Walther stood at his control station when it hit him, a purple beam of light washed through the thick glass and washed over him, his pupils dilated and his eyes glowed a deep purple color. Joseph watched enviously, ‘why did he never receive the visions?’ But his task was just as important; he had to keep the power continuous otherwise the devices secrets would be lost.
Jakob Sporrenberg had finally managed to get the emergency generators going and get a message out to the German high command. As far as he could tell the situation above ground was stable for now, but he knew his outnumbered troops would not be able to hold out forever; especially as their air support was gone. He needed to get a message out to Hauptsturmführer Krause but the lines of communication were garbled.
Sporrenberg cursed, he would have to wait deal with that insubordinate cockroach Gerlach. The Die Glocke experiments had taken up a lot of valuable time, resources and money and all they had to show for it were some ‘visions’ that gave the blueprints for how to build Wunderwaffe. Sporrenberg shook his head as he left the generator room. “What the Führer sees in this Vril Society hoodoo I don’t know.”
Walther’s hair stood on end and his wispy white hair went deadly straight, he was quietly muttering to himself in a language Joseph did not recognize. The older scientist had been like this for the last ten minutes.
A large explosion echoed out from the center of the laboratory, the device rocked under the force. Joseph cursed as the power levels began to drop. “Not again you bastard!” He shouted as he fought to keep the air electrified. He struggled in vain as the air discharged violently. Joseph watched as the same transformer that had caused the problem earlier sparked and billowed grey smoke.
As the bell lost power the purple aura dissipated snapping Walther aggressively out of his trance. The scientist looked confused, he stumbled forward slightly and Joseph had to leap towards him to stop his old man from falling.
Walther blinked quickly, his bloodshot eyes laboring to regain focus; a trickle of blood ran out from his nose. The scientist’s eyes rolled back into his skull then rapidly snapped back into focus as he inhaled deeply.
The old man spoke weakly at first, “Whe… where am I? How… How am I back here?… No no no!” He shouted. A red glow of anger began to replace the paleness in his face.
“Joseph, get my pen and paper I need to write this down while it is fresh in my mind, you can explain to me what the fuck happened later.”
“Yes father.” The young man and rushed to do as commanded.
Walther started to write in a frenzied blur of motion, he drew precise blueprints with exact measurements, he wrote down the materials needed and he noted how the object must be created so it functioned as intended. He scribbled furiously for about five minutes before finally putting his pen down.
“Come look at this my son.” Walther beckoned.
Joseph took the notepad a flicked through, he checked the drawings, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He looked at his father.
“This can’t be right… It just can’t be.”
“I know son, this will change the tide of the war for sure.”
Joseph had his doubts about the war effort but knew better than to raise them in front of his father.
“How would we even build this thing?”
“Think about it son, you’ve seen the amazing things we have built, the Me 262 jet engines, the Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus super- heavy tank, Fritz X guided anti-ship bombs, the V1 and V2 rockets that enter the edge of space. All these revolutionary ideas came from Die Glocke. We are the ones chosen to give life to these ideas so our people can take our rightful place at the head of the world.”
While Joseph did not agree with all these ideas he could not argue with the results that came for the bell visions.
The images on the notepad showed a large circular object constructed of tough reinforced metal alloy, one side was covered with a deep curving mirror. The object was to use the sun’s energy to create a concentrated beam of light onto the designated target.
“This is an Archimedes death ray.”
“Yes son,” Walther shouted excitedly, “But we will be able to burn entire cities instead of wooden Roman ships. These plans must get to Hillersleben.”
Walther sat up, “We need to get Die Glocke going one last time, I feel the war-winning secret was nearly there before it cut out.” He placed his hand on his sons shoulder, supporting himself as he stood.
“This time we must get the power to stay at 100%, we must scrap the caution and push it as hard as we can.”
Joseph nodded, “I’ll get on the repairs. You sit here and recover.” He said sternly.
Walther did sit and recover as he son had insisted on but only for five minutes; he had to get the message to the scientists at the Hillersleben facility in Germany. He pushed the document into a small brown envelope with a standard stamp attached to it, it looked unremarkable and that’s the way he wanted to keep it. Walther then sent an encoded message through to the facility instructing them on where the envelope was to be sent; the envelopes contents were to be destroyed by Joseph if he could not get the message out before the base was overrun.
Jim ‘Pete’ Parker
The open field stretching out in front of the Owl Mountains was ablaze, thick black smoke bloomed into the atmosphere and the smell of charred human flesh choked anyone in the area. Commander Jim ‘Pete’ Parker and his fellow Sherman crews had suffered horrendous losses but had now closed the gap and found themselves in amongst the dug in Tiger tank positions.
A Sherman commanded by Tom Finch maneuvered around the side of a Tiger I, the German tank could not swing its barrel round to target the American tank as the concrete pillars designed to protect it from aerial bombardment now inhibited it.
The Sherman had a clean shot into the weaker side of the tank. The gyrostabilizer kept the Sherman’s targeting reticle relatively in the right direction while the tank was on the move. Tom Finch’s tank hit the brakes and no sooner had it stopped it took a near point-blank shot into the side of the Tiger, the round penetrated, killing three of the crew and seriously wounding another.
A German anti-tank gun aimed at Tom’s Sherman but was too eager to fire and did not aim the shot properly, the shell flew passed the American who had noticed where the shot had come from, he directed his gunner on target and fired, the gun was destroyed. Tom smiled; it had been a good day’s work so far.
The Sherman’s were advancing into the first line of German trenches where they knew infantry with anti-tank launchers would be a threat, Bow gunner Steven Almore noticed movement and opened up with several bursts from his .30 caliber M1919A4 machine gun. Three SS soldiers screamed and fell, a few seconds later the grenades they were cooking detonated and a shockwave of air containing shrapnel swept out down the trench, killing three others.
Tom’s Sherman rotated its turret to line up a shot into the back of a Panther medium tank that was laying fire down into a group of advancing Sherman’s. The reticle rested on the German tank. Tom Finch was about to shout fire when the front of his tank disintegrated and caved inwards, the driver and bow gunner were killed instantly while the loaders arm was torn off. Tom had a second to look down before the ammunition rack ignited and the whole tank exploded; Tom was launched from the commander’s cupola and was dead before his burning body hit the ground.
Nobody had seen what had fired the round before a second shell hit another Sherman slightly to the right of the flaming wreck that had been Tom’s tank. The second Sherman did not catch fire but the round had penetrated and killed two of the crew, the others tried to escape the doomed vehicle but were cut down by machine gun fire as they did so.