Chapter 87

Dawn saw me standing on a tall hill overlooking a broad plain that lay between the coast and the foothills to the east. The hill was heavily forested and my troops were all dug into it, waiting patiently the arrival of the enemy force. According to the intelligence provided by Hope, that force was now only a half hour away and they were approaching us quickly. That meant that I needed to finish up here on the ground and get into the air so I would be ready to open the attack on the enemy when they got here.

"So," I said to Dork as I walked over to where my Sparrow Hawk was waiting, "are you already for the fun and games?"

"Sure," Dork muttered in reply, shrugging his shoulders as he did, "I'm ready and so is everyone else, although truthfully, I'd rather be back fighting people with my warhammer instead of watching you blow them up with your missiles and tear them apart with your chain gun. It's just not as fun as it was before."

"Yeah, I know that," I agreed, "but it is what it is and we have to live with it. The fact is that so long as people keep ratcheting things up we're going to have to meet them with equal or greater force."

"I know," Dork stated with a sigh, "but it still isn't as fun as it used to be."

I left Dork at that point in charge of the four Crab flails. In this upcoming battle I was going to deploy the vehicles first before hitting the oncoming enemy force from the air. My intent was to bring them to a halt and to distract them long enough for me to take out what anti-aircraft defence that they had. Once that was done, things would unfold as it had to the north with Nimue and her troops positioned on the flanks to make certain no one got away.

I was up and in position a few minutes later. Porter, Watson, and I hung in hover mode a few miles to the west hidden in another valley. There we waited patiently until Hope announced that the second armoured group had made contact with Dork and the Crabs. Her message wasn't long in coming.

"Okay boys," I radioed over to my two wingmen once Hope had contacted me, "let's get into position and get to work."

It took us about two minutes two lift out of the valley and swing around behind the enemy force. By the time we got into position, the enemy column had come to a halt and it had dispersed across the plain in platoon formations of four vehicles each. Smoke was already filling the air from a couple of personnel carriers that had been already knocked out by the remote weapon systems on the Crabs and clouds of dirt were leaping into the air as the vehicle mounted mortars tried to range in on the Crabs. Those mortar carriers became a primary target for my flight the moment we spotted them.

For this little engagement I had ordered my flight to remain in hover mode. It burned fuel like crazy but it did give us nice stable gun platforms for the job at hand. As we swung about the rear of the enemy column, taking up positions to their rear and about a thousand feet up, we started to open fire. My first target was the quad anti-aircraft mount that was in the centre of the enemy formation. I took it out with a missile. While my missile zipped through the air and did its job, I turned my nose mounted chain gun loose on a couple of personnel carriers that were moving towards the hills where my men were dug in. The bursts of ammunition ripped through the lightly armoured tops of the carriers leaving them crippled and on flames. Those surviving the initial strike poured out of the rear and threw themselves down on the ground in a hope of finding cover. As they did the fleeing men came under fire from the hills and the men under Nimue's command. Most of the soldiers never got up again.

While I dealt with the anti-aircraft gun Porter directed his missile fire at the first and second mortar carriers. They were positioned on either side of my target, the anti-aircraft gun tractor and they were roughly a hundred yards apart. Porter's first missile struck seconds after mine and it blew the mortar carrier to smithereens. Mortar bombs went up with the vehicle and there was nothing left of the vehicle and the crew once the smoke had cleared. Of course his second missile did basically the same to the second mortar carrier just a second or two later.

While all this went down Watson swung his craft to the far west of the plain where the enemy were spread out upon and then he opened up on the second quad anti-aircraft tractor. Like us he went for using a missile and he destroyed his target even as it was traversing about so that it could engage us with its guns. The missile hit and that was it. After that he fed a missile into one of the tracked rocket launchers. These weapons weren't much of a threat to anyone at the moment given that they were a long range weapon but they did make a big bang when they were hit. The explosion of the missiles carried by the vehicle put a nice little mushroom cloud of black smoke and red flame into the air and it knocked down anyone who was standing within a thousand yards of the vehicle. Once he had destroyed the first launcher he turned another missile on the second launcher. Again it made a very big bang.

The Nazi's did their best to defend themselves against our attack but there was very little chance of them succeeding. Their vehicle mounted light machine guns threw up streams of bullets that either missed our birds or the bullets pinged off of the armoured fuselages doing little real damage. At best their fire scratched up the paint on the aircrafts. Without any serious anti-aircraft capability left the action devolved into a case of shooting ducks in a barrel.

While the Crabs positioned at the head of the valley chewed up anyone trying to get out that way, my flight simply picked and chose targets at will, using our nose chain gun to tear up any personnel carriers that were still operational and killing any groups of infantry that showed signs of organized resistance. Even Nimue and her people got in a fusillade of fire from time to time when a squad or platoon of the enemy tried to make it across the open plain and into the hills. In seconds each and every personnel carrier had been knocked out and destroyed and within minutes most of the enemy force had been eliminated. Only a handful attempted to surrender once they realized what kind of situation they were in. As far as I could tell no one got off the battlefield that morning unless they were taken prisoner by my people first.

I did take my flight to the west and swept that area before heading aback to the resort to refuel and rearm. Behind me I left Nimue and Dork in charge of mopping up. Once back to the resort we landed our birds on the first green and then headed into the lobby for a drink and a debriefing. Of course while we were there I got reports from Nimue on their situation. Again the battle had been totally lopsided. My people had lost nobody while the enemy had lost almost everyone in that command. Of over two hundred fighting men, only five ended up surrendering and all of them were wounded in one manner or another. The only real casualty that we'd taken was vehicular. It turned out that the Nazi grenadiers had been equipped with shoulder fired anti-tank weapons and some of the enemy troops had let them loose against the Crabs. Two of the Crabs had been damaged by anti-tank fire but they had not been destroyed. One of the anti-tank grenades had struck the drum of one of the Crabs and it had blown the drum to bits. A second grenade launched against the second vehicle had also struck the front right glace and the result had been impressive. The grenade had torn a hole in the front armour and it had damaged the vehicle's power plant in the process. Thankfully the power plant compartment on a Crab was the heaviest armoured portion of the vehicle and no one in the vehicle was injured. As for the second vehicle damaged, the grenade striking it had hit the left side track and road wheels. The damage left the vehicle immobile but still functional and it finished out the battle as a stationary pillbox.

Debriefing didn't take long. Porter, Watson, and I knocked back a beer and then chatted about what we had thought about the battle. Both liked the versatility of the Sparrow Hawk but they hated the fact that the Sparrow Hawk was a gas guzzler. Our conversation got around to possibly replacing the attack craft with something else that perhaps had a power source similar to the power source in the Crabs. I told them I would put that on my list of many things that I already had Hope looking into. We did agree that each of us would fly daily patrols of the area in an attempt to keep an eye on the surrounding terrain and to get some flight time in. While Hope could easily forewarn us of another potential threat to the resort, it would call for Hope to dedicate some of her valuable resources and time to doing it. It was better if we did it so she could focus on locating the alternate Earth that the Nazis' came from and then finding me a way for us to get there and to deal with them without me losing a shitload of people.

It was after lunch by the time Dork and Nimue and the rest of the troops returned to the resort. By then the five captured Nazi grenadiers had been treated by Felicity and her medical team down in the medical centre and they were in bed and under guard while they recuperated with four of the men we had captured from the battle group to the north. Of the remaining three that had been captured up north, two had died of their wounds before Felicity had gotten to them and one was in detention with Gauliter Berman. For now I just made certain that there were guards on the grenadiers at all times so that they wouldn't try and escape. As for Berman he became my main concern. I decided to talk to Dork and Nimue about it when they finally returned. I also invited Felicity to sit in and join us in the conversation.

"This latest crisis isn't over," I told my two mates and my friends. "We might have stopped an attack on us but so long as the people on the other planet have the technicians and the technology to teleport from one universe to another the threat is always going to be there."

"So let's go and get them," Dork said with a grunt. "I mean that is the plan isn't it? Once Hope finds out where the idiots from Teutonic Network went to, we're going to suit up and go and raid them just like we did Sahara Network."

"It is our plan," I admitted tentatively, "but it things won't be as easy as that. Sahara Network ended up on an unpopulated Earth that we could send a few probes into orbit around and then ask Hope to teleport us in and then teleport us back home. Teutonic Network went to a fully populated Earth that from what we've learned from Wolfgang is a late industrial world on the verge of the computer/rocket era. We're going to need a lot of intelligence before we go to the Earth and we're going to need more than a couple of probes sitting in orbit to help teleport us in."

"So we talk to the Berman character," Nimue stated, "and we get the intelligence we need from him."

"We do and we don't," I replied hesitantly. "The fact is that this Berman character isn't like the stupid network bastards that we can bluff into telling us everything we want to know. Berman is a senior political figure from an Earth where people are put into death camps because they don't meet racial or cultural standards or they are put into work camps where they will eventually die through forced labour. The man is a member of a culture that believes that they are a race of supermen who can do anything they want. I doubt very much that any of us could frighten him into talking and I'm also fairly certain that the more traditional methods of torture won't work or if they do we won't know for certain that Berman is telling us the truth."

"So what do you want to do to get the information out of him?" Dork asked in a frustrated tone of voice.

"Back on my Earth," I told him and my two mates, "there were drugs that existed that could be used to make a person answer questions while the person was under their influence. I thought that we might be able to try something along those lines on Berman."

"That could be risky," Felicity interjected. "I know of a couple from my home Earth but they weren't something you'd use just on anybody. There were dangers involved in using them under the best of conditions and under the worst conditions you could fry a person's brain or kill them. Is that what you want to do?"

"No I don't want to do that," I told my dusky mate, "but we need to do something to get this information that will guarantee some accuracy. Besides, the drugs I was thinking about from my Earth don't have those kinds of side affects."

"Maybe we could ask Hope to shop around a bit," Nimue suggested, "before we try anything. What do you think?"

"I think it's an option," Felicity said in agreement, "however I want all the medical paperwork on any drug that we're going to administer to the man. I might not have any qualms about killing some network bastard but I do care about killing some one who technically is a patient of mine and that is what the man will be once I jab a needle into him."

"All right then," I muttered in response, "I can live with that. For now we'll keep Berman on ice while we find a drug to use on him. Now while I go and talk to Hope, why don't you go talk to some of your doctor friends and see if they know of a drug from their home Earths. If one of them does, perhaps with a little information, Hope can find that Earth and then find the drug for us."

"I'll get on that right away," Felicity stated getting up from the table.

"And while she does that," I interjected with a bit of a smile on my list, "I'm going to chat with Hope."

"Which leaves me to get back to my physiotherapy," Nimue declared with a sigh. "Greta has been on my case these last couple of day's about me not working out. I guess I'll drop by and make her happy."

"You do that," I chuckled, "and then I will see you later.

I left my mates and my friend to do the things that they had to do and I went back up to my suite to chat with Hope. My other mates had already left for Oak Hall and the jobs waiting for them there so there was no one in the suite to distract me. After pouring myself a drink I sat myself down in a chair across from the monitor Hope was using and I called out to her.

"Talk to me Hope," I said into thin air.

"Talk to you about what?" Hope asked as her digital form took shape on the monitor.

"A lot of things," I indicated taking a sip of my drink, "but we can start with a progress report on your search for the other network bastards that fled your Earth. What can you tell me that will put a smile on my face?"

"Not much, I'm sorry to report," Hope said with a sigh in her voice. "I have not yet located the Earth that Teutonic Network went to, although that has become a priority in my list of things that I'm searching for. I have however found another group of network people."

"Which group is that?" I asked eagerly, my interest perked by her report.

"The group is Lavender Network," Hope reported. "They were a small, specialty network that focused their programming on anything that crossed gender lines such as women taking on a male role or men who preferred a feminine role. Much of their broadcasting dealt with lesbian and gay sex."

"Naturally," I said with a chuckle.

"You and your mates were a big draw," Hope informed me, "as was Nimue before you established the consortium. They were not impressed when Passion Network helped form the consortium. Passion Network was a long time competitor of Lavender Network and there was no love lost between the two."

"Okay," I muttered thoughtfully in response, wondering if there was something there that I could use or if I needed to speak with Angela. After a moment I just pushed my thoughts to the side and asked Hope where the people were hiding.

"They ended up on another uninhabited Earth," Hope informed me. "However, unlike Sahara Network, the people from Lavender Network weren't prepared for the move and when they did flee they essentially took only what they could carry. The probe that I have orbiting the Earth that they are on has released several hundred thousand micro-cameras and I've collected several hours of intelligence. From what I have reviewed it appears that the exiles are barely surviving. In fact, comparing the number of persons that I have estimated to have gone to the other Earth during the exodus to the number my probe has counted I would say that at least fifty percent of the people who fled my Earth are dead."

"Really?" I muttered with a hint of surprise in my voice.

"Yes, really," Hope responded in a matter of fact tone of voice. "Would you like to see some of the intelligence that my probe has collected?"

I told her yes and then I sat back and watched the video feed from the other Earth. Hope showed me a small band of survivors who were out gathering food. Their clothing was torn and soiled and totally inappropriate to where they were living and what they were doing. The group was a band of nine individuals all of whom looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties. There were six men in the group and three women. All of them looked quite thin. The group was spread out over a tidal plain and they were searching for any aquatic life that might have been caught in a depression when the tide had gone out. From the look of it they weren't having much luck. Hope then showed me another group that was inland from where the other group was working. This group looked much the same as the first group. There were twelve people in this group of which five were men and seven were women. They were in an area that was lightly wooded and they were out foraging. Two of the men were carrying crude fire hardened spears. They too looked very hungry. After that Hope showed me a couple of other groups all of whom looked like the first two groups. In total she showed me roughly sixty survivors who all looked to be on the verge of starvation.