Avenging Steel: The First Collection Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead or undead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016. Ian Hall. Hallanish Publishing. Smashwords Edition.

  Published by Ian Hall at Smashwords

  ISBN- 9781370429479

  All rights reserved, and the author reserves the right to re-produce this book, or parts thereof, in any way whatsoever.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Avenging Steel

  (The First Collection)

  Including…

  Avenging Steel 1: The Fall of Edinburgh

  Avenging Steel 2: The Nuclear Option

  Avenging Steel 3: The Final Solution

  Avenging Steel

  (From The Tree of Liberty)

  By her inspired the new born race

  Soon grew the Avenging Steel, man;

  The hirelings ran — her foes gied chase

  And banged the despot weel, man.

  Robert Burns(1759 – 1796)

  Cover Illustration; German swastika banners on Edinburgh Castle for the victory parade, Tuesday 22nd October 1940.

  Picture by Robert Silverman, Official photographer for the German Governor of Scotland, General Hermann Ullrich.

  Also by Ian Hall, related to Avenging Steel; Non Fiction

  Churchill’s Secret Armies

  War without Rules:

  Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

  A short history of the secret departments and Special Forces put together by Winston Churchill in World War 2

  WW2 Spy School:

  The Complete 1943 S. O. E. Counter Espionage Manual

  The complete SOE manual used in World War 2 to train Allied spies and counter-espionage agents. Over 400 pages.

  The Ridiculously Comprehensive Dictionary of British Slang

  A huge dictionary of British slang, regional slang and Cockney Rhyming Slang. Thousands of definitions, hundreds of pages.

  No Ribbons: The Road to Camp X

  Ian Hall & C.R. Kennedy

  No Ribbons is the new World War Two espionage series.

  In this short introduction, we are told three very differing stories of men and women whose lives are being drawn towards S.O.E. Camp STS103 (Camp X) in Canada.

  Foreword

  Avenging Steel 1: The Fall of Edinburgh

  Chapter 1 The First Flagellation

  Chapter 2 A Feeling of Hopelessness

  Chapter 3 Men in the High Castle

  Chapter 4 A Fly in the Ointment

  Chapter 5 Biggles Goes Forth

  Chapter 6 It All Becomes Official

  Chapter 7 Alice from Wonderland

  Chapter 8 Mothers are the Rock of Humanity

  Chapter 9 Of Corpses and Patriots

  Chapter 10 How the Other Half Live

  Chapter 11 Of Wedding Bells and Honeymoons

  Chapter 12 It was the Best of Times

  Chapter 13 A Slice Into the Rough

  Chapter 14 The Four Man Stagger

  Chapter 15 Killing a Dead Man

  Avenging Steel 2: The Nuclear Option

  Chapter 1 The Nazi Hit-List

  Chapter 2 The War through German Eyes

  Chapter 3 Believable Deniability

  Chapter 4 The Unveiling of Martha Fulkes

  Chapter 5 Biggles Collects Papers

  Chapter 6 Flight through Edinburgh

  Chapter 7 Victory in the Desert

  Chapter 8 A Thank-You and A Smile

  Chapter 9 The Mathematics of Conscience

  Chapter 10 Biggles Buys a Car

  Chapter 11 The Mathematician’s Reprise

  Chapter 12 Of Murder and Mayhem

  Chapter 13 Running with the Deer

  Chapter 14 A Plethora of Nurses

  Avenging Steel 3: The Final Solution

  Chapter 1 The Fallen Circus Performer

  Chapter 2 A Whole Lot of Something

  Chapter 3 The Diminishing Labour Force

  Chapter 4 The Scottish Auxiliaries

  Chapter 5 Alone Again, With Benefits

  Chapter 6 A New Position in Life

  Chapter 7 Blowing Lids Off, Dust Settling

  Chapter 8 Going to Hell in a Handbasket

  Chapter 9 An Unexpected Friend

  Chapter 10 The Beautiful Game

  Chapter 11 From Memories, Into the Fire

  Chapter 12 My Reluctant Return to Carstairs

  Chapter 13 Ashes to Ashes

  Chapter 14 The First Branch of the Tree

  Chapter 15 The Pits of Hell Itself

  Appendix 1 A List of Characters

  On 10th May, 1940, Germany attacked the British and French troops.

  At that time, Britain had half a million men in France.

  By 4th June 1940, Britain had rescued 330,000 men (British and French) from the defensive bubble around Dunkirk.

  Between 15th and 25th June 1940, they rescued another 190,000 through Operation Ariel from French coasts and ports.

  In the short Battle of France, Britain had left behind 70,000 men, 450 tanks, 2500 artillery pieces, 85,000 vehicles, and 600,000 tons of ammunition, fuel and stores.

  The figures show Britain had 500,000 men for its defense… but with little arms, armour and ammunition to fight. Britain was ripe for invasion, and everyone knew it.

  Churchill spoke…

  … we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; We shall never surrender…

  On 16 July 1940 Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 16, setting in motion preparations for a landing in Britain. He prefaced the order by stating…

  "As England, in spite of her hopeless military situation, still shows no signs of willingness to come to terms, I have decided to prepare, and if necessary to carry out, a landing operation against her. The aim of this operation is to eliminate the English Motherland as a base from which the war against Germany can be continued, and, if necessary, to occupy the country completely."

  On the 16th August the first waves of German paratroopers descended on rural England. The next day, under the cover of the Luftwaffe, tanks and armored vehicles drove ashore in numerous locations.

  Within a month Germany had captured London, Birmingham and Manchester.

  A month later, Churchill’s much vaunted Battle of Britain was over.

  Churchill spoke to the British people from a fleeting headquarters in Ireland…

  … let us not consider this a retreat, not a farewell to our homeland, but as a gathering for a new offensive. And let me make this promise to Herr Hitler; we will return…

  Thus begins a brand-new Alternative History series… Avenging Steel

  Avenging Steel

  Part One: The Fall of Edinburgh

  1. The First Flagellation

  I remember the day the Germans marched into Edinburgh like it was yesterday.

  It was exactly one week after my twentieth birthday, Tuesday 22nd October, 1940.

  Apart from the Nazis in their grey uniforms, Princes Street was perhaps the quietest I’d ever seen it, autumnal trees shedding their leaves like tears, the traitorous sky above shone blue and cloudless.
r />   And yet still some Edinburgh residents turned out to see the spectacle. I must admit I was one of them, curious, searching for some remnant of reason why our own men had been beaten so quickly by these smiling grey automatons. I looked at each face under their coal-scuttle helmets, and wondered what made them so much better than our soldiers, quickly scattered into the hills like so many modern-day Bonnie Prince Charlies.

  I remember my own emotion, my own personal feeling of shame. I had done nothing to stop them myself, so how could I possibly set the blame on the soldiers who had fought so bravely against the German onslaught. Overcome with overwhelming tanks and artillery, with theirs so cruelly abandoned at Dunkirk just weeks before, how could they have stopped the Nazi juggernaut? Poland had fallen in just three weeks. Mighty France had surrendered in five. Our own forces had fought for seven weeks against the Nazi onslaught, then fled across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada.

  Churchill’s much vaunted ‘Battle of Britain’ had been a pipedream, blown away as quickly as our resistance.

  I, however, had stayed safely in the hallowed halls of Edinburgh University, my own advancement considered loftier than the humble defense of my own country. I knew would have to deal with that particular morsel at a much later date. There was no doubt that if I had not directly helped bring this on, me and my similarly minded academic comrades had certainly done nothing to stop it.

  I thought of my father in Palestine, fighting in the desert against the Hun horde, the conglomeration of Axis countries we now referred to simply as ‘Jerry’. I took some encouragement from his deployment, away from the fighting here at home. He’d never surrendered; he’d never fled to Canada.

  As I heard the first distant strains of music, I now realized I waited to see the Nazi procession, a self-delivered punishment for my inactivity, the first flagellation to atone for my previous misdeeds.

  Or more accurately… my lack of deeds.

  I stood on the garden side of Princes Street looking down the wide road and its shiny tramlines, my back to high Edinburgh Castle, my eyes unable to deal with the huge Nazi insignia now festooned from its ancient battlements. The shops before me were closed, all of them, their boarded up windows a remembrance of the brief street fighting of the last week, the gossamer threads of resistance, the brave heroes who had fired their guns for a few fleeting moments, then vanished from the streets. I recall sitting in the University buildings, head immersed in some technical book as if the pages could dull my senses to the random shots, the sporadic gunfire of a retreating and broken army.

  The shopfronts had been taken by the Germans, their long blood-red banners dripping from high windows, the pristine colors degrading the grey stone even further. The sun reflected from the huge swastikas where proud tattered Union flags had flown just days earlier. Somehow the gaudy Nazi colors greyed the scene, making it monochrome before a picture was ever taken; the red banners leaching whatever color remained in the stone, leaving them sterile.

  I knew I would never shop on Princes Street again; the appeal had been torn away, replaced by a reminder of my own complicity in my country’s defeat. I could picture a line of new cafés, offering the conquering heroes a view of their newest conquest, as they had done in Paris, just four months previously.

  When the marching band approached, I resisted the urge to run from my vantage point, to escape the final ignominy of my own personal surrender. I looked around; there was no wide-armed blue-uniformed policemen ushering eager children from the streets. My fellow Edinburgh residents stood sullenly on the pavements with no urge to see the band before they approached. We accepted its looming advance, yet perhaps hoped it would never arrive.

  My skin crawled against the shifting of familiarity, the dichotomy of sounds, the basic longing for a memory which had been snatched from me, replaced by this alien presence. Considering how many times I’d stood as a child, as a teenager, my heart racing, my mind dancing with the sounds of the oncoming tartan-covered pipe band. I’d felt giddy and excited, my core lifted by the Scottish-ness of it all.

  In precisely that moment, as I stood immobile like a deer caught in headlights, the full comprehension of surrender jarred me like a hammer blow. Today I would witness no Scottish parade. This would be no celebration of our traditions, paraded in front of me like some elaborate people’s opera… no familiar high skirl of pipes, no chanter drone, no rousing tunes of war.

  This procession was not an Edinburgh Festival March.

  My head reluctantly turned; the need to assuage my curiosity overcoming my reticence to acknowledge the passing of an era.

  In the brilliant sunshine that only northern climes can provide, an immaculately uniformed grey drum major marched in front, a red sash across his chest, but there any similarity with old memories ended. The helmet of this new leader was polished silvery grey; his weird manic goosestep looked awkward and staccato compared to the confident swish and swagger of tartan kilts we were familiar with. The brass band behind him played strange tunes which seemed to hurt my ears, and I grimaced in recoil. I sensed we all did.

  The bass drone of the pipes was gone, replaced by the low gears of the tanks following the band, their tracks making a crunching sound against the tarmac street and tramlines. I felt the growing vibration in my very soul; it was the grinding of our freedom, the destruction of our way of life. As the first tanks passed me, I sensed the pulverization of the history of my people under their screeching tracks.

  Heads and shoulders of dark men thrust forth from their mechanical insides, looking around in wonder, ignoring us, the people out to see them. They gazed at the high castle shining in the bright sunshine behind me, their faces confident, proud.

  The expressions of victors.

  Then armored cars and unfamiliar vehicles filled with gaudily dressed officers. Fancy grey uniforms filled with oppressive men with veneer smiles, looking past me, looking at the symbol of their victory, the battlements of once proud Edinburgh Castle.

  As goose-stepping grey men marched behind the armored cars, I turned away, pushing politely past the thin line of onlookers, past the tall red Nazi banners tied to the railings of Princes Street Gardens. I looked for the nearest opening to retreat down into the gardens, but they were locked, guarded by German soldiers. Resisting the overwhelming desire to run, I casually walked against the direction of the parade, my eyes fixed on the paving stones in front of me, not wanting to catch the eye of the soldiers lining the railings. I was desperate to get away from Princes Street; at that moment I would have hopped on a tramcar to the moon.

  I wanted to get out of Edinburgh, away from the uniforms, away from the bloody banners, away from my own guilt. I felt tears in my eyes, and I rubbed them away, determined that they would never return until my country was free once again.

  I walked up the Mound, and into the old city. The streets were deserted, as if a plague had struck, the sharp shadowed streets holding their sweating victims inside. Suddenly I knew my objective, my subconscious feet had driven me along accustomed streets towards my sanctuary; the cool rooms of Edinburgh University. I sought familiar faces rather than the strangers I had witnessed today. I needed the friendly voices of men with similar feelings of guilt; men who, like me, had hidden in the darkness of academia too long.

  “I’m getting out of town,” Raymond said, the beer glass on the dirty table was empty, the sparse rings on its insides betraying the speed of its consumption.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “My parent’s place, Auchtermuchty.”

  It was my round, but I still had half a pint left in my glass. I determined to make it last more than a minute before buying more. “I suppose I should get out too.” I mused before taking another gulp. “But mum’s place is in town, I’d need somewhere safe to go.” I left my words hanging, but Raymond didn’t pick up on my hint. Fife was hardly at the ends of the earth, yet it would still be out of Edinburgh. Faced with leaving town, I started to wonder what I’d do for a living. The feeli
ng of doubt didn’t sit comfortably; I hadn’t worked a day in my life.

  I was brought back to reality by Raymond’s chinking my glass with his. Surprised, I found mine also empty, yet could not recall finishing it. “Charlie!” I shouted towards the bar, waving my glass and two extended fingers.

  I remember sitting, having three more drinks, yet have no recollection of another word we spoke.

  Absorbed in my own problematic world, I walked home, neither noticing nor caring of German soldiers on every corner. With my coat collars pulled round my chin against the cold October breeze, I walked straight across the Meadows, once the garden of my childhood, now suddenly bereft of patrons. I saw the windows of our apartment from half a mile away, and homed in on their welcoming presence like a pigeon coming home to roost.

  Bruntsfield is one of the better parts of Edinburgh’s growing suburbs, and rooms had been sought after for many years, being just a mile or so from the city center. Upon turning the corner I passed the café on the corner, walked past Mister Teaser’s violin workshop, arriving at number 9, my home for all of my twenty years.

  I unlatched the main door with my castle key, pushing its heavy bulk inwards, and strode into the pitch dark common hallway. The interior square staircase was illuminated only by the large skylight four floors above, and provided scant lighting in the late afternoon. Fortunately I did not need it; memory filled the void that nature could not, and I had no hesitation in climbing to the first floor, pulling myself up the black railing. The cold stone steps were worn from generations of use, and my feet slid onto their smooth curves with a sigh of relief. On the first level, I unlocked the door and pushed the weighty contraption into the apartment beyond, its thick red curtain swinging into the hallway.