Ch15 - The Start of the End

The past three days had been torture. THe Two of them, Frank and Zoya, had been on the run, shadows to the world, like hunters in the dark. As night fell, they moved, bike engines screaming in the dead of night as they hurtled towards their targets, and their hearts clenched with fear. Fear not only of what awaited them, but fear of what lurked behind every corner, watching from the shadow of every tree.
It was not fear.
In truth, it was paranoia.

It was a useful trait to have, Frank supposed, this far behind enemy lines, but it was crushing in its strength, merciless in the way it clawed at his heart. THe objective against which they planned to strike was a good distance away still, and yet they still considered themselves in the near vicinity. It had been in Apollo Sutherland's notes as a station of importance, serving as an airstrip as well as a garrison. To disable the airstrip meant to risk confrontation with the several hundred, perhaps thousands of enemy soldiers stationed there. The goal, of course, was to wreak havoc, to create the impression that they were the force. They were to pull resources away from other vital areas of the Reich; resources that would be dedicated towards preventing the freeing of the captured agent Selene.

It was a harsh, jarring reality, they were being used as little more than bait, pawns in the grand plan of powers that were sitting in some office in a country far away, removed from the booming of guns and tramping of marching of marching boots.
Still, it wasn't much use to think such thoughts, not now.
Not when they were hundreds, no, thousands of miles behind enemy lines, where the slightest of bad moves meant their capture and immediate execution.
Their time in Germany so for, however, had not been spent idly. They had spent the first day planning, scouting as they needed to in order to ascertain what was where; to find their routes of escape. A full day had been spent taking turns watching the local garrison, taking note of every habit of the guards and the watch. Zoya, in her time in the Deserts of her homeland, had been introduced to the concept of the Lewes Bomb, an improvised incendiary device made by combining commonly found diesel oil with plastic explosives. The first, they scrounged from various vehicles which they came across, and the other was issued to them as a part of their supplies. THe result was a piece of genius, as far as high-explosive incendiary weapons could be classed as such. The thing weighed little more than a pound, and was enough, according to those who had advised them of its manufacture, to send even a tank up in flames, should it be placed in the correct spot.

Thoughts such as these left the minds of the pair of agents as their target came into view.
Buchschwabach Army Air Force Base wasn't the largest of military encampments, a temporary station at best, and yet for whatever reason, Apollo had deemed it an important target.
It was a good centre from which one might base their operations, Frank accepted, with its strategic location a few miles south of Nuremberg and within striking distance of Berlin itself, though that was from an attacker's perspective. The Englishman must have seen something, Zoya and Frank had agreed, and therefore it warranted further investigation before they sent it up in flames.
The same as for their previous attack, the duo spent the night prior to their strike hidden away in the trees, avoiding patrols as they maintained a watch over the main gate to the station. Vehicles entered and vehicles left, and yet there were barely any of military origin that formed the considerable traffic in the area.
Suspicious.
They struck that night, Lewes bombs primed and ready with an hour-long fuse armed and set to blow. The fires would burn bright and hot, and anything affected would be damaged beyond repair, a result of the thermite contained within the device.
A pair of wire cutters got them through the fencing, the duo sticking low to the ground as they moved, ensuring that they were constantly out of the view of the guards in the towers under which they were stood.
Bombs in hand, they crept up on the planes, the genius aircraft that was the Messerschmidt Me262 - one of the first jet aircraft, its design based off the incredible De Havilland DH-98 Mosquito - so vulnerable as it was here on the ground, so docile and unthreatening.
It was almost hard to think that this was the greatest fear of the Allied pilots, who flew the Spitfire and Hurricane, or the P-38 Lightning.
No matter, they would all be useless for anything but scrap in little under an hour now.
Bags considerably lighter than before, the duo met up outside the door to the building that housed the Officers' Mess, weapons out and ready to unleash hell on the inhabitants of the room.

The sight that met their eyes, however, was not at all what they expected.
Walls that were once adorned, however distastefully, with the likes of Hitler and Von Bismarck's portraits, were now spattered red with blood, the blood of those who had been relaxing here.
They knew for a fact that no other allied agents were meant to be operating here, and this made the situation all the more threatening.
Either there was a rogue Allied agent on the scene, or someone was callous enough to kill their own soldiers.
Checking his watch, Frank mouthed thirty minutes to his companion, watching as she nodded briskly before continuing, copying her actions as she examined the corpses.
The shooter had acted without any inhibition, a blatant disregard for their victims whether they were men or women, Officers or Enlisted. It was a massacre, plain and simple. Wounds littered the bodies of the fallen, some bodies still twitching in the final throes of death as their hearts kept the futile fight to revive them.
Zoya and Frank crept through the destruction, the former uttering a short prayer wishing the victims of this horrific attack safe passage to the next world. Yes, they came to this place with the goal of doing the same thing, and yet it was chilling to think that someone could be so psychopathic as to cause wanton destruction such as this.
And for what?
Pleasure?
Or was it to prove a point…

Frank had to fight not to scream as a person grabbed his leg.
It was a strong grip, he noted, the power in their hand holding somehow, despite the mess of blood and gore that was the man's face.
His garb was once smart, Frank supposed, the black trousers and the once neatly pressed white shirt and bowtie marking him out as the one serving the officers at the bar. Now, however, the shirt was torn open by no less than five bullets, three though the stomach and another having pierced a lung.
He dreaded to think of the mess that the man - no, boy -'s back would have been, basic knowledge of the function of bullets telling Frank that the exis wounds wouldn't be nearly as neat as the entry ones.
"Englander," the man whispered, vice hoarse from the pain, startling blue eyes fading even as he spoke, "Der meister…-" Frank paused, withdrawing his canteen from his backpack to give the man some weak form of solace as he passed, "-Der Meister ist hier."
Frank paused, looking up in horror at Nightshade.

The master

A German had done this, then…
Perhaps the same one from Innsbruck?
He conveyed the same suspicions to Nightshade, and she nodded grimly, face screwed up in disgust at the scene in front of her.
They knew not the purpose of the mysterious group of people that had followed them through Austria, and yet they knew that they were confronted by a ferocious foe, with technology seemingly beyond their comprehension. The automatons that had attacked them, claiming the life of Leonidas Valdez had been a tougher foe than anything they had ever faced, and this was more worrying still. What if such creations of massacre and death were what awaited them here?
How could they ever escape?
Off to their right, a door creaked open, the one who did so smiling welcomingly at the pair of Allied Agents.
"Frank Zhang and Zoya 'Nightshade' El-Faouly," he said, his voice alone chilling, like the scraping of nails against a chalkboard, "Prometheus is pleased to make your acquaintance. This meeting has been a long, long time in the making."

Perseus Jackson rarely ever enjoyed war, and he had been involved in its cursed business for a hell of a long time.
This, however, was relaxing.
He and his best friend were in a luxury train compartment, surrounded by beautiful scenery and drinking good alcohol. THe alcohol, needless to say, made the entire experience a great deal better.
It was good to know that he was truly taking full advantage of Germany before he went and blew it apart.
That was, of course, until the guards began doing their jobs in earnest.
Something had gone wrong, he knew. It was a consequence, he suspected, of having been involved in such a business for quite as long as he had been, that he could judge a soldier's thoughts by his body language alone.
These men, he noted, hurried about the vestibule of the train, rifles in hand as they chattered worriedly amongst themselves. At one point, he watched as a mildly panicked platoon Sergeant sprinted down the corridor of the carriage, not caring for the racket he made, and not apologising as several evidently elderly German figures of moderate authority, evidently commuting back home from Austria, made their feelings about the disturbance rather explicitly known.

Sharing a concerned glance with Thalia and Jason, Percy subconsciously reached for the silenced Walther P-38 pistol concealed within a trouser, switchblade emerging from its previous position in a secret compartment of his jacket's sleeve, nodding in approval as his companions mimicked his actions without even needing to look at him. Of Thalia, it was expected, and yet he was impressed by the alertness and awareness shown by Jason, the American Paratrooper having suited himself to the rigours of undercover action in remarkably quick time, and portraying himself in the best of lights to the British Officers along whom he was currently undercover.
More people went by, each seeming more panicked than the last, and somewhere along the line Percy heard the word 'commando'.
The team had planned extensively for situations in which Nightshade and Zhang were discovered, and he could only assume that one such scenario had materialised, most probably a consequence of the checks of the freight carriages at the German-Austrian border. It was concerning, yes, but ideally the fact that the Germans didn't know the size of their team would mean that there would be stringent checks; such things would allow the six remaining Allied agents, hopefully, to make use of their considerable skill in wheedling their ways out of tight situations, or if it came to such a situation, escape in the confusion of unprepared folk scrambling for their papers.
The last resort…
The less said about that, the better.

A short way down the train, another group of three agents sat in their own compartment, rather less settled in their route of progression than the other group, despite their rather better set alibis and significantly more advanced skills in espionage. This group, however, was the one which was most expected to make it out of this situation without being forced underground, and therefore the most useful in the secondary mission of gathering information which could be sent back to friendly troops as they moved rapidly towards Germany. There were already American troops, belonging to the 95th Infantry Division moving to capture Metz in the contested Lorraine region of France, and the XII Corps were gathering for the second wave of the assault. Western Germany would soon find itself embroiled in the fighting for the first time in a long, long time, and there would be need for the details of bases and garrisons, if not the destruction of such facilities beforehand.
Even more than that, they needed reconnaissance. Hundreds of British and American sorties had been flown over the Ruhr Valley and the rest of the East of Germany, though precious little was known on the ground itself. Aeroplanes painted a good picture on a large scale, the photographers providing tactical information, though at the speed at which they flew, there was always going to be information missed; information that could save lives.
Bianca watched as Reyna and Piper each tensed, each of the women gripping a knife that would likely do good work in a closed environment such as the one in which they found themselves. That was, of course, assuming that they were found. In all ideal scenarios, nothing would transpire of the situation; the scare, without doubt a result of Zhang and Nightshade making their escape, would be chalked down to nothing the German soldiers on the train could deal with.
By some sheer stroke of luck, that was exactly what happened. The soldiers were evidently called off their search, and all of a sudden the train was quiet again.
As a matter of fact, the train stopped.
In every compartment, there were nervous passengers, craning their necks to see what was happening, to determine why the train had come to a halt as it had.
By this point, of course, one would have been hard pressed to find a single soul aboard the train unknowing of the fact that there had been something the matter in the passage of this journey.

What Reyna knew, however, was that they had a rendezvous to make.
The suspicion was that their overall objective was somewhere in Nuremberg, and their train was Munich-bound.
If they had not yet reached the Bavarian Capital by this point, that left a few hundred miles between them and the point at which they would rendezvous, ideally, with Nightshade and Zhang.
A few days ago, this would have been an easy proposition, with their bikes and near-unfathomable range of movement.
Here, however, they had nothin. They needed to use all of their skill to gather resources, and yet not even show their faces in a country where security was tightened to a near-impenetrable extent.
Their existence here was illegal.
France, for Reyna, had been easy enough to deal with; she was fluent in the language, had even spent some time in the south of the country, accompanying her father in his work. She was near-enough guaranteed the support of friendly resistance fighters, and it wasn't even difficult to find them. Here, however, the situation was not in her control as France had been.
This was the job of a fighter, of a commando, not of a girl from a tiny town in Catalonia.
What disrupted her thoughts was the appearance of the first agent.
The man drew a firearm of some kind, its make indiscernible to the OSS agent, though no such thing needed to be done.
The presence of a firearm was reason enough to open fire.
That would have been the case, of course, if Reyna had actually been holding a firearm.
A flick of her wrist sent a knife soaring into the man's throat, bright red blood spattering the pristine compartment's luxurious interior.
They had to run.
Fortunately, the kill had been silent. Still, it was not worth risking anything. There was no point in warning Jackson and the Graces, for all six of the Allied agents aboard the train knew full well where they wanted to rendezvous. It had no effect on their plans if they made the journey together or apart, in fact it was most certainly preferable to make the trek from Munich to Nuremberg separately, for this would most certainly raise far less suspicion as to the reason for their voyage.
Then again, as good as it was that the trio would be making their way across the Bund of Bavaria, it was rather less ideal that they would most likely have to make the trek forced under cover, and therefore much slower than they might've liked to do.

The words of the telegram that had brought them their orders rung in her ears once more…
Casualties expected…

Frank found himself scared to an extent which he could never imagine.
The man before him was not human, surely?
As a man of considerable size, he had been informed of his almost unnatural height and muscle mass many times. More, in fact, than he could realistically count.
Never in his life had he felt truly dwarfed by another human being.
In that moment, he found himself making a decision.
The man, no, giant in front of them was strong, that much was for certain. His physique was one which seemed to exude power, his neatly pressed suit setting him apart from the armed and armoured people around him as a man of power.

Die Meister.

"You know, Frank Zhang, I have seen this meeting a million times over," he explained, eyes gleaming with an expression that the Canadian couldn't quite discern.
"so many people… so, so many have died that you and I might be sat here."
At this point there was no word to be spoke, no comment to be made that would change the topic. Prometheus was in the full flow of a monologue that would quite probably scar the both of the Allied Agents, and despite the lack of restraints binding them to their places, they knew that any attempt of escape was futile.
"Yes, you have seen, have you not?" The man asked, "If you escape then your fate is the same as those dear folk strewn across the rest of this lovely little base."
Off to one side, he heard a laugh, almost wild in its nature, the laugh of a man who had fallen too far down the rabbit hole of killing and deceit, of a spy who had fallen too far.
"You will die today, Frank Zhang, and Zoya El-Faouly shall be the one who carries on the news of your death. Your body shall never return to your grandmother, and you will lie here, a mystery to all who come after you. You, Frank Zhang, shall be the unknown soldier. My masterpiece, the last thing I see in this mortal life of mine."
With this monologue, the man smiled widely, exposing bloodstained teeth and a body littered with scars. His smart jacket and shirt fell away like ash, exposing a torso ripped apart horrifically. Internal organs, those things that keep one alive, ,were hanging out in a grotesque mimicry of the perfection that was the human body. Vulture tattoos littered tanned skin, parts of them ripped to the extent that the tattoos appeared to be the cause of the horrific wounds, as though much like the original Prometheus, vultures had ripped his liver from his body.
Blood began to flow from the ragged holes, and Frank pushed Zoya out of the door with force as he realised what was about to happen.
The giant raised his left wrist, an ornate watch adorning the limb and displaying with a chilling finality what exactly the time was.
The pair of agents had given themselves an hour.

Two minutes remained before they fell victim to their own bombs, regardless of the demon who was stood in front of them.
Frank calmly pulled his rifle, not daring to look back towards where he could clearly hear Nightshade fleeing, and in one final act of defiance, smirked at the behemoth before him, firing once, twice, thrice...
He didn't know when the magazine would be emptied…
He would never see it happen.
Fate was not as kind as that.

Zoya El-Faouly wept as she fled, her body working almost as though a higher power were controlling it, be it Allah or some other being so merciful as to guide her from harm. Three, four, five enemies fell to her revolver before it clicked empty, and then out came her bayonet, the last resort for the expert sharpshooter. Another three were dispatched without effort, despite the tears that flowed freely from her bloodshot eyes.
That was when the first bomb went off.
Planes, jeeps, even buildings went up in flames as Jock Lewes' forgotten legacy did away with the Reich's resources, bright flame engulfing each object upon which the explosives had been set.

As the dust settled, Zoya EL-Faouly rode a German-made motorcycle, heart heavy with the knowledge that she had walked her comrade into a trap.
She reached a rendezvous a day later, and was welcomed with the welcoming embrace of one who had felt as much loss as her. Normally she might have protested, but now all she needed was a break. A pause from this hell, this horror show with which she had needed to contend.
It had been far, far too long, she realised, and it all came crashing down on her there and then, for in truth there had never been enough time in which to process it all. Half her life, she had spent with a gun in her hand, killing and making money off it.
A third of that time had been spent in the service of a government who had taken control of her land for the money it offered them.
Since leaving the place of her birth, she had struggled through the desert, lulled to sleep by the soothing melodies of the cries of her wounded and dying compatriots and comrades.
That, of course, had been followed by time in the stinking, sweaty hell of the jungle, where the enemy was the earth itself, where the hunter was the hunted, and where she as an Egyptian had perhaps the least right to call herself a defender of that land.
Each army had spent longer fighting insects and shrubbery than they had the other army, and casualties, once more, had been terrifyingly high.
Then there were the horrors of Europe.
This time, not only had she been fighting alongside soldiers, but friends.
Friends because, for the first time in this blasted war, she had hoped that she wouldn't lose them. Friends because for the first time she believed that fate had given her pause from the killing, the violence, the screams of the fallen.
She wanted this fucking war to end.

A/N
It's been some time, yes, but as I said on In the Light of a Waning Moon updates should be common enough over the Christmas break, before life catches right back up with exams and assignments and being an Army Reservist on top of that. Not that I'm teasing anything, but something may be in the works on that front.
In fact, let's go through what I've previously written, though I make no promises as to what will see the light of day.
1. My first work was based off 'The Flagbearer', the author of which I've forgotten, but it's a great idea. it currently sits at about 50k words and a hell of a lot of planning too. It rests on the same premise as Waning Moon, though I suppose it's the other way around considering I wrote this first. I may release it if I ever write more for it.
2. My second is actually one that I sincerely hope will reach the internet, and it's something of an inversion of Imperator. Percy enters a Camp Half Blood which is nothing like canon, because it's a city made up of districts that claim ancestry from the city states of old.
3. This! I publish as soon as I have a chapter, but from the title of this chapter, you might be able to tell that it's winding down to a close.
4. A potential sequel to this, which would be fun to write purely because of what I plan on doing with it. I won't tease it much, because it would spoil the ending of this story.
5. Waning Moon, which I reckon most of you have seen already.
6. A story in which Percy goes from a street urchin to a soldier in the SAS, and we follow his journey through the British Army, alongside Jason. Planning this is great fun, purely because it's a laugh. There's also an inside joke that would run all the way though it if it would ever reach the internet, purely because it's a complete pisstake (in good spirits) of a fellow author, who doesn't mind the concept at all.
There's about twenty more projects lounging about on my Google Docs scattered among lecture notes, but these are all above 20,000 words written, and therefore worth mentioning.
Not sure why I wrote all that, but hey, it is what it is.
Until next time, I suppose,
Sol
(I don't own PJO)