zzambrosius_02

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Rage and Sorrow

“Fucking hell!” Ambros shouted: “Everybody down!” Two dozen bullets hit his armor, from front and back, and multiple hits spattered against his visor.

Two bullets hit on gambeson: one on his shoulder, one on his butt. He winced.

They dove for ditches and low spots.

Something fell in front of him: two bullets, fused together point-to-point.

“Megálos! Bit off more than we can chew! Got at least forty Panzers and a dozen Tigers here!”

“Akuo sas. I’ll get you a Phalanx and an ekato.”

“Efxharisto...Heather! What’s up?”

Heather shouted into a walkie-talkie: “I got help coming! Hold the high school if you can!” She rolled to face him: “My people are in the high school, with a bunch of locals and some US Army Reserves from Corvallis. They have a lot of weapons and ammo, but nothing that can touch these tanks.”

A Panzer approached the front door of the school and fired its cannon point blank, obliterating the door and blowing a huge hole in the wall. SS infantry charged in and a nasty-sounding gunfight began. Screams echoed.

Ambros called up an image from one of his drones: “I got ten panzers approaching the school, and a dozen more coming in from the north...behind me! The rest of the bastards are trying to flank around and attack the school from east and west.” He rolled over in the ditch and looked northwards: “I’m in serious trouble here, Megálos,” he said, conversationally: “I need a bunch of Plasma Swords ASAP.”

“On the way,” came the laconic reply.

Ambros’ Black Warrior bodyguards had already deployed their Swords and begun to cut the various tanks into pieces. Ambros joined that party, while Heather and her troops took potshots at SS infantry, who were scattered around, mostly in cover, firing at any targets they could see in the blacked out windows of the high school.

The SS footsoldiers who had entered the school fell back; some of them did, anyway. The tank rolled forward and lowered its main cannon, preparing to blast away at whoever was defending the front hall.

Ambros extended his APS right through the turret, then whipped it up and down and back and forth. Artabasi sliced the cannon off, and the shell that the crew had been about to fire went off, completely destroying the tank from the inside.

Four hundred Red Warrior Guild, all Skolarae and above, dropped in behind the Tiger tanks that had flanked the school on the west. At the very same moment, the BWG Ekato appeared to the east, and attacked the Nazis on that side of the battle. The din rose: tanks fired their cannons, or exploded, or fell to pieces, and the tank mounted machine guns rattled and occasionally jammed; Plasma Swords hummed various notes as the Commonwealthers drove them through armor and soldiers; from the school came various kinds of small-arms fire, punctuated by the distinctive three-round volleys from M-16s.

All that, and the cries and screams of wounded and dying civilians filled the air.

Ambros found himself in a shell crater, kneeling, face-to-face with Heather, each firing over the other’s shoulder. A rocket-propelled grenade flew by between them, somehow missing both, and destroyed a garage nearby.

Heather slapped and stomped as she dealt with the exhaust. Ambros rolled to the other side of the crater and shot at an SS man who had snuck within a few feet of their shelter.

SS officers drew their own Plasma Swords and set to with his bodyguards. Ambros saw Randy fighting one of them, and then falling into a ditch. He slashed at the SS man and hit the handle of his sword, which exploded, completely disintegrating the man. A few shreds of uniform were all that remained.

Gradually the sounds faded. Tanks burned, sending diesel smoke into the night sky, while a few forlorn SS men continued to fire rifles and machine pistols at the Commonwealthers all around them.

Ambros rose slowly in place. The firing died away as RWG swept across the field, finishing off the SS.

By then it was full dark. Ambros shook his head, vaguely wondering how late it was. Several Commonwealth drones lit up as flares, white light and black shadows making the scene hellish but clear.

He heard Randy’s voice, moaning. He tracked the sound and found his young friend sitting on the edge of the ditch, gripping a bloody right hand in his left.

“I got this,” Artabasi said, looking over her shoulder at Ambros. She set her APS at low power, pulled Randy’s uninjured hand away from the bloody stumps of his ring and little fingers; she cauterized the wound, and Randy cried out in pain.

Ambros walked the field, suppressing his tears for the sake of clear sight. A very young SS man lay in a heap on the ground near the front of the school, weeping. Ambros drew his pistol and double tapped him, a grim expression on him. He called out: “Clear out here!”

“Clear in here! Who’s that?”

“Spathos Ambros, Commonwealth Prime. I got General Heather Davidof out here, though...”

“Okay, we’re coming out...”

“Come on, then.”

They staggered out, most of them wounded. Those few unscathed carried or aided the most halt and damaged. Last out came the Reservists.

“Henderson,” Ambros said.

The Marine jogged over: “Sir?”

Ambros cocked his head at the soldiers: “US military there. Bring them up to date.”

“Sir! Miss...Ms...” He paused, then seemed to make a decision: “General Davidof is over by the remains of the welcome sign. She’d like your advice.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” He strode over.

Three SS men sat in a row, fingers interlaced behind their heads.

Ambros stared at them in amazement: “They surrendered?”

“Sorta.” Heather seemed amused: “What do we do with them?”

Ambros laughed sarcastically: “My first instinct is to shoot them.”

One of the SS men looked up at him, fearful and defiant.

Ambros grinned: “Sprachenze Angliche?”

“Un little bit, ja.”

“What should we do with you?”

The man shrugged: “Maybe you must kill us. Can you?”

Heather drew a pistol from her waist.

The English-speaking SS man remained defiant, until Heather thumbed the hammer back on her Colt, and it clicked. Then he merely looked scared.

He was very young.

Ambros said: “Maybe we must kill you. Or we could turn you over to the remaining populace of this town. But there might be an even more fitting punishment...Ellisi?”

“This is Magistros Kolnos, Commonwealth Prime Phalango Iera, at the Commonwealth forward base at Eugene Marine, USIT Line 17. Ellisi is off shift.”

“Endaxi. What’s the situation in Nazi Line One?”

“The Fuhrer and his main henchmen are dead. We’ve destroyed their command and control...a Sparticist underground revealed itself, and is organizing the execution of the remaining Nazi Party members.”

“Right,” said Ambros: “I have three SS men from that Line here...”

“Locked on to them,” said Kolnos.

“Send ’em home.”

Heather watched, grimly amused, as her prisoners vanished. She fist-bumped Ambros and then went off to organize her troops’ transport to...

“Wherever they are going next,” he muttered.

Ambros stood there, gazing around. Most of the City of Monroe lay about him in ruins. Women and children lay dead, or crawled from destroyed houses, weeping. The local men and women who had joined in defending the school wandered around, still armed. Occasionally, one would find a surviving relative, whole or wounded; more often they found them dead.

The twenty or so US Army reservists who had helped to hold the school began to gather in front of it. Heather went over to talk to them.

One soldier went to the fallen flagpole and rescued the very distressed flag that had flown from it. He and a local boy went into the school with it, climbing over the smoking remains of the tank.

Other soldiers began to loot the dead of ammo and weapons. One soldier hollered: “Hey Corporal! Found an eighty-millimeter mortar, and a dozen rounds!”

“Up on the roof with that!” shouted the corporal.

The moon rose over the scene, almost half full. The US flag appeared on a pole, up on the roof of the school. The living citizens of Monroe cheered raggedly.

Heather approached him: “The soldiers from Corvallis are gonna help the locals hold Monroe, just in case. My command is moving north from here, to flank the Nazi’s main blitz, just south of Salem.”

Ambros nodded: “Battle fortune.”

They bumped fists again and Heather marched off, hollering orders: “Get two more trucks, even if you have to commandeer them! How many of those school buses are still drivable? Start ’em up! Nobody walks, we want to be somewhere between Monmouth and Rickreal before dawn! Get me all the ammo from those .50 caliber machine guns! I want one mounted on each school bus...”

Ambros felt weary to the bone. He’d had no time to think ahead or to process the losses he’d already suffered.

He walked over to the damaged welcome sign and sat with his back against the post. He said: “Magistros Kolnos...”

“...yes?”

“Do you have time to get me up to date?”

“I do. What do you need?”

“Eight hours ago I worked the main board in Prime. What do I need to know about the rest of this planet in this Timeline...how’s it going in Europe and Asia?”

“Hang on a lepta...okay, I have a holo-video made by Ellisi and Aristogatos, one Commonwealth hour ago...ready?”

“Go.”

A holo of a globe shimmered in front of him, lighting up in various spots as Aristogatos’ voice began: “The British have plugged the Gates in their territory...London fell to the first assault, but the British Army is winning it back...”

“In France the unions organized into militias almost immediately...the French government has fallen...Syndicalists have begun operating locally in mass assemblies, but there’s not much news about what they’ve done yet.”

Ambros pulled a ‘Four-strand memory-RNA’ capsule out the patch pocket of his cargo pants. He lifted his visor and dry-swallowed it. He sighed and let the news wash over him:

“Several Mexican states have formed mass assemblies, armed themselves from federal stocks, and begun to fight the invaders, mostly Nazis from Nazi Line Two...the slums around the US Capitol in Washington DC unexpectedly yielded up large numbers of remarkably well-armed and organized militias, led by US military veterans. With their help, the active-duty forces stationed thereabouts made short work of the L’Iriquois regular army troops who attacked them...some militia soldiers report that enemy troops bit them, or tried to. Legionnaires are holed up in the Mall...Burma...Africa is a mess, it may take months to sort it out...Catalonia declared independence and sent its new militia to aid the Spaniards near the Ebro...several assemblies formed in Portland, Oregon...a group calling itself Green World Revolution has popped up in every nation and they are sabotaging the most polluting industries...shutting the oil refineries down...Draining fuel from container ships and scuttling them in ways that block the entrances to harbors...

He drifted off to sleep, eyes open, still sitting up; the information from the holo-vid sank in as he snoozed:

“The US Air Force has recovered from the chaos caused by the ATL’s assassination of their high command, and begun to bomb and strafe the remaining open Gates in US and allied territories...”

Ambros woke, startled into consciousness by his MPS’ urgent buzzing. He touched it and it stopped. Arrenji’s voice spoke in his ear:

“Have a good nap, Spathos?”

“As good as I’m likely to get for a while,” he replied. He began to stretch and wriggle, limbering himself up as well as could. He rose, pulling his shoulders back and down. He pawed in his pockets and found a tab of aspirin-caffeine-and-cocaine; he made haste to swallow it.

It was still full dark.

Ambros said: “You want me for some specific job?”

“If you’re up for it...”

“What about the squad I’m leading?”

“Bring ’em all in. We’ll find work for them.”

Ambros waved an arm; he spoke quietly, knowing they’d hear him in their helms: “Squad.”

They rose from various trenches and shell craters where they’d been (he fervently hoped) snatching some sleep for themselves.

“Randy...?”

“Med-evac’d,” said Vorlos. “Lost a lot of blood.”

Ambros nodded: “Okay, form on me. Arrenji wants us for some mission. Anyone wants to opt out, step away right now...”

They all gathered around him.

Sgt Henderson asked: “Who is...Arren...”

“Magistri Arrenji,” said Artabasi.

“Magistri means she’s high-ranking?” Jackson asked.

Vorlos nodded: “About as high Status as there is, Master in Sacred Band. Not everyone would want to go with her on a mission of any sort. It can be dangerous to be near her.”

“You’re all jumping to conclusions. Arrenji is my mentor, she’s calling for me. Likely y’all are...”

Vorlos interrupted him: “We three Blacks are with you, Spathos, Arrenji or not. Our task for the duration of this conflict is to keep you alive and kicking.”

Henderson laughed: “If you three are in, so are we.” He nudged Jackson, who grinned.

Ambros shrugged: “Fine...Arrenji? We’re ready for transport.”

***SALTATION***

Ambros herded the Marines off the landing pad and into the seating area at the side of the War Room. Arrenji was there, with a data crystal and a Commonwealth laptop; she downloaded co-ordinates as they approached. Spathisi Dheklani stood at her elbow, helm in hand.

“What are we doing?” Ambros asked.

Arrenji laughed: “What you told us to do, of course. We’re decapitating the State, in multiple ATLs. Nazis are great. No matter how many of them I kill, I never feel guilty.” She laughed again: “Thought you might like to help out...”

“I’m in,” he said, feeling the Obligation: “Who are we targeting?”

“Second-level Nazi shits,” she said, no longer laughing: “Commanders and guards at concentration camps. Now that the three Fuhrers are dead, and almost all of their close associates, the SS Commandants at the concentration camps are the next most dangerous Nazis, so they have to die. The Sparticists have little chance of taking them out, so...” She held up the data crystal: “I got locations and facial recognition IDs here.”

She rose and stretched: “The concentration camp guys are all Waffen SS, so they are easy to ID: They have their blood types tattooed on their forearms. So if you’re in doubt, bare their arms.”

“Got it,” said Ambros: “But...”

“Only one ‘but’ today, Spathos,” Arrenji said.

“They still run death camps in the Nazi Lines? Who is left to kill after seventy-odd years?”

“Not my concern,” Arrenji said bleakly. Her eyes went unfocused, and she stared as if into a great distance: “I know, from decades of study of comparable Lines, that if we don’t get every single SS man in all three Nazi Lines, that one or more of them will find a way to seize power and then we’ll soon be right back where we were, or worse. I know that. So my job is to kill every damn one of them...”

“Got it,” said Henderson: “I’m in.” Jackson nodded.

“I’ll go get my powered armor,” said Ambros.

Arrenji nodded: “You do that, Spathos...and no, I don’t think I’m practiced enough with that kind of suit to risk it.”

At length they were all ready; Ke’akani waved them to the launch pad.

***SALTATION***

They dropped in just inside the front gate at Auschwitz in Nazi Line One. Most of the place lay in smoking ruins, although a few buildings still burned. A few flickering spotlights shone, but night mostly engulfed the camp. He wondered, again, how late it was...

Guards with machine guns and rifles fought a retrograde action, slaughtering prisoners who charged at them repeatedly, each wave falling back only when devastated.

A guard ran back to take up a new position; he discovered that Commonwealth troops were behind him only when Ambros slapped his face with a power-armored gauntlet: “No where left to run, asshole,” he said, grim and murderous.

The Marines stood aghast for a short time. They gazed across the complex of prison, work, and death camps that made up Auschwitz in a Timeline where it had been in operation for over seventy years.

Henderson shook his head, continuously, for at least ten seconds, his mouth agape at the skeletal prisoners. By then they’d re-grouped behind the flaming barracks, and came screaming to the attack again.

Jackson stared at the indescribably huge piles of ashes and bone fragments that lined the fences, tears running down his face, stunned.

Ambros fell to his knees, stunned by the inhumanity of it. He thought for a moment he might weep, as Jackson had, but found that he couldn’t: the horror of what he saw put him beyond tears, into a place of bleak rage.

Arrenji Jumped into the middle of the remaining guards and rammed her APS under one man’s chin and through the top of his head. Then she spun around and began methodically murdering the rest. Dheklani sprinted ahead, to back her up.

The Blacks began firing their ‘rifles’, and after a moment the two Marines joined in. The SS’ firearms drowned the nearly silent Commonwealth weapons out, but not the pop-pop-pop of M16s. By the time most of the SS men realized they’d been flanked, it was far too late. The last of them fell to Ambros and Arrenji, wielding Plasma Swords.

Those of the prisoners who could still stand cheered weakly. They approached the squad, smiling, many of them toothless. Many of them naked. Some few were armed with weapons taken from dead guards.

Arrenji held out a hand, stopping them. She spoke in German: “We’re not done here yet! Where are the rest of the SS?”

Ambros understood very little of the conversation that followed, so he remained alert, watching and listening for trouble. His rage and sorrow at all that he saw grew by the second. He struggled to contain it, watching for enemies.

It was not long before he found some.

“Incoming,” said Henderson, who’d been watching the main gate behind them.

“That’s just Wermacht,” Arrenji said, dismissively: “Reds can handle them.” She spoke to her radio: “Bring ’em in, Ke.”

Two Phalanxes of Red Warriors dropped in, forming a rearguard for the squad. Firing commenced immediately. Ambros put that whole part of the battle out of mind, as Arrenji began to give orders: “Phalanx One, follow us. Combat Medics will begin dropping in to see to the freed prisoners, as soon as their Commanders think it’s safe. Break your Phalanx down by squads to protect them. We’re going straight through this camp, to divide it in two. No quarter for SS! Move now!”

The Marines followed close behind her; Ambros trailed the three by about thirty ells, alert for anything on the advance guard’s flanks; Artabasi tailed him at a similar distance. Vorlos and Athenados were slightly ahead of him, to either side.

Ambros slung his rifle and drew his APS. Whenever he saw anyone in SS black, he sliced or stabbed them. Part of him wanted to cut them into pieces while they still lived, so they could feel some measure of the terror they’d spent their lives inflicting on others, but he didn’t: ‘Revenge,’ he thought: ‘No time for that now...’

He noticed that black uniform color on multiple corpses, stained with blood, uniform and wearer torn to shreds: ‘The SS always was vulnerable to the anger of those they guarded. I wonder what those shitheads thought as the untermenschen ripped their guts out, barehanded.’

One such corse caught his attention: torn limb from limb and disemboweled, but with a very young man’s face clearly visible.

He shuddered, and shook his head: ‘How many of the here-and-now SS are under twenty?’

He didn’t want to know...

He turned and followed Arrenji

At that they ran into another firefight. Bullets hit all of them, but their armor (of course) held. Ambros and the Blacks took cover and returned fire, but Arrenji ran at the barricades behind which a party of SS guards sheltered. They fired everything they had left at her, but failed to stop her assault. Dheklani laughed and swore and followed at a run.

She leaped the barricade and they swarmed her. Her APS slashed and cut, but they bore her to the ground.

Ambros cursed. He set his armor for 60% augmentation and sprang forward, covering the space in one leap; rolling to his feet he hopped over the barricade.

Once among his foes, he started punching and kicking. The blows struck with powered armor hit like bombs and battering rams. He grabbed one man by his arm and threw him head first against a wall.

‘This!’ he thought: ‘This is how to do it!” He drove his foot clean through the guts of a Nazi: ‘Like a wish come true...’ He shook blood and viscera from his boot.

He flashed back to the many bad movies he’d seen as a child, where Hercules or some other legendary hero did such things, and laughed aloud as he pummeled the Nazis. He knew it was something he would come to regret, this murderous rage, but in the moment it was all he could do, and he did it with a sick joy that filled him with a feeling of Justice Done.

The Blacks and the Marines came around the barricade, and halted, stunned by the slaughter. Hearing Ambros’ laughter, they flinched, briefly appalled.

Ambros stopped only because there were no more SS men standing.

“Thanks, Spathos,” Arrenji said, actually breathing hard: “One more bunch to get here, say the prisoners, then it’s on to Buchenwald!”

She led the way towards the camp Commandant’s HQ, whooping like a lunatic. Dheklani followed.

Ambros stood for a moment, stunned, realizing the depth of the evil he would see that day, and then grimaced, furious.

He followed Arrenji.

Ambros sat under a half-broken-down patio cover in the back of the SS Commandant’s personal quarters at Treblinka in Nazi Line Three. He was physically exhausted, and yet more emotionally drained: “The Treblinkas have been the worst, every time,” he said aloud.

“Yes,” said Artabasi.

He just couldn’t process what seventy-plus years of Nazi government had done to the three worlds they’d been liberating. He contemplated the time: “Thirteen hours killing guards and succoring prisoners, at one death camp after another...” it was all a blur, with occasional discrete and horrible images. “This powered armor is totally the bomb for killing Nazis, close up.”

“Yeah?” That was Henderson.

“Yeah,” said Ambros: “Very satisfying to smash their heads with a punch. Nasty bastards.”

Henderson and Jackson laughed, Marine-wise.

Arrenji came through the house and sat beside him.

He sighed: “What did you do with his wife and kids?”

She raised the visor on her helm and sighed in her turn: “She...was worse than her husband.” Arrenji made air quotes: ’We are not criminals!’ she yelled: ’We are the purest, most perfect people in the Multiverse! We are as Gods to you untermenschen!’...”

“You kill her?”

“...no.”

“I’d a killed her,” said Henderson.

Arrenji shrugged: “I sent her to Zombie War Line One. Unlikely she’ll live. The kids...they were too young to remember this. I sent the kids to Alcatraz semi-Quiet, to the Ohio Valley settlement. They’ll do okay there.”

“Okay,” said Ambros.

“The good news,” said Arrenji: “is that we’ve killed all the SS guys in all three Nazi Lines, except for the ones that the civilian population did in. Sparticists rock!”

“Yeah, they’re badasses,” said Henderson. Jackson agreed, solemnly.

Ambros said: “I need a shower, or to go fight somewhere else, right now.”

Arrenji said: “I want you back in your own Line. Portland, Oregon has Asemblified itself, and the local National Guard has gone over to the Revolution. I’d like to know how you arranged that...” She looked at Ambros.

He demurred: “Not my doing, at least not directly.”

“Well, the Guard is fighting the Portland Police Department, who seem to have L’Iriquois Legionnaires and Nazis as ‘advisers’. So that’s where I mean to put you. If you will?”

“Akuo sas.”

Artabasi brought a big bag of food out of the house: “We should eat first,” she said.

“Not here,” said Ambros. “I have no objection to eating food looted from dead Nazis, but I won’t picnic on the asshole’s porch.”

“Good point,” said Vorlos: “I got a nice spot in mind...”

They all stood up and Vorlos sent coordinates to whoever ran the main board at the War Room.

***SALTATION***

Ambros woke.

He panicked for a second: “How long was I out?”

Arrenji’s voice consoled him: “About twenty lepta. Finish your lunch.”

He looked down at his lap, and saw a plate of sausage and kraut and potatoes. He began to eat.

Arrenji asked: “How many stimtabs have you taken since the shit began?”

“I think...three.”

“Good. That’s three in thirty-six of your hours. When you have a full stomach, you can take two. Then I’m sending you to Portland, to help the Assemblyists there. Once they have the Portland police under control, report back to the War Room. And Megálos has a Phalanx of Black Warriors from Syndicalist Two standing by if you need them.”

He nodded, calling up a drone-generated holomap of Portland from his MPS, seeing the choke points that the cops had retreated to, seeing where the various Anarchist factions lay in wait to cut them off, seeing the movements of the National Guard, cringing at the bloodshed he could foresee. He began to think of ways to convince the cops to surrender.

While doing that, he sent a call to the War Room, requesting his regular armor. When it dropped in, he switched out of the powered kit and into his accustomed gear: “The powered armor is overkill, anywhere but Bergen-Belsen and the like. Shouldn’t be many Nazis to punch, where I’m going next.”

“Your call,” said Arrenji.

He finished the food, tossed the plate over onto a pile of such in the corner of the picnic shelter, and stood up. He thumbed two stimtabs from the bottle in his pocket, and dry swallowed them, coughing a little.

“Here,” said Arrenji, handing him a water bottle.

“Thanks.” He drank a deep draft, sensing his dehydration. “You got another?”

She handed him two; he stowed them in his belt pouches.

“Ready?”

“Yes,” he said.

***SALTATION***

He still had a water bottle in his hand; he looked around and saw several people staring open-mouthed at him.

“Where am I?” he asked. His tech answered before the staring people could react:

“This is the map room at the National Guard Armory in Portland, Oregon, USIT Seventeen/One.”

Ambros’ head cleared a bit more as the ‘little bit of cocaine’ in the stimtabs hit him. He nodded at a mohawk-haired woman in an army green jumpsuit and asked: “You the local Assemblyists?”

“Yeah! You must be Ambros. Arlen said that once the shit hit, we should watch out for you. I’m Sandy Black.” She saluted like a Hellenic Warrior, and then said: “This is Col. Conner, she’s our contact with the National Guard...”

Conner got up and walked over to Ambros offering her hand for a shake. Ambros responded by offering a fist; she bumped it.

Ambros hooked a thumb over his shoulder: “Sgt Henderson, Pvt Jackson, and the Hellenes are Artabasi, Athenados and Vorlos.”

“Hellenes?” inquired an Army lieutenant who sat manipulating tokens on a map of Portland.

“People in armor like this,” Ambros explained: “Don’t worry about that, though. They are on your side, the Assemblyist side; that’s all you need to know for now,” Ambros told him. He added: “Also, I have a better map.”

He projected his drone map of the Portland area: “My spy-cams say the cops are holed up in three precinct houses and in the Multnomah County Courthouse. Additionally, they have armored riot squads at these three intersections...”

“Yeah,” said Conner: “We have a couple tanks coming from down by Salem, they’re moving them up here as fast as possible. We haven’t gotten any choppers for close air support. There’s an Air National Guard post at JBLM but we haven’t confirmed that they came over to the Assemblyist side yet. Be a couple hours to get air support, either way...”

Ambros made a face: “I’d rather get this settled quicker than that. I want to get the cops to surrender without any more fighting.”

“How do we do that?” Black asked: “I’m all for it, but they seem intent on fighting to the death.”

“Yeah,” said Conner: “And the more of our people they shoot, the likelier it is that we’ll give ’em what they want.”

“How’s your communications?” Ambros asked: “Can you get your people to stand their ground and not attack?”

“That’s what the Anarchists and Antifa are already doing,” said Black: “The Colonel has radio contact with her troops...”

Conner nodded at the lieutenant, who got on the horn immediately. After a moment he said: “All units holding their current positions...or will be when they have cover.”

“Good,” said Ambros: “How close can we get to the Courthouse?”

“We have a covered forward observation post across the street from the front entrance.” Conner gestured at Ambros’ map: “Ten minute waik.”

Ambros nodded: “Let’s go.”

They slipped along the sidewalk to a sandbagged machine gun post near the entrance to a park. From there, Ambros could see the Courthouse, and a couple auxiliary buildings nearby, pretty clearly. The skies opened up as a spring shower passed by. When the rain let up Ambros used his MPS to tap into the local cell phone network and called the main desk.

“Multnomah County Courthouse, how may I direct your call?”

Ambros stared at the building for a moment, then said: “Whoever is commanding your cop shop needs to be talking to me, right now.”

“I’m sorry sir, but Captain Morris is...”

Ambros frowned: “Listen...I’m sitting out front of your building with six hundred fairly heavily armored Anarchist and Antifa troops, and a thousand National Guardsmen. Thanks to President Gore, a bunch of those are combat vets. I personally have weapons that could take your building down to the ground in a few minutes time.” He drew out his APS and extended the blade across the street, using his index finger to guide it in a circle and cut a rather large hole in the barricaded front door.

He waited.

“Morris here,” said a voice in his ear.

“Good afternoon,” Ambros replied: “I hope to negotiate your surrender to the National Guard officer I have beside me.”

“What?”

Ambros was amused, and let it show in his voice: “Where did you think the Anarchists got machine guns? Lt Colonel Conner is here with me, and she’ll take your surrender when you are ready.”

“The fuck.”

“It’s true.”

“Why...would any part of the US military go over to the Commie side?”

“That’s hilarious,” said Ambros, sunnily: “Coming from a guy who went over to the Nazi side. It’s true, I suppose, that the Assemblyists are kinda communistic, in a little ‘c’ way. Not Stalinist at all, quite the opposite. But joining up with Nazis? That’s low, man. Got any Nazis in there with you? They aren’t covered by the safe-conduct the rest of you have.”

“We ain’t coming out,” said Morris: “Come in and get us, if you can.”

Ambros suddenly saw the way out: “How much food you have in there, Captain?”

Sandy Black frowned; Conner laughed out loud.

Morris let loose a stream of profanity, in the middle of which Ambros shut down the link. He switched the MPS to project an image of the building, including basements and such:

“Just wait them out,” Ambros said: “That’s what I’d do. See, they have access to the sewer system via this sub-basement, but you can block that with a machine gun set here...they can only get in and out via a couple doors, and y’all are watching those...if they break into the main sewer pipe here they still can only come out one at a time via the manholes hereabouts...”

Black said: “We can roll cars over each of those, and spike the tires. That’ll make it impossible to get out at all.”

Ambros nodded, continuing to check out the image before him: “I think you can cut off the water to the Courthouse at this juncture here,” he said, pointing.

A voice came over Conner’s radio: “Ma’am, the cops at Precinct Ten are trying to push their way out onto Sandy Boulevard! They got SWAT armor and they’re...”

The transmission cut off.

Ambros spoke into his version of a radio: “Megálos?”

“Akuo sas.”

“I have coordinates, get me that Phalanx of BWG...”

“Location received. Tha symfrommei.”

“When you can, send me there, too.”

“Akuo sas...”

Ambros sighed. He smiled at the besiegers, and waited.

***SALTATION***

An hour and a half later Ambros walked slowly up the hill on Sandy Boulevard, headed towards 82^nd. The neighborhood consisted of upper-middle-income apartment blocks mixed with much fancier houses, homes in the half-million-dollar range. None of the residents seemed inclined to come out into the streets, though Ambros saw curtains flicked aside and anxious faces at the glass in more than one home.

He very pointedly did not look back at the destruction and the bodies. He used his APS to cut down fences and slash through walls of brick or stone.

He broke in through one such and looked around. The first thing he saw was a dead dog, a German Shepard mix by the look of it. He made a disgusted face and said, aloud: “Okay Officer Puppy-killer, wherever you’re hiding, come on out. Hands in front, weapons left behind...”

“Nothing,” he muttered. He sliced the roof off of a metal shed that sat in one corner of the yard, then made diagonal cuts to the corners of the structure. The front fell inward, landing on a cop.

Said cop rose, pushing the metal panel aside, and began firing at Ambros.

Ambros sighed, and began to walk him down. A bullet spanged off his visor and he started. “I hate it when that happens,” he said aloud, but calmly.

The cop rushed him. They grappled. Ambros took the pistol away. The cop hit the ground with a thump.

Ambros sat down, straddling the small of the officer’s back, and said: “Lay still, until the National Guard can get here and take you into custody.”

The cop got his wind back, and began to squirm; soon he began to curse violently.

Ambros contemplated the names the officer called him: “Isn’t it interesting that as soon as the tables are turned, authority figures adopt the old ‘victim mentality’?”

“It’s fascinating,” said Voukli, from behind him: “Someone should write an essay on it.”

The family came out of their house, and the kids immediately began weeping over the dog. The little girl walked over and spat on the officer.

“Barbara!” her mother scolded: “Don’t be...”

Barbara spat again, then went back to the dog. The father restrained his wife: “Don’t.”

BWG troops and a couple National Guard came into the yard. The Blacks stripped the cop to his uniform, mocking the primitive—to them—tech that he carried, and then the Guards led the man off at gunpoint.

“I’m sorry about your dog,” said Ambros.

“Umm...thanks. What the hell is going on, anyway?”

“You not getting any news?” Ambros asked.

“A little. There’s two TV stations broadcasting, one is the Mayor saying stay where you are don’t do anything...”

“Like they do,” said Ambros.

“...the other is anarchist whack-jobs spouting crazy conspiracy-theories mixed with science fiction bull...baloney.”

Voukli laughed: “The whack-jobs have it right. The crazier it sounds, the more likely it is to be true.”

“Oh, come on, spare me...”

“Really,” said Ambros: “The south Willamette Valley suffered an attack by Nazis from another version of this planet. Another Timeline, if that means anything to you. There are similar invasions occurring all over the planet...but anyway...

“The cops here in Portland attempted to stage a coup in aid of that invasion. I don’t actually know which side your Mayor is on. I don’t really care, since he is now powerless. The ‘anarchist whack-jobs’ you referred to have managed to organize Assemblies for most of the neighborhoods in Portland, and they will soon put things back in order, though maybe not an order that you would prefer. And furthermore...”

He paused: “Never mind. I don’t have time.” He ignored the spluttering homeowners. He turned to Voukli: “Magistri?”

“You done here?” she asked.

“Pretty much.”

“Endaxi. Arrenji wants me with her.”

“Here in this Line?”

“Not in this Line. I don’t know where she’s taking me, but she thinks you’re needed back in Eugene. There’s Nazis moving north through downtown.” She shook her head: “Nobody’s had time to figure out where this bunch came from.”

The Sergeant in Command of the Black Warrior Phalanx approached: “Commander,” she said, addressing Ambros: “Are you moving on?”

“I am. SQUAD!” He shouted the final word, squelching his “radio” first. He spoke again, in a normal tone: “Squad, this is Commander Ambros: on me.”

He laughed silently at himself: ‘Naming myself “Commander Ambros” has just become utterly natural to me...but it’s still hilarious.’

Voukli was talking to the Black’s Sergeant: “...the Lt Colonel in charge of the local National Guard is named Conner, and the elected military leader of the Assemblyists is named Black. Sandy Black. Send three Files of your Warriors to help Ambros, drop in right where he does. The rest of you, put yourself at the disposal of the local Commanders. If you will?”

“Akuo sas. Tha symfrommei.”

Ambros called the War Room: “Megálos, Voukli says you got co-ordinates for Downtown Eugene, the Line I’m in?”

“I do.” Megálos sounded bored.

“Whenever you’re ready...”

“Okay, on my mark...and I’m handing this board off, I’m gonna join you. If you don’t mind...you retain Command.”

Ambros shrugged: “Sure. I got a couple wounded, I could use your help.”

“Endaxi...Mark!”

***SALTATION***

Ambros’ squad and thirty Black Warriors dropped in on the top of a parking garage in downtown Eugene. Sirens wailed, gunfire rattled and things exploded. Megálos dropped in nearby, unshipped his ‘rifle’ and set to work sniping at Nazis in the streets below.

“It sounds like everything’s blowing up!” Ambros shouted.

“It is!” said a bystander: “It’s going crazy! There are real live Nazis and they’re...”

An especially large explosion shook the building and part of the far wall collapsed. The roof tilted in that direction. Megálos fell along with the rubble on that side.

People who had fled to the top floor in a panic, panicked again.

“Shut the hell up! Don’t call attention to yourselves! And stay under cover!” shouted Ambros, using his Command Voice. They mostly did.

Ambros peeked over the chest-high wall that loomed over Eighth Avenue. He glanced back over his shoulder: “That you Bill?”

It was, and Bill scrambled over to where Ambros stood.

“Tell me what’s happening, old man.”

Bill said: “Where did all these Nazis come from?”

“I think you know...” Ambros sighed: “Just tell me what you know.” Ambros’ drones began showing him a real-time map of downtown.

Bill said: “I don’t know how it started, they just came driving tanks and...other big machines...right down all of the north-south streets. Half the downtown area is on fire, and the Nazis shot at the firefighters, and killed a bunch of them! Nobody is fighting the fires now...it’s all just burning...”

“Well, that’s Nazis for ya.” Ambros found himself feeling extremely laconic: “Okay, I see the biggest bunch...” He called in some Black Warrior backups, dropping them in behind the main mass of Wehrmacht tanks.

He extended his APS and cut a gray swastika-bearing APC in half longways. Men in gray uniforms swarmed out of it, and Ambros began firing at them with his rifle.

Bill grabbed at the barrel, saying: “No, no, I won’t let you kill people!”

Ambros shoved him away, and Bill fell backward, awkwardly.

“Sorry,” said Ambros.

The Marines had set up firing posts by then, and began methodically shooting down every Nazi in sight. The three-round bursts of their M16s interspersed with the much quieter Commonwealth firearms. Bill sat for a moment, stunned, then seemed to realize the futility of his actions. He rolled over and huddled against a wall. The rumble of diesel engines and more explosions occasionally drowned everything esle out.

Several larger bombs went off, and Ambros stuck his head around the corner to see what had happened. A bullet hit his armor and he ducked back: “Bad guys are still kicking...”

Red and Black Warriors swarmed over a large number of badly messed-up Wermacht tanks, which blocked most of the streets entering the main part of downtown.

Megalos climbed up the broken side of the garage, then turned and used his APS. “Hey Ambros,” he said quietly: “Who are these guys in blue clothes and half-assed armor?”

“Probably police,” said Ambros.

“Why did they shoot at me?”

Ambros laughed: “At least half of the EPD went over to the Nazi side as soon as they figured out what was going on. If they shoot at you, they chose the wrong side.”

“Akuo sas.” A bullet ricocheted off Megálos’ back plate. He laughed, then turned and began to swing his APS again. Ambros steeled his mind against the cries and screams of the cops as Megalos sliced at them: ‘The wrong side, for sure...’

He paused and listened to his ‘radio’.

“Endaxi,” he said “Their forward movement is stopped here in downtown. That’s fatal to a blitzkreig. Mop them up.”

He slouched over to where Bill huddled, with his arms covering his head.

Ambros sat down, immediately relaxing into an attitude of ‘rest’. He shook Bill by his shoulder, then helped him sit up.

Bill groaned: “I’m too old for this...”

“”Yeah, me too,” said Ambros. He lifted the shield from his face and said: “You want an evac?”

“A what?”

“An evacuation. We can move you to a safe Timeline, and bring you back when the fighting is over.”

Bill appeared to consider the offer, then shook his head: “I think I should stay. There ought to be something I can do...”

Ambros nodded: “I have a job in mind for you.”

“How can you be so casual about this? You seem completely relaxed. A minute ago you were...”

Ambros interrupted: “If you’re tense, you are slow. I can’t afford slow.”

Bill made another dismissive gesture: “What job do have for me? No violence, of course...”

Ambros sighed. He noticed that tears were running down his face, but ignored them: “Commonwealth troops have secured Eugene north of the river. We’ve set up a refugee camp at the big football stadium over there, but the site needs a leader, an organizer. That’ll be you, if you take the job...”

After a pause, Bill said: “Sure. Tell me, sir, why are you weeping?”

Ambros looked right into Bill’s eyes: “The hardest lesson I learned in the last two years was that I have to love my enemies. Get it? Otherwise I do damage to my own...I don’t know how to say it in American.“

Bill shook his head and spoke dismissively: “What does that mean? How can you claim to love people you are murdering?”

“It’s murder to you, is it?”

“Yes!”

“Well, you are correct. And it’s hard to love Nazis, especially SS. I ain’t claiming I’m all the way there. But...I feel for them. I empathize. Some of them, maybe even a lot of them, are in it against their own will. But I still want ’em dead, any who can’t be induced to surrender and get resettled. I know we make widows and orphans when we fight like this, but killing them is the only safe thing to do with ’em, for the sake of the rest of us. And as for the SS, I doubt I’ll ever love them, or empathize with ’em. Not even a little bit, but I’m okay with that. Long as they’re dead...none of the SS are draftees, friend.”

At that moment, Ambros froze, then relaxed: “Okay, they’re ready for you over at the stadium. See the woman with the red crest on her helm, she’ll take your requests for food, drink, shelter, and the like as Commands...”

“I don’t want to be the boss...”

“You aren’t her boss, she volunteered to save the people over there. Ask for what you need, and Red Warrior Guild Logistics will get it for you. Okay?”

“Sure, whatever.” Bill paused: “Does it mean anything to you that some of these Nazi guys are biting people?”

Ambros frowned: “It ought to. I need to think for a minute...”

His MPS pinged him. He shook himself and got back to business: “Squad: I have a pack of SS panzers rolling down Oak Street towards downtown. Aristogatos is sending a Sacred Band strike force to cut them off, but we need to get there and help out...On me! Black Warriors, secure this building, kill any enemy who come near...” Some of the Blacks began running down the ramps, searching other levels of the garage for enemies.

Bill stood up beside him. By then a pitched battle had begun over control of Skinner’s Butte. Explosions large and small, and some nasty hand-to-hand fighting, were clearly visible to them. The sound of people crying out in pain carried to them from the hillside.

More of the same appeared to be going on all along the line of hills to the south of Eugene proper, too far away to see clearly.

Bill squinted at those fights: “What the hell is that about?”

Ambros chortled, wicked and sarcastic, the sick humor of people fighting for their lives overwhelming him for a minute: “We may have weapons and armor that seem like magic to you, Bill, but high ground is still the key to winning any kind of fight. Only nuclear weapons can change that...annnd...break time is over.

“Magistri Vomani, I have your local liaison here...ready for him?”

His radio spoke: “Ready...”

Ambros used his own Shifter to send Bill away.

By then his squad had gathered; as soon as they were all in range ’Gatos said: “Mark...”

***SALTATION***

Ambros ducked behind the bank on the corner of Oak and 16^th, then used his APS to slash up the tracks on both of the lead tanks. Those machines ground to a halt and SS men began to scramble out and run toward the Wealthers. Vorlos tossed three power-mod grenades into the street, and when they went off they took out the bridge that spanned the canal just short of 17^th. That stymied the SS, and they went to ground along the south side of the canal.

Ambros spoke into his radio: “Those SS guys are partly armored, Marines, so shoot for their legs and arms. I’m gonna...”

A gigantic explosion rocked the street, two or three blocks south of them, and a column of smoke rose over the scene.

“That’s gotta be Voukli and the strike force. Marines, hold position. Vorlos, you and your friends use your Shifters...with me...”

They Shifted across the canal and began rooting the SS men out of their cover. Ambros parried attacks from their APSs with his own, and shot them at close range, ignoring such bullets as impacted him. He stalked from one end of the street to the other, casually murdering them. Their cries and screams only reminded him of what he’d seen earlier that day, in three dozen death camps in three Nazi Lines.

Artabasi and Vorlos imitated him, and soon the SS gave up the fight and began to run. They ran right into Voukli at the head of some Black Warriors, mopping up the column from the south.

“Where’s Athenados?” asked Ambros.

“I medevac’d him,” said Artabasi: “He took a shot from one of those blaster things the l’Iriquois Legionnaires carry, right to the chest.”

Ambros raised an eyebrow.

She shrugged: “He might live.”

He nodded: “Get me the guy who was carrying that blaster.”

“Akuo sas,” said Vorlos.

A minute later and they summoned him: “Here he is...”

Ambros walked over and stared at the guy. He remembered hitting his sword aside and firing, but he’d not even seen the blaster. ‘There it is, though. And it looks undamaged.’ He picked it up and used a personal evac mod to send it to Averos.

He drew a deep breath, thankful that he hadn’t taken a shot from the thing.

“Let’s get back across the canal and walk back downtown,” he said.

They moved slowly, watching every storefront and broken house as they passed. Each street crossing had the potential to hide enemies who had crossed the canal on other north-south streets, but they didn’t find any. Ambros watched his drone-generated map for any anomalies, and found none.

As they approached the Park Blocks Ambros called the squad together, and he switched the channel on his radio to announce his plan to all the Commonwealth troops in the area:

“The last big group of invaders is dug in around and inside of the Performing Arts center on Seventh. Not sure how they got that far north, but there they are. They are Wehrmacht, not SS. I’m gonna try to talk them down and send them as prisoners to a Quiet Line, but we should be prepared for the worst.

“ ‘Gatos is sending some Red Warriors, two Phalanxes. I’ll have them drop in on Sixth. Megálos, will you muster them? Spread them out along Sixth, slow walk south, check every nook and cranny for Wehrmacht or SS survivors, use your tech to search for lifesigns, so nobody is able to hide anywhere. Drag any visible bodies out from the rubble and cover them. If you think of anything I didn’t...”

“Akuo sas,” said Megálos. “Tha symfrommei.” He jogged off north, talking on the Red Warrior channel.

An hour later the last of the Wehrmacht were disarmed and lined up in the Park Blocks. Ambros called the War Room: “Aristogatos? You got a place for three hundred Wehrmacht survivors?”

“Pacifist Guild has all that mapped out,” came the reply: “I’ll just send ‘em to the next available camp...”

Techs moved around the prisoners, placing transport cones and setting sensors. After another moment, one of them waved at Ambros and made the handsign: “Ready.”

Three hundred bangs at once shook the air and rattled windows all around the square.

The Tech who had waved at him geo-Saltated up to Ambros: “I got a bad feeling, Spathos.”

“About what?” Ambros was simultaneously checking maps and listening to chatter on his ‘radio’.

The Tech said: “I think a lot of those Wehrmacht soldiers are sick. Something nasty: fever, drooling, a sort of shaky paranoia. A couple of them tried to bite us.”

Ambros stopped cold: “Zombie virus...That’s what’s been nagging at me for hours....”

“What?” asked the Tech.

“Would the Nazis have infected their common troops with the nastiest virus in the known Multiverse and sent them into combat as plague dogs?”

“Theosae!” said the Tech.

“I’m going to report this, straight to Command,” said Ambros, bleakly: “I want you to personally warn the Pacifist Deme that the prisoners they are succoring may be infected, and also tell Medical Guild in Commonwealth Prime; you personally. Will you do that?”

“Tha symmfromei.” The Tech pulled a Shifter out and spoke to it in code. In a moment, she vanished.

Ambros activated his Shifter and MPS, called the War Room and asked for an “open channel”.

When his tech told him he had it, he said: “Attention! All Commonwealth and Allied troops, fighting in any Line: Wehrmacht troops from at least one Nazi Line are likely infected with one or more Zombie viruses. Beware of bites when engaged in hand-to-hand combat.”

He signed off. He stood looking at the devastation of downtown Eugene.

‘Bad enough that the Wehrmacht is always cranked up on speed,” he thought: ‘That’s standard Nazi behavior. But...that virus will kill every single one of those soldiers, just not until after they win or lose.’

Arrenji’s voice sounded in Ambros’ ear: “You ready for a hunt, Spathos?”

“En’ lepta,” he said. He handed Command to Megálos with a few quick handsigns.

Then he laughed: “Whoever you want me to hunt, Magistri.”

“Stand by...”