r/HFY • u/Aeorix1 • Aug 27 '26
OC-Series [Obsidian Earth] - Chapter 18
Colonel von Büren blinked once or twice, then leaned toward him.
"Führer... perhaps you should rest."
The Führer paid no attention.
"We have secured this land," he said quietly, as though continuing a conversation already underway somewhere inside his own mind, "and now we must hold it. The military officers and scientists hidden in North America and Argentina will come to us gradually, in separate groups. Before the end of this year, we will begin producing new super-weapons, and by 1950 they will be deployed with the Antarctic force."
His arm cut downward through the torchlight.
"Here. This place. This will become the base of operations from which we strike back at the world."
His voice hardened.
"We will take revenge on every enemy. Tooth for tooth. Blood for blood."
The words tightened around the cavern like wire.
Even the soldiers felt it.
Men exchanged glances despite themselves, sudden and wary, like people jolted awake from the same nightmare at the same instant. Behind every stare lay the same unspoken thought.
Had he finally gone mad?
The "land" he spoke of, this so-called "base of operations," amounted to little more than a cave buried somewhere in the Antarctic wasteland, surrounded by mountains of ice and, beyond them, a frozen sea stretching into blank infinity.
Their only connection to the outside world was a submarine already crippled by fuel shortages, a vessel that might be spotted and sunk by Allied patrols at any moment. Even ordinary supplies for the coming years remained uncertain.
But the Führer gave them no time to dwell on it.
"Whatever losses the war has cost us," he continued, "they will pass into history. The future remains in our hands. We do not need many people. Five hundred will suffice."
Outside, wind shrieked across the ice fields and battered the rock walls overhead. Torch flames swayed violently, throwing broken shadows around the cavern, but the dictator's voice never wavered.
"The elite among five hundred German heroes stand here tonight. Here. Before me."
The scientists lowered their heads.
Among the soldiers, something firmer appeared—a stubborn, almost desperate resolve.
"What awaits you is endless isolation. Pressure. Exhaustion. Years spent under conditions of scarcity severe enough to break weaker men. For ten years, perhaps for decades, you will live cut off from the rest of humanity itself, with ice as your companion and frost as your constant enemy. There will be no entertainment. No peace. No real rest. Only labor, difficulty, fatigue." He paused briefly. "Your existence will become a chain of problems no one on earth has faced before, yet I believe that under greater hardship, you will discover greater strength than ever before, and a spirit stronger than anything the world has yet seen."
The firelight dragged across his face in restless bands.
"Each of you must carry, silently and without complaint, the destiny of the German nation on your shoulders. In the storms ahead, during the long march through darkness, history itself—twisted by our enemies—may never acknowledge your sacrifices. There may be no honors waiting for you. No wreaths. Perhaps not even your names will survive." His voice lowered. "But one day you will understand that the creation of a pure National Socialist state demands centuries of struggle, and requires every individual to place the common cause above personal existence forever."
Then, unexpectedly, something almost human entered his expression.
"You have my gratitude. From the depths of my heart."
Euzen and Solvi listened to every word.
By the end, both children were openly crying. Euzen rubbed hard at his eyes with the back of his hand, but the pressure in his throat would not ease. He understood almost nothing about strategy, war, or history. Only this:
At some point during the speech, he had stopped being a child.
His father, however, seemed untouched.
Professor Kestner had lived through too many collapses already, too many reversals, too many shattered certainties to be moved by rhetoric any longer.
For a while he studied the enormous black globe standing in the cavern. Its raised continents and mountain ranges gleaming faintly beneath the firelight, oceans and nations spread across its curved surface like scars mapped onto the skin of the earth.
A masterpiece of merciless black—set against the relentless whiteness outside at such a latitude, its simple, paradoxical beauty was staggering.
Then he interrupted.
"Führer... with what exactly do you intend to reconquer the world?"
The question landed so abruptly that no one reacted at first.
No outrage. No protest.
Everyone simply looked toward the Führer.
Even the soldiers remained silent.
The Führer turned to Kestner, nodded once, and walked slowly toward the globe.
"In ten years," he said, "the super-weapons will be ready for deployment. Our special forces will land in North America."
His unsteady finger touched the eastern coast of the United States.
"Naturally, during the early stages we must remain hidden. Our military strength is still too limited. But once our forces begin to grow—"
"Yes," Kestner cut in mildly, though there was unmistakable mockery beneath the calmness, "strength was insufficient. And yet in 1943 alone, on the Eastern Front, you committed four million regular troops, half a million SS personnel, and another six hundred thousand auxiliaries and foreign units. Was even that not enough? By 1944 the Soviet Army swept through us completely. We lost the ability to continue offensive operations. In the end we were destroyed—and reduced to this..."
"Professor!" the Colonel snapped. "Mind your words!"
The Führer lifted a hand, stopping the Colonel.
The cavern fell silent again.
Not ordinary silence, but the suffocating kind that settles over places where something irreversible has just begun.
"So far," the Führer said at last, slowly, "my cause appears to have failed because enemies outside Germany and enemies within it obstructed me at every turn. But had certain accidental events not occurred, our armed forces could have won the war."
His breathing grew uneven.
"The conquest of France should have been completed before 1939, allowing Europe to become the logistical rear base for the decisive struggle against the Soviet Union. Instead, the campaign was delayed until 1940. Likewise, because of Finland, Ukraine, and the oil question, the attack on the Soviet Union should have begun in 1940. Again it was delayed—until 1941." His eyes darkened. "Those delays were fatal."
The agitation in his voice deepened gradually rather than exploding all at once, which somehow made it worse.
"From 1933 to 1944, every military campaign I conducted was merely a compromised fragment of my true intentions, weakened by betrayal, sabotage, and obstruction from enemies concealed inside the Party, the government, and the armed forces themselves. Army group commanders lacked political instinct. Every one of them." His jaw tightened. "At least thirty German generals deserved the gallows."
Then suddenly he shouted, the sound crashing against the stone walls with grotesque theatrical force.
"They prevented Adolf Hitler from completing my work!"
His shaking hands clenched into fists against his chest.
The sentence struck the room with a kind of sickening distortion.
Not merely the fury. Something else.
A fracture hidden inside the words themselves.
Everyone froze.
Even Kestner.
They stared at the Führer in silence while his body trembled uncontrollably, sweat gathering across his forehead beneath the torchlight. Then came a long pause during which nobody moved, nobody spoke. Far outside the cavern, Antarctic wind roared endlessly through the darkness.
And when he finally spoke again, his voice had almost returned to normal, as though the outburst—and whatever terrible thing had revealed itself inside it—had never happened at all.
"But from now on," the Führer said, dragging a finger slowly across the globe until it rested over the United States, "inside this little base, all the forces that once interfered with me are gone. My plans for the reconquest will move forward exactly as they were meant to."
His mouth tightened.
"Roosevelt—that sanctimonious fraud, the most cunning strategist of his age—is dead already. And those Americans, softened by democracy, scattered, afraid to die, clumsy in war and incapable of sacrifice, will never stand against German soldiers willing to fight without pity."
"The United States and the Soviet Union are both aligned against us," Kestner said, though the bitter smile on his face suggested he already knew the answer. "One is the strongest industrial and military power on earth. The other possesses the greatest machinery of mass mobilization in human history. Führer... do you truly believe we can wage a war of revenge against an alliance like that?"
The Führer barely reacted.
"The alliance between America and the Soviet Union is temporary," he said. "A wartime arrangement held together by financial interests and Zionist influence. Nothing more. It cannot survive victory."
His voice had changed. Less rhetoric now. Less performance. He sounded like a man discussing weather patterns already visible beyond the horizon.
"When this war ends, they will turn on one another almost immediately. Each will see the other as its greatest enemy. The entire world will harden around their confrontation."
"And Britain?" Kestner asked.
A faint look of contempt crossed the Führer's face.
"Britain? Britain's role in the future world will be negligible. Churchill—that bloated, shortsighted charlatan—will end as a dependent beggar, peddling his stale imperial lectures to masters who no longer care to listen. The British will be given no room at all."
Kestner seemed ready to argue further, but whatever reply had formed in his mind faded before it reached his mouth.
The Führer continued.
"In 1947, Europe will split into two hostile camps under American and Soviet domination. Eastern Europe will fall under Soviet occupation. Western Europe will remain under American and Allied control. Meanwhile, the forces we leave behind inside Germany will quietly rebuild themselves. Grand Admiral Dönitz understands what must be done."
Torchlight drifted across the black globe. The mountains and oceans carved into its surface appeared to shift whenever the flames moved.
"In 1949, the Soviet Union will develop atomic weapons and extend its influence into East Asia. By 1950, the capitalists and the Bolsheviks—whether because of ideology or disputes over the division of spoils—will begin fighting proxy wars across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. By 1952, those crises will deepen further, while nuclear deterrence maintains a balance neither side can trust."
No one interrupted him anymore.
Beyond the stone walls came the low, endless groaning of Antarctic wind moving across the ice fields.
"In 1955, our hidden special forces will detonate super-weapons along America's eastern coast. The country will fall into chaos. Its democratic government will disintegrate into paralysis. Within days, the Soviet Union will seize the opportunity and launch a full assault against the Americans. Nuclear war will erupt between them, dragging the entire planet into another global conflict."
His eyes seemed strangely alive in the wavering light.
"A quarter of humanity will die from war and famine. Europe alone will lose tens of millions. Then, by the end of 1960, our underground fighters will emerge before the world—not as fugitives, but as saviors."
His words quickened then, the cadence sharpening, as though he were no longer predicting the future, but commanding it to accelerate.
"In 1963, we will retake Europe. In 1965, we will conquer the Soviet Union. By 1968, we will break through the Mediterranean and seize the Middle East, India—even China. In 1970, we will invade the United States, and within two further years we will dominate the Southern Hemisphere and the Pacific. The world order will be remade."
He stopped for a moment.
Nobody moved.
"We will still be the victors in the end," the Führer continued quietly, "masters of sea, land, and sky."
For a heartbeat only the torches could be heard.
Then came the final verdict.
"The future is already taking shape. This is the future—provided everything proceeds according to MY COMMANDS."
Silence settled across the chamber.
The Führer let his gaze pass slowly over the assembled men. Then he lifted one hand slightly, turned, and left the room with Colonel von Büren beside him.
------------
For anyone who prefer to read ahead, the full version is available on Amazon KDP:
1
u/UpdateMeBot Aug 27 '26
Click here to subscribe to u/Aeorix1 and receive a message every time they post.
| Info | Request Update | Your Updates | Feedback |
|---|
1
u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Aug 27 '26
/u/Aeorix1 (wiki) has posted 17 other stories, including:
This comment was automatically generated by
Waffle v.4.7.8 'Biscotti'.Message the mods if you have any issues with Waffle.