2.5. I want to be a Sturmmann
Once again you head out of the camp. This time you make your way towards the corpse you saw earlier. Finding a “stealthy” path down the slope of the strip mine was not easy but you think you weren’t noticed.
The dead Ahnenerbe engineer lies before you. You turn the rotting corpse over, it isn’t Wirtz who the Lemurians killed here but some engineer. The wounds look like caused by a lasrifle. You found nothing useful on his corpse, just a structural scanner but you have no need for more than one.
The machine wreck is somewhat visible from where the corpse is. For a brief moment you think you saw a flash, one similar to that from a mirror reflecting sunlight or from a lens. The flash appears again between the twisted metal of the wreck. Before you even realize it, you are hit in the right upper-arm with a short and powerful laser beam. You drop the engineer's structural scanner to the ground and start running.
The no doubt Lemurian sniper tries to hit you a few more times but the foliage and tree trunks make it difficult. Well it could have been worse, if your team walked blind into his line of sight you would suffer heavy losses. You are surprised the Lemurian didn’t just fire a longer pulse which could no doubt cut you in half. Maybe trees were blocking his line of sight and he didn’t want to waste fuel on them?
Back at the camp Osterhagen is not please to say the least, “How could you walk into his line of sight like that? At least we know we will have to avoid the more exposed parts of the mine. Now we will adjust route blue to hide from his scope.” Your wound is patched up, however the pain you experience when holding even something as heavy as your laspitol with it is unbearable. Unluckily you have no painkillers around. It looks like you will be firing it left-handed, a handicap to say the least. The team moves out, you have a Lemurian sniper to take care of.
*
You can see the sniper hiding between the wreckage. His rifle looks like it is made from a similar material to the one from which neural probe was made. There is a communications device next to him. While it is similar to the one the other Lemurian back in “Chimera City” was using, it is plugged into a large apparatus. Possibly a portable trans-parallel antenna. Osterhagen is waiting behind a tree nearby. Your job is to shoot at the Lemurian, thus keeping him distracted, while Osterhagen flanks his position. With that arm of yours, it is unlikely you would be able to kill him without the Sturmbannführer’s help.
The green beam of light cuts through a tree near the Lemurian. Startled, the armored übermensch grabs his gun and takes cover behind a metallic beam. He is holding the enormous lasrifle steadily with one hand, as if it was a light hollow plastic fake. Yet that weapon fires in your direction cutting down a nearby tree with a long pulse. You start running.
The titanic soldier moves in to try to shoot you again, Osterhagen fires a beam at his back. The armor gets scorched a little but the Lemurian appears unfazed. He turns his attention to your leader while you continue firing at him. All you manage to achieve is staining his armor with a bunch of dark scorched holes. Damn metamaterials, why didn’t they give you a vest made of those?
Finally Osterhagen gets a lucky shot, he hits the sniper in one of the scorched fragments of his suit. They can’t take more than one shot in the same place on the armor apparently. The Lemurian falls to the ground, it looks like Osterhagen’s shot burned through his flesh eventually hitting his spine. The paralyzed soldier crawls using one of his hands while trying to shoot you with the other. Fortunately the position he is in greatly decreases his firing accuracy. Combined fire from both of your laspitols ends his life.
“Well, we will study this device in detail when we get it back to the base. Lemurian devices are hard to come by,” Osterhagen smirks when looking at the communications post the sniper set up. “The laser cutter has been deployed sir!” Jürgen reports, he better have not screwed up again. You pick up the lemurian lasrifle, its organic structure is impressive but biometric locks prevent you from using it. Hopefully the Ahnenerbe will be able to figure out how to bypass them eventually.
*
Everyone is in place, the distraction team stands ready while you and Osterhagen are at the other side of the perimeter. Jürgen fires his DIY lascannon at the Lemurian guarding the truck, unfortunately he hits the tire instead. The guard runs behind the truck while shouting something. One other Lemurian runs out of the tent and hides behind some unloaded metal crates.
The beam of the laser cutter strikes the crate thus burning a fairly large hole in it. The Lemurian behind it panics and tries to retreat. After many failed shots Jürgen hits him with a long pulse burning right through his armor. If it was a bit longer, the young engineer would most likely cut the enemy soldier in half, from his head right down to his groin.
The other soldier who was behind the truck, attempts to run to the aircraft they came in. Jürgen however tries to kill him but he keeps missing. The Lemurian boards his craft and attempts to take off. As the white-blue glow of his anti-gravity engines appears, a laser beam pierces through the craft’s hull causing a minor hydrogen explosion. The craft continues to burn after it manages to gain some altitude, clumsily it flies north. For a moment you think you saw a small red flash near the craft. A trans-parallel transmission maybe?
You storm the tent, the sole Lemurian inside charges at you. You try to shoot him but you miss, this makes you wish you were left-handed. Osterhagen hits his armor a few times but both you and him get punched by the titanic soldier. He shoots you in the leg, the same one that was broken a few months back. This has to be a curse, you think. Next time you will requisition some painkillers when you get back. Assuming you get back, then again there is only one Lemurian left.
Osterhagen is being beaten into a bloody pulp, you can barely see his face under all the blood on it. Regardless you start firing at the Lemurian again as soon as point the pistol in his general direction. One shot almost hit Osterhagen instead but another burned through a damaged part of the armor. The giant groans from the pain, you aim for the damaged part of the suit once again. He falls to the ground, his body lies atop of the Sturmbannführer.
There will no doubt be an inquiry into what has happened here. Still you did manage to get Wirtz and two other engineers out of there alive. The rest of his team is dead, your team suffered no casualties fortunately. Despite the wounded arm, discovering that sniper proved beneficial. As you exit the tent you see the other Lemurian aircraft gathering in the sky. A flat blue vortex appears shortly afterwards, in an instant the Vimana appears in the sky once again. It launches several other craft. Before you even manage to start thinking about how bad this situation just became, something else appears.
An orange rift, one as big if not bigger than a dreadnought, appears almost next to the Vimana. That what emerges from a distant parallel using it, is an unusual yet elegant geometric form. Five pyramids, four smaller ones with a large one in the center. All mathematically perfect, with seamless edges and surfaces. They are connected to the central pyramid via a series of circular tubes, a white-blue light glows around the tubes and under the quintet of pyramids. Their black metallic surface is as dark as the empty void of space itself.
In an instant, the pyramid-craft fires at the Vimana. The cruiser tries evasive maneuvers but it gets hit with kinetic projectiles and laser beams. Smaller point defense beams of the unknown vessel strike down the Lemurian fighters as if they were mere flies. The Vimana is hit with what appears to be the main gun of the much larger pyramid ship, it explodes into millions of tiny pieces. Sadly there will not be much to salvage and reverse engineer. At least you are alive. The unknown vessel transits out of this parallel almost as suddenly as it appeared in it.
*
The trial is over, you yourself were obviously found to be uninvolved in the transmission that lured the Lemurians. Ajax wants to see you, he isn’t pleased that “Der Riese” almost got discovered but he thinks you did your job well under the circumstances. At least in the past few weeks the wound on your arm fully healed. Thule AG tissue cultivation technology surpasses that available in Atlantis, Ajax is indeed a medical genius.
During the trial you have testified that…
A)…Osterhagen was to blame for the accident, he ignored protocol.
B)…Jürgen’s handling of the machine caused it to broadcast the signal, it was his fault.
C)...the machine activated by itself, nobody could have expected that so nobody can be blamed. They have no evidence to prove otherwise.
Vote now.
Next update will be a bit less action-packed. But you will see some consequences surfacing. Too bad all the Lemurian crafts ended up salvageable, the Reich is losing so much useful technology recently. Well you got the sniper lasrifle and the portable communications post.
If only Jürgen would have gotten some hints, maybe he would have killed that pilot before he got into the craft and flew away. Yeah some unnamed team members would have died. But what do their lives mean compared to anti-gravity?