A hole in the sky is sucking her in like Heaven's worst vacuum cleaner. It doesn't have a magic signature or react to gunfire, and it's applying a stronger acceleration than her flight spell can counter, while somehow targeting only her and not any of the mages with her.

Tanya has absolutely no idea what is going on, which does nothing to improve her mood. At least it's not an area attack targeting her entire battalion, so she can expect backup. Well. Hope for backup, anyway.

On the other side of the hole is a cramped underground tunnel (she can't maneuver!!! her backup won't fit in here!), and a barely-visible silhouette in the dark which vanishes in the space of a blink before Tanya can shoot it.

She throws up a floodlight illusion.

The floodlight shows a tunnel just low enough that an adult would have to stoop. .

The walls are packed earth, scored all over with neat parallel claw grooves, and every few yards someone has shored up the ceiling with salvaged two-by-fours, rebar, and, in one place, a street sign reading NO OUTLET. A few yards ahead the passage forks three ways. Over the middle branch hangs a badger-lettered cardboard sign:

"WARNING: CINEMATIC ROLLING BOULDER TRAP FOR USE ON DR:E'S ENEMIES"

The boulder is right there: a big, lumpy ball of poured concrete sitting at the top of the slope, attached to a molten steel box. Right next to it is the portal, half-open but still pushing air through into Earth Bet at a rapid pace. 

The other two branches run on past the edge of the light.

The hole (portal??) she came through has gotten smaller so she can't go back, but it's not getting smaller still. The sign is in English and it's - threatening her?

This indicates a trap meant to capture but not kill (unless it looks like she's about to escape). Whoever built this (weirdly shoddy) tunnel could have mined it to collapse. If the concrete boulder falls it will pin but not crush her. 

She still has no idea how this thing works, especially without magic, but given the English lettering there's one obvious suspect. The Commonwealth couldn't build such a wunderwaffe to save their lives (evidence: they didn't). The Unified States, on the other hand, are the only state in the world besides Germania likely to pull off something like that. Being new to the experience of total war and full of offended pride after Tanya contemptuously wiped the Corinth Regiment from the sky, they hastily deployed their secret trump card against a strategically second-rate target instead of going for General Zettour or the Emperor, someone the Empire would make real concessions for in a prisoner exchange.

That is, she hopes they didn't build enough portal-traps to go after a hundred targets all at once. But however strategically useful the enemy's blunder might be to Germania, it confronts Tanya herself with a problem; that is, something she can't simply shoot.

"Lt. Colonel! Are you all right?!"

Visha's face appears through the narrow portal.

"For now. It's an American trap. We don't know what it can do, stay out of sight of the portal and communicate by radio." She thinks rapidly.

"My company will stay here. Major Weiss, take the other three to base at top speed to report. Leave members of Wüstermann's company along the way as radio relays. As soon as you're in radio range, report at highest priority that the Americans have a novel weapon, unknown limitations, protect high value targets." The Army will figure out which ones those are, and General Zettour is still here in Ildoa, not that she's going to say so out in the open. 

If she's going to surrender, she must not allow her orbs to be captured with her. She can simply hand them to Visha through the portal. However, Tanya finds that she extremely does not want to do this ahead of time.

There's the sound of fighting from around the corner. 

A woman in strange facial makeup, in a long black robe, followed by a sett of robot badgers, out a small tunnel splitting off the main one, and then into another, followed by by a man and a woman in armored costumes. "Edgar, quick, the Shrink Ray!"

There's a very loud noise.

She shoots at the movement, on instinct, but she can't empower the bullets without risking collapsing the tunnel on herself (not to mention the boulder trap). The bullets ping off one of the people and - a robot? 

The apparent fighting (that is, the fighting that doesn't involve her) and the weird clothing and face paint (??) are confusing enough to stop her from immediately trying to melt them all slowly enough to keep the tunnel from collapsing. She still powers up the optical spell, of course, just in case.

Does anything else come out of any tunnels after the loud unidentified noise? She's not going to go investigate immediately, she wants to keep her radio link.

A shout from around the corridor. "Don't shoot at the badgers!"

Another voice. "Also I have some heroes in a match-box here. Don't shoot at them either. Or Dr E!"

Who says "don't shoot" instead of "surrender or we shoot"? Are these people even military?? Do they want to parley and have somehow forgotten the word, Tanya is pretty sure her English isn't that rusty? 

Also, still with the threats, 'I have another wunderwaffe in a matchbox' is - not an idiom she recognizes, but people from the Unified States can be admittedly weird.

"...I will not shoot anyone who is unarmed and not attacking me or enabling it. Attempting to capture me is an attack," OBVIOUSLY, "and if you wish to parley you should release me immediately."

"All the badgers are armed with LASER EYES and other ray-beams."

"It's in the new Badger Constitution we wrote. Do you want a copy?"

"Release you from where?"

???

Are they saying nonsense as a delaying tactic? What can she do? The - device, apparently - around the portal is keeping it smaller; she tried to force it larger and failed (because she's a young girl and it's industrial machinery). She could damage or destroy it but that would probably just trap her here? Unless it's only keeping the hole small, not generating or sustaining it, but she has no way of making sure.

Or she could fly forward and attack, but there are obviously better ways of delaying her from doing that if you've lured her into a prepared location. 

...

A moment of horrified realization.

Tanya learned English in her first life. It's gotten rusty since then; anything she needs to read is normally available in a Germanian translation. That's probably why it took her a few seconds to realize after hearing those words.

The Unified States has not yet invented the laser, and would not expect her to recognize the word if they had.

"WHO ARE YOU?!"

"Theme Song!"

(They do the theme song)

Tanya listens in a wondering silence.

It's not proof. It very definitely isn't proof of anything. The music is just piano and drums and the nonsensical lyrics aren't what you'd call inspired; there's nothing in there that someone from the Unified States couldn't easily produce if they were trying to confuse someone, or possibly were very confused themselves.

There's just - something off about it. Something she doesn't quite dare speak aloud, or even in the privacy of her head. 

...what is this, psychological warfare? Tanya mentally shakes herself.

"I was pulled through a hole in midair. Was this your doing?" This feels inane, obviously whoever is present here must know what happened, but she can't think of anything better to say.

"So the thing is, sometimes-"

"More than sometimes, Dr E."

"Okay, more than sometimes, when I make something that isn't a badger, it doesn't work. Or fail. In interesting ways. When I tried to fix the flatscreen TV it turned into a ghost. It's still in the living room, haunting us. I tried to make this control box for the boulder- and it- well, it seems to have failed. Instead of going off, it made a portal"

On the one hand, it doesn't sound like her first Earth, not unless someone is pretending to be a mad scientist. On the other hand, nobody but her knows about flatscreen TVs. And she can't dismiss the literal hole in the air (it's still there!)

Her men can hear at least her side of the conversation on the open radio channel. Considering they can't hear the other side, she should be careful not to say anything that would make them think Tanya has gone crazy.

"To avoid any doubt, are you combatants or nationals of the Commonwealth, the Unified States, or any other country at war with the Germanian Empire? If not, where are you from?"