“Be careful, you idiots!”
In the upper regions of Germany, far from the prying eyes of any passersby, a pair of stalwart grunts worked with heavy excavation machinery. One tossed a look over his shoulder at the man who had spat an insult at him, a look of contempt on his face.
If the work didn’t pay so well he would have taken the jackhammer right to his employer’s throat. As things went, times were tough. He needed the money and for now he would put up with the harsh treatment.
The cement broke away, revealing a hollow area beneath the hillside. They had worked throughout the night, digging and chiseling through the hidden sealed doorway. Whatever was put behind the cement slab was meant to stay there. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep something hidden.
The final piece fell apart at the onslaught of the jackhammer and the men shut down their equipment. Their employer, a stout man with thinning grey hair, shoved by them in his excitement.
“Finally!” he said. “Get the flashlights. The flashlights!”
He peered into the opening, straining to see what was inside. All of his research had pointed to this moment. While he realized that the scene had unfolded much like a bad Hollywood film, there would be no treasure buried here.
One of the workers held out a large flashlight to him. “What should we be looking for?” the worker asked.
“One of the greatest weapons ever created for the glory of Germany,” the stout man replied. He shined the light into the newly opened entryway and smiled when he saw the steps leading down into darkness. “My God…it’s really here.”
“Weapon?” The workers traded a glance with one another. “What kind of weapon?”
“The kind that will return this country to its former glory. A living weapon so dangerous that it had to be contained for decades, buried and forgotten. You may have heard of him. He was called The Iron Cross.”
In the upper regions of Germany, far from the prying eyes of any passersby, a pair of stalwart grunts worked with heavy excavation machinery. One tossed a look over his shoulder at the man who had spat an insult at him, a look of contempt on his face.
If the work didn’t pay so well he would have taken the jackhammer right to his employer’s throat. As things went, times were tough. He needed the money and for now he would put up with the harsh treatment.
The cement broke away, revealing a hollow area beneath the hillside. They had worked throughout the night, digging and chiseling through the hidden sealed doorway. Whatever was put behind the cement slab was meant to stay there. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep something hidden.
The final piece fell apart at the onslaught of the jackhammer and the men shut down their equipment. Their employer, a stout man with thinning grey hair, shoved by them in his excitement.
“Finally!” he said. “Get the flashlights. The flashlights!”
He peered into the opening, straining to see what was inside. All of his research had pointed to this moment. While he realized that the scene had unfolded much like a bad Hollywood film, there would be no treasure buried here.
One of the workers held out a large flashlight to him. “What should we be looking for?” the worker asked.
“One of the greatest weapons ever created for the glory of Germany,” the stout man replied. He shined the light into the newly opened entryway and smiled when he saw the steps leading down into darkness. “My God…it’s really here.”
“Weapon?” The workers traded a glance with one another. “What kind of weapon?”
“The kind that will return this country to its former glory. A living weapon so dangerous that it had to be contained for decades, buried and forgotten. You may have heard of him. He was called The Iron Cross.”
Back to GatefoldIssue #28 by D. Golightly
Featuring the Iron Cross! |
"Eternal Enemy"
THREE DAYS LATER
Darkness.
He remembered what it was like before the darkness. He remembered pain. Love. Hunger. Depression. However, those simple feelings were from another lifetime. He thought of them as he would an old photograph. The conceptualization was there in his mind, but he couldn’t touch it. Couldn’t taste it.
His limbs had gone numb long ago. Time had lost meaning, as had the weight it carried. To him, this un-life he drifted through was all he could conceive of.
Then a sliver of light stabbed his eyes. He briefly wondered if his mind had finally been released from the body it was trapped in, and the suit beyond that. The concept of pain changed from a familiar idea into a new reality.
If he didn’t know better he would say that someone had forcefully opened his eyes. But that was impossible. No one knew where he was.
The light faded away, as did the grief it brought him.
His mind drifted off again and before long he imagined the hurtful experience had just been part of his inevitable death. How he longed for death. That strange mistress he had come to know so well during the war had decided to play a cruel trick on him.
However, what could have either been a few hours or a few days later, the sliver of light returned. Only this time it did not go away.
Instead it began to grow. Then the pain it brought on spread to other parts of his body. His left arm started to moan to him, voicing its discontent at some outside force poking and prodding it.
He soon realized that the sensation was the blood flow returning to the arm, undoubtedly forced there by his pumping heart. His heart? Hadn’t that stopped beating years ago?
No. No, of course not. The suit wouldn’t have allowed it to stop beating. Not completely. The armor he was shut away in could sustain him, making sure that his heart would thrum every so often. Just enough to keep his joints from drying up.
That’s what Professor Franz Schneider had told him. He remembered, so long ago, volunteering for a secret government project. The professor, renowned among his peers at the university in Berlin, had created a suit of armor capable of standing up to the fabled American supermen.
He had been a loyalist to the end. With the prospect of serving his country in such a way dangling in front of him, how could he not volunteer?
The procedure for implanting him into the armor was simple enough. He doused his body in chemicals for days, exposing himself to a viscous fluid smeared over his muscles that was supposed to help perpetuate blood flow.
He underwent minor orthopedic surgery to allow for greater range of motion in his arms and legs, which would be vital in moving the armor without worry of snapping his bones like twigs.
Finally, after the professor said he was ready, they inserted him into the armor. The power he had at his command was truly awesome. Upon seeing what he could do in name of the Axis forces he was moved to the front line immediately and given a codename.
They called him The Iron Cross.
He tore through the Allied ranks without mercy. Scores of men, once his equal on the battlefield, were now like clay to be smashed in his armored hands. His strength increased ten…no, twenty-fold. He could crush a man’s skull in his palm without even thinking.
He could soar over the British bombers and rip their wings apart. He had stopped several bombings of his homeland and saw to it that none of the jettisoned pilots made it to the ground alive.
He was truly unstoppable and worthy of his name. He even received a signed letter of appreciation from the Furher himself.
Then came his greatest challenge. The Invaders.
The Allied forces’ fabled supermen. Surprisingly, they had numbers on their side. One who could move faster than the winds. Another that was draped in the ugly flag of the United Kingdom. Even a woman with extraordinary power fought alongside them as an equal.
Their collective name, chosen because of their movement into Poland and other occupied areas, had become something more than a name. Like all great things, it had manifested fear in the enemy and encouragement in their allies.
But there were three that stood out above the rest. The American. The man of fire. The man of the sea.
He hated them the most, as it was them that were responsible for his ultimate failure. During a battle over the European theatre, the one called Namor badly damaged his armor. If not for the interference of Captain America and the Human Torch he would have completed his mission before Namor had decommissioned him.
Thought dead, The Iron Cross instead made his way back to headquarters, only to find that the war was over. He had been knocked unconscious and kept alive by the suit while the rest of the war had played out. When he came to, and had summoned enough strength to drag himself across the country, he found his beloved Reich in shambles.
But that was a long time ago.
Since then, all he had known was darkness. A cold numbness that had spread over his body, relieving him of the guilt he felt from his failure.
It had been that way for decades…so what was this new sensation he was experiencing? On a whim, spurned on by curiosity, the man once called The Iron Cross tried to flex the fingers at the end of his left arm. The tingles he felt slowly crept down to the tips and he realized that he was wiggling his fingers.
Incredible. He hadn’t done that since…since being shut away from the world.
He heard a large scraping sound. Metal being dragged across metal. The noise was almost deafening. Another twist and the stab of light in his eyes turned into a blazing sun of fury. His pupils hadn’t been exposed to natural light for far too long. He worried about the damage it might cause, only to then think that he had bigger problems to worry about.
Such as who had just removed his helmet?
# # # # # #
“If I were a more dramatic man,” the stout and balding man said, “I might make some ridiculous speech about welcoming you back to the world of the living.”
He gripped the helmet of The Iron Cross in his hands, gently lifting it up to reveal the man hidden underneath. His eyes widened in both fright and elation when he saw the partially decomposed head staring back at him.
The tissue had clung to the head, shrinking around it like a grape. The eyes were sunken, yet still functional. Truly, the professor had created a miracle when he made the armor. Somehow, for more than six decades, the original wearer was still alive inside.
The man opened his mouth to speak, but his lips were so dry that they cracked open and began to bleed. The stout man hurriedly produced a handkerchief and dabbed away the blood while shushing the confused and decomposed Iron Cross.
“Please, try not to speak. You only need listen for now.” He spoke in perfect German, sure that The Iron Cross would be much more likely to understand that than anything else. “I have much to tell you. It has been some time since you were among the living. Well, not that you were actually deceased.”
The stout man stood and removed his white lab coat, slinging it over the chair he had been sitting on. The Iron Cross was laid down on his back on an examination table in a darkened room. He had no doubt, though, that even though he had made sure to lower the lights here that they would still be seen as blinding to the old German hero.
“My name is Doctor Emil Schneider,” the stout man said. “I have been looking for you for quite some time.”
He paced around the table, being careful not to upset the observation machinery in the laboratory. He grasped a beaker full of a thick, pink paste and dabbed a tongue depressor into it. Schneider carefully spread the substance over The Iron Cross’s face, applying it as gently as he could. The deteriorated skin was very fragile and much of it was flaking away, revealing atrophied muscle beneath.
At first man who was The Iron Cross cringed from the touch. Soon, his nerves visibly relaxed as the doctor applied the soothing ointment.
“This is a derivative of my great-grandfather’s formula,” the doctor said. “The same substance that was used to prepare you for the suit, combined with my own special additives. I purchased an herb in the heart of Africa, found only within a nation now called Wakanda, and used the extract to make my own version.”
Already the flaking skin was beginning to reabsorb into the man’s face. The ointment stimulated his senses, bringing old sensations back again. For the first time in decades, The Iron Cross blinked.
“I suppose you’re wondering how I found you,” Schneider said. “When I learned of my great-grandfather’s history, I was shocked to discover that one of the great heroes of the Third Reich might actually still be alive. I knew I had to find you. I knew that it was my destiny.”
The doctor, finished with the application of the ointment, set the beaker down and walked around the prone Iron Cross. He slid his hand down the front of the armor, feeling its bumps and impressions. He paused when his fingers slid over top of the symbol. His eyes grew wide with excitement.
“The armor is quite unique,” he continued. “There are others that possibly stole some of his work. Ho Yinsen comes to mind. But those usurpers could never quite make the same discoveries that he did. The armor, as I’m sure you’re well aware, is life. It has sustained you, kept your blood flowing, and even allowed your brain to remain active.”
Doctor Schneider sat back down at the side of The Iron Cross and picked up a pair of cables from underneath the examination table. “I know what happened to you. After the war, you must have tried to return to the secret bunker where the ubermensch were organized. Those like you, brought together as the SuperAxis, were led by a great man. But they were gone. The war was over. You had failed and had nothing to live for.”
The doctor slid back a side panel on The Iron Cross’s armor and carefully connected the cables to the conduits hidden there. “But the armor wouldn’t allow you to die. No, my great-grandfather saw to that. So, you locked yourself away from the world in shame. I have brought you back from the bunker you hid yourself away in because several old friends have returned.”
Just as Doctor Schneider reached for the console beside the examination table, The Iron Cross shifted his gaze to match the doctor’s. “Yes, Helmut Gruler. Your fellow ubermensch have returned. The power of the Third Reich can rise again! It is time you joined them.”
Schneider threw back a switch on the console and several thousand kilowatts of power flowed into the armor. The internal circuitry sizzled, but maintained the charge, as Gruler felt all of his nerve endings flash to life once more.
He shook violently as the armor that had barely sustained him for so long was recharged. Energy poured into the circuits, once more giving him strength and power that decades ago had made men tremble.
As the last of the charge dispersed and energized his systems, The Iron Cross began to relax. The pain subsided. He lifted his arm off the examination table, elated at his ability to do so.
His mind pondered over the words that Schneider had said to him. The shame of his failure could be wiped away if what the doctor had said was true.
“Return…” Helmut muttered. “Who?”
Doctor Schneider sneered and replied, “They are waiting for you. It took me time after the first resurfaced, but I found the second almost immediately. Now, coupled with your strength, we can begin the search for the greatest champion that Nazi Germany ever knew.”
The Iron Cross smiled. He leaned forward and sat up, bending joints and flexing muscle that had sat dormant for years. He raised his arm triggered the switch in his gauntlet that activated one of his offensive features. An electrical burst built up and released from his outstretched hand, which arced across the laboratory and blasted away an entire table full of equipment.
“Yes,” The Iron Cross said as he stood up from the table. “We can rebuild. We can seek the glory of the Third Reich.”
AUTHOR’S NOTES
It seems that the golden age of villains is nearly upon us again! We’ve got Agent Axis, Baron Blood, and now The Iron Cross. I wonder who Schneider was referring to when he mentioned the Axis’ greatest champion? You’ll find out soon enough, as this is all leading into a new miniseries coming to M2K! Look for it soon.
-D. Golightly
Darkness.
He remembered what it was like before the darkness. He remembered pain. Love. Hunger. Depression. However, those simple feelings were from another lifetime. He thought of them as he would an old photograph. The conceptualization was there in his mind, but he couldn’t touch it. Couldn’t taste it.
His limbs had gone numb long ago. Time had lost meaning, as had the weight it carried. To him, this un-life he drifted through was all he could conceive of.
Then a sliver of light stabbed his eyes. He briefly wondered if his mind had finally been released from the body it was trapped in, and the suit beyond that. The concept of pain changed from a familiar idea into a new reality.
If he didn’t know better he would say that someone had forcefully opened his eyes. But that was impossible. No one knew where he was.
The light faded away, as did the grief it brought him.
His mind drifted off again and before long he imagined the hurtful experience had just been part of his inevitable death. How he longed for death. That strange mistress he had come to know so well during the war had decided to play a cruel trick on him.
However, what could have either been a few hours or a few days later, the sliver of light returned. Only this time it did not go away.
Instead it began to grow. Then the pain it brought on spread to other parts of his body. His left arm started to moan to him, voicing its discontent at some outside force poking and prodding it.
He soon realized that the sensation was the blood flow returning to the arm, undoubtedly forced there by his pumping heart. His heart? Hadn’t that stopped beating years ago?
No. No, of course not. The suit wouldn’t have allowed it to stop beating. Not completely. The armor he was shut away in could sustain him, making sure that his heart would thrum every so often. Just enough to keep his joints from drying up.
That’s what Professor Franz Schneider had told him. He remembered, so long ago, volunteering for a secret government project. The professor, renowned among his peers at the university in Berlin, had created a suit of armor capable of standing up to the fabled American supermen.
He had been a loyalist to the end. With the prospect of serving his country in such a way dangling in front of him, how could he not volunteer?
The procedure for implanting him into the armor was simple enough. He doused his body in chemicals for days, exposing himself to a viscous fluid smeared over his muscles that was supposed to help perpetuate blood flow.
He underwent minor orthopedic surgery to allow for greater range of motion in his arms and legs, which would be vital in moving the armor without worry of snapping his bones like twigs.
Finally, after the professor said he was ready, they inserted him into the armor. The power he had at his command was truly awesome. Upon seeing what he could do in name of the Axis forces he was moved to the front line immediately and given a codename.
They called him The Iron Cross.
He tore through the Allied ranks without mercy. Scores of men, once his equal on the battlefield, were now like clay to be smashed in his armored hands. His strength increased ten…no, twenty-fold. He could crush a man’s skull in his palm without even thinking.
He could soar over the British bombers and rip their wings apart. He had stopped several bombings of his homeland and saw to it that none of the jettisoned pilots made it to the ground alive.
He was truly unstoppable and worthy of his name. He even received a signed letter of appreciation from the Furher himself.
Then came his greatest challenge. The Invaders.
The Allied forces’ fabled supermen. Surprisingly, they had numbers on their side. One who could move faster than the winds. Another that was draped in the ugly flag of the United Kingdom. Even a woman with extraordinary power fought alongside them as an equal.
Their collective name, chosen because of their movement into Poland and other occupied areas, had become something more than a name. Like all great things, it had manifested fear in the enemy and encouragement in their allies.
But there were three that stood out above the rest. The American. The man of fire. The man of the sea.
He hated them the most, as it was them that were responsible for his ultimate failure. During a battle over the European theatre, the one called Namor badly damaged his armor. If not for the interference of Captain America and the Human Torch he would have completed his mission before Namor had decommissioned him.
Thought dead, The Iron Cross instead made his way back to headquarters, only to find that the war was over. He had been knocked unconscious and kept alive by the suit while the rest of the war had played out. When he came to, and had summoned enough strength to drag himself across the country, he found his beloved Reich in shambles.
But that was a long time ago.
Since then, all he had known was darkness. A cold numbness that had spread over his body, relieving him of the guilt he felt from his failure.
It had been that way for decades…so what was this new sensation he was experiencing? On a whim, spurned on by curiosity, the man once called The Iron Cross tried to flex the fingers at the end of his left arm. The tingles he felt slowly crept down to the tips and he realized that he was wiggling his fingers.
Incredible. He hadn’t done that since…since being shut away from the world.
He heard a large scraping sound. Metal being dragged across metal. The noise was almost deafening. Another twist and the stab of light in his eyes turned into a blazing sun of fury. His pupils hadn’t been exposed to natural light for far too long. He worried about the damage it might cause, only to then think that he had bigger problems to worry about.
Such as who had just removed his helmet?
# # # # # #
“If I were a more dramatic man,” the stout and balding man said, “I might make some ridiculous speech about welcoming you back to the world of the living.”
He gripped the helmet of The Iron Cross in his hands, gently lifting it up to reveal the man hidden underneath. His eyes widened in both fright and elation when he saw the partially decomposed head staring back at him.
The tissue had clung to the head, shrinking around it like a grape. The eyes were sunken, yet still functional. Truly, the professor had created a miracle when he made the armor. Somehow, for more than six decades, the original wearer was still alive inside.
The man opened his mouth to speak, but his lips were so dry that they cracked open and began to bleed. The stout man hurriedly produced a handkerchief and dabbed away the blood while shushing the confused and decomposed Iron Cross.
“Please, try not to speak. You only need listen for now.” He spoke in perfect German, sure that The Iron Cross would be much more likely to understand that than anything else. “I have much to tell you. It has been some time since you were among the living. Well, not that you were actually deceased.”
The stout man stood and removed his white lab coat, slinging it over the chair he had been sitting on. The Iron Cross was laid down on his back on an examination table in a darkened room. He had no doubt, though, that even though he had made sure to lower the lights here that they would still be seen as blinding to the old German hero.
“My name is Doctor Emil Schneider,” the stout man said. “I have been looking for you for quite some time.”
He paced around the table, being careful not to upset the observation machinery in the laboratory. He grasped a beaker full of a thick, pink paste and dabbed a tongue depressor into it. Schneider carefully spread the substance over The Iron Cross’s face, applying it as gently as he could. The deteriorated skin was very fragile and much of it was flaking away, revealing atrophied muscle beneath.
At first man who was The Iron Cross cringed from the touch. Soon, his nerves visibly relaxed as the doctor applied the soothing ointment.
“This is a derivative of my great-grandfather’s formula,” the doctor said. “The same substance that was used to prepare you for the suit, combined with my own special additives. I purchased an herb in the heart of Africa, found only within a nation now called Wakanda, and used the extract to make my own version.”
Already the flaking skin was beginning to reabsorb into the man’s face. The ointment stimulated his senses, bringing old sensations back again. For the first time in decades, The Iron Cross blinked.
“I suppose you’re wondering how I found you,” Schneider said. “When I learned of my great-grandfather’s history, I was shocked to discover that one of the great heroes of the Third Reich might actually still be alive. I knew I had to find you. I knew that it was my destiny.”
The doctor, finished with the application of the ointment, set the beaker down and walked around the prone Iron Cross. He slid his hand down the front of the armor, feeling its bumps and impressions. He paused when his fingers slid over top of the symbol. His eyes grew wide with excitement.
“The armor is quite unique,” he continued. “There are others that possibly stole some of his work. Ho Yinsen comes to mind. But those usurpers could never quite make the same discoveries that he did. The armor, as I’m sure you’re well aware, is life. It has sustained you, kept your blood flowing, and even allowed your brain to remain active.”
Doctor Schneider sat back down at the side of The Iron Cross and picked up a pair of cables from underneath the examination table. “I know what happened to you. After the war, you must have tried to return to the secret bunker where the ubermensch were organized. Those like you, brought together as the SuperAxis, were led by a great man. But they were gone. The war was over. You had failed and had nothing to live for.”
The doctor slid back a side panel on The Iron Cross’s armor and carefully connected the cables to the conduits hidden there. “But the armor wouldn’t allow you to die. No, my great-grandfather saw to that. So, you locked yourself away from the world in shame. I have brought you back from the bunker you hid yourself away in because several old friends have returned.”
Just as Doctor Schneider reached for the console beside the examination table, The Iron Cross shifted his gaze to match the doctor’s. “Yes, Helmut Gruler. Your fellow ubermensch have returned. The power of the Third Reich can rise again! It is time you joined them.”
Schneider threw back a switch on the console and several thousand kilowatts of power flowed into the armor. The internal circuitry sizzled, but maintained the charge, as Gruler felt all of his nerve endings flash to life once more.
He shook violently as the armor that had barely sustained him for so long was recharged. Energy poured into the circuits, once more giving him strength and power that decades ago had made men tremble.
As the last of the charge dispersed and energized his systems, The Iron Cross began to relax. The pain subsided. He lifted his arm off the examination table, elated at his ability to do so.
His mind pondered over the words that Schneider had said to him. The shame of his failure could be wiped away if what the doctor had said was true.
“Return…” Helmut muttered. “Who?”
Doctor Schneider sneered and replied, “They are waiting for you. It took me time after the first resurfaced, but I found the second almost immediately. Now, coupled with your strength, we can begin the search for the greatest champion that Nazi Germany ever knew.”
The Iron Cross smiled. He leaned forward and sat up, bending joints and flexing muscle that had sat dormant for years. He raised his arm triggered the switch in his gauntlet that activated one of his offensive features. An electrical burst built up and released from his outstretched hand, which arced across the laboratory and blasted away an entire table full of equipment.
“Yes,” The Iron Cross said as he stood up from the table. “We can rebuild. We can seek the glory of the Third Reich.”
AUTHOR’S NOTES
It seems that the golden age of villains is nearly upon us again! We’ve got Agent Axis, Baron Blood, and now The Iron Cross. I wonder who Schneider was referring to when he mentioned the Axis’ greatest champion? You’ll find out soon enough, as this is all leading into a new miniseries coming to M2K! Look for it soon.
-D. Golightly