Obersturmfuehrer – SS rank, roughly equal to First Lieutenant.
Ordnungspolizei – Order Police (regular police force)
Reichsführer-SS – Commander of the SS
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) – Reich Main Security Office
Sigrunen – SS insignia (lightning bolts)
Standartenfuehrer – SS rank, roughly equal to Colonel.
Sturmbannfuehrer – SS rank, roughly equal to Major.
Sturmann – SS rank, roughly equal to Private.
Strumscharfuehrer – SS rank, roughly equal to Master Sergeant.
Swinehund – German insult, literally ‘pig dog.’
Untermensch – Subhuman.
Untermenschen – Subhumans, plural of Untermensch.
Unterscharfuehrer – SS rank, roughly equal to Second Lieutenant.
Vaterland – Fatherland.
Volk – The German People.
Wehrmacht – The German Military (often taken to represent just the army (Heer)).
Excerpt from Book 2 of the Codex Regius: Beyond the Shroud of the Universe
___________________
Chris Kennedy
Available now from Chris Kennedy Publishing
eBook, Audio Book and Paperback
President’s Conference Room, Terran Government Headquarters, Lake Pedam, Nigeria, September 27, 2021
“That concludes my report,” Lieutenant Commander Shawn ‘Calvin’ Hobbs said from the podium. “Are there any questions?” He looked around the room and involuntarily cringed. While he had known there would be some questions; he hadn’t expected that everyone’s hand would go up.
The president’s conference room was unlike any other Calvin had ever been in. At its center was a table which could easily seat 20 people to a side. The floor of the room sloped upward on all sides, with 10 rows of stadium seating.
The leaders of the Terran Government sat at one end of the table, with the president seated at the head of the table in her customary chair. The vice president, the secretary of state and the speakers from both houses of parliament filled the chairs closest to her. The rest of the seats at the table held members of the Terran Republic’s Security Council; their staffs and other interested representatives filled the audience seats, as well as most of the aisles. The place was packed.
The people at the table had brain implants which translated any Terran language; every seat in the room also had jacks that allowed users to plug in and get a running translation of the conversation provided by a small artificial intelligence (AI) which had been replicated for that purpose. The AI also kept notes and logs of all the conversations within the room, unless specifically told not to.
Seeing the forest of hands, Calvin sighed. This was going to take forever. With a mental shrug, he pointed to the closest representative.
“We have only just finished the war with the Drakuls,” the senator from Japan said, throwing her hands up in the air, “and now this… this… soldier has gone and involved us in another one. Who is he to think he has ambassadorial powers or the right to speak for us?” She looked around the enormous room for support and smiled when she saw most of the heads in the audience nodding.
“I certainly didn’t intend to get us into a war, ma’am,” Calvin said. “We were helping the Aesir, as we were ordered, when the Efreeti vessel appeared and fired on us unprovoked. We didn’t even know it was there before then, much less do anything to cause them to attack us. And actually, ma’am, I’m a naval aviator, not a soldier.” Although Calvin currently led a space fighter squadron and a platoon of Terran Space Marines, he still considered himself a naval aviator at heart. It had only been a couple of years since the aliens had shown up on Earth and drafted him to be a janissary in their wars; until recently, a Navy F/A-18 pilot was all he ever wanted to be.
“Not only has he involved us in a war with the Efreet, but also a war with these Jotunn frost giants?” the senator from Romania asked. “Both of these are creatures out of myth and legend. And new universes? What’s next, vampires? How are we supposed to fight things that don’t exist in places our best scientists say are impossible?”
“The Jinn Universe does exist, sir,” Calvin replied. “My men and I have been there several times, and in a number of different systems. Their universe is just as real as ours. I lost a lot of good people there.”
One of the senators from Domus raised her hand, and he pointed to her. The planet had been discovered on one of Calvin’s first missions to space, and their society had joined the Terran Republic the year before. The world was home to two races; one of these was humanoid in appearance, while the other, the Kuji, looked like 6-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Having been recognized, the Kuji princess stood.
“Unlike the rest of this august body, we are less focused on what is already done and can’t be undone,” said the princess, nodding to the other Domus senator, the humanoid princess. “We are more worried about what will happen next. Lieutenant Commander Hobbs has already shown these races inhabit a number of stars and planets in their universe, most of which are also inhabited in our universe. How do we know they won’t all of a sudden pop up on our planet or jump into our system and start dropping bombs on our cities?”
“I’m sorry,” Calvin said, “but the bottom line is that we can’t know whether they are there until we go into their universe and see. Even then, there is no way to protect against them; we can’t stop them from jumping into our universe. The only thing we have going for us, we think, is that there aren’t any stargates in the other universe. The Jinn have to transfer into our universe to use our stargates if they want to move around quickly. They don’t have faster-than-light space travel in their universe, so it would take many years to go from one system to another.”
“So the only ones we really have to worry about would be the ones already there, or those that come through the stargate into our system?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin said. “At least, that’s the way we understand it now. There may very well be creatures that inhabit your planet in the other universe; in fact, I would bet there are. It seems like most of the planets that support life in our universe are also inhabited in the Jinn Universe.”
“A follow-up, if I may?” the princess asked. Gaining permission, she continued, “It is necessary for our continued security to determine if they exist on our planet. How do we find out if they are there?”
“There are a couple of ways to find out, ma’am. If we want to do it stealthily, we can use one of the transportation rods we brought back to send a few people to their universe and look around. Unfortunately, we only have a few of them, so it will probably be a little while before we can do so. We are working on making more rods, but there is a substance we need that is only found in the other universe. In order to make all the rods we need, we are going to have to find a supplier in the other universe.”
“What about the friendly race you met? The Sila?” Terran President Katrina Nehru asked, happy to be headed back in a positive direction.
“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin replied. “We have had contact with the Sila on a couple of occasions. They all left a common planet when its star went nova, and they now inhabit several planets we know of, but they don’t have contact with each other. Most of their planets have been conquered by the Efreet and ruled by them ever since. We helped one planet throw off the Efreeti yoke; I’m sure they would help us against the Efreet.”