One night, as I was sleeping, it came back.
I had another one of those dreams about those hooded figures and the ominous chanting.
However, this time, some of them actually spoke to me in an evil voice:
"The key…"
However, I woke up before they said anything else.
"The key?"
What was that supposed to mean?
For now, I decided to push that aside, because I had another assignment laid out:
I was satisfied with the progress I'd made in Germany, so I decided to make an incursion into somewhere else.
All my trips to Germany took a route through Ukraine, so for a change, I went into Byelorussia.
In a village called Komarin, I sighted an M4 Sherman that looked like it was in poor condition.
It looked as if someone had attempted to repair it, but it still looked crude.
Naturally, it wasn't much trouble for me.
Next, I was attacked by an M24 that also looked shoddy.
However, this one was odd because it looked as if it was equipped with a German gun.
I could tell just by looking at the muzzle brake.
German gun or not, this tank also fell before me.
Compared to my last few battles, this one was quite easy.
The various tanks of this company were in varying conditions, from "diamond in the rough" to just "rough".
Some of them even had unusual equipment loadouts.
Let me tell you about some of the more unusual ones:
There was a Char B1 with its forward howitzer replaced by a Soviet 152mm M-10.
Also, there was a StuG III with a long 88mm gun.
However, the one that took the cake had to be a T-34 that they had.
Sure, they had one with a French 75mm autoloader cannon, but that one looked normal compared to this one.
See, the one I'm talking about was not only equipped with a 107mm ZiS-6, but also a KV-2 turret!
It took one shot at me, but missed!
Furthermore, the recoil of the gun sheared the turret ring, causing the turret to tip over gradually and then suddenly crash to the ground!
I wasn't sure whether to laugh at the absurdity of this contraption or to scorn the creator of this machine for his stupidity.
In any case, there was no need to shoot that thing, as the crew would probably be killed by some less merciful tankers in the near future.
Towards the end of the battle, I got a radio call.
However, I couldn't understand it because it was just a bunch of grunts, groans and other gibberish.
Finally, I encountered a Tiger I, which was in surprisingly good condition compared to the rest of his comrades.
Furthermore, the machine was equipped with not one, but two 75mm cannons!
Clearly, whoever created these aberrations spent more time and care on this machine than the rest of them.
The twin cannons also gave it a fast firing rate for a Tiger.
Accuracy was reduced, but the number of shots that landed was disconcerting to me.
Still, I persisted, and after plenty of flanking and dodging, he was destroyed.
Of course, I understood the value of investigating mysterious opponents, but these guys were especially too good to ignore.
Given the unusual state of their tanks, you just don't encounter tankers like these and walk away without asking questions!
Now, after checking them out, I found out that they were named "Frank's Heroes".
These weren't just troops under the command of, but were also the creation of Dr. Franklin Nicholas Stein, a US Military scientist working for the National Defense Research Committee.
Based on my observations, it appeared that this was a sort of secret project where he had taken destroyed tanks and grafted on good parts of other destroyed tanks in order to restore them to working order.
Judging by the mismatched parts, it seemed that Dr. Stein had run short of parts.
Even so, I felt he could've done better than grafting a KV-2 turret onto a T-34!
But wait, he didn't just restore dead tanks, either!
He had also taken the bodies of dead tank crewmen and somehow brought them back to life by attaching good limbs & organs to them!
OK, I can understand repairing dead tanks, but as far as I knew, if a person died, it was impossible for them to come back to life, excluding certain cases where people only appeared to be dead for a few minutes.
Furthermore, a couple of these guys appeared to have bits of flesh falling off their bodies, and not from shrapnel or anything, mind you.
Guess this guy wasn't as good at resurrection as I'd initially believed.
Furthermore, a couple of the tankers had an unusual patch on their uniforms:
"Manhattan Project".
What did that mean?
Whatever it meant, I knew one thing: This Dr. Stein was a very sick man.
I mean, I've heard that German scientists were doing some nasty things, but I'm sure that whatever they were doing could not possibly eclipse what he was doing.
After all, this guy was doing something untried and possibly unsafe with hardly any regard for the rights and welfare of his test subjects!
However, I do admit he appeared to have good metallurgy skills, barring the quality of some of those tanks.
That proves one thing about dead tanks:
We can rebuild them.
We have the technology.
However, Dr. Stein didn't always make them better, faster or stronger.
Then again, I suspected that certain Soviet scientists were guilty of some gruesome things.
All that aside, I went back home, fixed up Goliath and tried to forget about what I had seen at Komarin.
However, I remembered that just because we can make tanks better, faster and stronger…doesn't always mean that we should.
Then again, Goliath had shown me that in the right hands, we can really make them better.
Criticism is gold. Negativity and nitpicking are pyrite.