Rough
Action/adventure
Set in 1943
FR-T
Violence
Disclaimers:
Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. Return to Castle Wolfenstein and related marks are trademarks of Activision. The Man from UNCLE and related trademarks are the property of MGM/UA and Arena Productions. This story is written purely for my own entertainment, and that of anyone else who may happen to read it. No infringement of copyright is intended. It is not intended and should never be used for commercial purposes.
The original characters, situations and ideas contained within this work are the property of the author.
Author's Notes:
Swan Maiden is the fourth story in the Demiurge sequence, preceded by Sterilisation and Comes the Tempest. It is followed by The Angel of Chaos and its events are concurrent with those of Raiders of the Lost Gate.
Acknowledgements:
Many thanks to my beta reader, Sarah.
Schloß Orlok Research Centre,
Romania,
1943
A young woman bent over her journal and wrote in a small, neat hand. She was an extremely fair woman, with pale skin, blue-grey eyes and long, almost white-blonde hair. She was dressed in a pale, cream dress that accentuated her Gothic appearance. Set within the dark, sepulchral opulence of her chamber in the ancient castle, lit by a row of flickering candles – much of the castle had been wired for security, but not the scientists' quarters – she looked more than anything like a ghost of some earlier time; a wronged woman setting down her grievance over and over again, through time immemorial.
But she was no spectre of the past; indeed, she dwelt more within the future than most. Dr Inge Weiss possessed one of the world's most brilliant scientific minds and she applied it diligently to whatever project her elders and betters – invariably men both older than her and less intelligent, yet more steadfast in their belief in the cause and in their own self-importance – saw fit. Despite her surroundings, she was not documenting her romantic trials; she was advancing the cause of nuclear physics by almost five years and – quite blithely regardless of her own inclinations – bringing several million people significantly closer to death.
She had just finished adding a diagram to her notes, drawing precise lines with deft strokes of her pen, when a knock at the door startled her. Mindful of the secrecy of her work, she replaced the cap of her fountain pen and closed her journal before calling softly: "Enter."
An over-eager young leutnant entered and saluted. "Frau Doktor," he said, politely, but with little respect. "There is a car waiting for you."
"A car?" Inge asked, confused. "I did not ask for a car."
"You are ordered to report to the Wewelsberg at once," the young man explained. "The orders were brought by car and the car is waiting to take you back."
"It is impossible," Inge protested, surprising herself with her temerity. "There are tests scheduled..."
"These orders are issued at the highest level," the leutnant insisted.
Inge was shocked. "The Director of Special Projects himself?" she asked.
"The Reichsführer-SS." There was a long pause, before the leutnant added: "A small bag has been packed and sent to the car; you are to depart without delay."
"I understand," Inge sighed. "I will be there as soon as I can change."
"Frau Doktor."
Inge returned her pen and journal to her writing case and slipped the case into her satchel. She was incensed to be called away from her work, but obedience was a virtue that her father had driven into her with an iron hand and a heavy cane. She took the satchel with her into the bedroom of her apartments and left it on the bed, where she could see it, while she fetched out and changed into a uniform smock dress that was more practical for travel. She donned a light overcoat and sidecap, picked up her bag and turned towards the door.
Before she left, she reached to her throat and withdrew a small cylinder of black metal; her lucky talisman. As had become habit with her, she flashed the needle-thin beam of light from the tube into the mirror, taking care to avoid her eyes. One day, she had realised, the talisman would run out of power; she was sure that that was the day on which her luck would run out and the fate she had so narrowly avoided in Westphalia would catch up with her.
Today the beam remained strong. She tucked the talisman away and went down to the waiting staff car, confident of a safe and comfortable journey.
*
Teutoburg Forest,
One week later
Wolfgang Bane died without a word, refusing to give his enemies the satisfaction of a scream. Inge had always imagined that the sound of a silenced pistol would be something soft, like the thump of a beater on a hanging blanket; in fact, the Luger pressed to the back of the Sturmbannführer's head sounded more like a heavy book slamming onto a desk. The violence of the sound made her jump.
"I am a wealthy and powerful man," Werner von Karlstein said in a trembling voice; he did not sound powerful, nor look wealthy. Like Bane and Inge, he wore only a rough smock, so that their clothes could not be used to identify them if their bodies were found. "I can get you money!" he insisted. "A pardon; position..."
The thump sounded again. Von Karlstein's body fell into the trench beside Inge. He turned as he fell and landed on his side with his face twisted towards her. The left-hand side of his face had been torn open by the bullet and his right eye stared blindly into space.
Inge cried out in fear.
*
Twenty-five kilometres away, in the depths of the Wewelsberg, five men stood around an altar. A strange casket made of some crystalline stone lay on the altar. The casket was deeply engraved with arcane symbols. Shadows seemed to gather around it, a strange unlight flickering from the cracks in the casing and making the sigils seem to slide and slither across the surface of the casket.
Although the centre of the room looked like a temple or a shrine, this was as much a place of science as Inge Weiss's office in Schloß Orlok. The perimeter of the chamber was lined with scientific instruments and recording cameras and white-coated technicians hovered in the shadows behind the officers.
"You see, Herr Klemper?" one of the technicians said, excitedly. "The device has been gathering power from the internal source for several hours."
"Yes," Klemper mused. He was a small man, with pockmarked skin and a disturbing gleam in the depths of his cold, dead eyes. "Dahak is stirring in his coffin."
"But what is the use of it, Klemper?" a third man asked.
"The use, Oberstgruppenführer Zelig?" Klemper asked, with barely restrained impatience. "Why, the potential of the Dahak Casket is almost limitless. It is a source of incredible power and a doorway into eternity."
At that moment, the casket emitted what could only be described as the very opposite of a flash; a pulse of that eerie black luminescence, which leeched the light of the incandescent bulbs from the room and left a dark afterimage on the eyes.
"My God!" Zelig gasped, disturbed.
"Excellent," Klemper purred.
*
There was a long pause and Inge heard muttering behind her. She could only make out a few words, but it was clear what the topic of discussion was: Killing a bloody-handed hero of the Reich or an arrogant, swaggering champion of the cause was one thing, practically an honour; shooting a sweet, pretty, frightened girl was quite another. Not that she doubted they would do it; she had already pleaded until her voice was hoarse, but to no avail.
Nevertheless, when all but one of her captors retreated and that last walked up behind her, she could not help herself. She did not want to die a coward, but more than that, she did not want to die at all.
"Please," she sobbed. She did not offer anything. She had nothing to offer but herself and she had seen the disgust with which these men looked at her. "Have pity," she begged, but that only seemed to anger the man. He pushed the fat muzzle of the silencer against her skin.
Inge reached inside her smock and gripped her talisman with a blistered hand; at least her captors had not taken that, for all the good it had done her. Its light was still strong and true, but death had caught up with her anyway.
There was a sudden noise and a flash of light and Inge thought for a moment that she was dead, but although she fell forward into the shallow grave that she had been forced to dig she was not dead. There was a scuffle behind her; the sounds of a fight. Strong hands gripped her wrists and pulled her out of the trench. Awkward, dazed, she found her feet and struggled to keep them as she was dragged along through the woods.
After what seemed like an hour, but was probably closer to ten minutes, her rescuer stopped and allowed Inge to catch her breath. She turned to look at him and started in alarm, for in the thin light of the moon and stars she saw that his eyes bulged horribly from his head!
A moment later, he pulled the goggles from his face and she was glad for the darkness that hid her blushes.
"Are you alright?" he asked her.
She was surprised to find that he was speaking English, but she replied in the same language. "I am very well, thank you, sir." His accent was American, but she had learned from records and BBC broadcasts. "I trust that you are too?"
He laughed. "Yeah. All things considered, I'm not doing too badly," he allowed. He held out a hand. "I'm Jack," he said.
*
Oberstgruppenführer Hans Zelig of the SS High Command was not a man known for his patience. He expected results and he expected them quickly, and Herr Karst Klemper was not providing them. It had been a stretch to offer the Gestapo agent a research command in the first place, but his promises and theories had been so compelling that Zelig had allowed himself to make a rare gesture of trust. It was either that or the schnapps that they had been consuming that night; Zelig's memory of the event was, regrettably, somewhat hazy. On several occasions he had decided to shut the Dahak project down, but each time, Klemper had somehow managed to persuade him otherwise.
If he did not know better, Zelig might have suspected Klemper of wielding unnatural powers.
"I am uncomfortable with the direction taken by this research," Zelig admitted. "I was told that this was an artefact of Henry the Fowler."
Klemper gave a soft chuckle. "I am in a unique position to confirm that association," he promised.
"But what I saw this evening was...unholy. I do not think that it would be in the best interests of the Reich to continue this line of research."
"But this is what we have been waiting for, Herr Oberstgruppenführer," Klemper insisted. "Since Westphalia the tesseract has been unstable, its power dissipated; we needed the presence of another time-traveller in this spatio-temporal location to stabilise the matrix and permit us to commence experimental and reconnaissance excursions through the" – he gave a soft chuckle – "Kurtzweiler event."
"You have been promising me time travel since the Westphalia catastrophe brought this artefact into your possession, Herr Klemper," Zelig said.
"I have been waiting for this moment since the Westphalia catastrophe," Klemper assured him. "The discharge of energy from the partially-shielded Casket signifies the arrival of a time-traveller from a more technologically advanced period. We shall have results very soon now; I promise you."
Zelig sneered. "You have two weeks," he said. "And find me this time-traveller, otherwise I will have to begin to question your reliability. You would not like that, Herr Klemper, believe me."
Klemper forced a sickly smile onto his face. "You...should not threaten me, Herr Oberstgruppenführer," he said, softly. "There really is no need and you would not want to say anything that you might regret."
The general's eye twitched angrily, but try as he might to deny it, he was afraid of Klemper. "Two weeks," he said again.
*
Jack took the young woman he had rescued through the woods until he was fairly sure that he had left their pursuers behind. He found a defensible position and let her settle down to rest for a short while.
He was in two minds about his actions. On the one hand, he knew nothing about the place where he found himself – except that they seemed to be quite posh – and few people tried to shoot anyone in the head without reason; on the other, the girl did not look as though she could be much of a threat to anyone. He was therefore inclined to assume that she was the innocent victim of some sort of mob hit. Nevertheless, he decided that he would have to keep an eye on her.
Keeping an eye on her was no great chore. Even mud-stained and weary, half-hidden in the darkness, she was a very attractive woman, if a little spineless. After Sam Carter, Amy Kawalsky and the other women he worked with, she did seem rather overwrought, although he supposed that being taken out to the woods and forced at gunpoint to dig her own grave would even knock some of the stuffing out of a female Air Force officer; he was sure it would take some of the spring out of his own stride.
"So; what's your name?" he asked, with slightly forced good cheer.
"Inge," she replied. "Dr Inge Weiss. I owe you my life..." she squinted quizzically at his uniform, looking for his insignia.
"Just Jack," he told her. "I don't much like to stand on ceremony."
She smiled, shyly. "You're not much like most of the soldiers I know."
He smiled back, deciding that was a compliment. "So what was their beef?"
"Beef?"
"That lot back there," he explained. "Why did they want to kill you?"
"They are terrorists," she replied. "I work with the government and the military, carrying out research vital to the war effort. I suppose that these men wanted to halt my research and to try and steal my work if possible. I was attacked on the road. They...they killed my driver in front of me and dragged me out of the car. They asked me questions. About my work...and about my family; about people that I know. They asked me if I knew some people that they spoke of."
"Did you?"
She shook her head. "They took my notes," she added, mournfully. "My work will be put back by years. Again. If I ever return to civilisation alive. I seem to attract this kind of trouble."
"Have you thought about a change of scene?" Jack asked.
"I do not choose where I work," she replied. "I simply use my skills where they are most needed. I suppose that I will always be seen as an enemy by some."
Jack took her hand and squeezed it gently. "I'll look after you," he promised. "Where were you heading when they grabbed you?"
"The castle," she replied. "I...I don't know where that is from here."
Jack shrugged. "How hard can it be to find a big, honking castle?" he asked rhetorically. "If we keep going straight, we should be able to find a road and flag down a car."
He reached down and helped her to her feet, then led the way through the trees.
*
Klemper was one of the Gestapo's more eccentric agents. He was something of a dilettante, interesting himself in political machinations as well as scientific programs and religious and philosophical questions. He was undoubtedly brilliant and his skill base was extremely broad, but by refusing to pin his colours to any one mast he had lost the chance to gain patronage from one of the big names in the SS. He lacked any real clout himself, being of markedly inferior racial stock and devoid of nobility, and his arrogance in the face of such disadvantage alienated him from all.
Nevertheless, three virtues had brought Klemper to the lofty rank of Obersturmbannführer. Firstly, he tended to get results, and the SS High Command would forgive much if a man could only be successful. Secondly, he possessed an absolute ruthlessness in the pursuit of his goals; a cold-bloodedness that made hardened Einsatzgruppen officers blench. Finally, he was – as a number of his enemies would have attested had they yet lived – extraordinarily hard to kill.
The pockmarks which cratered Klemper's face were actually the scars of a mortar attack in the trenches during the Great War. He had been shot nine times, stabbed three and surviving two attempts at poisoning. During an expedition to Tibet in 1940 he had been lost in the mountains for ten days before returning to camp, quite unharmed. He was fifty-three years old, but had the strength and vigour of a man of forty.
As befitted such a veteran, Klemper had a suite of rooms at the Wewelsberg and a personal servant to attend to his needs. As his record often attracted doubtful whispers, so his servant drew envious glances; her name was Gretel and, although small and dark with a milky cataract over her right eye, she was a woman of considerable beauty.
Klemper often seemed heedless of her charms, however, and when he returned from his interview with Oberstgruppenführer Zelig, he slumped into his chair and snatched a proffered glass from her hands without so much as a grunt of acknowledgement. Gretel dipped a curtsey and went about her duties, grateful for his indifference.
"That man is a fool," he declared at last. The drink was gone, the bitter sting of schnapps in his throat, and he gestured for another. "He can not imagine the importance of this work. None of them can. Their minds are too small; too limited."
Wordlessly, Gretel refreshed her master's drink.
"How I hate being forced to bow and scrape before such miniscule intellects as these," Klemper sighed. "Such is fate, however and I think that my days are numbered. I can not afford to presume that they would offer me two weeks if they were not planning to see the back of me in as many days and I must make alternative arrangements."
"I...I am sure that they appreciate your work, sir," Gretel stammered.
Klemper smiled fondly and beckoned to her. She approached, head down.
"Look at me," he said.
She obeyed and he slapped her hard across the face. "Do not call me ‘sir'," he told her.
"Forgive me, Master," she whispered.
He gave a short grunt of laughter. "Bring the elixir," he ordered.
Gretel's eyes brimmed with terrified tears. "Please, Master; not that."
Klemper slapped her again. "Bring the elixir," he repeated.
"Yes, Master," she sniffled.
With her shoulders rounded from fear, she sloped away to the bathroom medicine cabinet and returned with a small bottle of a lurid, purple fluid. He poured a drop of the fluid in his drink, and then waited for Gretel to put the bottle back in its place.
"Your health," he said, lifting his glass and taunting her with his flinty gaze.
Klemper set the glass down and beckoned to Gretel. Shaking with fear, she approached and knelt before his chair. Klemper caught her roughly by the back of the neck and pulled her violently into a kiss that was without passion or lust. He forced his lips hard against hers and her body spasmed wildly for a few moments, as though in pain, before growing still.
She no longer shivered, and when she pulled away from Klemper he fell back in his chair. His eyes were closed and his head lolled in sleep.
Gretel stood up and licked her lips. "Always delicious," she murmured to herself.
She left Klemper lying asleep in his chair and swept out of the room.
*
The sight of the road filled Inge with joy. It was easy enough for Jack to see that she was not the outdoors type.
"How're you holding up?" he asked, to keep her with him.
"Tired," she replied. "I'm scared and I'm hungry...and I want to go home." She did not mention it, but she was also on the verge of tears again. Jack chose not to mention it either; he would have been on the ropes after what she had been through and he had experience of being an abused prisoner.
He put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her, gently. "It's okay now," he promised her. "You're safe."
She flung both arms around his waist and clung to him like a child, shivering with sobs.
"Whoa!" Jack cried. He stroked her hair, gently. "Easy, Inge. You are safe, but we need to try and flag down a lift," he suggested. A cursory examination of the road surface in the half-light suggested that it was very similar to those that he knew from Earth and he began to wonder where in the galaxy he was. "We're not likely to get a ride while I'm so obviously armed," he decided. He disentangled himself from the woman, retrieved his rain poncho from his pack and wrapped his P90 in its folds He concealed the pistol inside his jacket.
Inge wiped her eyes. "We're not far from the castle," she told him. "The civilians will be used to armed soldiers."
"Better safe than sorry," Jack decided.
A pair of headlights appeared in the distance, flickering dimly through the forest.
"You're more likely to get results than I am," Jack suggested. "See what you can do."
Inge nodded and stood out at the side of the road. She held out her hand in supplication as the car approached. As the lights fell upon her, Inge looked a pitiful sight. She was half-starved, her skin almost bloodless and her face and smock alike were caked with the mud of the trench. Her fair hair hung in lank, muddy strands and her pale blue eyes were luminous.
Jack could not have resisted her imploring gaze and nor could the driver of the car. The vehicle stopped; Jack could hardly believe his eyes. He could accept that there were cars on other worlds; he had seen them. He could even understand that certain design universals would result in alien cars bearing similar design features to Earth vehicles. There was, however, no doubt in his mind that this car did not merely look like a VW bug; it actually was a VW bug.
Inge stumbled to the door of the car. "Bitte. K&öuml;nnten Sie uns zum Schloß fahren," she said.
"Ich bin nicht sicher," the man replied. He sounded frightened.
"Bitte; Sie müssen einfach!" Inge pleaded. Jack could hear that she was about to burst into tears again.
The man deflated. "Steigen sie ein," he sighed.
Inge leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, then waved excitedly for Jack to hurry over. The man looked surprised and dismayed to see a tall, fierce man emerge from the forest behind the safe, quiet girl he had agreed to help out, but he did not try to drive away as Jack and Inge climbed in. Despite her fear and exhaustion, Inge was conscientious enough to shift the driver's coat off the back seat to keep from getting mud on it.
"So," Jack said, "dies ist also Deutschland?" And not a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse after all.
Inge gave him a strange look. "Selbstverständlich. Sie sprechen sehr gut Deutsch," she added.
"Danke," Jack replied. He continued, still in German: "I had to learn for my work." He looked to the driver. "Thanks for this, buddy," he said.
The driver gave a nervous, grudging smile. "My pleasure, Mein Herr," he said, ungraciously.
Jack's heart sank. Despite her own troubles, Inge clearly noticed his apprehension.
"Have you never been to the Wewelsberg before?" she asked.
Jack shrugged. "Just once," he replied, although he was slowly becoming aware that his own visit to Heinrich Himmler's castle would, subjectively speaking, not take place for some forty years. He felt vaguely ill and he prayed that he was having a very bad dream.
"There isn't a Volksdeutch unit posted in the area, is there?" she asked. "What brings you so far from the front, Jack?"
"I can't tell you that," Jack told her, honestly. Carter might have been up to the challenge, but Jack knew that he did not stand a chance. He settled himself in the back seat of the KdF wagen and tried to prepare himself to bluff for his life.
*
Hauptsturmführer Reinhardt von Lieberman was as near to being the diametric opposite of Klemper as it was possible to be without leaving the hallowed ranks of the Schutzstaffel. He was a rising star of the SS Scientific Division, a brilliant military graduate from a good family, with an impeccable Aryan pedigree and the patronage of a powerful general. As Oberstgruppenführer Zelig's aide, he had risen far and fast and he had every intention of continuing to do so in the future, preferably in a more autonomous role. Klemper considered him to be an upstart. Von Lieberman considered Klemper to be an oaf and his immediate goal in life was to relieve the older man of his pet project, by undermining him at every turn and taking his place as director of the Dahak project.
Von Lieberman was sitting in his shirt-sleeves, contemplating the latest Dahak test results, when someone knocked at the door. He heard his Junker, von Beck, answer the knock and heard a woman's voice speak to the boy. He was on his feet and in his jacket by the time von Beck came to announce: "Herr Obersturmbannführer Klemper's servant has brought a message for you."
"Yes, yes," von Lieberman said, curtly, pushing past the youth. "Gretel, my dear," he said, smoothly. As well as Klemper's project, von Lieberman wanted to take away his servant; he had been conducting an illicit affair with Gretel for some weeks now, but he did not like to share.
Gretel gave a dazzling, demure smile. "Hello Reinhardt," she said.
Von Lieberman took her hands. "Surely he has not released you so early in the day?" he asked, hopefully.
"Not yet, but in one hour I shall be free," she replied, suggestively. "Will you?"
"I will now," he promised.
"Then I will see you then," she said.
She kissed him, hard and they both shuddered.
"Go," von Lieberman commanded, his ardour melting away.
"In one hour, then?" she asked, uncertainly. Her voice was shaking.
Von Lieberman gave her a long look. "Why not," he replied at last. "Now get out."
"Yes, sir," she replied. "I mean, Master," she corrected, as his hand twitched up, threateningly.
"Fetch my hat, boy!" von Lieberman snapped. "I am going to see the Oberstgruppenführer."
*
There were recriminations and bruised egos as the three executioners returned to their safe house. They had left the dead men lying in open graves; there seemed little chance of escaping discovery now and, therefore, little point in concealment.
They were silent until they were safely inside; then the recriminations began.
"Well, thank you so much for all your help," George Metzler grumbled. He sported a black eye and a nasty graze on the side of his face and he was limping. The interloper had tackled him hard and he had been a very big man.
"You said stay away five minutes," Rudolf Brunt replied, defensively. He and Basil Jägers had heard the commotion, but had not arrived until it was all over. They did feel bad about it, as they had in all honesty probably gone a little further back into the woods than was strictly necessary. More than this, they were a little bit afraid of Metzler.
Jägers ignored the argument and went to the radio. The OSA contact inside the Wewelsberg would be waiting to receive confirmation of the executions to relay to their friends in London and beyond and he had to be told that things had gone...awry. Jägers sat down, opened the cabinet and removed the transmitter. He connected up the battery, checked the tuning and began tapping out the Morse code.
-.-.- contact.-.-.- azazel to lucifer.-.-.- little billy goat gruff has crossed the bridge.. .. little billy goat gruff has crossed the bridge .-.-.
He waited for a few moments with the channel open, before the reply was rapped out in Lucifer's sharp, precise fist.
-.-.- contact confirmed.-.-.- lucifer to azazel.-.-.- little pigs are in the brick house.. .. little pigs are in the brick house.-.-.- the troll is under the bridge.. .. the troll is under the bridge.-.-.- cure the ham.. .. cure the ham.-.-. -.- -.-..-.
The receiver fell silent. Jägers disconnected the battery and put the unit away again.
"Well?" Brunt asked, concerned.
"I told him that Weiss escaped," Jägers replied. "He says it's too late to abort the mission; the team is already en route. He'll make arrangements to deal with Weiss; we're to go back and bury the bodies."
Brunt sighed. "Better hurry then; before someone finds the pigs in their graves."
"Goats," Jägers corrected. "The pigs are our guys."
"Bloody codes," Brunt grumbled.
*
At Jack's request, the car pulled up at the side of the road. Jack got out and headed for the trees.
"Be careful!" Inge called, nervously. "We know that there are terrorists operating in these woods; that means there will be patrols, also. They may not recognise your uniform."
"I'll stay alert," he promised. "I just...really can't wait until we reach the castle."
This was the plain truth, although his reasons were rather more complex than a need to relieve himself in the bushes. He briefly considered simply disappearing into the woods altogether, but something told him that it would be wrong to abandon Inge at this point. Indeed, as he moved further from her, he felt a painful, squeezing sensation in his chest that he could not account for. He had been in love and this certainly was not that; if it were anything known, then he would have likened it to the psychosomatic heart-strain experienced when one knew that one was overindulging in fatty food, as though leaving Inge to the tender mercies of the world might actually be bad for his health.
Jack stopped once he was out of sight of the road. He dug a shallow pit at the base of a distinctive gnarled and twisted rowan tree and concealed his wrapped P90 within. He added his spare clips, tags, tac radio and other high-tech equipment. After a short, internal debate, he left his watch, not without regret. He kept his pistol; it was too advanced for the period, but technically similar enough to a 1940s automatic to pass muster and he did not want to be unarmed.
"Time travel," he muttered to himself.
Back at the car, Inge fretted and watched the spot in the trees where Jack had disappeared. She was calmer now, but the fear that had dogged her through her week in captivity was still there, gnawing at her heart. Outwardly she seemed unconcerned, but she could feel the terror waiting to sweep over her again.
There was a knock on the window behind her. Inge screamed.
Jack heard the scream as he was covering the pit with earth. He left off what he was doing and moved quickly and silently through the trees towards the road.
The driver panicked. He tried to drive away, but stalled the engine instead. The man who had knocked on the window was peering in and Inge saw that he was no terrorist; he was not even German. His hair was dark and very short, his skin was nut brown and he had narrow, slightly slanting eyes. The shock of seeing an Oriental in the Teutoburg Forest was so great and her relief so palpable that Inge began to laugh out loud.
The driver looked around at the filthy, laughing girl; his eyes were crazed with fear. He released his safety belt, lunged across the seat to the passenger door and ran for his life, fleeing into the forest. He passed Jack as he ran, but did not even slow down.
Jack wasted no time watching the driver. He levelled his pistol at the newcomer, who was nothing extraordinary to him. Inge lived in a land made forcibly homogenous; Jack's home was as cosmopolitan as they came.
"Step away from the car!" Jack ordered in his best German.
Inge hauled the door open and scrambled out to hide behind Jack.
The man stepped back and raised his hands. He was wearing a workman's overalls that appeared to have seen a great deal of use. "My apologies," he said, in a peculiarly gentle voice. "I have travelled far and I hoped to beg a lift of you and your friends. I did not intend to cause any alarm and I deeply regret that I have frightened the lady and the gentleman so." As he said this, he directed an apologetic bow towards Inge.
"Come around to the front of the car," Jack instructed. "Inge; get in, start the engine and put the headlights on."
The man obeyed at once; Inge was less sure, but Jack laid a supportive hand on her shoulder and she climbed back into the car. The engine fired easily, but it idled for some time as Inge tried the windscreen wiper and the indicator before managing to locate the headlights. It occurred to Jack that this must be almost the entirety of the KdF wagen's electronic equipment.
The man did not appear to be armed and Jack allowed himself to relax a little. "Alright," he said. "Well, you probably don't want to go where we're going. Better wait for another car."
"You are not going to the castle?"
Jack blinked. "You want to go to the castle?" he asked, incredulously.
"Indeed I do."
"No offence, but you do realise that you're...Tibetan?"
The man inclined his head in agreement.
"And they're Nazis."
The man nodded again. "I have business there. They took something very dangerous from the monastery where I have spent the last...well, many years. I have come to retrieve it."
"Just you?"
"Yes."
Jack gave a short laugh. "Well, you've got balls at least." He put the pistol away. "What's your name?"
"My name is Lam."
"Hop in," Jack offered. "But I'll be watching you." He motioned for Lam to sit in the passenger seat, while he got in the back. "Inge; you drive."
"I do not know how," Inge admitted.
Jack sighed. "Just great. Lam?"
Lam shook his head.
"Alright; Lam in the back, Inge the passenger seat." He climbed out on the same side as Inge and passed her the pistol as they passed. "Watch him," he said, softly.
Inge looked at the weapon in some surprise. "Yes, Jack," she agreed.
*
Von Lieberman presented himself to Zelig in his office, just as the general was preparing for a meeting with the Ahnenerbe Research Committee on Cultural Antiquities.
"Yes, Hauptsturmführer," Zelig asked, impatiently.
"A message from your wife, Mein Herr," von Lieberman explained. "Frau Zelig wished me to tell you that she has decided not to attend the theatre tonight. She hopes that you can return to your quarters in time for supper."
"She hopes?" Zelig laughed. "I hope. You have met my wife, von Lieberman: Wouldn't you rather spend time with her than with a pack of stuffy academics?"
"Indeed, Mein Herr," von Lieberman agreed, with an affected air of detachment. He most certainly would have rather been spending time with Frau Zelig and he had not been happy to cancel their theatre date, but needs must.
"Well, since you're here, you may as well sit in on the meeting," Zelig said. "You take an interest in Klemper's project; I may need your head for facts and figures."
"Of course, Mein Herr," von Lieberman agreed. "Will you be closing him down?"
Zelig shrugged. "I gave him two weeks and he will have two weeks. It remains only to be seen whether he gets to keep his full staff for that two weeks," he added with a chuckle. "Klemper is an erratic liability. I think it is time to see this project handed over to a more able and more...agreeable supervisor. As I said; your interest in the project has been noted, Reinhardt."
Von Lieberman saluted, smartly. "Thank you, Herr Oberstgruppenführer."
"You never know your luck," Zelig added, as he led the way into his private conference room. "If we can have Klemper demoted, maybe we can have that pretty maid of his reassigned to you as well. I know you've got your eye on her."
"Thank you, sir," von Lieberman said again.
"I always find myself in a generous mood when I'm thinking of Aline," Zelig assured him.
"I understand," von Lieberman lied. He was thinking of Aline, but his thoughts were, as always, mean and selfish.
The Ahnenerbe Research Committees – the academic think tanks established to oversee the researches, not only of the Ancestral Heritage Division, but of the entire SS – were, without exception, collectives of stuffy, half-mad academics, but the Cultural Antiquities Committee was the worst. It was low on the ladder of departments and von Lieberman had it in mind to transfer the project to somewhere more respectable once Klemper was gone; Energy Physics, perhaps, or even Mystical Phenomena, if time travel qualified. At least some of the scholars on those committees were both younger than sixty and sane, and many of them were close to the Reichsführer-SS. That was where an ambitious young man like Reinhardt von Lieberman belonged.
The Cultural Antiques Committee consisted of General Zelig, Professor Dr August Wotan, Dr Ernst Baumreich, Dr Gregor Faustus and – notionally – the Reichsführer-SS, not that he ever bothered to turn up for meetings of such a trivial committee. Baumreich was the most stable of the three. Ninety years old and almost completely senile, he was nonetheless better than Wotan, a madman who had gouged out his own left eye as a sacrifice to the Well of Mimir. Dr Wotan maintained that he possessed all the wisdom of past and future, but von Lieberman was pretty sure that he was entirely out of touch with the present. And Faustus...
Faustus maintained that he was five hundred years old and had sold his soul to the Devil; he looked every day of it and did not seem to have got a very good deal.
"Gentlemen," Zelig said. "You have studied the latest reports on the study of Artefact H314?"
"Of course," Baumreich croaked, impatiently. "What are your impressions of the projected progress of this project?"
"Perhaps my aide, Hauptsturmführer von Lieberman can best answer this question," Zelig suggested.
"Please go ahead, Hauptsturmführer," Wotan growled.
Von Lieberman inclined his head in acknowledgement, unbowed by Wotan's one-eyed stare. He smiled inwardly at the Professor's evident disappointment. "The project shows remarkable potential," he assured the committee. "The sheer power generated by the tesseract held within the artefact is incredible. I would, however, question Klemper's handling of the investigation. He is perhaps a little too...mystical in his investigation of scientific issues and, too scientific in his investigation of matters mystical."
"But it seems to me," Faustus said, in his thin, reedy voice, "that there is little use for this artefact and that, until a use is found, the artefact is essentially an open door through which anybody could emerge, as happened in Walenberg."
"Indeed," von Lieberman agreed, "but Klemper does not see this. He researches from a sort of unfocused passion. This project needs direction."
"We believe that there is value to be drawn from this project," Zelig added, "but not under Klemper's direction."
The three older men leaned together and held a brief, whispered conference.
"We concur," Wotan assured him.
*
Jack could not escape the desire to flee from the Wewelsberg. He had faced down some of the most appalling creatures that the galaxy had to offer, but the Nazis were different. Their almost uniquely human brand of evil chilled his blood, for all that his father and grandfather had raised him on their heavily embroidered tales of heroic deeds in the battle against the Führer's finest. Until he was twenty-three, Jack had genuinely believed that his father – in reality a tail-gunner – had single-handedly devastated the Japanese war machine in the Pacific and that his grandfather – a Major in the infantry – had truly faced a mechanically reanimated corpse in mortal combat during a secret mission to occupied Norway.
Had he been alone, Jack could not swear that he would not have turned around and driven away at speed; he would certainly have slowed to a crawl a long way from the gate. Fortunately, the presence of observers stiffened his resolve. Lam was either made of sterner stuff or was incomparably naïve; he approached the gate of Himmler's Grail Castle with the confidence of an indestructible demigod. Inge, of course, looked as though she were coming home.
They stopped at the barrier and a pair of officious, black-clad soldiers ordered them from the vehicle at gunpoint. They sneered at Lam, ogled at Inge and cast wary eyes at Jack.
"What is your business?" the senior of the two demanded.
"My name is Dr Inge Weiss," Inge replied. "It is vital that I speak to...to someone in authority. I was ordered to report here by the Reichsführer-SS!" she added dramatically. Jack felt that she would have carried this claim off better if she had looked less like a peasant extra from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Despite her less-than-imposing appearance, Inge's claim clearly carried some weight, for the senior sentry nodded, respectfully. "One moment, Frau Doktor," he said. "March; call Herr Sturmbannführer Ruger and inform him that Frau Dr Weiss has arrived."
"Yes, Scharführer," the soldier called March confirmed.
Inge relaxed, visibly, but Jack sensed no such ease in the guards; if anything, their tension grew. Jack reached into the car and the Scharführer's MP40 came up, the barrel aimed unwaveringly at Jack's chest. Very slowly, Jack removed the driver's coat from the car. He held it up so that the sentry could see that there was no weight in any of the pockets, nothing that could be a weapon. The sentry then allowed Jack to hang the coat around Inge's shoulders and even seemed moved by the chivalry of the action, but his initial reaction had already confirmed Jack's suspicions; Inge's name had increased the sentries' wariness.
"Thank you, Jack," Inge said, pulling the coat around herself. "Oh, to have a bath." She was shivering, although her skin shone with sweat. Jack was worried that running flat-out through the cold, damp forest after days of captivity and malnutrition might not have done Inge much more good than the bullet would have done.
Sturmbannführer Ruger took ten minutes to arrive at the gate, a time that would have been impressive at most USAF bases, with the advantages of modern telecommunications. Ruger must have run hard to get to the gate so soon.
"I am Sturmbannführer Julius Ruger, senior controller of transportation and logistics. You are Frau Doktor Inge Weiss?" he asked, curtly.
"Yes," Inge replied, gratefully. "I am so glad to be here at last. My car was attacked and..."
"You were attacked?"
"Yes. I was..."
Ruger's hard eyes narrowed. "Was the car damaged in the attack?" he asked.
"The car?" Inge asked, nonplussed. "I don't...I think so. The driver was killed. I was hit on the hand myself; only a graze, but..." She held up her hand to display a livid, half-healed gash.
"Your car arrived here ten days ago," Ruger sneered. "‘Your' driver was quite unharmed."
Inge stared, uncomprehending. "I do not understand," she admitted.
"Frau Doktor Inge Weiss arrived at the Wewelsberg, almost on schedule. She left for her new assignment almost two days ago."
"But...But I am Inge Weiss," she argued, desperately.
Ruger turned away from her. "Scharführer!" he called.
Jack waited for Ruger to move between him and the sentry post, then sprang into action. He caught the Sturmbannführer around the neck and snatched the pistol from his hip.
"Drop your weapons or he dies!" Jack ordered. The guards wavered; they seemed baffled and Jack realised that in his excitement and fear he was speaking English again. "Inge; tell them."
"I...erm...Lassen sie Ihre Waffen fallen - sonst stirbt er," she translated. "Oh, Jack; they will never believe me now!" she wailed, as the sentries set down their submachine guns and divested themselves of their pistols.
"They weren't going for it anyway, Inge," he assured her. "Get in the car; passenger side. Have my pistol ready to cover Julius. Lam..."
"I shall stay," the Tibetan replied. "I have business here and nothing to do with you."
"It's your funeral," Jack warned.
Lam shrugged. "Perhaps." He gave a dry chuckle. "It wouldn't be the first time."
"Whatever. Julius; driver's seat."
Jack forced Ruger into the KdF wagen, then covered the guards as he climbed into the back. He reached for a seatbelt that was not there, pushed Ruger's pistol into the back of the driver's seat, and then gently took the Beretta from Inge's trembling hand.
"Go fast, but safe," Jack told Ruger. "Drive defensively. The first sign of anything bold and I'll put a bullet in your back."
Obediently, Ruger started the engine and dropped the car into gear. Amid a spray of pebbles and a squeal of tortured rubber, the KdF wagen hauled around and sped away from the gate. The Scharführer snatched up his MP40 and fired at the retreating vehicle, but to no avail. His partner covered the Tibetan.
Lam raised his hands. "I surrender," he said, calmly.
*
Ignorant of the drama playing out at the castle gate, von Lieberman made his way to Gretel's quarters.
"Master," she greeted him.
He slammed the door behind him and propelled her roughly towards the bed, forcing a hungry kiss on her mouth. "Imbeciles!" he snarled, incongruously. "Short-sighted, superstitious morons."
"Yes, Master," Gretel agreed.
"If they had half a brain between them, my plans could be in serious jeopardy."
"It could not be so, Master."
Von Lieberman gave an approving growl at her words and worried the skin of her neck with his teeth. She made a sound halfway between a gasp and a whimper.
"Fortunately, I can shuck off Klemper and continue my work as von Lieberman," he told her. "Of course, I shall keep you."
"Thank you, Master."
He shoved her down onto the bed and began to strip off his tunic. "Once I was feared; worshipped as a god. Now I must creep about in a succession of mortal shells, toadying to men I would once have slaughtered in the name of my master. My name, that once inspired dread in the great and the holy, must go unspoken."
Gretel struggled up and began to remove her dress. Von Lieberman knelt on the bed and kissed her. She leaned into his embrace with a small groan and murmured his name as their lips parted: "Reinhardt."
Once more, von Lieberman thrust Gretel away from him and he slapped her hard across the face. "How dare you speak of that mortal in my arms. Perhaps he should enjoy my favours."
Gretel quailed in fear. "No," she begged. "Please."
He gave a sharp laugh and clamped a cruel hand on the back of her neck. "Then speak my name," he demanded. He fixed his mouth on hers, driving his teeth hard against her lips and tongue until he tasted blood. "Say it!" he hissed.
"You are my Master," she sobbed.
"Say my name!"
"Yes," she whispered, "Iblis."
*
"You will never get away from them," Ruger warned.
"I'll take my chances," Jack assured him. "Pull over here."
"What?"
"Pull over!"
Ruger felt the barrel of the pistol through the flimsy protection of the seat cushion and he obeyed. At Jack's insistence, he got out of the car and stood in the road.
Jack pushed one of the pistols into Inge's hand. "If he tries to run or get back in, shoot him," he told her.
"But..."
Jack cupped her face. "I know you're used to doing what they told you, but you've been set up, Inge," he told her. "You have to trust me."
"I do," she told him.
"I'll be back in one minute," he promised. "Just keep an eye on Julius."
Keenly aware that pursuit could not be far behind, Jack dashed into the forest and scrabbled at the dirt beside the rowan tree. His hands fixed on the waterproof fabric of his poncho and he hauled his gear from the pit. With a P90 in his arms, he went more slowly back to the car, but still as swiftly as he dared.
Jack could hear the roar of motorbike engines on the road behind them. He dropped his bundle on the back seat and retrieved a single Claymore, stretching its tripwire across the road behind the KdF wagen.
"Back in!" he ordered Ruger, who went without question. As the Sturmbannführer drove them away, he checked his P90 and set his night-vision goggles over his eyes. He turned and saw, far off and half-hidden in grey-green shadows, the vague shapes of the motorbikes. They hit the tripwire and were knocked sideways by the blast of the Claymore; no other bikes came after them.
"What was that?" Inge demanded, looking back.
Ruger made a grab for the Luger in Inge's hand. Jack's attention was entirely focused on the man as he caught his arm and pushed the P90 into the back of his seat and so he did not see how Inge's eyes widened in amazement at the sight of the compact, square-stocked weapon.
"Just drive, Jules," Jack suggested.
"What do we do now?" Inge asked, breathlessly.
Jack pondered for a long moment. "I guess we could try to contact the local resistance or something," he suggested.
Inge gave a small, slightly desperate laugh. "Just who do you think tried to kill me tonight, Jack?" she asked.
"You said they were terrorists," Jack replied. "Oh."
"You're not Volksdeutch," Inge realised. She seemed about to say more, but she glanced at Ruger and thought better of it.
"I can take you to a house where you will be hidden," Ruger said, suddenly.
Jack gave a sharp laugh. "And we would trust you...why?"
Ruger shrugged. "If they catch you, I'm as likely to be killed as you are. I did a very good job of making Frau Dr Weiss seem like the worst sort of security threat; they'll take no chances."
"But why?" Inge wailed.
Ruger did not answer.
"Anyway," Ruger went on. "What are your alternatives? No-one will dare to hide you from the SS except for the people who want Dr Weiss dead anyway. Your descriptions will be out to all of the fuel stations, SS and army garrisons within a hundred miles. All you can do is drive straight until you run out of fuel and hope to avoid notice; unlikely, so long as you are on the road."
Jack sighed. "Take us there," he agreed. "Just believe that I can kill you and more of your friends than you might think before they take me down."
"Oh, I believe you," Ruger assured him.
*
Iblis was roused by the sound of the general alarm. He tried to ignore the noise and pulled Gretel close against von Lieberman's chest, but there was something else that troubled him; something that niggled at the back of his mind and made his pseudo-neuronal ganglia tingle. Despite the proximity of his willing and beautiful slave, he could not ignore this feeling; a feeling that he was sure that he had felt before, but not for a very long time.
He passed from von Lieberman's body to Gretel's and left her bed and her room before the Hauptsturmführer could protest, let alone dress to come after her. She might need to use von Lieberman to keep control of the Casket, but for the time being, Klemper was the man to be if she wanted to monitor security threats. He was the most senior Gestapo man on site at present and that gave him a great deal of clout in certain circumstances.
Once the door to Klemper's quarters was locked behind her, Iblis parted Klemper's lips with Gretel's tongue and slithered from one mouth to the other. He purged the sedative from Klemper's body and stood. The use of the powerful narcotic was inconvenient – it took him almost ten minutes to flush it from Klemper's body each time – but necessary; Klemper was a man of iron will and Iblis could not completely suppress him while in control of the body. If allowed to act on his own, Klemper might remember that he had been possessed; he preferred his hosts to think that his actions were their own, as von Lieberman did.
Gretel, of course, knew exactly what happened to her, but Gretel was a special case; she was the only creature in the world whose obedience – if not her loyalty – Iblis did not question.
In Klemper's body, Iblis made his way to the security room and demanded that the officer of the watch – a hard-faced auxiliary named Fraulein Decker, whose only passions were the Nazi cause and the minutiae of military administration – explain the cause of the alarm.
"An intruder has been taken and two spies have fled with an officer as hostage," Decker replied.
"Which officer?" Klemper demanded.
"Herr Sturmbannführer Ruger," Decker replied. "The chief of transportation," she explained.
Klemper shrugged, unconcerned.
"We have motorcycles in pursuit," she added. "We anticipate their swift apprehension."
"Anticipate away," Klemper snorted. "I wish to question the prisoner," he added. The prisoner...it can't be, he thought. But this feeling...
Decker nodded. "Of course," she agreed. "I will have him brought to one of the interrogation rooms and arrange for one of the clerks to take notes for you."
"Gretel will take notes," Klemper replied. "Just have him brought to my laboratory."
"Yes, Herr Klemper," Decker agreed. Many of his fellow officers would have been shocked to see her so compliant, but she respected Klemper's directness and he escaped her usual disdain for the rest of the human race.
"And let me know if the spies are captured," he added.
*
In the laboratory temple, the Casket pulsed once more with its black light, and on a hillside looking out towards the Wewelsberg, space-time warped. As the fabric of the universe twisted, it began to emit a bright light. The disturbance grew wider, then disgorged a black-clad figure; she hit the ground, slipped and fell, dropping a long, black, steel case. Moments later, a second figure appeared; he tripped over the first and another case dropped from his hand. Above them, the rift shimmered closed.
"I really hope that no-one saw that," the man said. He was a lean, handsome man with proud, Aryan features but dark hair, dressed in the black uniform of an SS-Obersturmführer. He rolled himself off his companion, stood up and helped her to her feet. "I feel undignified enough in this uniform."
The woman, wearing the garb of a female auxiliary officer, gave a sharp laugh. "You think you have problems, Siegfried. At least you get to look like a proper officer." She rubbed her sore spine and stretched her back. "I have to be your doe-eyed aide."
"Poor Kriemhild," he chuckled. "You're a martyr to your work."
She scowled at him. "Still; it would've been nice to know we were going to land on a hill. If I'd tried that dramatic commando roll through the transition event I would have hit the slope headfirst and snapped my neck."
The man known as Siegfried put his arms around the woman known as Kriemhild and forced a smile to hide his real concern. "I'm glad you didn't, then," he told her.
She kissed him, gently. "Sweetie," she murmured.
They leaned against each other for a long moment, then pulled reluctantly apart. Kriemhild retrieved her case and took out a slim, silver device. She twisted its handle and the top of the device opened out into two branching arms; a holographic screen flickered on in the crook of the ‘Y'. After a moment of static, the screen resolved into a map of the area; a triangle close to the centre of the screen flickered, demandingly.
"Is that him?" Siegfried asked. "Imperiatrix! He's right on top of us!" He snatched the pistol from his belt and turned, swiftly.
Kriemhild laid a hand on his arm. "No, sweetheart," she chuckled. "It's not him, it's you. He must not have arrived yet."
Siegfried sighed. "I'll never get used to that. We left six hours after he did."
"We have a greater mass than him," she reminded him. "Combined, I mean. We transit as a single object, which gives us greater temporal momentum. Anyway; you know that time travel isn't an exact science. More a game of blind-man's buff."
"Oh well." Siegfried shrugged. He holstered his pistol and slipped his arms around her waist again. "I suppose that gives us a little time to kill," he said, suggestively.
Kriemhild turned and rubbed her face gently against his. "You're incorrigible," she told him, approvingly.
"We wasted a lot of time, A...Kriemhild," he reminded her. "I don't like to waste any more."
*
The house was hidden away in the woods, along a narrow trail that was almost invisible to traffic on the road. Jack had Ruger stop about halfway from the road while he stretched a tripwire across the trail. He attached an alarm to the wire; a detonating Claymore might give just as good a warning, but it would put paid to any hope of hiding and might well result in the untimely – and revealing – death of an innocent bystander or other large mammal.
The house itself was large and had an air of decaying gentility. Ruger explained that it had once belonged to a wealthy Catholic family, before being wealthy and Catholic became politically unacceptable. They had fled the country, leaving the house pretty-much as was; few enough people knew that it was there that it was already fairly mildewed when the SS found it and they had decided simply to leave it to fall into ruin. The garden had already run wild and begun to blur into the surrounding forest.
"Nice," Jack drawled, acidly.
Actually, it was, despite the persistent smell of dry rot. The floorboards were sound, the air dry and the wallpaper only peeling a very little. There was some dust, but little enough that it was that clear the house remained in sporadic use.
"A handful of people know about it and we keep it in basic working order as a retreat," Ruger explained. "We keep the Aga burning, so there's hot water on tap," he added, with a meaningful glance at Inge.
Inge's eyes brimmed with tears. "Really?"
"The bathrooms are upstairs on the left," he added. "There's two of them."
Despite the fact that she could definitely use a bath and obviously wanted one, Jack made Inge sit in the kitchen with Ruger while he secured the house. The fact that she had made a pot of tea by the time he had finished suggested that she was already losing her mistrust of Ruger and her awareness of their danger; Jack wondered how long it would take her to get them both killed, if he stayed with her.
"Is it safe," she asked, hopefully.
"Yes," Jack assured her. "The second bathroom looks a little less gyurgh than the first."
With a soft squeal of delight, Inge brushed past Jack and half-ran to the stairs. She turned, ran back, picked up a mug and pressed it into Jack's hands. "Thank you," she whispered and then she was gone again.
"She's...rather sweet, isn't she?" Ruger asked.
Jack fixed him with a frosty glower. "Strange that you're the second person to try and get her killed tonight, then," he noted.
"Not really," Ruger replied. "That woman has the finest brain in the western world, assuming that the qualification is even necessary. Unfortunately, she's been raised to be an obedient daughter and that puts all that knowledge...that power in the hands of whatever authority figure has the wit to abuse it."
"And you thought you'd kill her rather than put her right because...?"
Ruger shrugged. "I'm protecting someone," he admitted. "Someone who could be in trouble if a certain Meteor missed its target." There was a long pause. "As though Lucifer himself were on his heels," he added.
"I'm sorry," Jack replied, "I didn't miss your oh-so subtle cue, but I don't recognise it."
Ruger sighed. "Look; you are related to Duncan O'Neill, right?"
*
Klemper barely put his head through the door of the interview room before he turned around and waved Gretel away.
"Did he have anything with him?" he demanded of the guard.
"Yes, sir."
"Bring me his effects."
The guard fetched a bag and emptied it onto the table. There was a stub of candle, a box of matches and a handful of change. Klemper sifted through them, turning the coins over as though something might be concealed beneath them. "Is this all?"
"Yes, sir."
Klemper looked disappointed. "Very well. I will interrogate him in my own quarters," he told the guard. He was barely able to contain his excitement, but he forced himself to seem calm and controlled. "Bring him up at once. Put the region on alert and inform me immediately if any other intruders are taken, whoever they claim to be."
The guard was taken aback, but Klemper was a senior member of the Allgemeine-SS and therefore entitled to a degree of eccentricity. "Yes, sir," he agreed.
Klemper was already halfway down the corridor and merely waved an acknowledgement.
The guard turned and opened the door. The Tibetan sat calmly at the bare desk and gave a slight smile. The guard beckoned to his colleague and they advanced on the prisoner.
*
"Yes," Jack hedged, warily. "We're...related."
"Then what are you doing helping a Nazi scientist escape execution, not once, but twice?" Ruger demanded.
"What does an SS officer know about resistance execution detail?" Jack countered.
Ruger sighed again. "I'm Lucifer," he confided.
Jack blinked owlishly.
"God help me," Ruger muttered, "I'm the OSA contact in the SS logistical control corps."
Jack laughed. "The OSA? Oh come on; the Office of Secret Actions is a..." He slowed when Ruger's gaze showed no sign of wavering. "It's a myth. Isn't it? Like the Paranormale Abteilung or the Spezieller Resurrectionhauptleiter-SS?"
Ruger's eyes bulged. "You know about the SR?" he demanded. "Even Major O'Neill didn't have that level of clearance."
Jack gave a shrug and forced an air of nonchalance. "Well, he is only a Major," he sniffed.
"And he'll never be any more," Ruger insisted, "if you let that girl return to the fold, and return she will, if you let her. She is a faithful daughter of the Reich, Herr..."
"Just Jack," Jack insisted, enigmatically.
"Herr Jack. She was raised to obey and the Reich has given her every opportunity to do so. They have systematically reinforced the dogma that her father instilled in her until obedience is her nature and independence anathema. She will go back to her masters, I promise you that." He leaned forward, intently. "I know that you have formed some kind of attachment to her, so if you do not want kill her, then I will do it for you; just give me a pistol and it is done. Only load it with a single bullet if you doubt me, but we can not take the risk of her escaping."
Jack's eyes hardened. "No," he said.
"If she returns to the Wewelsberg without me there to intercept her, it is all over for Major O'Neill and his team! You will have killed three brave souls that the Allied war effort can ill do without."
"I will...think about it," Jack allowed. "But if you touch her, I swear I'll kill you."
"Understood," Ruger replied, darkly.
*
In the heart of the forest, the air twisted and spat eerie light. A gangly figure in rugged, hard-wearing work pants and a tattered t-shirt stumbled out of the tesseract. He was old and skinny, half-starved by the look of him. He carried a pistol, tucked in his belt.
He looked around him with the eyes of a hunted animal and then ran into the forest.
The monitor gave a soft bleep. Kriemhild pulled herself, reluctantly, from Siegfried's arms and activated the screen. A new light flickered, about halfway to the edge of the display.
"He's here," she told him. "Range fifteen clicks and on the move."
Siegfried got up and picked up his shirt. "He couldn't have waited another two minutes?" he grumbled.
"It seems not," Kriemhild agreed. She reached up and caught the other end of the shirt. "But I suppose that we can," she allowed.
*
It was a rather distracted Jack who left Ruger handcuffed to the range while he went to the toilet. As Ruger had noted, there were two bathrooms; Jack went into the first. He was halfway to the toilet when a squeal and a splash told him that he was in the wrong room. He half-turned to look, then averted his eyes.
"Sorry," he said, blushing. "Thought you were in the other room."
"I...I was," Inge assured him. "Only there was so much mud and that tub was a little...I promise I'll wash it later, but...I came in here and ran another bath, you see. Would you pass me a towel, please?"
"It's alright," Jack said, waving vaguely towards the door. "I'll head out."
"No, really," Inge blustered, awkwardly. "I've been in here long enough. If you just pass a towel."
Jack shrugged and passed the towel. It was grey and utilitarian, but dry and clean; in no way did it match the rest of the house. He held it out as a screen and Inge stepped from the bath. She took the ends of the towel and wrapped it around herself.
"I think our friend Julius may be with the terrorists," she noted.
Jack turned and looked at her properly for the first time; she looked...slightly alarming. She was pretty – although her face lacked the strength of character to make it truly attractive – and had a willowy slenderness that was only just on the right side of malnutrition. Her skin was like chalk and her hair, even wet, was somewhere between silver and gold. She was, he decided, the kind of girl you could look at for hours, but probably would not want to take to a dance for fear of breaking her.
"There are clothes in a walk-in wardrobe in the room across the hall," Jack told her. "You should pick something for travel; we might need to leave in a hurry."
Inge gave a soft chuckle. "You're the first man in a long time to try so hard to get me into my clothes," she told him, then at once blushed a bright crimson.
Jack smiled, weakly, although in truth he thought that a man would have to be something of a bastard to want to get anyone so sweet and fragile into bed. "Why do you work for the Nazis?" he asked. He had not intended to ask it, but he just had to know.
There was a long pause. "It's just...I never considered anything else," Inge admitted, disconsolately. "I thought that I belonged with them. I was very young when my father joined the party. He pulled strings to ease my way into university – it's still very difficult for a woman to find a decent place – and then to get me onto a party-funded research project. My old supervisor, Professor Dr..." She broke off, nervously; there were bad memories there, or Jack was a Dutchman. "Well, he was a friend of my father's and guided my career after I graduated. They said that it was important work and it was challenging and exciting; I enjoyed it. I never really thought about politics; I just...did as I was told."
"You know, sentiments like that are going to get a bad name, real soon," Jack told her, sternly.
"And you would know," Inge agreed.
Jack searched her face, but he could see no sign of a deeper meaning there. "Didn't it ever occur to you that what you were doing might be wrong?" Jack challenged.
"Of course it did!" Inge snapped. "Sometimes I even protested some of my supervisor's methods. But I...I'm just a woman!" she pleaded. "I have little authority in these matters. I don't have an analytical brain, you see; I am a creature of sentiment and my intellectual judgement is unsound. I would let myself be ruled by weakness if I disregarded the advice of more stable and..."
She broke off, fearfully; Jack was staring, open-mouthed and the expression alarmed her.
"It's nice to have met your father," Jack said at last, "but it might be good to know what you think."
Inge blushed.
Jack laid a hand on her cheek. "Your judgement is better than theirs," he assured her. "I think you have good instincts, Inge; trust them."
"I will be ruled by you, Jack," she promised him.
"Now I feel like I need a bath," Jack grumbled. "Can't you just try to make your own decisions?"
From the desperation in her gaze, he guessed not.
"Haven't you ever known that you were doing something wrong?" he demanded.
Inge nodded, miserably.
Jack relented; she looked so destitute that he did not have the heart to press her further. "What do you want to do with your life?" he asked.
"My desires are immaterial; my ambitions foolish and womanly."
Jack sighed. "Being womanly doesn't make them foolish," he assured her. "Now stop spouting dogma and answer the question. Or tell me to mind my own damn business; that would be a start."
Inge blushed. "I wanted to write," she admitted. "Poetry; plays."
"There's nothing wrong with that," he said.
Inge squirmed under his gaze. "I'm a pretty bad poet."
"Does that matter if it's what you want?" Jack asked. "I always thought one of the nice things about poetry is that anyone can do it, even if only badly."
"I'm a very bad poet," Inge insisted, "but I'm a very good physicist."
"An impressive achievement for someone without an analytical brain," Jack noted.
Inge avoided meeting his gaze. "How could it be right for me to deny such a worthwhile talent in pursuit of something so...worthless?"
"Is it worthless?"
"I don't know."
"You're a scientist," Jack reminded her. "Haven't you ever tried looking at the balance of the evidence?" He sighed. "Go and get dressed, then meet me in the kitchen. I'm gonna make some supper. There's fresh water, heat and I saw some winter vegetables in the garden. As far as protein goes, there's some beans in the cupboard...and some dead weevils."
*
While Jack was making a stew of as many beans and as few weevils as possible, Lam was sitting down to a sumptuous feast in Klemper's private quarters, served by the lovely Gretel. Iblis-as-Klemper sat opposite him and smiled broadly, obviously seeking his approval.
"I realise that it is late to be eating, but I was...indisposed at supper time," Iblis explained.
"You keep a good table," Lam noted. "Some things do not change."
Iblis smiled, almost obsequiously. "One of the advantages of seeking out a position of power," he explained. "The same could be yours if you were willing to use your powers to your advantage."
"More wine, sir?" Gretel asked.
"Thank you," Lam replied with a smile. "You know my feelings," he told Iblis.
Klemper's eyes followed Gretel as she retreated to a respectful distance. "What do you think of her?" he asked.
"The girl?" Lam asked. "She is...lovely."
Iblis sat back and grinned. "We once shared quite a weakness for attractive brunettes," he noted. "Do you remember Helena of Trahus?" he asked.
"I remember." Lam smiled, in spite of himself, but then he frowned. "But I was a different person then."
"Weren't we all?"
Lam narrowed his eyes. "You have said that before." He took a draught of wine and closed his eyes, savouring the taste. "I do not know why you have bothered to drug the wine," he commented. "You know that it will not affect me; it simply serves to spoil what is otherwise a rather cheeky '38 Latour. Criminal."
"It is not for you," Iblis assured him. "Gretel!" he called.
The girl approached, shivering with fear.
"Damn you, Iblis," Lam muttered.
Iblis ignored his guest for the moment. As soon as she was within reach, he caught Gretel by the hand and pulled her to him. He clasped her neck in his iron grip and kissed her hard. Lam watched in disgust as Iblis' true body squirmed between their mouths and burrowed into Gretel's mind.
Iblis, in Gretel's body, shivered luxuriously as Klemper collapsed, unconscious. "He has his uses," she noted, "although they are running out, but he is inconveniently strong. My life will be easier once I arrange his execution and move permanently into von Lieberman." He chuckled. "I suspect that Gretel will be far happier with the arrangement as well."
"You're a bastard, Iblis. That girl is an innocent."
"I think I am in a better position to judge than you," Iblis replied, "and even besides her actions under my prompting, she is far from unsullied." She shimmied toward Lam and slid easily into his lap. "But why so coy, Ormazdh?" she laughed. "Listen to yourself; you talk more like a priest than a warrior.
"I am a priest," he replied, "and a monk. It is centuries since I have even carried a weapon."
"You a man of peace? What a perverse idea," Iblis crowed. "And you truly believe in your own conversion, don't you. You did not even bring a weapon now, to face me. And you are so used to talking to humans that you have almost forgotten your voice. Let me hear it," she wheedled.
"I have not forgotten," Ormazdh assured her, but he allowed his voice to rumble through Lam's. "I have chosen to live as one of them, as far as I can. You and I have nothing in common any longer, shapeshifter."
Iblis pouted. "Don't I even get a kiss?" she asked. "You never used to be so backward in coming forward. Do you remember that time on Baythis? After the battle, when you and I...?"
"We were different people," Ormazdh-in-Lam said again, firmly.
Iblis gave a sultry chuckle. She put her arms around his shoulders and nuzzled his throat, affectionately. "You can not hide that you want me, Ormazdh," she purred. "I sense it now as I sensed it then; as I sensed it at the battle of Wolfenstein when..."
"...when you tried to murder me. I have learned to control my desires since then," Ormazdh assured her. He took hold of her hips and pushed her away. "Gone are the days when the thought of coupling with a shapeshifter was dangerous and exciting; your appetites grew tedious long before I left my brother's company, however pretty your hosts."
Iblis scowled, angrily.
"And you may be an insatiable hedonist, Iblis, but you were never a wanton. You didn't bring me up here to make love, did you?"
"No." Iblis stamped angrily away. "I am offering you a partnership, Ormazdh," she said, without turning. "You and I, in service to the Master. I can offer you so much, my darling: money, power, authority; and of course Gretel, if you want her and however you want her. Or, if you prefer, there's the handsome Hauptsturmführer von Lieberman; if I recall correctly you were always broad-minded. Or I could introduce you to a svelte little general's wife, if it is simply that you have switched your preference to blondes these days. Frau Zelig is a most frustrated young woman; very grateful for attention."
"I won't make any deals with you," Ormazdh insisted. "I want to speak to my brother."
Gretel's shoulders hunched up. "Not now," she insisted, evasively.
Ormazdh laughed. "I would know if Ahriman were here, Iblis," he assured her.
Iblis blushed. "Alright," she grumbled. She turned and knelt at the feet of his chair; she clutched his hand, tightly. "You are right; there is no Ahriman. I never did manage to find him; whatever happened when he followed the advance guard through the Chappa'ai...I can only think that he is dead."
"I would know," Ormazdh replied.
"But he is not here," Iblis replied. "I am alone, Ormazdh, my sweet. I have been alone so long."
Ormazdh cupped her cheek; his eyes shone with genuine sympathy for her plight. "Poor Iblis," he murmured, and he stooped to kiss her gently on the cheek. "So long without anyone to tell you what to do; who to be. However did you cope, my poor shapeshifter?"
"Then you will be my lord?"
"Give me two hours with your servant" – Ormazdh laid a restraining hand on Iblis' shoulder – "with your servant, not with you," he insisted, "and I will consider it."
Iblis nodded, eagerly. "Yes," she agreed.
*
"It's almost midnight," Inge said, softly. "Why don't you go inside and get some sleep?"
Jack started awake on the balcony of the house. "No. I'll be alright," he lied. According to his watch it was closer to four in the morning, which meant that he had been awake for more than twenty hours straight, of which time he had spent about an hour running hard through the woods. He was exhausted, but he did not trust Inge to take a watch and he trusted Ruger even less. The SS logistician was in bed, handcuffed to the brass frame.
"No you won't," Inge insisted. "You need sleep, Jack."
He shook his head. "I have to keep watch."
Inge sat down beside him. She had changed into a brown woollen dress; her idea of practical travelling clothes. Jack had suggested she might wear trousers and she had laughed. She wore a pair of heavy boots, which looked comical at the end of her spindly legs, and a woollen overcoat for warmth.
"Thank you," she said.
"Pure reaction," he assured her, evasively. "If I'd known who you were..."
"I know," she said. "But you know now and you have not killed me or sent me away yet." She reached into the front of her dress and drew out a talisman. "I know where you come from," she said.
"You're familiar with Minnesota?"
Inge shook her head. "Perhaps I should say when you come from," she admitted. She held out her talisman for him to see.
Jack snatched the laser aiming module from her fingers and examined it. There could be no mistaking it; it was identical to the one in the rail of his P90. "Where did you get this?" he demanded, angrily. Inge retreated as far as she could; she was held by the talisman's chain, however, and Jack easily caught hold of her wrist. "Where did you get this?"
"You're hurting me," Inge protested.
"Tell me..."
"Take your hands off me!"
Jack was sufficiently surprised to hear Inge speak up for herself that he released her without a thought, also dropping the talisman so that she could back away from him. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "You came to offer me information; there was no need for that."
Inge cradled her arm and rubbed her wrist, but forced a wavering smile in response to his kind words. "Two years ago, I was working on a project at Schloß Walenberg," she explained. "One night, two people appeared in my lab."
"Just two people?" Jack asked. "Not three?"
She shook her head. "There was a man, Teal'c; a ‘labourer' they said he was, but he handled himself better than most of the Waffen-SS soldiers I've seen."
"Labourer?" Jack gave a soft laugh. "They would've been in for a shock if they'd taken him for a menial."
"They were," Inge assured them. "I lost track of precisely what happened that night, but between them, he and Major...Dr...Carter; I wasn't sure which she was."
"She's both."
"Well, they made a mess of the laboratory...and the castle. There were two other time-travellers; they called themselves Klingsor and Kundrie."
Jack gave a sharp laugh.
"Well, you don't stop to ask questions when someone waves a Gestapo ID in your face," Inge assured him, "however Wagnerian their name. They seemed to have been sent to catch your friends, but they disappeared, along with Dr Major Carter and Teal'c. They took most of their equipment with them, but I had been using that device to measure spatial distortions. I have kept it since as a...a good luck charm. I was fortunate enough to escape the castle almost unscathed, although all of my research notes were lost."
Jack sat in silent thought for a moment, then passed the laser back to Inge.
"Thank you," she said.
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For letting me know that at least some of my friends are alive and well," Jack replied. "Apparently you're a threat to my grandfather," he noted.
"Is your life in danger?" Inge asked, concerned.
Jack shrugged. "My father should be safely born," he said, "although you never can tell. It's not me I'm worried about," he admitted. "It's the rest of the world."
Inge gave him a startled look, as though just realising something important. "You never meant to come here," she said. "Neither did your friends. Kundrie and Klingsor did, but not you."
"I have no idea what my being here will do. Saving your life could have destroyed the future I know; I could go back and find that your lot, the Nazis, won the war."
"Dr von Kurtzweiler thought that Dr Major Carter had come from the future to help him perfect his machine," Inge noted. "I always had my doubts. The Reich will not be victorious then?" she asked.
Jack shook his head. "Does that bother you?"
"I don't know," Inge admitted. "As I said, I have...tried not to concern myself with politics. I'm a scientist, Jack; I don't care about the Reich."
"There are things that you can have that attitude to and things that you can't," Jack told her, sternly. "When they start building the death camps, it's time to take sides."
Inge averted her eyes. "I can't do anything about it, Jack," she moaned. "I asked them to stop, but they said they didn't matter. They kept feeding them into that machine...into the tesseract."
"Into the what now?"
"A hole in time," Inge said. "The same hole that you fell out of. I was trying to work out how it worked, but they...Dr von Kurtzweiler just kept throwing them into the void, where they were...torn apart. I told him it did no good; I told him that we learned nothing. I...I wanted to tell him that it was wrong, but I was afraid. I'm sorry."
Jack laid a hand on her shoulder. "You can't change the past," he said, "but there's always the future."
Inge smiled up at him and slipped her hand into his. Jack felt himself blush and hoped that the poor girl was not falling in love with him.
"Oh my God!" Inge gasped.
Jack followed her gaze. Where the overgrown garden met the edge of the woods, a man had appeared, half-running, half-staggering. Jack scrambled to his feet and ran down the stairs; Inge followed as fast as she could in her heavy boots.
Jack reached the door just ahead of the man. "Halt!" he commanded.
The man, a pitiful, emaciated figure, slid to a halt and half-raised a pistol; he must have registered the weapon in Jack's hands, however, because he stopped without bringing the pistol to bear.
"Lassen Sie die Waffe fallen und nehmen Sie die Hände hoch," Jack ordered.
"You'll have to speak English, son," the man replied.
Jack felt a shiver all along his spine at the sound of that voice. "Put down the weapon," he said.
"My God," the man whispered. "It's you!" His hand came up fast.
"Don't..." Jack began.
A shot rang out...from behind Jack. The bullet flew wildly into the night, but the man looked up in shock and that was all that Jack needed. He stepped forward, knocked the intruder's hand aside and twisted the weapon from his grasp; he recognised the zat'nik'tel as it fell to the ground. He thrust the man away and held him covered with the P90. Inge came forward, the Luger held in her shaking hand. She raised a lantern and shone the light on the man's face.
Jack lowered his weapon. "General Hammond!" he gasped.
The familiar face, so ravaged and thin, scowled up at him. "Commander O'Neill!" he spat.
"Jack?" Inge asked.
Jack shot her a fierce glance and for a moment there was madness in his gaze.
"What does it mean?" she asked, in a quavering voice.
"It means I've gone and done it," Jack said. "I've killed my world."
He stepped forward and grasped Hammond's arm. Hammond tried to shake him off, but he had almost no strength.
"Come on, General," Jack said, gently.
"General?"
"Let's go, Sir."
*
Iblis left the room in Klemper's body and Gretel stood before Ormazdh, head hanging.
"Please, take a seat," Ormazdh said.
Fighting not to shiver, Gretel obeyed. Ormazdh, his senses far sharper than any human's, could smell her fear; she was terrified. Of course, if she retained any of Iblis' memories then she would know that the master whom she feared was himself afraid of Ormazdh.
Ormazdh got up and knelt before her. He laid his fingers on her temples and applied a gentle pressure. As he massaged her skin, he began a soft, low chant. The massage was incidental; the chant created a soothing vibration which resonated through his hands and into her body, slowing her heart rate and calming her panic.
She looked up in wonder.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Gretel," she replied.
"And how long have you served Iblis?"
"All my life," Gretel replied. "Well, almost. He has raised me since I was a child. I have served him since I was eight years old and tall and strong enough to carry a tray; I first became his host and lover at the age of sixteen."
Ormazdh stroked her face, tenderly. "You poor child," he murmured. "To be so cruelly used by that..." His fingers trembled with suppressed anger.
Gretel withdrew from his touch. "You must not speak of Iblis that way. He...He is father, mother, lover and master to me," she said. "He is my everything. If he works me hard, it is only his due. He has given me everything in life; I owe him no less." She cast her gaze to the floor. "Perhaps I have, at times, been obliged to do things that I have found painful, or dispiriting, or demeaning or..." She fell silent.
"He is, and ever was, a hateful creature," Ormazdh spat.
"You were not so gentle yourself, once," Gretel replied. "He has told me of you, Lord Ormazdh."
Ormazdh chuckled. "Only Ormazdh," he said. "I gave up all title of lordship many centuries ago."
"You and he were lovers, were you not?"
"Sometimes," he admitted. "Usually when one of us was a man and the other a woman, although not always. Sometimes it was because I desired him too greatly to restrain myself and sometimes I simply felt sorry for him."
"For Iblis?"
Ormazdh gave a thin smile. "Even for Iblis. He was ever the first victim of his master's temper and my brother has never understood restraint."
"Ahriman," Gretel whispered.
"Yes."
The girl shuddered in fear.
"So he has shared those memories with you?"
"Among others."
"Come here," Ormazdh said, gently. He beckoned Gretel onto his lap and enfolded her in a tender, undemanding embrace. "Of course, Iblis has always done his best to emulate Ahriman in his treatment of his servants."
She laid her head on his shoulder and wept; he rocked her gently.
"What do you want, sir?" Gretel asked, softly.
"I have come for the Casket," he replied. "It is here, is it not?"
She nodded.
"Help me to retrieve it and I will set you free," he promised.
"I would not know what to do if I were free," she replied. "Maybe I am better as I am."
"I doubt it," he said.
*
"Kriemhild," Siegfried said, sounding baffled.
Kriemhild slid her arm through his. "What is wrong?"
"This scanner," he replied, rapping it against his hand.
"Go easy on that thing!" Kriemhild protested. "It's worth more than we are." She took the device from his hand and looked at the screen. "Oh."
"You see?"
"Hmm." She fiddled with the controls for a moment, then rapped it against her palm.
Siegfried gave a dry laugh. "You're right as usual; best to leave it to the experts."
"Oh shut up," Kriemhild groused. "When did this happen?"
"I first noticed it about five minutes ago," Siegfried admitted. "The second trace just...popped out of nowhere, but there was no sign of a temporal surge."
Well..." Kriemhild said, doubtfully. "Well, I suppose that if this were a transfer from a different time, the scanner wouldn't pick them up until they came close enough to our target to pick up a little of his resonance. Yes!" she declared, firmly. "See! The target's trace signature has drifted slightly; by about seven percent."
"More insurgents?" Siegfried asked.
"Or agents sent after our departure."
"That's trust, that is," Siegfried complained.
"They may be here on an entirely unrelated errand," Kriemhild reminded him. "They're certainly very close to Hammond...I mean, the target, with no sign of killing or retrieving him."
Siegfried shrugged. "Oh well. I guess we can ask them once we find Hammond," he said. "Best not to assume they're on our side, though."
"Quite," Kriemhild replied. "Shoot first and ask questions later."
*
"So...in your world, North America is still dominated by the United States?" Hammond asked.
"Yes," Jack said, for the fifth time.
Hammond shook his head in disbelief. "It is hard to think of you as a defender of democracy and freedom," he admitted. "In my world, you are the face of oppression; the Commander of the Lady President's Praetorian Guard."
"Great," Jack grumbled. "So I've not only killed my own world, I've turned myself into Judge Dredd."
Hammond looked no less baffled than Inge.
"So that's me," Jack said. "What's your story, Sir?"
"Why are you acting like I'm your superior officer?" Hammond asked.
Jack sighed. "Because in my world, you are."
"Well that's not me," Hammond assured him. "I'm not even in the military. I did join up, but I...kind of dropped out."
"Kind of?"
"I blew up the Academy faculty building after the first month; I could see that they were teaching us to hate anyone who wasn't ‘approved' and I...I didn't want to be a part of that. I'm part of the last free generation, you see; everyone who came after us grew up learning whatever the Lady President wanted them to believe."
"And who is the Lady President?" Jack asked.
Hammond shot him an envious look. "Marianna Veidt, Lady President of the Confederated Empire of America," he explained. "At our best estimate, it took her nine years to establish her absolute authority over the USA and three more to mastermind the conversion of the United States to the Imperial model."
Jack gave a low whistle.
"A woman did this?" Inge asked, astonished.
"If you can call her that," Hammond replied. "Veidt isn't quite human. I was a part of the rebellion, but we had some people on the inside. They said that Veidt was part-demon, possessed by a creature called Ahriman."
Jack swore, quietly and toyed with Hammond's zat gun. "I bet her eyes glow white," he guessed.
"They do," Hammond agreed.
"Those damn Goa'uld!" Jack snapped. "They get everywhere."
"Goa'uld?" Inge asked.
"Tell you later," Jack offered, offhandedly.
Hammond waited until he was sure that they were finished before he carried on. "Whatever she was, Veidt came to America following a secret mission to the Antarctic in 1943," he said. "It took us years to find the information that confirmed this. The mission was compromised and the team forced to flee; they brought Veidt back with them. She threw herself into the war effort and advanced military technology by twenty-five years, almost overnight. After the defeat of Germany and Japan in December 1943..."
"Son of a...!"
Inge looked alarmed. "Jack?"
"It's just always annoying to find out that the evil aliens do things better than we do," he admitted. "In my world, the war stretched out until 1945," he admitted.
"God," she muttered, horrified.
"By 1955 we would have welcomed another two years of war as an alternative to what followed in peace," Hammond assured them. "Veidt controlled America – North and South – and most of Europe with an iron fist. Germany was one big labour camp and the anti-Veidt factions had been pushed back into the Far East and Africa. Johannesburg fell in 1980, although when I left 2003, Mongolia was still holding out."
"So what did you come back to do?" Jack asked. "If you wanted to stop Veidt taking over the States, you're on the wrong continent."
Hammond shook his head. "The key is a critical causality nexus in the here and now," he said.
"Huh?" Jack asked.
"History is generally very robust," Inge replied, with uncharacteristic confidence. "It resists alteration by time-travellers, maintaining the essential course of events within a particular timeline – which is not to say that there could not be alternative timelines. However, extended spatiotemporal manipulation within the destination time zone creates a weakness in this resistant fabric; a causality nexus, in Mr Hammond's . If the weakness is sufficient – if your temporal interference generates a critical causality nexus – then history is not merely malleable, it becomes positively fluid. The mere presence of a time-traveller could set the future off along a vastly different path." Suddenly, she seemed to realise that Hammond and Jack were both staring at her, intently. "In theory," she added, quickly. "I've never had an opportunity to experiment."
"She's a scientist," Jack told Hammond.
"She's also right," Hammond replied. "Is she local?"
"She is from Brunwald," Inge said, sniffily.
Jack smiled at her, pleased to see that she was not a complete doormat. "Local time, certainly," he agreed. "But she's from Brunwald."
"I gathered. Anyway, she is right, and right now we are moving through a critical nexus. As closely as we can make out, German experiments with a prototype temporal core resulted in a weakness in the fabric of history, but only here and at this particular time. It is at this critical juncture that a message will be sent from the Wewelsberg to an Antarctic base, resulting in the discovery of the team. In the course of their escape they will come into their alliance with Veidt; we believe that the alliance will not occur if the message is never sent. I came back to stop it, although you can be certain that the Praetorians will have sent an assassination team back to stop me."
"Assassination team?" Jack asked.
Hammond shrugged. "They call them Executive Action Units," he admitted, "but they're assassins, sent after terrorists, political enemies and TFs."
"TFs?"
"Tempus Fugitives," Hammond explained. "There'll be two of them, kitted out for the era and armed to the teeth."
"The tesseract!" Inge cried.
Jack jumped in surprise. "Inge?" he asked.
"The Tibetan," she explained.
Jack shook his head, slowly. "Still not getting it."
With a visible effort, Inge took a long moment to gather her thoughts before speaking again. "Two years ago, I was experimenting on an artefact recovered from Tibet by Schafer's expedition. This artefact was an ancient coffin, which proved to be a containment unit, sealing in a tesseract; a fissure in space-time. My supervisor felt that the best thing to do with it was to..."
"Poke it with a stick?" Jack asked.
"More or less," she replied. "If the stick was a prisoner of war," she added in a shamed whisper. "But if the Tibetan were tracking the artefact..."
"And I can't think of any other reason for a Tibetan to want in at the SS clubhouse," Jack admitted.
"...then it must be the cause of the weakness," Inge finished. "Oh God; and I must be the cause of the message!" she gasped. "Bane, von Karlstein and I were to be assigned...somewhere. We must have been replaced by this team and when I came back..."
"When I rescued you!" Jack realised. "We caused the message."
"Not yet," Hammond said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Well, the message won't be sent for about...five hours," Hammond explained.
*
Kriemhild looked down on the house through a short scope.
"No defences," Siegfried noted. "Just a few tripwire alarms. Shouldn't be a problem."
"I'm not so sure," Kriemhild replied. "Most of the entrances are secured; well, boarded-up anyway. If we try to break in they could pick us off easily enough and the main entrances could be guarded. I think we'd have a tough time of it, just the two of us, even with these weapons." She patted her case.
Siegfried sighed. "So what do we do? We could blow up the whole place, but that's going to cause a little too much distraction."
Kriemhild nodded. "We could very well cause a significant delay to the transmission of the message," she agreed. "You had the technical briefing for this one. How critical is the timing?"
"It's not an exact science," Siegfried replied, "to quote Technical Director Carter. Doesn't that just fill you with confidence?"
Kriemhild sighed. She put the scope away and lay back in the bracken. "Siegfried?" she said.
"Yes."
"Why don't we go into Paderborn?" she said. "We've got authentic SS identity papers and – if I recall correctly – you at least have some serious authority."
Siegfried shrugged. "There a limit to how senior a man of my age can be," he hedged.
"But you're a Hauptsturmführer on paper, right? You'll outrank a radio relay station commander, won't you?"
"Probably," he agreed.
"Well," she said, "why don't we just go to the Paderborn relay station and send the bastard message ourselves?"
*
Gretel emerged from the dining room, deep in thought. Almost at once, Iblis-in-Klemper had seized her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. He pushed her back against the wall and forced his mouth against hers. She felt, just for a moment, Iblis' coils winding around her brain stem, then he was gone again, back into Klemper. He had never touched her so briefly, nor so brutally.
Shocked, bruised and violated, Gretel began to cry.
Iblis stroked her cheek, gently. "I was afraid that he might have suborned you, my pet," he said. "Ormazdh is a cunning adversary with many tricks, but I sense no treachery in your mind."
Gretel shook her head. "He wanted to know if you treated me well," she sniffled. "I told him that you were my master and that I love you."
He kissed her again, gently this time. "As I love you, my pet."
"I am your faithful servant, Master," she added.
"Yes, you are. And you will be rewarded. Soon I will need this ugly, brutish body no longer and you will belong to Hauptsturmführer von Lieberman."
She averted her eyes. "Thank you, Master," she said, although she knew full well that Iblis was changing his primary host for his own reasons.
"Go about your work," Iblis told her. "I will call you when I need you."
"Yes, Master," she said. "I...I have finished all of my regular duties," she added, hesitantly. "Could I go back to Reinhardt's apartments?"
Iblis narrowed Klemper's eyes, menacingly.
"Just to sleep!" she insisted, quickly. "I..."
Iblis struck her, not a slap this time, but a solid punch to the face. She reeled back and fell to the ground. "You will lie with no-one but me," he growled. "If you allow that man to touch you without my presence, I shall kill you, Gretel. Do you understand?"
"Y-yes, Master," she snivelled.
"If you need sleep, you will sleep in my bed. Now get out of my sight; your snivelling disgusts me."
Iblis turned his back on her and went into the dining room. Even as he opened the door, Ormazdh stepped forward and punched him in the face. Iblis was knocked to the ground, as Gretel had been. He drew his pistol and aimed it at Ormazdh's throat. "You can not escape!" he sneered.
"I was not planning on it," Ormazdh assured Iblis. "How dare you treat that girl so badly?"
"I own her," Iblis insisted. "She knows that; once you would have understood it as well. I have seen you do far worse to the girls who defied you, so do not presume to lecture me. And do not tell me that we were different people then, My Lord."
"I am not your lord," Ormazdh insisted.
"You must be!" Iblis demanded. "I will give you anything; even the girl if you want to protect her!"
"I have no need of an assassin," Ormazdh said. "I will free the girl, but you I reject utterly."
Iblis squeezed the trigger of his Luger and the bullet slammed into Ormazdh's shoulder. As he fell, Iblis rose and slammed the door on him. "You will change your mind in time!" he shouted through the door. "I can be very persuasive!"
"You are an amateur!" Ormazdh called back, in a voice filled with pain. "I know you and you do not have the strength."
"You knew me!" Iblis retorted. "But we were different people then!"
*
Jack took Hammond through to the kitchen to warm up. Ruger took an immediate interest in the new arrival and Jack grudgingly allowed the double agent to join Hammond and him at the table, largely so that Inge could freely access the range and heat up some stew for the half-starved newcomer. It was deeply disturbing for Jack to see George Hammond looking so...reduced.
Hammond produced a battered copy of the message from his jacket and spread it out on the table. "One of our agents was able to access the Library of Congress sealed archive and recover the text of the message, although it cost her life to do it."
"May I see?" Ruger asked.
Jack turned the page so that they could both read the message.
131019430426131019430426 ++ message to 101ultima ++ sender 587black
highest priority commander ultima 3 : pigeon contaminated : snowdrop a forgery : recommend full security alert and please advise status
message ends
"So what does all that mean?" Jack asked.
"Ultima-3 is one of a number of excavations currently underway in the Antarctic Circle," Ruger explained. "The pigeon is a transport plane carrying supplies and personnel to the base and Snowdrop..." he shot a glance over his shoulder.
Jack followed his gaze; Inge sensed that she was being stared at and she smiled at Jack.
"Snowdrop is making the tea," Jack finished.
"Indeed," Ruger agreed, "but this doesn't make sense."
"How so?"
"If she never got back, how would anyone know that Inge Weiss had been replaced?" he asked. "But if she did get back, she should know that Sturmbannführer Bane and Herr Dr von Karlstein were also captured and replaced; the message should warn that Scythe and Bookmark were also compromised, but there's no mention of them."
"More and more curious," Jack noted. "Who sent it?"
Ruger shrugged. "Well, Black is a Wewelsberg command authorisation," he said, "and five-hundred is a Waffen-SS security series, but I don't know 587. As far as I know, that series only goes up to 566."
"So no hope of finding and killing whoever is going to send the message in...?"
"Five hours and forty-six minutes," Ruger replied. "This is the date-time code at the beginning: Thirteen, ten, nineteen-forty-four – that's tomorrow's date – and oh-four twenty-six; the small hours of the morning. And no; I can't even tell you who it is that will to send it."
"So why not just remove their ability to send any message at all?" Inge asked. She walked over and placed a bowl of stew in front of Hammond, then sat beside Jack.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Ruger scoffed.
"I am not being ridiculous," Inge assured him tartly. "I am being practical. You want to stop this message and you don't know who will send it; why not just knock out their communications capabilities altogether?"
Jack looked at Ruger. "Well?" he asked. "Is that possible?"
*
Ormazdh sat cross-legged on the floor of the dining room, focusing his mind and nursing the wound in his shoulder. He had slowed the flow of blood to the area and was boosting the production of healing enzymes, but he was not so strong as he had been when he first came to Earth. The changes wrought on his host's body chemistry were largely regulated by the naquadah in his bloodstream and that naquadah was running out. On most worlds in the Goa'uld Empire, he would constantly be fixing minute quantities of environmental naquadah into his bloodstream, but here there was no environmental naquadah and each time he changed hosts he left a little of his precious supply behind.
Iblis was different, of course, he was a shapeshifter, and while Ormazdh doubted that Iblis would have grown much stronger, he could not believe for certain that he was still the stronger of the two.
He could hear Iblis pacing up and down next door. No doubt he too was weighing up his chances if he were to go head-to-head with Ormazdh. The strange thing was that, even if he were now the stronger, Iblis would still want to serve. He could not lead; he was temperamentally unsuited to it, despite his innate, Goa'uld desire for power.
In the next room, a telephone rang. Ormazdh rose and pressed his ear to the door.
"Yes," Iblis snapped in Klemper's voice. There was a pause and then he said: "Ten minutes."
Ormazdh heard Iblis leave. He sat down and waited, focusing his energies on the wound until it was almost healed. The effort almost exhausted him and he wondered if he might not have been better off wounded, but otherwise fresh.
The key turned in the lock and the door opened.
"You have made your choice?" Ormazdh asked.
"Yes," Gretel replied. "He has gone down to the gate; we have to act quickly."
*
"It can't be done!" Ruger insisted. "I mean, the telegraph lines would be easy enough to cut, but the Wewelsberg radio tower is right in the heart of the castle; we could never get to it."
"We don't have to," Inge insisted.
"Oh no," Ruger scoffed. "We just need to get to the gate and you can turn us all over!"
"No!"
"Colonel O'Neill, we can't stop this transmission, but we can remove the most likely cause if we deal with this, now! Just one bullet, Colonel; just one!" He stood up and Inge rose as well, knocking her chair over in her effort to escape from Ruger.
Jack stood, smoothly, and stepped in front of Inge. "If you want her, you have to come through me," he said. "Now Inge; what do you mean we don't need to get to the radio tower."
"It's a short-range transmitter; the security is there to protect the Lorenz code machines, rather than the transmitter itself. All outgoing messages have to be routed through the large relay station in Paderborn and that it vulnerable."
Ruger shook his head. "The station is heavily-guarded and in the middle of the town. Besides, it may be a short-range transmitter, but there are three other relays that the Wewelsberg tower can reach."
"Not if the Paderborn station is transmitting on the same frequency," Inge corrected.
"A jamming signal?" Jack asked.
Inge nodded. "It would be easy enough to alter the equipment in the relay station to transmit at maximum strength on all military frequencies. That little tower in the Wewelsberg wouldn't stand a chance."
"You could do that?" Jack asked.
"Easily."
"It's a trick," Ruger insisted. "If you give her half a chance, she'll send that message herself!"
"It isn't your decision," Inge said, softly. "It's Jack's. I want to help you. If you'll give me a chance," she told Jack. "I promise you, I only want to help you. I don't know much about right and wrong," she admitted, "but...but I don't think that the world this man comes from can be right. I trust you, Jack." She picked up her chair and sat down. "It's up to you."
Jack looked back and forth between Inge – the Nazi scientist who owed him her life – and Ruger – the allied double agent who had tried to kill him. He shrugged. "What the hell," he decided. "Let's do it."
*
At the Gate, Klemper was faced by two newcomers in SS uniform. "And who are these?" he asked the guard officer.
"The man claims that he has been pursuing a spy, but we have had no word of any such mission. Besides; he is an unimpressive specimen and he had no other soldiers with him."
"So what am I? Sauerkraut?" the woman demanded.
"The woman" – the officer went on, implying that the term was ill-used – "does not know her place. They came to the relay station in Paderborn and attempted to commandeer the radio to send a message; something about this ‘spy'. They did have the appropriate ID, but you ordered a high alert status and so their authorisation was checked with command here at the Castle and..."
"Yes!" Iblis said, impatiently. "I know what orders I gave."
"They were heavily armed and they had these with them," the officer went on, indicating two long, black cases, which lay on the table. They looked innocuous, but the other guards seemed to be keeping their distance from them.
"Open them," Iblis ordered.
The officer looked uncomfortable. "We tried, Sir," he promised, "but they won't open. They do not seem to be locked, but when Jurgen touched the catches, he was...killed. Some sort of electrical charge," he added.
Iblis narrowed his eyes. "So who are these mysterious agents?" he asked.
The officer gave a snort of laughter, clearly feeling that he was on firmer ground here. "Hauptsturmführer Siegfried Volsung and Unteroffizier Kriemhild Nibelung, they say."
Iblis blinked in disbelief. "You must be joking," he said.
The guard handed over two identity cards.
Iblis examined the cards, then laughed aloud. "These have to be the stupidest aliases I have ever heard," he declared.
"Aliases?" the man who called himself Siegfried Volsung demanded. "Do you honestly think that I would be stupid enough to present that as my name if it were not? I was named for the greatest of my ancestors and this woman has served as my aide since I spotted her name in a register of auxiliary volunteers."
"Ah yes," Iblis said. "The old ‘well, I wouldn't call myself Hans Schmidt if I were a spy' ploy. Well, we shall see. Take them to the interrogation rooms. Summon Dr Fasbender and a nurse to administer a truth serum."
"Will you require...Professor Klingman?"
"No," Iblis replied. "They may yet prove to be our friends; we should at least try less strenuous methods before moving on to torture."
"You are a fool!" the alleged Kriemhild Nibelung declared. "There is a spy en route to the Antarctic. If you do not stop her, she will destroy Project Ultima!"
Iblis turned to look at her. "Get two more men up here," he told the guard, "and place a call to Professor Klingman's residence in Paderborn; we will require his services after all."
"What?" Kriemhild demanded. "How dare you...?"
Siegfried laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. "Let it be," he sighed.
Kriemhild closed her eyes. "Damn," she muttered. "I shouldn't have known about that, should I?"
Iblis gave a nasty smile. "No, my dear, you should not, but I will find out how you do." He looked into her eyes and she met his gaze without fear. Something flickered there, some spark of recognition that piqued Iblis' interest. He reached out, slowly, and caressed her cheek, almost daring her companion to try and stop her. "I shall enjoy finding out," he promised her.
*
Gretel led Ormazdh through the servants' corridors of the Wewelsberg, where few of the officers ever came. They saw few people and those they did pass kept their eyes on the floor.
"No-one questions," Gretel explained. "Those who question...go missing."
"Why did you come back?" Ormazdh asked. "I thought that you had decided not to help me."
"I had," Gretel replied. "I had to. I knew that he would test me as soon as I emerged; helping you was never an option. It was only after he was sure of my loyalty that I could let myself begin to betray him."
Ormazdh gazed at the woman in surprise. "You must have extraordinary mental discipline," he whispered.
"He has been in and out of my brain since I became an adult," she replied. "If I had not learned to hide things from him, he would have disposed of me long ago and found a new pet to amuse himself with. He can sense concealment, so I have learned to not think about things, when the situation calls for it."
The girl drew to a halt. "We will have to go into the main passage here," she said. "The servants' corridor does not reach the main laboratory." She took a pistol form under her apron and handed it to Ormazdh. "There will be guards, and scientists there."
Ormazdh nodded, unhappily. "I had hoped that this could be resolved without violence," he told her, "but then I had hoped that Iblis would not be involved. I really thought that I had settled him for good in Kathmandu in 1886, but he is as slippery as a snake and ten times as cunning."
"Quietly now," Gretel said. "I will go first; you must follow fast."
*
Having made his decision, Jack turned Ruger loose.
"If you really want to help us," he said, "you'll organise someone to bring down the telegraph lines."
Ruger shook his head. "I can do it, but they'll have them up again by nightfall."
"If Hammond is right about the nexus, that'll be plenty," Jack assured him. "We only need to prevent the message being sent within a four hour window."
Ruger laughed, bitterly. "This is madness," he snapped, "and that girl will be the death of you, Colonel. She is very sweet and innocent, but she is a tool of the Reich and she will turn on you. You would be safer taking a viper to your bed."
"First of all," Jack replied, with an air of absolute finality, "this has nothing to do with my bed and there isn't even a suggestion of any taking going on. Secondly, you're wrong about her. Anyway; I know how to look after myself. You just worry about the telegraph lines."
Ruger searched for another objection, but Jack's eyes defied him to speak. "Good luck, Colonel," he said at last.
"And you, Sturmbannführer."
*
"If we ever get home, I'm going to kill someone in registry," Kriemhild fumed.
Siegfried shrugged. "The names are supposed to be recognisable," he pointed out.
"Only to other agents," she replied. "You bluffed beautifully, by the way," she added.
"Why thank you, ma'am."
"Sorry I stuffed it up."
They were being escorted to the dungeon by six guards. Two of the guards were carrying their cases, holding them away from their bodies as though they were serpents. One led the way and the other three held submachine guns pointed at their backs.
"Quiet!" one of the soldiers behind them snapped.
"Front or back?" Kriemhild asked.
"Back," Siegfried replied. As he spoke, he brushed his thumb against the back of the ring on his right hand.
"I said be quiet!" the guard repeated, angrily.
Siegfried turned to face him. "Make me!" he snapped.
With a mean smile, the guard stepped forward, raising the butt of his weapon. Siegfried stepped forward and caught the weapon in mid swing with his left hand. He raised his right hand and a beam of red light stabbed out to slice through the heart of the second guard. He used the first guard as a shield while he killed the third, then shot the first at close range.
He turned and saw Kriemhild leaning nonchalantly against the wall. Three black-clad bodies lay on the floor behind her and her Berlin Handshake had left its telltale burn marks in the wall. "Are you finished?" she asked.
"Show off." He brushed his thumb across the surface of his own weapon and it shrank away into his ring once more. In its place, he stooped and picked up an MP40.
Kriemhild pushed away from the wall and kissed Siegfried quickly on the lips. "I just love watching you work. Grab your case," she ordered. "I think I've just about had it with finesse."
*
Gretel went into the laboratory with a swing in her step, as though she knew all eyes were on her and she had not a care in the world; almost immediately there came a gasp of pain. Ormazdh ran in and saw two guards grappling with her; he clubbed one of them to the ground and the other fell with a knife in his gut. Gretel rose up, her victim's MP40 in her hands.
"Raise your hands and stay away from that alarm switch!" she ordered the scientists.
Once man ignored the warning; she shot him down without hesitation, but he reached the switch and the alarm began to sound. The other scientists panicked and ran; Gretel let them go.
"You're very ruthless," Ormazdh told her.
"I am the servant and the vessel of Iblis," she reminded him. "I can not afford compassion; it would drive me mad." Despite her words, her face was almost ghostly in its pallor. Ormazdh supposed that she had never killed before, at least, not by her own volition; she had been Iblis' host for long enough that she must have blood on her hands.
Ormazdh turned away from her and hurried to the Casket. With deft strokes of his fingers, he closed the outer seals of the device. "Now; we must get it away from here," he declared.
"We will never make it," Gretel told him.
"Then we must destroy the castle," he decided, his body shaking with the enormity of taking such a decision after so many years of peace. "Blow up the entire Wewelsberg and bury this accursed thing forever."
*
The relay station had been set up in Paderborn's now-abandoned Catholic church and armed guards stood on either side of the high, arched doorway. The stained-glass windows still showed images of the church's patron, St George in full dragon-slaying mode, but many of the individual panes had been broken and replaced with clear glass. The building had a cruciform shape and a high tower rose from the crossing; the radio antenna had been fixed to this tower, the ancient stonework clutched in a death-grip by steel bands.
Jack, Hammond and Inge huddled opposite the church, in the shelter of an alleyway between a tobacconist's and a haberdashery, and waited. As it turned out, they needed little patience for their vigil; after only half an hour, six guards and two technicians ran out of the relay station and jumped into a truck. They drove off at high speed. They were the only people they had seen; Paderborn was a quiet, subdued town.
"He did it," Jack whispered. "The telegraph is down and they've gone to repair it."
"Why so many guards?" Inge wondered.
"In case the line has been brought down by terrorists," Hammond replied. "Ruger and his contacts will face a tough fight to keep those lines down."
"They'll do what they have to," Jack assured him, "and it makes life easier for us." He took a deep breath; this would be a telling moment. "Inge," he said.
"Yes, Jack?"
"You stay here until we can secure the building; you've no combat training so you'd only be in the way. When I signal at the door, you come over. If you don't see me...get away. Disappear as best you can; maybe try to make your way to England or America."
"I doubt they'd be very pleased to see me," she told him.
"You never know," he said. "They can be very forgiving of past sins if you happen to be a towering scientific genius." He squeezed her shoulder, gently. "Just do your best not to get killed; alright?"
"I will," she promised. "And please be careful, Jack."
"I always am," he assured her. "Now remember, George; no projectile fire if we can avoid it. We don't want to bring the whole town garrison down on top of us."
Hammond nodded in acknowledgement and drew his zat. "I'm ready," he promised.
Together they slipped around to the back of the relay station. As they approached the vestry door, they could hear the throb of powerful generators, rattling away in the undercroft. A single man guarded the rear entrance to the church; he never knew what hit him. Hammond bound him securely while Jack was checking behind the door. They dragged him through and dumped him, then headed deeper into the church.
They had begun this operation with an acute realisation that it was a hard task for any two men to set themselves. If Jack had been asked to plan this assault in advance he would have wanted a minimum of nine teams of two; three to secure the front door, vestry and lady chapel, one to cut the power in the undercroft and five to neutralise the enemy, striking at the nave, the radio room in the apse and the dormitories in the transepts simultaneously. Unfortunately, two men was all they had.
Cutting the power was of course a snap for two men armed with zats; cutting it so that it could be swiftly restored to allow Inge to generate a jamming signal: that was difficult. There were two men working in the undercroft and Jack and Hammond could not risk a zat blast. The engineers were unarmed, but put up quite a struggle. Luckily, the noise of the generators masked the sounds of the fight. Once the engineers were dealt with, Hammond threw the main circuit breaker; the generators were still running, but no power was reaching the systems above. As quickly as he could, Jack cut the cables above the breaker and closed it again; there was still no current, but the problem would be far harder to trace.
"That was easy," Hammond said, nursing a bruised chin.
"Now for the tricky part," Jack reminded him.
*
Iblis looked at the bodies of the guards and fumed, quietly. He was furious, but although he hid it from the guard, he was frightened as well. He recognised the killing wounds; a single, neat burn through each man's torso. "The shol'va's salute," he whispered. He touched the ring on his own finger, its power long-since depleted.
"Sir?"
"Find them," Iblis growled.
"Yes, Sir," the guard officer replied, "but..."
"If they are not in chains by the time that Professor Klingman arrives, I shall allow him to warm up on you!" Iblis snapped.
"Yes, Sir."
An alarm klaxon rang out. Iblis looked up and snarled. "Ormazdh."
Kriemhild and Siegfried found an empty room and ducked inside. "Is that for us?" Kriemhild wondered.
"Who knows," Siegfried replied. "Best to act as though it is."
Kriemhild nodded and reached for the locks on the case, but Siegfried grabbed her hands.
"Wait," he said.
"What?"
"That's my case," he said.
Kriemhild checked and saw that he was right. The case was keyed to a single genetic code; that of Siegfried. If she had touched those locks, she would have suffered the same fate as the nosy SS guard; death by electrocution. They swapped cases and Kriemhild pressed her thumbs to the locks; they sprang open at her touch.
The field boxes used by the Temporal Counterinsurgency Group were part attaché case, part suitcase and part armoury. Ignoring her neatly-folded change of clothes, Kriemhild removed an overlock and clamped it to the door; long spikes shot out in four directions and buried themselves in the frame. The door was solid and it opened inwards; it would take a battering ram to get in while the overlock held it firm.
Her partner had already shed his jacket and shirt and was pulling on his protective vest. Their disguises already incorporated an impressive degree of body armour, but taking on the Wewelsberg called for a different level of protection. Kriemhild stripped off and took out her own vest. It was lightweight and flexible, but the polymer fabric could stop an anti-tank bullet, although the impact of so large a projectile would still liquefy most of the wearer's vital organs. Against small-calibre weapons it was far more effective.
Siegfried pulled his SS uniform back on over the vest, then donned his helmet, a black dome covering his hair, with a full-face visor. The product of cutting edge technology, it enhanced rather than hampered his senses, as well as protecting his beautiful brown eyes from harm.
Kriemhild sighed.
"What's wrong?" Siegfried asked.
"We could just run," she suggested. "I know we have a job to do, but I don't want to see you hurt."
"I'll be fine," he assured her. "It would take an army from this time to stop us." He gave a wry grin, then went back to assembling a rifle. "At most they have a company stationed here."
"Don't joke," she said. "It may be worse than you know."
Siegfried looked up from his Mauser-Enfield MG90K; behind the visor, she knew that there was concern in his eyes. "What don't I know?" he asked.
Kriemhild swallowed hard, trying to escape the feeling of something cold sliding down her throat and wrapping itself around her spine. "The Gestapo officer," she said. "He was Iblis."
"What?"
"He was Iblis," Kriemhild repeated.
"Not possible," Siegfried said, sharply.
Kriemhild sighed. "I know Iblis," she began.
"Don't I know it!" Siegfried snapped. "You know him better than anyone else in the world."
Kriemhild blushed, angrily. "Oh, I can't claim that," she assured him, "but I know him well enough to spot him in any body, at any time and that was him." She reached out and put her hand on her partner's shoulder. "I don't know why, but the TCG wants us dead."
Siegfried looked as though he were about to make another harsh retort, but then he raised his visor. "You're serious?"
She nodded.
He leaned over and kissed her. "Well...we won't make it easy on them, then."
"What do you think?" Kriemhild asked. "Carry on, or make a run for it."
Siegfried shrugged. "We've already come so far," he said. "I'd never feel right if I didn't see it through. Besides; if the Group are against us, we're as likely to get caught going out as heading in."
Kriemhild shook her head in amusement. "The glass is never half-full for you, is it?"
He squeezed her hand fondly. "I just figure a guy can only have so much luck," he said. "I used mine up getting you."
She hugged him tight. "Then we'll have to get out of here on my account," she said. She stepped back and pulled on her own helmet. "Let's reach out and touch someone."
*
Jack and Hammond had three advantages: good intelligence – Ruger had briefed them thoroughly on the layout and personnel compliment of the station – surprise and zats.
There were five men in the dormitory area set up in the Lady Chapel. Five zat blasts shifted them from sleep to unconsciousness and Jack watched the door while Hammond tied the men to their camp beds. Jack did a count in his head: nine men out, eight incapacitated; that meant only five more guards and two radio operators to account for. Jack heard voices outside the door; two men shouting down to the engineers in the undercroft, not knowing that no answer could be forthcoming.
Jack and Hammond came out shooting and the two guards tumbled down the undercroft stairs. One guard inside, two on the doors and the radio operators.
The latter were easy enough to deal with. They were, of course, examining the long coils of cable which wound around the church, looking for the break. As with the machine room, Jack and Hammond could not risk a zat blast near the cables, but a pair of solid blows to the head did the trick. The last guard happened along as they were securing the operators and found himself on the receiving end of a brace of zat blasts.
Jack quite regretted the death of this man. The guards at the door fell as easily as the others, which meant that there was only one life lost in the entire strike. Jack had no real qualms about killing Nazi soldiers, but the SS would hunt much harder for assassins than for saboteurs and hurt more people in the process.
"That went as well as could be expected," Hammond noted.
"Better," Jack replied. He caught one of the guards by the shoulders and dragged him into the church. Hammond brought the other man through.
Jack went back outside and waved to the gap between the tobacconist's and the haberdashery. After a long pause, Inge appeared and hurried across the road, huddled in her coat.
"It's cold out here," she complained.
"Well come inside where it's warm then," Jack told her. He laid an arm across her shoulders and guided her through the door.
She beamed up at him. "Were you worried I wouldn't be there?" she asked.
"Never had a doubt," he assured her, as he surreptitiously removed the tracking device that he had clipped to her shoulder. "This way."
Hammond stood guard at the door, while Jack took Inge through to the radio room.
"I'll go down and reconnect the power," he told her. "You start work on whatever it is you have to do."
"Jack!" she called.
He turned in the cellar doorway. "Inge?"
"Why do you trust me?" she asked. "I know...I know that I don't deserve it."
Jack smiled at her. "In your better moments, you remind me of a good friend," he told her.
Inge shook her head. "I don't have Major Carter's strength," she assured him.
He laughed. "Actually, I was thinking of Teal'c," he admitted.
*
The Mauser-Enfield Maschinengewehr-90 Kurz was a masterpiece of ballistic engineering. Applying the fine German craftsmanship for which they were justly famous to the mighty industrial base of the Anglo-American Enfield arms plant, the Mauser designers had refined the venerable Enfield-Colt M88 assault rifle and created the MG90. In response to a demand for a more compact weapon, they had then produced the 90K, one of the finest of all modern small arms.
The design of the MG90K would have been familiar to the gunsmiths of Fabrique-Nationale, but it was sleeker than the P90, with a blue-grey, small-calibre barrel and hand-carved wooden stock. It was chambered for the Mauser 3.36mm caseless cartridge, a deceptively small round which possessed impressive stopping power on account of its awesome muzzle velocity. The 90K had a fifty round box magazine and its rate of fire approached one thousand rounds per minute.
Stories of the MG90K and its larger cousin approached the level of legend. It was said that the then-Commandant John O'Neill, armed with a 90K, had held off a battalion of Congolese infantry single-handed for five hours during the West African campaign of 1996. Even allowing for exaggeration, it was certainly the case that two highly-trained Praetorian assassins wielding MG90Ks were a match for a whole lot of SS security troops.
"Ultimately, this has to count as one of my greatest failures," Kriemhild admitted, during a lull in the firing. They had, for the most part, managed to avoid trouble, but there was only one approach to the radio room and they had tipped their hands by demanding to be taken there on arrival. "Although, in my defence, my training is in clandestine ops; I suck at covert."
"I have no complaints as to your undercover work," Siegfried assured her.
Her face softened. "Aww. Sweetheart." She narrowed her eyes and leaned tight around the corner, snapping off a three round burst. The first high-velocity round spat sparks and shrapnel from the wall and two more buried themselves in a hapless guard. The return fire flew wide as she ducked back into cover; the MP40s could not match the MG90K for accuracy and the few stray shots that did hit were no match for twenty-first century armour, not that Siegfried and Kriemhild were letting that make them careless. "One left," she said.
Siegfried nodded. He lay on his side and pushed himself out into the passage. At the first sign of movement, the last guard fired wildly with an MP40 in each hand. His shots were high to start with and hopelessly inaccurate, and the recoil drove his aim further off. Siegfried needed only one bullet to kill him.
"Have I mentioned how much I admire your work?" Kriemhild asked, as they picked their way carefully over the bodies. They burst into the radio room and swept it with their weapons, fingers lying gently on the trigger.
"Clear!" Siegfried announced. "And thank you."
Kriemhild smiled. "It won't stay clear," she assured him. "Five minutes, then we call it a bust and hit the recall button."
"Have you ever seen what happens to people who go back with bad news?" Siegfried asked.
"Yes," she replied, "but it's that or fight our way out of the bloody Wewelsberg. I don't fancy that, even with our advantages."
Siegfried knelt at the door and reloaded his rifle. "Better make that call quickly," he suggested.
*
The seals of the Casket snapped shut.
"Bring that trolley over," Ormazdh directed. "We'll carry the horrible thing down into the basement; the generator room, probably. We blow that up and the Casket will be buried, hopefully beyond all hope of retrieval."
"Oh, I doubt that!"
Ormazdh turned fast, but Iblis already held a pistol on him.
"I was willing to serve you!" Iblis yelled. "I would have given you anything!"
"I want nothing from you," Ormazdh assured him.
Iblis gave a scream of rage and two shots rang out. The first caught Ormazdh high in the shoulder and shattered his collarbone; the second took Iblis under the ribs. Iblis fell and Ormazdh staggered against the Casket.
Gretel dropped her smoking pistol and ran to Ormazdh. "Quickly!" she said. "There will be more here soon."
"The Casket," he gasped.
"Another time!"
With Ormazdh leaning heavily on Gretel's shoulder, they hurried past Iblis as he struggled to rise. Iblis groped for his pistol, but by the time he had reached it, they were out of sight.
Iblis hauled himself to Klemper's feet. He would have given chase, but Gretel's bullet had caught him just under the heart and he could feel his life ebbing away. He did not have the strength to pursue them, even with Ormazdh wounded. Instead, he stumbled into the lab and let himself fall against the Casket.
"They will never escape!" he declared. "I'll turn the whole damn castle loose on them, and one another too!" his hands slapped down on the surface of the Casket and slid around in motions that were the precise opposite of those performed moments before by Ormazdh. The Casket split and he worked the inner seals as well, black light spilling out. Iblis felt new strength rush through his dying host; he cracked the innermost seal.
"Yes!" he roared, as the ecstasy rushed through him. "If I must die, all shall die!"
Ormazdh staggered and slipped from Gretel's grip. He fell hard against the wall and slid down it to lie exhausted.
"You must get up," Gretel told him.
"I can't," Ormazdh sighed.
"You must!" Gretel snapped, enraged by his weakness.
Ormazdh's eyes widened in alarm. He slapped one hand against the stone floor and caught her hand, feeling the rage drain out of her, through him into the stone. "Take off your shoes and stockings," he instructed. "Dahak is loose."
*
"Everything alright?" Jack asked, as he returned to the radio room.
"Yes," Inge replied, uncertainly. "There is...The Wewelsberg has been signalling for the last few minutes, I heard it as soon as you put the power back on; it seems their radio room is under siege."
Jack shrugged. "Well, I don't know what that's all about, but whether it's good or bad from our point of view, I don't think cutting off the castle can hurt."
Inge pointed at the controls. "There," she said. "Just throw that switch and the jamming signal will begin."
"You do it," he offered.
She looked up into his face and saw no judgement, no intent to test her; just an acknowledgement that she had made this possible and deserved the final act. She smiled and threw the switch.
*
Kriemhild snatched the headphones from her ears. "Damnit!" she swore. "Someone's flooding the airwaves. I'll never get a signal through that; not with this half-assed transmitter."
"That's it then," Siegfried said.
"God damnit!" she screamed. She stood and snatched up her rifle. She jerked the trigger back and held it down, raking the radio set with bullets until the magazine was empty and the radio was a wreck. "I have had it with this damn place. Let's just kill everyone," she suggested.
"Sounds good," Siegfried agreed. "I've got some NBX in my case," he added.
"Just the thing."
Siegfried reached for his case. As he did so, he rested his hand on the floor beside it. He gave a sharp gasp as Dahak's rage drained out of him.
"Kriemhild!" he said, but she had seen his reaction and understood. She reached down and pressed the back of her boot. A steel spur dropped from the heel, connecting a plate inside the boot to the stone floor.
Siegfried did the same, then closed and bolted the door while they steadied themselves. "Well, there goes the neighbourhood," he said. "Alright; let's just use the recall device."
Kriemhild laughed, without humour. "No good. The tesseract is wide open; we could come out anywhere. We could come out everywhere," she added, darkly. "We need to close some of the seals at least, before we can try to get home...Assuming we still have a home to go to." She sighed. "This must be Hammond's doing – the jamming signal; he wouldn't open the Casket if he knew how – though I wouldn't have thought him so subtle. He always seemed more of a death and thunder kind of guy."
"Great," Siegfried fumed. He turned and fired at the window, blasting out the glass. "We'll have to use decelerators and go down fast," he said. "If we rappel, we'll turn on each other before we reach the ground."
Bullets hammered into the door, splintering the wood and ringing off the metal bands which reinforced it.
"Set up the rigs," Siegfried said. "I'll hold them off."
"Just don't go believing the stories too much," Kriemhild said. "You're not Commander O'Neill and this isn't the Congo."
Siegfried gave a sharp laugh as he settled himself on the floor beside the door. "I was a junior press officer with the Guard in 1996," he reminded her. "I wrote that story; truth is that the Commandant was the only Praetorian there, but he had the high ground and three dozen pro-Confederate partisans with machine guns and grenade launchers." He used a small laser-cutter to slice off the corner of the door and poked his rifle through.
"Doesn't surprise me in the least," she assured him.
He began to fire, sending a row of frenzied SS-Schützes to the ground with shattered ankles, while Kriemhild fetched two decelerators from their cases.
*
Ormazdh fell.
"You'll never make it," Gretel told him.
"I have to," Ormazdh insisted, but it was a vain protest. Even at his full, ancient strength, the Goa'uld could not have gone on much longer with a broken collarbone and so much blood-loss. "We have to close the seals on the device."
He tried to rise, but she pushed him back down. "You can't," she insisted. "I can, but I don't know the combination to close the Casket and if Iblis has jumped bodies again, he'll be too strong for me."
"You have your life ahead of you," Ormazdh told her.
"I am scarred to the heart, Master Ormazdh," she sighed. "I can not live as Iblis' cast-off. I have seen myself do so many terrible things that I can not possible go on. I must die; die, or change utterly."
"You don't know what you are asking."
"I know that you are like him, yet unlike," she said. "I know that there is another way, for both of us. A way to save you and me; and everyone else within a hundred miles."
*
Jack looked up from his watch. "That's our window!" he called. "Let's pack up and move out; the cavalry are coming and we're the Indians!"
Inge was at his side in moments, her body literally shaking with nervous excitement.
"You okay?" Jack asked.
"I've never done anything wrong in my life," Inge said, with a terrified laugh.
Jack put a supportive arm around her shoulder and she pressed herself against him. "Try to calm down," he told her. "You look wired; if the goons see us they'll know we've been up to no good."
She nodded, stepped away from him and took several deep breaths.
"Ready to go, George?" Jack asked.
Hammond turned from the door and shook his head. "I'll keep an eye out here and make sure you have enough time to get away," he said.
"You don't have to do that," Jack told him.
Hammond shrugged. "I don't have anything else planned. This was always a one-way trip and if I just delayed the Nazi defeat, I'd like to make up for it a little." He gestured for Jack to come closer. "You get the girl away," he whispered. "You'll go slow with her to look after, but I'd guess she's your best bet to find a way home. Anyway, I think she's sweet on you."
Jack chuckled. "As though I didn't have enough problems."
"I've thought this all through," Hammond assured him. He took a thick book from his inside pocket. "Here. This is the official history of my world, with annotations wherever we managed to find the truth behind the lies. Keep an eye out and make sure this doesn't come true."
Jack accepted the book, and with it the commission. "Thank you, General," he said, softly. "Good luck."
"It's a nice evening," Hammond replied. "I never wanted to die in the rain. Now get that girl out of here and get yourself home."
"Yes, Sir," Jack agreed, reluctantly. He turned back to Inge. "Come on," he said.
"What about George?" she asked.
"I'll catch up with you if I can," Hammond replied. "Otherwise I'll go back to my own time," he lied. He smiled at her, warmly. "You're a good woman, Inge," he told her.
"Don't you mean a good girl?" she asked, blushing.
Hammond shook his head. "You made your own choice," he said. "You didn't have to help us. I'd say that means you've grown up."
She beamed, delightedly. Jack took her gently by the arm and led her towards the back door, allowing himself just one last glance at the slight, heroic figure of the familiar stranger.
*
As tempers at the Wewelsberg calmed down and men began to wonder just what they had been doing, Hauptsturmführer von Lieberman summoned as many guards as he could find to protect the central laboratories and shrine. They found the body of Obersturmbannführer Klemper lying beside the sealed coffin and formed a cordon around the inner sanctum sufficient to make even an Executive Action Squad think twice.
Siegfried and Kriemhild retreated into the servants passages and played an increasingly desperate game of cat and mouse.
"Surely the tesseract is stable if they can muster this kind of organised defence?" Siegfried said.
Kriemhild shook her head. "It's not stable, it's closed. We can't even take a chance at recall."
"It sounds as though you're in a bit of trouble."
The two assassins dropped their cases, spun around and raised their rifles. A slim girl stared down the barrel of the rifles with marked equanimity.
"Good God!" Siegfried gasped.
"Quite," the girl chuckled. "Would you like me to show you the way out?" she asked.
"Who...who are you?" Kriemhild asked, truly staggered to have been taken by surprise by a serving girl.
"My name is Gretel," she replied. "It's this way."
*
Inge only really began to calm down once they were out of the town and back into the woods. She kept looking over her shoulder as they drove away from Paderborn, but slowly she relaxed.
"He isn't going to escape, is he?" she asked, at last.
"No," Jack agreed, unhappily. "I don't much like leaving him behind, but...I guess I can't help thinking of him as the boss."
"So what do we do now?"
Jack pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. "I'm going to find Ruger and his friends," he said. "I have to find my friends and they seem to be my best shot at that. It's probably best if you don't come with me. I suspect they'll still want you out of the picture."
Inge looked devastated. "Then...what should I do?"
Jack shrugged. "Go to ground. Find a farm where you can work or something."
"Great," she sniffed. "Back to playing the obedient girl."
"Better than dying," Jack assured her. He leaned across and kissed her on the cheek. "Good luck," he said.
"So...that's it? You're just dumping me?"
Jack sighed. "It's for the best."
Stifling a tear, Inge climbed out of the car and watched as Jack drove away. She turned and began walking back along the road in the direction of Schwalenberg. From there she could make her way into the country, or even out of Germany altogether. She tried to put a spring in her step, but it began to rain.
She heard a car behind her and decided to risk trying to hitch a lift. To her relief, the car pulled up and the door opened.
"If I knew who you were, I'd probably have shot you myself," Jack called out to her.
Inge barely paused before climbing into the passenger seat. She leaned across and kissed him gently on the lips. "Thank you for not stopping to ask," she said.
*
Ten days later
Oberstgruppenführer Zelig hung up the telephone with a satisfied air, then turned to his wife. Frau Anile Zelig was half her husband's age, had a slim, curvaceous figure and a lazy, inviting smile.
"You wanted to see me?" Anile asked, her eyes resting nervously on a pistol that lay beside the telephone. She was aware that her husband knew of her infidelities – the generalities if not the specifics – but he still considered himself a lucky man to have persuaded her to marry him. Nevertheless, she worried that she might push him too far one day and the presence of the pistol was worrying.
"I am sending the Casket to a secure location," he explained. "Von Lieberman will be leading the escort and I want you to go with him; I worry for security here." He passed her a packet of documents. "Give these to Hauptsturmführer von Lieberman. He will know what to do."
"What do you mean?" Anile asked. "Why not give them to him yourself? Or send for a courier?"
Zelig gave a strange smile. He embraced his wife and kissed her, while his left hand groped for his pistol.
The shot rang out through the house and the Obergruppenführer's valet came running. Later, the valet was to comment that the shock seemed to have made Frau Zelig oddly euphoric. When he found her, she had laughed, hysterically, and said: "I really wasn't sure I'd get out in time."