The Final Order

Hamburg was nothing short of beautiful, as far as postwar cities went. As Hans quickly learned, the Final Order did not control the entire city, just the district around the city center. It was clear, however, that they had established a very stable society in the limited space. Most of the buildings were still standing, converted to markets, houses, apartments, taverns, diners, and so on. It was also clear that the Order had the people to staff these locations, and the money to pay people to both work in and patronize said locations.

Hans and his healthy cohorts were led through the bustling halls of the Hamburg Rathaus, up to the third floor, and to an office near the clocktower. Sergeant Paul March led them into the office where a man in a grey suit waited, looking over a sheet of paper. He looked up at the visitors, set down the paper, and leaned forward.

"Oberfahnrich Paul March, Border Security Officer, Gate A4, Diechtorplatz District. Presenting Hans Eckhart, Walter Steinbatz, and Klara Edmund of the Pariser Platz U-Bahn station in Berlin. They entered the city half an hour ago seeking medical attention for a fourth, Hilda Muller. At my discretion I admitted the individuals to the city and diverted Fraulein Muller to the medical staff at the Rathaus Apotheke, to be treated for severe infection following ghoul bite on previous day." March reached into his shirt and produced a folded sheet of paper. "The copy of the relevant visas and log of arrival."

The man in the suit spent a few moments looking over the papers before setting them down. "Thank you, Oberfahnrich. Please wait outside for the time being" he said.

"Ja wohl!"

Sergeant March clicked his heels, saluted, and stepped out of the room. The man in the suit licked his thumb, picked up a sticker from a dispenser on his desk, and applied it to the visa. "Herr Eckhart?"

Hans stepped forward.

"Hmm. You are Berliners? From a U-Bahn station? The report here says you and your friends are mercenaries. Ghouls, raiders, and Communists? Lots of Chinese remnants and partisans still in the country, if you can believe it. I'm curious: tell me about the partisans."

"It was last year, sir. The U-Bahn stations were being harassed by Communist agitators at Fernsehturm, by the Alexanderplatz plaza. Herr Steinbatz and myself were tasked with handling the threat" Hans said.

"Handle? How?"

"Peacefully, if possible. Permanently, if necessary. The Communists made us pick the latter option. Over the course of two days Herr Steinbatz and myself were involved in a protracted battle with the Fifth Columnists, between twelve and twenty members. Walter and I killed about half their number before the rest scattered, and the problems ceased. Fraulein Muller joined us after this."

The man leaned back. "She was a Communist?"

Hans cleared his throat. "Not exactly. At the time, the U-Bahn stations were not accepting new members. Fraulein Muller was a drifter, looking for a place to settle down. When the stations rejected her she fell in with the people at Fernsehturm. The way she's described it is the Communists cared more about printing presses and copying machines than hydroponics, and were stealing water from the pumps the stations operated in the lakes and ponds near the Brandenburg Gate. Hilda- That is, Fraulein Muller, refused to be a part of this and insulted their leader, who threw her in a cage. Of her own volition she bombed the tower at Fernsehturm. Said the Communists idolized it."

The man nodded and wrote something down. "Most wastelanders, they see ghouls and raiders and Heaven knows what else as the threat. What do they care about petty politics? To them, the people at Fernsehturm were just more raiders, stealing what they could not, or would not, produce themselves. Tell me, Herr Eckhart. What is your opinion?"

Hans shared a look with Walter. "Respectfully, I don't care. They were threatening our home, and I was paid to put an end to that. It's what I've been doing for six years now, sir."

"I can respect professionalism," the man said. He tapped his pencil against his desk for a moment before setting it down and standing. "I am Director Otto Jaeger, acting mayor of the Free City-State of Hamburg. Under my direction Hamburg has established itself as a safe city, free from the threat of ghouls, raiders, Rovers, and radiation. Our colleagues in Munich have begun an initiative, Herr Eckhart. Reclaim Germany. Ambitious, I know, but we have the means and the iron hearts to do it. As you can imagine, innumerous obstacles stand before us in this mission. The mutants and abominations of the wasteland, the greedy and selfish, the ignorant. Today, most Germans cannot read or write. They are blind to our history, our culture. They care not for ideology, literature, the arts. Their only concern is survival, and rightfully so."

Otto Jaeger walked around his desk and sat on the edge of it. "Our mission to reclaim Germany saw us begin many initiatives. Recruiting from Berlin's U-Bahn stations is just one of many such initiatives. Even as we speak operatives of the Order are being deployed all across our country to establish chapters and begin the process of rebuilding Germany. I tell you, the reports I see speak of things far more dangerous than just ghouls and Rovers. I'm prepared to offer you and your team a place in this organization, so long as you are willing to perform duties for more than just money. You will all be paid, of course; a fair wage, but conviction is what drives us, not money. Given your experience I'm even prepared to let you pick the members of your team. I imagine you'll keep who you have. I have a job for you, and for the duration of it you can remain as freelancers. If life in our organization entices you, then you'll be asked to join after its completion. If not, then we will offer you and your team other jobs within the city. If you decline this as well, then you will be asked to leave."

"Let's discuss Hilda first."

"Hmm, your wounded team mate. If you think this job will require your team at full strength, then I'm inclined to offer you a temporary replacement. You'll be offered new armor and weapons. Rentals, of course. You will not be charged for any damage this equipment suffers, only if any of it is lost. Alternatively, you could trade in your weapons for a selection of ours" Otto said.

"Do we have time to consider this offer?" Hans asked, and Otto nodded.

"The problem is contained, for now, but it needs a quick solution. You have until the morning, if you need that long. I imagine you'll all want to rest, given..." he leaned back, picked up a sheet of paper, and read it. "Given you've all been on the road nine days now."

Hans looked at Walter, who was biting his lips, his mouth a thin crease on his face. Klara looked a little uncertain, but Hans was confident she could hold her own. He rubbed his chin for a moment. "Tell me the job and the pay, and we'll decide."

Otto nodded, walked back around his desk, and sat. "Just outside the city is Comcave College. Near it is the Hyperion building, a hotel management school before the Resource Wars. When the Resource Wars began, the school shuttered, and a new tenant moved into the building: Happy Liberty Imports, a shipping and logistics firm. Thing is, the outside of the building is being patrolled by a Panzerbot, encouraging listeners to 'relent to the glory of Communism.' Preliminary scouting suggests there are more combat robots inside. The presence of the robot suggests the building was a front for Communists, and there may be valuable equipment inside that the Order could make use of" Otto said. He leaned forward. "That Panzerfaust your friend is carrying will come in handy, along with any grenades you have. The offer for this job is 400 tokens; yes, we pay people in the subway tokens you're already accustomed to. Helps encourage U-Bahners to sign on, plus the silver content has legitimate value."

"We're in. We'll keep our own gear, if that's alright, but we will need our team at full strength. If Hilda's not well enough to participate then who will be her replacement?" Hans asked.

"Sergeant March, likely. He will provide whatever assistance you deem necessary, and will follow your command, so long as you do not order him to do anything that will damage the safety and integrity of Hamburg and the Final Order. Will the four of you be sufficient to see the job done?" Otto asked.

"Yes. We'll be ready first thing in the morning" Hans said, and Otto picked up a few sheets of paper. He wrote a few things down on each, signed each, and set them aside.

"Very good, thank you. Good luck."

The next morning the four of them were assembled by the A4 gate in Diechtorplatz, checking over their gear. As agreed upon the Berliners had kept their own weapons and armor, but naturally Sergeant Paul March brought his own. He'd changed his green shirt for a black shirt, black combat armor, and an STG-44. He tightened the straps of his helmet, nodded to one of the guards, and the gate began to open. They all stepped beyond the walls of Hamburg and onto the streets outside, Paul in the lead. "This road will take us straight to the Hyperion building" he said, gesturing to the road sign: Nordkanalbrucke.

It was a cloudy morning, promising rain, though Hans expected them to spend most of the day inside the Hyperion building. The building was visible from the gate, its red façade faded and damaged, most of its many windows broken. It took them maybe ten minutes to reach the building, the trees outside it knocked over. A Panzerbot patrolled the cobblestone sidewalk, extolling the virtues of Communism in both German and Chinese. The sign near the roof still declared it to be the Hyperion building, but the sign on street level bore the building's true name: Happy Liberty Imports.

Hans took a moment to check out the Panzerbot. It had a bowl-shaped body with two triangle-shaped treads on either side, giving it limited mobility but excellent traction. On top of its body was a turret sporting two machine guns; MG-42s, judging from the shape of the barrels. Hans saw a Panzer I in a museum once and decided that the Panzerbot vaguely resembled the ancient light tank, just robotized.

"There's a chance, if we blow up this bot, that the rest in the building won't know" Sergeant March said.

"Well, I guess we couldn't hold onto this Panzerfaust forever. Walter, you're up" Hans said, and Walter nodded with a grin.

"With pleasure."

They were crouched on the other end of the street, next to a bus which had jumped the curb and crashed into a storefront. The Panzerbot was thirty feet away, by one of the red stone columns outside the front of the building, when Walter fired. A sharp blast shook the world around them, followed by an explosion as the rocket hit the stone column. The explosion and shrapnel tore the bot up, but it was still functioning.

"Achtung. Signif-if-ificant damage sssssustained."

Walter swore, dropped the steaming tube, and followed it to the ground, his Madsen already deployed. Half a magazine of armor-piercing 8mm Mauser later and the bot was done for, thin wisps of black smoke pouring from the bullet holes. The four of them scurried across the street to the front door of the building, though with most of the windows broken there was hardly a point in using the door. They entered the lobby, keeping low. Ahead was a reception desk, two stairways flanking it, both leading up to the same balcony. "Any ideas where we should begin?" Hans asked.

"The building has ten floors, plus a basement probably. If there's anything of value here, it's probably in the basement" Paul said. The lobby was nondescript, save for the terminal on the reception desk, which Hans checked. Boring trite; schedules, appointments, a script ('smile at the client, or you're fired!'), and little else. Below the terminal were some shelves containing some destroyed books and folders. By the desk was a skeleton, a .32-caliber revolver still clutched in its hand, a hole in the skull. No mystery as to what happened there.

"Hans, have a look at this."

Hans looked up, Walter's voice having come from above. He'd gone up the stairs to the balcony, and Hans stood to join. Part of the left staircase had crumbled a bit, the railing missing, but it was still sturdy. Walter and the others were standing by a pair of double doors, closed. "The doors are locked."

"Is that supposed to be a surprise?" Hans asked, and Walter shook his head.

"Take a closer look."

Hans stopped and looked the doors over, the usual wood with windows built into them, too dirty to look through. Hans looked at the handles and saw what he was supposed to be seeing: the doors were locked alright, from the outside, to keep something sealed inside. Chains tightly wrapped around the handles and a padlock to hold them closed.

"Probably supposed to keep the robots locked away" Klara guessed.

"Maybe..." Hans said, though he wasn't too sure. "Either way, we've got to find another way to the upper floors. Let's check the rest of the first floor." They went back down to the lobby, two doorways on either side of the reception desk. To the left was bathrooms, if the signs on the wall could be believed. There was no way to confirm that, though, since that part of the building had completely collapsed, so the team crossed the lobby to the right doorway. The hall beyond stretched around to the right, the wall lined with glass and looking out on the streets. The wall also stretched on to the left, a few doors lining the walls there.

"I'll take a look" Walter said, and jogged down the hall. The rest of the team waited by the entrance to the lobby, watching him as he peeked in the doors. He'd reached the third one when a Panzerbot came rolling around the corner at the end of the hall, rotating on its axis to identify the threat, the tile underneath crushed to dust by its armored treads. The bot's turret turned, one of the machine guns replaced with a rocket pod resembling a Nebelwerfer.

"Achtung! Intruder alarm."

"TAKE COVER!"

Paul was closest to the corner, so he dove around it. Hans and Klara were forced to back into the lobby, and the robot fired. The sharp whoosh of the rocket was quickly lost to the earth-shattering blast that violently shook the whole floor, dust and stone falling to the floor. "Walter!" Hans shouted, but could hardly hear himself, let alone anything else. He ducked around the corner of the doorway, crawling on the floor. The hall was completely destroyed, cutting them off from Walter. From down the hall Hans heard the sound of Walter's Madsen as he opened fire, and the Panzerbot grinded along to give chase.

Paul was already back on his feet, crouched by the corner and aiming his STG down the hall. "Will your friend be alright?" he asked as Hans got back to his feet.

"He's got an LMG and all our grenades. He'll be fine, but now we're down our heavy hitter until we can find a way to get back to him" Hans said. "Down the other hall, but let's be careful. We don't want to run into any more robots."

Together the three of them moved down the hall in the other direction, keeping low and near the wall, wary of any passers-by seeing them from outside. The hall went down to the end of the building then sharply veered left, a single door along the way. Hans peeked inside quickly, the room beyond completely collapsed, and they rounded the corner. The hall stretched on again, the corner on the far side bearing bathrooms, then veered sharply left again.

"We're on the right track" Paul said, and Hans nodded. He eased up to the corner, peeked, and moved forward. The Panzerbot was gone, but they were definitely following its tracks. Soon they were on the other side of the rubble, the door that Walter had jumped through standing open. Hans was about to enter the room beyond when the Panzerbot came back, the yellow searchlight mounted to its turret bathing the gray wall in pale light. It tracked the width of the wall until it sighted them, and its light turned red.

"Achtung!"

Hans scrambled backwards and fell onto his back as the Panzerbot opened fire, a storm of steel that shredded the corner and punched holes through what remained of the windows on the wall behind them. The Panzerbot soon came around the corner, its treads grinding against the wall. The rocket pod was gone, and Hans silently thanked Walter. The rocket launcher being destroyed meant he had five seconds to live instead of two.

The Panzerbot, miraculously, didn't see Hans on the floor. Its bright light beamed down the hall and it opened fire with its machine gun, the barrel resembling that of an MG-42. Hans grit his teeth as the robot fired, the ripping thunder of the gun nearly splitting his head open with the concussive force, the windows shattered. He raised his rifle and fired, the bullets punching through the bot's hull.

The Panzerbot's upper body leaned forward and it began to move, the grinding wheels just inches from Hans head as it passed him by. He scrambled to his feet just in time to see Paul leaning around the corner down the hall, STG aimed at the bot. Hans hit the floor and Paul opened fire, his missed shots zipping overhead. Hans watched as the rounds punched through one of the Panzerbot's treads and it tipped over as the assembly detached.

"Achtung! Self-destruction initiated. Ten seconds remaining...seven...five..."

Hans rolled around the corner and scrambled all the way back to the rubble as the Panzerbot detonated, the sound of the blast completely lost to the ringing in his ears, the building shaking and crumbling all around him. After a few seconds it was over, and his hearing slowly began to return. He picked up his Gewehr 41 and peeked around the corner. The Panzerbot's explosion had completely obliterated the hallway and surrounding walls, leaving a roughly sphere-shaped crater in the side of the building. Glowing bits and pieces of the robot remained, lying on the floor. As Hans stood he saw the pile of brass at his feet, the robot having expended easily a hundred rounds in just seconds. Some of the cases were stuck into the wall, having been ejected so violently. Outside, behind the building, was a cobblestone courtyard, the perimeter lined with hedges. The Panzerbot's searchlight had ended up on a picnic table, looking back at them.

Paul and Klara came around the other corner, as amazed as Hans was to still be alive and relatively unharmed. They jogged forward to meet him, carefully stepping through the debris. "Fucking Hell..."

"I'd have stayed in Pariser Platz if I'd known this is what I'd be getting myself into, Herr Eckhart" Klara said with a smile, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. She checked the Erma SMG, having taken it from Hilda when she'd been taken to the doctor, and blew out a sigh. "What now?"

"Now, we must go through the door and track down Walter" Hans said, and they nodded. The three of them moved through the door that Walter had gone through, the room just a landing for the stairwell to the right of the door. The stairs went up some twenty feet, ending in a sharp left turn. Up they went, mindful of the shell cases on the steps. The hall at the top of the stairs was clear, no sign of Walter anywhere.

The first door on the left contained what looked like a meeting or briefing room, rows of classroom-style chairs with a blackboard at the front of the room. There was a counter on the side of the room, lined with a few coffee pots and mugs. There was another door at the end of the room, open. Inside was a small office with some filing cabinets and a desk. No terminal, but there were some books on the desk. Intrigued, Hans took a closer look. Two of the books were plain; one bound in brown, the other green. Pre-War books, marred only by the yellowing of their pages from age. Rare. The other book was red, some unknown language written on the cover along with a man raising his fist.

Hans picked it up and flipped through its pages. "Can anyone read this shit?" he said, and held up the book. Paul took it and nodded, his expression glum.

"Chinese army training manual. The Final Order hasn't found anyone who can read the language yet, but we still take possession of the books when we find them. Knowledge is power, Herr Eckhart. Even knowledge that cannot be understood yet" Paul said. He slipped the manual into his backpack and looked over the other pre-War books. "Boon Island. Fiction. Bedtime Stories. Fiction. What kind of bedtime story book has a skull on it? Eh, not exactly educational finds, but literature has its place. You should visit our library, Herr Eckhart."

"When there's time. For now, let's focus on the job at hand" Hans said. The ceiling above them gently shook as a Panzerbot on the floor above rolled by, and somewhere in the building there was a burst of automatic fire. "Walter's still missing, and still alive. Let's get back to the search."

The three of them headed back through the briefing room and back out into the hall. The floor to the left, directly opposite the landing to the staircase, was partially collapsed. Passable, but risky, so the team went right, around the corner, and down the other hall. Two bathrooms on the left were empty (but not their first aid kits, to the team's delight and surprise), and the closet on the right contained only trash, so they moved on. The hall ended at the front of the building, looking out on the street below. Hans looked left and, through the shattered windows, could see Hamburg's Diechtorplatz gate in the distance. "Klara, check left. We'll check right."

They split as Hans said, Paul and himself sneaking down the right side hallway. From up on the second floor Hans could see out onto the top of the terrace that stood outside the front entrance, shielding it from the light and the elements. A skeleton was splayed out on top of the terrace, most of its bones broken, the terrace partially impacted around the skeleton, and Hans frowned. Bad way to go, that.

Hans had just turned his gaze away when gunfire erupted from behind. He and Paul spun, crouched, and levelled their guns. Klara was down the hall, backing away from the corner at the end, Erma in hand. "Panzerbot!" she yelled. Hans and Paul moved up, crouching by the wall to cover Klara as she backed up.

"Get down!" Paul barked, and Klara dropped to the floor, prone. The Panzerbot eased up to the corner, turret turning on its axis. The rocket launcher on its right side opened, the red tips of the eight rockets a stark contrast to the machine's slate gray color. The three of them were about to open fire when a rocket screamed through the air from behind Hans and Paul, flashing by them in a second. The rocket smashed through the window and out into the midday sky, the angle off. Hans and Paul turned and saw a second Panzerbot in the hall, its machine gun trained right on them. Hans' blood ran cold, the team trapped between the two Panzerbots.

They were dead.