Fabienne Gschwind - The Fallen Heroine

"Tartelette is called 'the waiter's terror' in La Rochelle and the surrounding area ... but you'll see for yourself," Emily whispered to me.

Tartelette was hungry after this effort and ordered up and down the menu. She was a fan of the 'vielle cuisine française' and asked the waiter in detail about all the ingredients and cooking methods. In addition to a dozen oysters, a calf's head and a paté du chasseur, she ate a handful of ecrivisse - crayfish - and a trout. I contented myself with a steak à cheval. This is not a horse steak, but a normal hamburger covered with a fried egg. And couldn't believe at first that I was able to eat anything at all. But after all the excitement and stress, it soon seemed like the best thing I had ever eaten. Emily filled her belly at the cake buffet and Gabin just ate some snails with salad.

On this team, you became a compulsive gourmet.

"Of course, everything tastes so good. That's just because you don't know if you're not eating your last supper...", Gabin said laconically.

When we got back to the barracks, it was already close to two o'clock in the afternoon and Tartelette ordered me to have another collation - that is, a snack - together with her. The others had somehow talked their way out of it, and so the two of us sat down at "Chez Pierrot," a brasserie on the harbor of La Rochelle that serves wonderful crêpes. We were still in gear, mind you. Tartelette looked at me with motherly love, or so it seemed to me as I polished off the second crêpe. "I think it's okay for you to gain a few kilos so you can ..."

What should have become of the few extra kilos remained a mystery, because we got a new alarm.

This time from the aquarium in La Rochelle, which was conveniently located just down the street.

"Fishes can't be reprogrammed ... Every kid knows that." Tartelette was a bit grouchy about being interrupted while eating. While we were still hurrying through the street in mud-encrusted gear and weapons.

A few minutes later we found ourselves in the back of the aquarium, where visitors were not allowed to go. The curator of the aquarium was terribly upset. Apparently there had been an incident in one of the saltwater aquariums and somehow the fish had 'degenerated'.

We bent over the open tank, but nothing could be seen through the bloody water. An employee held up a display with a scientific journal and claimed that it had been proven last month that the retrovirus - which was responsible for genetic reprogramming - had mutated and could now attack fishes.

This, of course, would be a disaster....

The curator bent over the basin. A scallop jumped out of the water and bit off his nose. The man cried out. There was nothing more we could do. Everyone knew a bite was as good as a death sentence. Too many retroviruses entered the bloodstream, genes were reprogrammed too quickly. Knowing it was one thing, seeing it was another.

The curator was already standing up again and gazing at us mindlessly. My blood froze in my veins; this was the worst thing ever, a human being who had mutated. Zombie was the colloquial name for human repro. "Don't look at it little one, you're not ready for this." Tamara drew her Machete.

But just at that moment, another staff member came over in a panic. "Repro fishes, repro fishes ... in the big tank," he shouted, agitated. I ran there with him and Tamara beheaded the curator. At least I was spared to see it with my own eyes.

We rushed with him to the big basin and met Emily and Gabin there. Through the large front window we could see the carnage. Fishes were attacking their fellow fishes and the water immediately turned red. There was a dull thud as a stingray crashed against the glass. A crack formed and we heard the glass crunch telltale.

"The battle cry of the day is 'bouillabaisse'!" Even in this situation, Tartelette was still coming up with cool sayings.

We ran as fast as we could away from the pool as the glass burst. Several thousand liters of water washed us through the aisles. The combat armor kept me from breaking all my limbs as I kept banging into walls. I had lost sight of the employee; afterwards I learned that he had been killed. He had broken his neck when the mass of water hurled him against a wall.

Already two dead on my first mission!

But fortunately, the building had been evacuated in time, so there were no other fatalities.

The rest of the evening, deep into the night, was pretty messy. We waded through the knee-deep, bloody water, decapitating anything that wriggled. The large aquarium must have housed several hundred fishes. We did everything to save at least some valuable and endangered animals that were not contaminated and put them in a separate tank.

A barracuda had crushed my combat boot and I was limping. Gabin had been slammed into a wall so hard that he broke two ribs. But the pain blocker was automatically administered and he kept going. Tartelette also almost got it when she was pushed into the polar pool by a crocodile. Emily saw no other option but to shoot the still intact glass, flushing out all the aquarium inhabitants. I ran over to help. Tartelette had no weapon left and was wrestling the crocodile with her bare hands. "Get on with it, you fucking idiots!" she cursed, and I shot her and the crocodile with the zapper on maximal power. Our combat suits protected us from the discharges.

Sometime in the deep of night, I had painstakingly decapitated a whole row of clownfish with my pocket knife. Before, I had sniffed one after the other to make sure that really all were repros. The boss had stepped behind me. She had organized a coffee from somewhere and was sipping it from a paper cup. "Kid, I'm impressed. No training yet and better than a regular repro hunter..."

She picked up a passing lobster and smelled it.

"It's not infected ... it's going to come along and end up in the crock pot. That's way too expensive to waste!"

An hour later, nothing could be done; all the remaining fishes had been reprogrammed and had to be killed. Thibault, at Tartelette's behest, organized two units of army robo-infantrymen. Protected in their robot armor, the soldiers would scour the aquarium and kill everything. Bombing the aquarium was out of the question; it was centrally located in La Rochelle and the collateral damage would be too great.

So that had been my very first combat mission, and it was fierce. We all got back to the barracks at midnight and Tartelette hurried to write her report because the reprogrammed fishes were a terribly serious danger. At the same time, she ordered Emily to cook the crawfish and yapped all over us about recipes for cooking crustaceans.

I was so exhausted that Pierre, the driver, chauffeured me home. There, after all the excitement, I still couldn't fall asleep. While dozing off, I reflected on my first mission and was dismayed at how many times I had jumped from the brink of death. The average life span of seven years suddenly seemed very very long. This could not end well.

Tamara decided to have breakfast at a bistro. The host had probably already had an incident with the commander and had obviously drawn the short straw. He resignedly waved us to a table and instructed the service team to bring our orders forward. Of course, it was on the house. We piled our weapons on a neighboring table, and Tartelette signed autographs or posed for souvenir photos. She had a lot of fans, and the aquarium debacle was the main topic of the French press today. The bistro was quickly full and everyone wanted to eat there where superhero Tamara also had breakfast. In the end, the landlord had a good deal after all.

Afterwards there was training and the commander gave me a private lesson "So let's see how good you really are...".