Chapter 354: The Visitor, Part 22
Otto still didn't forgive Engelbert for doing what he did back in Mexico, but he couldn't get back to Vienna on his own. So they continued on together.
They left Frankfurt on the 23rd, helped out by the Resistance, which had smuggled them onboard a train bound for Vienna. With any luck they'd be there by evening. However, at the next stop Otto heard that after they had left Frankfurt, the Angeloi had ambushed the Resistance in a surprise attack, catching most of the operatives at the station while storming and flushing out their strongholds. As such, most of the Resistance in Frankfurt had been eliminated. Then rumors began spreading among the passengers of reprisals against the families of known operatives...
Otto said nothing. Engelbert would just remind him that he couldn't save everybody.
The train set off again, and they pulled into Vienna's station in the late evening, where Conrad and Hans awaited them.
"Had a nice trip?" Hans asked.
"Talk about it," grumbled Otto, "It's been two weeks. Octavia better be satisfied."
"Oh, she is!" Conrad said. "Thousands of Angeloi troops intended for Greece have already been diverted to invade Russia. Those fools were easily deluded."
"Are you sure you guys weren't followed?" Engelbert asked.
"Octavia took all of the necessary precautions after what happened in Frankfurt," said Hans, "She went as far as to cast a few spells. Don't worry."
"Let's not dawdle here," said Conrad, "We're approaching curfew time. Let's get back to the bunker."
They got in a car and drove off.
"By the way, Otto," said Conrad, "You should know that we've found Wilhelm, the angel who can take you back to your world."
"When can I go back?" Otto asked hopefully.
"Er..." Hans said. "He's a bit busy right now. He's not in a very good shape. We'll have to wait a bit for him to heal first."
"Oh," said Otto.
They reached the Inquisition headquarters unnoticed and drove into the abandoned garage, where they took a secret elevator down to the bunker.
Octavia and several other agents awaited them at the bottom.
"Welcome, back, Senator," she said, "Your mission was incredibly successful, and I thank you for your cooperation. You've risked your life for this very dangerous mission, and now you may have changed the course of the war in our favor."
Octavia confined talking, and the other agents applauded him, but Otto wasn't listening. He didn't deserve these commendations. He was no hero. He had killed innocent men and women just for his own ends. Millions around the world suffered for what he had just done. And yet he could still live with it. It was all nothing to him. Somebody had to be sacrificed for the rest to survive. And that was the worst thing about him.
"Alto?" said Octavia, shaking him out of his self-loathing.
"Oh, yes," said Otto, "Could you repeat the question?"
"I said, we are in your debt," said Octavia, "Is there any way we can repay you for your help?"
"You said that the angel to take me home isn't ready yet, right?" Otto asked Hans.
Hans nodded.
"Okay," said Otto, "I may be a hero to you over here, but over there I'm still a fugitive and a traitor. My friends are rotting away in a prison somewhere, and if I set foot in my universe for even one second they'll throw me in jail, if not kill me immediately."
"What do you want us to do, go with you over there and protect you?" said Engelbert. "I don't think we can do that."
"No, something much more simpler," said Otto, "Octavia, I need to meet the Kaiser. Your Kaiser."
There was silence in the entire bunker.
"The Kaiser?" said Octavia. "Your counterpart? The leader of the opposition to the Angeloi? You just got back from the Equintern, and that took up most of our resources even with Axis and Equintern borders peaceful and stable. The border between Angeloi-occupied land and loyalist-controlled territory is ever violently shifting. You wouldn't make it near the front lines before you were blown to pieces by a land mine, an artillery shell, or a sniper's bullet. We'd be risking most of the Resistance's resources just to get you to Constantinople."
"We don't have to cross the front," said Otto, "We go down the Danube and across the Black Sea. We land in Thrace and we walk the rest of the way to Constantinople."
"He has a point," said Conrad, "That is the safest way."
"But why do you need to meet the Kaiser?" said Hans. "Besides getting him to save yourself when you go home."
"I just have a feeling I need to talk to him," said Otto, "Something important that I need to tell him, told by someone he would listen to."
Octavia sighed. "I'll think about it," she said, "Give me some time to think. But right now, I need you all to get some rest. We're making too much noise at this time. We don't want the Angeloi to know we're here. Dismissed."
The Resistance operatives dispersed.
"I hope you know what you're getting yourself into," said Octavia to Otto as she walked away.
---
As the Imperium geared up to invade Russia, the loyalist offensive continued. Imperial factories worked in overtime, producing planes, tanks, and weapons at astonishing efficiency. New panzers were designed, quickly mass produced, and sent off to the front, while more and more pilots gained the necessary training to take on the Imperium bombers terrorizing the skies of the Balkans.
On the Eastern Front, the Angeloi started making advances in Taurica, though progress was much slower than previous estimates. The Red Army, still recovering from Molotov's purges in 1937, was ill-equipped to take on the technologically superior Angeloi troops. And there were several setbacks, notably in Bialystock-Minsk. Meanwhile, the loyalists made significant progress on both fronts, liberating Trebizond and Antioch in the east and Tirane in the west.
Seeing how quickly the Red Army had fallen before the Angeloi, Molotov issued an order to transfer as much Soviet industry as possible to its Siberian territory in the Uralic Soviet Socialist Republic.
Loyalist troops started pushing into the Peloponnesian peninsula and southern Syria, where Aleppo was liberated. An Ethiopian stronghold on the island of Rhodes was destroyed, freeing the island and asserting the loyalists' naval dominance in the Aegean.
By mid-July, the loyalists had liberated most of Anatolia and Greece, except for a pocket in western Greece that was slowly being destroyed. The Angeloi, meanwhile, had made more progress against the Soviets, occupying most of Lithuania and pushing into the former United Baltic State's territory. The dire state of the front led Molotov to declare a "Great Patriotic War" against the fascist invaders, calling on the people of Russia to defend their motherland and the Russian nation, rather than the usual "defend the Party." This struck a patriotic chord within the Russian people, and thousands of recruits joined the Red Army.
Cyprus was liberated at the end of July, its last Ethiopian occupiers driven into the sea, boosting the General Staff's confidence. Horthy gave the approval for an invasion of Alexandria itself, to be led by Admiral Chester Nimitz. Two other amphibious assaults would occur simultaneously on either side of Israel and southern Syria. The Angeloi and the Abyssinians would fiercely attempt to dislodge these invasions, but as they always sent transport fleets to do the job, they failed. In Russia, by August all of Lithuania and the southern former UBS had fallen, and Angeloi troops had arrived on the doorsteps of Kiev.
The invasion of Beirut took just two days, during which casualties were kept to a minimum on both sides. The city was liberated on the 3rd of August, a couple hours before the first loyalist troops set foot in the town of Rashid, just outside of Alexandria, and promptly ran out of fuel and supplies, making them susceptible to Angeloi attack.
On the 4th, the last Axis strongholds in the Aegean had been eliminated, and the loyalists asserted their control over the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits. Corfu, the last Angeloi stronghold in Greece, also fell, and troops in Damascus, reinforced from Beirut, launched a breakout against the Angeloi surrounding the city, while the Angeloi in charge of defending Tel Aviv, the site of the third invasion, started falling back. More attempts to destroy the fleet blockading Aegyptus were met with failure, due to the Ethiopian and Angeloi aircraft and aircraft carriers being intercepted by loyalist planes with more advanced radar systems.
More reinforcements arrived in Damascus, accompanied by panzers and planes, and the Angeloi fell back on all fronts.
Meanwhile, Angeloi troops had pushed into the outskirts of Kiev, but they couldn't advance any further, as the Soviets had thrown everything they had into defending their capital. Both sides started suffering heavy casualties. The Angeloi leadership, realizing they couldn't afford to divert any troops to the Middle Eastern front, decided to get some help from its allies. On the 18th of August, the fascist-leaning Malian government signed an alliance treaty with Berlin and declared war on both the loyalists and the Equintern.
After a secondary amphibious landing to the south of the city, the battle for Tel Aviv ended in a loyalist victory, and Tel Aviv was retaken on the 19th, taking away the Angeloi's last Mediterranean port in the Middle East. An attempt by the Ethiopians to destroy the loyalists' supply fleet resulted in the sinking of the most advanced battleship in the Abyssinian navy, which had been rushed into service so quickly it hadn't even been given a name yet. The sinking of "Battlecruiser #1," despite its name, would deal a significant blow to Ethiopian morale.
With more and more losses being taken on the eastern front, the Angeloi realized that the Malians couldn't really help them reinforce their troops in Russia, especially after Jerusalem was liberated on the 21st. Therefore, the Angeloi entered into talks with the Tsarist government in exile in Russia, promising to install Sybslava as the Tsaritsa in Kiev in exchange for a declaration of war against the Soviets. Despite Sbyslava's insistence on not working with the "godless fascists," the (still unelected) Duma overrode her and signed an alliance that brought the Tsarists into the Axis powers, expanding Gandhi's axis of evil once again.
The loyalists, though, weren't invincible. The fleet reinforcing Israel barely managed to maintain control over the coast after an Axis attack, though at the coast of three transport ships and four destroyer escorts. The troops assigned to liberate northern Indochina were plagued with supply and fuel difficulties, making movement, already hampered by the harsh terrain, even more difficult. And Leningrad fell to the Angeloi on the 16th of September in a morale boost for the Axis. But the loyalists pushed on, developing new weapons to make up for these losses.
On the 19th, the Rashid beachhead was eliminated in a most humiliating way. Nobody was killed in the engagement. Six thousand Abyssinians managed to get a loyalist army five times larger than it to surrender, asserting Axis supremacy over Aegyptus again. It was a blow to the loyalist cause, but it wasn't the end. Horthy was already planning for another invasion to make up for that.
In the east, eighteen thousand troops defeated an Iranian army three times larger than it at Baghdad, making up for the humiliation at Rashid and liberating the jewel of Mesopotamia on the 21st. By then all of Israel and Syria had been liberated and loyalist legions had started pushing into Arabia and Aegyptus. The Angeloi withdrew to the Suez Canal, where they dug in and prepared for the inevitable assault.
The second attempt to liberate Alexandria began on the 24th with two groups of marines landing at both Rashid and El Hammam. After establishing beachheads they would then converge on Alexandria, which actually was easier than everybody expected, as the Abyssinians hadn't expected a two-pronged assault. Alexandria was liberated on the 28th, and the legions started marching inland.
By October, it was clear that the loyalists had recovered from the dead. The Angeloi had been pushed into southern Illyria in the west, Mesopotamia in the east, and Arabia and Aegyptus in the south. Loyalist troops also geared up for more fighting on all fronts, but the Reich's enemies wouldn't give up just yet. The Angeloi eliminated the last Soviet presence from Leningrad on the 2nd of October (though they still couldn't take Kiev), prompting Molotov to ramp up his "Great Patriotic War" rhetoric. Thousands of soldiers perished in a loyalist bombing of Sarajevo, one of many that would take place over the next few days.
On the 3rd, the city of Bur Said was retaken, linking up the large pocket in northern Aegyptus with reinforcements in the Sinai and shutting off the Suez Canal to the Axis Powers. The loyalists still couldn't use it, but at least the enemy couldn't either now. As reinforcements poured into Aegyptus, Cairo was liberated, and in Mesopotamia the city of Basra was taken, cutting off the Iranians and Indians in Arabia from the Iranian heartland.
Finally, on the 17th of October, Sarajevo was liberated after seventeen thousand troops defeated an Angeloi garrison over ten times its size with minimum casualties, encircling tens of thousands of troops in southern Illyria. Its factories and strategic location would be a boon to the loyalists' economy and military. Another major city had been retaken by the true Reich, boosting the loyalist cause immensely and crippling the Angeloi even more. It was clear now that Kaiser Otto was a force to be reckoned with, and he wouldn't stop until he marched through Berlin. The loyalists had a long road ahead of them, but they were confident they could make it.
