as it came flying towards him. He stood frozen as it fizzed past him, at just above chest height.
He would have thought that it had missed him completely if it were not for the searing pain he now felt across his throat. Looking down, the Fuhrer was horrified to see blood streaming down the front of his jacket and even more horrified when he realised that it was his own. Slumping to his knees, he clutched desperately at his throat, and gurgled to the rest of the group in a desperate attempt to get help.
His unintelligible pleas, however, went unheard by the others, drowned out by the sounds of the nearby battle. Hitler reached out hopelessly with a blood-soaked hand, groping pitifully at the air, as the group moved away. Helpless and dying he stayed on his knees for a few seconds more, before falling face-first to the floor.
V
Fate Fights Back
It was Commander Braal who was first to notice that something was wrong. He had glanced over his shoulder to check if the Fuhrer was keeping pace, only to see him face down on the floor lying in a rapidly widening pool of blood. He yelled out to Gillitzer, before turning on his heels and sprinting back to where Hitler’s stricken body lay.
As he reached the Fuhrer, he rolled him on to his back, revealing the gaping wound that ran from one side of his throat to the other. Braal placed his hands over the wound in an effort to stem the flow of blood that was pumping from it with unceasing regularity. As the others got to the two of them, however, he could already feel the life ebbing from Hitler’s body.
“Bloody hell,” said Gillitzer as he reached Braal’s side, “is he going to make it?”
“I don’t think so,” replied the commander, “he’ll have bled out before we reach the Erloser”
“How, in god’s name did it happen?” asked the captain
“I don’t know,” replied Braal, “he was already down before I noticed. By the look of the wound must have caught a stray piece of shrapnel...just bad luck, I suppose.”
“Can’t we just hit him with a stasis field?” suggested Ensign Schultz, “then get his wounds treated when we get back.”
“Too risky,” said Gillitzer shaking his head, “if we return and he dies anyway, the operation will have failed. We’ll just leave him here, head back to the ship, use the quantum reversal gear and try again.”
“Good,” said Braal as he took his blood covered hands from Hitler’s throat a began wiping them on the Hitler’s jacket, “I don’t have to bother trying to save him, then.”
Once he had managed to clean of the worst of the blood, the commander got back to his feet. The four of them then started back across the grass, toward, leaving the Fuhrer lying where he was, dying and alone.
They soon passed the chancellery buildings and turned onto Goerring Strasse. The street was virtually deserted save for the odd car or troop transporter. With the Russian forces now within the city, most of its people were either in hiding or in battle.
Each of them, at some point, had spent time in Berlin, but the city, as it was now, was barely recognisable to them. In the distance, they could see thick columns of black smoke as they rose and billowed high into the air, disappearing into the bed of thick grey cloud that covered the sky. There was an ever-present smell of burning, occasionally interrupted by acrid fuel fumes or the raw stench of death.
Although Goerring Strasse had escaped the worst of the shelling, it still bore the scars of war. The buildings that ran along it had been pockmarked from a range of different munitions and the road was littered with rubble, debris and dust. Like so many of Berlin’s streets, it was slowly but surely, being pounded into submission.
Despite the death of the Hitler and the bleak devastation that surrounded them, Gillitzer and his team remained upbeat. The quantum reversal suit that they wore meant that they could return to a pre-set point in the recent past, over an hour before Hitler’s suicide. Whilst the technology had limited range, the process could be repeated several times, which meant that the group could, if needed, have multiple attempts at saving the Fuhrer.
“Next time,” said Gillitzer as they walked, “we’ll hide the guards’ bodies...stop his bloody awkward questions. I could do without that maniac pointing a gun at me. And we’ll wait inside the bunker until we hear that Katyusha volley hit. We should be okay after that.”
“What do you think Richtofen will say?” asked Braal.
“I dare say he’ll bend our ears about it,” he replied, “but when all is said and done, this is exactly why we are wearing the suits...we are in a warzone after all.”
“How many charges does the quantum generator have?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” said Gillitzer, “it should have enough for a good number of uses, but it depends on the length of the reversals. Let’s just hope we only have to use it this once.”
Seconds later, they reached the red brick wall that snaked its way around the perimeter of the Tiergarten. One by one they vaulted over it and began navigating their way through the trees and shrubs until they came to the grassy depression where they had landed the previous night. The shimmering haze that marked the boundary of cloaking field, was the only indication that the two craft were there, at all.
Passing through the surface of the field, one at a time, they were greeted by the sight of Major Richtofen, pacing up and down in front of the Turmfalke, as he impatiently awaited their return. He immediately stopped when he caught sight of Gillitzer, his eyes full of nervous expectation. The optimism on his face soon disappeared, however, when he realised that they had returned without his prize.
“What the hell happened?” he said bluntly, “Where is he?”
“He didn’t make it,” Gillitzer replied, “there was a rocket strike as we left the bunker. He was in the throat hit by shrapnel...it was just a spot of bad luck.”
“What you call bad luck, Captain,” snorted the Major as he pressed a button on his wrist console, “I call, being unprofessional. I should have known that you wouldn’t be competent enough to pull this off on the first attempt.”
As he spoke a small hatch slid open on the underside of the Turmfalke’s hull. Six steel braided cables then began to slowly descend from the opening until they had almost reached the ground.
“Thankfully, Gillitzer,” continued Richtofen, as he gestured towards the cables, “we have the means to overcome your mistakes.”
Trying his best to ignore the venom in Richtofen’s comments, Gillitzer said nothing, instead making his way straight to one of the cables. Taking it into his hand, he then plugged the end into the socket of his suit, which was discreetly tucked away in the breast pocket. Braal, Schultz and Harris, in turn, all did the same. Once they had all connected themselves, Richtofen checked that each of them was properly secured to the generator, before connecting his own suit.
“All suits active,” said the Major robotically, as he glanced at his wrist console.
“Synchronising in three, two, one,” he continued, before pressing the activation switch.
As the suits began to activate, a deep humming sound filled the air around them. The sound grew steadily louder as the quantum generator gradually built up power. Gillitzer then felt the strange prickly sensation that always accompanied the process as it drew to its climax.
Although he had used the quantum suit many times before, Gillitzer still found the sensation that it caused to be more than a little unnerving. He had once described the sensation as like ‘diving backwards out of a swimming pool’. As the process finished, he stood for a moment wincing, as he battled the inevitable dizziness that remained after one had been violently snapped back through time.
“Now, Captain,” said Richtofen after they had all regained their senses, “I trust that you will take greater care of our ‘package’ this time.”
“Yes, Major,” replied Gillitzer, “of course,”
He and his team, then unplugged themselves form the generator, and made their way over to the stretcher that lay on the grass a few metres in front of them.
Upon it, housed in a refrigerated body bag, lay the genetically engineered doppelganger of the Fuhrer, just as it was an hour previously. Once they had all positioned themselves at the corners of the stretcher, they bent down and lifted it in unison, before starting back towards the Fuhrerbunker.
At first, they retraced the exact steps of the first rescue attempt, first making their way to the Chancellery courtyard, then quickly subduing the perimeter guards, before finally getting to the bunker door. It was not until they had duped their way inside, for a second time, that Gillitzer began to make changes to their previous actions. In an effort to avoid any unwanted questions from the Fuhrer, this time Gillitzer and Braal took time to hide the stasis-frozen guards from view.
Once they had forced their way into Hitler’s quarters, everything proceeded as it had before. After they had persuaded Hitler to follow them, Gillitzer and Braal then headed back to the surface. This time, however, after meeting back up with Schultz and Harris, the group paused and waited in the bunker entrance.
Upon hearing the familiar wails of a Katyusha volley, Gillitzer looked up to the east, and watched the rockets arcing through the sky, once again. His eyes followed the flight of the rockets until they had all impacted with thunderous percussion. With the coast, seemingly clear, he then ushered the rest of the group out of their hiding place.
“That should