The Depths
Hans was certainly grateful that there was an instruction manual for the Mars Automatic, because it was simply unlike any firearm he'd ever seen before. Instead of feeding rounds in the traditional way by stripping them from the magazine and pushing them forward, the mechanism pulled the rounds backwards, lifted them up, and then fed them into the chamber.
Hans pulled open one of the boxes of ammo, forty rounds in total, and looked the rounds over. The box was marked .45 Mars Long, the cases bottlenecked like a rifle's cases, the brass dull but clean and the bullets clad in nickel. It was a magnificent affair, one that Hans was indeed very appreciative of. As far as he could tell the gun had never been fired, the finish clean and unmarred. He filled up the three magazines, inserted one, turned the ears of the bolt, and pulled. The entire mechanism came out of the back, smooth and still oiled, the cartridge held in place by the claws of the extractor, and Hans released. The bolt and mechanism snapped home with a heavy *ker-chunk*, the gun bobbing in his hand from the force.
"Alright, that is obviously a very impressive piece of hardware, but it doesn't change the fact that we're trapped in here with dozens of mutant frogs" Paul said, and Hans looked up. He replaced his P38 with the Mars, giving the much smaller 9mm to Klara.
"Hilda went down to the basement. The door was small enough that no Croaker could fit through it, so that's our way out of here. If this place was a museum then it's clear that it wasn't the usual kind, with displays and exhibits and shit, so the odds of finding anything useful here are somewhere near zero. We'll keep our eyes peeled, but for now rescuing Hilda is the focus" Hans said.
"This all seems very familiar to me" Paul said.
"He's got a point," Walter chimed in. "Every time he's on our team, one of us ends up separated from the rest and we've gotta go hunt them down."
"We? Last time it was you and Klara, at Happy Liberty. Don't get confused on who's saving who" Hans said, and Walter rolled his eyes, a smile on his face. He adjusted his glasses and picked up the Madsen.
"Let's go save the little one, then."
Hans stood, rifle in hand, and approached the door. The sound of the Croakers walking around on the floor below could be heard, along with their groaning and rumbling. Hans gently pushed the door open and peeked out through the gap at the Croakers as they milled about, seemingly oblivious to the team's presence now.
Now that he actually had the time to do it Hans looked the room over. The second floor, if it could be called that, was just the catwalk that ran along the wall, stretching from the office they were currently in to a door at the other end that led back to the turbine hall and the room with the conveyor belt. Halfway down the walkway, to the right, was the door that opened up on the T-shaped catwalk. Below, on the floor, was the Croaker nest, among what appeared to be a series of green steel plinths.
Hans pushed the rest of the door open and slowly crouch-walked out onto the catwalk, trying to be as quiet as possible. The others soon followed him, keeping low and going slow. Hans reached the open door to the T-junction and moved through, the Croaker from earlier on the floor below. The four of them made their way across the junction and to the right, where the room where Hilda had last been seen in was.
"Hilda was in here earlier. Hans and I saw her" Klara whispered to Walter, who nodded. The bulk of the room, as Hans had noticed, was indeed dominated by a confusing maze of pipes going from the floor to the walls and to the ceiling, but the far left end of the room was filled almost entirely by control consoles, cabinets, and shelves. The catwalk wrapped around the edge of the room, a staircase at the end.
"This way" Hans whispered, and the team made their way around to the right, following the catwalk under a series of large pipes towards the stairs. They made it to the end and quickly descended down the steps, the coast clear for the moment. At the base of the stairs Walter crouched and picked up an empty magazine for an Erma and stuffed it into one of his pockets.
"She'll be wanting this back, I think."
Hans nodded and they made their way towards the basement door, careful not to kick around too many of the empty shell cases Hilda left behind. Hans crouched by the door and peeked around the control console that Erma had taken cover behind not ten minutes ago, and checked that the corridor was clear. He turned, put his hand to the door's latch, and pushed.
Nothing happened.
"Oh God damn it, nothing ever fucking changes. Must've automatically locked behind her" he whispered. He pushed the latch again and it gave a little, but otherwise didn't move. There was no slot or groove for the keycard he'd picked up earlier, so they were out of luck. "Well, we're not getting into the basement this way."
"You give up too easily, friend. Why not try kicking the door down?" Paul asked, and Hans looked up at him.
"The first kick will bring every Croaker in this building to us. The second kick will be you flailing your legs as a Croaker swallows you whole. Probably not the best choice" Hans said.
"Look around. The room is packed tighter than a miser's purse. Croakers don't do well in tight spaces, and between the four of us we've got enough firepower to keep any of them at bay. The only other option we have is to hope there's another basement door somewhere in this building, which is infested with mutant frogs. Don't think we're going to get lucky with a secret elevator like at Happy Liberty, either."
Hans frowned, but the man was right. "Get to it. We'll cover you" he said, and Paul nodded. He slung his STG, put himself square in front of the door, and kicked. From the other room Hans could hear the Croakers as they groaned and roared, first in wonder, then in anticipation.
"There, there's one!" Klara said, pointing to the corner at the far right end of the room. An adult Croaker squeezed through an open doorframe and into the room, its tongue darting out at the air. The massive beast began pushing its way past all the pipes and machines in the roam, growling the entire time.
Walter was the first to open fire, his Madsen thundering in the cavernous room. Hans and Klara joined in a moment later, putting round after round onto the abomination. Green blood splattered and poured from the bullet wounds, but it continued to slowly push towards them. Klara emptied both shotgun barrels to the Drilling and switched to the rifle barrel. With a single thunderclap she put the round through the Croaker's neck and it fell to the floor, spasming and groaning as it died.
"Nice shot, but keep your guard up!" Hans yelled as they all reloaded and waited for the next. It didn't take long for another Croaker to squeeze into the room and began crawling towards them, blank eyes fixed on them. The creature pushed its way past its dead spawn and onto one of the walls, its webbed hands leaving a sticky sheen as it went. The team's bullets tore into its fleshy hide, splattering the wall with blood, and it fell to the floor, dead.
"Nice to see they're actually not so hard to kill!" Walter said.
Hans had just finished topping up his G41 when four juvenile Croakers poured into the room and began making their way through the pipework, their smaller size giving them more room to maneuver. Walter opened up with the machine gun, tracking the creatures as they moved through the room. Stray bullets punched through pipes, machines, and cabinets as the team lit the juveniles up, dropping two of them within moments. The third made it halfway to them when a single blast from Klara's Drilling shredded it from tip to toes, leaving just the fourth.
Hans put his sights square on the Croaker, pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. Once again the G41 had jammed, an empty case stuck upright in the action as it tried to feed another round. From experience he knew clearing the jam would take a minute, so he dropped the rifle and drew the Mars Automatic. With the heavy gun in hand Hans tracked the Croaker as it approached, waiting for the right moment to fire. The Croaker leaped into the air right as Klara fired, her buckshot killing nothing but the pipes. The Croaker flew clean over them and landed on the wall, its head turned towards them. Its tongue flashed out at Walter and Klara, and they dove to the floor. The Croaker's tongue hit the control console they'd been crouched by and the machine began to dissolve, audibly hissing as the creature's saliva disintegrated it.
Hans put the sights right on the juvenile's head and fired. At once the Mars practically exploded, a magnificent fireball erupting from the muzzle, the bolt and action ejecting out of the back and bucking his wrist hard. The bullet sheared the Croaker's skull open, blood and gore spilling onto the floor.
Hans looked down at the Mars Automatic, the action locked open, a fresh round lined up with the chamber's opening. He let go of the trigger and the action snapped closed, ready to fire again, and he smiled. "Incredible."
His excitement was short lived as more juvenile Croakers came into the room, followed by an adult. The adult began butting its head against pipes and machines, bending and smashing them to make room, more adults lining up behind it. "Paul!" Hans said, and turned back to face their Final Order babysitter. The Lieutenant took one look at the room and kicked again, harder and harder, the door marred with scuffs and scratches from his boot. He took a step back and rammed his shoulder against the door once, twice, and then it opened.
"GO! COME ON!"
The four of them wasted no time in scrambling through the open door, the Croakers right behind them. Paul slammed the door shut behind them and they all rushed down the stairs into the basement, their feet a blur on the steps. The stairwell ended in another door, this one already open. The four of them reached the open doorway and slowed down, weapons at the ready, and moved into the corridor beyond. The hall was clear, as far as Hans could see, and decently lit. Paul crouched at the base of the stairs, his STG aimed up to cover them if any Croakers figured out how to work a door.
"Jesus..." Walter said, and ran a hand through his hair. "Fucking abominations. Gotta wonder why there are so many of the damned things here."
Hans had to agree. Croakers, in his experience, liked being near water. Seeing as how the power plant was on the shore of the Baltic it made sense that Croakers would congregate near it, but the sheer amount of them in the plant was staggering. A few would've made sense, but there were at least two dozen juveniles in the plant, plus a handful of adults. It didn't make sense, but maybe Hans didn't know as much about Croakers as he thought.
"OK, let's stay focused. Hilda's still here somewhere, alone, maybe low on ammo. Let's-" Hans started, cutting himself off when he reached for his G41 and realized he'd left it in the pipe room. "Christ's sake." He pulled the Mars Automatic from its holster, a small part of his mind telling him it was probably an upgrade, and checked the magazine. "Let's find her, before she becomes frog food."
The others nodded and they set off down the hall, two against each wall: Hans and Walter on the left, Paul and Klara on the right. The basement hallway ended in a dead-end, three doors lining the walls. Two to the right and one on the left, all closed. That was a good sign, as far as Hans was concerned. It meant Hilda'd had the time and the foresight to close the doors behind her as she went, to keep the Croakers at bay.
Hans crouched by the single door on the left side of the hallway and looked it over. There was a faded strip of blue paint on it, along with a slot in the middle. He stuffed the keycard into the slot and the door unlocked. He turned the knob, the valve loosened, and the door slid into the floor. He was about to head into the next room when he saw it was hardly five feet long, ending in another heavy steel door, a red strip of paint on it.
"Guess we see what's behind the other doors" he said, and the four of them moved to the other side of the hall. Paul and Klara disappeared into the door on the right, leaving the other to Hans and his well-armed friend. The door opened without incident and they moved into the room beyond.
The room appeared to a lab, though abandoned. Metal tables, empty chemistry sets, a wheelchair, and random medical tools everywhere he looked. The room was practically a mess, though it looked like it'd been searched at some point. Hans stood, gun at his side, as the two of them poked through all the junk.
"Haven't heard any gunfire down here. The little one must be still alive and just waiting for us behind that locked door" Walter said, but Hans thought about it a moment. The first door had been locked, and the second door was locked. It wasn't likely that Hilda had found both colored keycards in her run from the Croakers, but if she was behind the locked doors then Hans couldn't imagine how. The only explanation he could come up with was that they were already open, and automatically locked when she closed them.
Hans' searching had brought him to a desk, papers and clipboards piled on it. He sifted through the papers, doubting he'd find another massive pre-War pistol in the desk's drawers, and paused. The Peenemunde power plant had been just that, and then at some point had become a museum. Why was there a chemistry lab in the basement anyway? He took a closer look at the papers but didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Tour schedules, internal memos, personal letters, finance info, all the usual boring stuff that accumulated near desks.
"Think I found the keycard," Walter said, and Hans looked up. He was holding a red card, the same size and shape as the blue one, in his hand. Hans nodded and walked over to him, and was about to reach out and grab the card when Walter closed his hand and looked at him. "We need to talk."
"Is now the right time?"
"No. It can wait until after we save Hilda, but what happened back at the Hamburg airport was wrong. Tying up and executing ferals is one thing, but doing that to sane people for no other reason than their skin? Blowing their brains out of their skulls without even a second thought or moment of hesitation, because they suffered something outside of their control? It's a dark path. We're all victims of The Bomb, some of us more than others. Doesn't make it right to kill 'em like dogs, even if you're in a uniform. Especially if you're in a uniform, given our country's history" Walter said.
Hans nodded. "I know. We'll talk more about this later, and I'll talk to Hilda too. Maybe once she learns to read we can put a few history books in her hands. Enlighten her."
"Good thinking."
Walter handed the red keycard to Hans and they headed back to the hall. The door that Paul and Klara had gone through was still open, a winding hallway beyond it. The two men went straight to the locked door and Hans placed the card in the slot, the door sliding open without effort.
The room they emerged in was unlike the rest of the building. Much cleaner, more organized. There was a heavy steel operating table in the center of the room, attached to a rotating arm. The table had been rotated upright, the surface facing away from the door. On steel tables and desks all around were stacks of books, files, and chemistry sets. It all looked clean, maintained. There was a sound through a door across the room. They weren't alone. Hans crouched, both hands on the Mars Automatic, and looked at Walter. "Guard the door," he whispered. "If you don't recognize them, kill them."
Walter nodded.
Hans slowly made his way towards the operating table, keeping his gun at the ready. He eased up to the edge of it and peeked around, surprised to see Hilda strapped to the table's surface. She turned to look at him, a scowl on her face. "Get me out of here" she whispered, and Hans nodded. "There's a guy in a lab coat in the next room, and his assistant's around here too. Kill them."
Hans crouch-walked over to a door on the wall opposite the operating table, to the right of it. He gently eased the door open, a computer room inside. Most of the terminals were busted, the few intact ones turned off. The man in the lab coat was standing in front of one, staring at the screen. He didn't look up, didn't hear Hans as he snuck over to him and drew his knife from its sheath. The man reached for a cup of coffee with his left hand and Hans quickly grabbed it and yanked, pulling the man towards him, and he stuck his blade into the man's throat. He groaned, a strained and desperate sound, as the blood poured into his throat and onto his shirt. Hans dragged him to the floor and he quickly passed out, the blood flow slowing as he died.
Hans stood into a low crouch and quickly looked the terminal over. The man had been typing up some kind of memo or log entry, and Hans left it alone. What ever was on the terminal would have to wait. He holstered the Mars, put the knife in his right hand, and wiped it off. There was no one and nothing else in the room, and he was about to head back to the main lab when he heard Hilda shouting in protest.
"Hey! HEY! What the Hell, stop, you pervert! STOP! NO, STOP! WHAT THE FUCK!?"
Hans briskly walked over to the door, knife gripped in his hand, and yanked the door open. The assistant that Hilda had mentioned was there, standing by the operating table, his back to Hans. He'd undone Hilda's pants and pulled them down to her ankles, leaving her bottom half covered only by her underwear. The man was looking over a clipboard and didn't even look up at the sound of the door behind him opening. "Doctor, I have a question about the V-series. In previous experiments we used a compound comprised of a number of enzymes that I think-"
Hans cut him off by wrapping his arm around his neck and sticking his blade into the man's kidney. The clipboard clattered to the floor and Hans stabbed him again and again, Hilda staring at him the entire time. Hans locked eyes with her and saw a strange look in her gaze that he didn't recognize. He brought the knife up and drove it into the man's back, between his ribs and into one of his lungs. The man's struggling became weaker, his breathing erratic and strained. Hans waited until he went slack before he released him, dumping his body onto the floor. He sheathed his knife and quickly released Hilda, who carefully stepped off the table. "He's dead, right?!"
"They both are" Hans said, and Hilda nodded. She pulled her pants back up, her face red. Though it looked to Hans like she was more angry than embarrassed. She ran a hand through her hair and paced back and forth, breathing deep.
"You know, just ONCE I'd love to wake up in the morning and not have to wonder if today's the day I get raped! I'd love to not live in constant fear of this shit! I'd love to wake up and not have to worry about some sick, twisted FUCKER putting his hands on me and... And..." she trailed off, unable to finish. Her equipment had been left on a table at the other end of the room and she stomped over to it. She snatched up her P38 and walked back over to the assistant's body and shot it twice. "I'd cut your FUCKING BALLS OFF if you were still alive, you SICK BASTARD!" she screamed.
Hans looked up as Walter came running into the room, Madsen in hand. He stopped when he saw that Hans and Hilda were fine and carefully took the scene in. For once in his life he decided not to utter some stupid quip and, for that, Hans was grateful. Now just wasn't the time.
"Are you OK?" Hans asked, and Hilda nodded. She holstered her pistol, her eyes lingering on the assistant's corpse for a few moments before she looked up at Hans, her hands on her hips.
"Thank you" she whispered. "Now, where are the others? How are we getting out of here?"
"Paul and Klara went down another hall, through one of the doors out there. Maybe they found a way out, or maybe there's one hidden in this lab. There's not a damn thing here worth taking, except..." Hans trailed off, and looked around the room. "Maybe all these medical tools will be useful."
He headed over to one of the tables and looked it over. There were a few trays scattered around, various utensils on them. Ophthalmoscopes, forceps, surgical tubing, empty IV packs, a few bottles of Rad-X and some stimpaks, a microscope, some crutches propped up against the wall. Beakers, measuring cups, a hotplate, antibiotics, gauze, Doctor's Bags, the room was absolutely packed with miscellaneous items.
"I sure hope Paul brought a big enough backpack" Hans said as he started picking up some of the loot. It wasn't a major find, like they thought they'd find at Peenemunde, but it had to count for something. Hans opened up one of his empty bags and started shoveling the utensils in, leaving the medicines for Walter to scoop up.
With his sack filled Hans took another look around the room, and he remembered the terminal in the doctor's room. He stepped back into the room, the doctor's body quietly cooling on the floor, and Hans sat in the chair before the terminal. Hilda came in a moment later, Erma in hand. She joined Hans at his side, her shoes in the pool of blood. "What the Hell was that guy talking about, anyway? Enzymes?"
Hans looked the terminal entries over, a dozen logs going back three months. He chewed his lip as he read a few of them over, the horror slowly dawning on him as he went through them all. The final one wasn't finished, since Hans had killed the guy typing it up, but it was just more of the same. "Well, if it makes you feel better, that guy wasn't undressing you so he could rape you."
Hilda scoffed. "Why else would a guy tie up a girl and start taking her clothes off?" she asked, and Hans turned around in the chair and looked up at her.
"They were going to feed you to the Croakers."
"Oh..." Hilda said, surprised. "What the Hell for?!"
Hans glanced at the terminal entry. "Well, actually, they were going to inject you with some hormone enzyme and then feed you to a Croaker. These logs go back a while; these guys were experimenting with the Croakers, playing around with chemicals to see if they could get the Croakers back down to a normal size, or at least to a size that would make them harmless to people."
"They wanted to make Croakers harmless to people by feeding them people? Idiots."
Hans nodded and stood. "Guess it's better than them trying to make more Croakers or train them to follow commands or God knows what else" he said. "Let's get out of here. This whole place was a waste of our time."
The two of them headed back out to the main lab room, where Walter was waiting for them. The tables in the room had been cleared of all the valuable medical salvage, so at least they were going to leave with something to show for it. The three of them left the room and stepped back into the hallway, Paul and Klara standing by the third door. "Did you find a way out?" Hans asked, and Paul and Klara shared a look.
"We did..." Klara said. "The hall kind of winds around, with twists and turns, into a pump room. There were some water tanks, for drinking as well as plumbing... The tanks were broken open, and filled with Croaker eggs, but there was a hatch in the wall. It led into a drainage tunnel."
"Filled with Croakers, no doubt. Fucking Hell" Walter said.
"Juveniles, probably, so they won't have any trouble moving around in there. It's our best chance out of here, though. Did you find anything useful?" Paul asked, and Hans nodded. He showed him the haul of medical tools and supplies, and Paul smiled. "I'm glad to see Fraulein Muller looks no worse for wear, as well."
Hans looked at Hilda, who stared back at him. There was something there, in her eyes, that told him to just go along with it, and he nodded. "Found her holed up in the room at the end of the hall" he lied. "She found the red keycard there, and all this stuff we looted was in the locked room. It all worked out."
"There was nothing else? No military tech, or salvage?" Paul asked, and Hans shook his head. "Ah well. Guess we can't complain. Come on, let's go." The team headed into the winding hall, eager to leave Peenemunde behind.
A/N: a reader left a comment telling me about a game called Contamination Europe, one of those tabletop RPGs that you roll a die for and everything. I checked it out and it looks cool; they have a soundtrack for the game on Youtube and it's very good! Very atmospheric and dark. The music and sounds perfectly fit the image in my head when I think of Europe in Fallout. I recommend you take a look!