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zzambrosius_02CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: All the Shit Hits Everywhere
“I am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is under all imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though the use of violence is in some sense unjust. I believe that one has to estimate relative justices. But the use of violence and the creation of some degree of injustice can only be justified on the basis of the claim and the assessment—which always ought to be undertaken very, very seriously and with a good deal of skepticism—that this violence is being exercised because a more just result is going to be achieved.”
― Noam Chomsky
The room lit up, the flash from outside bright enough to wake him from a deep sleep. He rolled to his feet, shielding his eyes. A deep, throaty “boom” filled his ears and he cursed in several languages:
“Jannet! Wake up! Now!” He used his Command voice, well aware that she had never before heard that tone from him.
She rolled over, muzzy with sleep, knuckling the matter from her eyes: “What? ‘Wha...”
He interrupted, still in Command mode, calm but firm: “Get dressed. Wake up Kim and Jimmy, then get upstairs. Wake up Marie and Luisa. Then put in your contacts, and grab your bag. Meet in the front yard in ten minutes.”
She stared at him, puzzled. She began to do as he’d ordered, slowly and reluctantly.
Then the ground wave from the explosion rolled through, shaking the house and bringing down some wallboard from the ceiling above her.
“Shit!” she yelled, and started throwing her clothes around, donning some, searching through the pockets of each item, looking for her phone.
Ambros flipped the New Pismo open, flattening the screen onto the working surface of the standing desk. He spoke passwords and Commands in Rational Hellenic, ignoring Jannet’s protests and questions. The machine ceased to operate in its “stealth mode”; it became a Commonwealth laptop, except in appearance.
“Oh, bleep,” he said, having no cuss words bad enough for the situation: “Move as fast as you can, Jannet. This is so bad...”
She stood up, dressed, and looked over his shoulder. What she saw there startled her; she gasped. “What...?” she began.
“No time,” he said: “The next boom is coming in a minute.”
His drones showed them the situation, in brief videos from various parts of the county: the chief danger to their neighborhood came from a gasoline and diesel storage facility about two miles from the house. One of the huge storage tanks had already exploded, and was burning fiercely. The second one in that row looked to be on the verge. Tanks with Nazi emblems on the sides rolled along the road, chewing up the tarmac with their tracks.
The sense of “placement in a four-dimensional universe”, which he had felt after his First Contact with the Commonwealth, then more fiercely after running a board in the War Room, clamped onto his mind and didn’t go away. He could feel enemy troops dropping in all over the globe, and sense the opening of multiple portable Gates all around the world.
He called up more input from all of his drones, planet-wide: the closer to the Willamette Valley he looked, the more detailed his view; nevertheless it was obvious that a global invasion had begun.
He spoke again in Hellenic, and the display shut down. “If you’re gonna stand there, get me my pants,” he said, shortly. He gave the Pismo another command in RH, and its case came apart into a half dozen pieces. He scattered those aside and rolled the pinkish plastic Commonwealth laptop into a scroll, locking it into that configuration with another command. He looked over his shoulder at Jannet: “Told you I was a spy, didn’t I?”
She shook her head, squatted down and grabbed his pants, and handed them to him. As though suddenly remembering the tasks he’d laid on her, she ran out the narrow door, bumping her right hip against the doorpost, hard. He heard her grunt in pain, he heard Jimmy’s voice, he heard Kim shouting; he ignored all of it. Adele shrieked, but they all headed upstairs.
“Pants, shirt, boots.” He put the scrolled computer into one pocket, then pulled out his Shifter and Saltated to his Salon, right into the wayback room. He started slapping on his Commando armor, muttering under his breath: “Get me a straight line to whoever is on Rescue duty in Athino Prime...Agathos? Spathos Ambros here. My Line is under attack from ATL Prime and Nazi One. What? Okay, I should have guessed that. I have a handful of evacuation modules, I’ll be triggering those in the next hour. Pull those people out of this Line, lodge them in safety. Tell all of the War Rooms, Allied Lines included, that Spathos Five Ambros Rothakis, Phalango Iera, Athino Prima, has called Code Spartacus, launch when ready...No, this is on Magistri Arrenji’s initiative, the whole thing will be clear to the people in the War Rooms as soon as they initiate that code. Thank you and battle fortune. Let’s kick some ass!”
He hollered out the door of the office: “Randy! You here?”
Randy came running out of the back, Marissa’s hand in his. They both looked terrified.
Ambros said: “Randy, will you help me fight this invasion?”
Randy gulped and said: “Yes sir.”
Ambros’ eyebrows went up, he tipped his head to one side: “You sure?”
“Yes...yes sir!”
Ambros turned to Marissa and said, gently: “Marissa, you are about to become a refugee. Do you trust me?”
“Umm...I do.”
“Hold this,” he said: “You know you can trust the people you meet on the other side.”
Marissa nodded and took the evac mod from him, and he triggered it. In a second or two, she vanished with the usual bang.
“Let’s go, Randy. Put that suit of armor on.” Ambros indicated the Infantry Scout gear hanging on the wall: “Don’t forget ypur cup!”
Randy began fumbling his way into the armor. Ambros stood aside, an abstracted look on his face, listening in on a dozen radio and “radio” conversations, flicking from one frequency to another with little movements of his eyes. He interrupted that work to step aside and grab some aspirin-caffeine-cocaine tabs and a couple Memory RNA capsules from his desk.
Randy put the helm on; Ambros pulled himself away from his virtual scouting and said: “Randy, can you hear me through the helm?”
“Yes, sir.” Randy seemed to have calmed down and centered himself.
“Good. I’m gonna set the receiver in your helm to hear only my broadcasts; the rest of the babble would just confuse you. Stay near me, do as I say, no matter how authoritative anyone from this Line seems.”
“I can do that.”
Ambros ran rapidly through the weapons: “APS...slugs and waves...that’s a steel knife...Stand close!”
He Saltated back into the front yard at Rose House, holding Randy in his arms: "Randy, get in among those bushes and look out around the corner to the west. Don't show yourself, but tell me what you see."
Randy stared at the wall of intertwined barberry, laurel, fir and rose bushes that made up the hedge on that side of the property. Ambros made a patting motion with his hands: "On your belly, crawl through. Use the APS if you gotta. Hop to it!"
"Yes, sir!" Randy turned and dove into the shrubbery.
Ambros spoke quietly for a couple of seconds, in contact with Agathos in the War Room. Three Black Warriors dropped in, with a couple Techs in tow. The techs set up transport cones and the Blacks herded the women into the circle.
"Wait!" cried Jannet: "What's happening?"
Marie put her hand on Jannet's arm: "They are getting us out of harm's way. There is an invasion coming."
Jannet bridled: "Because we're women?"
Ambros shook his head: "Because you are non-combatants, and privileged by your association with me."
"We are not trained to fight," said Luisa: "Come on, Jannet, get in the circle!"
“But, Jess! Our kids!”
“Ambros will do something, if he can…come on!”
Ambros didn't look back; he had things to do. He used his MPS and contacted Averos: “Magistros…”
“Spathos Ambros. What can I do for you?”
“I just called Code Spartacus. I’m now calling Code Boom.”
“Akuo sas. Tha symfrommei.”
Randy called out from near the sidewalk: "Sir! There's a convoy of some kind of tanks or something coming this way! They're green and gray and blue and they're coming fast! Got big guns on ’em! A big bunch went on down the highway towards downtown!"
"Okay. Hold your position." Ambros spoke calmly, knowing Randy could hear his voice, quiet and confident, in his helm.
He ran over to the truck and palmed the door open, then popped the hood. He waved at the controls, saying a password. Something exploded west of them, shaking the ground.
"Report, Randall!"
"Sir! Some people came out of that apartment building by the tracks, they were shooting at the tanks with handguns...the lead tank just blew the whole building to bits!"
"Casualties?"
"Pretty much all of them, Sir." Randy’s tone was bleak.
"Okay. Rise in place, cut your way back to the yard."
"Sir."
Ambros returned his attention to the truck. He reset some of the controls on the main board, then skipped around to the front of the vehicle. He opened the hood and reset the power mod. He tuned his MPS to the mod, then started the truck. He drove it into the street remotely; bullets from the machine guns mounted on the ATL tanks spanged off of the windshield and hood.
He locked the front wheels; he commanded the truck into full acceleration.
It sped silently away, increasing its speed with every yard it traveled. When it reached the lead tank, Ambros triggered the power mod.
The truck exploded, sending shrapnel in all directions.
“Got it!” he exulted. The truck’s suicide had destroyed the lead tank, and badly damaged the following one, as he’d intended. Huge piles of smoking metal and concrete debris blocked Rosefield Avenue from side to side, effectively stopping the Nazi column.
The remains of the truck smoked and fumed. He noticed that the auxiliary power mod had been destroyed; the nauseating seven dimensional “guts” of it sat where the truck’s bed had been, and lightning sprang from all sides of it. The energy stored in it—enormous amounts of electrical power—let loose in strand and ball lightning, the strands leaping from the source and fusing the metal debris together while the ball lighting bounced around, completely disintegrating whatever it hit.
“Bonus!” Ambros said: “I didn’t even consider the aux power mod.”
Ambros saw an SS officer on a motorcycle maneuver through the debris. The bike had a sidecar-mounted 9mm machine gun, operated by another SS man. Ambros raised his rifle to his eye, but he was too late.
A ball of energy about the size of a basketball hit the bike. The motorcycle and its riders vanished with a bang, leaving behind not even smoke: just a diminished ball of electricity, which bounced away and set fire to a house.
People fled from houses all along the street, terrified children in tow.
Ambros ducked behind the hedge, waved at Randy: "C'mon, quick!" The BWG soldiers jogged along, following Ambros.
He knew why they were following him, and appreciated it even if he didn’t especially like it: ‘They are my bodyguards. I am the only near-fully-trained Warrior native to this Line that the Commonwealth has...they have to keep me in one piece...’
“Huddle up here,” he said, calmly: “Which of you BWG is senior? Vorlos? Good! Keep a connection to Master Agathos open. I want to see what’s up...” The other two BWG identified themselves as Artabasi and Athenados.
The Blacks stood facing three different directions; one of them tapped Randy and said: “Watch that way...”
Randy glanced at Ambros; Ambros nodded. He flicked his eyes to the lower left of his face shield and added: ‘Jess and kids’ to his task list, moving that job up to second priority, after ‘Plug the Prairie Road Gate’.
He heard Aristogatos’ voice in his ears: “Spathos, I have a message for you from Magistri Ellisi.”
“Shoot.”
“She’s at...’Eugene Marine Reserve HQ’...attempting to counsel them on the current situation. She’s meeting resistance.”
“Yeah...” he used his tech to send co-ordinates to Aristogatos: “Weapons down, everybody,” he told his squad, then sent to Aristogatos again: “Drop us there, all of us.”
“Tha Symfrommei.”
***SALTATION***
Ambros raised his hands, palms out, as a dozen Marines in various states of undress all seized weapons and leveled them.
“Peace!” Ambros said: “We’re here to help!” He looked around and gestured in the direction of Magistri Ellisi, who was deep in a heated conversation with a Marine officer, a Major by his tabs. Ellisi’s armor, so similar to what Ambros and his squad wore, convinced the Marines not to fire immediately: “Hold fire,” said a sergeant, laconically.
Ambros backed slowly away, as the Marines stayed alert. The sergeant waved a hand, saying: “That must be more of those Hay-llenes. Weapons down!” They all went back to prep work, pulling combat gear out of lockers and muttering tersely to one another.
Ambros turned and strode over to the map table, elbowing his way in between the major and one of his officers: “Look, I have a way better map here,” he said, deploying it over top of the (actually rather detailed) map of Oregon that lay spread across the table.
“My map is an amalgam of the info sent to me by a thousand drones, all over the Willamette Valley,” he pointed out: “Ellisi will have access to that information as of...now.”
He deliberately didn’t give the Marines the information he had on the rest of the country, or the world: ‘They don’t need that.’
He could ‘sense’ other things, though: ‘Red Warrior squads are dropping in all over the earth, in multiple Timelines, and they are taking out—killing, that is—a lot of people...like Posse Comitatus. That organization will soon be non-existent. And Burt Roberts made that possible!’
“Keep talking, Spathos,” said Ellisi.
He pulled himself back to the present and spoke rapidly, using the tech to highlight the areas he indicated: “There are three Gates opened along the northern edge of Eugene. Most of the men and ordnance coming through these two gates is heading north, roughly along the course of I-5. But this Gate, near the junction of Beltline with Highway 99, is pointed right at downtown Eugene.
“You have US military reservists mustering all up and down the Valley, but they will have a tough time with the enemy’s Blitzkrieg tactics. They need more tanks...I have an idea how to get those...but the first thing to do is to plug the Gates.”
The major—Williams, his nametag read—seemed utterly at a loss. He stood there shaking his head, muttering, eyes wide and face pale.
“How the hell do we do that?” asked the Captain standing to Ambros’ right. Ambros turned to look. Then he pulled his helm off and said: “Baron Darien...Captain Darcy, I should say. How’s it going?”
“Ambros. You tell me.”
“Moderately shitty, right now. But soon to get a bit better.”
“Talk to me...”
Ambros turned back to the map: “I want to emphasize the seriousness of the threats we’ll face. The forces entering this Timeline...”
Major Williams interrupted: “What? Are you nuts? The hell...”
Ambros interrupted in turn: “You don’t have the leisure to doubt what is happening, Major Williams. Get this through your head: the main group invading Eugene is a group of Panzerkorps from a Timeline where the Nazis won World War Two. They’ve had sixty years to refine their blitz-style warfare, and ten years using Gates to make pests of themselves in the Multiverse. You can beat them, especially with Commonwealth help, but you gotta snap to and get to work.”
“Major...” Captain Darcy began.
“Captain, get these nutjobs out of my HQ!” Williams tried to flip the holo-map over, but his hands passed right through it. He looked down, boggled.
“Permission to speak frankly, sir?”
“...Granted,” said Williams, grudgingly.
“Sir, I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I do know this man,” Darcy indicated Ambros: ”I trust him, and so should you.”
Williams frowned: “NO. Get them outta here.”
Ellisi said: “We don’t have time for this.”
She drew her APS and activated it. Ambros knew she was about to do something drastic, but couldn’t stop her.
She leaped up onto the table and walked across; the map swirled like wet paint around her ankles, then returned to its previous form.
Ellisis pushed her APS right through the Major’s thigh.
“Oops,” she said: “Looks like Major Williams needs a medical evac.” She closed her visor and hopped down on the Major’s side of the table, catching him as he slumped into unconsciousness, and placed an evac mod on his forehead.
Ambros shook his head, ruefully: “She’s got a reputation for hasty solutions.”
One of the Marines fired a shot at Ellisi, hitting her right in the visor. The bullet spanged off and ricocheted around the room. She looked up, grinning. Every Commonwealther in the place leveled a firearm at the Marines by the lockers.
Randy aimed his rifle, too.
“Stand down,” Captain Darcy ordered; he made a face, looking around at the other Marines. He raised his voice: “I’m in charge now.”
After a tense moment, the sergeant saluted him. Major Williams disappeared. The bang startled the Marines back into prep work.
“Plug that gate, you said...” Darcy prompted.
“Yeah...” He lined out a basic plan, making sure to explain: “This is like a grenade, at least in its current settings. Lots more powerful than yours, though. I want one here, and one here...better if your men do the job.”
Darcy nodded: “Henderson, Jackson!”
Two Marines jogged over: the sergeant and a private.
“Go with this man, do as he says.”
“Sir!” the Sergeant said.
Ambros pointed to the map: “We’re going there...” The holo showed the Gate, with rank after rank of grey-clad Wermacht soldiers marching through.
“We need a truck?” said the private.
“No, I’ll get you there. Stand close together.” Ambros spoke in Hellenic: “Gatos? I have co-ordinates. Me, my squad, two US Marines. Endaxi?”
“Stand ready, Spathos. Arrenji is sending you some help.”
“Thanks.”
***SALTATION***
They dropped in on Prairie Road, a little northeast of the inferno that had been a fuel storage facility. Twenty storage tanks blazed, and more would soon join them. Ambros briefly wondered why the Nazis had torched them: ‘Wouldn’t that fuel have been useful to them?’
The fire had begun to spread into the piles of bark and yard debris at the recycling yard nearby. He dismissed the subject: “Plug the Gate, rescue Jess and kids, then the next thing...Commonwealthers all over the Multiverse are making similar lists and doing the same kinds of things...’
Ambros led the way into cover: a Parks Department building from the signs on its remaining walls.
Ambros felt the incoming troops before they actually dropped in. Thirty Black Warriors, all of them looking right at him.
“Looks like fuckin’ six hundred Nazis coming down the road. Looks like Waffen SS. They got a couple tanks,” Sgt Henderson said. He sounded bored.
Ambros spoke to the Black Warriors: “Who’s senior?” One raised her hand.
“I need those soldiers in black uniforms stopped where they stand. I don’t care how. No quarter. Get to work.”
They streamed out the broken windows on the north side of the building, running directly into intense machine-gun fire. Their armor held, and they began firing back, or using APSs and power mod grenades.
Ambros said: “I want to drop in about a hundred yards apart, on either side of the actual Gate. It’s better if you Marines do the deed. Can you do it?”
Henderson shrugged: “Done it before, in Afghanistan.”
Ambros said: “You got that, ’Gatos?”
“I have your coordinates, Spathos. Say when.”
Ambros pushed Randy over by Henderson, saying: “Go with him, son. Jackson, you come with me.” Ambros’ bodyguards moved close to him.
***SALTATION***
“Randy, can you hear me?”
“Sir?”
“You and Henderson start crawling toward the Gate. We’ll be working our way in from this side...”
“Yes sir!”
Forty yards of crawling and sprinting and evading the sight of SS flankers ensued. They settled behind a convenience store, out of direct sight of the Gate.
“Private Jackson...?”
“Sir?”
“Take this. It’s a grenade, okay?”
Jackson looked askance at the power mod, a hockey puck to him.
“Trust me,” said Ambros.
“Sir!”
“As long as it’s in your hand it won’t blow. Let go of it, you got about nine seconds to be under cover. Got it?”
“Sure. Sir.”
Vorlos spied around the corner: “Break in the ranks...here comes the next tank.”
Jackson moved up to the corner, still concealed from the enemy.
Vorlos said: “And...NOW!”
Ambros and the Blacks opened fire on the ranks of armored SS. Men fell about, screaming—or silent, the shock of Commonwealth firearms overwhelming their reactions.
Jackson sprinted for the Gate, firing his sidearm at the soldiers. Ambros used his ‘rifle’ to mow down the enemy, aiming for the gaps in their armor.
The tank that was in the Gate fired its cannon, aimed off to the southwest: a horrific scream filled the air, and Ambros flinched. For a few seconds it kept getting worse, as several other shrieks joined in; then the sound faded.
Meanwhile, Henderson and Jackson arrived at the tank simultaneously, and at the exact right moment, when it was about halfway through the Gate, and not yet re-loaded. Henderson jumped up on the front of the machine and tossed his grenade down the cannon; Jackson rolled his under the carriage and into one set of tracks. Then they both took off for Randy’s position.
The turret of the tank disintegrated, shrapnel flying in every direction. The left track blew apart, stranding the machine halfway out of the Gate. The debris from both explosions did tremendous damage to the semi-material arch that created the Path from one Line to the next. In a moment, that collapsed and the ultra-violet colored Gate disappeared.
So did the back end of the tank.
“Mission accomplished, that shithole is plugged! They can’t re-open it without Commonwealth Command seeing them!“
“What now? asked Black Warrior Commander.
“ I wanna know what that horrible shriek was. Randy?”
“It...looks like...giant ants, sir?”
“On my way,” Ambros said: “Blacks follow me. Finish any SS men you see squirming, then set up a perimeter around the place where I stop...”
“Akuo sas,” said the Commander.
It took a few minutes of desultory fighting to to cross the road that the SS men had been using.
The Blacks surrounded him, facing outward, going prone or kneeling behind broken autos and damaged buildings
Ambros stared at the mess in the ditch on the other side of the road. He spoke: “Aristogatos, I have three of our Ant allies in various states of dismembered. Any advice?”
“Ena lepta...usually takes some serious shit to kill those things,” he said.
“Explosive shell from a new-style Tiger tank,” Ambros said.
“That shouldn’t have injured them,” said Gatos.
“Commander!” one of the Blacks said.
Ambros and the senior Black Warrior looked at the speaker. She said: “I’m getting elevated radiation readings from all these xenomorph casualties, and from the ground around here...”
Ambros frowned: “How bad?”
“Don’t touch the casualties with bare hands, discard any gloves that you use, and don’t dig around in the soil...those of you prone, get decon’d when you next report to Command...I’m guessing depleted uranium munitions.”
Ambros heard muttering in the radio as ‘his’ troops absorbed this advice.
A few seconds later, Aristogatos said: “Diplomacy Deme says render any aid they ask for. If any of them are conscious.”
“Akuo sas,” Ambros replied. He knelt beside the one intact Squid: “Can you speak?”
The Squid writhed and replied: “I am damaged. Help us, Ambros-unit.”
“Tell me how.”
“I must extricate...” The Squid continued slowly writhing, until it pulled a long appendage slicked with greenish blood out of the Ant. The Ant itself lay dead, clearly: in pieces, actually.
One of the other Ants was trying to move, digging its legs into the dirt and dragging itself slowly toward the top of the ditch. The Squid on that one was blown to bits, one ragged tentacle clinging to the carapace.
The Squid next to Ambros said: “EEEour unit is damaged. I must...”
“Tell me,” Ambros urged, looking around: “Quick as you can, I have other tasks to attend to!”
The Squid moved quickly then, touching the dead-looking machine implanted in its Ant’s thorax. The machine fell to pieces; the Squid seized two of the parts: “These, from our other-units...”
One of the Blacks touched the other two machines in the same place, in spite of the way one of them sparked and arced. Soon the conscious Squid had the six bits in its tentacles. “Get me a...piece of each of the other...squids, you call us.”
Ambros did that himself, grimacing at the cold tentacles and flaccid muscles of the damaged creatures. No sooner had he handed the bits off, than the Squid manipulated one of the machine parts it was holding; in a second or two, the creature vanished with the usual whooshing sound of its own tech.
“That’s all the thanks we get?” said Henderson, grinning.
Ambros thoughtfully placed an evac mod on the least damaged Ant, and waited till it vanished. Then he said: “Gatos, get us all back to Marine HQ!”
Aristogatos’ voice came through: “One lepta, Spathos...Voukli first...stand ready...”
***SALTATION***
Ambros and his squad dropped in to the Marine HQ, to find Voukli awaiting him.
“You going to Salem to try to rescue Jannet’s family?”
“I hope so...”
“I’ll come with. Jannet is sitting in a hallway at Command crying her eyes out. Let’s shoot for a happy ending there.” She touched her visor: “I got a set of co-ordinates out of Jannet...”
Ambros shrugged: “Let’s go. C’mon, squad!”
To his surprise the two Marines came with his guards and Randy.
“Darren...?” Ambros called.
Captain Darcy waved a hand: “You want ’em?”
“I’ll definitely take them.”
“Yours.” He turned back to Ellisi, waving at the map. Each of them uttered staccato orders into their mikes, moving American and Commonwealth troops around the valley. Ambros heard Ellisi say: “Red One Squad 3 Commander, you have the White Supremacist compound near Lebanon Oregon...take no prisoners.”
Voukli spoke into her “radio”: “Hey ’Gatos? Ready here...”
***SALTATION***
By chance—or by Synchronicity—the hotel in Salem was very near the front line of the current fight. Two blocks south of them a small contingent of US Army reservists were defending Commercial Street from a full Panzerkorps. The hotel itself was partially destroyed, but the lobby remained intact. Ambros and Voukli led the squad into cover nearby.
Ambros crawled over some debris near the door to the lobby and called out: “Jess? You nearby?”
“Yes! Who is that?”
“Ambros. I’m here to get you out.”
“Come in, then.” Ambros recalled the photo of Jess in military uniform. Hundreds of war movies and stories told to him by his uncles appeared in distilled form in his mind: “Coming in,” he called.
Ambros and Voukli dashed across an open space and into the hotel. The rest of the squad followed.
Jess sat in one corner, doing her best to shelter the kids beneath a dozen mattresses looted from the guest rooms. She’d scored a rifle somewhere, and aimed it at the doorway. Jacob the drummer lay by one window, across the room. He too had a rifle.
Mr James lay near Jacob. He had sustained some serious wounds, but he was breathing.
Ambros knelt: “What happened, old man?”
Mr James laughed, then winced: “I never liked me any Nazis. When they shootin’ at me I like ’em even less. Jake got me a rifle, but I ain’t such a good shot any more...”
“We’re gonna get you outta here,” Ambros said.
Sergeant Henderson said, quietly: “Nazi patrol comin’. They’re ahead of their tanks, though.”
Ambros put an evac module on Mr James’ chest and handed one to Jacob. He glanced behind, and saw Voukli giving the same to the kids; Jess clutched one like an amulet, still pointing her rifle at the door.
He said: “Hey Marines. These people will make a noise when they vanish. Nazis will hear it. Be ready...” He triggered the mods.
Predictably, the series of bangs and pops caused by the refugees disappearing one by one drew unwanted attention. A grenade came flying through the doorway.
Vorlos kicked it into the corner and his two buddies each threw a mattress on it. Ambros and Voukli stepped between the corner and the Marines. Randy very cleverly dropped to the floor just before Ambros said: “Hit the dirt.”
Into the resultant storm of shrapnel and burning fluff charged ten SS Kommandos. Oddly, they were only lightly armored.
Ambros deployed his APS and started cutting. Henderson brought one down with his sidearm. Voukli shrieked like a banshee—or a Comanche warrior—and killed seven in about that many seconds, pistol in one hand and APS in the other.
The fluff and ash slowly settled.
Private Jackson sat bleeding from an arm wound. Henderson field dressed it, saying: “My grandaddy always talked about killin’ Nazis in the War. He’d never a’ believed I’d be doin’ the same thing in 2009.”
“We could medevac your man, there.” Voukli spoke diffidently.
Jackson laughed: “You kidding ma’am? It’s a scratch. Wouldn’t miss this buncha shenanigans for the world!”
Voukli stood a moment, as if contemplating. Ambros knew she was listening in on a Command channel, one he couldn’t access.
She came out of it: “Spathos, we have another rescue...Postal Guild says some friends of yours are in trouble.”
Before Ambros could speak...
***SALTATION***
Ambros recognized the neighborhood immediately, and his heart sank: “This is Patrick and Jonie’s house!”
EPD cars surrounded the place, and Ambros spotted a Nazi uniform or two as well.
“What, they want hostages?”
Voukli didn’t answer; she charged for the door, which had been battered down. Ambros followed, cursing.
His bodyguard surrounded him as he crashed through what was left of the biggest window. Voukli stopped, drew and deployed her APS, and began dueling with the two Nazis, while Vorlos used his own APS to destroy the cops’ rifles.
The inside of the house was a shambles: not a stick of furniture still held together. Patrick sat in one doorway, his back against the post, bleeding from multiple wounds.
Ambros put an evac mod on his chest and led the way back into the hallway. Jonie had hidden in a closet; she had a shotgun, and aimed it at the hallway door.
“It’s Ambros,” he said, and she lowered the barrel a trifle. He cleared his visor and she knew him. Patrick’s departure made the usual bang.
“Oh, god, Ambros! Gustav is hurt!”
Allie rolled out from under the bed and dragged Gustav out as well.
“They shot him! And Dad, too!”
Voukli came in: “Patrick’s evacuated.”
Ambros looked at Gustav’s legs: “He’s messed up.”
“Evac him, too,” Voukli said.
Ambros shook his head: “He’s bleeding too bad, I gotta do first aid. Jonie!”
“Yes, sir,” she responded to his Command voice.
“I need a shoestring or something like it, a butter knife, and all the tampons you have in the house.”
She didn’t hesitate. She set the shotgun down and ran.
Ambros rolled Gustav over, ignoring his scream, and grabbed his shattered left foot.
“Squeeze here,” he told Allie. When Jonie showed up with some twine and the knife, he quickly fashioned a tourniquet, cutting off the blood flow above Gustav’s ankle. Then he handed Allie a tampon: “Jam this into the entry wound...”
“The what?”
“The small hole on the outside of his leg!”
He began shoving tampons into the exit wound until the bleeding stopped, and no more would fit. Then he slapped an evac mod onto Gustav and told Allie and Jonie: “Get as close as you can to him, keep your hands on him...”
Ambros turned away and went back to the living room. He saw one of the Nazis, and recognized him: “For fuck’s sake Matthew...” Matthew wore an SS jacket and blue jeans, with running shoes and a gunbelt.
Ambros shook his head: “You went over to the Nazi side? I knew you were an asshole, but...Nazis?”
Matthew looked down on his shattered ribcage and moaned. He looked at Ambros, pleading with his eyes.
Ambros eyes met Matthew’s: “Suffer, asshole.”
Voukli was already in touch with the War Room.
Aristogatos’ voice came to them again: “Ready for transport...” He sounded weary.
Voukli said: “Break time, Magistros. Bring us all back to Command.”
“Tha symfrommei.”
At the last second, Ambros shot Matthew in the head.
***SALTATION***
Voukli made a handsign at Ambros as they stepped off the landing pad. The Black Warriors escorted the Marines off. Ambros said: “You Marines go take a break,” as he gestured at the seating area. All the seats were filled, but people made space for the newcomers.
Jackson and Henderson looked around at the War Room, a combination of awe and snark on their faces. They made smart-ass jokes about the equipment visible to them, and laughed semi-hysterically at each other’s quips.
“This room is way more packed than usual,” said Ambros: “Of course...”
“Ambros, start preparing to relieve Master Aristogatos,” Voukli said: “Megalos is due here in half an hour, our time. You bridge the gap...”
“Akuo sas.” He stood behind the Main Board and watched and listened to what ’Gatos did.
“Endaxi,” said Ambros: “I see what you’re doing. I’ll take the board...”
“Efxharisto,” Aristogatos muttered. He stepped back as Ambros stepped forward; ’Gatos staggered a bit as he headed for the seating area.
Ambros said: “If those Marines are gonna run with me all day, I want them in armor.”
Voukli said: “I’ll see to that.”
Ambros immersed himself in the information flowing over the board: ‘I need to...’ He felt himself sink into a flow-state, where he could see infinite connections between the various Lines, the enemy, and the troops and equipment he needed to move. He felt a twinge of happiness as he noted how well the various anarchist and syndicalist organizations were doing, in multiple Lines, in organizing as well as military situations. ‘Never mind that,’ he thought: ‘Stuff to do...’
He spoke quietly: “Red twenty, prepare for Saltation...see the Magistri. Black seventy-fourth Ekato, do you need assistance? Stand by...SB Sixteen, can you help in Commonwealth Eighteen? Prepare for Saltation...Who is Red Front? Prepare for Saltation, see the Marine Captain or Magistri Ellisi...”
Voukli stepped up beside him and took over half the incoming calls. She said: “All three Gates in North Eugene, Line Seventeen slash One, are plugged. Red Front get me two Phalanxes...see the US Army Colonel at their front line in north Salem...Syndicalist Two is getting overwhelmed, Black Command, get me an Ekato...stand by for Saltation...”
Ambros saw the many Lines in which fighting had begun as if they were chessboards, but with terrain and multiple sorts of pieces, stacked to his left like a tower of Strat-tac tanks. Whichever one he interacted with appeared before him in detail; its nearest neighbors in space-time hovered all around.
“Hey!” he said: “What’s going on in USIT One through Nine? I got nothin’ on this board!”
Aristogatos’ voice spoke in his ear: “Nothing is happening there, Spathos. Only echoes of the problems in Ten through Nineteen...we’ve sent the Reds who were staged to fight in those Lines to your Home Line...”
Ambros saw it then: “The election...Romney and that Obama guy...all the horrible shit in Six...the Lines have diverged enough that the ATLs abandoned their plans in One through Nine...” He shook off the revelation, knowing he had to concentrate on his own reality.
He continued: “Magistri Gennasi, give me your status...I’ll get you a couple Phalanxae of Red Warriors...Red Command, one here, one there, stand by...”
He could see monitors at the right side of his board, and watch as troops in Red, Black, and Sacred Band colors moved by turns into various of the launch areas, disappearing when the co-ordinates reached the Controller. Gray Warrior aircraft reported in a constant stream of whispers, which he could attend to or not. He had little attention to spare for those things, though.
“The hell is that shit?” he muttered to himself.
Voukli said: “We aren’t sure. Looks like irregulars of some kind, but uniformed, armed and disciplined. They are attacking crucial infrastructure in the petroleum and seaport industries, globally, and doing a very good job of shutting all of it down. People in identical uniforms seem to be assassinating selected billionaires and government functionaries...”
Ambros then recognized the black jumpsuits trimmed in green: “That’s Green World Revolution. Nothing we can do will aid or hinder them. I advise caution if approaching them...” He tore his attention away, and back to moving troops he had control of: “Gray Warrior Guild, Can I get a squad of aircraft for Syndicalist One? Use channel forty to contact their air force...”
A report came in: “This is Sacred Band Eleventh Ekato. We broke the back of ATL Prime’s security apparatus. Got a warehouse on this property has about a billion of those nasty little exploding Drones. We’ll put those out of mischief. It may that’s all they have left of them...”
Voukli said: “Ambros, the US Army reserves north of Salem will not be able to hold a front against those Nazi Panzerkorps...”
Megálos voice from behind him said: “I have this board...”
“Couple more things, Magistros...” Ambros replied. He pulled the representation of USIT Seventeen over and spent a solid minute staring at it, taking note of several sets of co-ordinates where extra hard fighting lay visible to him. He said: “Send a Black Spathe Ekato to Eugene Marine, then move Captain Darcy and his men to these coordinates in North Salem. Move a Phalanx of Red
Warriors to the same place.”
Then he said: “Tech Guild, how many armored techs you got available? Endaxi. Give me twenty, and ten Portable Gates. Meet in Main Launch in...ten lepta.
“All yours, Magistros Megálos. Here are the co-ordinates I’ll need in about twelve lepta...”
“Akuo sas.”
Ambros walked to the seating area: “Squad, on me. We’re going to the basement.” He noticed that the two marines had Commonwealth armor dialled to kahki camo and decals with their rank insignia and USMC in large letters across chest and back.
Voukli glanced at her MPS: “I’m with you. You have Command.”
“Akuo sas,” said Ambros in his turn. He continued: “Everybody but Voukli and Vorlos, I’m setting your helm radios to hear only me. If I go down, you can over-ride that with this control...look directly at it and blink twice.” He indicated it, making it light up on their visors.
“Let’s go!” They jogged down the halls to a bank of elevators: “After half an hour on that board, I have a much better idea of what’s happening where in the Multiverse. The next thing is to stop the Nazis from getting to Portland, in Line Seventeen. Then...”
“Then?” asked Randy.
“I’ll know soon. We gotta get us some tanks.”
“Sir. Where will we get tanks?”
Ambros laughed: “Happens I know where the US military stores some.”
He led them across the cavernous underground warehouse six floors down from the surface. He approached the Main Controller: “Megálos should have...”
“You’re Spathos Ambros...take the small launch pad, three down that way.”
“Endaxi.” Twenty Techs waited nearby. They followed his squad.
A dozen wounded women and men appeared: ‘Red Warriors,’ Ambros thought. He grabbed a badly messed-up soldier and carried him off the pad. As he set the man down, he recognized him: “Jimmy? For fuck’s sake...I...told you...”
Jimmy felt limp, more than relaxed: like all his bones were broken.
A Med tech touched the controls of Jimmy’s armor; it fell off. The Med went to work on him.
One of the other wounded, less broken, spoke: “Save him...he saved us...”
Ambros looked at her.
She croaked: “Little drones, that exploded when they hit us...he stepped in front. Took four of them...Save him, if you can...”
The meds paid no attention, working furiously.
Ambros felt it all, for a moment: rage, fear for Jimmy, for himself and for Kim; disgust with Jimmy’s bad choices: ‘Yet another foolish, if heroic, decision,’ he thought: ‘By the look of it, it may well be his last...’
Then he had a sudden vision of himself in similar straits: ‘Not like I haven’t made my own near-fatal errors. I know I’m susceptible to the Heroic Gesture. But Jimmy or whoever was in Command there should have deployed counter-measures...’ He realized that Jimmy probably didn’t know how.
The reality of his own mortality settled over him like a heavy, wet cloak: a garment sodden not with rain but with the tears of everyone he loved, everyone who loved him. He felt that, to his core, and foresaw a hundred opportunities for his own death approaching, as the struggle for the future of the world went forward...
‘Not just the world...a big chunk of the Multiverse is at risk right now...’
And his actions, because of a Situation he’d had no part in creating—no conscious part, at any rate—his actions would have a determining influence on the outcome in at least a dozen Timelines.
He shook off the illusory cloak that weighed him down and threatened to paralyze him; he suppressed his emotions and spoke to the squad.
He said: “On the pad, facing out, weapons down but ready. Sgt Henderson...”
“Sir?” Henderson’s response was quick and certain, all hesitation gone.
“Get your Marine ID out, have it ready.”
After a bit of shuffling around under his armor, Henderson palmed a card and said: “Ready, sir.”
They stepped onto the pad and arranged themselves as the countdown bell began to ring.
***SALTATION***
Ambros said: “Keep your weapons down!” They reeled a bit from dizziness, but held formation.
They stood at a guard kiosk near the entrance to a gigantic storage yard in the California desert. Tanks and APCs and even some aircraft sat in perfectly straight lines as far away as the eye could see. Some of them were running, a few were moving towards the kiosk.
Six US Army soldiers surrounded them, and their weapons were all eye-leveled at the squad. Henderson spoke without hesitation: “These are allies, soldier, never mind from where.” He held up his ID. “I’m Sgt Henry Henderson USMC Reserve, outta Eugene. Oregon National Guard really needs some of these tanks...”
The lieutenant in charge of the guards examined the ID. He called the guards off and said: “I got a double dozen people screaming for tanks, Sarge. I only had six C5s when this mess blew up...I can’t move ’em any faster than I am!”
“But I can. Move them faster, I mean.” Ambros gestured: “You Techs! Set your Gates up! We’ll get you coordinates for the other end of the holes as soon as possible. Henderson! Talk to one of those techs! Give ser the location of the nearest National Guard base north of Salem! Lieutenant, speak to these Techs, tell ’em where you want the equipment to go.”
Twenty minutes later (after the lieutenant had a brief headshaking conversation with Henderson) a steady stream of tanks, trucks, APCs and other gear rumbled up and passed through the Gates, headed for battlefields all over the planet. Groups of tank crews came through the other way, mounting up and driving back through as fast as the machinery could arrive in the staging area.
Ambros looked up at the sun, realized it was late afternoon. “Where does the time go?” he said, mockingly. He drew a deep breath, trying to get his shoulders relaxed, and sighed the air out audibly. Then he said: “Squad?”
They gathered round him. He contacted Command: “New coordinates, Megálos...”
“Got ’em. Stand by...”
***SALTATION***
They dropped in to the back yard of a house on the northern outskirts of Eugene. Ambros spoke softly: “Into cover!” By the time he finished saying it the whole squad had faded into the shrubberies. Randy seemed to be adapting to the situation very well. He was watching the area behind them, searching for enemies.
‘Like a natural soldier,” Ambros thought.
The sound of small-arms fire from in front of the house got his attention: “We’re here to help a friend of mine, who may have intelligence I need,” he told the squad: “I need a heads-up on the fight in the front of this house.”
“Got it,” said one of the BWG.
A moment later she called back. He heard Artabasi whispering in his ear: “Don’t know who is inside, but the guys attacking are SS and Jean IV’s Legionnaires. Some of them are moving to flank the house...”
“Then it doesn’t matter who’s inside. These are the real bad guys, Marines. No prisoners.”
“Sir,” said Henderson, again sounding bored.
His squad moved forward from cover to cover until they bunched up behind Artabasi. Ambros made a handsign and they intervened “With Extreme Prejudice”.
It took nearly two minutes of concentrated fire, but the fascists eventually fell, or fell back.
“Henderson...”
“Sir?”
“Make sure those last three don’t go far.”
“Wilco.” Henderson and Jackson jogged away, following the bad guys.
“The Marines seem to be adapting well to bullet-proof armor,” Ambros said to nobody in particular.
Artabasi went from corpse to corpse, making sure they were all dead.
“Hey!” Ambros hollered: “Inside the house—we’re clear out here.”
A familiar voice replied: “Clear in here! Coming out!”
“C’mon, then.”
Heather appeared on the porch, helm in hand; her short red afro made her look like a torch in the dim light of sunset. She put the helm on before approaching him: “That you, Ambros?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool armor,” she said, tapping the scale on his chest, her grin visible through the visor on her helm. She wore armor cobbled together out of police riot gear and US Army surplus stuff. The breast and back plates had the IWW logo stenciled on. Her left hand had a bloody bandage wrapped around it; she carried an AK47-ish rifle low front, the barrel pointed down: “What’s up?”
“What isn’t? What are you doing, here? Why...?”
“This is a forward medical base for the anarchist militia. C’mon in...”
She led him towards the door: “Coming Inside...”
“C’mon in.” Ambros recognized Anthrax’s voice.
They passed inside. Ambros’ BWG guard moved to create a perimeter outside, and Randy joined them. Gunfire rattled on the downhill side of the house; the Marines jogged back into sight, looked over the situation, then took up posts at the rear corners of the house.
Ambros followed Heather through the vestibule and into a dim front room. Anthrax half-knelt beside the picture window, his own AK47 leaning against the sill. He reloaded magazines from a box of ammo; multiple bloodstains marred the back of his legs.
“You okay, man?” Ambros asked.
Anthrax nodded: “Fragmentation grenade. Not gonna kill me but I can’t walk much.”
Ambros grunted. He followed Heather down a narrow hall; she stopped just outside the kitchen, saying: “Stay back. This is being a surgery right now.”
“Okay. Where’d you pick up an Army medic?” The soldier worked alongside a woman in green scrubs.
“He was trying to report to his unit in Springfield. He couldn’t get there so he came with us. I’m glad to have him, too.”
A teenaged girl in fashionable, blood-spattered clothes managed a sterilization station consisting of a camp stove and two flat pans with simmering water, and some bottles of alcohol gel.
A man poked his head around a corner: “General-elect?”
Heather turned.
Ambros raised an eyebrow.
The fellow beckoned to her and she followed him. When they got to a closed door he said: “Dave’s about done.”
Heather waved the guy away and opened the door. Inside, at least twelve wounded lay on the beds or on the floor in a very small bedroom, probably a kid’s. Some of them were cops, some were soldiers. At least eight were armored as Heather was, and had antifa or IWW symbols on their breastplates. He spotted Marta Barkley, of all people, wearing EPD armor with an Antifa symbol spray-painted on the breastplate. She appeared to be unconscious.
Dave lay on a pallet on the floor. His face showed pale in the wan light coming through the window shades. Most of the armor he’d worn had been removed.
“Got me in the armpit,” Dave whispered: “I’m triaged as “likely to die”.
Heather started to speak, but Dave interrupted: “It’s true. A medic and a veterinarian are not gonna get this bullet out. Hurts like shit, but it’ll be over soon. Gimme a kiss, and get back to work.”
Ambros backed out of the room, closed the door, and waited.
Heather came out, wiping tears away. Then she straightened up and said: “You got any idea how we can tell cops who are fighting the Nazis from cops who are helping them?”
“Not really. If they shoot at you...?”
“Yeah, that’s what we been going by so far. So...”
“So?”
“I got sixteen effectives here. I need to leave at least ten to lift and carry for the medics, and defend the place. But I need to get back to the fight, too.”
Ambros leaned back against the wall, eyes closed.
“You okay?” asked Heather.
“Dizzy...” He shook his head, hard, which only made it worse.
“When was the last time you ate anything?”
He laughed: “Last night, about six.” He glanced at the time on his heads-up: “Twenty-six hours.”
“Go out and sit with Anthrax. Tony! Rustle up some rations for Ambros...no gluten.”
“Something for my squad, too,” said Ambros: “Out front, two Marines, three fighters in dark blue armor, and a young fellow in gray.”
“Okay,” said a guy in motley armor, with Antifa symbols on his chest and back.
Ambros worked his way through narrow crowded hallways, back to the front room. He sat slowly, on the floor next to Anthrax.
“Sorry about Dave,” he said.
Anthrax brushed away a tear: “Shouldn’t have been out here. He had every excuse to stay under cover. Couldn’t run, bad back, bad knees...”
Ambros nodded: “How about you?”
Anthrax shrugged: “Got it in the same scrape as Dave. Fuckin’ cops.”
“Yeah?”
Antifa Man arrived with a big box of food of various types. Ambros took a couple energy bars and waved the man along: “See to my squad, bring the rest back here, please.”
He nudged Anthrax, careful to avoid his legs: “Spill it. I gotta know what’s going on.”
“We came up on some fighting...”
“Hold it,” said Ambros. He pulled out his Shifter and activated his MPS: “I’m gonna broadcast this to all the Commonwealth soldiers and Warriors in this Timeline.”
“Commonwealth...?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just talk.”
“Okay...We came up on some fighting, looked straightforward. Lane County Sheriff’s deputies firing at a row of cars, parked along a street. We’d been moving slowly, at Dave’s walking pace. We had to figure the deputies were on ‘our side’, since the guys they were shootin’ at were dressed as Nazis. What’s with that anyway?”
Ambros tore into the second candy bar, and gave Anthrax a bleak look: “They’re Nazis. Ever wonder what the world would be like if they won, back in the forties? I could show you...never mind. Go on.”
Anthrax looked at him strangely for a second, then said: “Right. So we rolled up and offered to help. Sheriff Burr was there...himself said yeah...so we flanked the...Nazis. Started pushing them back toward a steep dropoff. Then a big pack of EPD rolled up in those armored paddy wagons. They hopped out—and joined the Nazis! Dave got hit, Heather popped the cop who shot him, and then we were hand-to-hand for a minute or so. One of the Nazis tossed a fragmentation grenade, killed a dozen of us, and dropped twenty cops in the process! I didn’t quite get into cover quick enough.” The big man shrugged: “Now I’m a guard at this medical station.”
“Okay,” said Ambros. He shut down his broadcast, then took a stimulant pill.
Antifa Man came back with the remaining food.
“Thanks,” said Ambros putting more energy bars into his pockets and tearing into a bag of tortilla chips: “Somebody find Heather!”
A woman nodded and leaned into the hallway: “General!”
Ambros looked at Anthrax. Anthrax shrugged: “When the shit hit, she activated our phone tree and social media and other emergency communications setups. Every Anarchist, Syndicalist, Antifa, and Enragé wannabe in the County gathered at their nearest muster points, and before the phones went down, they elected her ‘General’. I mean, she seemed to know exactly what was goin’ on, and no one else did, so...”
Ambros frowned: “How many people is she commanding?”
Anthrax laughed: “More than we expected. Hundred ten of us Wobblies in the core group, then before we moved we got forty more from that Redneck Rebel group, plus Antifa, god knows how many of them. And then a bunch of pro-Situationists.”
“Zazu’s bunch? Twenty or so?”
“More like a hundred. I know, I was surprised, too.”
Ambros used American-style air quotes: “ ‘Our ideas are in everyone’s minds.’ “
“Sure,” Anthrax said, sarcastically.
Heather came out of the hallway, shouting over her shoulder: “Find my helm, and get me some more ammo! Please!” She plopped down beside Ambros, who had begun to scarf down the chips. She said: “I want to take my six available effectives and go with you. At least as long as you are in this Line. I need to get a better idea what’s going on.”
Ambros tossed the empty bag away and said: “Ellisi...”
“Spathos?” came the whisper in his ear.
He called up his map, and connected it to hers: “I got one Heather Davidov here, she’s in command of more than three hundred assorted anarchist soldiers. We need an update...”
“Overall? Or the Willamette Valley?”
“Talk to me about the Valley first. Including where the rest of Heather’s troops are, if you know.”
Parts of the map began lighting up as Ellisi filled him in; he put her on ‘speaker’ so Heather could hear the briefing.
“Tha symfrommei. I can find out, I bet...so the bulk of the anarchist irregulars are fighting a delaying action in and near the City of Monroe. The anarchists are in touch via radio with us here at Marine HQ. We’re sending them reinforcements. Monroe is a very small city, 14...miles...north of Eugene...a detachment of Waffen SS are trying to fight their way back to Eugene from Corvallis via Highway 99. I don’t get why...”
“Okay, and I do know why. How many are there?”
“Unknown at this time. The group is getting bigger as it moves south, though. Picking up stray units, I guess.”
“Endaxi. What else you got?”
“The majority of the invaders are from Nazi Line One. They have several problems: first, their blitzkrieg is bogged down just north of Salem.
“That’s fatal for Panzerkorps,” said Heather.
Ellisi continued: “Second, those tanks you sent to the National Guard in Salem are entering into the fight, some from behind the Nazi’s lines. Third, word is we took out Fuhrer Number One, so they have no direction from outside this Line. The Nazis don’t take orders from Jean IV or his lackeys.”
“What about Eugene?”
“The Gates in the north of town are all plugged. Eugene Marine reserves and Springfield Army National Guard are deployed moving north; they are reinforced by BWG and ten Phalanxes of Red Warriors, so they are rapidly cleaning up the SS and Abwehr troops that were supposed to be holding them in check. By tomorrow morning the Marines and ’Wealthers will be crawling up the Nazi’s asses as they retreat south through Salem.”
“Nazi’s are toast, then, at least in this valley.” Ambros felt a distinct pleasure in saying that.
“Pretty much. We’re toasting them down everywhere else as well.”
After a short pause Ambros said: “I’ll assemble a squad out in front of this house I’m calling from. I need Megálos to move us all up to Monroe to help the Anarchists. Soon, I’ll be moving my own squad elsewhere. But first I want to mop up that Waffen SS unit in Monroe.”
“Arrenji wants your help as soon as may be...” Ellisi said, diffidently.
“Okay...but not till we kill some more Nazi’s. That flank-back is an old Rommel trick; if we stop that, the rest of the Willamette Valley will fall straight into the ‘Win’ column for us.”
“Tha symfrommei...”
“Show me...never mind, I see it. When I’m ready I’ll ping you. This is where I want to drop in, just north of Monroe High School. By the way...where the hell is Corvallis?”
“It’s...” Ellisi paused: “Pretty much flattened.”
“I see.”
He strode out of the house, followed by Heather and her squad.
By then it was early evening. The sun was invisible behind a bank of clouds to the west.
***SALTATION***
They dropped in near Highway 99 by the “Welcome to Monroe” sign.
The world exploded around them.
