Marching Through Georgia

by S. M. Stirling

  Perhaps there is something to the fashionable liberal idea that the Domination is Afro-Asia's revenge on the West for five centuries of pillage and exploitation. Certainly, the results of the Eurasian War are a fitting punishment for our sins of omission and commission: allowing the Domination to expand in the Great War. the appeasement of Nazi. Soviet, and Japanese aggression that followed, the isolationism and wishful thinking that left us with no choice but that between bad and worse. Yet given the choices left to us, what other course was open? Japan attacked us directly, and as for the Third Reich— the Domination aspires to rule the world, not destroy it, and they are patient The Nazi leadership was not "If we perish, we shall take a world with us; a world in flames." Hitler's words, and they were meant. The fall of Europe was apocalyptic enough; had the National Socialist dream not ended in the ruins of Munich, his scientists might have given him the means to make his dreams literal truth. Liberty is not peace, but constant struggle. Each generation must fight the enemy that history deals it"

  ―Empires of the Night, A '40's Journal, by William A. Dreiser, MacMillan. New York, 1956

  Village One, Ossetian Military Highway April 15, 1942: 0350 Hours

  Trooper Patton wiped the sap from her bush knife .and sheathed it over her shoulder; carefully, with both hands. It was far too sharp to fling about in the dark. Then she knelt to run her fingers over the product of her ingenuity: a straight sapling, hastily trimmed to a murderous point at both ends.

  One point was rammed into the packed earth of the trail; the middle of the stake was supported by the crutch of a Y-shaped branch cut to just the right length. The other end slanted up… Patton stood against it, measuring the height. Just at her navel, coming up the trail from the north. The briefing paper did say that the Fritz SS had a minimum height requirement, so it should hit…

  The Draka woman was grinning to herself as she slid back four meters to her firing position to the left of the trail, behind the trunk of a huge Mien beech; laughing, even, an almost soundless quiver. One that Trooper Huff beside her knew well. Lips approached her ear, with crawling noises and a smell of wet uniform.

  "What's so fuckin' amusin', swarthy one?" asked Monitor Huff, commander of C lochos, the squad.

  Patton was dark for a Draka, short and muscular, olive-skinned and flat-faced; their people had a Franco-Mediterranean strain that cropped out occasionally among the more common north-European types. Huff could imagine the disturbing glint of malicious amusement in the black eyes as she heard the slightly reedy voice describe the trap.

  "Belly or balls, Huffie, belly or balls. Noise'll give us a firm' point, eh?"

  "Yo're sick. Ah love it." Their lips brushed, and Huff rolled back to her firing position. Gonna die, might as well die laughin, she thought.

  Down the trail, something clanked.

  * * * *

  "Clip the stickers," Tetrarchy Commander Einar Labushange said as he crawled past the last of his fire teams. This was the largest trail; half the tetrarchy was with him to cover it, where a ridge crossed the path and forced it to turn left and west below the granite sill. Less cover, of course, but that had its advantages. He touched the bleeding lip he had split running into a branch, tasting salt. "And be careful, if'n I'm goin' to die a hero's death, I don't want to do it with a Draka bayonet up my ass."

  He slid his own free and fixed it, unfolding the bipod of his Holbars, worrying. The little slope gave protection, but it also gave room for the Fritz to spread out. And withdrawing would be a cast-iron bitch, down the reverse slope at his back and over the stream and up a near-vertical face two meters high. At least they could all rest for a moment, and there was was no danger of anybody dropping off, not with this miserable cold pizzle running down their—

  The sound of a boot. A hobnailed boot, grating on stone. The heavy breathing of many men walking upslope under burdens. Close, I can hear them over the rain. Very close. He pulled a grenade out of his belt and laid it on the rock beside him, lifting his hips and reaching down to move a sharp-edged stone. He rose on one elbow to point the muzzle of the assault rifle downslope and drew a breath.

  * * * *

  Eric could smell the trucks now, lubricants and rubber and burnt distillate, overpowering churned mud and wet vegetation. They must be keeping the boilers fired; he could hear the peculiar hollow drumming of rain on tight-stretched canvas, echoing in the troop compartments it sheltered. Only a few lights, carefully dimmed against aircraft; that was needless in an overcast murk like tonight's, but habit ruled. To his dark-adapted eyes it was almost bright, and he turned his eyes away to keep the pupils dilated. There was an exercise to do that by force of will. Dangerous in a firefight, though; bright flashes could scorch the retina if you were overriding the natural reflex. He counted the trucks by silhouette.

  There must be at least some covering force. Adrenaline buzzed in his veins, flogging the sandy feel of weariness out of his brain; he would have to be careful, this was the state of jumping-alert wiredness that led to errors. Some of the trucks would mount automatic weapons, antiaircraft, but they could be trained on ground targets. Eight assault rifles, including his, and the demolitions experts from Marie's tetrarchy; they were going to be grossly outnumbered. Mud sucked at the soles of his boots and packed into the broad treads, making the footing greasy and silence impossible.

  Thank god for the rain. Darkness to cover movement, rain to drown out the sounds. That made it impossible for him to coordinate the attack, once launched; well, Draka were supposed to use initiative.

  "Halten zie!" A German voice sounded from out of the darkness, only a few meters ahead now: more nervous than afraid, only barely audible over the drumming rain. He forced himself to walk forward, each footfall an eternity.

  "Ach, it's just me, Hermann," he replied in the same language. "We got lost. Where's the Herr Hauptman?" And knew his own mistake, even before the spear of electric light stabbed out from the truck's cab. Hauptman was German for "Captain." At least in their Regular army, of which the Liebstandarte was no part.

  The SS don't use the German Army rank system! The night lit with tracer fire, explosions, weird prisms of chemical light refracted into momentary rainbows through the prism of the falling rain. The Germans were shooting wild into a darkness blacker to them than their opponents.

  He flung himself down and fired, tracer flicking out even before his body struck the ground. Grenades went off somewhere, a sharp brak-brak sound; a fuel truck went up with a huge woosh and orange flash in the corner of his eye. A bullet went over his head with the unpleasantly familiar CRACK of a high-velocity round; the Holbars hammered itself into his shoulder as he walked it down the length of the truck, using the muzzle flash to aim. Stroboscopic vision. Lightflash, blinkblinkblinkblink.

  Blink. The driver tumbling down from the open door, rifle falling from his hands. Blink. Metal dimpling and tearing under the ratcheting slugs. Blink. A machine gunner above the cab trying to swing his weapon toward him, jerking and falling as the light slugs from the Holbars struck and tumbled and chewed. Ping-ting, ricochet off something solid. Blink. Shots down the canvas tilt, sparks and flashes, antennae clustering on its roof…

  "Almighty Thor, it's the command truck!" Eric whooped, and ran for the entrance at the rear. His hand was reaching for a grenade as he rounded the rear of the truck, skidding lightly in the torn-up wet earth. The canvas flap was opening at the rear. The Draka tossed the blast grenade in and dove to one side without breaking stride, hit the ground in a forward roll that left him low to the earth in the instant the detonation came, turned and drove back for the truck while it still echoed. You had to get in fast, that had been an offensive grenade, blast only, a hard lump of explosive with no fragmentation sleeve. Fast, while anybody alive in there was still stunned…

  * * * *

  Standartenführer Hoth had been listening on the shortwave set in the back of the radio truck, to the broadcasts from over the mountains. It was all there was to do; as useful a
s Schmidt's poring over the maps, there by the back of the vehicle. Reception was spotty, and he kept getting fragments. Fragments of the battle south of the passes, in German or the strange slurred Draka dialect of English; his own command: of that tongue was spotty and based on the British standard. Evaluations, cool orders, fire-correction data from artillery observation officers, desperate appeals for help… There were four German divisions in the pocket at the south end of the Ossetian Military Highway—the Liebstandarte, split by the Draka paratroops and driving to clear the road from both ends, with three Wehrmacht units trying to hold the perimeter to the south. Trying and failing.

  Time, time, he thought. The faint light of dials and meters turned his hands green; the body of the truck was an echoing cavern as the canvas above them drummed under the rain.

  "Are you getting anything?" he said to the operator.

  The man shook his head, one palm pressed to an earphone and the fingers of the other hand teasing a control. "Nothing new, Standartenfuhrer. Good reception from Pyatigorsk and Grozny, a mishmash from over the mountains—too much altitude and electrical activity tonight. And things skipping the ionosphere from everywhere: a couple of Yank destroyers off Iceland hunting a U-boat, the Imperial Brazilian news service…"

  The first explosion stunned them into a moment of stillness. Then Schmidt was leaping to his feet, spilling maps and documents. Hoth snatched for his helmet. Firing, the unmistakable sound of Draka automatic rifles, more explosions; only a few seconds, and already orange flame-light was showing through the canvas. The truck rocked, then shook as bullets struck it, a shuddering vibration that racked downward from the unseen cab ahead of them. Slugs tearing through the rank of electronic equipment, toppling boxes, bright sparking flashes and the lightning smell of ozone. The radio operator flew backwards across the truck bed with a line of red splotches across his chest, to slump with the headphones half pulled off and an expression of surprise on his face.

  Hoth was turning when the grenade flew through the back of the truck, between the unlaced panels of the covering. It bounced back from the operator's body, landed at Schmidt's feet. There was just light and time enough to recognize the type, machined from a hard plastic explosive. It was safe at thirty feet, but more than enough to kill or cripple them all in the close quarters of the truck. He had enough time to feel a flash of anger: he could not die now, there was too much to do. It was futile, but he could feel his body tensing to hurl himself forward and kick the bomb out into the dark, feel the flush of berserker rage at the thought of another disaster.

  Eyes locked on the explosive, he was never sure whether Schmidt had thrown himself forward or slipped; only aware of the blocky form plunging down and then being thrown up in a red spray. That barrier of flesh was enough to absorb the blast, although the noise was still enough to set his ears buzzing. The SS commander was a fast heavy man, with a combat veteran's reflexes: in a night firefight, you had to get out this was a deathtrap. There was a motive stronger than survival driving him forward, as well.

  The past day had seen his life and his cause go from triumph to the verge of final disaster. He had seen his men cut down without an opportunity to strike back while he blundered like a bull tangled in the matador's cape. Out there was something he could kill. A thin trickle of saliva ran from one corner of his mouth as he lunged for the beckoning square of darkness.

  * * * *

  A step brought Eric back to the rear of the truck. He had just time to wonder why the explosion had sounded so muffled when a German stepped over the body of the comrade who had thrown himself on the Draka grenade and kicked Eric in the face, hard.

  The Draka's rifle had been in the way. That saved him from a broken jaw; it did not prevent him from being flung back, stunned. The ground rose up and struck him; arms and legs moved sluggishly, like the fronds of a sea anenome on a coral reef; the strap of his Holbars was wound around his neck.

  Self-accusation was bitter. Overconfidence. He had just time enough to think stupid, stupid, when a huge weight dropped on his back. The darkness lit with fire.

  * * * *

  Down. Reflex drove Sofie forward as motion flicked at the corner of her eye, letting the Centurion run on ahead. She landed crouched on toes and left hand, muscle springing back against the weight of body and radio. Shins thudded against her ribs, and the German went over with a yell; she flung out the machine pistol one-handed and fired, using muzzle flash to aim and recoil to walk the burst through the mud and across the prone Fritz's back, hammering cratering impacts as the soft-nosed slugs mushroomed into his back and blew exit wounds the size of fists in his chest. Eric had stopped ahead of her, walking a line of assault-rifle fire down the truck. Explosions; there was light now, enough to seem painful after the long march through the forest. Eric—

  Ignore him, have to. She twisted and pivoted, flicking herself onto knees and toes, facing back into the vehicle park, its running shouting silhouettes. Her thumb snapped the selector to single-shot and she brought the curved steel buttplate to her shoulder, resting the wooden forestock on her left palm; there was enough light to use the optical sight now, and the submachine gun was deadly accurate under fifty meters. The round sight-picture filled her vision, divided by the translucent plastic finger of the internal pointer, with its illuminated tip. Concentrate: it was just school, just a night-firing exercise, pop-up targets, outline recognition. A jacket with medals, lay the pointer on his chest and stroke the trigger and crack. The recoil was a surprise, it always was when the shot felt just right. The Fritz flipped back out of her sight; she did not need to let her eyes follow. More following him, this truck must mean something; quickly, they could see the muzzle flashes if not her. Crack. Crack. Crack. The last one spun, twisted, only winged; she slapped two more rounds into him before he hit the ground.

  A bullet snapped through the space her stomach would have been in if she had been standing; she felt the passage suck at her helmet. Aimed fire, if she hit the dirt he might still get her, or the centurion in the back. Scan… a helmet moving, behind one of the bodies. Difficult… Her breath went out, held; her eyes were wide, forcing a vision that saw everything and nothing. The Fritz working the bolt of his Mauser. Blood from a bitten cheek. The pointer of her scope sinking with the precision of a turret-lathe, just below the brim of the coal-scuttle helmet. Her finger taking up the infinitesimal slack of the machine pistol's trigger. They fired together; the helmet flipped up into the ruddy-lit darkness with a kting sound that she heard over the rifle bullet buzzing past. A cratered ruin, the SS rifleman's head slipped down behind the comrade he had been using as a firing rest.

  Sofie blinked the afterimage of the Mauser's flash out of her eyes, switching to full-auto and spraying the pile of dead, you never knew. Knee and heel and toe pushed her back upright as her hands slapped a fresh magazine into her weapon, hand finding hand in the dark. Unnoticed, her lips were fixed in a snarl as she loped around the truck Eric had been attacking; her eyes were huge and dark in a face gone rigid as carved bone. He could not be far ahead. She would find him; his back needed guarding. She would.

  * * * *

  Plop.

  The Fritz flare arched up from behind a boulder. Harsh silver light lit the trees, leeching color and depth, making them seem like flat stage sets in an outdoor theater, turning the falling rain to a streaking argent dazzle. The Draka section hugged the earth and prayed for darkness, but the flare tangled its parachute in the upper branches and hung, sputtering. Einar Labushange laid his head on his hands; the light outlined what was left of the Draka firing line on the ridge with unmerciful clarity. He was safer than most, because when his head dropped, the dead SS trooper in front of him hid him from the front. He could feel the body jerking with pseudo-life as bullets struck it, hear the wet sounds they made. Rounds were lashing the whole ridge; the firepower of the Fritz infantry was diffuse, not as many automatic weapons per soldier, but their sheer numbers made it huge now that they were deployed.


  Not as many as there had been when the Draka had caught them filing along below. Forgetting, he tried to shift himself with an elbow: froze, and sank hack with a sound that only utter will prevented from being a whimper. Briefly, some far-off professional corner of his mind wondered if he had been justified in using an illuminating round, that fifteen-minute eternity ago. Yes, on the whole. The Fritz had been in marching order; he did not need to raise his head to see them piled along the trail, fifty or sixty at least. More hung on the undergrowth behind it, shot in the back as they waded through vine and thicket as dense as barbed wire. Clumsy, he thought, conscious even through the rain of the cold sweat of pain on his body, thee slow warm leakage from his belly. Open-country soldiers, Draka would have gone through like eels or used their bush knives.

  Stones and chips tinked into the air; a shower of cut twigs and branches fell on the soldiers of the Domination, pattering through the rain. They crouched below the improvised parapet; occasionally a marksman would pop up for a quick burst at the muzzle flashes, roll along to another position, snap-shoot again at the answering fire that raked their original shooting stand.

  "Fuckahs never learn!" he heard one call out gleefully. There was no attempt at a firing line; the survivors of the two lochoi would rise to fire when the next charge came in. Overhead, a shell from 2nd Tetrarchy's 60mm mortar whined. Only one, they were running short. Short of everything; and the Fritz still had more men. Despite the dozens shattered along the trail, the scores more lying in windrows up the slope they had tried to storm, and thank the One-Eyed that the bush was too thick to let them around the flanks easily…