Rademacher salutes „Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck, pleased to meet you. We have the device here. It needs minimum setup but we will have to have it and its operators physically close“
CvLV: Very well, get in. No need to salute me.
R: I used to be in a prior organisation
CvLV: Pilot, emergency war speed. Rademacher, we’ll do the briefing in the air with everybody patched in. We don’t have time. I’ll start.
The helicopters lift off the field without regard for formation or order. We are handed headphones with intercom jacks, similar to those used in armored vehicles, helmets, gas masks, iodine pills and … dosimeters. Dosimeters? This is developing into a direction I do not like at all. I am plugged myself into internal communication.
I hear von Lettow-Vorbeck’s voice:
… the place where we are heading. The details don’t matter. The government has decided to restart all nuclear power planets which possibly can be restarted. In this case the final tests were conducted, which includes a test of the SCRAM system. This led …
OK, that is a sensible question. The SCRAM system is used to shut down the reactor in an emergency. In a full test this is coupled with a separation of the reactor from the power grid. Of course the diesels are already powered up and the instrumentation is supplied with outside electricity. In that case the energy needs to go somewhere and for a short term steam from the non-radioactive circuits is blown off. This is spectacularly loud. So much to the background.
He seems to be reading from a briefing sheet. That is not good.
CvLV: The important part is that the reactor is fully fueled and has been critical. It needs to be kept cooled. The reactor is officially in B zone, as nuclear reactors are usually built in less densely populated areas. It should nevertheless have gotten an upgrade to A zone conditions, but due to recent changes in the federal government, this seems to have been forgotten. Rademacher, if you would continue.
Rademacher: The reactor has a very small Network contingent, who did the zone B detection rituals. They were never told the schedule. There has been an additional complication. For a reason we do not understand an intrusion zone has slipped through undetected until it almost formed open doorways. The power plant has reported a loss of connection to the power grid. We currently have a nuclear power plant that needs to be cooled to prevent a melt down, is powered only by its backup diesels and is under attack by dim … - monsters from a category 3 intrusion. For some reason our contingent so far has been lucky. Possibly the monsters don’t like nuclear power. And for some reason they cannot switch the plant back on for now.
Nobody is teaching people about xenon poisoning of nuclear fuel in Network training. They do have weaknesses.
Rademacher: Our job will be to go in and stop all intuding monsters as early as possible as well as sweeping the forests around the plant. The regular army will secure the plant itself. One more thing: Ammunition expenditures are meaningless today. Fire whenever you can land a shot.
On the ground a man is speaking into a very expensive military radio:
„Are you sure you cut the wires without trace?“
„Yes. We went for additional useless cuts to make it seem like an enraged monster“
„Very well. They are close enough. No need to drive the monsters off anymore. General retreat.“
A herd of centaurs is cloaking themselves and scattering away from the vincinity of the power plant.
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--
We have been dropped into a pond to arrive as close as possible to the plant. The device is fine. Its transport crate is watertight, has flotation devices and a beacon just in case. We are dripping wet.
Rademacher: Are we still in the static phase?
P: No. Sorry, we have dynamic formation of open doorways. The intrusion is in the terminal stage.
Rademacher: Shit.
CvLV: What does that mean?
No briefing on intrusions, what a clusterfuck.
P: It means that I cannot just generate you a list of headings and distances from here and you know where to operate. The list needs continous updates and if we have shadow effects I need to move the device through the area to get all doorways. We usually don’t bother anymore at that stage and run. I know this stage only from theoretical considerations and am not competent to deal with it. I would and should have run away at the preceeeding stage.
R: That is one of the reasons I am here.
CvLV: Rademacher, can you assign them an escort? These woods are full of monsters.
R: Not quickly enough. I’ll stay here myself.
Thomas has been making a list of the static doorways. He is better at that than I myself.
--
We are walking in a ring around the plant. I must admit that besides being so scared that it does not matter anymore I am regretting leaving all those monsters Rademacher casually dispatches with his spear or even his bare hands unlooted. Powers are addictive. I am sure of that now.
Rademacher swears something foul and tosses me a honest to god wand. „Hold your fire“ he orders. The wand looks like it is made from blue plastic with a corkscrew pattern diminishing in diameter to a fine point for about half its length. „The pointy end towards the enemy. They are only category 1 but they are many.“
He is twirling his spear above our heads like a baton. The whole group ducks, though by the time we are reacting he is already firing a pistol he is holding in his other hand. I follow his example.
The air in an area surrounding us but being blown back by something is full of sparkly things. There is no better description. In some places the air is briefly turning into a mirror at so short an interval that the eye tends to turn the reflections into a path. „Mirror sprites“, Rademacher explains. „They can reflect a lot of attack forms. They are rare, very rare.“. Us having eliminated about a quarter of them the rest flees.
All the while von Lettow-Vorbeck is getting radio reports, giving orders and manipulating a map on a tablet. This man either has nerves of steel or is on drugs.
Rademacher does not object as I store the wand
Ulrike has almost shot a group of special forces soldiers come to escort von Lettow-Vorbeck to a command post, so only us and Rademacher are left. That is Rademacher is hopping from tree trunk to tree trunk attacking a group of floating golden rings shooting bolts of force at us. We have taken shelter behind a toppled tree and are trying to keep them from surrounding us by firing at those who try to go around Rademacher. We don’t do visible damage, neither do they. To us at least. The tree is not salvageable anymore. „I have no idea what those things were“, he admits to us.
--
We have lost our communications guy to a swarm of flying, translucent pairs of sickles attached to each other on their handles. The human body contains a lot of blood, which is released if a body is sufficiently finely sliced. Now we know what that buzzing sound means.
On the plus side three Network fighters have joined us.
We are fighting an elongated octahedron shimmering blue. It projects a defensive screen of solid white light in the shape of a soccer ball. Bars of solid light form the polygons characteristic of such a ball. Bullets pass through, but Rademacher’s spear does not. It fights by means a five distinct sets of crab claws surrounding it in ellepises it shapes to reach its targets. As it and Rademacher have fought each other to a standstill, we have a stationary target and as we have used up the majority of our ammunition it starts to develop cracks.
Both crumbling halves of the octahedron separate and smash together again, obliterating themselves.
We see a blue flash for a brief moment obscuring all visual perception. Then our long forgotten dosimeters start beeping. The dragon has been tickled once too often. Mine shows a flashing red number: 10 100
This instrument counts in miliSievert. That means 10.1 Sievert of exposure.