Chapter 90

We didn't get out of there without having to deal with somebody coming to see what had happened at the castle. A patrol arrived up the road leading from the village about mid afternoon. The patrol consisted of a motorcycle and side car and an open topped jeep-like vehicle that had four men in it. Their arrival was watched from the guard towers on the curtain wall and the presence of the patrol was passed onto Nimue well before they reached the dry moat.

Nimue dealt with them without hesitation or concern. As the vehicles approached the moat she ordered the guards in the towers to put a couple of ten-millimetre HEAP rounds into both vehicles. The rounds that hit the motorcycle destroyed it completely. At the same time the destruction killed the rider. The rounds that struck the jeep-like vehicle tore through the front of the vehicle and ripped it to shreds. A second burst killed the soldiers in the back seat of the vehicle. The driver and the co-driver were able to bail out of the front of the vehicle but that was as far as they got. The guards on the gate cut them down with their assault rifles.

I learned about this after my third raid of the day. I stayed long enough to confer with Nimue on the situation and to inspect the guards on the gate. Once I had done that I left for the next raid, leaving Nimue to deal with any other unwelcomed quests that might show up at the castle door. In all honesty I was certain that we'd see somebody sneaking about by nightfall if not sooner.

I was right. By the time I was back from the final raid at the aircraft plant in the Ruhr valley another group of solders were making their presence known.

This force was led by an eight-wheeled armoured car that was armed with a short cannon set in a fixed turret. The vehicle started up the slope towards the castle and then pulled of the road and parked itself. The moment it came to a halt the vehicle opened fire. The first round fired struck the curtain wall to the left of the metal gate. The second round struck the gate and blew it up. While the armoured car fired at us, two personnel carriers started driving up the long slope that led up to the now open gate. The personnel carriers were similar to the ones we'd engaged on Game World. They were little more than tracked rectangles with a light machine gun mounted at the crew commander's cupola. The crew commander opened up with his weapon as the vehicle drove forward. As you'd expect, bullets flew everywhere. The machine guns weren't that accurate when fired on the move.

The attack did not go unchallenged. The armoured car got off two rounds but that was it. The sentries in the two watch towers nearest the access road opened up with HEAP rounds. Four rifles firing three round bursts each made very short work of the vehicle and its occupants. Then they turned their fire on the approaching personnel carriers. Again four rifles all hitting the lead vehicle brought that vehicle to a flaming halt. The rounds tore into the front of the vehicle and struck the driver and the engine compartment. Other rounds tore the crew commander apart while even more rounds shredded the roof of the vehicle. As smoke belched from the vehicle and men piled out the rear in an attempt to escape the flames that were engulfing the carrier the sentries at the gate rushed out and cut down the survivors before they could regroup or even respond. That left the second personnel carrier and it ended up suffering the same fate as the first. The sentries in the watch tower quickly switched targets upon seeing that the first carrier had been halted and they focused the remainder of their fire on the second vehicle. Again their fired brought the second carrier to a halt and the men on the gate finished up the job.

By that time I had scrambled up a tower to have a look at the situation. Both Dork and Nimue joined me. The three of us gazed out at the ruins and simple shook our heads in disgust. Then I brought my binoculars up and I had a look around.

There were more troops on the road leading up from the village. I spotted a couple of jeep-like vehicles and four troop carrying trucks. Men were standing in the lead vehicle with binoculars staring up at the castle and the destruction that lay before it. Others were running about shouting at troops as the piled out of the backs of the trucks. Once each group of troops were formed up they moved off the road and into the woods and hills that lined the road. I could see them slowly working their way towards the tree line that ringed the hill upon which the castle stood. From what I could observe most of the men were armed with assault rifles. Those alone weren't much of a threat to my force but some of the men were carrying shoulder fired rocket launchers. Those could possibly cause my people some problems.

"Well," I said turning to Nimue after having a look at what we were up against. "Do we stay or can we go? Has the hardware been disassembled and shipped out?"

"The teleportation system and the replicator are gone," Nimue told me, "but the computer and the power plant are still up and running. Richards has begun the shut down process but he says there are safety procedures that need to be followed. According to him it will take another hour before he can start shipping things out."

"Then we need to hold," I said with a sigh, turning my gaze towards the enemy forces once again.

"Can we hold?" Dork asked out of curiosity, also glancing out at the enemy force.

"For an hour, yes," I answered him calmly, "and perhaps even a little longer than that. The officers down there had seen that we can knock out their light armour with ease so they're not going to rush up here with their remaining troops and watch them get cut to pieces. Considering that they look to be a short company of infantry at best, my thinking is that they'll try and wait us out until they receive reinforcements."

"So they won't attack us?" Nimue asked pointedly.

"Not tonight," I told her without hesitation. "Of course that doesn't mean that we don't need to be careful and keep watch. I want a couple of the staff cars from the motor pool wheeled into place in front of the gate to keep anyone from trying to sneak while we're waiting to leave. I also want everyone in the towers to keep an eye out for snipers. I'll put money on it that at least one of those soldiers will be qualified as a sniper and he'll try and take out the men in the towers first before anyone else in that outfit tries to breach the walls. If they spot a sniper, tell them to get their heads down and to call for me. I'll have Hope teleport the bastard out."

"Why don't we just do that to these men now," Dork asked giving me a look, "instead of waiting and playing around?"

"Because Hope is on standby to teleport us out of here when I say go," I told him in a lowered voice, "and because while these idiots are a bit of a nuisance they're not that much of a threat to us so why even bother. We watch them and wait and when Richards is done we can get out of here."

For the most part I stayed in the tower and I kept an eye on things. I watched patiently as more troops started arriving about half an hour after the attack on the gate. I spotted another column of trucks pulling into the village and I saw the men in them pile out and disperse into the surrounding countryside. I noted with interest that one group of men manhandled what looked like mortars from one end of the village to the other and then watched as they set the weapons up near the base of the slope that lead up towards the castle. That caused me some concern.

"Mortars," I said to Dork in a casual manner.

"Like ballista or cannons?" Dork asked out of curiosity.

"Yeah," I muttered with a sigh as I brought my binoculars up and had another look. As I did I hit a button on the side of my binoculars.

My binoculars were a pair of high-tech glasses that came with a laser range finder built into them. My quick look at the mortar emplacement that was being set up told me that the weapons were a good two hundred yards outside the range of both our assault rifles and the light machine guns that were mounted in the tower. That wasn't good. For a second I just stood there and watched as the mortars were set up and cases of mortar bombs were brought forward. Then I made my decision as to what to do.

I called Hope up and asked her for a high-tech sniper rifle with all the gear that went with it. I also asked for a heavy anti-tank weapon. That I gave to Dork. When he asked me what I wanted him to do with it I simply told him to hold it and wait.

It was beginning to get dark by that time. We were still getting some sunlight where we were, situated on the top of a hill overlooking a valley, but the village of Mendon and the enemy troops lay in the shadow of the nearby forest and the hills and it was getting dark down there. Fortunately as I stated I had asked Hope for a high-tech rifle with all the bells and whistles mounted on it. This rifle had a scope that could collect the smallest bit of light and amplify it and that is exactly what it did. I slapped in a fully loaded magazine and charged my rifle and then I took aim. I fiddled with the sight for a bit until I had a clear picture of what I wanted to shoot at and then I squeezed off a round. The round didn't hit quite where I had wanted it to but given that it was a fifty-calibre bullet absolute accuracy didn't really matter. I had been aiming for the chest of the non-commissioned officer commanding the mortar battery and the round hit high and to the left. Instead of killing the man instantly it just blew his left arm and shoulder away. The end result was the same.

I didn't hesitate after making that shot. I noted what had happened and made what corrections that I needed to make when I took my second shot. This time I picked off one of the loaders that had been tinkering with setting the elevation dials on the mortar to the right of the position. This time the round slammed right into his chest blowing the man to pieces.

I got off two more shots before most of the mortar crew withdrew back towards the trucks that had carried them there. Both shots had scored hits and the bodies of my victims littered the street. Of course I took a little fire as well. Riflemen in the woods opened up as did a couple of men in the village but as I had already noted, the range was too great for their standard weapons or mine. Still it gave me something to think about.

While the mortar crew had been driven back the mortars and the mortar bombs were still in the street waiting to be used. To deal with them I called Dork forward with the launcher he was holding. With a smile I handed the sniper rifle to one of the sentries in the tower with me and then I turned to Dork and walked him through setting up and arming the launcher. We took our time. Still five minutes later the big guy squeezed the trigger and he launched the missile. The missile flew true and it landed smack dab in the centre of the mortar battery. The resulting explosion blew up all the mortars and the mortar bombs and it left a fair size crater in the cobblestones of the road. That put a smile on Dork's face and it caused the enemy troops to pull back even further and that made me very happy.

The mortars were the last incident of the day for us. One hour and five minutes after the first attack on the gate by the armoured car Richards showed up in the courtyard and he informed us that everything had been teleported out. At that moment I gave the word to start the evacuation. I stood and watched as sections formed up on the courtyard grounds and then blinked away as the probes teleported them back to the resort. I stayed there with Dork and Nimue to the very end until all my people were gone as well as Richards and his team of service robots. Then I had the probes fill up the main building and all the outbuildings with explosives. Once that had been done I had Hope teleport my party home. I didn't even stay to see the fire works although later Hope sent me a video feed. The castle went up five minutes after I had teleported out. There wasn't anything left of it at all. The blast was so big that parts of the curtain wall collapsed as a result of it. I was truly impressed.

The next week at the resort was spent dealing with clean up from the operation against the Reich and from picking up the other network idiots that had fled the alternate Earth to other universes and other Earths. Fortunately the other six groups of network idiots hadn't been as prepared as Sahara Network or Teutonic. One was just as unlucky as Lavender Network. They'd ended up on an Earth going through an ice age with only the clothing on their backs. Of almost three hundred people who'd fled the alternative Earth there were only ten still alive when we finally located them and those people had resorted to cannibalism to survive. They were a pathetic sight when we brought them back to the resort.

Numerically we had recovered a large number of the various network people that had fled my conquest of the alternative Earth. Of the technicians taken by the Reich my troops and I rescued a hundred and eighty-three individuals out of two hundred. The others had been killed by the Reich during their captivity. I verified that before having Hope close down our operations in that universe. Of the other eight hundred or so people that had either ended up in the resettlement camp or the work camp Hope was able to identify three hundred and ten of them. I had her yank them out the moment that she located them. I had her do the same with each and every other group that had fled us. Once Hope had found where they had gotten to she had used the employee records of each network to scan the population for the people. It took her some time and a lot of her resources but in the end we'd pulled back almost twenty-two hundred men and women from the six other Earths.

All of that made more work for Josh and Hugo but by then they were used to the workload and in many cases the people that we hauled back to the resort were happy that we had done it. It didn't matter to most of them that they were looking at a life of indentured servitude. What they had found on the other Earths had been enough to sour the desire to resist the changes that I had put in place. For food, drink, comfort, and security they swore loyalty and obedience to me and my cause.