‘The planet looks similar to Earth.’
‘Indeed it does. It has roughly the same mass as Earth and it appears from the information we have gathered about it to be tranquil and fertile, its atmosphere comparable with our own. It is perfect for colonisation. It is perfect for colonisation by us,’ Richter said.
Stahl crossed his hands behind his back and contemplated the stunning hologram. Green fertile continents decorated the world, while giant oceans completed the image. Then a thought suddenly struck Stahl. ‘If this world offers such a hospitable environment does that mean that it is already inhabited?’
‘That is one question we cannot answer, Stahl. Does it matter, even it was?’
‘No. ’ Stahl pressed on with his point. ‘But what if we find intelligent life on this world?’ he asked.
‘The chances are remote my friend.’
‘But, in theory, the life we discover could have intelligence, and an intelligence that could oppose our plans.’
‘You fear we will encounter intergalactic Bolsheviks!’ Richter smiled thinly. ‘We will do what we Nazis have always done with all those who have opposed us. We will liquidate them.’
Satisfied with the answer, Stahl moved on.
‘Rocket science was never on my curriculum at the academy at Wewelsburg, but I presume we have some means of getting to this new world.’
‘Again the Space Ministry has taken care of that problem. For the last three years the Neu Magdeburg colony in the Outer Territories has been constructing, at great expense, our chariot to the stars,’ said Richter. ‘Soon the craft will be finished and you’ll be aboard. The time-line is almost heaven sent. Next year is, as you know, the one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the creation of our glorious Nazi state. So it is only apt that we create a new chapter in our Reich’s history to celebrate that upcoming occasion.’
Stahl smiled as he peered closer at the hologram. Richter’s words had hooked him. He may have been under orders, but his enthusiasm for his new mission was growing by the second.
‘Imagine it, Stahl, a new nation of German colonists working in its fields,’ Richter said wistfully as he too stared at the spinning globe. ‘Harvesting wheat below that alien sky and raising their children on that far off world. I do so envy you.’
‘Does the planet have a name?’
‘Vanaheim,’ Richter said.
Stahl smiled. The name was steeped in Aryan mythology and it seemed the perfect name for this proposed Nazi colony.
‘According to legend the kingdom of Vanaheim was the home of the Vanir, gods of fertility and wisdom.’
‘The Vanir supposedly had the power to see into the future too,’ Stahl said.
Richter nodded. ‘Let’s hope the Vanir foresee a successful mission.’
‘And what is to be my role there, Herr Admiral?’
Richter moved closer to the younger Nazi officer. ‘You will be the Party’s eyes and ears out there, Stahl. You, my friend, will ensure that the Party is still obeyed and that there are no lapses of discipline. Your experience in the East should serve you well,’ Richter said. ‘Our people out there are the salt of the earth and most, as you know, are the back-bone of the country, but when times are hard especially with those harsh winters and the incessant native problems, doubts can arise about the regime. Dangerous doubts. Doubts that must be stamped out once they surface. The selection committee is well aware of your sterling work in Hitlerstadt during the past few years. We were certainly aware of how you suppressed that farmer’s revolt last winter. They can act like troublesome children at times.’
In the city of Hitlerstadt and surrounding countryside Stahl ruled. He was a feudal lord, only answerable to the province’s Gauleiter. His word was law as he was ruler, judge and executioner for the entire area. Not only for the German colonists who paid tribute to him, but also to the natives that worked the fields. His black uniform was the embodiment of the might of their masters, a god-like figure with the power of life and death over them all. One particular incident sprang to mind. The event that marked the end of the farmer’s revolt the Admiral spoke of. The farmers of the area had long complained about the unfair advantage the farms that belonged to the likes of Stahl and other Party officials had over them. The Nazi-controlled farms were manned by unpaid slaves and were able to undercut the produce from the colonists’ farms. This had been the case for decades, but following a couple of disastrous harvests things came to a head. The crops of Nazi-owned farms were burnt and protests held, much to the embarrassment of the regime, so in response, men like Stahl ruthlessly quashed the protests. Most of the leaders were deported to camps all around the Reich such as Neu Magdeburg, but Stahl took particular pleasure in personally executing the leader of the revolt. In the courtyard of his lodge the farmer was dragged, battered and bruised. He had knelt before Stahl and pleaded his case. Stahl listened, but once the man had finished, he was summarily shot. Stahl remembered the pool of blood that coursed from the farmer’s blasted head, the bright red liquid a declaration of victory over the disgruntled colonists.
‘There is one other reason why we are embarking on this epic trek. A more, may I say it, romantic reason,’ Richter said. ‘This thought first gripped me the moment I left the Earth and I looked down upon the surface.’
‘What was that?’ Stahl asked like an eager schoolboy.
‘That one cannot remain in the cradle forever.’
Stahl smiled as he remembered Richter’s final words as he finally reached the shuttle’s observation-suite. From the shuttle’s windows he could see the chariot that Richter had spoken of.
The Odin.
Richter had hinted at the vessel’s immense size, but only now, after seeing it finally in the flesh, could Stahl appreciate its scale. The ship was two kilometres long from bow to stern and it easily dwarfed the rocky colony of Neu Magdeburg which hung above it like some parasitic fly attached to its host via numerous connections and gantries. The main structure was made up of intricate lattice-work, the metal twisted like barb-wire. The stern sections which housed its fuel-tanks and power-plants were dominated by a cluster of graceful engine bells, their gigantic gaping maws, for the moment, dark and silent. Sweeping closer, Stahl made out on the structure microscopic figures. These were the construction engineers who were still working furiously upon the ship, their life-lines pictured briefly in the blue sparks of their welding equipment. At the opposite end of the ship were the crew’s quarters, command module and cargo carriers. Compared to the elegant engine section, the bow was an ugly carbuncle, a mass of bulky containers and communication dishes and masts, and as the shuttle jetted closer to the construction site a thought suddenly struck Stahl. The thought was not particularly complementary towards the vast vessel, and hardly the most patriotic regarding its design, but to the neutral eye it perfectly summed up the design of the spacecraft. If the devil had built a spacecraft this would be it.
CHAPTER FIVE
The lift rose up the dark shaft. Inside the rickety cage Konrad was trapped in a corner, smothered on one side by the cage’s wall and on the other by a mass of bodies. As the lift climbed, the temperature inside the rocking cage dropped as it neared the outer limits of the vast installation. Konrad’s body was too cramped to shiver with the cold, but his breath turned into a silver mist which eventually froze to form tiny ice particles. They attached themselves to everything within the cage, metal, cloth and skin, forming a frosty veneer on them all.
After Konrad had been bundled out the construction gallery by Brutus he passed several empty warehouses that had once been filled floor to ceiling with mammoth parts for the ship. But now they were eerily dark and quiet like long abandoned cathedrals. Alongside the empty warehouses were more factory galleries now also redundant, their furnaces and machinery lying in state in the darkness. All around Konrad the colony was winding down as the vessel outside neared completion. As the craft grew and neared its explosive birth, the rocky camp was approaching its doom and these sights generated a great deal of fear in Konrad. He knew once the space-craft was complete he and the other prisoners, like the redundant pieces of machinery, would no longer be needed. But unlike the foundries and production lines which would be moth-balled and sent to another camp or sold as scrap, the unwanted prisoners would all end up inside the colony’s gas chambers.