulled the trigger, blood and other stuff coated his protective goggles for a few seconds. When he had finally cleared them the battle was over, at least for now.
A thorough search of the cave revealed only one more tunnel, one that led further downwards into the darkness. Mathis made sure that the tunnel mouth was covered by two machine gun teams, that several claymore mines pointed in the right direction and that everybody was set before he sent in the drones.
He bent over the back of the operator and watched the picture of walls go by the small tracked device. There were no branches, no side tunnels and no caverns at the end of the tunnel. And that was it, there were no further tunnels, no more snakes, no Naga and no explanation where they could have come from.
He was about to voice exactly that when the drone was deep enough in the terminal cavern to see the reliefs that covered the walls, all of them.
"Mon Dieu."
