6Black Sun Rising
A/N:Hello, guys. This Anime Borat and my latest story, Black Sun Rising. This is a theoretical experiment about what happened if you cross the World of Warcraft with World War II, especially with Nazis as the villains. It would make for a very exciting fan fic, if executed properly. An author by the name of Spyash2 actually beat me to it, writing Nazi Zombies: Neue Welt(New World), but he took it off the site to reconfigure the story to Black Ops. Sad... I wanted to read it some more. Also inspiring me to write is Freedom Guard and his crossovers. This story is actually a crossover of three games, Warcraft franchise by Blizzard Entertainment; Wolfenstein franchise by id Software(RTCW made with the cooperation of Gray Matter Interactive and Nerve Software; the 2009 game made in cooperation with Pi Studios, Raven Software and the now-defunct Endrant Studios); and Clive Barker's Undying by DreamWorks Interactive(now EA Los Angeles). Furthermore, this story is set between Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm with possible AU. Special thanks to Elred Bluegreen for helping me in this chapter. I dedicate this to him for assisting me in this prologue.
Entire fic rearranged due to concerns in length.
Prologue: Run Silent, Run Straight
October 28, 1943
Somewhere off the Norwegian coast
2045 hours...
The moonlight shone brightly on the cold sub-Arctic seas. On the surface two submarines sailed gracefully across the relatively calm seas, the waves lapping lightly against their hulls. They seemed like whales knifing leisurely through the dark cold north. It seemed like a very appropriate metaphor to the watches. The submarines were magnificent to look at from a distance- and vulnerable, easy prey for surface ships just as the whales are the prime targets of whaling vessels. It was that danger that made the watches of the two submarines, USS Thunderfish and HMS Sterling, guard against greatly.
The watches of the Thunderfish huddled tightly in their coats, trying to shield themselves from the frigid Northern winds. From the conning tower they peered out over the moonlit sea, occasionally bringing their binoculars to their eyes to take a closer look at something that seemed suspicious - there had nothing yet so far.
"I can't feel my goddamned nose." One of them complained angrily, his voice shuddering with the cold. His collar had already been turned up as far as it could go, as if the wind wasn't piercing it with blades of icy wind. "Chief, how much longer do we have on watch?"
"Fifteen minutes. Hang on, Seaman, we'll be back inside sipping on Bo's godawful monkey coffee in no time."
"I never thought I'd look forward to that stuff. At least it's hot."
"You and me both." The casual and lighthearted conversation masked their tension for this was no ordinary patrol. This was a special mission.
SUBLANT Force Commander Rear Admiral F. A. Daubin and the Royal Navy Submarine Service provided boats for this special assignment. Their job: to take two hundred American Rangers to the island of Rjuverikan, an island seven miles off the coast of Central Norway. The Thunderfish carried teams Bravo and Charlie.
The captains were only told that the Rangers were being sent to on a mission straight from the top, which most of them speculate is to destroy or knockout a harbor for U-boats operating out into the North Sea and the Arctic to intercept convoys bound for Murmansk carrying supplies to the Russians, who were once embattled but are now on the offensive. The Germans were desperate to cut the supply artery that now enabled the Red Army to strike back with a vengeance. The harbor, they believed, was located underground, which made it difficult for conventional air or sea attacks alone, so High Command approved a commando raid as the only way to take it out, followed by a massive airstrike.
But that was not it.
The Ranger's real mission was to extract an important defector by the name of Sergei Kovlov, a young student of the occult affiliated with the Golden Dawn. He had been in Isenstadt, unknowingly involved with Nazis during Operation Natchsonne, Hitler's attempt to harness the power of the Black Sun for his war effort, through his superior, Dr. Alexandrov. Dr. Alexdranov assembled all surviving members of the Golden Dawn's Russian lodge, most of them who escaped from Russia during the revolution and the 1920's. Although the Nazis' operation in Isenstadt had fallen to ruin they captured the Golden Dawn in the city and executed most of its senior members, while forcing the survivors to work for them.
The submarines were stripped of their torpedoes to give room for their passengers and their equipment. This also allowed more speed for the return run back. Thus, the watches of both subs were giving their utmost performance for their entire shifts, the excitement and danger never leaving their minds.
They wouldn't be alone. A crack squad of SAS commandos would follow in by glider and they would rendezvous with a team from Milorg, the main Norwegian resistance group. The Norwegians were once inhabitants of the island before they were evicted by the Germans, who needed the place to build a facility whose function was a closely guarded secret, although it was speculated by Allied intelligence analysts that it continued work on Operation Resurrection and Operation Natchsonne but they were never sure. The facility is heavily-guarded and has defenses to withstand a sustained sea and air assault. The young sailor on the Thunderfish's conning tower checked his watch again. Fourteen minutes to change of the watch. He was more anxious than ever. He looked over to the chief; the old sea dog seemed calm as a gull.
He mulled over the characteristics of the boat he's serving on. The Thunderfish was a Balao-class submarine fresh off a Connecticut shipyard with a novice crew that was the best-trained in the submarine force. She was equipped with the newest and most sophisticated radar and sonar sets, that can track contacts in the air and above and below the water with excellent accuracy. It was tempting to think that a watch was unnecessary, but from day one he had been taught that all mechanical devices had one thing in common-at some point, they failed and the lookouts were always the submarine's eyes and ears on the surface, first and last. With a heavy sigh that sent a cloud of steam drifting up, he brought the binoculars back to his eyes. "It's a nice thought, though." He remarked..
He then looked over at the Sterling sailing just seventy yards starboard. The Royal Navy sub was just as new as their American counterpart, yet a veteran crew manned her. She was a member of the British S class submarines, the latest of which had a greater fuel capacity. He learned from base that the crew members were sailors who had lost their boats during the early years of the war, some from the Far Eastern theater. They're true-blue seadogs who had been through hell and back.
He imagined what that would be like-him, maybe the Senior Chief Engineman, and one or two others, the only survivors of the Thunderfish's wreck. Most of the guys were as green as grass - he'd been with them since training. As hard as he tried, he couldn't envision how it could happen, and that told him a lot about the Brits. He recalled an offhanded comment he'd made before about those tea-sipping pansy sailors and cringed due to it.
There was even a grim joke that British sailors made their tea with the blood of captured Kriegsmarine, especially U-boat crews. And frankly, after the terror they'd been through, of the gritty duty of undersea combat and of the knowledge that their home islands were struggling to keep their sea lines of communication and logistics open despite near-crippling losses to U-boats, could anyone blame them?
"Skipper."
Thunderfish's captain was gaunt from his first all-night mission, bags forming under his eyes as though to catch them from completely falling out, and he shuffled his way to the sonar operator, who was fidgeting with some dials on his equipment and adjusting his headset.
"What's the problem, Petty Officer?"
"I don't know, Skip. Something's up with this thing, I'm getting some pretty screwy returns on the passive. We can't go to active without lighting ourselves up to any U-boat within 'we're screwed' range."
"Dammit. XO, get those watches changed out for fresh ones now. We need ready eyes and ears."
"Aye aye, Skipper." The Executive Officer turned and went for the conning tower. Below decks, it hummed with activity. Some of the commandos of Able Team, who were mostly recent inductees taken from Ranger battalions and Army scout units, who were in the conning tower were anxious, especially since this the final run of their approach to the island. The others were sitting in there bunks preparing for their mission, checking their weapons and equipment, while the commanders were at the captain's ward room. He passed by them on his way to the crew quarters to find replacements for the current watch.
At the ward room, several members of the Ranger assault team were going over their plans again. The men in the room studied photographs, maps, and assault diagrams over and over again. Among the men hunched in intensive planning was William Joseph "BJ" Blazkowicz. He had become a legend within the OSS Operation Groups branch. A Ranger officer since Operation Torch, he was handpicked by the Office of Strategic Actions, a joint British-American intelligence endeavor, to investigate covert German activity in Egypt together with a British agent, on the Twelfth of March. What happened afterward was strictly classified, although there had been talk of about him getting captured in a castle somewhere in Austria or Germany and fought both Germans and unnamed monstrosities as well bringing back reports and samples of their secret weapons. Another legend involved him against the Germans' occult activities although he was not cleared to say the specifics. In any case, the legend was here with them, planning the assault of on a relatively obscure facility, one whose secrets they wished to pry open and take for themselves. The captain entered the room just in time for the planning.
"Am I late?" the captain asked.
"No, sir," replied 1st Lt. Shane Richards. "Not at all. We're just about to read over our mission objectives."
"Alright, let's start." They plotted the course which the sub would take and their ETA.
"Here's the cove," Blazkowicz said, pointing to a part of the map. "The cove is isolated and the waters around here are rarely covered by patrol boats so getting in would be real easy."
"I'm worried about sentries on the coast," Richards pointed out. "I don't want our boys to have a Jerry welcome committee waiting for them." He had been a veteran of Tunisia and his battalion had been captured by the Germans after an ambush that nearly decimated them. Only his platoon escape the cordon the Germans set up, being lucky to fight another day.
"That's alright, we've got a team of Norwegian resistants clearing the way for us," Blazkowicz explained. "They know the area like the backs of their hands."
"That's good enough," replied one of the senior NCOs, Andrew Lamarck. "So how about air cover? The Krauts must have 'em."
Blazkowicz replied, "Their air cover won't be any effective at the moment. RAF had hit their bases a day before and bad weather on Norway should keep the rest pinned down."
"That's great," the captain said. "Where do you want us to offload your boys?"
"Right, here," the agent pointed to the map near the island. "Seven miles off."
"Alright, looks like we got everything settled here."
Meanwhile, at the conning tower, the sailors where attending to various pieces of equipment that made up Thunderfish's nerve center. They looked calm but were in fact focused; too focused to show any sort of emotion except for stoic attendance to their stations which they were trained for.
As the XO was making adjustments of their course or making corrections on various readings from the sub's instruments, the radar operator sat hunched on his station. He seemed to be in a world of his own, not seeming to mind the others. He was listening to his head set; his eyes on the cathode-ray tube called the plan position indicator. His stoic face eerily lit by the PPI's glow, he listened carefully from his headset while he searched radar contacts on the horizon. So far he got a few rocky shoals that showed up on the radar.
Ping...
He heard a faint ping. His face showed some emotion for the first time, one mixed of curiosity and a little apprehension. Then it was followed by another. His eyes turned to see a small oblong shape show up in the PPI. It was making blips at the edge of the circle. His eyes widened and face contorted in growing tension as the pings got louder and blips more frequent.
"We've got a contact!" shouted the radar operator. The XO instantly turned to him and rushed to his station.
"Where?" he demanded
The radar operator pointed to the oblong object as it steadily left the circle's edge with each blip. "Starboard, estimated range twelve miles. It's small, sir, it could a U-boat."
"Go to the captain, now!" The executive officer ordered a sailor. The sailor rushed frantically to the ward room, rushing past other crew members and commandos sitting in their crowded bunks. He promptly knocked on the door.
"Enter," the captain said. The door opened and sailor came in.
The sailor paused briefly to catch his breath. "Skipper, we've got a starboard contact. Possibly a U-boat." The soldiers in the room froze. An enemy submarine popped out of nowhere and showed itself in the radar, had they been compromised? If so, then the mission would have to be scrubbed and that would put to waste months of planning and trainging for the operation.
"Sailor, have the radar turned off," the captain ordered. The sailor left and the captain turned to Ranger team and gave them a sly grin and a wink. "Don't worry, boys. I've got a surprise for those U-boats."
"What do you mean?" Blazkowicz asked.
"You know that drill we made three days before we left for port?"
"That one?"
"Come, I'll show at the deck," the skipper offered. The captain and Rangers-in-briefing came out of the room. The puzzled landlubbers wanted to see what that trick the captain was talking about what the drill was for.
Two hours earlier
10,000 feet up in the air...
An RAF Handley Page Halifax bomber droned through the cloudy skies over the Atlantic while it towed an Airspeed Horsa glider. The engines revved loudly and the crew could feel the vibrations all over the airplane's body. The pilot and co-pilot stared at the dim sky, their collective controls on their hands despite the fact they're on auto-pilot. The radio/radar operator kept his eyes at the eerie glow of his screens, one searching for enemy night-fighters working the airspace around them while the other, an H2S set, allowed them to map the ground. So far so good, their weary faces belie the tension they felt all throughout the trip; a tension that previous missions, bombing and covert transport duties, have not entirely allayed but instead of carrying parachute-laden agents or supply canisters, they're towing a glider full of commandos. The navigator had checked his charts from time to time, conferring with the radar/radio man for bearings on the H2S's Plan Position Indicator(PPI). The plane was not heated and only the thin skin separated them from the cold winds that blew in maybe a hundred knots an hour that shrieked in time with the bomber's four propellers.
"What's our ETA?" The pilot called out in his strong Midlands accent.
"Fifteen minutes to dropoff point at bearing zero-six-zero," replied the navigator loudly. "Picking up a signal on the 'becca, sir. Not a strong one but it reads right. We're on the right track." In addition to the radio and radar sets, he was also using a top-secret radio directional device which coordinated its actions with a ground-based beacon. The green light blinked steadily next to a long-dead red one.
"Alright, let's get ready to cut our boys loose," the pilot announced. On the intercom his replies were either "Aye, sir" or "Yes, sir".
The co-pilot took out a thermos containing hot strong tea. He poured himself a cup and drank it. He then offered the pilot a cup, who wordlessly took it and thank him. The tea tasted good and warmed him. Then the co-pilot turned to the pilot. "I hope they do some good over there."
"Hopefully if the Jerries don't get them first," the pilot commented gravely. He wasn't just noting about the outcome of the team if they're captured early. Something like that was said to have happened before. According to rumors, two glider-borne sabotage parties tried to land somewhere in northern Norway but due to the foul weather and some screw-ups with the landing arrangements, they crash-landed into some hell of ice and rock. Their fate is unknown, no one knows whether they died of the cold, or were killed in a fire fight or worst, captured by the dreaded Gestapo and shipped to some place they could only guess.
"We've got our jobs, they've got theirs," the flight engineer said. "Godspeed and good luck to them mates." He passed back the cup to his colleague, who placed back on top of the thermos.
There was silence save for the drone of the engines and the muffled wind outside. It was lonely up here, and cold too. Then the pilot simply said to no one in particular, "For God, King and country..."
Inside the glider the soldiers huddled together as their craft was buffeted by thermals and strong winds. The wooden fuselage didn't help shield them from the cold but everyone dressed for the occassion. The men were checking their gear, talking about few things at home, or griping about the somewhat uncomfortable trip and adding a touch of black humor such crashing accidentally or having a German welcoming committee. They consisted of the SAS Regiment's 3 and 4 Troop including the pilots, who were former members of the Glider Pilot Regiment, and one specialist from the Special Operations Executive.
One soldier regarded the figure seating at the tail end of the glider and smoking a cigarette, his face lit by the glow of the tobacco stick and shrouded by its smoke like some cold morning mist. From the faint light one can see the outline of a graying beard set on a rugged weary face. It all seemed to give the man an air of mystery. He was the specialist.
They were told about that he was Lieutenant Patrick Galloway, the specialist who was essential to a purpose known only between him and their commanding officer, Major Stuart Speraver. Everyone in his squad has talked about him ever since his introduction to them a few months ago. For one thing, he spoke with a strong Irish accent and wore a cross around his neck, so they knew he was a Mick, coming directly from the Emerald Islands themselves, and they kept talking about the 'Mick super spy' behind his back but they were silenced during a training exercise. At a pub near base on the night before, one of their guys, Sgt. Ingram, drunkenly challenged him to hand-to-hand fight during the exercise the next day. And when it came, Ingram had his ass handed down to him by Galloway on the floor in less than a few seconds, an exercise indeed, one of futility as Ingram repeated it again and again for another ten minutes. Despite this, he offered him a drink and it was all forgotten. They later learned that he was a veteran of the hellish trenches of the Great War, surviving countless battles from the Marne to the defeat of the Kaiser's armies at 1918. However, he always kept silent of his exploits, explaining that he doesn't want to talk about them.
The young soldier decided that he should give it a try. He cleared his throat a bit and turned to Lt. Galloway. He smiled. "Um, Lt. Galloway, sir. First time in a glider?"
Galloway turned to the soldier, his face eerily lit up by the cigarette's dull glow and smoked swathed his face. "Yeah... I've did ride on airplanes before a few times," he replied in his strong Irish brogue. "Never on an engineless wooden kite."
"By the way, I'm Martin Brock, sir, but everyone calls me Marty."
"Uh, nice to meet you Marty, me boy." He replied in his strong Irish accent. He then stubbed out his cigarette as it got shorter. "You look quite green. How long have been in the SAS?"
"Maybe two or three months ago," he replied. It's no secret that Brock was had joined the élite unit a few months ago. Back then, he was fighting as regular Tommy in the North African desert with the 7th Armored Division, which pushed Rommel out of El Alamien. Before that, he was an orderly in the headquarters section, Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, 4th Cavalry Brigade. His unit was assigned to Iraq to relieve a small RAF station in Habbaniya, Iraq when the Arabs in Baghdad decided to kick them off and throw their lot in with the Germans. He was there in the headquarters section, bringing papers, cups of tea and coffee, and summoning officers to planning areas. It was somewhat boring but there's never a dull moment. One of the things he liked about duty in the Middle East was the desert, with its seductive spartan beauty. What he didn't like was the heat, smells, and sand, as well as of course, enemy bullets flying by. But he didn't realize about how much he hated the heat until members of his unit were forced to push trucks out of the sand. The sun bore unmercifully on him as he dug away the sand and then they have to shove the trucks out of it. After they won battle in Iraq, the 4th Cavalry was then pushing through the Levant, kicking pro-Axis Vichy French forces into submission. By the time the fighting had ended in that side of the world, he was thirsty for some action. Real action.
He was quite jealous of the guys who got to see action against Rommel. When he realized the war in North Africa was still going on, he applied for a transfer to the 7th Armoured Division. His commanding officer approved and within a few weeks of paper work, he was flown in to the fray. Unfortunately for him, the battle there was a seesaw battle where the Allies win ground today, then Axis forces push them out the next day. Action was great and intense, just as he liked it but the Germans were no pushovers and he sometimes had to fight for his life.
Galloway asked again, "Did they picked you from selection?"
"Uh, yes, sir," he replied. "I was lucky. They say the action is great with you guys, sir." It was during the North African campaign that made him consider the SAS. While in a recon patrol, his squad was ambushed and captured by a German column. They were shacked in a temporary POW camp near the front before being shipped out an airstrip one night, without a doubt their destination being one of the Stalags in the continent. Along the way, their convoy was stopped by a wayward camel. As soon as the German commander got off to shoo the bothersome animal away, he was cut down by machine-gun fire. Then the entire convoy was suddenly became the focus of a mini-war, the trucks exploding into fireballs, tracers lit up the sky and Germans scrambling to their feet to meet the enemy. The fighting was over in a few minutes.
After huddling down the bed of their truck in terror, they peered warily out through the canvas flaps of their truck to see many dead Germans strewn around in the sand, their vehicle shot up to pieces - the ones that carried Jerries instead of prisoners that is - and bearded men dressed in tropical khakis of the British Army but wearing red-and-white kerchiefs like Bedouins, armed with Tommy guns, Enfield rifles and Brens. One of them approached their truck and said in a cheery Yorkshire accent, "Would you boys like some tea and biscuits?" Everyone was dumbfounded, then laughed happily, realizing that fellow Tommies had came to their rescue. They rode with them back to the front lines. He asked them about what outfit did they belong. They said the magic words that would change the course of his military service, "Special Air Service."
He was back in his unit again. The memory of their rescue never left him. And day and night, he wanted to join those élite warriors into battle, mounting feats that no ordinary soldier could pull off. Yes, it was something he wanted to. Regular front-line combat was satisfying, yet, some feral instinct was aroused by these men who regularly fought the enemy in his own backyard. After pulling his weight in North Africa up to Tunisia, he signed up for the SAS. He had to get through a rigorous physical examination and screening course to pass. And after that came the hell of the commando training itself, which nearly sent him to the hospital at one point. Not so for Kenneth Cameron, known as Carmine or Kenny, before him, who was injured during the mountain-climbing exercise. His injury did not hinder from continuing his training and within a few months of recovery he was back on track and later sent with an élite squad. He, however, earned the dubious honor of getting killed in his first mission. Not a good thing to think about, he thought.
Brock continued with Galloway, "I heard you were a war hero back in the Great War. What was it like back there?"
Galloway looked at the young man, deceptively green in appearance but managed to pull his own weight in the actions he fought before entering the SAS. In turn Brock saw in the elder soldier a face that told him of a weary man, surprised and disappointed of a young man's questions of his previous service. He replied to him, "It's hell."
Brock backed down and apologized, "Sorry, sir. I just wanna know about what you were back then."
Galloway broke into a smile. "If you get out of this with your balls intact, I'll be you a drink and we could talk all night."
"Really, sir?"
"Yeah, me boy. Just stay out of the bullets," he suggested.
Brock's companion, Norman, patted his shoulder and laughed jovially, "Brock, you lucky bastard. You did it this time."
"Yeah," another commando said. "I'll get you another drink for that."
"Don't get your hopes up, lads," Galloway reminded. "I still have to get back to the pub in one piece too."
The chuckling died down and they went back to attentive sobriety. The glider rumbled every time it hit a turbulent air pocket. Galloway wondered about how much he should tell them. He had seen it all, the carnage, the filth and misery in the trenches, the pain and agony soldiers like him had seen back in the Great War. Days when casualties ran by hundreds, even thousands daily, even if there was no real combat, where they went through the hell of an artillery barrage and the lethal specter of chemical weapons that hung over them like a suffocating fog that eats into the body, the disease that ravage young men while staying in the trenches, that became swamps during sudden downpours. And the useless attacks they have to carry out knowing that all their efforts would be in vain and the dead died for nothing. Combat, once you get into the enemy's trenches, was an exercise in brutality and confusion, where the chances of being hit by rifle butts and bayonets was awfully high and always painful.
Worst, he also saw things that world wasn't meant to see. When he signed up for the army, he was sent to a unit with a special purpose, their job was to root out superstition among the recruits coming from the rural areas. Selected for the job due to his scholastic experience in folklore and the occult and with the promise of having him cleared of his crime, one he didn't commit, the job was simple enough. The unit simply went to an area were the superstition came from, ascertain its very nature, and recommend the appropriate action, whether to send the men back to the rear for rest and recuperation or deliver stern disciplinary action on anyone for shaking down the moral of the unit, as if the real war wasn't horror enough. He would have hoped it was just that simple, it turned out that these superstitions were not just the delusions of farm boys being thrust into the world of war for the first time. Sometimes, the cause of such 'strange incidents' as they were called were far from normal. One source was Trsanti, an Arab tribe who clung to the old ways before Islam, had been making some troubling raids against the trenches for loot, as well as their deals on the side and smuggling activities to both sides of the conflict.
These Trsanti did things that made the men in trenches shudder and lose their minds. Things that gave them horrible nightmares. There were bodies of men missing on patrol that had horrible, often ritualistic, mutilations. In remote or quiet sectors, men either went missing, died mysteriously or sustained unexplained injuries, or worst, going insane, speaking in a different tongue, making some unsettling sort of action such as a dance or go into a convulsion, even attack comrades. Some men would babble about seeing monstrosities that could only be found in the mind of an opium addict.
It's not to say that their stories are not true. There had been some evidence of such things. A strange claw mark or foot print, a hazy photograph of a weird creäture seen in the horizon was enough to convince the generals in the know that the stories were real, direct action the only practical solution. That night, he remembered, after the rough interrogation of a captured Trsanti, they made preparations and head out to a site in the no-man's land somehow ignored by artillery or patrols, a clump of woods un-battered by shell fire. It had been easy enough to follow the tracks and sneak up on them - or so they thought. The Trsanti jumped on them, uttering battle cries in a strange tongue, screaming like banshees, waving their swords as they charged into his patrol. The battle turned into a savage melee as the Trsanti inflicted horrible casualties on the British, whose only equalizers were their firearms, as well as the sharpened spades, bayonets and lethal trench clubs they carried with them.
It had been a tough going for Galloway. He had wrestled with some of the fiends, very brutal combat ensued. He fought vigorously, even when most of his men have fallen. As the battle came to a close, he met with the ringleader, a hulking, muscular bald man with a beard. He swung his revolver at him and lined his sights. He could have ended it in over a few seconds. Instead, the man brandished a strange green stone. He uttered a yell in a strange tongue. Then a powerful green flash came from his hand holding the stone, sending Galloway flying back to ground as almost at the same time he pulled the trigger.
He woke up in the field hospital with sever burns on his body. His commanding officer and war buddy, Jeremiah Covenant, send him back to the rear while the rest of the unit went on to pursue to rest of the Trsanti.
Jeremiah...
It's a name with bittersweet memories. He could not forget it nor the tragedy that befell to its bearer, even if he wanted to. It will never go away from him. The terror, the battles, they will never leave him. They will continue to stay with him as long as he lived, reminding him of the horror of the otherworldly and evil humanity was capable of, and of its ignorance of what is beyond his realm of reality, ignorance that could one or another bring his downfall, even his extinction.
"Heads up, boys!" Major Baker shouted. "We're almost on our release point. Remember your training and the plan of the operation, God will take of the rest. Lock and load." Every commando responded by readying their weapons, the clicks of magazines loading and cocking handles pulled back to chamber a round filled the air despite the drone of the plane's engines and the turbulent air.
Another commando, a Bren gunner, shouted aloud in his broad Scottish burr, "The bloody Huns will never know what hit 'em."
Near Valgarde, Northrend...
Often it reminded why this place was called Howling Fjord. The winds howled fiercely as squad of footmen trudged through the thick snow. The cold that knifes through a man's clothe would send lesser-willed individuals regretting their choice of assignment but the squad were men from Valgrade, hardy soldiers worth their salt. Leading them on the march was a hunter and fisherman named Asleson, a man with a peculiar accent. A peasant of many trades, he joined the expedition of Arthas into Northend for financial reasons, mainly to save his farm from foreclosure and ships needed expert sailors, which the captain who hired found odd for a farmer.
He did not know that he would, like the rest of his expedition, be abandoned by their prince and forced to fight for their lives. Asleson did, coming to grips with ghouls, undead spider-men, and other monstrosities the Scourge have summoned to destroy them. They never were able to get back home and Asleson did not know of the fall of Lorderan until the first Alliance vessel to arrive after they built the port of Valgarde. He learned that his home village was overrun by the Scourge, everyone he knew was dead. It had been a hard one for him, since many good friends have died.
He took the loss of his home hard, having to drink himself into stupor over the months after that. When he finally pulled his person together, he set out a trade as a hunter and fisherman. Over time he became an experienced tracker, knowing every trail that snakes through the hilly woods of the fjord, every small channel and cover, and knows when was the best time to hunt or stalk game, knowing his way as far as Grizzly Hills. Naturally, his services have been called in more than one occasion by many, the garrison of Valgarde most of all.
"Why do they send us to a lumber camp in the middle of this crap?" complained one soldier. "There's a blizzard coming soon and we would be freezing ducks."
"Quit your griping, Darrick," his sergeant said sternly. "Vice-Admiral Keller received word that a traveler is spending the night there. He is a survivor of a party carrying some important information from Stormwind. Keller says that ensuring his safety is of the highest priority."
"And why are we giving an armed escort for this stranger?" another man asked.
"That's what we are going to find out," the sergeant replied.
"This stranger be bloody worth deh freezin' stroll we' takin'," muttered his counterpart, a dwarven sergeant in charge of their rifle squad.
The first man, Darrick, laughed out loud. He then said to Asleson, "Hey, I bet you a pint that lad we're picking up must have pissed off someone big in Stormwind one way or the other."
That got everyone laughing including the sergeant. Asleson chuckled as he thought about that bet. Usually coming to Valgarde to trade his goods, he made many new friends along the way including many footmen of the city, whom he often joined for drinks at the local tavern.
"Probably," he noted with his heavy accent. "If the weather holds up we could see the sun sooner.
The chatter died as the wind got colder as they marched deeper into the forest. The snow was already a foot a deep and it was starting to crunch from the frost needles buried deep in them. For some going through the snow this way was a death wish. It was to some comfort that the bitter howling of the air helped masked their approach from the denizens that lived in these parts of the woods.
"This place gives me the creeps," Darrick observed nervously as he looked at the leafless, skeleton-like trees around them. Having fought many skirmishes and battles since he was deployed, he proved to be a competent soldier in the service of the Alliance but the fear of the frozen wilds outside the safety of Valgarde never left him. He still has memories of fighting the Scourge, the ugly rotting bastards who kept coming at them to tear them apart, then bring you back up to fight for them in their hideous army, as well as the feral denizens such as the ice trolls.
"Keep your guard up," the sergeant said. "We've been through tight spots before. And just hope this thing's a chore."
"Yeah, I hope," muttered Darrick. "Especially before this blizzard hits." They trudged on as the winds howled louder.
"Quitting your griping would help a lot faster."
In the midst of the snow a few shadowy figures behind the trees watched the procession from packed mounds of snow. One cautiously raised his head, just above eye level in his mound. With his goggle-clad eyes slowly scanned the surroundings then warily turned his eyes on the patrol they passed by. The armored soldiers and fur-clad shooters lead by a man in heavy fur coating seemed oblivious to their presence. He has the snow to thank for that.
Watching the patrol disappear in the blinding white, he perked his ears up to listen to the slightest sound of their footsteps crunching the snow. When it was apparent that he could no longer hear them in the howling winds, he emerge from the powdery snow. He made several hand gestures and in response the others emerged from hiding places. They wore baggy-looking clothing white clothing, their heads covered by the hoods in their parkas, face concealed with goggles and thick gray scarves. They gathered around the hand waver.
One of them pulled down his scarf and breathed deeply, his breath immediately condensing into mist. "You were right. Looks like they took the bait," he said . "What now, Herr Oberleutnant?"
The hand waiver pulled down his own scarf and smiled. "We follow them. They could lead us to our objective much faster than having to rely on guides."
"But the blizzard's fast approaching," the other man observed gravely. "We should have went in earlier."
"We risk compromising the mission early by letting in more people than necessary, Feldwebel. We already have to pay our greedy informant back in Valgarde to mislead them, not to mention the trouble our superiors had negotiating with those cutthroat pirates."
His subordinate snorted. "Ja, I don't like those bastards one bit." He changed the topic. "What if we don't make it out of the storm once we're done?"
"The rest of the unit had secured and ready fallback positions so we have safe points on our way out. Hopefully, if our weather reports are accurate, we can stay here for at least three weeks, two at best."
"As long we don't have to run into any untoten*, bird-beaked bastards*, spider-fuckers or anything else in this God-forsaken hellhole. Stalingrad and Norway seem like winter resorts compared to this." He shuddered as he remembered their encounter with the so-called Scourge. They saw those rotting bastards moving around. How they, unbelievably, revived slain people and creatures and impress them to their ranks. The first time he saw them, he nearly had a nervous breakdown.
The officer chuckled a bit. "Ah, good times. Sometimes I missed them, except perhaps Soviet bullets. Well, we should move out. Feldwebel, your squad's taking point."
"Jawohl, meinherr," his subordinate replied. He whistled with his fingers and issued orders to his squad. Everyone else fell in their positions. They all took out skis hidden in a large pile of snow. Clearing it of the powdery frozen water, they equipped them and made last-minute checks on the rest of their gear. Satisfied, they fell out in single file, assembling in the solitary clearing.
The officer though to himself, Now would be a good time for a cigarette but that would have to wait. He signaled for the men move out. That was followed by the clicks of MP40s and Gewehr 43s.
A/N: Finally, after two long years, I've finally established this. I've suffered writer's block, delays and other issues to get this moving. I know that you would probably have no interest in this fic because I used cliched Nazi villains but again, such a thing like this is rarely explored. I think there's no need to be familiar with Wolfenstein or Undying just to read this fic, but if you're curious you can watch their respective walkthroughs in YouTube. I just hope that you have the patience to read it and I would be thankful for those who have time to do so. Okay, here's the rundown. BJ Blazkowicz is the hero of the Wolfenstein series while Patrick Galloway is from Clive Barker's Undying. Kenneth Carmine is a reference to South Park's Kenny and Gears of War's Carmine, both who always die horribly one way or another. I've done as much research in all respective works of fiction to construct this, as well as providing the backdrop of the war. Please PM me if you have anything to say about this besides the reviews.
*Untoten - undead.
*Trolls, specifically ice trolls.
Oberleutnant - 1st Leiutenant
Feldwebel - Sergeant.