Phantasm

“You have to number them?” Felicia asked, aghast. “How many world-encompassing wars have you had?”

“Just the two,” I replied. “World War III was a widely feared possibility, but we managed to avoid it.”

I’m not sure if it counted as a win that we’d managed to hold off on global war long enough for the world to end in a data processing accident, but I’d take it.

After a bit of scouting, I decided it was safe to have the group creep out of the bunker. Looking around the rubble, I saw various looks of shock and disappointment.

“Your whole world was like this?” Felicia asked. “Twice?”

“Not everywhere,” I said defensively. “You only got this when the armies fought in a city. World War I was different, I think,” I looked over at Borys.

“More trench warfare, less city warfare,” he agreed. “There was still enough bombs and artillery to destroy many cities, though.”

“What are those?” Felicia asked uneasily.

“Bombs: think of giant birds dropping those Drachen missiles from the last floor,” I said. “Artillery: same thing, only flung long distances. We might see some of both, so keep an eye out.”

Felicia looked up at the cloud-covered sky. “How?” she asked.

I shrugged. “They make a distinctive noise, in the movies,” I said. “That was when they were machines, though, so who knows what goes for here.”

It was funny how the world worked sometimes. Right now, I’d really prefer to be processing my new memory of my boss tearing himself apart in front of me. Or trying to comprehend what it meant that the gods had been arguing inside of what amounted to my head. Or the fact that the Goddess of Creation had been a financial officer for a now-defunct startup. Surely that deserved a little time for me to figure out how I felt about it.

But the needs of the moment reigned supreme, at least if I wanted to live long enough to think about those things. Somehow, the needs of the moment required me to revisit certain geo-political realities of the 1940s.

“The tank I saw was a Panzer Two tank,” I told the others. “So we’re probably going to be facing Germans. If we see their soldiers, they’ll be wearing sort of squared-off helmets. If we see soldiers with rounder helmets, they’re probably Allies. We might be able to join up with them?”

“Axel is unlikely to share our prejudices,” Borys said. “He might have arranged things so we can ally with either side… or only the German side.”

“That might be so, but I’d feel uncomfortable allying with the Nazis,” I said.

Borys nodded. “They are not remembered fondly in my nation either, but keep the possibility in mind.”

“So what do we do?” Kyle asked. “Is it going to be like the last floor, with missions and such?”

“Maybe,” I said. “WWII games tend to be simpler, with less dialoge. You get objectives you have to capture, and you kill all the soldiers that are in the way.”

I thought about trying to contact Axel, but decided against it. Getting missions from a smart phone wouldn’t have been in keeping with the theme.

“Let’s get moving,” I said, shrugging. “Let’s try and get as much information as we can before committing to anything. At least…” I looked around, up in the air, letting [Mana Sense] do it’s thing.

“At least we know which way the exit is,” I said, pointing. “So we might as well head that way. You’re our scout, Cloridan.”

He nodded, used to the role, and I cast [Greater Invisibility] on him.

“Let’s give him a bit of a lead,” I said, “and then we’ll head out.”

I eased back around the corner and found the rest of my group waiting for me.

“Nazi goblins,” I said, to the edification of only Borys, who raised an eyebrow.

“Nazi’s are Germans, right?” Felicia said.

“Some Germans were Nazis, during the war,” I said carefully. “They have distinctive uniforms. If you should happen to run into any real Germans, don’t call them Nazis.”

“That doesn’t sound very likely,” Felicia replied.

“You’ve got a Pole and an Aussie right here,” I said. “Odds seem a lot lower from where I’m standing. Anyway, there’s a patrol of them, looks like they’re doing a sweep of the street. We might want to take them before they get to us.”

“They’ve got guns?” Borys asked.

“Guns and skills,” I told him. “Uniforms, not armour, though, so they should go down pretty easy. And there’s no tanks around.”

Cloridan couldn’t say anything, as he was still invisible, but he waved to get my attention and then made a pincer gesture.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We’ll wait for Cloridan to get in position and then attack them from here. Once we’ve drawn their fire, he’ll attack them from the side.”

“Solid tactics,” Borys said. “How are we for weapons?”

Cloridan held up two machine pistols. “Cloridan’s good for his part,” I said.

“We’ve got enough guns for maybe three significant battles,” Kyle said. He was carrying most of the spare guns. “Maybe more, depending on how wild the fire gets.”

He looked significantly at Felicia and me. We were definitely the worst shots in the group, and firing on full auto had a way of making up for a lack of skill. Once you got used to the recoil, of course.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll keep the rate of fire down,” I said. I nodded to Cloridan, who headed off to find an ambush site. The rest of us got into our own ambush position.

The goblins were picking through the wreckage of one of the buildings. They were chatting to each other, and it didn’t sound scripted. That didn’t mean it wasn’t scripted, especially without any interference from the outside. For all I knew, Axel had scripted an hour-long conversation for them to have every time they thought they were alone.

The fact that it didn’t sound like German, and the way that my translation made it out to be a simpler type of speech were arguments against a script. They looked and sounded like well-dressed goblins, they probably were. Which meant that they’d kill us as soon as they saw us.

We opened fire. Borys and Kyle opened up with their assault rifles in single-fire mode, picking off the unaware goblins. Felicia and I held off for a bit, waiting to see if they decided to charge us. Machine pistols were better at shorter ranges.

The goblins appeared to have some basic safety instincts, though. They dived for cover behind piles of rubble. I cursed and switched over to burst fire. The rest of my team did the same. Now we were going to be trading fire with another group who was also behind cover.

The goblins’ weapons were loud. Much louder than our magic dart-throwers. They didn’t seem more powerful or more accurate, though. There were a few ways out of the stalemate we were in. Kyle could charge out behind his shield, we could throw a grenade, or…

The sudden slump of one of the goblins at the back heralded the arrival of a third option. The sound of Cloridan’s attacks was entirely covered by the loud racket that the goblin’s guns made. They didn’t notice a thing until it was too late.

My ears were still ringing when Cloridan waved the all-clear. We stepped out and started to loot the bodies.

“These are… normal-sized guns,” Borys said.

“I thought they looked too big on these guys,” I said, picking up my own example. “They’re all carrying… assault rifles? Did they have those in that war?

[Identification]: - Gewehr 43 - Quality: Good - Damage: 525 - Ammo: 10

“Carbine rifles,” Borys corrected. “These do look like the German ones. And look!”

He held up the rifle and demonstrated how to remove the clip. Or, rather, he demonstrated that it had a clip.

“These ones can be reloaded!” I said. He nodded.

“They should be carrying spare cartridges that look like this,” he told the others. “Grab as many as you can.”

“Much more convenient than spare guns,” I agreed. “But let’s hurry.” I suited actions to words, rifling through the goblin’s small Nazi uniform. “Those guns made so much noise that I’m worried—”

“Um, Kandis?” Felicia interrupted. “Is that the tank you were talking about, before?”

A panicked glance down the street showed that Felicia was correct. A tank, probably a Panzer—

[Identification]: - Panzer II - Threat: 24 - Properties: Armored, Ranged Attack

Yes, thank you, [Identification]— was turning down our street. It wasn’t yet facing us, but the turret was already turning, which meant we didn’t have much time.

“Everybody off the street!” I yelled, as loudly as I could while sprinting towards the nearest hole in a wall. Everyone followed me, which wasn’t the best—it was what we practised: keep the group together. My instincts were telling me that we needed to scatter. That way it couldn’t kill all of us—

I shut that line of thought down when I realised that I was counting on at least one of us dying, that I was trying to minimise the casualties. That was what you did when a tank came after you. That wasn’t an acceptable line of thinking, not anymore.

The tank had looked to be at least five hundred metres away when I’d seen it. It hadn’t had the time to cover any of that distance, but distance didn’t mean much to that gun.

The street we’d just left exploded into flames.

“Keep going! Keep going!” I yelled. There were more holes, that led deeper into the building. Some of them had been doors. Not all of them.

“We need to—” Kyle said.

“It can drive through buildings!” I yelled. “We need to not be here when it arrives!”

He blanched, took a last look out at the street, and then followed me.

“If its shots explode when they hit a wall, it won’t—”

“Borys?” I asked. He was a guy, he’d know better than me.

“Tanks have more than one type of shell,” he said quickly. “You just saw the one that explodes. There are others designed to punch through armour, which will go through walls just as easily.”

“What do we do then?” Kyle asked. “Can Cloridan sneak up on it?”

“No!” I said loudly, making sure that the shadowed form of Cloridan was close enough to hear. “Tanks don’t have eyes, so I doubt that they’re using sight to target us.”

“Didn’t you say that they were piloted by humans inside? Doesn’t that mean there’d be goblins doing the aiming?”

“Maybe…” I said doubtfully. “Doesn’t seem like it would need to be a monster in that case, or that a monster would need a pilot. But how does a living monster have wheels and a gun?”

“Magic,” Kyle said.

We were quite a way from our entry point by now, but a crashing sound indicated that the tank had not given up looking for us. The sound of a tank crashing through a wall was not one I’d heard before—movies didn’t do it justice— but it was quite distinctive.

“Let’s think about this,” Borys said. “If it is piloted, the pilots are the weak point.”

“Sure, just like regular tanks,” I agreed. “If it’s not piloted, though… has anyone ever heard of mechanical monsters?”

“Golems are non-living,” Kyle said thoughtfully. “They work pretty much like regular monsters, just with different stuff inside. There’s… living armour?”

“What’s that? I asked.

“It’s a suit of armour, animated with magic,” Kyle said. “I suppose it’s a little like an animated skeleton, only with armour instead of bones.”

“Ouch,” I said. “For those, you have to destroy enough bones or separate them enough from each other. Doing that to fifty tonnes of metal…”

“These guns do a lot of damage,” Kyle suggested.

“Yeah, basic rule of tanks,” I said. “Don’t bother shooting them with small arms.”

He frowned. “You’re saying it will have more armour than these guns can do damage. That’s a lot of armour.”

“You’re getting better at maths,” I joked.

“Let’s get back to the goblin pilot possibility,” Borys said. “We can test it.”

“How?” I asked.

“You’ve still got a few grenades, right?” he asked.

“Yeah, but I doubt they’d do much good,” I said. “Maybe if I got one in the tracks?”

“A thought to try later,” Borys said, “But you’re neglecting one of your skills. If there are goblins inside, there must be a space for them. A dark space.”

“What are you… oh.” I should have thought of that. I pulled a grenade out of my ring space.

“Be right back,” I said.