Norderweisenburg, Leistung
0256 hours, local time
274.12 Kelvin, light snow
12 November 2010
0256 hours, local time
274.12 Kelvin, light snow
12 November 2010
For the villagers of Norderweisenburg, it was a good day to catch up on some sleep after the weekly meetings were concluded and everyone could finally go home. For the Stoklomolvi infiltration team sent to assassinate Konstantin Zeltyavich, it was the perfect time to move in and silently murder everyone in the village, as the team lacked a photograph of Konstantin but knew he was living here as a Leistungi citizen. It was simply a logical approach to one of the toughest problems the Stoklomolvi Liaoist Party had been facing in months. The Stoklomolvi government, however, had failed to consider the Leistungi government reaction to its entering its territory, but it neither cared nor thought about whatever the Leistungi government would fling at it.
Thus, Dzherzinsky and his team were tasked to indiscriminately massacre everyone in the village. Each person of the twenty-man team was highly experienced from the innumerable other assassinations and massacres they had been tasked to previously perform, and since Konstantin was such a high-profile target the Stoklomolvi government could not afford to send anyone less. The hardest objective to reach was actually crossing the river that divided Stoklomolvi and Leistung. On the Stoklomolvi side of the river, a gigantic concrete wall system stretched from the sea to the west and the border of De Vliggenplat to the east. On the Leistungi side of the river, minefields, barbed wire, tank traps, and stakes lined the ground to prevent anyone from crossing the river. The single point where the team could cross was at the forested knoll that blocked the view of Norderweisenburg, as the Leistungis figured no normal person would be willing to scale the cliff beneath it.
The river dividing Leistung and Stoklomolvi was huge. Across, the river was around half a kilometre, and depth-wise the river reached a kilometre in some of the deepest areas. At the crossing point, the river was actually narrower than it was elsewhere, and the team donned their diving gear and swam beneath the surface silently slipping into the river. It took a good ten minutes to swim across, but after everyone arrived at the opposite bank they all stood on rocks to stay out of the water. To prevent any Leistungi guards, of which there were none at the time, from seeing the team, Dzherzinsky flung a single grappling hook upwards, and from there the men climbed up the rope and hid behind the trees. Norderweisenburg could be seen in the distance, the single light from some resident's house illuminating the way. There were no mines and only a single barbed wire blocking the way.
Dzherzinsky got the team field engineer to cut through the wire, and they simply walked into Leistung through the mess of metal and pointy barbs that now lay beneath their feet. The first house in the city of Norderweisenburg, a small village of only one hundred forty residents, stood outside the village itself. A family of two, husband and wife, was the occupant of the cabin; Dzherzinsky knew that this house was not the one they were searching for, but decided to kill them anyway. Better to be safe than dead. Miraculously, the door had been left unlocked, for the husband was actually awake writing a letter to his ageing mother up in Falkenberg. The wife was asleep, having watched the town meeting for hours. Silently, Dzherzinsky walked alone to the desk, and sliced the husband's throat in a single motion. He cried out not, gurgling as he clutched his neck and fell to the floor. Dzherzinsky then lumbered to the bed where the wife rested, covered her mouth, and sliced her throat as well. Nobody will find them until morning, he thought, as he turned off the desk lamp and left the building.
At this point, it was 0256 hours in the morning. The main operation for the night would occur at 0300 hours sharp as had been planned several hours ago. Dzherzinsky wasted no time in ordering his twenty men to each stand before a different building, guns ready but knives out. They would save the gunning down for last as they would be able to simply ignore the cries of the other villagers since everyone else would be dead. Only the family in the house on the other side of town was awake, as the husband of the family was still writing a report while the wife got ready for the business trip she had scheduled tomorrow. The children were, of course, asleep. As soon as each person's watch struck 0300 hours, they all entered the houses they stood in front of. Some of the doors were locked, but the men simply ripped out the door knobs and pushed the doors open that way.
Over three dozen throats were slit over the course of the next minute. As of 0301 hours, only a hundred of the original residents were still alive. Swiftly, this number decreased. Nobody in the infiltration team cared who was being slaughtered, and indiscriminately killed artists, workers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, politicians, and engineers alike. By 303 hours, only twenty people in the village were still breathing. Bloody footprints could be seen across the streets as the soldiers efficiently killed the random villagers. Several people were awakened by the brutal entries made by the soldiers, but before they could cry out they had their mouths covered before being stabbed repeatedly in the stomach, chest, head or throat. Not a single wall or floor was left unstained by the blood of innocent villagers.
Konstantin was still alive, though by 0305 hours he too had been murdered. Dzherzinsky knew of this, for he was the one who killed him, but decided to let the operation proceed anyway. Better to be a corpse than a Leistungi, he thought, as he proceeded to the final lit house. Bored from the easy kills he had been scoring for the past five minutes, he decided to gather everyone around the house and ready their weapons in case anyone managed to escape. He cleaned his knife and put it away before pulling out his 12.7mm bolt-action anti-materiel rifle that he had brought along just to make messes with. He forcefully kicked in the door and ran into the house, rifle at his hip and ready to shoot.
The husband instantly heard the door, and stood up immediately. He reached for his revolver in his coat, but before he could load the gun Dzherzinsky popped into the room. The man turned to face Dzherzinsky only to find a long anti-tank gun pointed right into his face, and could say nothing before a single round penetrated his skull. Dzherzinsky grinned as the man's head exploded against the wall, expressionless face covered in blood as the open head spewed blood everywhere. He walked over and took the man's revolver, identified it as a simple Colt, and loaded it for the man. He fired a bullet from the revolver into the man's head and then placed the revolver in his hand. A cruel joke.
The wife had, by this point, been very frightened by whatever was occurring in her husband's study. She decided to stay quiet out of hopes that whoever was in the house would not notice. Dzherzinsky, however, did not hesitate as he checked every room in the house for anyone else alive. He saw the children in their room and left them alone, and noticed a light down the hall since the woman had only closed the door and had not shut off the lamp in the room. He slowly trudged over to the door, flung it wide open, and stared down the woman. He grinned as he watched her cower in a corner, and pulled the bolt on his rifle before aiming it at the back of her head. He pulled the trigger, and her head too was a mess on the wall. The anti-tank round had gone straight through, landing somewhere in the field outside. Realising that the children were still alive, he walked over and simply cut through them with his knife to save some ammunition. He turned on the light in the doorway and left the house that way, door agape.
The team, finished with their operation, promptly ran through the village, tossing lit matches at the wooden walls of the various houses there. The village hall was ignited by a torch they made out of a rag, some beer they found in one man's house, and a wooden stick. By the time they had left the village in its entirety, they had lit every house except the still lighted house on fire, crucified a corpse upside down for entertainment, and painted graffiti on random walls out of people's blood. Dzherzinsky, as he prepared to descend to the river, took one last glance at the village. The sweet, sweet smell of death.
