Foundations of the Reich: Terra Inferus, #2

By C. Craig R. McNeil

British MI6 agent, John Murdoch gets far more than he bargained for when on a reconnaissance mission to the Antarctica, he discovers a vast Nazi base that delves down deep into the Earth.

Nazi Germany moves on to a war footing, finally ending the phoney war between the British Empire and the Third Reich. Can Greater Britain cope with the both the Nazis and the remnants of the American Confederates?

As the Nazis prepare to unleash their own hell on Earth, the demons that are ensconced in London are stirring once again...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Craig McNeil
• Release date: Sep 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386449997

Book preview

Code Indigo is the call code for a demon incursion. It is assigned highest priority and all available forces will be mobilised to counter the threat.

From His Majesty’s Armed Forces Book of Call Signs

... I PUT READY MY DEATH's Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language.

Adolf Hitler in an address to his heads of military

WE ARE EACH OUR OWN devil, and we make this world our hell.

Oscar Wilde

The Beginning

The darkness between galaxies is complete. The darkness is not merely an absence of light in all its forms, it is an absence of everything. If one could stand in the darkness between galaxies with one’s eyes wide open, one would go mad as one’s senses are deprived of stimuli.

And the darkness is vast. Galaxies of uncountable billions of stars are barely visible pinpricks in the unimaginable distance, the smears of light across the velvet canopy are countless galaxies clustered at the universe’s core.

The darkness ripples as if a fish passes beneath the surface of a vast sea. The universe is threatened by the Great Old Gods of myth and legend, the destroyers of all are trying to break into our universe and bring the eternal nothingness with them.

London glowed in a spring sunrise of 1942, the golden rays of the soft dawn bathing the tall buildings in sparkling, fleeting jewels that, together, blazed like diamond flames, the heart of the British Empire once again the centre of freedom and all that was good on Earth.  As far as the citizens of London were concerned as they woke to their daily grind, it was a normal day.

The Pit it was called. Or variously, the Hellhole, the Demon’s Nest, or, on occasion, That Bloody Thing That’s Blocking The Sun and Stopping My Washing Drying. However it was described, in the few short years since it had been thrown up by the sorcerer Dai Thules, the mountainous circle of jagged peaks had become an accepted landmark of central London. Not a very highly regarded one but an accepted one nonetheless.

Blazing like terrible angels, the two dreadnaughts patrolled the skies above, shining in the new sunlight. His Majesty’s Dreadnaughts Swift and Albion flew in loose formation as they left the permanent dark miasma that covered central London. No doubt the crews savoured the sight of London in red, yellow and orange before the two guardians once again plunged back into the depressing cloud.

Floating in the sky above the ruptured ground of Hyde Park, the two aerial dreadnaughts assigned to the British Home Defence were on permanent station, the dull rumbles of their engines an ever present feature of London life. Once there had been four, then three but now only two of the giant machines patrolled the skies as the Empire railed against the Nazi threat and attempted to quell the rebellious American Confederate South.

The demons who had come from beyond the stars were quiet neighbours. In the beginning they had raided the surrounding city with impunity, eating and kidnapping the populace almost at whim until the Home Defence forces had driven them back to their fortress peaks and contained them within their lair. Contained they remained, quiet they stayed over the years, content to plot whatever dark and loathsome plots they wished; a cancer in the heart of the British Empire.

But those born in the El Worlds of other dimensions were long lived creatures, and a decade is a blink of an eye to them, a flash of nothingness. And the fact they were dying was a shock many of the demons had not yet comprehended, if they were able to do so.

The demon creatures lived through their creators; they were one with their gods. God had created Man in his own image and left him to his own devices. The Great Old Ones of the El Worlds had not abandoned their creations but lived through them. They were one with each other. For the first time, they were cut off from each other, the dimensional gates closed fast from either side.

The Great Old Ones needed to consume; their hunger was beyond compare. They needed to enter this fresh new universe that had presented itself to them. And their children needed their gods, consumed with grief at the silence that responded when they reached out to touch the tentacle of creation.

The demons could not wait any longer. They needed to feel the touch of the Great Old Ones. They needed to breach the walls between dimensions once again or they would pass over into the oblivion beyond redemption.

Whadya got there buddy? asked the Confederate sergeant curiously. Despite his interest he still found time to heft his Thomson gun uneasily, while keeping one eye on the distant hills. The front was only a few miles away and the Limeys were advancing again as per damn usual.

Hauptsturmführer Friedmann of the Ahnenerbe looked up at the sergeant, a chest of wood and corroded metal lying open at his feet, his face impassive as he mentally translated his ally’s speech. The Confederate’s spoke English but the inflections and slang they used made it a chore to understand them.

Books, Friedmann said. And in excellent condition too. A rare find.

The sergeant grunted dismissively. Books! He couldn’t understand why he and his platoon were babysitting the Krauts nor could he appreciate the need to hang on till the last minute. The Krauts had already excavated enormous amounts of junk from the old Red Indian burial mounds yet still they insisted on hauling out more.

The Limeys will be here within the hour, he said as the thunder of artillery rolled across the forested landscape. Ain’t gonna be nothing I can do with this peashooter once the dreadnaught appears.

Friedmann ignored the American as he carefully lifted one of the steel bound manuscripts. The untarnished cover was etched with Atlantean engrams of which he could decipher only a few. The spine creaked softly as he opened it up, and his eyes widened in delight at how new it appeared to be despite the fact that it was likely thousands of years old. The pages were made of thin sheets of metal on which was written dense lines of script and what looked like mathematical equations. As he quickly flicked through the thick tome he spied bright and colourful pictures and diagrams of creatures which appeared to be similar to the Thule Cult’s khadrae. Friedmann’s pulse quickened as his eyes flicked across the script. This was a rare and precious find! And more importantly the information within could be utilised for the great good of the Reich.

Replacing the book in the chest, Friedmann waved over one of the Ahnenerbe’s assistants.

Load this on to the truck. We are leaving immediately.

The sergeant swallowed involuntarily as a grey shadow fell over them. The tall, bulky mass of muscle that was the supersoldier nodded, picked up the heavy chest in one hand and strode away.

Raus! Friedmann called out to the scattered Ahnenerbe archaeologists and supersoldiers. We are leaving now!

The artificial thunder rolled loudly and storm clouds of smoke and dust now obscuring the already weak sunlight.

Are we going now? asked the sergeant. The Hauptsturmführer had spoken in German, a language the American was unfamiliar with. You could let me know buddy! I’ve got a squad to pull together to look after you and your German behinds!

Ja, we are leaving. We have found much here, Herr Hauptmann, Friedmann said as he picked up his greatcoat from where it lay on a nearby crate. The items we have found here will greatly assist in the war against the British.

We’re moving out boys! the sergeant shouted, waving to his squad of GIs scattered around the dig site. C’mon! Into the jeeps!

Friedmann had walked on ahead and the sergeant ran to catch him up, keeping a wary eye on the hills. Engines growled beyond, racing closer. Tank cannon fire boomed, fast and panicky.

We will go straight back to the airfield, Herr Hauptmann, said Friedmann. A squadron of American planes screamed overhead, their wings laden with rockets. They would do no good, Friedmann knew. Our scientists will be most intrigued by our discoveries.

Why are you taking them to Germany?

I never said I was, replied Friedmann as he climbed into the cab of the large truck and sat down. With a flourish of a gloved hand he called out, Auf wiedersehen, mein freund!

The ground thrummed.

As the truck pulled away to join the convoy that was bouncing down the rough track away from the burial mounds and towards the relative safety of the forest, the sergeant had a grim foreboding. The Yankees had it all wrong, of that he had no doubt. His grandpappy had fought under Lee in the Civil War because he didn’t agree that the blacks should have rights like a white man, and that was something he personally agreed with. It had been scientifically proven the negroes were a sub race and should be treated as such. Not cruelly, but use them for manual labour in the fields and such places. Cotton and tobacco had to be picked by someone after all.

It had been right for the South to rise again when the President had pretty much damn capitulated to the Limeys, yellow bellied coward that he was. When the hand of friendship was extended to the states of the South by the Germans and their man, Hitler, it had been easy to accept. But this wasn’t how it was meant to be. Never in his wildest dreams had he ever seen himself fighting a losing battle in the Mid West against the British!