Kopenick
Night came and Hans hooked up with the EAA squad assigned to the mission, joining them in the electric motorboat for the silent trip to Park am Katzengraben. When they reached the park they disembarked, secured the boat to the pier, and moved inland. Around midnight they were on the Schlossinsel peninsula, about a hundred yards from Schloss Kopenick, an ancient palace built on the peninsula for the same reason the NDM took control of the hotel: to control the waterways. They were perched on the shore, concealed behind the dead trees. The squad leader had a radio, which he held up in his hand, waiting for the signal from team two. To Hans' disappointment none of the American Panzertroopers had been assigned to the mission; instead he was teamed up with five regular soldiers, wearing pre-war German Bundeswehr armor. Two women and three men, plus Hans. Three K98s and a Walther Toggle Action shotgun. The squad leader had an American AR-18. Hans had the only suppressed weapon and thus would be their point man.
"Anyone want a Nuka?" someone offered.
"You have Nuka-Cola?" one of the women asked.
"The Americans have ridiculous amounts of food. I don't know where they found it all but it's great. One of their transports came by last week and resupplied us with all sorts of their shit. Here."
The man handed the woman the Nuka-Cola and she took a sip before stuffing a cork in the opening and putting the bottle in her backpack. Hans adjusted his position, the FG42 held firmly in his hands. There were very few lights on in the hotel, and as far as Hans could tell they were all from candles or oil lamps. Whether the power was out or just off, he couldn't tell. With the advent of commercialized microfusion traditional power plants went the way of the Dodo long ago, replaced by local fusion generators and fusion batteries. A building like a hotel would've had its own fusion generator, usually in the basement, but lights usually did little more than illuminate your position. It was best to rely on candles and lanterns, in Hans' experience.
The radio in the squad leader's hand suddenly crackled to life. "This is team two. We're in an alley behind the hotel and are ready to go. End."
"I understand," Hans' squad leader replied. "Begin the mission. We'll link up on the top floor. End." He switched the radio off, put it in his pouch, and gestured to the team. "Time to go."
Hans entered the water first, silently treading across it. He used his left hand for propulsion, keeping the stock of the paratrooper rifle anchored to his shoulder with his right. They were halfway across the river when flashes started erupting inside the hotel, accompanied by the dulled thunder of gunfire. With an invasion force already inside their walls the NDM soldiers inside likely wouldn't be watching the water. They made it across the river without incident and quietly rushed to the nearest door, moving past the rotting remains of wood patio furniture.
The team paused outside the door for a moment. The squad leader nodded to Hans, who nodded back and opened the door, weapon at the ready. The room inside was dark and he entered with the team at his back. He switched on his flashlight, bathing the room in pale yellow light. It was a changing room for the hotel's pool, lockers lining the walls. A good place to find great loot, in his experience. Mostly silver and gold watches, of both the wrist and pocket variety.
There wasn't time to search them, however. He and the rest of his team moved out of the locker room and into the first floor's main hallway. They carefully moved down the hall, checking rooms as they went. When they reached the lobby they stopped, taking in the scene. The NDM had posted a few guards in the lobby, who were now lying dead on the floor. An oil lamp illuminated the scene, revealing they'd been shot. As the battle raged above them on the second floor Hans and the others looked up. Heading right, behind the front desk, they ascended the hotel's grand staircase, which split off at a landing, going left and right to the second floor.
The squad leader switched on his radio. "Team two, this is team one. We're inside the hotel and proceeding up to the third floor. End."
"Understood, team one!" came back the screaming voice of team two's leader. "We'll hold down the second floor and then leapfrog up to the fourth! End!"
"Lead the way," the squad leader said to Hans. Together the six of them headed up to the third floor, stopping at the top of the stairs and lying awkwardly on the steps for a moment. The hall was well lit by candles and lanterns on the tables between chairs and on the floor. The carpet was a nice red, and the wall was finished in a half-and-half pattern; wood trim on the lower half, gold-painted drywall on the upper half. On the walls were iron sconces, most missing their light bulbs. A very ritzy place before The Bomb. Now, in the dim light of the candles, it looked more like a dungeon.
It was also buzzing with activity. NDM soldiers were moving between the rooms, organizing a defense. A squad ran down the staircase at the end of the hall, responding to the firefight on the second floor. The rest of the soldiers on the third floor continued their preparations, stacking sandbags and taking positions behind furniture. They set up a team watching the far end staircase, their backs to the other staircase. They were about to send another team down the hall to fortify the second staircase when Hans opened fire, the sound of the suppressed gunshots lost to the din of the firefight below. He gunned down the three soldiers running towards him and paused, watching for movement. The rest of the NDM soldiers remained in position, unaware of what was happening behind them.
Oh this isn't even fair, Hans thought. He reloaded, deployed the FG42's bipod, and let her sing. The rifle vibrated in his hands as he raked the NDM soldiers from behind, their blood splattering onto the sandbags and soaking into the canvas. Other soldiers on the floor realized what was happening and shifted position to return fire, remaining firmly behind the chairs and sofas. As Hans' gun clicked empty the squad leader opened up with his AR-18, suppressing the NDM soldiers.
"Move up!"
The other four members of the squad advanced, ducking into rooms to clear them and then taking up position by the open doors. Their K98s thundered harshly, their single claps complimenting the staccato bark of the squad leader's AR-18. Hans remained in position at the top of the stairs as the squad advanced, carefully checking the doors before entering the rooms. One of the women peeked a door and turned to enter the room, only to be cut down in a hail of lead by someone inside she hadn't seen. She crumpled soundlessly to the floor, already dead. The EAA soldiers shifted their fire right, peppering the doorway and keeping in whoever was inside. Hans moved up to an end table pushed against the wall, set up the paratrooper rifle's bipod, and took aim.
*BOOM!*
An explosion suddenly rocked the hall, blasting apart one of the doorways and sending the EAA soldier who'd been taking cover there hurtling through the air. He hit the wall and slumped to the floor, dead. The blast knocked over an oil lamp, shattering it and setting the carpet on fire. A cloud of smoke hung in the air, kicked up by the grenade blast, backlit by the fire. Its curling wisps drifted through the air, making everyone jumpy as they watched the smoke for any sign of movement. The squad leader fired into the cloud, his muzzle flash lighting up the parts of the hall not illuminated by the smoke. "Everyone down, I'm throwing a grenade!" one of the EAA soldiers yelled. His squadmates ducked back into the rooms as he retrieved the grenade, pulled the pin, and chucked it down the hall.
Pin? Shouldn't it have been a cor-
Hans' thoughts were drowned out by the titanic *FWWAANNGG* of the plasma grenade as it detonated, erupting into a brilliant ball of blue light as its superheated fluids were sent screaming down the hall. Everything they landed on was erased, the paint on the walls boiling and the fibers of the carpet atomized by the immense heat. An NDM soldier was caught in the blast, his intense shriek of agony quickly silenced as his flesh and muscles melted away, rendering him a carbonized skeleton that collapsed to the floor in a heap. Hans watched his blackened bones roll down the hall, stunned into inaction by the horrifying sight.
The remainder of the NDM soldiers turned tail and ran, booking it for the stairs at the end of the hall and rushing up them to the fourth floor. Hans' team carefully cleared the rest of the floor, smoking out and killing the soldier who'd been hiding in the one room. With the floor clear they linked up in the center of the hall, by the elevators. "Team two, this is team one," the squad leader said into the radio. "We've cleared the third floor. How's the fourth? End."
Silence answered his question, the only sound in the hotel that of the firefight raging on the fourth and final floor. "Team two, this is team one," the squad leader said again. "Floor three is clear. Are you getting this? End."
Again there was no response, and Hans was about to suggest they get going when the radio crackled to life. "Team one, team two! We need some help up here! The monarchist's have a damn MG and have us pinned down hard in the hall. Three men are dead and we are unable to move! Get these assholes off our backs! End!"
"You heard him team one," the squad leader said. "Get up those stairs and let's finish this."
"Wait, hold on," Hans said. "I've got an idea. If the elevators are working why don't we send some grenades up in them, blast the NDM out that way?"
"Good idea," the surviving female member of the squad said.
"I agree," replied the squad leader. "Let's try it."
Hans hit the call button for the elevator and, as expected, there was no response. "Damn," he said. He ran his knife up the seam in the door, wedging it in at the top. He pried and the doors slid open on their tracks, revealing a dark and empty elevator shaft. He looked inside for a moment, shining his flashlight into the shaft. "Give me some grenades. Anything's fine."
The squad leader handed him two M24 Stielhandgranaten and Hans shoved them into his pocket. He slung the FG42 over his shoulder, grabbed the elevator cable, and hoisted himself up. Carefully he climbed up to the fourth floor's elevator door, using his knife to pop the door open. He peeked over the rim and took in the NDM's positions; to the right they had a sandbag wall set up, an opening in the center to allow their MG-34 team to fire down the hall. To the left they had a metal barricade facing the other staircase. The perfect kill box. Hans clung tightly to the elevator cable and used his teeth to yank the cords of the stick grenades, lobbing one at each barricade. He slid down the cable and a moment later they went off, shrapnel zinging between both ends of the barricade. He rejoined his team on the third floor and a second later two more explosions rang out above them, rattling the chandelier above the center of the hall.
"Good thinking, freelancer."
Silence hung over the hotel as team one carefully ascended the steps to the top floor, guns up and at the ready. "Team two, this is team one, we're coming up the north stairs now. End."
"Team one, team two, I heard that. All quiet up here. End."
They reached the top of the steps and paused, the stench of blood thick in the air. Hans gazed down the hall, a muffled groan a few feet ahead to his left. The grenades had blown away the sandbag wall, leaving the MG team a shredded mess. The MG-34 remained on its tripod, smoke still rising from the muzzle. At Hans' end the metal barricade remained standing, the inside marked with hundreds of scratches. He pushed the barricade aside and the groaning turned to weak moaning. A man tried to roll over, his left leg missing from the hip down. His face was ashen and sweaty, his eyes unfocused. He was dead, his body just hadn't gotten the memo that it was time to clock out yet. He moaned unconsciously, mouth moving as if he was trying to speak. He stared at the wall, his hand weakly scrabbling at the carpet.
*BANG!*
The man went limp and the squad leader stepped over him, peeking in the room to his left and then moving inside. Hans stepped over the body and checked the room on the right, making sure it was clear before leaving the door open and heading back out into the hall. No one else from the NDM remained alive on the floor, and soldiers from both EAA teams started searching the bodies. They'd won the fight for the hotel. Hans took a deep breath and blew it out, the gray haze that hung at the edges of his vision in every fight fading away as the adrenaline was flushed out of his system.
"Nice thinking with the elevator shaft," Hans' squad leader said again. "Really, it helped out."
"Yeah, no kidding," a man said from behind him. "It got the heat off us real quick. Pretty clever trick on your p- Oh what the Hell?!"
Hans turned around, wondering what had the man so spooked. He half expected to see a legless NDM soldier propped up against a doorframe with a pistol in his hand, ready to take someone with him. Instead, what he saw shocked him even more.
Standing there in the hall, an incredulous smile on his face, was Paul March.