"It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland."
- Horace
- Horace
It was always a spectacle when the First Citizen’s Zeppelin landed at the Capitol in Hoover, delivering the Princeps of mankind to the seat of his power. From the honour guard of navy jacketed Swiss soldiers of the Principal Guard firing their twenty-one-gun salute, to the crowds of people cheering in adoration, to the full quorum from the United Nations’ General Assembly, the Security Council and the World Court stood at the steps of the World Parliament awaiting the most powerful men in the world. Such riotous events had met Hoover when he first arrived in the city – still yet to be named after the father of world unity then – and then Eisenhower, and even Hallie Selassie despite his loss of the election to the office. No such celebration met Charles DeGaulle.
Rather, as the hero of Paris stepped from the Zeppelin, he was met with a largely empty boulevard, only a handful of suspicious citizens waiting his arrival, and no salute. But then what was to be expected of a city whose population was almost entirely populated by UN employees for a man who had run on the platform all but promising to disband the organisation? Regardless, the general either seemed not to notice or not to care, head held high, and only the crispest of waves offered to the assembled citizenry as he climbed into the limousine which would carry him from his landing point to the Parliament building.
The Zeppelin itself was magnificent beyond doubt – adorned with glittering silver to the point of gaudiness, midnight blue envelope taut and marked only by the white globe that was the symbol of the UN. It was like a modern leviathan, a great and beautiful thing which dominated the skies, part Presidential transport and part sky-borne palace, like something carried from a fantasy into the service of a mortal. As it had descended from the pallid, grey, sky it had seemed to glitter in the sunlight, seeming now more like a gift from god than a construct of petty, foolish, mortals. It did not belong in the world of war which had preceded it – but from an organisation which had so dedicated itself to eradicating all conflict that may well have been intentional.
Atop a rather inconspicuous office building, Heinz watched with a degree of surprise as the man sat upright in the open-topped care and looked uncaringly around the city. He was unsure what he had expected to feel… Awe? Respect? He supposed that it was better that the man was just that, a man, not some Caesarian or even Jupiterian figure as Hoover and Eisenhower had seemed… though he had only ever seen the two First Citizens on the television at home in Germany. Home. Germany had been a defeated power when Hoover had been elected, the Kaiser’s once mighty empire under the heel of occupation, betrayed by the British in exchange for what? Though the rational part of him could hardly blame them for avoiding the Sonnenbombe being dropped on London as it had been on Berlin…
He rested the rifle firmly on his shoulder and wondered how it was he hadn’t been caught yet… He wasn’t stupid – he knew that his mission’s success – success so far – had more to do with the cabal of UN figures who had helped them than any great coup by his Schutzstaffel comrades, no matter what Himmler would claim when he had succeeded. A tired group of war veterans, he knew, would not have been able to do this without all of the help they had been afforded. Not that any of it mattered in that moment – self-serving bureaucrats might have paved the way for it, but he wasn’t doing it for their world government, quite the opposite, he was doing it for Germany.
His finger on the trigger felt better than anything he had ever done before – this was not just a gun but an instrument of destiny, the sword of Germany’s liberation. He put his eye to the scope and found the First Citizen’s head with a practiced ease. He took in a breath, steadying his chest, steadying his pounding heart, and made sure that his shot was lined up perfectly. It had to be for the fatherland to be free. It had to be for the world to be free. In that moment he was still but a man… Himmler would have called him a servant of heaven, had done before he departed from Munich, but Heinz didn’t think of himself in that way. He was just a man, a man fighting for his country like so many before him had done.
The sun was still rising behind the domed roof of the Parliament building, and it hit his eye, momentarily blinding him as it glinted on the white marble of the building. His gaze swept around for a moment to see the assembled parliamentarians – the traitors to the fatherland amongst them – with their grey faces and displeased frowns. He only wished that he could kill them and not DeGaulle… for all his collaboration he was a good enough man – he was like Heinz, a soldier fighting for his country. DeGaulle just didn’t have the stomach to fight with bullet and blade, so he fought at the ballot box instead. But then the men who had set all of this up, the worst of the traitors in a way, would not have allowed it… this show of force had to do instead.
A moment later his eyes were back to DeGaulle, and he knew that he was ready. His finger tightened on the trigger as if he were in a dream. He thought of his brother Otto, dead in the fields of France, his body exiled from his homeland forever… he thought of the Kaiser, humiliated in exile in Britain, and he thought of Goethe and Mozart and Beethoven and all the great men who had crafted the finest nation on earth. The rifle bucked in his arms, slamming into his shoulder, the recoil knocking him back as it fired, like a wild and dangerous beast.
He did not see the bullet strike before he was struck on the back of the head and dragged away. He did not need to, for he knew that he had done all that he could for his nation. He smiled as the men of the Principal Guard dragged him away…
that very kind, I'm not sure I just didn't think this was my best work, but I do like trying to work little things like that in to add flavour to a world!