Helen of Bikini
This too shall pass.
Beckton lit a cigarette himself while Newkirk scribbled down a long note for his factory chief.
"It is a shame. I was almost finished with this. We put Fireball in a Bofors cannon - quite a lot better than Firebolts coming out of a Browning machine gun."
"We'll find someone to follow up. Anyone to recommend?"
The academic shrugged, pulling another sheaf of paper from a drawer with deft movements of a ghostly hand. He kept writing without a pause and the other hand disappeared after neatly closing the drawer.
"Dumas, perhaps, or Varenne. Ealing is competent too."
Agent Beckton coughed discreetly.
"Missing, dead, recruited. Ealing is waiting for you at Los Alamos."
"Dumas and Varenne? They were good."
"They stayed in Paris to fight it out."
Newkirk sighed deeply. More old friends lost to a war that seemed like it would have no end.
Unless he dared to imagine the unimaginable.
Prequels
Sequels
Comments (7 so far!)
HSAR
(continued)
Dumas and Varenne are stations of the Paris Metro. Ealing a station on the London Underground.
Los Alamos is the location where much of the Manhattan Project was conducted.
The French Resistance conducted a wide range of covert warfare operations after the capitulation of France to the Axis forces. What Dumas and Varenne were doing in Paris before they stayed behind is not stated.
In this world, magic is common but magicians are not. Master magicians are the equal in rarity and value to the scientists of the Second World War - von Braun, Oppenheimer, Einstein. University graduates might suffice as apprentices, and dedicated laymen might have command of a handful of lesser spells. And while powerful magicians are required to cast powerful spells, the true value of men like Newkirk is in their application of novel techniques and methods to the existing magical canon - in the invention of wholly new magic.
- #3060 Posted 7 years ago
-
0
HSAR
Lastly, "Helen of Bikini" is the name of the bomb detonated in the second test ("Baker") of the round of nuclear tests codenamed "Crossroads" that directly followed Trinity. Baker test was conducted less than two weeks before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and captured the results of detonating a nuclear bomb underwater. The resulting, catastrophic contamination of dozens of ships used in the test and millions of tons of seawater could be said to be the first nuclear disaster.
- #3061 Posted 7 years ago
-
0
ElshaHawk LoA
I nearly forgot about the magic. Thank you for the background comments. It makes this so much deeper. This story is genius.
- #3064 Posted 7 years ago
-
0
Robert Quick
I recognized the 5E spells but because of the Harry Potter Brand (and echo of WWII in the Deathly Hallows) I was confused by Firebolt because I thought of a broom first. Not your fault. Agree with Elsha that the background elevates this story (which I already liked) to genius. I was curious about the name and thought this was going to be a romance. Keep trucking!
- #3074 Posted 7 years ago
-
0
WhiteHat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OperationCrossroads - 1946, not 1945.
- #3081 Posted 7 years ago
-
0
HSAR
Excellent catch, WhiteHat, and that makes much more sense of a few other quotes I've seen. Correcting the previous paragraph to the following, since we can't edit comments:
Lastly, "Helen of Bikini" is the name of the bomb in the second ("Baker") test of the series codenamed "Crossroads", the first post-war nuclear tests. Baker test captured the results of detonating a nuclear bomb underwater. The resulting, catastrophic contamination of dozens of ships used in the test and millions of tons of seawater could be said to be the first nuclear disaster.
- #3082 Posted 7 years ago
-
0
Inspired by (sequel to):
The professor drew deeply on his cigarette: the tip burned brightly in the semi-darkness. He seemed …
Trinity- Published 7 years ago and featured 7 years ago.
- Story viewed 24 times and rated 0 times.
All stories on Ficlatté are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. What does this mean?
HSAR
Spells from the Fifth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Firebolt is a cantrip (effectively zeroth-level) spell dealing 5.5 damage (average) to a single target. Fireball is a third-level spell deal 28 damage (average) in a 6-metre radius.
This is roughly comparable to the upgrade from a heavy water-cooled machine gun to the 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft cannon which was widely used by WW2 forces. Not coincidentally, this is also the weapon upgrade - the previous Firebolt spell was compact enough to be cast into a 12.7x99mm (.50 BMG) cartridge and belt-fed into a machine gun, while the significantly more complex Fireball spell requires a 40×311mmR autocannon round which is held in four-round magazines.
The Bofors anti-aircraft cannon was a very effective long-range weapon mounted in twin- and quad-gun arrangements on ships and ground defences throughout the war.
As a highly fluent wizard of the modern age, Newkirk uses the spell Ghost Hand almost unconsciously to assist him.