The Ganesha Campaign

This is part of a larger space opera story I've been working on for a while. 

     Jezzie went over to the shelf and examined the holoprint.  It showed Liam and two other people in Alliance Army uniforms.  One of them was a young pretty woman.  The other was Logan.  From Liam’s apparent age the print was about twenty years old.  But Logan only looked a few years younger than the man she had met earlier that day.

Leyla’s Tale (Part Six)

     I had been considering a move to the United States for some time.  After World War II many Hidden Ones moved there.  The devastation of the war in Europe made it easier to fabricate identities with no paperwork.  Just about every large concentration of European immigrants in the U.S. had a few Hidden Ones in it.

     My recent encounter with Hans Glickenhoff convinced me of the need to abandon my current identity and move on.  I had a score to settle with him but Hans held all the high cards at the moment.  I would have to wait until I had the advantage to confront him.  So it seemed the right time to make the move to the New World.  

A Hunter’s Tale

I tried to write this as a standalone story about the Hunters so it’s technically not part of Leyla’s Tale.  If you’ve read the first part of Leyla’s Tale, you’ll realize what this scene is.  If not, I recommend reading part one right after reading this.

This was Gustav’s first Hunt.  He had helped on other Hunts as a driver but this was his first time as an actual Hunter.  He was nervous and excited.  The creatures were dangerous, especially when cornered in their lair. 

Leyla's Tale (Part Five)

     The next day I was escorted to a courtroom.  Two men in dark suits and a severely dressed woman with a tight bun of gray hair sat on a raised platform at one end of the room.  I was directed to a chair placed squarely in front of and facing the judges.  Armed guards flanked the door.  The witness chair was flanked by a pair of desks.  At the desk to my left sat two men.  One was a nervous looking man who looked to be in his fifties.  He was obviously the defendant.  Next to him sat a younger man with several folders on the desk in front of him.  I wondered how much effort the advocate was putting into the defense.  On my right was the prosecutor.

     I had never met Hans Glickenhoff before but I recognized him from his photographs.  He was about the same age as Baker but looked ten years younger.  He must have been feeding on many of my kind over the years to be aging that slowly.  He gave me a predatory look as I sat in the witness chair.  I felt like I was being sized up like a side of beef.  He rose and spoke in a booming voice that filled the courtroom.

The Institution Part Two

Sorry for the long break in writing.  The real world was very demanding.  Here's the continuation of my last story.  There is a fair amount of violence so you've been warned.

The Institution

Here's something I wrote yesterday based on a writing challenge.  I hope you like it.  It's a bit violent but not too graphic.  (I'm still working on the conclusion of Leyla's adventure in East Germany.)

The New World

I'm still working on Leyla's current adventure and will post the rest of the story when it's finished.  In the meantime here's something I wrote yesterday about another young girl in extraordinary circumstances.

Leyla's Tale (Part Four)

     Baker arrived promptly at noon for our rendezvous.  He wore plain brown clothes and carried a small case.  He handed me the case.  It was full of Deutsche Mark banknotes.  I took him to an empty building near the Elbe River.  The area had still not recovered from the North Sea flood back in February and was sparsely occupied. 

     “We’ll leave tonight,” I told him.  “Try to get some rest.  It will be a busy night.”

     I went to a bank and deposited the money in one of my accounts.  Baker had paid the full amount up front.  I would have been surprised if he had not but sometimes clients try to shortchange me.  He had fulfilled his end of the deal.  Now I had to uphold my end.

Leyla's Tale (Part Three)

     I stayed in Europe for several years after the war.  Many Hunters had been Nazis or Nazi sympathizers in their own countries.  They had to cover their tracks or change identities.  We Hidden Ones were not the only ones after them.  My quest took me back and form across the Iron Curtain.  I did some cross border smuggling too.  The black market paid well and I liked the challenge.  I tried to keep a low profile but it was only a matter of time before someone noticed.

Update and Musings

The real world has been taking up a lot of time recently but I'm still writing when I have the time.  The next part of Leyla's Tale is done and will be posted Thursday (to be in line with io9's Thursday Tales). 

I've also realized that even though I call it Leyla's Tale, I haven't actually used the character's name in the story.  Leyla was the name her parents gave her when she was born.  It's the name she uses with other Hidden Ones.  But in public she's used several names and different people call her different names.  At some point I need to write a background story.  In my head I know when and where she was born as well as other details like how much the Hidden Ones age compared to humans. 

Anyway, Leyla will be back Thursday in the first part of a story set in 1960s Germany.  She gets caught up in some Cold War intrigue (more John le Carré than James Bond).

Leyla’s Tale (Part Two)

     It took many years to track down the Hunters who took my parents. 

     World War 2 slowed down my search.  Certain high ranking Nazis were Hunters and used the resources of Nazi Germany to find Hidden Ones throughout Europe.  I was part of a guerrilla band of Hidden Ones operating in occupied Europe.  We were from the younger generation, average age around a hundred years.  Being in my mid sixties (and looking like a teenage girl) put me at the younger end.  Our oldest member, Ricardo, was the leader, a dour man of two hundred.  Each one of had lived and traveled in Europe for decades and knew multiple languages.  I spoke fluent French and German and was knowledgeable in most Central and Eastern European languages. 

     Our band of Hidden hunted the Hunters.  The random violence of war and occupation provided an excellent opportunity for settling old scores.  We also found others of our kind and smuggled them out of Europe.  Because if the Hunters found them first, Hidden Ones would end up in the camp.  Besides the large camps for Jews, Roma, and other undesirables, there was a smaller, more secret camp holding Hidden Ones.  There were enough Hunters in the Nazi hierarchy to quietly set up this camp in an isolated part of Bavaria. 

     Ricardo wouldn’t even consider attacking the camp until very late in the war.  It was too well defended and we had neither the numbers nor the firepower for a direct assault.  He changed his mind in 1945 when the Allies were invading German soil from east and west.  We needed to get our people out before the Americans racing through Bavaria found the camp.  There would be too many questions about what was going on and who the prisoners were. 

     We gathered in a cellar we were using as a temporary headquarters to plan. 

     Stephan, our intelligence specialist, spoke first.  “We’ve been cautious about gathering information because we don’t want them to get suspicious.  There are about fifty prisoners inside and about a dozen guards on duty at any time.  The off duty guards have barracks there so we’ll have to deal with them too.”

     “They can’t all be Hunters,” said Katya, a blonde about my age.  I had lived with her family after my parents were taken. 

     “No, they’re not,” Stephan continued.  “As far as I can tell, the guards are simply SS troops.  I don’t think they’re aware of the special nature of their prisoners.  The camp Kommandant is another story.”  He held up a photograph of two men in SS uniform. 

     “On the right is  Sturmbannfuhrer Erich Vogler, a known Hunter.  I have confirmed sightings of him on Hunter raids all the way back to the 1920s.  He knows what we’ll do to him if we get our hands on him so expect him to fight to the death.  The other man is the camp physician, Doctor Ernst Frobicher.  As you can see, he is also an SS officer.  His presence bothers me.”

     “Why?” I asked.

     “He’s not some doctor who comes by occasionally to treat the guards.  Obviously he’s not there to treat the prisoners.”  Our kind doesn’t get sick and heals rapidly from injuries.  There was not much need for an onsite doctor to care for us.

     “He lives at the camp and has his own building there,” Stephan continued.  “There’s no record of him being a Hunter but it’s highly probably he’s the one who harvests blood from the prisoners as well as harvesting the organs of any dead.  But even that job doesn’t require him to spend so much time at the camp.  I want to know what he’s doing in that building.”

     Stephan unrolled a large sheet of paper on the central table.  It showed the layout of the camp with many of the buildings labeled with their function.  “I’ve identified the guard barracks and prisoner quarters.  I can only guess about the other buildings.  This one is probably the kitchen and mess hall.  The others are probably for storage.  We won’t know what’s in them until we raid the camp. 

     “There are four guard towers with machineguns, one in each corner between the inner and outer fences.  Each one has a clear line of side inside and outside the camp.  The towers look like they have sandbag reinforcement so taking them out will be difficult.  But as long as the Germans control the towers, they control the camp.  Eduard?”

     Eduard was our best tactician.  He was dark haired and growing a thin fuzzy beard to look older than his late teen appearance (he was more like ninety).  He lit a cigarette as he approached the table.  “We picked up a lot of equipment at that German depot we raided last week.  We’re going to need it.  This will be the kind of stand up fight we’ve always avoided.”

     “This will be a tough battle,” Ricardo said.  “The plan is risky and we will almost certainly lose people.  But the objectives are worth the risk.  We need to get our people out of there.  The Kommandant, Vogler, can’t be allowed to get away.  I want him alive if possible. He can identify other Hunters for us.”

     We worked well into the evening going over the plan, preparing equipment, and doing a quick walkthrough.  Eduard wanted another day to get ready but Ricardo was adamant about attacking as soon as possible.  The Americans were rapidly approaching and could reach the camp any day.  The next morning we moved out.

     At midmorning a Horch staff car drove up to the entry gate of the camp.  Up front were two of the older guerrillas dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms.  The gate guards would probably notice the bullet holes and bloodstains on the uniforms.  They didn’t have any identity papers to bluff the guards with either.  But the car would at least get to the gate.  The SS guards might be leery of the Wehrmacht visiting but they wouldn’t open fire on an approaching military vehicle without provocation. 

     In the back of the car Katya and I were hidden under a blanket along with two other guerrillas.  We popped up and opened fire with submachine guns when the car stopped.  All six of us scrambled out of the car and ran past the gate.  We split into two teams of three, one heading to each of the two nearest towers.  From the woods behind us machineguns opened up, laying suppressive fire on the towers. 

     I sprinted as fast as I could as bullets from the far towers struck nearby.  Katya and Mikhail, one of the uniformed guerrillas, were with me.  We reached the base of the tower.  My companions sprayed rounds at the other towers as I climbed the ladder.  I pushed on the trapdoor over my head.  It was latched from the inside.  I jumped over to one of the tower support beams.  I shimmied up until I could see through one of the openings.  I pulled out a grenade, armed it, and lobbed it into the tower.  After it exploded I crawled up and tumbled into the tower.  Both guards were laying on the floor with multiple shrapnel wounds.  I made sure they were dead then grabbed the machinegun. I let loose a long burst of fire at the guard barracks then opened fire on the next tower as Katya and Mikhail sprinted towards it.

     They were caught in a burst of machinegun fire from the tower and fell about halfway across.  I swore and poured more rounds into the tower.  The other team had taken their towers.  I saw one of them sprint towards the last tower.  With the three other towers laying down suppressive fire, he knocked out the last tower without difficulty.  I looked back and saw the rest of our band coming out of the woods and running to the entry gate. 

     I threw open the trapdoor and hurried down the ladder.  I ran over to where my friends lay.  Mikhail was stitched with bullet holes from crotch to throat.  He was clearly dead.  Katya’s legs were a bloody mess but she was alive.  Her body was already healing and she would be fine in a few days.  I ran to join the rest of my band in clearing the guards out of the camp.

     The battle for the rest of the camp was short and violent.  The guards fought as fanatically as we feared and none surrendered.  One guard had managed to get to a prisoner building and gun down everyone inside.  We found 37 of our people undernourished and weakened but alive in the rest of the buildings.   Sturmbannfuhrer Vogler took his own life rather than let us capture him.  Dr. Frobicher wasn’t present at the camp.  We found out he had left at dawn on an errand of some sort. 

     What we found in his laboratory sickened all of us.  The lab was clearly set up for medical experimentation.  There was a blood stained operating table and neatly labels jars containing various body parts filled wall shelves.  Dr. Frobicher had kept meticulous notes of his experiments in several notebooks.    

     We grabbed all the journals for later study.  They were loaded along with the freed prisoners and our casualties into trucks we had brought with us.  We were just about to light the lab building on fire when the Americans showed up.

     About two dozen vehicles, a mix of jeeps and halftracks, roared up to the entry gate and several soldiers disembarked the vehicles.  They were shouting in English and pointing their rifles at us.  None of us understood English so we pointed our weapons at them.  It was an odd picture - a group of soldiers in a standoff with a bunch of armed civilians, most whom looked to be teenage children. 

     Two of the Americans stepped forward.  One of the men was tall and lean.  Unlike the others, he didn’t wear a helmet.  He also had different patches on his uniform.  The other was dressed and equipped the same as the rest of the soldiers.  I guessed they were both officers.

     “Put down your weapons,” the tall man said in German.  “If you fought the guards then we are not your enemy.  I am Major Paul Jenkins of the Office of Strategic Services.”

     Ricardo stepped forward.  “Let us leave with the people we’ve rescued and we won’t be a problem.”

     The tall American gave us a tight smile.  “Well, that may be a problem.  I’m here to recover the prisoners for the U.S. government.  I’d also like to know what happened to Sturmbannfuhrer Vogler.”

     “The Kommandant is dead.  Like all of his kind, he was too cowardly to face justice for his actions.  But I suspect you know all about his kind, Major.  We will not turn over anyone to you.”

     “That’s unfortunate for you.  The troops with me don’t understand German.  Captain Talbert,” he gestured to the officer next to him, “will accept my version of this conversation.  I will leave here with the prisoners.  You can turn them over and leave here alive or I will have Captain Talbert’s men shoot you.  The choice is yours.”

     I took a desperate chance.  “Captain Talbert,” I called out in French.  “Can you understand me?”

     Talbert looked at me and nodded. 

     “The major wants to kill us and take these people we just freed,” I blurted out.

     Jenkins glared at me then looked over at Talbert.  It looked like he didn’t understand what I had said to the captain.  Jenkins and Talbert spoke to each other in hostile tones for a moment.  Talbert called something out to his men and turned his weapon on Jenkins.

     “I don’t know what’s going on, Miss,” Talbert said in heavily accented French.  “Major Jenkins says you’re some kind of German guerilla band.  He wants us to open fire on the lot of you.  But I’m not shooting a bunch of kids.  You’re killing German soldiers and that’s good enough for me.”

     “What are you going to do with Major Jenkins?” I asked.

     “I’ll figure that out later.  Tell your friends to leave now before I change my mind.”

     I translated for Ricardo.  His French was spotty and he hadn’t followed what was said.  We quickly finished loading vehicles.  Talbert looked upset when Ricardo set the lab on fire. 

     “Bad things were done in there.  We’re cleansing the ground,” I told him. 

     I checked on Katya, who had been loaded onto one of the trucks.  She was still unconscious but I could already see signs of healing.  I went back to the staff car and climbed in.  We rolled out of the camp past the Americans while Talbert and Jenkins were having another heated discussion. 

      Paul Jenkins was almost certainly a Hunter.  He must have had some serious support behind him to commandeer an infantry company for a private mission like that.  We were going to have to find out a lot more about Major Jenkins.

     Doctor Frobicher disappeared after the camp was liberated.  We had destroyed the evidence of his crimes at the camp but he had also been conducting medical experiments on prisoners at other Nazi camps.  Like his colleague Josef Mengele he was considered a war criminal.  We were also after him for our own justice.  His notebooks detailed experiments on Hidden Ones to determine healing ability.  Prisoners had limbs amputated to see how quickly they were regrown.  Others were subjected to increasing levels of injury to see how much they could take before being unable to heal.  The Hunters were most likely hiding him.  His knowledge of our physiology made him useful to them.  It was quite possible the Hunters were supplying him with test subjects. 

     I picked up a few leads on my personal quest during my time as a guerrilla.  After the war, I was able to follow up on them.  Katya recovered fully from her injuries.  She and many of the other members of the guerrilla band stayed in contact.  We had all lost someone to the Hunters and we helped each other track them down.  Our experiences in the war had taught us to not just hide like our kind usually did.  We were going to take the fight to the Hunters.

Leyla's Tale (Part One)

This is an expansion of something I wrote for a short creative writing challenge at io9.

Leyla’s Tale (Part One)

It used to be easier for my kind to hide.  We never stayed any one place too long so the humans didn’t notice we weren’t aging like they were.  With photography and electronic records and instant communication it’s harder to maintain the illusion.  And it’s easier for the Hunters to find us.

Introduction

Hello.  This is my site where I will post some of my writing.  I hope you enjoy and feedback is encouraged.  I can also be found at the io9 blogsite under the screen name Ghost in the Machine.