"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
In a steampunk-inspired World War II, treachery and secrets abound as the world spirals closer to chaos.
Steve Rogers is a would-be soldier with nothing to lose. Denied from enlisting more t...
- John Bradford, as quoted by Arthur "Dutch" Schultz
media:
"When That Man Is Dead and Gone"
by Mildred Bailey
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Saint-Marie-Eglise; June 7, 1944
The grinding of machinery wheels and the footsteps of soldiers trampled in the distance. The movements of the impending German counterattack had already gained the attention of the 82nd Airborne's impromptu headquarters in Saint-Marie-Eglise, morning beams of sunshine glinting off of the ruins from the fire and the bullet holes glancing off of the stone structures in the town. A nervous energy hung loose in the air, drifting with the wind. Raw anticipation kept Steve's nerves on edge.
Damp dew sunk into the elbows of his uniform as he crouched low in an apple orchard a short way from the town. At the end of the row, a thick hedge rose like a monolith blocking Steve's view. He tightened the focus on his binoculars, the lenses clicking and zooming to sharpen the image before his eyes. The leaves remained stubbornly dense, like trying to peer through a brick wall.
Frustrated, Steve set his binoculars aside and picked up his notebook. The pages were smudged from his damp fingerprints, but he carefully penciled in the locations of the voices he had heard. He knew the make of the German Tiger tank from the sound of its treads, and had calculated its acceleration in the margins of his paper. Before him lay a precise map showing where the Germans were accumulated.
A spatter of fire tore his focus back to the hedgerow, and he flattened himself against the earth for fear he had been spotted. Sharp commands in stilted German reached his ears and he extended his hand for his M1, gripping the barrel and drawing the rifle close. He rested the metal against his shoulder, measuring his line of sight and aiming near the bottom of the hedgerow. Not a leaf twitched.
A second burst of gunfire sounded, followed by the rushing of the wind. Silence. Steve took this as his cue to head back to the CP, head ducked low as he sprinted across the level ground of the orchard back towards the town.
He was unchallenged in his dash through enemy territory, and when he reached the command post he realized that Lieutenant Wray had beaten him to it. The stocky soldier stood with blood streaked down the front of his coat and his neck, looking irritated and stern as he reported his own intel to Lieutenant Colonel Vandervoort. A map of the area around Saint-Marie-Eglise was marked up with pencil, and Wray was pointing out the areas where he had detected a heavy concentration of Germans.
"They've been getting kind of close to you, haven't they?" Steve noted, and Wray gave him a grim smile.
"Not as close as I've been getting to them. What did you find?"
