How Our Legacies Shape Us
The kid ducked and nearly dropped his gun as every window in the gymnasium imploded, sending a shower of glass to the scuffed hardwood floor below. The windows were high up, designed to catch the sun, and through each one came an armored soldier on ropes anchored to the roof. They held their guns to their shoulders with their right hands, using their left hands to ride down the ropes. The kid saw them and immediately dropped his gun, raising his hands. His followers mostly did the same, except for a few who went for their guns and were shot down.
The men hit the floor and quickly surrounded the group. Their guns were a mix of ballistic and energy, and they were all clad in the dark blue uniform of the EAA. Hans was certainly glad to be alive, but their arrival and timing were no coincidence. Their squad leader approached Hans, a PG-60 plazmagewehr in his hands. "Herr Eckhart, good to see you're alright."
"Yeah thanks. At least when I die and go to Hell I can take comfort in the fact I wasn't bumped off by a twerp whose balls haven't even dropped," Hans said.
"Screw you, man!" the teen exclaimed.
The squad leader looked around the room. "What the Hell is all this, anyway? A cult?"
"Yeah they worship BMW, a damn pre-war car manufacturer, if you can believe it."
"Not the weirdest thing I've ever seen," the squad leader said. He turned to his team and made a circular gesture with his finger. "Round 'em up!"
His team disarmed the discount parishioners and herded them in a group by the wall. They remained there, concerned and annoyed. Hans glanced at the teen and smiled to himself; the kid looked completely lost. He turned to face the kid and folded his arms over his chest. "Not how you imagined your day going, huh? Guess you'll have to go back to that farm-"
"Smoke 'em!"
Hans whipped around and watched as the soldiers gunned down the parishioners, bullets and lasers flashing into their bodies. Smoke rose into the air from the muzzles of their guns, leaving a thin haze in the air. Screams and the clattering of empty cases filled the room, followed by the heavy odor of blood and ozone. The parishioners all fell in a heap, the survivors groaning in pain. The soldiers finished them off, the sole shots oddly quiet after the deafening fusillade.
"Jesus Christ!" Hans said, looking at the squad leader. "What the Hell did you order them to do that for?!"
"They're bootleg marauders. A week from now they'd have been robbing the caravans at gun point. Nothing of value lost here."
"My God..." the teen said, his face very pale. "Wh... But." He was too stunned to say anything, his hands trembling. He turned and booked it for the door, nearly tripping over himself. The squad leader turned and fired his PG-60, sending blue orbs of plasma into the kid's back. His whole body flashed blue and then suddenly all that was left of him was a pile of blue goo, steam drifting off it. Hans remembered the last time he'd seen that happen, when his friend Klara suffered the same fate outside the Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden. Like her, the kid hadn't even made a sound.
"And that's a wrap," the squad leader said.
Hans took the boat back to Die Banke while the soldiers remained behind to secure the school and establish it as a base. He walked straight to Colonel Hoffmann's office to make his report, though as expected the Colonel was dismissive of Hans' concerns.
"You've killed unarmed people before, Herr Eckhart. Executed them yourself or stood by and watched. Stuff like this should be of no surprise to you," Hoffmann said.
"Alright, it's time for you to fess up. How do you know so much about me?" Hans asked.
"Don't you remember? I told you I served in the Final Order."
"Yeah, give me the full story this time, asshole."
Hoffmann smiled. "I was part of Erich Braun's team."
"Bullshit."
"Is it really so hard to believe? We never took our helmets off, and we rarely spoke. How are Irmina and Oskar, by the way? I didn't get the full details of your mission to kill Queen Ilse."
Hans sighed. "They're fine. Or at least they were when I left."
"Getting back on subject, I worked closely with Erich when he was in the Order. When he wasn't assigned to your team, that is. This time last year I was in Austria, helping the Osterreichisches Frei Republik get on their feet. They'd just wrapped up the Austrian Civil War against the Neue Osterreichisches Reich. It was Heidi and I there, if he ever mentioned us."
Hans had to think about it for a moment. "Not by name, no. But I do recall him mentioning something about two Panzertroopers being in Austria on other business. If you're a member of his team then why aren't you back in the city proper, helping him? He works for me and the U-Bahn stations now."
"Yes, I know. And the answer is I did," Hoffmann said. "When Heidi and I were done in Austria we returned to Berlin and reported to Erich. This was about ten months ago, a few months after you disappeared, according to Herr Braun and Herr March. He ordered me to investigate the fast-growing Euro-American Alliance, find out what they're all about. Turns out we have mutual goals."
"I see," Hans said. "Now answer me this: what happened at the school was no coincidence, so what gives? You've got a team following me?"
Hoffmann's smile faded. "I do. After you left the first time I ordered our resident American Panzertroopers to shadow you, in case the NDM took notice. They did, and intervened. When you agreed to take on the school mission, I assigned another team to the same mission. To supervise and intervene, if necessary. Good job I did, eh?"
"So why me? What makes me so damn important?"
"Our shared past isn't enough to invoke a sense of camaraderie in me?" Hoffmann said with a grin. "No, the truth is you're valuable for more practical reasons. You're a cut above the usual man, Herr Eckhart. Intelligent, perceptive, and tenacious. It takes a lot to break you. When Walter died, you kept going. When Projekt Natursturm failed and the Order was destroyed, you went home and went back to work on the U-Bahn network. When Queen Ilse came knocking and killed your wife, you got your revenge. Nothing anyone does can take you out of the fight; only you decide when it's time to hang it up. I'm just lucky that you just happened to be living a mile away from this base."
Hans rubbed his hands down his face. "Some luck," he said. "Tried to walk away from it all and it still found me."
Hoffmann leaned forward. "For what it's worth, I do sympathize with you. I know what it's like to lose it all, despite all your best efforts. I'm a veteran of the Resource Wars. I was in Riyadh when the Saudis blew up their oil fields. It's a crushing, infuriating feeling, to put in all that effort and yet be so helpless in the end. My original offer still stands. You can walk away any time and you'll never be bothered by us again, but the stakes are different this time, Herr Eckhart. We're fighting an enemy that threatens to shift the entire balance of power in Europe. To change our part of the world in such a way not seen since Der Atomkrieg. We're talking imperialism, enslavement, wars of conquest, and whatever the Hell Convergence is."
"You mean you don't know?" Hans asked.
"No," Hoffmann said. "We get very little information from the NDM. Sure, they have bases and settlements and all that, but they're not exactly clear on what Convergence means. They've got a radio station, near the Berlin center, and they broadcast their message from there. That's a problem for a different time, however. The higher-ups have decided that for the time being letting them broadcast their message is beneficial for us. Helps us learn more about them."
"Do you know anything about them at all?"
Hoffmann shook his head. "Not much. As their name implies they've got a Kaiser or Kaiserin of some kind, but we don't know how their military is structured, what their logistics are like, or what the state of their settlements is. What we do know is that they're organized and motivated, and possess some above-average firepower."
"I see," Hans said. He still wasn't sure how much he believed of what Hoffmann told him or even if he trusted him, but if what he was saying was true then it stood to reason that the NDM was worth standing up to. If it was all true, of course. "Here's the part where the other shoe drops: what does the Alliance want from Germany? And Europe at large, considering the name."
"Freedom, peace, and democracy. Of course, that's the tagline they told me to use. The truth is more complicated, of course. Nothing is as simple as just walking into a settlement, offering them hydroponic equipment, and then suddenly they're onboard with your movement. It's been twenty years since Der Atomkrieg; an entire generation has come up in the ruins of the world that came before them. They don't know what peace means, or freedom. They're not familiar with political concepts like democracy or monarchies. All they know is 'don't eat that', 'don't go near that building', and 'don't drink water before boiling it'. They spend all day looking for their next meal, their next place to sleep, and avoiding the malignant trash that pollutes our streets. When every day is spent surviving, little time is spent on esoteric subjects like politics, math, and civilization."
"You didn't answer the question: what does the Euro-American Alliance want? Have you even met any of these higher-ups? You said they're all Americans who were stranded here when The Bomb came. Where exactly did they come from? Do you even know?
Hoffmann sighed and leaned back in his chair. "No."
Hans laughed. "I see," he said. He drummed his fingers against the surface of Hoffmann's desk for a moment, thinking. Somehow he found his thoughts wandering to that of Helga and the children's drawings in the school. An entire generation has come up in the ruins of the world that came before them, he thought, playing back what Hoffmann had said to him. After the Order, the failure of Projekt Natursturm, and Queen Ilse, he'd given up on higher ideals. But he'd resolved to himself the night before that the future was worth fighting for. Whatever that future actually looked like.
"I'm still onboard, at least for now. So what's next?" Hans said.
Hoffmann nodded, and looked at his notes and maps. He sifted through them, eyes scanning the pages. He was about to speak when there was a knock at the door. "Enter," he called, and the door opened. In walked a woman carrying a sheet of paper. She showed it to him, and he spent a minute reading it. "Alright, uh... Send a KKG, they can handle something like that." The woman nodded and left, and Hans was about to say something when Hoffmann's face brightened. "Here we are. Here, take a look."
Hans stood and looked at what Hoffmann was showing him. It was a map of Berlin, with a bridge circled. "This is the Lange Brucke, over the river Dahme. A key crossing. Next to it here, at this intersection, is the Kopenick Hotel. The NDM are using it as a logistics hub, to move ammunition and other supplies to their other bases and settlements in Berlin. We want that hotel. It's a major junction for both road and river traffic. Controlling it would give us a big leg up in the area."
"You want me to take that alone?" Hans asked. "If you wanted me dead you should've just let those NDM guys kill me in my cabin."
Hoffmann smiled. "You won't be going alone. I've got a team ready to go, and the base at Tempelhofer Feld have dispatched another squad to the hotel as well. They're going to sneak in the hotel from a side street, Rudower Strasse, while my team sneaks across the river from Schlossinsel. The two teams will then move through the hotel and eliminate the NDM presence inside. My team leaves tonight via electric motor boat, traveling along the Muggelspree to a park on the shore. Park am Katzengraben. From there they will walk to Schlossinsel and then swim the river to the hotel. You will be on that team, if you so desire."
"Do you know how many soldiers the NDM has there? Their weapons? Defenses?" Hans asked.
"No," Hoffmann said. "You'll be going in blind, but you'll be going in at night and will have the element of surprise. It's the best we can do."
Hans looked at the map for a minute. The hotel was a U-shape with square edges, facing the river. There were piers outside the hotel, for boaters to use before the war. Clipped to the map was a pre-war postcard showing the hotel from the water. A ritzy place, now undoubtedly fallen to ruin and decay. Still, what Hoffmann had said was true: it was in a key junction. Controlling it meant controlling that entire area.
"I'm in."