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Before - Legends An attempt to be very original with SW fiction...

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction- Before, Saga, and Beyond' started by BaronNoir, Sep 16, 2012.

  1. BaronNoir

    BaronNoir Jedi Master star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 6, 2001



    Pillau, late January 1945…

    The arrival at the harbor was rather gloomy, and foreshadowing of what would come. The minesweeper had to navigate between several wrecks just to reach the inner roadstead, itself packed with a variety of ships. What was the most telling were the lines and lines of refugees, camping on the docks for a spot in the next vessel, in a relative silence. A silence punctuated at regular intervals by the thunder of the naval guns of the Panzerschiffe firing near Pillau. It was a desperate, last ditch attempt to slow down the progression of the Red Army toward Koenisberg. The fact that the howling sound of Katiushas batteries was perfectly audible in the background showed quite well the success of this strategy.

    The minesweeper’s Captain, who had done several supplies runs/evacuation runs over the last weeks, were nevertheless aghast at seeing the mass of civilians rushing for his ship. It was another sign that the situation in Eastern Prussia was getting desperate. While no one believed anymore the official reports, the reality was so grim that people had trouble to handle it either. One deckhand had told the Captain, hours before leaving Kiel, that his father-in-law, living in Potsdam, had told him that the Red Army had crossed the Oder in the previous days. This would have been truly the writing on the wall for the Reich, all this will the press was talking about the lines holding near Warsaw. The deckhand being quite shaken with the news, the Captain had sent him on a random errand and lifted anchor while the sailor was away: the lad risked an «accident» because of so-called defeatist talk otherwise.

    And with their current cargo, such accidents were bound to happen. The minesweeper and its crew had spent much of the war on supply runs to Norway-a job as thankless as dangerous. The Captain would have actually preferred to keep shipping ammunition with heavy RAF interdiction than conveying the present passengers: at least, British bombers did not threatened periodically to have you shot. SS generals did not have the best reputation in the Kriegsmarine, but the one that they had to ferry to Pillau was really a special case-and his escort was far beyond special. The Captain and the crew quickly lost the track of the why and the when concerning the death threats they have received : antisubmarine evasions patterns were seen as skulking, average speed thanks to limited fuel reserves was seen as sabotage, and so forth.

    Not that the passengers had a much more positive attitude with the regulars or the population in general, and they seemed keen on proving it. As soon as the minesweeper had docked, scores of refugees had swarmed it, pleading for evacuation, the pleas including sometimes promises of generous rewards. The General and his escort ignored this human wave, until someone spotted a walking wounded from the Heer. As he was missing most of his right hand, it was a fair bet that he was not faking it. It did not prevent the General for asking him about proofs of his military situation-paperwork about furlough and permission, medical reports. Considering the state of the front, such a request was very rhetorical. Asking what happened when the private was unable to provide one of the said documents was rather rhetorical too. Well, it had the merit of making the crowd of refugees move back, if only for a couple of meters and a very short time. Two SS dragged on the docks the body of the «deserter», trying to find a lamppost to hang it-a tough proposition thanks to the state of the city. The Captain then said something he thought witty, a crude joke about how the General could direct his attention toward the feldpost, if he disliked this much delays about documentation. Sure enough, the Captain ended propped against his ship, with submachine guns prodded between his ribs. He was not overly worried, however. The SS needed the supplies runs of the navy, in Kurland and elsewhere. They had thus orders from their leaderships to avoid incidents with naval personnel. This said, there was no lost loves between them and what remained of the Kriegsmarine.

    The General barked an order, and his bodyguards let the Captain go, after a vicious prod with their weapons. As a Lieutenant from the garrison was wading through refugees to reach the commanding officer, the General made his thoughts rather clear.

    «Orders or not, you are merely a dignified tramp steamer commander. If I could find a way to bring you and your cowards on the front, I would. If possible without weapons, so you could serve as shields for real soldiers. This said, you are dismissed»

    «This means we won’t have the pleasure of escorting you back? What a pity»

    The escort of the SS made some crude comments, but the General himself said nothing else. As he left, the Captain started to listen more closely about offers for his return trip. He had principles. He took kids first. Of course, if the parents had some sort of gift for him-

    The General was well aware of this. Taking bribes was merely an aggravating offence for the crime of contributing to demoralization. Demoralization was quite loosely defined as anything that could harm the defense of the fast collapsing borders of the Reich. As seeing waves of refugees from Prussia could be the killing blow to the morale in the central areas of the Reich, helping with the evacuation was thus seen as demoralization, especially considering that the luminaries of the High Command had decided recently that the garrisons of the so-called fortress cities would fight harder with civilians trapped with them.

    If shooting a naval officer was hard to do officially nowadays, there was other ways to achieve the same results, useful ones. A minesweeper, after all, was a very minor warship. The General had the exclusive use of the radio for most of the trip, under the pretext of getting updates from Berlin. Of course most of the updates had consisted of hours long rants from the Chancellery, but it could still count as orders. Issue was, the crew had thus missed in the previous hours a crucial warning about several Soviet submarines spotted in the immediate vicinity. As the ASW had never been a priority for the Kriegsmarine, the minesweeper could have an unfortunate accident in the next hours. Such an accident would certainly help to relieve the pressure on the Baltic harbors-well, from a certain point of view.

    Hoping that the Captain and his crew would have a watery fate, the General was led to the vehicles that had been prepared for his mission: a mere two half-tracks. Their so-called armor was dented by numerous bullets impacts, the machine gun that was the only armament of the vehicle long removed for more pressing needs. But the engines were apparently working, which was what mattered. As nightfall was close, he gave orders for immediate departure. The lieutenant, who had kept trying all this time to tell the General something (only getting as answers murderous looks from the SS guards) finally dared a more direct approach»

    «General Lash would be delighted to receive you at his command post. »

    «I’m here to oversee the evacuation of critical assets for the war effort. I’m sure that General Lash understands that those orders easily supersede any instructions he have. »

    «Yes, General Lash made that point quite clear. But your assistance could help us strengthen the command structure here. The Gauleiter keeps interfering with our defense efforts, and the SS companies we have in the city are almost openly refusing to take orders from General Lash…»

    The General almost chuckled. Lash was probably complaining loudly about issues like this to separate himself from the SS-and the Genral guessed the command issues involved..

    «Let me guess. You mean that SS are shooting deserters and traitors belonging to the Heer, and that this is annoying officers from the said Heer, who feels that the SS are not respecting their authority? Do you really want to say something as stupid as this to me, Lieutenant? Do you really think I’m here to nurse the hurt feelings of general Lash?»

    The silence of the lieutenant proved that the guess was pretty much spot on.

    «Besides, General Lash should deal himself with traitors. The SS will however gladly assist him into finding and punishing the said traitors, with or without assistance of the Heer. This city is the birthplace of Prussia. It will not be surrendered to the Red Army»

    Oh, such sentences were heard often recently. The Gauleiter, who was hiding on some military outpost close to the sea, was spending his days writing proclamations about how «Koenisberg will be defended to the death» and how «the Prussians will never give up the city that is the symbol of the Reich». General Lash answered with proclamations that the Wehrmacht would «fight to the death» and how the city would «be defended to the last soldier and the last bullet». The garrison and the population were quite sure that all the parts about dying were not bombast and that the authorities were quite willing to do everything in their power to achieve this objective. However, recently, there had been a glimmer of hope. Not for their own survival, but at least an impression that the upcoming sacrifice was going to be helpful in a way. As the general was getting under way, the Lieutenant tried to convince himself of this, by asking indirectly the General for a confirmation of the rumors swirling around.

    «Rest assured, General. We know how vital your mission is. Every single man available is working on the Emden, and it will be ready when you will need it»

    The lieutenant was not sure he actually heard one of the SS guard remove the safety on his weapon. It was probably an illusion. What was not an illusion was that the said guards were considering shooting him, and were merely waiting for an order. Well, he did have his answer about the general mission tied to the Emden.

    «The Emden mission is of great importance for Berlin» said coldly the General Giving the enemy airpower, any indiscretion could have dire consequences for the Reich. »

    «We don’t know anything-and I don’t wish too either» said nervously the lieutenant. «We just know that you have been sent here for the sole purpose of taking a cargo on the Emden»

    So Lash or the Gauleiter had presented the future cargo of the Emden as vital for the war effort, probably as some kind of ridiculous wunderwaffen. It was a quite creative way to present the matter, but that could help to speed up the repair work-besides, the General would not be there when the garrison would learn what was the goal of the Emden mission.

    In any case, the repair work was not exactly a luxury. According to the damage reports, the Emden guns were out of condition, the cruiser was listing and its machinery was on its last miles. It would never been able to limp to Kiel without an escort. It would be another moment of painful revelation for the locals when they would learn that the said escort would be provided by the Panzerschiffe, by far the most important military asset remaining in the area. Another carefully hidden information was the fact that the warship was supposed to «escort» the Emden by presenting itself as incredibly more tempting target than a crippled light cruiser.

    The precious cargo of the General had first to reach Koenisberg, then Pillau: hence the vehicles, to go inland and meet with the detachment that had the said cargo. To guarantee a successful transportation, some issues had to be dealt with along the way-aggressively. The most important of those issues was on the other bank of Vistula lagoon. The ice on the lagoon was apparently solid enough for light vehicles, as the scores of refugees crossing it, but probably not solid enough for half-tracks. They would have to pass next to Koenisberg. Well, that would be the occasion to check the actual defense preparations: any air attack could cripple further the Emden, and it was quite possible that he would have to stay for several days in the area.

    What the General saw as his small convoy moved next to the outskirts of the city convinced him that lingering here would be a folly. The outer defenses of the city still relied on 19th century works being hastily modernized into makeshift bunkers, backed with a force that was miserable even on paper, lacking men, supplies and weapons. Even the most basic war tools were missing: it was pretty telling on that matter than the typical platoons of Volkstrum sent on trench digging duty were using gardening shovels. The General briefly considered to tell the SS platoons «stimulating» the Volkstrum platoons to increase their efforts, but gave up quickly the idea. Even the most patriotic slogan or the most blood curling threats could not change anything to the fact that the ground was hard as rock thanks to frost and virtually impossible to dig. And those platoons could be useful to plug holes in defense lines later.

    The trip further inland was rather tense. The Luftwaffe had withdrawn most of her assets beyond the Oder as her bases in Eastern Prussia were being overrun. There was thus nothing in the air to stop the swarms of Soviet Sturmoviks, which made any daytime movement quite suicidal. Even the Flak was now seriously lacking, with most of the guns being sent to the front to serve in emergency AT duty: their total lack of mobility meant that they did not last long. The only respite was when the weather was so atrocious that Russian aircraft could not take off, which obviously brought problems in itself. As a testament to Soviet air supremacy in the area, the ditches of the road were littered with what could be described as a museum of motorized and mechanized vehicles, not to mention a growing proportion of antiquated horse drawn transportation. But at least, moving inland was relatively easy. There was no new units, no reinforcements, and not even ammunition to send to the division, so one side of the road was quite clear. The same could not be said about the other side of the road.

    For kilometers, the side of the road leading to Koenisberg and Pillau was filled with civilians fleeing the advance of the Red Army. The fact that the two half-tracks commandeered by the General and his party were the only vehicles going to the front gave a pretty accurate picture of the military situation. Those civilians would have quite a shock when they would see the scores of would-be evacuees on the docks and the state of the defense of the so-called Festung-not to mention the reluctance of the Party to help with evacuation.

    Everyone was trying hard to stimulate resistance with wild stories about the plight of the refugees, but letting the general population see the chaos and confusion from Prussia was quite a different matters. Likewise, it was apparently good for the moral to speak for hours about the exactions of the Red Army, usually luridly descripted. After all, such an approach allowed everyone to not think too much about why every single civilian was trying to escape Westward.

    Virtually everyone in those trek had a son, brother or husband that had served in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. And they knew what Germany had done there-that the Red Army was burning with vengeance. More accurately, this was vengeance for the things the Russians knew-their towns burned to the ground, their relatives starving, mass graves. Issue was, as the battle-hardened Russian soldiers closed on the Reich, they had started to discover new elements, unspeakable even for the incredibly harsh Eastern Front.

    This explained some of the secondary orders of the General: If the Western Allies learned about certain complexes, plans and programs, this would harm the efforts to reach an armistice with them-provided this was possible, and the General doubted. The British had not surrendered in 1940, they would probably not surrender when their armies were on the Rhine. But the General was willing to work for even a slim chance, as one more day holding on the Eastern Front meant a victory a little more costly for the Soviet Union.

    On all official documentation, the General was thus merely designated as someone tasked with «liquidating» programs and installations. This quite transparent euphemism had been requested by officers of the Wehrmacht, who were very busy right now pretending that they were totally unaware what the SS had been doing during the war. The General took great care to send to those officers his requests for weapons and ammunition for the said liquidations in triple copies, just to be sure that a paper trail existed. The liquidation was just not a euphemism, however. In the civil life, the General had been an accountant. He was thus also charged with checking the cash balance of the various projects he terminated fiscally and litteraly. His masters disliked deeply people embezzling funds. Sure, it could be maliciously argued that this was mostly because they wanted to embezzle the said funds themselves or that they wanted scapegoats, but the General did not cared, as it allowed him to audit violently.

    Another advantage of liquidating dubious projects was to free up badly needed manpower for the front. The Etappe (rear areas) in all arms of the Reich had always been quite important a large number of officers and troops having spent most of the war in Berlin or Paris in purely administrative work, when there was work at all. Various more or less secret projects usually boiling down to embezzlement schemes and/or jobs that were basically there to prevent people from being sent to the front. His first stop was for one such facility.

    To summarize, the facility appeared on maps as a suspiciously large model farm. It might have been true to some degree in the past, but it had been commandeered by the Reichwher after the Great War, for use as a black barrack. Eastern Prussia geographical proximity to the Soviet Union had gave major importance to this facility before 1933, where it had been used extensively for the secrets arrangements of the Rapallo accords. Otherwise said, the facility had been used by the Reichwher to provide a modicum of training to future tank drivers, ironically enough with Russian instructors thanks to accords with the Weimar Republic. The rise of the Nazis had negated the uses of such schemes, although the facility had seen continued use, mostly for convenience issues: by the time of the invasion of Russia, it was still training trucks drivers and such. The core issue was that this facility still had access to resources more precious than gold in Eastern Prussia at the moment: motor vehicles and oil to use them.

    This was what had brought the attention of officials on this facility. A lot of the trucks earmarked for use in the Emden operation had gnarly encounters with T-34s or Sturmoviks, not to mention mechanical failures: Berlin had thus been reduced to raid the bottom of the barrel of its available motor transportation in Eastern Prussia. Unfortunately, this dignified garage had been requisitioned a couple of months ago by individuals with a murky link to the command chain. Those new users considered the vehicles, oil, and spare parts as their property, vital for their survival-and they had flatly refused to hand them over for the Emden mission. The General had to recuperate the trucks for the mission and then deal harshly with those saboteurs/hoarders/traitors/whatever was convenient for the power struggles in Berlin. The issue was, a lot of projects commissioned when the war was going well looked a little silly and wasteful right now, and they could be used against a lot of powerful characters.

    The General prided himself to never be concerned with politics, which merely meant that he was quiet about it to back the winner. His master had been under a lot of flak recently, over the humiliating collapse in the Ardennes, and his enemies were moving for the kill. The said master thus claimed loudly that he had never funded this particular group this probably meant that he had indeed backed it and wanted the matter to be forgotten. Besides, the new rage to please the Leader was not to present him special researches, but special divisions, special corps and special divisions and so forth. Usually, the special part boiled down to the utter lack of supplies, cadre and gear but the whole point was to get little flags for the situation map. The scientists holed up in this garage would thus have the choice between having a lot of bullets fired upon them of having a handful of bullets to fire at the Russians-the latest SS-sponsored unit in formation had a name as long as the list of weapons was short.

    What made the case of those planqués even worse was the General personal distaste for this kind of research, that he found as useless as fraudulent. The claims they had made about recent breakthroughs while clamoring for quarters on the Emden for evacuation had just managed to make authorities in Berlin remember about them.

    For starters, there were good reasons of being skeptical of credentials and research goals. As many people that had got the ears of Himmler about special research, they were extremely good at telling to their bosses what they wanted to hear, as well as inflating their own importance to pose about how they were positively vital to the Reich war effort in their current occupation. After all, when you «worked» on Tibetan astrology or Viking paganism, you were obviously far too precious to be, said, issued a single panzerfaust and sent inside a shoddy foxhole in the path of a Soviet tank column. Those astute «scholars», who had been offered nice university jobs thank to their Party membership and the «departure» of actual scholars, had been clever enough to focus their efforts on finding links between medieval Christianity and ancient German paganism, fields in which results would have been pretty murky in the best of cases. They had spent most of the war writing verbose papers about the Teutonic Knights and their supposed admiration for paganism, about how medieval romance were coded works about Norse lore, about how such and such Christian miracle «proved» the existence of Humans with strange powers-the latest came of course with abstruse explanations making various saints Germans.

    The General had been born in a pious family, with one of his brothers being even ordained. He had kept the appearances after his entry in the SS, mostly to spare the feelings of his mother. Whatever were his feelings toward Christianity he could not help but find works of those kind deeply insulting for intelligence. In any case, the «scholars» had managed to get postings in France, where they had spent a little time checking religious monuments and much more time organizing various black market schemes. The windfall of those proceedings was what had sent them back to a forsaken barrack in Eastern Prussia, from where they had been evacuated after the latest disasters on the front. They had been clamoring for evacuation since the destruction of Army Group Centre, and «curiously» their requests had been more and more desperate as the Red Army progressed. They must have grown really desperate over the previous months. The reports have evolved from the vague and so usual «project whose military applications could turn the tide of the war» to some frantic claims about ways to make elite soldiers of the Reich virtually invincible, coupled with some bizarre comments about the inner mental strength of the medieval Knight orders.

    Of course, the researchers were prudent with specifics about this marvelous result-they just hoped that they could sweet talk themselves out of predicament upon reaching Berlin. This attitude was shown when the General arrived with his escort. The lack of any guard detail around the facility was a proof enough of the value those individuals had right now. Rather amusingly, the «scholars» had dutifully put on white lab coats, in a pathetic attempt to stress out their intellectual credentials. They must have thought that the General was the head of their evacuation detail. The relief vanished promptly from their faces. Maybe it was the stern look of the General orr the fact that the platoon used the butt of their guns for greeting them.

    When the ritual protests were over, thanks to some boot kicks, the General spoke.

    «I will be brief. You have the choice between dying here or on the front. Questions? »

    «Our work here could save the R-» (detonation followed by screams)

    «This was not a question. Anyone one want to make comment before making their choice?»
     
  2. BaronNoir

    BaronNoir Jedi Master star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 6, 2001
    A small update before tomorrow next update (checking with moderators for graphic content)


    As grunts of pain related to having fingers blasted off by a pistol did not counted as an answer, the General proceeded inside the main building, leaving a couple of men to watch the prisoners. The building was a rather depressing low concrete structure, made to look very superficially like a large barn from the sake of aerial recon. It housed the main garage, some administrative offices, storeroom-not the kind of facilities you associated with research.

    As the main door was knocked down by vigorous shoulder shoves the General saw in a corner two individuals trying to turn a machine gun in his direction. A very rude summation from one SS guard convinced them to stop this. The two culprits then tried to look relieved, saying remarkably fake-sounding stuff about how they had mistaken the newcomers for Russians. The General was considering propping them on a wall for some harsh lessons on the importance of uniform recognition, but fortunately for the personnel, the so-called scientists decided to take the relatively easy way: they left their hiding places, hands quite high.

    «Setup demolition charges, and check the conditions of the vehicles they still have here» Despite the previous comments of the General, someone was foolish enough to protest over the destruction of the research. As one adjutant was giving him a crash course on military etiquette with his boots, the General checked the lab coats for the most flamboyant title. Having found this individual, he gave his orders, with his usual unique approach to diplomacy»

    «Everything except vehicles must be destroyed here. You have another objection?»

    «No», said in a curiously suave voice the said head scientist. «I understand General: the Reds can’t have our results. We won’t let them have them, don’t worry»

    The General then expressed succinctly what the higher up thought exactly of the said research, and how the team should consider themselves quite lucky to be offered the chance of dying against the Russians-well, he said it succinctly and with chosen words.

    «Oh no, General. I’m not contesting your orders and your authority. You can supervise personally the destruction of our research project, if you want to»

    The man made a move for a staircase leading underground. The General hesitated for a second, before motioning two guards to follow him. Of course it was likely a trap, but a clumsy trap would allow him to top the liquidation with a very complete audit. As the General had served on the front, he noted with a moderate surprise that the machine-gun had been pointed to face this staircase, which was obviously not a very good defensive setup. But all in all, the surprise was really not overwhelming, as the General had experience of similar project.

    Thus, when the scientist led him in a makeshift cell occupied by an disturbingly young female, apparently unconscious chained to a bar over her head, whose naked body was caked with blood, he did not even bothered to ask what kind of research this was-or rather, what was the supposed goal of the research. He made a simple evasive gesture that his bodyguard had seen him do countless times on the Eastern front-the only difference was that this time, the female shrieked in pain after receiving a full clip of ammo in her midsection. After a brief pause, the General snapped his fingers, and one of his troopers handed him the weapon. The second clip resulted only in further shrieks. The General briefly considered verifying if the weapon was working-by testing it on the imbecile in a white coat next to him, but decided against it-after all, this research was obviously real to a certain degree.

    «You are aware» he said nonchalantly while reloading, «that there is something know as a flak jacket. This thing just a curiosity, or there is something else you can you with it ?»

    ((I think they like to hear themselves talking like that.))

    As the scientist started a long winded explanation heavy on how he had saved the Reich, the General continued with his testing. He saw the female move slightly as he was putting the barrel of his gun on her ribs and pressing hard. He waited until she opened her eyes before pressing the trigger. She twisted as she had been punched, her eyes got unfocused, but she was still breathing. And there was «only» between her ribs a large bruise and some burn marks.

    «I stand corrected, this look more efficient than a flak jacket. Explanations?»

    ((If he wants explanations, he is asking the wrong guy, to say the least))

    «Oh yes. What we call the phenomenon, we have several hypotheses on it. It appears that it can deflect bullets, when it is conscious at the very least»

    «What make you think that?»

    The so-called scientist pointed at two reddish scars on the lower legs of the prisoner.

    «We knocked it with sedatives, and tried saturation fire, with a MG-42. Only two bullets made it. Unfortunately, the body of the specimen is rather weak, so we can’t repeat that too often»

    ((That’s certainly related to you sabotaging this work. After all, there are no reasons at all why you would in this condition, after all the loving care you received from them))

    «Is this thing dangerous?»

    «With what we put it through, if it could harm us, it would have done it long ago»

    ((Oh, you can do much more then harm them, you know. If you wanted, they would be on their knees, begging for you to just kill them. One more time, I must say that the moral objections you seem to have over using your Gift are very cute, and very useless)).

    «I suppose it’s a valid answer. But let’s got the point, shall we? I was given your dossier before leaving Berlin, so I’m quite familiar with your credentials. Or what pass for them. »

    As the General had pointed out, despite a fancy coat and a fancier title, the scientist had the formal training of a lab technician at best. The semblance of scientific lingo he used was from his work as a figurative monkey lab in a university-this explained partly why he enjoyed so much working with literal monkey. He still could not give up on the charade, however, and started with his explanation. Not that this was a surprise or new information for the girl: they had been babbling about their so-called theories for months. And there was hardly science in this. The fact that she was virtually impossible to kill with bullets was interesting, but that was even more interesting when combined to the fact that she was certainly not above pain. The «research», at this point, had mostly been about how much she was able to endure before passing out and being reanimated with buckets of cold water.

    ((That’s torture, and nothing else. Why you refuse to show to them the true power of your Gift is beyond me-especially considering that they will try very hard to impress Herr General, to save their skins. And this will be very painful. Very))

    This infernal voice in her head had tantalized, mocked, teased, Sarah for as long as she could remember. And it was getting harder to resist to the insinuations that kept creeping in her head. Give in. Give in. Give in. Day after day, week after week.

    ((You might dislike the Gift and my suggestions, but this is what kept you alive. I’m also the only one here that consider you as a Human being. Well, of course, I’m a kinda you….))

    The absolute lack of interest of the denizens of the facility for actual knowledge was showcased by a very troubling point. They never asked themselves how fourteen years old girl from France was able to understand them perfectly-the fact that Sarah was apparently quite fluent in German was certainly interesting for the sake of discussing loudly in front of her the next sequence of experience, but short of this.

    ((You are not exactly understanding and hearing them my dear. It’s deeper than this. Much deeper. This said, considering what they think of you and what they do to you, I’m quite willing to admit that this is a mixed blessing that you can understand this forsaken language. ))

    «This is just another way for you to torture me» said Sarah without thinking.

    The Scientist did not flinch upon hearing Sarah’s sentence. What the guinea pig thought was of no importance. In fact, if he had a single good surgeon on the team, he would have asked to have her vocal chords removed. The desperate weeping the guinea pig had sometimes was disturbing to team members who had daughters-he did wondered at times what could make the test subject cry, considering that the «tests» were not enough.

    ((Mmh, may I ask to who you are talking ? To me ? Or to those Nazis ? Because I feel really offended by the accusation of torturing you, considering what they do to you.))

    «In 1942» began the scientist, «we were stationed at the Kommandantur of Nantes…»

    ((And here we go, again….You know, I don’t know what is the most insulting. The fact that those Nazis dare to think to use you, or the fact they can be that wrong about the Gift))

    Sarah was trying to stay focused, but to no avail. She was trying again to kill herself by not eating Usually, it took 3-4 days before they resorted to force-feed her (another abject humiliation), and she was very weak at the moment. She kept drifting in and out.

    «The locale Milice proved very cooperative, and informed us about…»

    ((Of all the ways of dying, this one must be the most painful. You did not suffered enough of hunger before? This said, considering how and what they feed you….))

    «…there was some items the Bishop had removed and hidden, for not falling in our hands….»

    ((Amusing about how they talk endlessly about saving civilization, and about how they found perfectly fine to basically loot a church under a flimsy pretense…))

    «...for political ploys in France, he played hard on his credentials as a captain in her army, especially as he was wasting his patrimony, which infuriated his heirs…»

    ((That poor girl had apparently a knack for being too trustful, despite the Gift.))

    «…he was an imbecile that was trying to use alchemy, and ruined himself….»

    ((Oh, the pot is calling the kettle !))

    «…he tried hard to salvage his reputation by posing himself as close to her…he needed something to prove his point. Even if her body had been burned…»

    ((Everyone as a weak point. For her, it was her love for her country-a country that betrayed her and sold her. Like France have forsaken you to appease those charming individuals))

    «….the reliquary was seized by the Bishop during the trial, ….»

    ((For you, it’s how you hate above everything yourself.))
     
  3. BaronNoir

    BaronNoir Jedi Master star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 6, 2001
    «…It was a rather gaudy work, but it was containing a piece of clothing stained with blood-»

    ((Can’t help but notice how he was willing to rescue some blood soaked piece of a shirt, and unwilling to do anything to save the wearer of the said shirt. And after, people will complain that the ones who accept the Gift are misanthropic»

    «…the encasing had preserved the sample enough to allow it to be analyzed, or at least pretend to the general population that it could be analyzed…»

    ((As you have experimented (sorry for the pun) yourself, their ethic for science if equal to their ethic in general. They don’t understand anything about the Gift»

    «….we thought that this would be devastating to French morale to prove to them that one of their most venerated saviors was of Nordic blood, so we prepared a speech about this»

    ((I’m sure the preparation of the speech took more time than the actual research))

    «but the tests we ordered about the blood just to be sure shown something astonishing»

    ((You mean you were astonished to actually find anything. You heard them Sarah, thanks to the Gift. They are frauds. They spent their whole lives inventing esoteric stuff for their masters and they are utterly mesmerized by the Gift-they can’t even grasp what it means.))

    «…the blood is different (…) some kind of symbiote, inside the white cells, in huge quantities. Like midochondrions, but somewhat different-»

    ((I’m sure that Herr General know as well as them what he is talking about))

    «We immediately set up a cell culture, to see what would be the effect of the midochloridians-»

    Even the SS trooper, who was not exactly an intellectual, noticed at this point that the so-called researcher was mastering so much the subject that he could not even get the same word twice. He made a remark about this in rather crude terms, and laughter from three different sources burst into Sarah ears. Of course, only two were real.

    ((Yeah, as they don’t exactly lack human test subjects, they basically asked for some, to inject them this, just to see what this would do. Real science, indeed. It’s also fun to notice that this great scientist don’t even know what is a mitochondrion, to the point that he slaughters it every single time. Mitichlorian, Midichlorian…I don’t have the foggiest idea of what this is, to be honest-they don’t either. I suspect that they picked up the fanciest looking word in the analysis report they asked for, and keep parroting it))

    «So, to summarize, you tested this…serum ?...and then came to the conclusion that the blood gave some kind of power you can’t understand, which would explain retrospectively what happened to the first girl ? » The General sounded quite sarcastic.

    ((Well, this one have more brains than the others. Not a feat, but something. The question is, will he have enough brains to realize that the supposed original was not exactly helpless?))

    «Uh, yes»

    «We should hire you to test armor for our panzers. We fire an AT shell at every single member of your team until one of them repel it. Sounds interesting?»

    «General» protested meekly the man in the lab coat, «those test subjects have zero value for-»

    «You can do whatever you want with that kind of vermin. The issue is that whatever you found will be extremely hard to replicate, since according to your own records, she is the only one that survived to the injection. What kind of use this research is for the Reich?»

    ((Vermin. This is how they call you. You should both remember it and act on it))

    «We could do some vivisection on it, but we don’t have the personnel for it. But in Berlin, they have it, and I’m sure that this could shed some light on why it lived through the injection.»

    ((That’s what is fun about those Nazis. The idea that you could have the Gift naturally did not even cross their mind, thanks to what their propaganda say about you. They think for some reason that the blood of this girl could give them power, and that you survived thanks to some fluke that they could replicate. This blood did not you gave you the Gift, Sarah. It awakened the Gift that was latent in you-mostly for fight off the massive sepsis that occurred thanks to this injection, something that anyone with a modicum of medical training would have understood.))

    «I still have the strange feeling that this research is as useful for the Reich as those imbecilities about physics, atoms and particules.»

    ((Oh, if only you stopped trying to hold me back, Sarah, he would have a spot on demonstration on potential military uses. It’s only your will that keep them alive.))

    Sarah, still half-conscious, saw that several of the scientists were coming down the stairs, curious to see how the meeting was going. Their SS «escort» was coming with them. There was virtually no one left in the upper level. No one left to crew the machinegun-

    ((This would be an opportunity to use. The Gift have many possibilities and uses. Remember the little «magic tricks» you were doing to entertain her-))

    The Nazis were a bit puzzled to see their guinea pig act like she had been struck.

    ((I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I know how you suffer about this. About her. But this anger, you can use it. You think I’m a sort of demon that thrive on tormenting you. To be honest, there is part of truth in this. I’m certainly evil-less than them, however, but that’s another matter. But I’m you. Do you think I like this sort of life ?

    One of the scientists-who was cleaning lab equipment before his promotion-made the suggestion to «stun» Sarah using sniper rifles for transportation.

    As the lead individual in a lab was at this time trying hard to find arguments for evacuation, he jumped on the idea and asked to the General if he wished to see such a demonstration. As the voice in Sarah had stated, everyone had their weaknesses. For the general, it was such social events. Fear started to creep inside Sarah as they settled the rifle, whose barrel was a couple of feet away from her chest. The effect of those weapons on her was beyond belief. Sarah had a rather rough upbringing, and she had been punched quite a few times-obviously, even the most vicious kick paled in comparison to what did a high velocity bullet.

    ((Well, it’s the Gift, it’s not a miracle. It’s hard enough to deflect the bullet.))

    The bastards were aiming at her mid-section, as usual. Sarah ended up most of the time throwing up the meagre content of stomach as a result, which was seen as another scientifically interesting result. Not for the first time, Sarah tried to make the void in her mind, hoping somehow that she would be able to not block this shot. She repeated some crude mantras in her head.

    I will be finally at peace, and I’m accepting it without any emotion

    ((You do not want this «peace : every cell of your body is fighting desperately against it))

    I will never accept this Gift without knowing what it is

    ((The more you survive, the more you suffer))

    I don’t want this. I just want this to be over. Let me die

    ((The more you suffer, the more powerful the Gift grow))

    I don’t want this Gift-I’m not a freak, I’m….I’m,….

    ((The more the Gift grow, the more devastating your vengeance will be))

    What kind of Gift this is, if this is not even allowing me to end this ?

    ((Your vengeance will free you from this existence of torment))

    Sarah eventual reply was cut short by a flash of pain, of agonizing pain-the sniper rifle had been used. And it was not only the pain that despaired her: it was the fact that this voice I her head would grow more powerful, more tempting. She would lose control soon.

    She tried to convince herself that she preferred to die as Sarah than to live as some kind of abomination. It was getting harder and harder.

    «Just kill me»

    This outcry was by no means exceptional-it was the only kind of communication the guinea pigs had with the facility staff. A SS sergeant, however, was a bit surprised when he realized that the girl was spitting blood. How she could have spoken so clearly?

    …was this really speaking ?

    Meanwhile, the Scientist kept begging the General to give him a chance, kept proposing various tests to show how the guinea pig capacities to survive were unmatched. Sarah’s hearth squeezed a little when she heard what she would have to endure: all of this: just to impress another Nazi ?

    She was really just a guinea pig ? She was really this powerless ? And then, one the scientists sealed the deal with the sentence. He was trying to deflect blame on the SS

    «We would have a second specimen, if your colleagues at Theresensdat had not wasted it-»

    The voice in Sarah’s head shut up instantly. Even this voice was afraid of her reaction. Months of living like this had not been enough to break Sarah. This sentence did the trick. Wasted. It. They could talk of her like this if they wanted. She was an abomination. Not her little sister.

    That they had killed like she was a harmful animal. She had been so nice, so kind, so-

    «Do not talk like that of her» finally said Sarah in an eerily quiet voice.

    The same attentive SS noted that the green eyes of the girl had taken an orange, reddish tint-he took a step back. There was a minute of horrified pause as the assistant who had made this fateful remark started to suffocate, his hands clutched around its throat. There was a sickening sound as its windpipe was crushed by a terrible force.

    ((Finally !))
     
  4. CmdrMitthrawnuruodo

    CmdrMitthrawnuruodo Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 1, 2000
    Indeed!

    Now this voice, is this another living sensitive talking to her or perhaps the remnants of the original?
     
  5. BaronNoir

    BaronNoir Jedi Master star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 6, 2001
    The voice is not a separate being. It's merely temptation (it's her dark side...from a certain point of view). It helps the girl a lot to cope with the issue to think of this voice as a separate being.
     
  6. BaronNoir

    BaronNoir Jedi Master star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 6, 2001
    Next chapter in one week or two