At the Edge of the World
Hans barely had time to move before the panzertroopers thundered down the hill towards the chalet, their heavy steel boots slamming into the dirt as they went. The others followed in their wake, weapons at the ready as they rushed the chalet. Hans reached a low stone wall and crouched, watching the windows.
The panzertroopers weren't waiting. The two of them smashed through the back door of the chalet and rushed inside, plasmagewehrs thundering. Bright flashes of blue danced in the rooms beyond the windows, the whine of the energy guns at odds with the deep crack of the ballistic guns. An errant yellow laser flashed through one of the windows, melting the glass around the entry point.
Hilda scurried around the wall, MP5 at the ready, and moved into the room. Hans and Klara followed quick behind, pausing only briefly to stare in awe at the carnage. It had once been a sitting room, judging by the leather chairs and bookcases, but in just a matter of seconds the panzertroopers had laid waste to it. Half a dozen Coalition soldiers lied dead on the floor, body parts missing or melted off.
"We need to get some people outside, to protect the Natursturm device!" Chancellor Dietrich yelled. He was holding a 9mm USP tightly, in cover behind an end table. Kommandant Wolfgang looked at him and nodded.
"Lieutenant March, with me! We're going to round up some men!" the Kommandant said, and the two of them took off into a side hall with Dietrich in tow, leaving Hans alone with the girls. They were looking at him, the anguish caused by the uselessness of the Natursturm device still visible in their expressions.
"Come with me!" Hans said, and the three of them rushed to a nearby door. On the other side, through a short hallway, was the kitchen. They took cover behind the counters as the battle reached the dining room beyond, the stone walls cast in harsh lights from the laser and plasma guns. Hans rested the G11 on a stove and opened fire on a group of Coalition soldiers crouched by an overturned table, the rounds punching through the heavy oak with ease. A yellow laser bolt flashed overhead from the left, forcing Hans to duck. He watched Hilda scurry around a corner, her MP5 chattering. Behind him Klara returned fire with the M30, the thunderclap drowning out the other guns.
Hans reloaded and rose just in time to see Erich Braun step into the room. He hefted a heavy energie-maschinengewehr and opened fire, hosing the Coalition soldiers down in a storm of blue plasma. The high whine of the energy gun was transformed into a hammering drumbeat by the room's stone walls, Erich cast in an eerie cobalt glow by the flash of his gun. The plasma bolts tore flaming chunks out of the tables and chairs, ripping great holes in the bodies of the enemy soldiers. Hans watched in awe as the panzertrooper lumbered through the room, annihilating the enemy. A Coalition soldier threw a grenade, which detonated in the far side of the room, blowing out the windows and showering the panzertrooper in harmless shrapnel.
A door behind Erich opened and a squad of Coalition soldiers rushed into the room, peppering him with automatic fire. The armored soldier turned and swung his EMG, striking one in the head with a stomach-churning crunch as she tried to run past him. Hans had a perfect shot on the enemy but held his fire, afraid of hitting the panzertrooper.
The other soldier apparently had no such qualms. That, or he couldn't see Hans, for he opened fire on a Coalition soldier crouching behind a table. Hans watched in horror as the EMG briefly spun up and then discharged, the brilliant blue orbs flashing towards both him and the Coalition soldier. Hans ducked behind the oven as the plasma bolts slammed into it, causing the appliance to start glowing. Erich ceased firing and Hans rose back into his crouch, weapon at the ready. The few Coalition soldiers still alive took cover to the panzertrooper's left, firing on him with a mix of their own laser and plasma weapons.
Hans watched Erich draw a metal tube from a holster on his left side, effortlessly hoisting the EMG with just his right hand as he turned. He lifted the tube into the air and, with a heavy flick towards the ground, an axe blade ignited at the end. The panzertrooper swung the proton axe, the blade lashing through a table as if it was air, emitting a cracking noise. A Coalition soldier behind the table scrambled back and fired on the panzertrooper without effect, his weapon silenced by a storm of plasma. The panzertrooper lumbered out of the now clear dining hall, seeking the next battle. Klara was still crouched by the refrigerator, reloading. "Hilda!"
There was no response.
Hans licked his lips and stood, taking in the dining room. The heavy stench of ozone hung in the air, tinged with sulfur. The dining room had been absolutely trashed, strewn with bodies and debris. He and Klara rushed out into the room, looking through the corpses for Hilda. Another grenade went off somewhere in the chalet, shaking the ceiling lights and rattling the debris. There was no sign of Hilda anywhere in the dining room.
"If there's no body, then nobody's dead!" Hans said, and Klara nodded. The two of them crouch-walked into the hall outside the dining room, the sound of the battle raging somewhere ahead and to the right, where the lounge they'd first entered was. The two of them eased up to the open door and peeked in, judging it to be safe. Hans took cover behind an armchair and looked the room over. He saw Paul and Kommandant Wolfgang crouched behind a table singed by laser fire. Paul saw him and waved, and Hans waved back.
Hans was about to move over to their position when he saw a group of Coalition soldiers outside, on the sun terrace, running towards the back of the chalet. What was odd was that it didn't look like they were trying to flank the Final Order or get behind them. It seemed like they were just running straight for the Natursturm device.
Joke's on them Hans thought bitterly.
"I lost track of the Chancellor and Director Jaeger!" Wolfgang yelled.
"Hilda's missing, too!" Hans yelled back. "Let's press on!"
The four of them left the great hall and made their way to the adjacent room, a library. The Coalition was faring a little better there, with a more established foothold in the room. There were metal crates on carts strewn about the room, likely filled with pre-War books, providing excellent cover. Hans scurried behind one and opened fire on the enemy, ducking to avoid their counterfire. Klara's shotgun thundered once, twice, and then she ducked to reload.
Hans leaned out from around the crate and continued firing, the G11 humming steadily as the action cycled. He ducked back in to cover to reload and realized he was on his last magazine. He rocked it into the rifle and was about to pop up to return fire when a plasma grenade landed on the ground next to him. He quickly snatched it up and flung it back towards the enemy. A thundering *twaaang* filled the chalet as the grenade detonated, the sound hitting Hans so hard he felt disoriented. Residual heat from the plasma washed over him, making him break out in sweat. The few books not instantly atomized were flung to the ground, their edges scorched and glowing blue.
Fuck... Fucking Hell...
Hans licked his lips, tightened his grip on his rifle, and leaned back out to continue the fight. A traditional grenade went off in a nearby room, shaking the walls and the chandeliers and his bones. He peered through the G11's scope, the world beyond the hall wrapped in that gray haze Hans was so accustomed to seeing during combat, and saw nothing.
Commander Wolfgang rose into a crouch and moved up, MP40 in hand, and a laser bolt speared him through the chest and out through his upper spine. He crumpled to the floor without a sound, dead. Hans swore and peeked over the top of the crates, seeing a few Coalition soldiers alive on the other side of the dissipating blue cloud. He switched the G11 to semi-auto and carefully placed his shots into the enemy's positions, killing one and forcing the others to scatter.
"Paul!" Hans yelled, and there was no response. He could see Klara ahead of him, behind a wood barrel. She looked at him. "Do you see Paul?!"
Klara shook her head.
Hans decided that rushing through the remnants of the plasma grenade's detonation and chasing the Coalition down was a bad idea, so he decided to double back into the great hall. Klara followed him, keeping an eye on the door to the library. There was no way to tell exactly how the battle was progressing, though it sounded to Hans like the gaps between gunfire were getting longer. A sure sign that the amount of people capable of firing a gun was dropping.
The chalet began to shake and Hans could hear a vertibird hovering outside, towards the rear of the building. He and Klara moved through the great hall and back to the kitchen, where the back door was. Outside he could see a squad of Coalition soldiers up the hill, assembled around the Natursturm device. The vertibird was hovering over them. Hans crouched by a window, watching, and was surprised to see Friedrich Ademar jump out of the vertibird. The helicopter banked away from the Eagle's Nest and was about to fly off when a burst of plasma bolts and two micro-missiles hit it, tearing apart one of the wings. The aircraft pitched to the left and dropped from sight, a distant boom rising up a few seconds later.
Hans and Klara took the opportunity to rush outside, keeping low. There was a patio outside the back door of the kitchen, a low stone wall surrounding it. Hans deployed his rifle on the wall and opened fire, dumping his magazine into the Coalition soldiers until it was empty. He dropped the rifle, drew the Mars Automatic, and rushed up the hill. A few of his bullets had hit the GECK, smashing it to pieces. He blew out a quick sigh, reminding himself the thing didn't even work. The bodies of the Coalition soldiers all lied on the ground around the blood-splattered Natursturm machine, one still moving. Hans finished her off with a single shot from the Mars.
Hans was about to say something to Klara when he heard someone running up behind them, and he spun, gun raised, surprised to see it was Chancellor Dietrich. The man didn't seem to notice, didn't seem to care, his eyes fixed on the GECK and the Natursturm device. He saw the Coalition soldiers on the ground next to it and his brow furrowed. "Damned fools!" he yelled. "They can't understand the work we're doing here! We were going to SAVE GERMANY!"
An explosion from the chalet cut him off, and he ducked and turned back towards the ancient house. He was slowly standing up when he was hit in the back by a plasma bolt and dropped, tumbling down the hill. Hans turned towards the Natursturm device, raising his Mars, and saw Friedrich Ademar crouched by the end of the machine. He fired again, but not at him. Instead his second shot flashed through the air towards Klara, hitting her in the right side of her armor. The plasma bolt reacted with the metal and Hans watched as Klara dissolved before his widened eyes. Time seemed to slow, his eyes feeding the sight to his brain in pieces. The M30 dropped from her hands as they vanished, clattering to the ground. Her eyes bulged and she opened her mouth to say something, or scream, but it never came out. Her clothes, her armor, her skin and her flesh, it was all rendered into this glob of amorphous green goo that dropped to the ground with a thick and wet smack.
Hans' perception of time returned to normal and he ducked behind the Natursturm device just as Ademar fired again, his plasma bolt hitting the side of the machine. Hans swallowed the lump in his throat, his mouth dry and heart hammering in his chest. Ademar fired again and again, his shots errant and shaky.
"Oh, Jesus! Hans! Hans Eckhart?!" Ademar yelled, and Hans gritted his teeth. "I didn't even realize it was Klara until after I'd pulled the trigger! What are you doing here, with these damned Nazis!"
"They're not Nazis, you fucking narrow-minded idiot!" Hans shot back. "Do you have any idea what we've been through since we left Berlin?! It was all going so well, and now it's all falling apart! Walter's dead, Klara's dead, Hilda and Paul are probably dead! Everything we've ever worked for has been for nothing because this piece of shit doesn't even work!"
"You're lying, Herr Eckhart! The Natursturm device does work! It would not have been made otherwise. Firms like IG Farben and Porsche would not have put so many resources, so much research, in to it if it did not work! That's why files about it were locked away in the basement of the Deutsches Historische Museum in Berlin; the museum was going to receive the prototype, put it on display! The Great War could've been avoided, had our ancestors only had the patience to see Natursturm through to the end!" Ademar said.
"You weren't here! You didn't see how God-awful slow the damn thing is when it clones something. Worse, the GECK the Order was going to use to purify the cloned food was fucking irradiated! The whole thing is a farce!"
"I don't believe you, Herr Eckhart. I wouldn't believe a word these Nazis would say to me, and it saddens me so deeply that you have fallen in with their ranks! What happened to you, Herr Eckhart?" Ademar called. "What happened to serving the people of Germany, protecting them, so that we might live to see a better tomorrow?!"
"That's what I was doing! That's what we were all doing, and it turned out to be a waste of our Goddamned time!"
Hans leaned out from behind the Natursturm device and fired, the Mars Automatic recoiling violently. The bullet hit the conveyor belt, punching through and pinging off metal. Ademar returned fire, his pistol spewing scorching hot orbs of plasma at him. Hans ducked and fired again, forcing Ademar to duck. At the top of the hill the Natursturm device was the only cover, forcing the two men to keep close to it as they fired at each other.
Hans ducked behind the machine to reload when he heard Ademar approaching him, the bushes by the Natursturm device rustling. The former councilor of the DHM U-Bahn station rounded the edge of the machine, raising his pistol, and Hans rushed him. He grabbed Ademar's arm by the wrists, pushing the weapon away. Hans pointed his Mars up when Ademar did the same thing, the two men locked in place. Hans headbutted Ademar, stunning him, and yanked on the man's arm. Ademar stumbled forward, releasing his hold on Hans' wrist, and Hans struck him in the side of the head with the grip of the heavy handgun.
Hans let go of Ademar and he fell to the ground, rolling onto his back. Hans barely dodged the shot from his plasma pistol, the sizzling orb flashing by his head, and he fired reflexively. He extended his arm, the barrel pointed straight at Ademar, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, and Hans swore, remembering he hadn't finished reloading. Ademar took the opportunity to scramble away, back behind the other end of the machine.
The Mars Automatic bobbed in his hand as Hans finished reloading, the bolt dropping back into battery with a pull of its cocking ears. Hans kept the Mars up as he edged closer to the corner of the machine, ready to fire. Ademar fired first, plasma bolts flying overhead. One hit one of the jet engines recovered from the BMW museum and it burst into flames, pieces of metal falling onto the conveyor belt. Hans quickly ducked towards the other corner, gun at the ready, and fired. His shot hit Ademar in the hip, eliciting a cry of surprise from the other man and forcing him to scurry around the corner. Hans stood, ready to finish him, when Ademar fired again, hitting the machine.
"We don't have to fight, Herr Eckhart!" Ademar shouted. "We can work together, to save Germany! We both want the same thing, and Natursturm still has merit! It's still worth pursuing!"
"Not the way you want to do it, you old bastard. Permitting abominations like ghouls to exist, when they exist solely because of The Bomb and what it did to our country? No thanks" Hans said.
"We're both old enough that we remember that Germany was filled with monsters before The Bomb, Herr Eckhart!"
Can't argue with that Hans thought, thinking back to what he'd learned at BMW and Installation 14. "Projekt Natursturm was going to put an end to all of that! It was going to satisfy all our needs and desires, and there wouldn't be greed or avarice any longer. The sins of the old world would never be repeated!"
"Surely you aren't that naïve!"
Hans leaned out and fired again, sending two rounds over the conveyor belt of the Natursturm device. Ademar returned fire, the orbs flashing just over Hans' head, and he scrambled down the side of the machine. He paused halfway down, stopping next to the smashed remains of the GECK, and stood. As he expected, Ademar was still crouched at the very end of the machine, where the conveyor belt ended. Hans fired down at the corner of the machine, tricking Ademar in to thinking Hans was still at the other end and forcing him to pull back. Ademar turned and approached the other end of the conveyor belt, unwittingly exposing himself. Hans placed his sights on Friedrich Ademar's back and fired, the rounds punching through the man's right shoulder. He fell to the ground, dropping his gun, and Hans walked around, keeping his gun ready.
Ademar rolled on to his back with a wince, his teeth gritted, and looked up at Hans. His left hand groped through the grass for his gun, still defiant. Hans put his foot on Ademar's wrist and picked the gun up, looking it over. A Glock 86 Plasma Defender. He set it down on the still Natursturm device and looked down at Ademar. He trained his gun on the former councilor and hesitated, unsure of what he was doing.
A future built on a foundation of corpses...
"It... It was all for a better Germany. A better tomorrow! When we left Berlin, it was for nothing more than to find an answer to why the U-Bahn stations were vanishing. What we learned in Hamburg changed our lives, just as we were going to change Germany" Hans said. "I put every fiber of my being into the service of Projekt Natursturm, and now you and your do-gooding horseshit has destroyed all of it! The machine, slow as it was, still worked! Finding another GECK would've been a challenge, but not impossible. Now we have NOTHING, and GERMANY STILL SUFFERS."
"You and the Order wanted to build our future by reenacting our past. Is no cost too great?!" Ademar yelled back, and once again Hans couldn't help but recall when Walter had said the same thing to him. There, on the gently lapping shores of the Baltic, where everything had changed.
"No. No cost is too great in pursuit of building a better world! I've lost everything chasing a dream that DOESN'T WORK. Every place we went, every thing we did, took something from me. A little piece, each time. From some it took everything, including their lives! But you want to know something?" Hans asked. "If doing it all again would make the Natursturm device work, would make the GECK clean, then I wouldn't hesitate in the slightest!"
Friedrich Ademar chuckled mirthlessly and looked Hans straight in the eye. "Doing it all again would get you right where you are now. Nothing would change, and do you want to know why, Herr Eckhart?" Ademar strained to lean up, teeth gritted and face pale, but his gaze piercing and strong. "Because man never changes."
Is this who we're going to become?
Hans remained silent, his gun still trained on Ademar's face. They'd been promised the chance of a lifetime; the chance to change the world, and a chance to put an end to the nightmare their world had become. Unlimited food, unlimited fuel. An opportunity to make the world whole again, squandered. Even if he killed Friedrich, nothing would change; the GECK would still be irradiated and destroyed, and the Natursturm device would still be uselessly slow.
Nothing would change...
After a moment Hans sighed and lowered the Mars Automatic.