Post by LUDMILA ILYUKHIN on May 15, 2011 11:27:04 GMT 1
1943 JANUARY 5TH
Ludmila felt very small in front of the massive statue. The Motherland Calls, representing a woman brandishing a sword, had been built in the sixties as a memorial commemorating the Soviet victory at Stalingrad. Ludmila stood out among the other veterans present there. They were all old now, whereas Ludmila was still young-looking and fresh in appearance. Despite this, she was wearing her old uniform and all her medals, and had all the poise of someone who had actually fought in Stalingrad. Her expression was even more solemn than usual as she contemplated the large statue.
Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Ludmila?"
She turned around and recognised a man she knew all too well. Valentin Krylov. Ludmila's usually cold and severe expression was suddenly replaced by a genuine smile, and a twinkle in her eyes. She embraced the old and slightly stooped man like she would an old and very dear friend, for that was what Valentin was.
"-God, Valentin. I'm so happy you came", said Ludmila.
"-Why would I not come?", said Valentin with a laugh. "You're the only other person from the Unit who's still alive."
"-True...true...", said Ludmila. She and Valentin had been through hell back in World War Two. They had participated in classified missions from Stalingrad all the way to Berlin, combating the Nazi's attempts at reversing the tide of the war on the Eastern Front through occult means. They were members of the Special Intervention Unit, whose task was to counter any "special threats" posed by the Nazis. All of the Units members had either died in the war or of old age, so only Ludmila and Valentin remained. Soon enough, only Ludmila would be left, since Valentin had heart problems and had already been hospitalised. Ludmila preferred not to think of that.
"-Still remember Stalingrad?", asked Valentin, looking up at the statue.
"-How could I forget it? I still have nightmares about it sometimes", said Ludmila, her eyes taking on a far away quality as she looked away from the statue and at the grassy hill it was built on. Her memory took her back, back to the dark days of 1942...
...another explosion shook the crumbling ruins of the city of Stalingrad. The ominous whistle of artillery shells was almost always audible, like a hellish psalm of death destined to the Soviet soldiers who crawled, fought and died in the rubble. Winter had come, and snow was falling, covering the blasted earth with a dirty white blanket from which rubble and twisted, broken and frozen bodies poked. The Luftwaffe still ruled the skies, sinister eagles of steel that rained death and destruction onto the abused city.
The Unit was behind enemy lines, armed and ready for combat. Alarming reports of special units of the Werhmacht, most notably the Schwarzes Truppen, the armoured elite of the SS. Their presence on the battlefield could only mean one thing: the Nazis were up to something, and said something could only be bad for the Soviet war effort. The Soviets were aware that the Nazis had been feverishly pursuing the occult in order to gain an advantage in the war they were fighting in Europe and North Africa. The Unit's objective here was to find out what the Nazis were up to, and disrupt it. It was a dangerous mission, but a necessary one. Who knew what the Nazis would do if they were not stopped?
The Unit had managed to sneak past the patrols and were now only a few metres away from where the SS was. Ludmila was, with a few others, hiding behind a collapsed wall. She had a PPSh sub-machine gun, a Tokarev TT-33 pistol and a belt of grenades, and she had a feeling that she would be using those soon. The SS present before them had placed a heavy metal coffin on the ground, in the centre of a pentagram. Much to the Unit's horror, several prisoners were killed, and their blood was collected in a ceramic bowl and poured onto the coffin while other men clad in black intoned a lugubrious chant in some archaic language.
"They're trying to bring something back to life", said the Unit's occult expert, professor Anton Dimitrov."Although what it is...I have no idea."
"-I don't care about what they're trying to revive, Anton, the fact is that they're trying to obtain a weapon to fight us and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat."
Ludmila grabbed her PPSh and shouted: "URRA! POBIEDA!"
Before any of the Nazis could react, she and the rest of the Unit had leaped over the collapsed wall and had opened fire on the enemy. Several chanters fell dead, and orders were barked in German.
"-Continue the ritual!"
Ludmila grabbed a grenade and pulled the pin off before lobbing it in the direction of the dark ceremony. As the grenade hit the ground, the Schwarze Truppen moved in and opened fire on the Unit. Bullets flew, and Ludmila felt a painful sting on her shoulder as a bullet grazed her skin. She ran to the side, spraying the Schwarze Truppen with bullets. Their heavy metal armour easily deflected her shots, and she was forced to seek cover as they retaliated. She lobbed another grenade at them, and was satisfied to hear a muffled shriek of pain over the blast. She then re-emerged from cover, slamming a new magazine into place, and opened fire on the enemy once more.
"-Stop the ritual!", she shouted above the din of battle. She took aim at the chanters and opened fire, gunning two of them down. However, her slaughter of the ritual's participants was brutally interrupted when she saw a black object come slicing through the air towards her. She barely avoided getting cleaved in half by a massive black blade that slammed into the ground with a loud clang, cutting right into the concrete. Ludmila looked up and saw a hulking, armoured figure. A nightmare Nazi knight with an armoured gas mask for a helmet and a white swastika on its breastplate. The figure paused as it briefly removed its helmet to reveal the scarred face of a blue-eyed and blue-haired German in his thirties.
"-AH! Ludmila Ilyukhin, the Soviet's pet siren! Finally we meet."
"-Gerhardt von Himmelstoss", said Ludmila.
"-I was given the mission of securing victory for the Reich in the East, miss Ilyukhin", boomed the armoured man, "and I will not let a pathetic creature such as yourself stop me! Prepare to die!"
With that, Himmelstoss put his helmet back in place and swung his sword at Ludmila. The Rusalka threw herself aside, avoiding death by an inch. As she got up, she fired her PPSh into Himmelstoss' face, only to see the bullets ping harmlessly off his helmet.
"Ha! You cannot do anything against me, fraulein. My armour is proof to all your weapons!"
Throwing the now useless PPSh aside, Ludmila sprinted away from Himmelstoss, drawing her TT-33 out of its holster before firing several times at her pursuer. Again the bullets ricocheted off Himmelstoss. Himmelstoss bore down on her like a freight train, and slammed her aside, sending her flying into an old cement column. She fell to the ground, winded and in pain, only to see her foe coming towards her, ready to cut her in half with his sword.
"It's the end, Bolshevik scum", said Himmelstoss, raising his sword. "Behold the triumph of the Aryan race!"
And with that, he swung. Ludmila ducked and rolled aside, and the sword smashed into the column, breaking it. There was an ominous crack before the heavy edifice lost its fight with gravity, and it began to topple. There was a scream of anger as the column crashed onto Himmelstoss, smashing the articulations of his precious armour and pinning him in place. Limping, Ludmila approached the trapped Nazi agent, allowing herself to smile triumphantly.
"-So, comrade Himmelstoss, how's your armour now?"
"-Judeo-Bolshevik scum! Filthy banshee!", spat Himmelstoss.
"-Tut tut tut, you are in no position to talk. Oh! By the way..."
Ludmila took a packet of chewing gum from her coat pocket. It had been generously donated to her by an envoy of the USA, and she had never used it. Now she took a good portion of it and began to masticate.
"I discovered bubble gum the other day", she said. "Very interesting thing. Could have many military applications..."
Ludmila grabbed two grenades, took the chewing gum out of her mouth and stuck onto the explosives. She then stuck the two grenades on Himmelstoss' neck and walked away.
"-THIS IS NOT OVER, ILYUKHIN! WE WILL MEET AGAIN, AND I WILL CRUSH YOU! I-"
His insane rant was brutally cut short when the two grenades exploded. Ludmila slumped slightly, feeling pain and exhaustion overcome her. She'd probably broken a couple of ribs when she'd hit that column.
"I'm going to be sore in the morning...", she grumbled. Judging from the carnage where the ritual had been taking place, said ritual had been stopped. She saw the bodies of several members of Unit amongst the destruction, but also those of the Schwarze Truppen. She limped back towards the metal coffin and the rest of the Unit.
"Right! Get your shit together, secure the perimeter, and cart off that fucking coffin before the Krauts get here", she barked in a hoarse voice. "I have a feeling they'll be trying to get it back..."
Ludmila looked around her. It was late evening, and darkness had fallen. The distant clatter of a machine-gun was audible, as well as the ominous rumble of artillery. Whatever was in that coffin, the Nazis needed it, and they would come after it. The Unit needed to get moving.
And fast.
