Chapter 88

Once I was able to escape Ileana's company I went in search of Josh. I found him in one of the dining rooms lecturing some of the new staff. I stood out of sight and watched as the man made it clear to the ex-network people what their fate involved. It became obvious that this wasn't the first time that he had to speak to these people. His tone and manner was filled with exasperation of having to do it again and for a moment I was tempted to step in and make my own thoughts known. I didn't do that however. Personnel management was Josh's job and I wasn't going to step in and interfere with his job unless things became really bad. From the look of what I saw the biggest problem in the group he was talking to was attitude. These people still looked down on anyone from Game World and that attitude was showing in their work. I even noticed that the woman who'd brought me my beer was in amongst the group.

In the end Josh dismissed the group with a stern warning to change their attitudes or else. He also made it very clear what 'or else' stood for. I hoped they would listen and follow his advice. Life as a slave on Game World wasn't very fun. Once the group had been dismissed I went in and spoke to the man.

"Problems?" I asked as I shook the man's hand.

"None that I can't handle, my lord," Josh replied bowing his head.

"I don't doubt that," I reassured the man, "unfortunately these people need to accept their fate and move on with it. If they don't, while I dislike doing so, we will get rid of them, one way or another."

"I know my lord," Josh acknowledged with a sigh. "Being an ex-slave myself I abhor the thought of mistreating these people or selling them off at a slave market, but given the alternative I don't see a choice. Hopefully they will learn that life as a servant isn't as bad as they think."

"I hope so as well," I admitted, nodding my head thoughtfully as I spoke, "however only time will tell. As for now I've come to inform you that we found another group of network people on another alternative Earth and Hope is getting ready to yank them here and to deliver them to you."

"Really my lord?" Josh stated raising an eyebrow. "How many will be in the group?"

"There are only sixty or so survivors out of their original group," I told the man. "They're in pretty bad shape and I'm certain that you're not going to be doing much with them for a few days. They ended up on an unpopulated Earth with little or no supplies and they quickly found out how ill prepared they were. Hopefully that will mean that they will be grateful for us rescuing them. We'll have to see. For now I'm going off to see Dork about it. I want Dork, Felicity, and you to coordinate their arrival with Hope."

"I can do that, my lord," Josh responded with a bow of his head. "You can trust me for that."

I told him I did and then I left him to get back to work. I then went and saw Dork who just grunted as he always did and said he would make arrangements with Josh. The final person I saw was Felicity. I told her about the new group of network idiots and explained to her that most were suffering from exposure and starvation. My dusky mate promised to see Josh immediately and that she would set up a quarantine area for the new arrivals. While she was certain that they didn't present a health issue to the rest of us, Felicity thought that putting them out of sight and in a controlled setting would speed their recovery. I just shrugged my shoulders and told her to do what she thought was best.

That left me at a loss as to what to do for the rest of the day. I ended up spending most of it with Nimue once she finished her physiotherapy for the day. I ended up helping my little elf in the shower and then in the bed. We both slept well that night as did Felicity when she finally came to bed with us.

The next day saw me speaking with Wolfgang again. I had him brought up to my suite and we spent the morning talking about the Reich and what he remembered of his stay on that Earth. My purpose was to build a list of questions and answers that I could use during the interrogation of Berman and any of the other captured Nazis. Considering the fact that Wolfgang was being very cooperative I figured starting with him would expedite matters. I also hoped that any intelligence obtained from Wolfgang would assist Hope in locating what alternative Earth the Reich was on.

I started with questions about Wolfgang's boss and where he might have kept backup files of all the research that he had done on the other Earth. Wolfgang provided me with some information which I noted for passing on to Hope. Once we had dealt with that I asked him about who had gone to the alternate Earth from Teutonic Network. I hoped to get a few names at least so that Hope could use employment records to identify people that we could rescue. Unfortunately Wolfgang was less than helpful in this area. He could identify many of the family members of the executives that had made the exodus with him and a few of his senior colleagues but only one or two of the technicians and none of the support staff. He did inform me that over a thousand people had made the trip with him. Given that Wolfgang had already informed me that the elderly and the very young had already been separated from the group and that they had been sent to a resettlement camp I doubted very much that any of them were still alive. I still noted names when Wolfgang gave them to me and I was determined to pass them on to Hope. Perhaps she would get lucky and locate some of them.

After that I got into some very specific information about where Wolfgang and the technical staff had been kept and more specifically where the teleportation system, power plant, and computer system had been set up. Here Wolfgang proved to be of more use.

According to his tale, Wolfgang and his people had decided to relocate to Denmark when they had fled their world. Wolfgang's boss had a fascination with the nation and the culture and he had wanted to settle the group near Copenhagen. Regrettably for the entire group, Wolfgang's boss's research of the local and state culture had been less than stellar and within twenty-four hours of arriving in a fishing village to the north of Copenhagen, the entire group had been picked up by the local police and they had been handed over as illegal aliens to the Gestapo. Initially Wolfgang and his people had been held in Copenhagen where they were first interrogated and then tortured. That is where Wolfgang sold his people down the river. Once that had been done, the Reich had moved Wolfgang and the technicians in the party to the south. They had been transported by train and the trip had taken them several days during which Wolfgang and his people were fed but once a day. It had been a hard trip for them.

Wolfgang told me that eventually they had been dragged from the railway cars and forced to march through a village called Mendon. It was a small mountain village that was surrounded by forests and steep hills and towering snow capped mountain tops. At the far side of the village stood an old stone castle and that was where he and his group of technicians were delivered. Of the original group of over a thousand people, Wolfgang reported that only around a hundred and eighty of them made the trip with him. As for the rest he really had no idea where they had ended up.

Wolfgang really couldn't tell me much about the castle that he'd been delivered to other than that it was old and that it was surrounded by a curtain wall that was guarded day and night by armed troops. I learned that in addition to a large keep that stood in the centre of the grounds that there were several outbuildings including a barracks where he and some of the more senior technicians had been kept. Again when I questioned him about what had happened to the other technicians he could only state that he saw them occasionally during the construction of the teleportation system and the setting up of the other equipment but not often and not after the system had been calibrated. That made me wonder if they had been disposed of or not and I asked Wolfgang if he had seen any executions or if he had heard gunshots at anytime after the system had been calibrated. Wolfgang turned pale at the question but he still denied having heard or seen any executions after the system was up and running. After some prodding by me Wolfgang did admit to seeing some of the technicians executed near the beginning of the assembly process. As he put it some of the technical staff attempted to resist and the local garrison commander decided a demonstration of authority was needed. I just nodded my head and listened and recorded everything the man had to say. Hopefully there was something in it that could help Hope pinpoint what universe that the Reich was in.

That part took up the last bit of my chat with Wolfgang. Again he had very little to tell me other than what his boss had told him. Here there was some interesting historical information that made me pause and wonder at how lucky my Earth had been. Two very interesting historical facts came out of the talk. One was the fact that the British sued for peace after the fall of France in that universe. It appears that Lord Halifax became Prime Minister after Neville Chamberlain stood down and he had led the move to end the war with Germany. When I asked about Churchill Wolfgang just looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. He'd never heard of the man and no one from the Reich had ever mentioned him in Wolfgang's presence. The other interesting historical fact was about Adolf Hitler. It turned out that Hitler had survived an assassination attempt in the early days of the war, but only barely. He ended up hospitalized throughout the Polish campaign and the occupation of Denmark and Norway. He had recovered sufficiently to oversee the invasion of the west and the fall of the Low Countries and France but after that he was forced to rest due to worsening health problems. Worse, according to Wolfgang's boss was the fact that much of the Nazi leadership had been killed in the assassination attempt and it resulted in a power struggle that eventually saw Hitler being murdered and an unknown party official, one Kurt Wagner, move up and take the mantle of Fuehrer. All of this dominated the period following the fall of France and into the next year up until the Japanese drew the American's into the Pacific War. By then Stalin had occupied Finland and parts of Moldova and he was rattling sabres along the Soviet border with Iran. What happened next opened the door to a new alliance that saw Nazi Germany allying with Britain in an alliance against Soviet Russia. The Soviet's dispatched troops into Iran. With more astute political wrangling and a better relationship with his General Staff, Kurt Wagner actually led a successful coalition of nations against the soviets. After the soviets had been defeated, the victorious army of the Reich turned on their allies and destroyed them in the field. That left nations like Britain and the Balkan nations and Turkey without an army. Within a year's time all the self interested leaders of those nations capitulated choosing the role of a puppet rather than that of a martyr. By the time the war was over Nazi Germany controlled all of Europe and Africa and parts of western Asia. In the west the United States dominated North and South America and most of the Pacific Rim. At the time that Wolfgang and his people had arrived, both Nazi Germany and the United States controlled nuclear weaponry making them the two world powers. However rather than a cold war mentality the two nations maintained open diplomatic channels and trade.

I met with Gauliter Berman that afternoon. I decided to keep it informal. In other words I had him brought to my suite just like I had done with Wolfgang. I thought I'd try talking to the man before moving towards a more formal questioning environment. It proved to be an interesting experience.

"I demand to be released," were the first words out of Herr Berman's mouth when he was finally brought up to my suite.

Two guards had delivered him to me as per my request. The men were armed and Berman was handcuffed. He was also dressed in only a shirt and trousers. I had ordered him stripped of all his regalia.

"Just have a seat Herr Berman," I told the man, ignoring his outburst, "and we can have a chat."

"I do not desire to speak to any subhuman creature like yourself," Berman sneered back at me refusing the offered chair.

"And I personally don't want to speak to a closed minded bigot like yourself," I said in reply, "but somebody has to do it and I've elected myself to the job. Besides I don't want my people having to put up listening to your drivel. That's what I'm paid to do."

"You insolent cur," Berman spat back at me, "I will ensure you are dealt with properly once I have been freed by my people. You will die slowly and everyone else here will be eliminated so that my people will not need to breathe air contaminated by your presence."

"Oh just shut up and be quiet and take a seat," I said in exasperation.

"I will not be talked to like that," Berman threw back at me. "I demand that you release me at once."

Tired of the man's blathering already I just signalled the two guards to get the man seated. Berman tried to resist but he really had no chance in doing it. My men were two ex-slaves that had spent a number of years working hard in the fields of Minos. They were strong and physically fit. Berman was a short, thin man who was well past his prime. He looked to be at least in his fifties if not older. After a moment or two of effort, my men just picked him up and plopped him unceremoniously into the seat across from me.

"Let me go!" Berman shouted indignantly.

"Herr Berman," I said sternly, drawing the man's attention to me. "If you continue to speak this way to me and if you continue to refuse to cooperate in any shape or form then I will be left with very few options as to how to deal with you. If you would prefer I can hand you over to a number of people in my company who enjoy working with blade weapons. I'm certain that one of them could make you see that calm and consideration and common courtesy would be the best way for you to behave in my company."

"You would not dare," Berman declared, glowering at me as he did. "I am a senior party officer and the Fuehrer's designated Gauliter for this world. You will pay dearly for this insult."

"You do realize that your precious Fuehrer," I told the man coldly, "and the people you represent are far away from here and that they are incapable of coming to your rescue?"

"The Fuehrer will come for me," Berman declared confidently, "and the Reich with prevail here as it has on our own Earth and there is nothing you can do to prevent it."

"I can kill you right here and now," I stated bluntly, "or you can shut up and the two of us can have a nice sociable chat. It's your choice but I'd be very careful about what you say next. I'm really getting tired of your attitude."

Berman glared at me angrily and turned red in the face but that was all he did in response to my comments. For once he kept his mouth shut. I took that as a good sign. I waited a moment or two for his temper to drop and then I started my chat.

"I won't play games with you Herr Berman," I told the man bluntly. "You and your people are a threat to Game World and my people and to all other alternative Earths through out all the other alternative universes. Your Reich has existed on other Earths before and on some it flourished for a while and then died out and on others it never even got started. Even so most Earths that have experienced life under a Nazi regime have no desire to do so again. Thus we have a problem and that problem can only be resolved by eliminating your Earth as a threat."