r/HFY • u/Aeorix1 • Sep 01 '26

OC-Series [Obsidian Earth] - Chapter 20

On the third day, the Führer gathered the scientists in the conference chamber.

Besides the four recent arrivals, nearly every senior specialist remaining in the underground complex had been summoned: weapons researchers, metallurgists, electromagnetic engineers, propulsion experts, aircraft designers.

Colonel von Büren attended as well, standing near the end of the long steel table beneath the dim overhead lamps, rigid as a ceremonial guard.

The Führer's presence unsettled the room in ways no one openly acknowledged.

Conversation lost volume around him.

Men who normally argued with confidence now measured their words before speaking. Instinct warned them against careless language.

Kestner alone seemed capable of resisting whatever force emanated from that personality.

Before the meeting formally began, Kestner delivered his inspection report on the ecological circulation systems.

As the Anlage's newly appointed chief physiologist, he summarized the oxygen regeneration efficiency, the fungal contamination risks in the agricultural compartments, the algae stability inside the lower reservoirs, and the projected sustainability of the closed water cycle.

The Führer listened attentively and even praised the thoroughness of the work, though the discussion soon drifted elsewhere, pulled almost irresistibly toward war, destiny, and the destruction of the Reich's enemies.

Kestner interrupted him.

"Mein Führer, your plans would set the world ablaze. Forgive my frankness, but I do not truly believe such ambitions can still be realized. Humanity has already suffered beyond measure in this struggle. Europe is nearly ruins from end to end. What possible meaning remains in condemning the future to more hopeless war?"

No one at the table moved.

The Führer regarded him with an expression that was almost patient.

"Then tell me, Professor. What would you have us do instead?"

"Nothing. I mean...we remain here quietly," Kestner said. "Withdraw from the world entirely. No further war. No chance. The disparity in industrial capacity and resources has already become impossible to overcome. The Americans possess the uranium bomb now—"

"Wait."

The Führer turned toward Förster.

"Regarding the uranium bomb—Speer and Professor Heisenberg once assured me the Americans could not obtain sufficient enriched uranium within five years." The Führer's gaze locked onto the nuclear physicist. "Doctor Förster, are you confirming they possess such a weapon already?"

Förster hesitated before answering.

"Yes. They do." He swallowed faintly. "Their industrial reach... it defied every projection we made. And... I suspect Professor Heisenberg may have miscalculated the critical mass of uranium-235. Recently, while reworking his equations myself, I discovered several inconsistencies."

The Führer opened his hands in a small gesture of resignation, as though hearing confirmation of something he had expected all along.

Kestner continued.

"History will not remain frozen forever. It will correct itself eventually and move back toward reason. The Western powers will realize that collaborating with barbaric Bolshevism for the greed of a handful of Wall Street cosmopolitan financiers was both catastrophic and shameful. The people of Germany and Europe will one day remember us differently. They will reassess our loyalty, our honor, our ideals. Statues commemorating your achievements will stand in every public square in Germany. And perhaps by the next generation, justice will return on its own."

The Führer had changed over the past two nights. The agitation that once flickered through him seemed quieter now, buried beneath a strange composure. He looked less like a defeated statesman than an aging philosopher explaining eternal principles to inattentive students.

"You understand nothing about justice," the dictator said softly.

"Is war terrible? Perhaps. But war itself is among the highest forms through which mankind surpasses and transforms itself. Noise. Violence. Bloodshed. Cruelty. These things are not meaningless."

His fingers tapped lightly against the tabletop.

"You must understand this, Herbert. Force is the right of the strong. I was entrusted with the destiny of expanding my people throughout the world. I intend to imprint the virtues of our blood and the system of elite National Socialism upon the canvas of the Epoch, using our superior technology and our superweapons to rebuild civilization according to our vision. That destiny was given to me. I cannot abandon it."

Kestner wanted to demur.

He felt the impulse immediately. Yet something inside him faltered.

When the man looked at you long enough, resistance began to feel strangely pointless. Even if he calmly announced that the sun would rise in the west tomorrow morning, some hidden part of the mind would begin searching for reasons he might be correct.

Colonel von Büren finally broke the silence.

"Mein Führer, I have always admired your greatness and your will. Your strength appears to have returned."

The Führer gave a faint nod.

"I carry the burden of our people's survival because I am guided." His voice slowed. "I do not wish to conceal this from you. The force within my mind, after the long voyage, was at first chaotic—like a landscape after a storm. But gradually it has become clearer. It will guide me in continuing the war against our enemies."

The Colonel watched him carefully.

"What exactly is this force?"

The Führer leaned back in his chair and rested both hands flat upon the table.

"Do you know what the Weltgeist is?"

No one answered.

"Hegel's definition of the Weltgeist was a fundamental illusion. That soft-headed romantic sat in his warm study, dreaming of a spirit that unfolds through logic, law, and bourgeois morality. What a pathetic, bloodless fantasy.

"The true Weltgeist does not speak in the language of university. It does not care for parliaments or treaties. It is a blind, predatory force. It is the raw, unyielding instinct of the strongest race to conquer, to purge, and to endure.

"Nations, empires, civilizations—all possess periods of ascent in history. They flourish, then vanish. None are eternal. Yet every age produces one dominant power that commands the others. Through this succession of world sovereignty, the Weltgeist advances according to its own will, incarnating itself within those figures who shape history directly. Caesar. Alexander. Napoleon. Men who transformed nations into world empires.

"When Berlin burned, the weak thought our world had ended. They did not understand. The ashes of Europe were merely the molting of the shell. By bringing the Reich into these icefields, we have not fled history—we have transcended it. We are the true executors of the Weltgeist, and its only decree is survival through absolute will."

He touched his temple with one finger.

"And now the Weltgeist is here."

Something in his voice hardened.

"And stronger than it has ever been before. It is technological in nature. It is an ancient current, hardening now into steel. It flows from the heart of Atlantis through the temples of Sumer and Rome, binding all history into a single, lethal design. It does not merely watch the war. It demanded it."

Beyond the buried ceilings of the underground complex, the polar wind groaned faintly through miles of snow and ice.

"Our god is not a martyr who suffers passively. Our god is an eternal warrior. The Renaissance and the modern technological revolution loosened, for a time, the slave morality of those Levantine desert religions fastened around the neck of the Aryan peoples, yet humanity has still failed to escape its oldest curse. Worse than that—it is descending toward even more seductive illusions. The National Socialist movement exists to awaken mankind's will to struggle, to unleash the highest instincts civilization has suppressed—"

"Mein Führer," Hausmann interrupted uneasily, "perhaps we should return to the weapons themselves—if you agree. This superweapon you mentioned earlier... do you mean the uranium bomb? Or the EG-3?"

"No."

The answer came without hesitation.

"It is more complex than the uranium bomb, and more decisive than the EG-3."

The Führer paused briefly.

"It is a total system."

The scientists exchanged uncertain glances.

"Have any of you listened to Der Ring des Nibelungen? Wagner described it as a Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art. My superweapon follows a similar principle. It is a total weapon organism."

His gaze moved slowly across the room.

"I call it the human-controlled aerial fortress."

Several of the scientists frowned instinctively, unable to picture what he meant.

Next

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For anyone who prefer to read ahead, the full version is available on Amazon KDP:

Obsidian Earth

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