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    Avenging Steel 2: The Nuclear Option
    Avenging Steel 2: The Nuclear Option
    Avenging Steel 2: The Nuclear Option
    Ebook131 pages1 hour

    Avenging Steel 2: The Nuclear Option

    By Ian Hall

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    About this ebook

    April 1941... German troops have taken over Britain.
    Their King, Winston Churchill and all troops have retreated to Canada; the only front they are fighting is North Africa.
    James Baird, a Philosophy student in Edinburgh University, fights the battle the only way he knows how. He is drawn into the depths of the British Resistance, his fate decided by the S.O.E., Britain's MI-6.
    In long novella parts, we follow James's story as a nation begin to rebel against Nazi jackboots.
    Thus continues, Avenging Steel, a new Alternative History series.
    Get your teeth into a brand-new version of World War 2.

    Avenging Steel 1: The Fall of Edinburgh
    Avenging Steel 2: The Nuclear Option
    (Coming Summer 2016... Avenging Steel 3: The Final Solution

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIan Hall
    Release dateJun 23, 2016
    ISBN9781310562181
    Avenging Steel 2: The Nuclear Option
    Author

    Ian Hall

    Ian Hall is a former Commander Officer of No. 31 Squadron (1992-4), as well as being the editor and writer of the Squadron Association's three-times-a-year 32-page newsletter. He is the author of Upwards, an aviation-themed novel currently available as a Kindle download. This is his first full-length historical study, having previously penned a 80-page history of No 31 Squadron's early Tornado years.

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      Book preview

      Avenging Steel 2 - Ian Hall

      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- 9781310562181

      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

      2: The Nuclear Option

      Ian Hall

      (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

      Also by Ian Hall, related to Avenging Steel…

      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 of authentic WW2 documentation.

      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.

      With a slightly comic twist.

      On 10th May, 1940, Germany attacked British and French troops in France and Belgium.

      At that time, the British Army had more than half a million men in Continental Europe.

      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, armor 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.

      Four weeks 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

      An Introduction to the Characters…

      James Baird…

      Our main character, our story’s hero and the book’s narrator. He is a 20-year old philosophy student at Edinburgh University, and has been recruited by the S.O.E. as an agent. His code-name is Biggles, and is used by the S.O.E. as a liaison between cells in Edinburgh. He also works at The Scotsman newspaper as a writer and copy-editor. His father, in the Scots Greys, is stationed in Palestine.

      Alice Howes…

      James’s partner in spy-crime, girlfriend, and the head of the S.O.E. cell inside The Scotsman newspaper. She is from Selkirk, and speaks fluent German; her father having been a POW from the Great War who stayed in Scotland in 1918. She seems to take her orders from Lilith, but her actual bosses are unknown to James. Alice also works at The Scotsman newspaper as a copy-editor.

      Leutnant Möller…

      The German officer in charge of German bias/slanting for the Scotsman newspaper’s stories. James has to report their stories to Möller each day by one o’clock for his inspection.

      Ivanhoe (Mr. Irvine)…

      James’ contact within the S.O.E. in Edinburgh, and the man who recruited him. James only glimpses the level at which Ivanhoe works, but does harbor the suspicion that Ivanhoe might be the top man in Scotland.

      Lilith…

      A beautiful enigmatic S.O.E. contact, possibly working in conjunction with Ivanhoe, but definitely also operating outside his purview. Lilith introduced Alice to James, and is Alice’s main contact. Although James seems to be in love with Alice, Lilith’s face comes to him at the oddest times.

      The Baird Family in Edinburgh…

      Veronica Baird is James’ mother. She lives for her family and rules with a slightly flexible iron rod. Frances is James’ fourteen-year-old younger sister. They live in a first floor apartment in Bruntsfield, on the edge of the Links and Meadows.

      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

      The Nazi Hit-List

      Ivanhoe never came to my office. It was against every rule, law and ordinance we worked to.

      Yet there he was, sitting in Alice’s chair, immobile, stiff as a board. Only his blinking allowed me the knowledge that he actually wasn’t dead. Alice had scarpered as soon as Ivanhoe had appeared.

      There’s a hit list. Ivanhoe’s tense lips hardly moved.

      So you already said. I so wanted him to come to the point. If Ivanhoe was scared, then perhaps I had reason to be too. And why is this important right now?

      We don’t know who’s on it.

      God, he was wound tightly this morning. So how can we act on something we don’t know?

      Because we have our own list; made up in 1939. But it only goes to 2,479 people in Scotland.

      I swallowed. Two and a half thousand people suddenly on a Nazi hit-list. You’re not suggesting me?

      He shook his head vehemently. No, no. You’re not on it. And that’s just our list. The German one is considered to be much more encompassing. But we’ve got reason to believe that several officials in the University are on the list, maybe as many as a hundred. And that concerns us… and, of course, you.

      By all things holy. It scared me that Ivanhoe was in my office for a specific reason. Anyone I know?

      Ernest Covian.

      I nodded. A polish professor in Philosophy.

      Reginald Parish.

      That hit close, I’d attended classes by him. He seemed radical, almost communist.

      Max Born.

      Ouch, another near hit, again I’d attended lectures, he was a high professor in Natural Philosophy. I thought he was German?

      He is, but he’s also a Jew.

      And of course, that sank the list into dangerous territory. Rumors were already circulating that certain British Jewish figures had gone missing. No one knew if they had gone into hiding, or whisked away by Nazi sweep teams.

      Klaus Fuchs.

      I shook my head.

      Rudolf Peierls.

      He’s a big shot. I said. Up from Birmingham Uni’ for a year. He’s linked with a lot of talk coming out of the Physics boys.

      Ivanhoe smiled. I knew I did right coming straight to you. Walter Kellermann.

      Again I shook my head.

      "Right. Old boy. You have a new assignment. Get yourself into the University drinking dens, and see if you can get close to anyone in the communist fraternity. We think the big cheese on this list is Klaus Fuchs. He’s a

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