Chapter XVII
„Muller, drive up the front entrance and shoot anyone trying to get away!” You yell over into your helmet mounted comms microphone. “We’ll try to cut them off at the back of the warehouse.”
„Understood, moving out.” Paul answers.
You rush towards the backside of the old warehouse, kicking up the fresh snow. The rear entrance appears before you, a van is parked near it along with a few other cars. The only road out is blocked by the transportpanzer, if they want to get out on foot they’ll have to get pass your team. You wait and prepare.
The first bunch of criminals runs out from the inside, two of them look just like typical shady characters hut nothing special. The other two though, they’re muscle – well armed muscle – and will be a problem, you think. Anna and Sven try to take them out while they’re still out of cover. Unluckily enough they miss, as do you.
Oskaras lines up his rifle and takes a shot, aiming for one of the thugs. The bullets begin their journey ending up in the target’s right arm. “FUCK!” The criminal yells as he drops his gun and begins frantically looking for it somewhere behind one of the cars, clenching his wound tightly. He’s severely wounded but not out of the fight yet.
Your adversaries, now aware of your presence, scramble and hide behind whatever cover they could find. They’re boxed in, all you need to do is hold the line until Muller and the rest clean up the front. But considering the weapons some of these gangsters have this won’t be easy.
The team starts firing once again, a barrage of bullets flies into the direction of trapped thugs. “One down!” Sven proclaims joyfully after a poorly armed thug drops dead on the snow-covered ground. “Shit! My fucking arm!” A criminal yells as Anna manages to wound him with a short burst. The remaining criminals try fighting back, but so far your cover is proving effective.
Both sides exchange fire once again, your scope is pointed at someone hiding behind a van. The trigger is pulled, a few metal projectile fly in the van’s direction impacting the leg of a thug hiding behind it. “God damn it!” He screams as he loses balance and falls to the ground. You try to finish him off but you fail. Bullets continue to sweep through the air but it seems nobody else got hit.
Reload, aim, fire – another short burst hits the unlucky criminal behind the van. “Fucking hell why is it always me!” The thug yells, luckily for him the projectiles just barely scratched his shoulder, he is still alive and conscious. However his fighting ability is severely hampered by his wounds and the pain.
“I’ll get you this time arschloch!” You yell as you fire at the van, it looks like you didn’t get him. “Ha! It’s all in how you pull the trigger!” Sven comments amusingly, you’re not sure where you heard that line before. It appears that he did but an AP round through the armored goon’s chest and into his heart. Those neo-ceramic/durastic composite plates don’t do much against proper AP ammo, the bad news being that your armor uses those plates as well.
“This is easy!” Anna grins as she fires at a different heavily armed criminal, she manages to hit his legs causing him to fall. It also appears that the goon behind the van lost consciousness from blood loss. You aim at a new target, a shadowy silhouette firmly gripping its handgun, itching to jump out of cover and start shooting. Well, you’re not going to let him try. A loud bang, three supersonic projectiles rushing through the cold November air. “Kurwa!” Your target screams, his gun drops into the snow next to a red-patch made by the blood dripping from wound you just made in his arm.
Sven grunts painfully, an AP round just hit him in the chest. You can see blood, this looks bad however it seems it only hit his lung. “Doesn’t look good… Frau…” The Swede says. “Keep it together soldier, I saw worse, nothing modern surgery won’t fix. Just stay focused, filter out the pain.” You try to calm him.
“Ouch!” Anna shouts, she got hit as well. Luckily the round is not powerful enough to bypass the composite armor plating. “Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought.” She adds.
The wounded criminal is once again in your sights. He can barely hold his pistol in his hand, covering the wound on his arm with his free hand. His head is right at the center of your scope’s view. You take a deep breath and fire. What happens next is best left unmentioned, as it appears his neural tissue is now scattered all over the area behind him. A grim reminder of the messy nature of your service to the Bundesreich, especially when one does not wear a helmet.
More shots, more bullets flying at and from both sides. “Scheisse!” Oskaras curses as he falls over. “Damn leg hurts like mother…” He continues. “Keep calm, it’s just a flesh wound!” You remind him, it looks messy but the bleeding should be easy to stop. You just hope he doesn’t hemorrhage internally too much.
The fighting continues.
*
For Mr. Muller this appears to be just another day on the job. He wonders why did he ever bother to stay in the military, ever since he got that one deal. Paul fulfilled his end of the deal years ago. And yet he is still here, wearing the same dark-grey uniform and the same armor with some improvements.
Perhaps the military became his home now, his new pack of wolves after his old one had to be… abandoned? Betrayed? But those are harsh words that carry a burden of guilt. He tries to justify it to this very day, convinced that he was in a unique position. He saw an opportunity and he exploited it, Mr. Muller after all is nothing if not an opportunist. And in his last *pack* everyone would do the same, if they were in his postion.
The transportpanzer decelerates making quite possibly the largest ruckus one could possibly imagine. But this is irrelevant at this point, they know that the military is here. The sight of a 50-ton monster of an IFV is merely just another symptom that things are going rather badly for them tonight.
“I see five, no wait at least seven targets. Man the gun ports and start shooting, Smith take the autocannon. Fire at will, just not at our people!” Paul orders, he rather likes this part of the job. He’s more than just a grunt now. Sure, he is another cog in the Europareich war machine, but a somewhat larger cog that can tell smaller cogs what to do. He dictates how they turn, when they turn, whether they live or whether they die. Power can be quite alluring, Mr. Muller knows that well. A stable job although still a risky job, some power, decent money and other perks. Sure beats the life he once knew.
The cogs of a different and not so metaphorical war machine start turning, as the autocannon bolted into the armored turret turns towards the front gate of the to-be-demolished warehouse. Collateral damage is not an issue, in fact the owner may be pleased the military did some of the work for free.
A mighty roar echoes in the night, like a beast screaming with every ounce of power within its lungs, the barrel of the Neinmask’s gun announces its involvement in the skirmish. The criminals start panicking, they try to run. But for some it is already too late. They hide behind cars and behind steel junk, but that is not enough to escape from the cannon.
“Two targets eliminated, cannon slightly overheating Sir!” Sarah reports after firing a few rounds.
“Keep the pressure on them, they either surrender or they die. Whether or not they pick the smart choice doesn’t matter.” Paul tells everyone.
The squad keeps firing, the criminals fall one by one. Two of them decide to surrender, another somehow runs away behind the corner of the warehouse.
“Bosch, Richter, Osterhagen! You guard these two smart guys, the rest of you is coming with me to reinforce the Feldwebel’s position!” Paul orders again.
Mr. Muller runs out of the armored vehicle, his handpicked teammates just behind him. He enters the theoretically abandoned warehouse to aid his superior officer. He could stay behind, behind the safe armored shell of transportpanzer. For some reason however he goes into the danger zone.
Why? Well that remains a mystery. But it is clear Mr. Muller, as always, hopes to somehow profit from this situation. That was after all the motivation behind all of his actions, or at least most of them in his life.
*
It seems like nobody is willing to surrender, well it is not like you have a reason to even consider that. You keep firing, barely noticing that Gefreiter Borg has just lost consciousness. There is not time to check if he is alive, you keep firing hoping to end this quickly.
The Unteroffizier arrives, immediately pointing his gun at the nearest exposed target, the element of surprise is on Muller’s side. A bullet hits his target in the jaw, he isn’t killed outright but if you were in the poor goon’s place, you would prefer quick death over the agony in which he’ll probably die within the next ten to twenty minutes. Paul makes a very messy entrance.
“Reinforcements are here, lay down suppressive fire!” You order the team just as Beauvis and Smith arrive in the combat area. Carefully you pick your target and fire.
“Kurwa jego…” A criminal curses in Polish, just as a bullet impacts his chest. He would most likely finish that sentence, however Paul puts an end to his existence.
Anna rushes forward, towards one of the gang leaders. She gets into position and takes a shot, hitting one of them in the arm. Gefreiter’s Beavis and Smith follow her example and manage to hit him as well, he falls to the ground as he passes out from the trauma.
“I surrender! I surrender!” The other gang leader, an older man wearing a black coat yells!
“Hold your fire!” You order the squad. “You, drop any weapons you have! Now!” You yell towards the gangster.
A series of clanking metallic sounds echoes in the now oddly silent warehouse, as a Submachine gun, 9mm pistol and even a rather large machete fall to the ground.
“On the ground, hands behind your back!” You order him, he complies.
*
“Well, this is going to be a problem.” The Major tells you. You’re being debriefed after yesterday’s Friday night firefight as the squad jokingly called it. Oskaras and Sven are under medical care in the Army hospital downtown.
“Why Herr Major?” You ask while looking over the police file Orłowski send you on the guy you caught, the one who surrendered.
“This *Cod*, he’s a scumbag. Drugs, arms, hired killings, human trafficking and money laundering. Hell, it looks like we took out the kingpin of the most well-organized bunch of thugs on this side of the Baltic.” You add.
“And why do you think he eluded the authorities for so long? Hell, why do you think he surrendered if he’s pretty much guaranteed to face the firing squad with all the crimes tied to him?”
“Let me guess Herr Major, politics?” You ask reluctantly, fearing that the answer is the one you expect.
“Politics indeed Frau Westgard, politics indeed.”
You sigh. “How deep does this go?”
“Well, we’re pretty sure *Cod*, I mean Dorszowski, has ties to powerful people in the civilian administration. As well as ties to the local fraction of the *Strong Poland* party, as well as ties to the party proper in Poland itself.”
“So? We’re going to expose what he did and they’ll cut all ties. Doubt that they’re going to admit they had support from a criminal scumbag, it’s a win-win.”
“Frau Westgard, this is not how things here work. Or at least not in local politics. The Polish right, even the more legitimate right like *Strong Poland*, has a very long tradition of believing everyone is conspiring against it. And considering growing, but still minor, anti-european sentiments in Poland and the TSZ in particular, this can’t end well.”
“Are you saying we bury this? Just let him go?”
“No, we let the civilian administration handle this. If friends of *Cod* want to get him out, let the local politicians take the blame and responsibility.”
“This is wrong.”
“This is the TSZ Frau Feldwebel, at first glance it looks like right and wrong have the same meaning as elsewhere. But when you get to know it better, you realize the line is a lot more blurred than elsewhere in the Bundesreich.”
“Then we should settle thinks straight, just because it is like that now does not mean it has to stay that way.”
“People who try to enforce that tend to have problems, like the previous General two years ago. He didn’t try to overlook the shady dealings tied to local politicians, suddenly you had a spontaneous riot under his command center in Gdingen. A week later the Chancellor himself decides that he can’t afford to have such an unpopular choice calling the shots here in the TSZ, unless he wants to risk massive unrest. So the General gets reassigned to fighting mujahedin in the Caucasus taking General Vogler’s place there. A change of strategic paradigms, requiring command rotation – officially.”
“What about General Vogler? Is he willing to transfer Dorszowski’s case to the civilian government?”
“Well, the General for the time being didn’t have to deal with politicians. Call it luck, but he would probably want to put *Cod* in front of a firing squad at all cost. The General was rather efficient in the Caucasus, but that’s because his authority was then only authority there. Now he has to listen to the locals, I’m not sure he’s aware of that, at least not yet.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” You wonder whether this *Cod* is indeed too much trouble.
“Riots, armed-rebellion possibly if he’s real good friends with the big fish in the *TSZ Autonomic Government*. If we’re lucky though, they’ll just send everyone involved to Siberia as reassignment. That’s you, me, your squad, the entire company and the General.”
“So what do we do? We sweep this under the rug?”
“We *unofficially* contact the government, tell them who we caught and why. They start talking with the General. He makes the choices, he suffers the consequences. We stay behind the scenes and avoid the fallout when it happens.”
“And *Cod* walks free? After trying to kill me and my squad?”
“Probably, it depends how much pull he has. But we stay out of the mess by throwing the ball into the General’s hand.”
“The guy is too much of a security risk, we can’t have the kind of arms he was offering on the streets. He would just keep arming more and more troublemakers.”
“We execute him and we face instability and reassignment. I rather not spend the rest of my career freezing to death near the Urals.”
“Can I at least look into how he is connected to the bombings Herr Major?”
“I won’t give you that permission.”
Well, he won’t. But you can always ask the General, that however means he’ll get involved.
You will…
X)…inform the General that you caught a major arms dealer and smuggler.
Y)…let the Major deal with the situation as he wants by informing the local government, try to stay back from the Fallout.
Furthermore, regarding your investigation into the bombings you will…
1)…go to Zoppot, see if you can get access to the bank manager’s home and investigate it for clues regarding the bombing.
2)…visit the manager at the hospital, see if he has anything interesting to say about the bombing.
3)…interrogate Robert Wis, see if he knows anything about local right-wing terrorists.
4)... persuade Carla Durante, the hacker, to tell you more using torture. Don’t worry, it’s all in the mind.
5)…go make up for all the patrol duty you missed by playing cop. Spend an entire day doing that.
Furthermore the major orders that you actually get your squad on patrol, the rookies can’t be playing cops all the time. You will patrol the following area during the night:
A) Saspe
B) Heibuden
C) Oliva
D) Brösen
E) Neufahrwasser
Pick 3 people out of the following to go with you as your “personal” team:
Beauvis, Mazowiecka, Smith, Osterhagen, Richter, Bosch
You didn’t get a fate point but the rookies got some stat boosts. Also you got a slight stealth increase, but I reworked the scale so it’s all as x/100 now. How much exactly you’ll see when I post the reworked character sheet.