On the Air

They spent the rest of that day and the entire following day recovering mentally and physically from what they'd encountered in the Muggelheim U-Bahn tunnels before making the long drive into the Berlin city center, following the map until they were a couple blocks from Wuhlischstrasse. From the alley where Paul parked the Kettenkrad they could see the radio tower on top of the target building, the dishes mounted to the spire pointing to all four corners of Berlin.

They were on a rooftop a block away, scoping out the building. It was a narrow seven-story structure wedged between some apartment blocks, the exterior done up in an Art Deco façade. There was a single guard outside, leaning against the wall by the door and smoking a cigarette. He looked twice as bored as he probably felt.

"I've been meaning to ask," Hans said. "What do you know about these people? The NDM, I mean."

"Just what I've heard via their broadcasts and some of what the Alliance has told me," Paul said. "They're monarchists led by an unknown Kaiser and are very aggressive. They attacked the U-Bahn stations on sight. Friedrichsstrasse held them off, but Oranienburger Station and Schwartzkopffstrasse Station were destroyed. The stations at Richard Wagner Platz and Mierendorffplatz also went dark. I never sent anyone to find out what happened to them."

"When did this happen?"

Paul thought about it for a moment. "About eight months ago. The surviving stations had to seal the tunnels that led to stations the NDM destroyed or took over, otherwise they'd have come down the tracks. Besides expanding and knocking over stations they've been proselytizing pretty hard over the radio waves. Preaching the benefits of monarchism as well as their Convergence thing, whatever that's about."

"No one seems to know," Hans said. "And if they're being secretive about it then I don't think I want to know."

"Yeah, you're telling me," Paul said. They spent a few more minutes watching the front door and then pulled back from the rooftop. "You're the one who always comes up with the plan, so what'd you come up with?"

"Well," Hans said, "if we had a bigger team I'd suggest going into one of the adjacent apartments and blasting a hole in the wall. Since that's not an option then I'd say to get on the roof via one of the apartments and attack from above, but there are no doors on the radio station's roof."

"There might be a hatch."

"There might," Hans conceded, "or there might not. Maybes get people killed, so we're picking the front door."

Paul smiled. "I think you like doing this more than you realize."

"As if," Hans said. "Maybe if I had one of those American Panzertrooper suits."

The two of them descended from the roof and snuck through the nearby alley, stopping at the edge. The guard outside the station continued to lazily patrol around the front door. It was clear that they didn't see much action around the station. The guard had an MP40 slung around his neck, leaving the gun level next to his ribs. Hans waited until the man turned around before leaning out of the alley and putting a single 8mm Mauser round through his head. The suppressed shot echoed off the walls of the buildings, drowning out the sound of the man's body hitting the pavement.

Hans and Paul waited a minute for any sign of response from the station before quickly scurrying across the street to the front door. The sun was coming up, casting the sky in an indigo color and giving them the perfect mix of light to see by and darkness to sneak through. They stood outside the door, nodded to each other, and then Hans turned the knob.

He slid into the radio station's lobby and swept the room, quickly taking it in. It was clear, with no additional guards or soldiers waiting for him. The room was T-shaped, with the wide head comprising the bulk of the lobby. To the right, facing the door at an angle, was the reception desk. To the left was a faded and torn leather couch. Ahead was a straight hall, two elevators on either side facing each other and a spiral staircase ascending to the second floor.

Hans moved deeper into the room and Paul followed, locking the door behind them. He slowly approached the stairs with Paul at his back, watching the elevators in case someone decided to use them. A quick check confirmed they were not working, leaving them free to ascend to the second floor together. Hans peeked up the staircase and saw it rose all the way to the top of the building.

The two of them reached the second floor and crept down the single long hallway. The floor was home to four offices, two to a side, each empty of soldiers. They searched the rooms together, looking for anything of value to take. For Hans that meant rare salvage that could be sold for profit; for Paul that meant anything not nailed to the floor.

"I forgot how much of a packrat you are," Hans said good-naturedly. Paul just grinned at him as he shoveled whole desks' worth of items into his empty packs. Picture frames, knick-knacks, watches, coffee cups, pencils, clipboards, even the folders. He spared nothing.

With the second floor clear (of both men and materials) the two of them proceeded up to the third. It was similarly devoid of NDM troops, though there was plenty for Paul to loot. While he vacuumed up everything that wasn't permanently installed Hans took a moment to check the desks for anything important. One of the offices had a RobCo terminal still powered up via fusion battery, and Hans sat down to take a look. Mounted to the wall next to the terminal was a safe, sealed shut.

"Damn, it's locked," he whispered. He stared at the screen for a moment, trying to remember how to hack one. After a moment he remembered how to enter the computer's recovery mode and typed in the commands.

'set terminal/inquire'

'enter'

'set file/protection=owner:rwed accounts.f.'

'set halt restart/maint'

A moment later the screen flashed and then spit out the usual screen of words amidst garbled lines of garbage. Hans stared at the screen, scanning among the lines of trash for the words. "Seven letters," he said as Paul came into the room. "Shouldn't be a challenge."

He tried one at random, 'zincify', and it came back as 1/7 correct. He tried another, 'vaccine', and it came back as 2/7 correct. Paul stood behind him, looking over his shoulder. "Two of seven... They share a C and an I. Try 'special'."

Hans selected the option and the terminal gave him access, displaying the home page with the user's messages, calendar, memos, and the safe control. "Good thinking," Hans said. "Let's see what Frau Heidi Heisenberg was hiding."

The messages and memos were a mix of mundane and morbid, between discussing inter-office drama and reminding herself to buy a new urn for her uncle's ashes Frau Heisenberg's office life was like any other: dull. Hans skimmed through all of it and then selected the option to open the safe, listening as the lock released. He turned the handle and opened the door. Inside were the usual suspects: some pre-war Deutschmarks, some files, and a woman's silver watch. There was a bauble inside, however, which Hans removed. It was a horse statuette, like the one his late wife had owned. Hers had been of a gray pony with a brown mane, a tattoo of a computer on its flank. The one in his hands was of a dark-gray pony with a blue mane, a tattoo of a record on her flank. The inscription on the base read 'Honesty.' Hans slid it into his pack.

"You're keeping that?" Paul asked.

"Hilda had one, and I've seen others. I think they're part of a set."

There was nothing else of value in the safe, so the two of them moved on. They proceeded up to the fourth floor, which had a large conference room to the left and two bathrooms to the right. Hans and Paul were about to clear the conference room when a man emerged from one of the bathrooms. Hans aimed and fired, sending the bullet straight through the man's upper chest and out through his spine. In the enclosed space the suppressed FG42 was almost as loud as an unsuppressed gun, causing a flurry of activity on the floors above.

"What the hell was that?" a man on the fifth floor yelled. "Friedrich, you OK down there? You didn't blow up the toilet, did you?!"

Abandoning stealth Hans and Paul rushed up the stairs, deciding shock and awe would serve them better. They emerged at the top of the steps, surprised to see that the fifth floor was one big room. A lounge or breakroom, from the look of it. The room was host to five NDM soldiers; two by the water cooler to the left, two in chairs beside a window overlooking the street, and a sole woman to the right. They looked at the interlopers, shock rooting them in place for just a second too long.

Hans and Paul opened fire, blanketing the room in 8mm bullets. Hans started left and worked his way right, his bullets shattering the water cooler and dying the water red with the blood of the men standing beside it. Paul walked his STG across the right side of the room, sending blood splattering across the walls and what remained of the windows. The soldiers all fell to the floor, dead.

A commotion above told the two of them that they themselves were about to have visitors. They turned and fired as two men came rushing down, sending their bodies crashing down the steps. A grenade was dropped from above in response; it hit the steps and rolled down to the fourth floor before exploding. Paul eased up to the stairs, his gun pointed up. With the shorter weapon he was able to maneuver better. He fired a burst and pressed forward, with Hans at his back. The already long FG42 was especially unwieldy with a seven-inch suppressor on the end, forcing Hans to move in an awkward manner in the spiral staircase.

Paul reached the sixth floor and opened fire, the flash from his STG lighting up the dark stairwell in brilliant strobes. He leaned to the left, against the wall, as he ran empty and reloaded. Hans pushed up, switching the paratrooper rifle to full-auto. It sputtered loudly, the casings bouncing off the pillar that ran up the length of the spiral staircase, as Hans fired on a man to the right who ducked into a room just in time.

Hans was about to pull back when a man with a shotgun leaned out of a door to the left, firing as he did so. The spreadgun thundered brutally in the tight confines of the hall. The pellets hit the pillar to Hans' right, tearing it apart. He scrambled back and Paul got back in the fight, cutting the shotgunner down with a burst from his STG. He lobbed a grenade into the first room on the right, smoke and debris flying out into the hall from the tremendous blast.

An NDM soldier responding to the fight came down the stairs and collided with Hans, knocking his FG42 out of his hands. The man pulled back, surprised, which gave Hans the opening he needed to close the distance. He pinned the soldier's MPL to his chest, putting it out of the fight. He kicked the man's legs out and they toppled to the floor together, the two of them wrestling for control of the gun. Hans rolled, putting the man underneath him. Paul was about to just finish the man off when another NDM soldier leaned out one of the rooms, forcing Paul to engage him.

With the soldier pinned beneath him Hans had the advantage. Using his left hand to keep control of the man's SMG he used his right to draw his knife, sticking it beneath the man's ribs. He cried out in shock and pain, the primal fear of death becoming visible in his eyes. He headbutted Hans, loosening his grip on the knife, and used the moment to roll and pin Hans beneath him. Blood began to flow from his mouth and the man weakly fished for the knife stuck between his ribs, leaving just one hand to grip the MPL. Hans seized the weapon with both hands and drove it up into the man's jaw, breaking some of his teeth. He groaned in desperation, bloody teeth gritted to fight through the pain. Unable to bear his weight the man collapsed, causing the handle of the knife to hit the floor and driving it further into his chest. He howled in agony and rolled to the side, freeing Hans and giving him an opportunity. He rolled in the same direction as the man, wrenching the MPL out of his grip as he did so. Hans rolled onto his knees, flipped the SMG around, and shot the man in the face.

With his heart pounding and adrenaline pumping Hans stood and whipped around, the stock of the MPL to his shoulder. He saw Paul by one of the doors, firing blindly into the room. He rushed down the hall, pulled out a grenade, and chucked it into the room. It detonated with a blast that shook the walls, sending plumes of smoke swirling into the air. Hans entered the room and saw an NDM soldier lying on the floor, thoroughly maimed by the grenade. She was missing three fingers from her right hand, the bone of her forearm sticking out through the flesh. Her left arm was dislocated, leaving her flailing on the floor. She clawed at her gun with weak and unresponsive fingers, and Hans aimed the gun at her. "STOP!" she screamed. "STOP! ST-!"

*Bang!*

The woman went limp, bleeding from a hole in her head, and then the building was silent save for the ringing in Hans' ears. He stood over the woman for a moment, breathing erratically. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and dumped the MPL onto the floor. He opened his eyes and blew out the breath he'd been holding, feeling his heart rate start to return to normal. He turned around and saw Paul was already searching through the bodies, facing down the hall toward the stairs.

Hans walked back out into the hall and retrieved his knife and FG42, taking the opportunity to reload. He waited for Paul to finish before the two of them proceeded up to the top floor, weapons at the ready. Hans paused at the final bend of the spiral staircase and thrusted his weapon around the corner, trying to bait a response. When there was none he peeked around the bend, taking in the room. It was the radio station's main studio, the bulk of the space dominated by the sound room and its equipment. Through a window above the audio mixing station he could see the room where the radio host would sit, a standing microphone in front of a leather chair. The room was clear, allowing Hans and Paul to move in.

Hans stopped by the audio equipment, inspecting it and the adjacent terminal. Being an NDM station he decided to root through their terminal and papers, looking for intel. He sifted through the papers and holotapes, most of it all unlabeled. The terminal was on and unlocked, and had some NDM information on it. Nothing that made sense to him, but he was sure it'd be useful anyway. He popped in one of the holotapes, saw it was blank, and downloaded the information from the terminal onto it. He rifled through the rest of the tapes and found one labeled 'Ashes of 2063', which looked exciting. He popped it into the terminal but it turned out to just be a game.

He shoveled the papers and holotapes into his pack, deciding to just hand it all over to the Alliance in bulk. He put his pack on and turned around to face Paul, who was standing by the mouth of the staircase. The look in his eyes was almost as haunted as Hans felt. They shared a look and Paul licked his lips. "Some fight, huh?"

"Yeah," Hans said as he started down the stairs. "Some fight."