Phantasm

We were in a garage. A dark and empty garage. I guess the Germans figured they wouldn’t have much use for cars with the roads blocked off and removed them. Or… they never had any cars at all, because this was all a set piece of WWII, done in a fantasy world. If they did have cars, the goblins would have been too short to drive them.

Aside from the lack of cars, it was a very authentic garage. I could smell the same petrol and metal smells that filled every other garage I’d visited. When I cast [Light] we could see the benches of tools and the oil stains on the floor. There was even a stack of tyres in the corner.

“We’re in,” Sarge said. He sounded surprised, and I thought he might be responding to our notification as much as he was to our physical location.

“So what’s the next step,” I asked.

“We gotta do two things,” Sarge said. “Destroy all the records of the work they’ve done here, and destroy the prototype.”

He pulled out a map. For a moment, I thought it was going to be a perfectly drawn map that showed every location of interest in the compound. It was that sort of game, after all. Instead, it was a crudely drawn scrawl that could have been made by anyone who had looked at the place from the outside, like we had. All it showed was that there were four buildings on the block, arranged to form a square.

Sarge tapped the largest building on the map. That would be the pile of stone at the front.

“Administration building,” he said. “That’s where the notes will be. A nice toasty fire will take care of most of them, but there’ll be a fireproof archive somewhere, probably in the basement. We’ll have to take care of that as well.”

He tapped the next two largest buildings. They came off from the Administration building, forming two sides of the square.

“Workshops and labs,” he said. “That’s where they’re making the thing. We’ve got to find the prototype and destroy it.

“How do we do that?” I asked.

“We’ve got plenty of demo,” Sarge said. Several of the kobold privates started nodding vigorously. “The administration team will need some of it to start the fire and get into the archive, but there’s plenty left to make a big bang.”

“You want to… blow up… the atomic bomb? That sounds dangerous,” I said. I looked to Borys for confirmation.

Borys grimaced. “Blowing it up won’t detonate it,” he said. “It’s not a conventional explosive… unless it is.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, we don’t think Axel has actually cracked nuclear fission, do we? He’s going to mimic it with magic, he doesn’t have a critical mass of U-235.”

I felt a sick feeling in my stomach. “I didn’t, but now that you say it… I don’t see why he couldn’t.”

“Then… I think it’s likely that blowing up the bomb will throw up a cloud of poison. Either because he’s managed to make a working bomb, or he’s just added the poison in to make it more realistic.”

I looked at Sarge. “Won’t be a problem, sah. We’ll put a timer on and we’ll be long gone by the time it blows. Poison will just make it harder to rebuild.”

“Long gone… I like the sound of that. All right. What’s this building here?” I tapped the smallest building. The two workshops occupied the corners of the square, leaving just a small part of the final edge for this building to occupy.

“Accommodation,” Sarge said. “That’s where the boffins and the cooks live.”

“We’re not tasked with taking out the scientists as well?” Borys asked.

Sarge scowled. “I didn’t sign up to kill civilians. Like as not some of them will die in the action, but we don’t need to go around killing unarmed folks. There’ll be plenty of soldiers to fight once we get started.”

“Fine by me,” I said. “You said we were going to form two teams?”

The kobold nodded. “How do you want to split us, sah?”

“We’re staying together,” I said, pointing at my group. “If we go after the bomb, we’ll need someone for the… demo.”

Sarge nodded. “Bucky will sort that out for you, and I’ll come along to keep him in line. Pip, you take the rest of the boys and burn down that building.”

The other kobolds nodded and saluted. Then they gathered around Bucky and started loading him up with small kobold satchels. He’d been carrying a fair amount of gear to start with, but when they were done he looked a little like the Michelin man.

“You all right there, Bucky?” I asked.

“I’m fine, sir. Let’s go find that bomb.”

“Right.” I turned to leave. “No, wait, let’s do this with scouting. Cloridan…” I cast [Greater Invisibility] on him. “Go do your thing.”

Cloridan gave a credible imitation of the kobold’s salute and opened the door.

There were two goblins standing on the other side. They were already facing the door, and they were now gaping at… well nothing. The door had opened on its own as far as they were concerned. But they could see us, and they had guns.

Cloridan jumped over the guard’s heads and rolled to the side. Showing off, but it was a smart move.

“He’s clear!” I shouted as everyone went for their guns. Someone on our side was first.

Your party has killed a German Private - your experience share is 305 XP

Your party has killed a German Private - your experience share is 305 XP

Wait, was that right? I wondered. Privates were Threat 20, I recalled. That, times the level difference, times ten and times six for the number of shares I got. Divided by the size of my share should give me the number of shares…

Thanks to [Calculate] the answer came right away. Fifty-nine shares. Borys and I made twelve, my friends made another fifteen…

The kobolds were getting a share of the experience.

I didn’t have time to contemplate that fact though.

“No time to scout, we’ve got to move, sah!” Sarge shouted. No one moved though.

Oh right, I’m in the military now, and I’m in command.

“Move out,” I said, hoping I sounded more like a captain and less like Optimus Prime. The kobolds obeyed, regardless of what I sounded like, and my group fell in behind Sarge.

I cancelled the spell on Cloridan. Bullets were going to start flying and I couldn’t count on being able to direct my side to avoid him.

“Building’s three floors,” Sarge said. “We go up to the top, work our way down.”

We pushed on. We didn’t run into any trouble finding a stairwell, but once we got out onto the third floor, we started running into problems.

“Hey, what’s all that—”

“You can’t be here—”

“Ahhghh! Giant invaders!”

Most of the goblins we encountered were civilians. They screamed and ran for the most part, and we let them. A few of them tried to stand in our way. We let Borys handle them. Instead of shooting them, he could use his rifle as a club, knocking them down and out of the fight in one blow. Not dead, generally. We—well, I—got a paltry 48 XP for defeating them.

We crashed through what looked like chemical labs, physics labs and seminar rooms. We moved fast, operating under the assumption that a nuclear bomb would be pretty easy to identify. We also assumed that it wouldn’t take long for the soldiers outside to come looking for us.

We didn’t meet organised resistance until we finished sweeping the first building and tried to cross the courtyard. A bunch of goblin soldiers were forming up there, probably getting ready to charge into the building after us.

I blocked their view with a phantasmal wall. It lasted for three shots, which I thought was pretty good, but it amounted to about half a second. That was enough for us to get through the door though. Sarge and Bucky went out front, with Cloridan, Kyle and Borys firing over their heads. Felicia and I hung back, but I added in a few [Improved Blind]s when I had line of sight.

They didn’t last long.

Your party has killed a German Private - your experience share is 305 XP

Your party has killed a German Private - your experience share is 305 XP

Your party has killed a German Private - your experience share is 305 XP

Your party has killed a German Private - your experience share is 305 XP

Your party has killed a German Sergeant - your experience share is 380 XP

I was used to monsters with more hit points, I think. Or less damaging weapons? We took a few hits, but Felicia was able to heal them.

Then we were charging across the courtyard, into the other building. We found our target on the first floor.

The layout of this building matched the one we just left. This room matched up with the garage we’d arrived in—except that they’d removed the ceiling so they had more height for construction. The heavy roller doors leading outside were some evidence that this place had started as a garage as well.

They needed the room in here for the two cranes. One of them held what must be the bomb.

[Identification]: - Endkampfwaffe Prototype 002 - Quality: Perfect - Properties: Destruction

Oh no, I thought, looking at the empty crane. The fifth objective.

The bomb was suspended by the crane, hanging about four feet in the air, which was plenty of room for a goblin to walk underneath. The bomb itself was huge, about two metres wide and three metres long. It was surrounded by two levels of gantries, giving access to every part. Not that they were working on it right now.

“Everybody out!” Sarge shouted at the goblins. They stared at him, but when he pointed his gun at them, they broke and ran.

“Bucky, rig this thing to blow,” Sarge said calmly.

“On it, Sarge!”

The rest of us spread out, waiting for the next assault.

“You saw the prototype number?” Borys asked me with a worried tone.

“Yeah, we want to hope that there’s some clue here as to where it went,” I replied. “I don’t like the idea of capturing a prisoner to interrogate while we’re waiting for the bombs to go off.”

I looked around. There were papers scattered about. Axel had made it easy last time, but I didn’t see anything with a golden halo.

“We probably need to worry more about where the next wave of soldiers is coming from,” I said.

Borys nodded at the steel roller doors. “There’s only a few soldiers left in the building, but there’s a whole company out there.”

I looked uneasily at the thin steel barrier. “It seems like it would be awkward to open.”

Borys shrugged. “They’ll just blow it in with a grenade or an anti-tank weapon,” he said.

“Seems odd for the Germans to have anti-tank weapons when the tanks are German.” I groused.

“I don’t think they are German,” Borys said. “They’re more like wandering monsters. There might be some British ones out there as well. And besides, they need to have them so the gallant heroes can take them off their corpses.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “See if you can find a transportation order or something, I’ll see if we can get some advanced warning.”

With Borys’s agreement, I grabbed Cloridan.

“I need you to cut a hole in this door,” I said. “Quietly.”

“Well, that’s what darksteel was made for,” he replied, “But if they’re out there, won’t they notice the hole in the door?”

“That’s what [Static Image] is for,” I said. I cast the spell on the door.

“I don’t see anything,” Cloridan said.

“I overlaid the image of the door over itself,” I said. “Now, when you cut a hole, they won’t see it. We just have to make sure that the bit you cut out doesn’t poke through the image. Or the knife… wait.”

I cast [Greater Invisibility] on Cloridan again.

“Okay, do it,” I said.

Cloridan’s knife cut through the mild steel like butter. I winced when he held the sharp edge of the cut-out in his hand, but he was wearing gloves.

“Now poke your invisible head through and take a look,” I whispered.

He did so, taking a long look. Then he motioned me back from the door. Once were a little distance away, I cancelled the spell so he could talk.

He swallowed nervously. “It looks like there’s an entire goblin army out there,” he said.