Secret Origins: Hoffnung

[Trav McBang!]

Secret Origins: Hoffnung
RP #1 vs Los Sexys

World War II came to an end in 1945. As the world rejoiced the American victory, Germany was thrown into political and economical turmoil due to the sins that the previous regime had committed. As Russia emerged as a superpower and began its tumultuous standoff with the United States, the once thriving country of Germany struggled to rebuild itself. The military of the nation was in shambles, following in the footsteps of men who executed people based on their ethnicity. In the year 1970, the entities of East and West Germany formed a secret alliance, creating a military force with the best men from each nation. This was the first step in the merging of the countries and the fall of the Berlin wall. This organization’s name was: The Krieg.

Intel Base
Poznan, Poland.
December, 1982

Mats Klose took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The mission ahead was a small taste of what he had hoped to accomplish when he had accepted his assignment to join the Krieg. The small, secretive organization was struggling to find its footing. Despite nearly being a dozen years old, the Krieg had yet to accomplish anything substantial. Mats Klose, born into a strong military family, was expected to be the man that changed the fortunes of this unit. His team of four men was highly touted as the future of the German military. Poland was a moderately sized country, certainly not as large or as powerful as Russia or the emerging North Korea. A small, unimportant first mission was just what the Krieg wanted to help Klose get his feet wet. After months of briefing, the day was here. Operation Hoffnung was upon the Krieg. A successful mission would be a step in the direction of regaining the glory of Germany’s prosperous times.

Klose opened his eyes. He gripped the air vent in front of him and pulled it from its resting spot with a firm tug. That was easy enough, the soldier thought to himself. He braced himself flat against the side of the building and waved towards the gaping hole with two fingers. His battalion emerged from some nearby bushes and filed into the ventilation system. Mats placed a finger to his ear, triggering the communication device. As he updated his superiors, he couldn’t help but smile.

“Commander Erskine, we have breached the intel center.”

---
Der Kriegzimmer
Munich, Germany

Josef Erskine reclined in his chair and propped his feet up on the desk in front of him. The commander was long overdue for some good news. For the past six years, Erskine had been the head of the Krieg. He had often wondered if the organization would ever see success before he passed away. As his smile spread, exposing his stained teeth, the commander turned to his subordinates.

“Lukas, Wolfgang. They have breached the intel center.”

Lukas Reinhardt and Wolfgang Kohler nodded silently, keeping their keen eyes glued to their monitors. Lukas was monitoring the pulse of all five soldiers as Wolfgang was carefully eyeing a blurry, grayscale video feed from the tiny camera attached to one of the men. Despite the good news, they both knew that the difficult part of Klose’s assignment had yet to be finished. Until Klose had the needed intel, they couldn’t afford to take a break.

Erskine laughed out loud at their intense concentration. In his years of service in the military, the Krieg had been a consummate laughing stock. The fact that Klose’s men were even inside the base was great news.

“Come on, men. We have breached a secured intelligence base. It’s time to take a breath and appreciate our accomplishments. I remember when the Krieg was just beginning and our men could not even quell a fight between civilians at a local pub. Now, we have the son of Bastian Klose leading men into actual operations. No more tests or preparation, my friends. Today, the Krieg finally gets to experience action.”

The old man’s arrogance at the small token of success did not sit well with Kohler. He blinked several times, attempting to make sense of the shapes on the poorly transmitted video. However, Erskine’s yammering forced his concentration to be fractured between watching and listening. He spun around in his chair to face his commander and spoke to him with a harsh tongue.

“We have merely accomplished breaking and entering, commander. Thousands of petty crooks across the world do the same thing every day. Until the Polish intel is in your hands, I shall not rejoice.”

Reinhardt withdrew in shock at Kohler’s sudden harshness. Instead of responding with escalated fury, Erskine merely smiled and shook his head.

“Always the stern one, Kohler. This is why you should make a poor commander. A leader must share the highs and lows of his job with the subordinates. You must learn from defeat and revel in the victories while still maintaining a certain perspective on things. What we have accomplished today speaks volumes for the preparation of the Krieg. This is a novice mission, but a mission that Klose shall surely succeed with. Smile, Mr. Kohler. The Krieg has finally caught up to the rest of the world.”

Kohler rolled his eyes. There was no use arguing with the old man at this point. There was still a mission going on. If the mission went off as planned, the argument would be silly anyways. Wolfgang’s attention was best focused on doing his job.

---
Poznan, Poland

The men slowly marched through the ventilation system, each step carefully attempted to mask any noise that they might be making. Klose muffled a cough, bringing all of his men to a halt. From his pocket, he produced a mapping of the building’s ventilation system. He studied it carefully, pinpointing where his men currently stood. As he carefully plotted a location into the building’s safe room, one of the other foot soldiers spoke in a voice barely over a whisper.

“Mats, where the fuck are we?”

Klose pulled his balaclava down, making verbal communication easier. His team wasn’t going to like the news.

“We’re fucking lost. These schematics don’t match the building at all. According to the map, that right turn we just took doesn’t exist.”

The group of men all let out collective groans. They were essentially sitting ducks if they took a wrong turn at this point. Klose could sense the frustration and decided to give his men the words needed to boost their spirits.

“Don’t fret just yet. This is a Polish base, not a Russian one. Even if we are found, we will easily be able to use our training to overcome whatever these men can possibly throw at us.”

The man closest to Klose decided to speak what the rest of the squad were all thinking.

“Mats, shouldn’t we just abort the mission?”

“Abort the mission? If we do that now, our entry will be discovered by morning. Four months of planning went into Operation Hoffnung, my friend. To abort now would set the entire Krieg back in both money and precious time. March forward. In the face of adversity, great men are able to overcome setbacks and fulfill their objectives. Let’s give the Krieg the long awaited hope that she thirsts for.”

Klose pulled the balaclava back over his mouth. He wasn’t interested in arguing with his men. He wasn’t interested in playing it safe. Today was meant to be the Krieg’s day and he was going to do everything that he could to make his commander proud. He hoped that somewhere above, his father was looking down on him and beaming with pride. He folded the worthless schematics up and placed them back into his pocket as the group began to hesitantly push forth. Following the sound of the air that was being circulated, the Krieg squadron assumed that it would lead them deep into enemy territory…just where they wanted to be.

The cramped corridors now seemed more eerie than before. Each turn offered uncertainty as opposed to hope. The German men had once carried a certain degree of arrogance about them as they broken into the Polish base with ease. It had been replaced by something much more powerful: fear. As they inched past Polish voices below, holding their breath, they knew that their next step could very well be their last. The air ducts creaked and groaned. With a sudden jolt and a noise of steel shifting, the vent gave way. Two of Klose’s men tumbled down to the room below, uncertain of what it might enclose.

The men landed with a hard crash into what was one of the barracks in the base. Twelve Polish armed forces all leapt from their beds at the startling sound. The Krieg soldiers scurried backwards until they hit the far wall of the room. They were trapped. The Polish forces each grabbed their firearms and surrounded the Germans. From the duct, Klose pushed forward, peering down at the scene as it unfolded. The clash between German and Polish led to a screaming match between the men. Unable to explain themselves, the two Krieg soldiers looked up to the vents in an attempt for Klose to help them. Mats’s eyes went wide as the Polish men turned their attention to the sagging ventilation system. Abandoning his stealth training, he clumsily turned to run. As he did so, he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Nein! Nein!”

In a bright burst of gunfire, the Krieg operatives were massacred in the vents before they could even retreat. Operation Hoffnung was a failure and the German military had just lost the man that had been seen as the future of the nation. Mats Klose and his men were dead.

----
Der Kriegzimmer

“Dammit!”

Erskine slammed his hat to the ground with more force than Kohler and Reinhardt expected the old man could muster. He stumbled and caught himself against a nearby wall. The military career of Commander Erskine was drawing to an end without a single successful high profile operation. He had been sure that fortune would smile on him at least once. He had hoped that karmatic justice had forgiven the sins of his countrymen. However, in Erskine’s mind, this was cold hard proof that the Krieg would never be able to stand alone as one of the world’s top organizations. This was proof that he had failed.

The Kriegzimmer sat in an eerie silence. Kohler was withholding his comments, but his emotion was clearly displayed on his face. He had known that something would go wrong. His respect for Erskine was the only thing keeping him silent. At the other end of the table, Reinhardt turned his monitor off. The flatlined pulses weren’t helping the situation. Lukas reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph of his wife, visibly pregnant. He closed his eyes. With today’s failure, he could not wait to get home to his loved one. Offering a glimmer of blind hope, Reinhardt whispered.

“Perhaps the prophecy shall be fulfilled.”

Erskine turned his head towards his subordinate.

“What did you say, Lukas?”

Reinhardt straightened his back and tucked his photograph back into his pocket.

“I said…perhaps the prophecy shall be fulfilled.”

Erskine stood his head violently. After concrete proof of futility, one of his brightest men was babbling about something that had been found inside of an ancient book? Surely, Erskine had done something in a past life to warrant this dreadful treatment.

“Prophecy? Scheiße…I have one man who cannot enjoy success and another who cannot accept rational facts. The Krieg is doomed. The future is more bleak than I had ever imagined.”

Kohler turned up his nose in disgust. He shook his head at the foolishness of Reinhardt.

“Prophecy, Lukas? The foretold fairy tale that the German army can only prosper through integrating ethnics? In the old country…”

As much as Erskine hated the prophecy nonsense, he hated the past of Germany even more. His old, wrinkled face turned beet red as he turned his fury towards Kohler.

“In the old country, we slaughtered men like animals without remorse! The sins of Germany are why we are in such a dire state today! If we did things now as we did back then, we would be imprisoned within the month! The old country is nearly as ludicrous as this prophecy nonsense. No supersoldiers shall spring up from the far corners of the world and no more minorities shall die at our hand, is that understood?!”

Kohler and Reinhardt nodded in agreement. Erskine sunk down into his chair, which overlooked the entire Kriegzimmer. He slumped down to nothing, which brought to light just how old he truly was. His eyes had seen the horrors of Nazi Germany, witnessed the birth of the Krieg. He’s seen the hope and the disappointment that his regime had brought Germany’s combined military forces. Half joking, he muttered to his men.

“Perhaps Germany should place their hope on this…prophecy…because if the Krieg continues on as is; we are doomed.”[/font]

Three months later, Josef Erskine died of an apparent heart attack. Those that were close to him said that he lost his will to live after the failure in Poznan. In those three months, the Krieg never fully recovered. They did not attempt any more objectives, instead opting to focus on training and blind hope. His successor was named: Lukas Reinhardt. Reinhardt held fast to his beliefs in the prophecy…and his beliefs would lead him to do a questionable thing just one month into his regime as commander of the Krieg. This questionable thing would eventually produce the man known simply as Balraj.

COMING NEXT WEEK: THE ORIGIN OF THE PUNJABI GIANT, BALRAJ!