MI6s team of enhanced individuals have undergone further testing with the enhanced chemical and are now training with their new and improved abilities before going on their most dangerous mission to date. The team consists of Mademoiselle Mimi Dubois, La Résistance fighter and mistress of skills; Miss Madeline Forsyth, SOE operative and a living shadow; Franklin Fort, hard bitten soldier and teleporter; and Sven Hyse, Norwegian Resistance soldier and shapeshifter.

Hanslope Park, Buckinghamshire, England, December 1942

Late December 1942 we are summoned to the briefing room of Hanslope Park to discuss the final details of our mission to southern Germany. Major Hoffman once again reiterates the mission priorities and Captain Ledman discusses our equipment requirements and false identifications. For the latter we finally decide upon four German civilian identification papers and just in case, four Gestapo identification papers. As part of their specialised equipment Sven requests a Bren light machine gun and Frank asks for a matched pair of sawn off double barrelled shotguns. I guess that they are taking the defensive ability of the German enhanced very seriously.

The conversation turns towards the senior members of the German political class and in particular the possibility that Hitler himself may well be enhanced. It is an interesting discussion but we have no evidence to go on and so it is ultimately moot. Madeline then pitches the Major a curve ball of a question;

What is going to happen to us after the war?

Both Hoffman and Ledman look taken aback, but they recover very quickly and say that they are just currently focusing on winning the war and that they do not know what will happen after that. Madeline does not look convinced.

We go on to look at potential escape routes and Captain Ledman informs us that he believes that our best exit route is through Switzerland given its relative close proximity to the target site. We agree and plot two routes, one out through Lindau and across Lake Constance to Rorschach in Switzerland, and a second route through the mountains into Austria and across into Switzerland. If either of those routes are not an option then we agree that we improvise.

Hanslope Park, Buckinghamshire, England, January 1943

We set out from Hanslope Park in a military truck loaded with our kit heading for RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. When we arrive we are driven straight up to a stripped down Lancaster bomber and introduced to Captain Lannon and his crew of six. Captain Lannon informs us that all going well we should be over the target at zero one hundred hours. While Lannon and his copilot finish their preflight checks, the rest of the aircraft crew assist us in rigging up our gear with a parachute.

Just before twenty one hundred hours we take off, as soon as we are up in the air and levelled off we are joined by an escort of four RAF Hawker Hurricanes. After an hour and a half our escort peels away and we are on our own, but only for a short while as we are joined by two De Havilland Mosquitos who shadow us for another forty five minutes until our aircraft turns south and heads over Germany. Our pilot jinks us left and right avoiding major towns and cities heading for our target.

At zero twenty eight hours the copilot heads back to us and shouts into Madeline’s ear;

Thirty minutes!

Madeline signals this to the rest of us and we start our pre-jump checks, making sure that we check each other’s parachutes and harnesses and Frank double checks the parachutes attached to our kit drop. Ten minutes before we are over the target the copilot once again joins us and checks to make sure that we are ready. Sven and Frank man-handle the kit drop into position beside the side crew door and then the copilot shouts;

One minute!

And open the door. The fuselage of the plane is filled with a rushing wind and hear anything becomes an impossibility. The copilot holds up three fingers and then counts down, three, two, one! Frank and Sven shove out the kit drop. Again the copilot holds up three fingers and counts down. Frank leaps out. He is followed out by Madeline, myself, and finally Sven.

I avoid colliding with the tail of the Lancaster and free fall a short distance following Madeline. By the light of the half moon I can spot Madeline’s parachute opening below me and so I pull my own cord and breathe a sigh of relief as my own parachute deploys. But my luck takes a turn for the worst when I am caught by a strong crosswind and I am blown out of our formation. I land hard beyond a ridge line and wind myself, but unlike the last time that I parachuted I do not injure myself. I have just started to gather up my parachute when a large raven lands near me and says;

Caw!

I smile and reply;

I’m fine thank you Sven, and will be with you all soon.

The raven flaps off northwest and I follow on foot. When I crest the ridge line it is obvious that the others landed perfectly in the drop zone and we are approximately three miles away from the target in a sparse section of the wooded hillside. As we came into land Frank confirms that he could see the lights of a large town to the northwest, which we agree must be Füssen, he also saw light from the direction of the village of Hohenschwangau below Schloss Neuschwanstein. All seems quiet and after a quick aerial reconnaissance Sven confirms that he believes that we have not been spotted coming down. We quickly unload our kit and stash the parachutes in the bole of a large tree, which I then camouflage.

We yomp as a group for an hour to get into the foothills of the ridge line that leads towards the Schloss. When we arrive we set up a small camp in the middle of a depression and Sven heads up into the night sky as a falcon to see if he can find any caves within the hillside for us to set up a base camp. After about fifteen minutes he returns and tells us that he has found one that fits the bill approximately a mile closer towards the Schloss. By zero two thirty hours we are all tucked away inside a large, but low, cave with a narrow entrance. Perfect for our purposes. We settle in and Madeline takes first watch while Sven heads back out to scout the Schloss in the form of an owl.

Sven flies in low, hugging the terrain, and drops over the lip of a steep cliff. Before him he can see the Schloss lit up by searchlights. He can also see a large construction site on the edge of the lake with what seems to be a large piece of armour parked up outside the main gates. Sven circles back around and can see that there is an anti-aircraft battery set up within the walls of the Schloss and that the towers of the Schloss are manned and each has an independent searchlight scanning the area around the Schloss. Sven heads back towards the cave and spots that the lip he originally flew in over provides an excellent watch point over Schloss Neuschwanstein.

Sven returns to the cave that we have designated rendezvous one, RV1, and tells us about the observation post that he has spotted. We all head out so that we know exactly where it is, it is a difficult climb and so I borrow Madeline’s shadow form ability as well as her ability to see in the dark and slide up the mountainside. Frank teleports up and Madeline arrives the same way as me. Once we have reached the observation post I set up a camouflaged hide that we can observe the Schloss from during daylight hours and we designate it as OP1.

While I am engaged building the hide, Frank and Madeline watch the Schloss through binoculars and manage to spot that the closest tower seems to have a owl cage hung from the rafters of the tower roof. That is going to make approaching from our usual direction, above, difficult. We return back to RV1 and continue watches.

… part two ...

Cap Matifo Peninsula, East of Algiers, Algeria, November 1942

Having regrouped and agreed that we do not have time to discover those other entrances that must exist based on the command to cover all of the doorways that was issued in German. We agree to blow the door and storm the room. I set up two charges on the door and run a wire back down the stairs to the ‘L’ shaped room. Sven then asks if I know what the enhanced beyond the door can do, I head back down and push out with my senses. I discover that he is also very resistant to damage but that he can also hold people in place with a gravitic force. I return and inform the others of this discovery.

Madeline, who has been at the top of the staircase listening, suddenly slides around the edge of the door to see what is in the room beyond. As soon as she does so we can hear a raised voice in German shout;

Was ist das? An der Tür!

Madeline quickly ducks back onto our side of the door and signals that she has spotted four soldiers on the other side of the room, behind a makeshift barrier, and that one of them is an officer of some kind. She then says that she is going to create darkness on the other side of the door and try something and that we are to hold position. With that she turns back to the door.

Seconds later we hear a burst of gunfire hitting the back of the door and Madeline slides in. Over the next few seconds we hear several raised voices in German shouting something about ‘die Schatten’ and more bursts of gunfire from within the room beyond the door, finally we spot Madeline sliding back to our side and signalling for me to blow the door. I flick the trigger and the double explosion blows the door off of it’s hinges and into the room.

It was at that moment that we discovered what die Schatten was referring to, Madeline gazes intently towards the top of the stairs and four, what I can only describe as living shadows, come into being from the darkness around the doorway and glide into the room. We are all stunned but are snapped out of it when we hear more gunfire from the room at the top of the stairs. We rush up the stairs to storm the room.

Sven gets to the top of the stairs first and throws a phosphorus grenade into the room, a second later there is a blinding flash of white light and the clap of an explosion. Frank reaches the top of the steps next and as soon as he has line of sight into the room he disappears, only to reappear a heartbeat later next to the Germans behind their barrier. It is at that moment that he spots two more Wolfenkorps troopers hidden behind within the doorway recesses. He also spots a second grenade thrown by Sven bouncing off of the rear wall of the room behind the barricade, fortunately for Frank it bounces away from him before detonating. He then cannot see much more as a patch of utter darkness appears in the middle of the barricade.

After their initial shock at our unconventional attack, the Wolfenkorps troops rally and open fire at Frank. They end up shooting at thin air as Frank reappears stood just behind one of the German troops in cover with his rifle raised. A squeeze of the trigger and the troops head explodes like a watermelon. It is then that the German Oberst locks eyes with Frank across the room, Frank feels a strange binding force clinging to his legs and he realises that he can’t move his feet. So he raises his rifle and puts three shots into the Oberst. But the Oberst does not go down.

Frank then spots that four more of the oil on water smoke creatures have issued forth from the area of utter black and are rushing to attack the Oberst. With his attention distracted, Frank tries to move again but finds that he can only move his legs very slowly. He then catches sight of a Wolfenkorps trooper in the other doorway raising his MP40 and aiming at him. But a shadow detaches itself from the ceiling and as it drops towards the floor transforms into a knife wielding Madeline. The Wolfenkorps trooper dies before he can pull his trigger.

The shadow creatures continue to attack the Oberst and eventually he falls to them, as soon as he is down they begin to move towards Madeline. But with a dismissive flick of her hand she sends them back to whatever hell they issued forth from. All is quiet.

While the others are regrouping I slide under the upper of the two doors and find myself in a long corridor. I continue to the end and up the spiral staircase and find it opening up into one of the gun emplacements. I can hear French voices, knowing that they can only belong to the traitorous Vichy French collaborators I materialise and draw my gun and a grenade. I lob the grenade in and as soon as it detonates I follow it in. I find two Vichy French troopers injured, which I quickly finish off with a couple of shots, and a further two dead. It is obvious that the main gun has had a catastrophic explosion in it’s breach. I guess that was Sven’s handiwork.

By the time that I arrive back in the main room the others have managed to search it briefly. They have discovered papers on the officer naming him Oberst Amsberg, Wolfenkorps Beta, and Sven has discovered that the scattered papers across the floor are the defensive plans for the area around Algiers. We quickly move onwards into the rest of the structure. We pass through a kitchen and into a dormitory with two doors leading off of it. Madeline takes the left hand door and Frank goes through the one straight ahead. Sven and I look at each other, and then he follows Frank and I head after Madeline.

After a very long corridor and a spiral staircase, Frank and Sven find themselves in the second gun emplacement. They quickly clear it with a grenade and machine gun fire. Once secure they head back to find us. I follow Madeline up yet another spiral staircase, but this one comes up in the middle of what would appear to be a local Algerian dining room. We quickly search around and discover that we are in a single storey residential building on the very edge of the local urban area, a very good disguise for the entrance to the bunker.

Leaving Madeline watching the entrance I head back into the bunker in search of a portable radio set. I meet up with Frank and Sven and send them up to support Madeline and, having found a radio, I join them in the house. We make radio contact with a Lieutenant Howards squad and inform him that the tower and bunker is secured and we issue him with the coordinates of the bunkers hidden entrance. He replies that Charlie beach is secure and that they are moving inland towards us meeting little resistance and should be at our location in twenty minutes.

He goes on to ask if we have any intel on the location of the Vichy French General Alphonse Juin. We inform him that we do not but that we will investigate. We leave Frank on guard at the entrance while Sven transforms into a bird and heads aloft for a birds eye view of the battle, and myself and Madeline head back into the bunker in search of information on the whereabouts of the Vichy French General. Madeline begins to sift through the papers in the main room while I head back up into the tower to see if there is anything there.

I head up to the top of the tower, planning to work my way back down searching, and remember that we had left the enhanced unconscious in the top room. With a tense nervousness creeping over me I reach out with my senses and discover that there are no enhanced within the tower. I rush up the stairs but discover the body of the Wolfenkorps enhanced laying dead in the top floor room. There is a large caliber bullet wound in the centre of his head, that definitely wasn’t there when we left him, the kind of wound that would be made by a rifle. And judging by the powder marks the gun was fired at point blank range. I quickly continue my search but find nothing of interest.

Madeline has far more success, she discovers lots of plans that are written in French but with very recent changes made in German. The changes look rushed and are written in pen all over the plans. But she does discover that it was intended that General Juin would be commanding from the central command bunker. Madeline stops short when she reads that line. Realising that this is the central command bunker, and that as far as she knows we are the only ones alive in it she has a good look at the bodies lying dead in the main room. And she discovers that one of them is wearing a French Generals uniform.

Madeline heads back and radios in that General Juin has died as a result of shrapnel wounds suffered in the capture of the bunker. She is asked to confirm and she does so. The radio goes dead. Madeline then radios in the location of the second in command of the French forces, so that the task force can receive their surrender. Ten minutes later and we are relieved by Lieutenant Howards squad, he tells us that it is practically over and that we are to return to the ship. We inform him that we will be taking the bodies of two Wolfenkorps officers, he asks us why and we say;

Need to know old boy! Need to know!

He shrugs but sends four of his squad with us to help carry the bodies. We head back to the landing craft and then back out to sea, we are informed that we will be heading back to HMS Malcolm as HMS Broke was hit during the invasion and has been sunk.

Hanslope Park, Buckinghamshire, England, December 1942

Five days later, having taken HMS Malcolm as far as Gibraltar and then flown back to Biggin Hill, we are sat in the Hanslope Park briefing room with Captain Ledman and Major Hoffman going through a through debrief. They focus on the relationship between the Vichy French and the Germans, which we are able to inform them was very poor, and then they quickly turn the questioning to the enhanced Germans and our own uses of powers.

Major Hoffman informs us that the commanding officers of Operation Torch were very pleased with how we accounted for ourselves, and that the mission is a potential turning point for the war in North Africa. Captain Ledman then informs us that the first test of the new British enhanced chemical process is to be tested tomorrow, and if successful then as planned they will progress with further exposure of us to the chemical. With that we are told by Ledman to take a couple of days off and recover.

With Christmas Day fast approaching the atmosphere at Hanslope is the most joyous it has been since we first arrived. We spend some time working up the bare bones of a plan for our mission to Schloss Neuschwanstein and in a moment of jovial mirth it is nicknamed Operation Reindeer, leading to Sven prancing around the briefing room transformed into a small reindeer. During that time we are informed by Captain Ledman that the initial test has yielded positive results and that the subject survived the procedure and is doing well. They are currently in a state similar to how we were after our initial exposure, but theirs is far milder in nature.

Christmas Day is a wonderful oasis of fun in the face of the war. We have a wonderful dinner and Madeline gets me a beautiful box of chocolates. I gift her French cigarettes, and I also receive several gifts from numerous scientists and staff around Hanslope Park. Only some of whom I know. On Boxing Day we are informed by Captain Ledman that Subject H is conscious and is showing the first signs of enhanced abilities, with limited control as is to be expected. Madeline asks for more details but Captain Ledman remains tight lipped. Ledman looks around at us all and asks;

Do you still wish to proceed?

We all agree that we are still willing to go ahead. Captain Ledman looks pleased and tells us that we will begin with the first of us in forty eight hours. We agree to draw lots and end up with myself being the first, followed by Frank, Sven and then Madeline.

RAF Halton, Buckinghamshire, England, December 1942

We undergo three days of preparation and medicals at RAF Halton, the location of the new enhanced facility, after which I am cleared to undergo the process. I am strapped to a surgical table, dressed only in a hospital gown, and two large injector arms are position above me. The doctors remove two glowing blue vials from an insulated container and insert them into the injector units, the units are then positioned one over each of my arms and the process is started. As the enhanced chemical is injected into both arms simultaneously I am gripped with intense pain.

I start to feel a warmth flowing from the injection sites and slowly my vision is tinged with a blue hue. Next the doctors trigger the x-ray process and the pain returns, tenfold. This is followed by what I know as a familiar blue pulsing emanating from my own body, it rapidly increases in intensity and the pain mounts to the point where I blue out.

I ‘wake’ up in a sea of blue. Slowly, ever so slowly, I become aware of my own body. I start to sense it as a three dimensional shape, with some areas pushed out or extended. After some time, but without any knowledge of time passing, I start to understand that those extended areas are representative of my enhanced abilities. I also realise that I have the power to change those areas by pushing them further, but not only that I have the power to alter other aspects of my being to create new enhanced powers.

I gently try and remove the requirement for physical contact on my ability to ‘borrow’ enhanced abilities and I succeed, but the effort exhausts me. After an undetermined length of time I feel able to try something else and so I try and push out the range of my ability to sense enhanced abilities. Again I am exhausted by the effort but I believe that I have managed it. I make several other attempts and have various levels of success, and eventually I wake up once more in the real world.

I am informed by the doctors that it has been five days and six hours since the initial injection. I undergo a barrage of checks and tests and am visited by Ledman. I ask him how the others are and am told not to worry and to just focus on getting stronger. I fall into a deep, proper sleep. The following day I am visited by Frank. He tells me that he was unconscious for almost five days and that Sven and Madeline are both still unconscious but that the doctors believe that everything was a success.

Sven wakes up later that day, but it is another two days before Madeline regains consciousnesses. After four days of tests at RAF Halton we are discharged and return back to Hanslope Park where we once again undergo training in order to master our new abilities. And after three days I have gained a good grip on what I can now do. I also seem to have developed the ability to mimic anything that I hear, from birdsong to voices. I’m just like a mockingbird.

We continue to receive briefings on Operation Reindeer and are given our mission priorities by Major Hoffman;

Right then chaps! Primarily you need to obtain details of any enhanced that the enemy have produced and destroy their ability to create anymore. Secondly, secure details on Wolfenkorps Alpha activities and in particular their timescales for testing. Thirdly you need to get details of the Wolfenkorps Beta demonstration to the German leadership and if at all possible, disrupt the demonstration.

At that point Captain Ledman cut in;

And disrupt the leadership if at all possible!

Major Hoffman looked a bit uncomfortable at that point, but carried on to inform us that the Schloss had been a low key military location for some time but recently it has seen a significant increase in activity with a buildup of up to two companies and supporting armour. Given how far behind enemy lines the target site is the only possible deployment will be by parachute from a stripped down Afro Lancaster. With that Major Hoffman leaves us and Captain Ledman takes control of the briefing;

If the opportunity arises, make sure that you disrupt the German leadership!

Ledman throws a folder onto the briefing table and as he does so some of the pictures spill out, we find ourselves looking at the face of Adolf Hitler.

MI6s team of enhanced individuals are assisting in the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa, Operation Torch. The team’s mission is to infiltrate and disable a command bunker, and hold it until relieved. The team consists of Mademoiselle Mimi Dubois, La Résistance fighter and mistress of skills; Miss Madeline Forsyth, SOE operative and a living shadow; Franklin Fort, hard bitten soldier and teleporter; and Sven Hyse, Norwegian Resistance soldier and shapeshifter.

Cap Matifo Peninsula, East of Algiers, Algeria, November 1942

With Madeline, Sven and myself crouched on top of the German observation tower I push out with my senses to check that there are no enhanced within. There had been no intelligence to suggest that there would be, and this location seemed a very long way from Europe where we had encountered most of the enhanced beings of the Wolfenkorps, so you can imagine my surprise when as well as my two companions my senses returned the location of a third enhanced just below us on the fourth floor of the tower.

I am surprised for a second time when a fourth enhanced appears several feet away from us, but I breathe a sigh of relief when I realise that Frank has joined us on the roof of the tower. I push out once more with my senses and discover that the enhanced on the fourth floor has some kind of resistance to physical damage, but stronger than that which we have encountered before on the Wolfenhund, I push further into the enhanced’s mind and discover that they are able to take greater damage before becoming incapacitated. Enhanced abilities similar to those of the Unterfeldwebel at Schloss Wewelsburg.

Sven transforms himself from a sea eagle into a thrush a flaps down towards the the large observation balcony on the fourth floor of the tower. Madeline shifts into her shadow form and slides down the outer edge of the tower heading for the other side of the observation balcony, while I follow Frank down the spiral steps cut into the top of the tower that lead down into the darkness.

From her position on the outer edge of the balcony Madeline can hear German voices efficiently passing information with regards to Allied troop movements to someone within the room. Sven lands on the edge of the balcony and finds himself looking at three Wolfenkorps troopers, two manning post mounted binoculars and the third relaying information into a internal comms unit. All three are being observed by a powerful looking Wolfenkorps Leutnant.

Frank and I have less success, after just half a turn of the spiral stairs we find ourselves face to face with a locked, solid steel door. Frank shrugs and heads back up the stairs, but I transform into shadowform and manage to slip under the door and continue down the stairs. After a full turn of the corkscrew stairs I find myself on a small landing with two doors leading further into the tower, I push out with my senses and confirm that the enhanced is beyond the left hand door. I return back up the stairs, unbarring the steel door on my way back up to the roof.

We regroup in a tight huddle and share what we have found in a low whisper. We agree that we need to make sure that there are no further enhanced beings within the tower before we proceed and so Madeline and I are tasked with scouting the rest of the tower while Sven and Frank rig up two rappelling lines to the main aerial mast. We quickly slide down the spiral staircase on the ceiling past the fourth floor and head for the third, yet again we find a small landing with two doors leading into the tower we listen and can hear the low murmur of both German and French voices. We carry on down to the second floor, the floor that seemed to be in darkness from outside, and discover again a small landing with two doors. This time we slide in under the doors, Madeline to the right and me to the left, and find ourselves in a large room that takes up the rest of the tower level. The room is filled with boxes of light machine gun ammunition but nothing else of any note.

We keep moving downwards. From behind the doors on the first floor we can hear the obvious activity of a busy radio room, messages seem to be received from further up the tower and relayed to other defensive positions across the battlefront. Almost all of the conversation is in French. We move down to the ground floor and can hear quiet talking from beyond the doors, but it is difficult to make out what is being said. The stairs continue downwards into the cliff face and so we carry on down, we find ourselves in rectangular room that contains more ammunition boxes for light machine guns. In the middle of one of the long walls there is a corridor that runs off for five yards before ending in a solid looking metal door.

I push out with my senses once again and get no returns. We decide that there is enough distance between here and the enhanced on the top floor for us to launch the attack and so we return back up to the roof of the tower. Just as we are getting to the ground floor of the tower we hear, or more accurately feel, the boom of an emplacement gun firing. A couple of seconds later a second gun fires. We realise that our intel was slightly lacking, the bunker has two gun emplacements. By the time we arrive Frank has rigged up two rappelling lines so that he and Sven can breach the tower from either side of the large observation balcony. We make the decision not to risk it too grenades and so I rig up a couple of our charges on three second timer fuses.

I place a third charge on the aerial mast, this one with a twenty second timer, and a further couple of charges with ten second timers that Sven has requested so that he can deal with the two gun emplacements. At zero five zero nine hours Frank and Sven are in position, Madeline sneaks down the stairs and waits in the shadows with her STEN gun covering the doors of the radio room on the first floor. Frank and Sven leap off of the roof of the tower and rappel down until they are level with the fourth floor balcony, Frank gets there a couple of seconds before Sven and throws in his explosive charge. His actions are quickly mirrored by Sven and a second later there is a double explosion. Frank and Sven quickly climb back up to the roof of the tower.

Outside the radio room Madeline can hear the Germans and the French arguing over who should go and investigate the detonation. Eventually the French point blank refuse, Madeline makes the decision to transform into her shadow form and hide on the ceiling just as the door of the radio room opens and two German troopers step out and begin to head upstairs. Madeline is only a little surprised that both troops are dressed in Wolfenkorps uniforms. The Wolfenkorps troops kindly left the door to the radio room open and so Madeline transforms once again in to her solid state and walks in. The two Vichy French radio operators are surprised to see a female British commando walk in, but their surprise is short lived as the die in a hail of bullets.

As Frank and Sven pull themselves up onto the roof of the tower I let them both know that I have heard gunfire from down the spiral staircase, at that moment the emplacement guns fire again and we are all momentarily deafened by the boom. Sven looks at both Frank and myself and says;

I have to silence those guns!

With that he transforms into a hawk, grabs one of the explosive charges in his claws and launches himself into the sky. Frank grabs his Lanchester submachine gun and runs towards the gunfire.

In the radio room Madeline hears the sound of boots heading back down the stairs at a pace and so she changes back into a shadow and slides out of the balcony and starts to head up the outside of the tower. Frank gets to the fourth floor, and following standard military protocol on clearing buildings, plants a big kick on the nearest door. It doesn’t budge. Madeline gets to the fourth floor and looks in to see if anything is alive, she is surprised when she hears a banging noise coming from the stairwell side of one of the doors, but the noise also startles the Wolfenkorps Leutnant hiding in the debris clutching an MP40. Madeline slides into the room and heads for a spot out of sight around the corner.

Sven flies swiftly to the nearest gun emplacement and hovers at the end of the guns barrel. He gently lands on the end of the barrel and, priming the charge, drops it down the barrel before flying off as quickly as possible. As he is flapping away he hears a voice shout;

Mon Dieu! C'était quoi ce bordel?

On the roof of the German observation tower I spot a hawk swoop in, grab the second explosive charge in it’s claws and head in the direction of the second gun emplacement. As soon as Sven has departed I trigger the charge on the main aerial mast and run for the stairwell. As I enter the stairs there is a large explosion from further down the headland as the first of the large guns is silenced.

Inside the fourth floor room Madeline quietly arms another explosive charge with a very short timer, she then quietly creeps to the corner and throws the charge towards the Leutnant. As soon as the charge has left her hand she transforms herself into shadow and slides up to the dark ceiling. I join Frank in the fourth floor stairwell just in time to hear the explosive charge detonate on the roof of the tower, but we are both surprised when we hear a second explosion coming from inside the observation post on the fourth floor. The sound of the explosion is closely followed by a cry of pain and the sound of someone scrabbling to their feet, a heartbeat later and we hear the distinctive sound of a German MP40 having it’s clip emptied in a spray of bullets.

Frank kicks the door again and this time is successful in kicking it in, he leaps through and comes face to face with the Wolfenkorps Leutnant across the destroyed room. Frank levels his Lanchester and hoses the German with bullets. They all bounce off of his skin, damaging his clothes but not scratching him at all. The two enhanced soldiers leap at each other and start to trade mighty blows, but they are evenly matched and neither can gain the upper hand. While they are engaged in a rolling fight I quickly rig up yet another charge on a short fuse.

I slip into the room and around behind the enhanced German Leutnant just as he swings a fist at Frank and catches him with a right hook, cutting Frank’s lip. Frank spits a glob of blood onto the floor and steps back into the fight. Seeing my opening I leap onto the back of the German, both he and Frank think that I am trying to grapple him to the ground. I’m not. As soon as I have made physical contact with the Wolfenkorps enhanced I ‘borrow’ his ability to resist damage. The German is quickly able to throw me off of him, but when I hit the ground it doesn’t hurt thanks to my new borrowed ability.

I roll to my feet and make sure that Frank can see that I have the explosive charge in my hand and I shout;

Frank! Disappear!

I throw the charge into the room and dive for cover. To my surprise Frank doesn’t disappear, but runs for the door and dives through it just as the pack explodes. I remember later asking him why he didn’t just teleport and he replied;

Sometimes I can’t!

We head back into the room and find the Wolfenkorps Leutnant unconscious. I have no idea how he was still alive after the three explosions but he was. It was at that point that we heard more gunfire from below us and we ran for the stairs.

As Frank and the enhanced German were locked in a fight Madeline was sliding in through the Radio room’s observation balcony. As soon as she was in she discovered six Wolenkorps troopers inspecting the two dead Vichy French radio operators. They seemed to be arguing over if they should report directly to the Oberst or investigate the explosions from above. They quickly decide on the latter and rush out of the room heading out of the room and into the stairwell, as they are leaving Madeline transforms once again into her solid state and drops from the ceiling landing on her feet like a cat. She raises her STEN and catches the last two soldiers in a spray of bullets, gunning them both down.

As Frank and I are running down the stairs looking for the scene of the gunfire we had heard we again feel, rather than hear, the sound of the second gun emplacement exploding. I hear footsteps behind me and swing round with my pistol aimed but am relieved when I find Sven running towards me, I let him pass and we carrying on down. Frank steps out of the stairwell on the first floor and finds that he is looking at the back of two German troopers crouched in front of an open door staring into a radio room. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth he opens fire and they both fall to the floor dead.

The remaining two Wolenkorps troopers covering the other door on the first floor spin around and open fire at Frank but he dives for cover into the radio room and they miss. That clears enough room for Sven to step off of the stairs and lob a grenade into the middle of the German troops. There followed a terrific explosion and a intense flash of bright light, Sven had thrown a phosphorus grenade. The burning shrapnel and intense detonation took care of the Wolenkorps troops.

I had carried on down the stairwell to the ground floor of the tower and could hear hushed French voices from the room there, I transformed into a shadow and slid under the door and into the room. I find four Vichy French troops with their guns aimed at the doorways, but they seem to be paying far more attention to the conversation than the doorways;

...restons silencieux, ils pourraient ne pas regarder ici!

I slide across the room and up onto the edge of the observation balcony, which has two light machine guns fitted in place, and prepare to materialise. There is a loud knock on one of the doors and Frank shouts, in a terrible German accent;

All clear! Open up!

With all eyes on the door, and the Vichy French relaxed that everything is safe, I transform back into solid state and aimed my pistol at the troops not moving towards the door. Two of the troops get to the door and open it. They find Frank standing there with his Lanchester leveled, Frank squeezes the trigger and the two troops drop in a stream of bullets. I put three bullets into the soldier that I was aiming at and then making the most of the surprise put two more into his comrade. Ground floor cleared.

We regroup on the second floor and crosscheck which floors we have cleared, when doing this we realise that none of us cleared the third floor. We all rush up stairs and Madeline slides in under the door while the rest of us start to discuss what we are going to do. That decision is taken for us when we hear the sound of Madeline’s STEN gun barking beyond the doors. By the time that we get into the room we find Madeline with a smoking gun in her hands and two dead Vichy French soldiers on the floor.

With the tower now definitely cleared and secured we push on down into the sub levels. Madeline and I take point in shadow form and once we have descended two long flights of stairs we find ourselves outside off an internal door, I push out with my senses but can not sense any enhanced on the other side and so Madeline slides quietly over the top of the door. She finds herself in a large ‘L’ shaped room that is empty with the exception of a pile of dead bodies in Vichy French uniform. A quick inspection leads us to believe that several of them have been executed with a single shot to the back of the head and the rest look like they have been mown down with machine gun fire.

We push on and find another staircase leading up into the peninsula, the staircase ends at yet another internal door. Once again I push out with my senses but this time I get a definite hit. There is an enhanced at the very limit of my range beyond this door, Madeline listens at the door and can hear a commanding German voice issuing orders for all doorways to be covered. We retreat back to the others.

... to be continued ...

Having completed their mission at Schloss Wewelsburg, MI6s team of enhanced individuals are trying to make good their escape in a stolen Junkers. The team consists of Mademoiselle Mimi Dubois, La Résistance fighter and mistress of skills; Miss Madeline Forsyth, SOE operative and a living shadow; Sven Hyse, Norwegian Resistance soldier and shapeshifter; and Franklin Fort, hard bitten soldier and teleporter.

Paderborn Lippstadt Airfield, Germany, November 1942

With the airfield in chaos thanks to our last two explosive charges I manage to taxi the Junkers JU88 off of the apron and onto the runway without being spotted. I push forwards on the throttle and we begin to speed along building towards takeoff speed, it is at this point that we are noticed by the bases Luftwaffe staff. But they have noticed far too late to prevent us from climbing up into the night sky and away.

Following the example set by the pilots that infiltrated us into the heart of Germany I decide to put us high and climb to seventeen thousand feet. Sven passes me the coordinates that he has calculated, it didn’t fill me with confidence that Sven said he was sure that they were incorrect as he handed them to me, but I set course based on them anyway. By zero four twenty seven hours I am levelling out and putting the Junkers into cruising speed when Frank shouts out on the internal comms;

I’ve got something moving on our six!

After a minute or so Frank confirms that it is a small plane and that it is gaining. I maintain course and speed, I don’t want to push it to hard as we only just have enough fuel to make it back to England. A couple of minutes later and Frank confirms that it is a single seater fighter aircraft, possibly a Focke-Wulf, and that it is definitely on an intercept course. A second later and the rest of us hear the distinctive roar of a MG 81Z, as Frank opens up with the tail mounted twin guns.

Frank rakes the fighter plane with a hail of bullets, despite the fact that it is still almost two thousand yards behind us. The Focke-Wulf begins to trail smoke behind it but continues to pursue us, at least it does up until the point that Frank hits it with a second burst that tears off one of the fighter planes wings and pitches it into a fatal dive. The last thing that Frank spots before we pull away from the scene of the aerial battle is the pilots parachute canopy opening as he bails out of his wrecked plane.

By the time that we reach the second bearing point Sven is so sure that he is not navigating correctly that I have to lock off the throttle and joystick and do the navigation calculations myself. Once I have double checked I confirm that Sven had us only a couple of degrees off course, I correct for this and set us on the next bearing. As our watches tick over to zero six hundred hours we pass over the coast of Denmark and out over the North Sea, I make the final of our course corrections and Madeline slides out of the nose gunners position and into the radio operators chair;

Pelican calling Nest! Pelican calling Nest! Come in Nest! The Pelican has the fish!

We are greeted with a beautiful sunrise over the coast of Scotland and an escort of two Hawker Hurricane fighters all the way to Biggin Hill. We are greeted at the airport by Captain Ledman and quickly shown to a waiting truck and driven straight back to Hanslope Park. Once we have arrived we are given a fifteen minute debrief by Ledman, where we tell him that the mission was a success and Madeline raises the point that the German’s must now know the the Allies have an enhanced team. We also hand over the twenty three samples of enhanced chemical as well as the sample of the Wolfenhund’s enhanced fur, Captain Ledman looks genuinely surprised and we are dismissed with orders to return for a full debrief at eighteen hundred hours.

Hanslope Park, Buckinghamshire, England, November 1942

As is our tradition upon successfully completing a mission we head for the officers mess and a well deserved drink. Even if it is only nine o’clock in the morning. Later that evening, after we have provided Captain Leadman with a full mission debrief, he informs us that he has had the preliminary reports back from the science division and they have confirmed that with the information that we recovered from Schloss Wewelsburg they will be able to replicate the enhanced process. They are planning on setting up a facility for the processing of cobalt 60 as well as having started on a second facility for the injection and activation of the enhanced chemical.

Ledman also informs us that initial reports coming out of Germany indicate that Schloss Wewelsburg is out of action as a base of operations as almost half of the structure was severely damaged in the fire. The Captain also agrees with our initial thoughts that the next target will have to be Schloss Neuschwanstein and an attempt to locate the information on the number and power of any enemy enhanced as well as the destruction or crippling of the new base of operations. It would also be useful to discover more information about the demonstration of Wolfenkorps Beta. Captain Ledman then looks at us all and says;

But that can wait for a few days. You need to get some R&R. Thank you once again, and take a couple of days off!

Forty eight hours later and the team are once again sat in the briefing room at Hanslope Park in the presence of Captain Ledman and Major Hoffman. Before we get started Madeline asks about Henry, Hoffman frowns and tells us that the Jackal incident is being investigated and that they believe that he may have stolen the original sample of enhanced chemical that we retrieved from under Kohnstein. We all sit silently listening to this disturbing news, and I remember thinking that at some point the team might well have to get involved in the investigation ourselves. Quietly!

After a moments pause, Major Hoffman carries on with the briefing;

Right then chaps, we have been requested to assist in a major assault in North Africa. The Yanks are finally coming to the party!

Hoffman goes on to explain that Operation Torch is a joint Anglo–American invasion of French North Africa, moving against the the Vichy French in order to open up a second front as requested by the Soviet Union. The operation will be under the overall command of the Americans, in particular General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and will involve a three pronged attack aimed at Casablanca to the west, Oran in the centre, and Algiers to the east.

You will be attached to the Eastern Task Force which is under the command of Major General Charles W. Ryder and consists of the U.S. 9th and 34th Infantry Divisions, the British 78th, and No. 1 and No. 6 Commando. You will be going in with the latter, ostensibly you will be under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Derek Mills-Roberts but with your own specific mission objective and authority to pursue it as you see fit. You will be heading in towards beachhead ‘Charlie’ and your target is a military observation tower on the headland west of the beachhead. Below the tower we believe that there is a command and communication bunker.

Major Hoffman goes on to outline the mission objectives;

Your objectives are to gain access to the observation tower and the bunker beneath it, negate it’s command functions, identify any intelligence and hold it until you are relieved. You will be departing in six days, any equipment requests please pass them through Captain Ledman and he will see what he can rustle up for you. Carry on!

With that, Major Hoffman leaves and we are left with a table of maps to begin formulating our plans.

Over the next four days we continue to refine our plans and discuss with Captain Ledman our requests for equipment, in addition to our normal weapons and ammunition we ask for a double load out of explosive charges as well as standard commando equipment and uniforms so that we can blend in with the units involved in the landing. At one point during this period Frank is asked to attend a meeting in Colonel Lambert’s office. When he reappears he has a slight spring in his step and a nice new pair of ‘stripes’ on his sleeve. He is now Corporal Fort . We head for the mess to celebrate and Madeline offers to sew his stripes on straight once we get back.

Two days before we are due to depart for North Africa Captain Ledman once again calls us into the briefing room. He informs us that the science division have managed to identify a source of cobalt and that they are progressing well with the application facility and are in fact almost ready to test. He goes on to inform us that if all goes well the decision has been made that we as a team, if we wish, will be allowed the chance of having further exposure to the enhanced chemical process. Within seconds three of us have volunteered, only Sven doesn’t do so straight away as he insists on contacting the Norwegian embassy first. It has also been agreed that with any remaining enhanced chemical a second team of enhanced will be created.

North of Algiers, Mediterranean Sea, November 1942

Four days later, after a lot of sitting around waiting for something to happen and a horrible eight hour flight to Gibraltar, the team are kitted up and on the embarkation deck of HMS Broke waiting with a force of twenty troops from No. 6 Commando to board our landing craft. We had spent our time on board not mingling with the other troops, at the request of Lieutenant Colonel Mills-Roberts, and all our squad know is that we are to be dropped off in a dinghy a mile from the headland before they continue onto their landing zone.

At zero four forty hours we leave our commando allies and make the usual jokes about meeting up for a drink in Algiers after the invasion. As the landing craft disappears towards the beach we row to within seventy yards of the cliff dominated by the military observation tower. Frank, who is in the prow of the dinghy, disappears and then reappears on a ledge halfway up the cliff face. He immediately begins to quietly climb to within forty yards of the tower.

We let the dinghy drift further out to sea and Sven transforms into a sea eagle, Madeline and I turn into shadows and slide onto him, and he leaps up into the sky heading for the roof of the tower. By zero four fifty five hours Frank is poised forty yards from the base of the observation tower while Madeline, Sven and I are in position on the roof.