Jacob looked intensely at Hanna Schiller, the Nazi Ace Pilot of Eisenhelm with whom he had teamed up. They were still deciding exactly what they would do next. At that point, Ling was on her way up the Pillbox ladder in order to prepare for the attack on C3-DZ-A1, while Vallnam was meditating in the elevator shaft one level beneath C3-DZ-A1, preparing for Zero-Hour. Hans and Nick, the two best technicians Eisenhelm had to offer, had madly made their way to Level 7 of the Science Center out of sheer and foolish curiosity. Nick had picked the lock, which was quite difficult as there had been a containment mechanism attached to the door that would have electrocuted them both to cinders, but the power had been turned off in the building, and so he only needed to bypass it for the door to open. It took him a few seconds. He was the number one expert at this task, which had earned him the nickname "locksmith". The lock clicked, and Nick put his tools quietly away. Hans slowly pushed the laboratory door open. Nothing moved, except the thin veil of mist that covered the floor. Inside the dark chamber they observed by the thin green beams of their flashlights a circular white tub filled to the brim with a greenish liquid that bubbled every few seconds. It was positioned in the center of the white tiled room. On the far side was a massive steel mirror that took up most of the wall. Nick watched in heart-racing terror as his courageous companion stepped gingerly into the room shining his flashlight in all directions, and then settling on the tub. The liquid bubbled, and there was a ripple across the surface as the greenish mist rolled over the rim of the tub onto the floor. The two Technicians were never seen again.
Meanwhile Jacob was looking into Hanna's beautiful ice-blue eyes, and thought about the situation carefully. The problem was that she had ordered her men to switch the power coupling from Hanger B back to the Science Center in order to, hopefully, give the scientists time to re-secure whatever it was that might be escaping from containers within the various laboratories. The problem with this, of course, was that de-coupling power from Hanger B would strand the technicians working within and stop them from pursuing the goal of repairing the UFOs. They were working diligently under Vallnam's instructions, and had seized on a tiny sliver of hope that they might escape from the seriously disintegrating Eisenhelm. He suggested that her Nazi Squadron could take care of whatever came out of the Science Center, but she seemed to believe that they would have no chance of survival. Jacob vaguely wondered about what kind of monsters lurked within the Science Center that could be so lethal, but he drew a blank. Hanna's eyes revealed nothing other than absolute certainty.
Within, however, her thoughts betrayed conflicting goals, and she was silently trying to work out what path had the greater odds of success. One was to escape Eisenhelm in the UFOs as Jacob had mentioned. Then there was the other possibility that Jacob suggested, which was his plan to somehow stop the Giant Nuclear Missile Robots before they finished destroying the magnificent Nazi fortress. The first possibility had a clear and immediate path, which deviated from Jacob's in only one detail. She wanted to get to Shadow Hawk, the mysterious and incredible spaceship of questionable origin that she had been test piloting with Melitta Riecht for several months since it had been discovered by Ludendorf's team of Lunar Miners. Needless to say its discovery came as a complete shock. It implied, though there was no direct proof, that some other group had made the moon a base of operations in secret. Only a select few had been informed of the discovery. Hanna suspected that Ludendorf was on his way there to meet Melitta and escape into space before Eisenhelm was melted down. She had decided to intercept them and gain entry to that flight. Hence her squadron of Commandos had been leading the way there when she discovered the power in Cavern 8 had been turned off somehow. She had been investigating with the scientists in the Science Center when she discovered how grave the situation actually was. They sent her out with one of their members to divert the power back to the Science Center with the assurance that failing to do so would release "untold horrors" onto the surface of the moon.
However, once they got into space, what then? As soon as "The Phalanx" arrived at Earth it would obliterate the last remaining vestiges of human civilization there and blanket the planet in ultra-lethal radiation, exterminating all life on Earth once and for all. In addition, Eisenhelm was being destroyed by a smaller force of Giant Nuclear Missile Robots known as "The Obliterators", and so the fortress would soon cease to exist as well. So where would they flee to in Shadow Hawk? She had no idea, except one. There did happen to be a small base on the far side of the moon that had been occupied for a time, but was now deserted. There would be air, and food, and supplies there. Perhaps that's where Ludendorf and Mellita had planned to go?
It was the old Red Mercury Mine that had originally been Admiral Ludendorf's Ace-in-the-Hole, and due to which his fleet of 1000 UFOs would have manifested. How glorious that would have been! And all had gone well there, until the miners one by one went insane and killed each other in the most brutal ways imaginable. She'd seen the magnetic tape recordings. It had been a nightmare from which she never quite awoke.
The mine closed after that, and since then no one dared travel to the far side of the moon at all. And this was why they wound up with only twenty UFOs, instead of the Thousand Ship Fleet that Ludendorf had planned. To Ludendorf's unending frustration General Hertling had somehow predicted this, and once that happened his own Giant Nuclear Missile Robot Army became far more popular and successful. Ludendorf clenched his teeth and fists every time he thought of it. The problem for Hertling, however, was that his forces put everything they had into their construction and maintenance, but there never was a practical use for his doomsday machines. After all, they were designed to end all life on Earth and the moon. Not exactly practical. And so they had sat idle for decades, requiring vast amounts of ongoing maintenance, but never to any discernable purpose. His command had begun to suffer a sense of disillusionment over time.
And so both the Grand Admiral and the Major General had been stymied, and neither of them would admit it. The entire socio-political structure of Eisenhelm had slowly decayed as a result. The long slow slide to disintegration suddenly seemed to Hanna to have been inevitable. And yet she was not the kind to despair for one second. She sought a way out. And so she was heading to Shadow Hawk, and the first step was through the Bay Door of Hanger B, which happened to be the straightest path to her goal. Otherwise she would have to double back through moonquake rattled tunnels and access the Shadow Hawk Control Center through the White Tunnel system, if possible. Better, she thought, to re-route the power and open the door from the outside. There was after all a manual override lock next to the gigantic bay doors, but they required power to operate. Had she been a technician, however, she would have known the trick that Hans had used to gain entrance to Hanger B. But she was not, and so she did not. Nor did any of her Commandos, nor even the scientists, who after all would never sully their hands with technician's work unless they absolutely had to. Only a top technician like Hans would have known that trick. At any rate, Hanna's plan had been to gain entrance to Hanger B in order to get to Shadow Hawk, and if in the process she managed to provide a means by which the scientists could save their rotten lives for a few extra minutes by re-securing whatever monstrosities that had been released, so be it. They'd all be dead soon afterwards regardless. She was leaving Eisenhelm. "Good riddance!" she thought suddenly.
But now this plan had been suddenly altered by a new possibility. One that stood out as far better, were it only truly possible, and not some diabolical distraction. But she felt that Jacob was telling the truth. She didn't know why she felt that way. No one in Eisenhelm ever told the truth. But his voice sounded so sincere. It was hard to believe. And yet there it was. She trusted him. Even though she knew he was lying! And she was both terror stricken and hugely relieved by the idea at the same time. This was a girl with significant conflicts going on behind those beautiful icy-blue eyes.
"So you know a vay to stop zee robots, Ja?" she asked in her crisp High German.
"Yes," answered Jacob.
Hanna grabbed him by the collar. "How?!"
"Well, we have access to the Robot's master control room," answered Jacob, but Hanna found this highly improbable. She couldn't imagine how anyone under Ludendorf's Command Hierarchy could possibly have gained access to the pass-keys and codes necessary to gain entrance to General Hertling's Primary Command Center. It didn't make any sense!
"Only General Hertling could provide access to zee control room!" she said with a steely intonation, now suspecting she should simply shoot Jacob between the eyes and get on her way to Shadow Hawk.
"Well we do," he said. "Like I told you, I'm Special Forces," he added.
"None of our people have access to Hertling's infrastructure. It seems impossible," she said eying him suspiciously.
"I told you, I'm Special Forces. I have acquired access to it," he asserted again.
"Acquired access..." she repeated incredulously.
"Discretely," he added.
"You stole it?!"
"Are you really going to object to it at this point?" he asked in amazement.
"I need to know that I can trust you," she replied. "How did you get it?"
"I won it," he said.
"You beat zee General in cards?! How did you even get into zee game?!"
"No, I didn't say that," he answered with a grumble. "I said I won it. And I won it honorably," he added.
"What proof do you have?" she asked with a mocking edge, nearly convinced the answer was a bullet through the forehead. But he just stared it her. He had already broken through her defenses by striking at her vulnerabilities: her jealousy of Melitta and her fear of dying along with everyone else in Eisenhelm. He was her knight in shining armor, and she wanted to believe. And so she did.
"You have zee access code?" she asked finally.
"Yes, I have the access code," he reassured her. "We have set up a breach, and we have twelve minutes and counting to get there. It will take about one minute to get to the Pillbox from here at a flying sprint. I should get going," he said.
Hanna made some quick calculations. She had eight loyal Nazi Commandos, and one scientist. The scientist and two Commandos were in the Power Coupling Station working on diverting the power back to the Science Center from Hanger B. The other six Commandos were with her. She estimated from what the scientists told her that whatever monstrosities were escaping from their containment chambers, they were likely to break out within the next few minutes if the power was not restored by then. Twelve minutes.
"You four," she said to pointing to her Commandos, "vill come with me. You two," she said pointing to the remaining men, "go to zee power station and protect zee scientist."
"Hold on a second," said Jacob, "if your guys switch the coupling then you're going to disable the technicians working on the UFOs, right?"
Hanna felt that the technician's efforts were a fools errand. Those old derelict UFOs in Hanger B could not be repaired in time. But she was not a technician, she was a pilot, and she decided there might be a hope that some of the UFOs could be repaired. She thought about it for one second. She considered sending the scientist and the four Commandos to help the technicians inside Hanger B. But the way was blocked because there was apparently a pile of derelict UFOs bracing the bay door closed. Vallnam had seen to that. Hanna knew that because the Scientists had told her a band of Technicians had entered the cavern and slipped into the Hanger after diverting the power. When they released the Doom Spheres the Technicians sealed the door behind them and nothing was going to get through.
"So how are you planning to get into Hanger B. The door is sealed," she remarked.
"Um. Well, that was set up by Vallnam," he said, fumbling for an answer to a very salient question. "I'm not sure what we're going to do about that, frankly. Maybe it won't be necessary - if we take out the Robots."
Vallnam, meanwhile, was listening in on the radio transmission while meditating. He was trying his best to focus so that he could accumulate enough mystic energy for the battle ahead. So he said nothing and continued to focus. Good man.
"If you can't give me a vay to get into zee Hanger then I might as well turn on zee power to zee Science Center," said Hanna. "So if you vant to trust zee technicians to get zee UFOs into space, it is fine. But you either provide access to Hanger B, or I switch the power over. Vhat vill it be?"
"We need to use the crane inside to move the UFOs that are piled up against the door," replied Jacob.
"Zhere is not going to be enough time for it," replied Hanna. "Zee monsters inside zee Science Center vill not wait. Vee have maybe a few minutes, no more."
Jacob tried to radio into the Tech's channel and find out what their progress is. But he didn't have the frequency that Vallnam had been using to communicate with his team. It was another crucial oversight. Vallnam was busy meditating, and Jacob understood that, and so he didn't want to interrupt him. He thought furiously.
"Do your thing," she said.
He considered blowing up the door. He needed explosives. Hanna's Commandos probably had access to explosives, he thought to himself. Hanna was watching him closely. He was taking too long to decide. She decided for him.
"Vee vill evacuate zee Science Center and all move to zee Pillbox for zee attack. If vee can gain access and your self-destruct code for zee robots vorks vee vill not need zee UFOs, you are right. If it does not vork vee can take zee secret tunnel from C3-DZ-A1 to zee Secret Shadow Hawk Hanger and escape. You and me! Jah!"
She looked up at the green glass on the seventh floor of the Science Center where the handful of scientists were anxiously waiting for her to divert the power so that they could reactivate the containment units. She would evacuate them all. She got on the radio and flipped the frequency to the Science Center radio.
"Achtung!" she announced into her mic. "Herr Nachtnebel! Come in!"
The reply was a disturbing mix of screaming, hideous gurgling noises, splintering bones and what sounded perhaps like splattering entrails, possibly. She noticed several spots of dark splatter on the green windows and turned the switch back to Jacob's frequency. She looked a little pale.
"Vee have to go now," she said in a quite whisper, turning away from the Science Center to look at him. She switched the frequency to her Commandos. "Stop zee vork on zee power coupling! It is too late for zee Science Center. Come here immediately. Vee are going!"
Three flashlight beams were seen emerging from the Power Coupling Station at a run and began traversing the cavern towards them.
"Do you have explosives?" asked Jacob. "Perhaps we can cave-in the tunnel entrance and buy us some time."
"Ja! Good idea," she said. "My men have explosives enough for zee job. However, I need two minutes. You go ahead and lay zee charges. I vill catch up vith you! You men follow zee Doom Spheres and vait for me. You two lay zee charges!"
Not far away was the abandoned Military Complex at the southern end of Cavern 8, in which there happened to be a single prisoner. Hanna would not, and could not leave him behind. It had been her plan all along to bring him with her. He was extremely important. She ordered two of her Commandos to come with her as she ran to the dark and abandoned Military Complex to secure her prisoner.
She made no attempt to explain herself, but did take a moment to order the Doom Spheres to take a position in the tunnel five hundred feet east of PillBox C3-PB-A1 and wait there for her as she ran with light bounding steps followed by two of her Commandos. The Scientist and the two Commandos from the Power Coupling Station arrived and followed after the Doom Spheres on Hanna's radioed orders as she bounded away.
The tunnel was filling with smoke from Cavern 7 and the ground was trembling. From that position they could see up the north branch tunnel towards Staff Operations Center 4. A quick glance down its length showed that through the dust cloud the tunnel had caved-in. It was completely blocked. Jacob caught sight of an arm sticking out of the rubble but it was unmoving. Ahead of them to the west, on the side of the tunnel wall they could make out through the haze Pillbox C3-PB-A1, about fifty feet up on the wall, and reachable by a metal ladder. Beneath it were two gimbled machineguns. The slit windows shone dimly with red light but they could not see inside from that angle.
Further up the tunnel the silhouette of a monstrous Giant Nuclear Missile Robot stood out out against the fiery glow behind it. It suddenly discharged a searing scarlet Energy Beam from its cyclopean eye-slit deep into Cavern 7. There was an enormous flash of yellow light which Jacob presumed was the detonation of Military Complex 7. The smoke billowed into the tunnel and the ground shook so that rocks and sheets of dirt fell from the ceiling. Then the giant robot slowly turned toward the main tunnel. It was a full thirty feet tall, had dark gray armored skin, and on its shoulders they could make out various weapons arrays. Its fists were clenched into giant wrecking balls. The scientist muttered under his breath as he zoomed in on the robot with his Eye-Lens, "Zee Duridium plating has not a single scratch on it! Vundervoll!"
When Hanna got to abandoned Military Complex 8 she found, as per usual, the main door was dangling open on one hinge and broken glass was scattered across the steps leading up into the squat pentagonal three story solid steel building. She and her two Commandos entered the dark entrance hall, and shone their flashlights forward. The walls were scored with scorch marks and there were bullet holes in the thick glass windows that lined the hall. The famous Battle of the Wolf Brigade had taken place here. Some space suits riddled with holes lay on the ground in the frigid airless moon cavern. There was no movement, and dust covered everything except a small path along the floor. According to all personnel this complex was abandoned. However, among Eisenhelm's many secrets was the fact that Military Complex 8 was not actually as abandoned as it seemed. She went through another broken door, down a corridor passing a number of doors, most broken in, some not, turned left, and found a locked door. She opened it with her pass-key. There was a stairwell going up and down. They went down one flight and through a series of passage ways. They came to a solid metal door with a slit window, which was illuminated. A gimbled machinegun had been tracking them as they came down the corridor. Hanna stopped and flashed her metallic key-pass and looked squarely at the glass window.
Inside was a sardonic old sourpuss named Corporal Klaus Himmelstein, who never lost his Most-Bored-Member-Of-The-Human-Race expression, ever. He'd been guarding the prisoner for many years by now, as that had become his one and only job in Eisenhelm and he intended to to his job well. His orders had been "Never speak to the prisoner. Do not let him escape. Make sure he stays fed, and don't let him die." In fact, he'd done a near perfect job for all those years.
When he saw the Key-Pass Assessor Light flicker green on the panel he moved back from the machinegun control and snapped to attention. He walked crisply to the door and gazed at Hanna's eyes through the glass. There was a small chamber between the two doors. Klaus snapped his heels and provided the standard Nazi salute, all without changing his expression in the slightest. He recognized her, of course, but didn't move a muscle to open the door. Not until she responded with her reciprocating salute. She saluted in kind, and only then did he pressed the red button which unlocked the outer door with a dull hiss. There was an airlock for her to go through.
"Corporal," she ordered, "I am here to relieve you of your duty. You vill secure zee prisoner. Vee are leaving in two minutes exactly." The ground trembled again as she finished her sentence, as if to emphasize the urgency of her order.
"Ja," said Klaus as he began the process of unbinding the prisoner from the wall and putting him in a bright yellow prisoner space suit. The prisoner himself was gaunt, with deep brown eyes, long stringy grey hair, and a slight smile on his boney face. He also never seemed to lose that expression. In this sense, he and Klaus were a like two rival peas in a pod.
It took one minute for Klaus to put the prisoner into an emergency space suit, and get his wrists cuffed. The prisoner offered no resistance. After that Klaus stayed behind him and they all made their way through the Military Complex labyrinth and back out into Cavern 8, with Hanna in the lead, and the Commandos following up in the rear. Off to their right they could see a few large and disquieting flashes of green light from the upper three stories of the Science Center. The windows silently shattered outward but they did not stop to watch. They bounded as fast as they possibly could toward the tunnel entrance.
As soon as they passed into the tunnel the two Commandos there waited for them to get clear and then pressed the detonator plungers. They all bounded westward towards Pillbox C3-PB-A1. Behind them the explosive charges ignited and their was a bright flash of light along the tunnel walls. Rocks and debris sailed through the vacuum from behind them, but no one was injured. It was a perfect demolition. The tunnel cave-in completely sealed the entrance with tons of rock and rubble. Whatever was emerging from Science Center 7 was no longer their problem. Those poor technicians in Hanger B, however, might not be as lucky. They ran down the tunnel towards Pillbox C3-PB-A1. It would take them another minute to get there.
Meanwhile, the Giant Robot was now lumbering into the tunnel from Cavern 7. It was moving slowly, and appeared to be searching for stragglers of the Nazi forces that had tried to ward it off from the Cavern 7 Military Complex. When it spotted a soldier scrambling among the rocks machinegun fire from its shoulder mount riddled the target so that it suddenly danced along like a crimson splattered marionette, and then lay on the ground in a disjointed heap. There was a lot of smoke in the tunnel so it was hard to see clearly, but their impression was that there were a number of soldiers still trying to escape into the tunnel. Bad for them, but good for our heroes as it would buy them a little more time.
"I'll need to explain things before you come up, so stay here and wait for my signal," radioed Jacob to the Commandos that had come forward with the Doom Spheres. He went ahead and climbed the ladder to the Pillbox, opened Hatch 1, slipped inside, operated the airlock as he had learned to do from Hans earlier, and then opened Hatch 2 and peered inside.
The Pillbox interior was illuminated by a lurid red light, and there he saw Ling backed up against the wall, her hands in the air. Looming over her was the ever resourceful Captain Helmund, who had apparently woken up and escaped his bonds. In fact, he'd woken up before Ling had returned from Cavern 8, effected his release with the sturdy straight dagger he always had sheathed in his boot, and after retrieving his Luger pretended to still be sleeping and bound to the post with steel wire... until she came close enough. He lunged at her and easily karate chopped her Lewiston out of her hand. She was helpless and without enough Mystic Energy to even try to put him to sleep again. She had a fierce expression on her face as Helmund leered at her menacingly. She was not planning to surrender easily to the brute.
Fortunately, at the moment Helmund's back was to the airlock. In his fascination with Ling, the ferocious Captain made one mistake. He did not turn around at the faint sound of the airlock opening to see Jacob emerging. Such was the power of Ling's incredible beauty that despite his decades of relentless training and ruthless experience, at the crucial moment when it mattered most, he was distracted by the pretty girl. Such is life!
Jacob, assessed that firing his Lewiston inside the Pillbox would easily bore a hole straight through Helmond, and just as easily then bore a fist sized hole through the Pillbox wall. This of course would cause an explosive decompression which would likely kill Ling who was not wearing her helmet. He also found that the tight space in the airlock would not allow him to get his New Model Combat Rifle out of the holster on his back and into position to take a shot in time. So he silently slid his machete out from its sheath and sprang at Helmund from behind!
Helmund was wearing an armored space suit, without the helmet, while Jacob was wearing his (long forgotten Modroni) purple bubble environmental suit with riot armor over it. Jacob lunged from behind with his machete, but Helmud saw his movement reflected on a glass panel and the experienced war-dog stepped slightly to the side. The blow landed on a weak spot between the joints of his armor, but his evasion caused the machete to only puncture through enough to wound but not disable the Nazi Captain. The two faced each and Helmund pointed his Luger at Jacob's stomach. Seeing as his smaller opponent was armed with only a machete, the Captain smirked. For one such as Helmund, shooting Jacob would provide a hollow victory. His reputation for honorable kills was legendary. He tossed his Lugar to the ground and unsheathed his straight dagger from the side of his boot. The two warriors circled one another like tigers.
The battle was brutal. Helmund's combat experience was profound, and knife fighting was one of his proficiencies. His metallic armor was designed to absorb bullet damage so it was very hard for Jacob to get through with a machete. Nevertheless, Jacob was a vicious adversary, more agile, and had an equal level of expertise to Helmund in the art of knife fighting. The two men stabbed at each other many times, often missing or glancing, but now and then drawing blood. Helmund got in a good slashing attack at Jacob's left arm cutting him deeply. He grinned at his opponent, taunting him. Then Jacob, infuriated, leaped suddenly and with expert precision rammed his machete between two plates of Helmund's armor, and the Captain went down on one knee. It was not enough. Helmund quickly got up again and continued fighting viciously as ever.
As the men were fighting, Ling had been stealthily moving around the side in order to get to Helmund's Lugar. She picked up her Lewiston along the way, but knew that firing it inside the Pillbox would be a fatal mistake.
Finding himself wounded and fighting a wily and unexpectedly skilled adversary, Helmund looked for a way to take Jacob down quickly and put an end to the fight. Ling, however, achieved her objective before Helmund noticed what she was doing, grabbed the Lugar and pointed it at him. She wanted to avoid shooting because a bad shot or ricochet risked penetrating a window and causing explosive decompression of the Pillbox which would have killed them. She demanded he surrender, shouting "Stop or I'll shoot!" but the Nazi Captain would never surrender in a million years.
Ling took the shot. The bullet pierced the armor into Helmund's thigh, but this was not quite enough to bring him down. Now he became like a wounded animal, and Ling suddenly became his primary target. Forgetting his own wound, Jacob leapt at him with his machete in order to protect Ling from the Captain's savage retaliation.
Meanwhile, not terribly far way, Vallnam was sitting on the floor of the glossy white-walled elevator in a lotus position with one hand over his heart chakra and the other resting on one knee in the Guyan Mudra position. He was focused on accumulating Mystical Energy so that he would have at least a few options when it was time to attack. Through half slitted eyes, however, he noticed that a circle on the elevator door was slowly darkening. It gradually turned an interstellar black and began to seethe. He did not break concentration and continued to stay with his meditation regardless. He calmed his heart and mind in order to stay focused.
Helmund and Jacob grappled, and slashed at each other's armors without effect several times, and Jacob had managed to keep between Helmund and Ling. Both of men were severely wounded, but Jacob had the worst of it. He wasn't going to be able to keep fighting this way for long. "Shoot damn it!" he shouted.
Ling shot again, but the bullet ricocheted off Helmund's armor. Jacob reeled dizzily from pain, but still managed to block Helmund from getting at Ling. Her next shot penetrated square-on, and this time Helmund was brought to his knees. His dagger dropped from his hand with a clatter. He backed himself against a wall, panting heavily, blood sputtering thickly from his mouth. Jacob, bleeding profusely and swooning, made a last-ditch full-on attack, grabbing Helmund by his metal helmet collar. Before the final blow he stared down into the Nazi Captain's steely, unrelenting eyes. Between the two men was a begrudging respect that only those who have fought each other with knives to the last ounce of strength can truly ever know. Jacob put all his strength into the finishing blow, and stabbed his machete through Helmund's right eye down to the hilt.
And so Helmund died as fiercely and heroically as he had lived - a true man's man, brutal, and unrelenting - a cold-blooded Nazi Captain to the last breath.
Ling immediately ran to Jacob as he slid to the floor with a groan. His wound was terrible, but unbeknownst to him or Ling, his purple bubble suit had already begun to perform healing actions and had instantly applied anesthesia after Helmund struck the grievous blow, which is how he managed to continue the fight despite the severity of the wound. Ling applied first aid, and began the job of treating the wound, which would have been mortal had the purple bubble suit not taken immediate action.
Meanwhile, Vallnam observed the dark interstellar spirit that had been devouring the soul of the young Nazi soldier he had shot in the back as it slid through the door into the brightly lit glossy white cylindrical elevator. He wondered if this type of spirit would attempt to devour him while he was still alive, or if it was merely a scavenger of souls that would only feed on the recently dead. He thought back through his folklore studies under Master Carlos of the Castaneda Academy in the deserts of New Mexico. It seemed to him that he recalled it was the latter case, as according to the lore of the Wiedergänger such creatures devoured the lost souls of the recently dead. If their eerie void-like presence not slay the living with fear, then they bided their time, waiting for the inevitable. They usually arrived in small packs where battles were soon to take place. It had been a common superstition among the German folk for countless ages.
So deciding he was not in immediate danger, he continued his meditation in silence, assuming that the monster was lured by the scent of deaths soon to come. It would not be long now. And sure enough the darkness massed into a black smoky circle, then billowed into the room, but did not attack him. It smelled rancid and wicked as it formed into a shadowy cloud that took on the shape of what might have been a bulldog with the head of Anubis. It circled around him three times and then sat next to him like a sphinx. Had he not activated the Mentarian Power of "Mighty Eyes" Vallnam would never had guessed that such creatures were lurking on the moon. It sat waiting, patiently, like a well-trained attack dog. And Vallnam sat next to it, focused only on one thing - the manifestation of Mystical Energy for the battle to come.
At this point, Hanna and her crew had made it to the Pillbox. Her Commandos were outside observing the Giant Robot as it laid the Nazi stragglers at its feet to waste. She signaled for her men to follow her, and dashed to the ladder to climb up. When she got to the base she saw the body of one of Helmund's subordinants laying on the ground dead. Explosive decompression from a gunshot wound through his space suit did him in. She stepped over it and quickly climbed up the ladder. It felt oddly thrilling to be invading General Hertling's domain this way.
When she gained entrance through the airlock she found Ling tending Jacob's wounds, and saw with some dismay that the infamous Captain Helmund, Hertling's best and bravest, was lying dead on the floor with a machete through his right eye. She had never liked Helmund, actually. No one did. He was a hell of a brute, and cruel to the bone. But she respected him for his valor and stoic integrity. And she noted that unlike other men in Eisenhelm, he had never stooped to ogling her, and never once spoke to her rudely. It would be an overstatement to say that she admired him, but like everyone else in Eisenhelm she found it impossible not to respect the man.
Hanna then took note of the oriental girl wearing a purple bubble suit tending to Jacob's very serious looking wounds.
"I see you have been busy," she said to Jacob as she stared down at Ling. "And who is this?"
"Special Forces," he gurgled through the blood in his mouth, and gave a weak thumbs up. It seemed clear he wasn't going to be a font of information at that point, so Hanna addressed Moon Princess Ling insolently and with deep German disrespect.
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