Marching Through Georgia

by S. M. Stirling

  "Too soon," he muttered, as he came up beside Sofie and spread the bipod of his Holbars. From here you could just see down a little of the long curve of the street: parts still blocked by houses on either side, others merely a lower patch in a sea of stone lumps, bits of broken timber, bodies, wrecked vehicles. "Too soon to stop the shelling. Why?"

  * * * *

  "Herr Standartenfuhrer, I just cannot raise them!"

  The radioman in the command tank winced in anticipation, but the SS commander's face remained set. Voices were crackling in, demanding to know why the artillery support had ceased. One minute, magenta flashes and cedar-shaped blossoms of dust white and black, walls collapsing, thunder echoing back from the walls of the valley, fire. Now, nothing.

  How should I know? his mind complained, as hands levered him back into a sitting position in the turret and he turned to look north and west. Futile, the guns were behind the ridge and two kilometers away, but instinct did not work on the scale of modern warfare. He switched circuits.

  "Weidner. Take two carriers, get back there and find out what the problem is with those guns!" He paused, considering. "Radioman, get me Pyatigorsk; perhaps they have a through connection."

  Waiting, he turned to consider the remnants of the Circassian town. That was all that was left, the flanking trenches had been pounded out of existence. Shell-holes pocked the uneven surface of the fields, the shattered stumps that had been the orchards around it. Even now that the buildings were mostly battered down he could not see much past the first mounds of broken stone blocks, but columns of smoke pocked it; the sharp rattle of automatic fire, grenade-blasts, glimpses of moving vehicles. There were more of those south, up the valley—tanks and carriers moving past the ruins and onto the Ossetian Military Highway once more. Slowly, cautiously; the Draka had taught them that, and the special mine-clearing tanks were burning wreckage in the fields below the village.

  Unwillingly, his eyes shifted down. More pillars of smoke from wrecks, far too many. Here a twisted mass after an ammunition explosion in a pierced hull; there a turret flipped forty meters from its tank, still gleaming wetly even though the rain had stopped hours ago. Another that had shed its track and turned helplessly in a circle as the length of flexible metal unreeled behind it; the crew lay where the machine-guns had caught them bailing out. Fuel and scorched metal, burnt flesh and explosive, wet dung-smell from the fields. More bodies lying in the glistening chewed-up grey mud, in straggling lines, in bits where the mines had gone off, singly and in clumps where they had been shot off the tanks they rode toward the buildings… His infantry had suffered even more than the tanks; many were still slow and exhausted from last night's ambush-fiasco in the woods. He flushed, hammering a hand into the side of the hatch.

  "Lieber Herr Gott, how am I going to explain this?" Professional reflex ran a tally in his head. A hundred tanks and assault guns yesterday at dawn; barely twenty now, and that was including the damaged ones that were still mobile. The infantry? Four hundred down, dead or with incapacitating wounds, many more still on their feet and carrying weapons who should be in hospital beds. He rammed the side of his hand into the solid steel again. The transport, you had that shot out from under you last night, don't forget that. All his painfully accumulated motor transport, most of his fuel supply, all of the specialized engineering and mine-clearing equipment except for the two machines burning before his eyes. Two mornings ago he had had a regimental combat group, a third of the strength of the best Panzer division Greater Germany could field. Two days of combat had destroyed it, and for what?

  To overrun one single, reinforced company of light infantry, who even yet held out. "They will stand me up against a wall, and they will be right," he muttered, putting a hand to his bandaged head. He did not clearly remember how he had come to be lying unconscious in the mud, but whatever had hit him had come within a fraction of cracking his skull. Or might have indeed; the medic had not wanted to qualify him for duty, but there was no time for weakness. A benzedrine tablet had brought back alertness enough.

  "What sort of trolls am I fighting? Why are they so hard to kill?" he continued, in the same inaudible murmur that barely moved his lips; the SS commander was unconscious of making any sound at all. Then in a sudden snarl: "Shoot!"

  Crack and the 88mm gun of his tank cut loose. The long flash dazzled him for an instant, backblast drying the sweat on his face with an instant of chill-heat. He could feel the massive armored weight of the vehicle rock on its treads beneath him with the recoil, an almost sexual shuddering. Spray and bits of road surface flew up, droplets hissing on the muzzle-brake of the long probing gun. The tank was like a steel womb, warm and comforting, nothing like the dark clamminess of earth and stone. A glance skyward; the low cover was holding, a gift of Providence. With luck—

  "Standartenfuhrer, H.Q. in Pyatigorsk."

  "Ja." The voice of the regimental medical officer, with his heavy Dutch accent, sounded tinny in his ears, like someone from Hanover with a head cold. H.Q. had been completely stripped; he was senior officer, but Felix Hoth did not like it, or the Hollander. It was policy to accept kindred Nordics in the SS, but…

  "Yes? Any report from the battery?"

  "No, Standartenfuhrer."

  That was suspicious; Oosterman always said "Sir" unless something had gone wrong. Unless he had done something wrong. Had the pig been into the medicinal drugs again? One more offense and it wouldn't be demotion, he would have him shot, and never mind that his sister was married to the head of the Dutch Nazi party. "What is it, man? Spit it out!"

  "Your… the osthilfe volunteer Valentina, she is missing."

  "What!" he screamed. Then his voice dropped to a flat tone that was far more menacing. "You are wasting time on a command circuit with news about subhuman Slavic whores?" You decadent cosmopolite pimp masquerading as a National Socialist, his mind added. It was time to do something about Oosterman, even if he did have protection.

  "Standartenfuhrer, she left an antipersonnel mine in your quarters rigged to the door, four men were killed!"

  He stopped himself just in time from barking "impossible. Even Oosterman would not dare to lie to him so, over an open circuit. "Continue," he said weakly.

  "There was a written message."

  "But… she cannot even speak decent German," the SS commander said in bewilderment. This—no, there was no time. "Condense it."

  "It… Herr Standartenfuhrer, it lists our order of battle for the last six months, and, ah, is signed 'Comrade Lieutenant Valentina Fedorova Budennin, Politruk and Military Intelligence Officer, First Caucasian Partisan Brigade.' " There was gloating under the fear in the Dutchman's voice; Hoth the incorruptible would have some trouble explaining this.

  The gunner of Hoth's tank had been peppering the village with machine-gun fire from the co-axial MG38, on general principle. Even over that ratcheting chatter, gunner and loader both heard the sound their commander made. They exchanged glances, and the loader crossed himself by unconscious reflex. Usually the gunner did not let that pass, being a firm neopagan and believer in Hoerbiger's ice-moon theory, the Welteislehre. This time he simply licked his lips in silence and turned back to the episcope, scanning for a target. The antitank weapons in the village frightened him, but he could shoot back at them.

  "Forward, all reserve units, into the village, kill them." Hoth's voice rasped over the command circuit, with a catch and break halfway through the sentence.

  "Sir." That was the squadron-commander. "Herr Standartenfuhrer, we have lost more than two-thirds of our strength, the enemy is neutralized and time is of the essence; why don't we just pass through the cleared lanes, and leave a blocking force to contain enemy survivors until the Army infantry comes up?"

  "That is an order!"

  A hesitation. "Jawohl. Zum befehl."

  Hoth switched to the intercom. "Forward. Schnell!"

  With a grunting diesel roar, the command tank threaded its way around the huge crater in the road and
the circle of overturned fighting vehicles; the driver geared down and began the long climb to the burning town.

  * * * *

  Johanna flattened as the Fritz artillery fired, then raised her head again. The noise was overwhelming, as much a blow against the ears as a sound, echoing from the hills and the blank wall of the forested mountain behind her. The guns were spread out along the narrow winding road: a two-lane country track, barely good enough for an internal plantation way in the Domination. The surface was broken, beginning to disintegrate into mud—mud like the soupy mass she was lying in, that coated her from head to foot after the long night march through the rain. It was nearly thirty hours since she had slept. There had been nothing to eat but a heavy bread full of husks; she belched, adding to the medley of stale tastes in her mouth. The branches above were still dripping, adding their load of wet misery to the grey color of the day, and the pain in her neck had never left her since the crash…

  In the infantry after all, she thought disgustedly. Knights of the Sky, bullshit.

  A five-gun battery was firing from the little clearing ahead of her, amid the hulks of burnt-out trucks and a wrecked tank and old-looking roofless form buildings. The road fell away on the other side, but there were more guns there, from the sound of it. The guns themselves were simple field weapons, long-barreled 170mm's mounted in open-topped boxes atop modified Soviet tanks, nothing like the custom-built models with enclosed turrets and 360-degree traverse her own people used. But they were pumping out death effectively enough, the recoil digging the spades at the rear of the guns deeper into the muck, crews dashing between the supply tractors and the breeches, staggering back in pairs bearing shell and charges in steel-rod carrying frames. The men were stripped to the waist, sweating even in a damp raw chill that let her see their breath as white puffs around their heads. She shivered, and swallowed again, her throat hot and scratchy.

  "A cold," she muttered to herself. "Happiness, happiness." They were close, close enough to see liquid earth splash from the running feet of the nearest crew…

  The partisan, Ivan, crawled in beside her and put his mouth to her companion's ear. He whispered: unnecessarily, between the firing and the engines they could have shouted without much risk of being overheard, and the SS were fiercely concentrating on their tasks. Valentina translated in a normal tone: "Where are their infantry? That is most of the Liebstandarte's Divisional artillery regiment, there should be at least two companies for perimeter defense."

  How should I know? I'm a fighter pilot, Johanna answered in her head. Aloud: "Up the valley, attacking."

  "If they've done that, Pyatigorsk should be wide open." Valentina translated the remark, then answered it herself before continuing to the Draka: "I said again, there is no use in blowing up fuel depots there if the Fritz come back victorious."

  Ivan sighed, raised the flare-pistol he had borrowed from her. Johanna tensed, bringing a leg beneath her and raising the machine pistol.

  Eric, if you only knew, she thought. There was none of the fear-exhilaration of aerial combat. Just plain fear, went through her. She belched again, felt her stomach rumble, tightened her rectum instinctively. Oh no, not that. Eyes were on her: the Russians', her father's…

  The flare went pop, pale against the massive muzzle flashes of the cannon. Three hundred partisans rose and threw themselves forward. Urra! Urra! Her feet pushed her upright and after them, gaining, in among the wet green-grey hulks, breathing their burnt-oil and propellant stink. Crewmen and gunners turned, snatching for personal weapons and pintle-mounted machine-guns. Finger clenching, bucking weight in her hands, pingpingping across armor-plate, a German falling with red splotches across his hair-matted chest, a silver crucifix winking.

  Something struck the weapon in her hand. Hard: she spun, feet going out from under her on the slippery rock-strewn mud. A tread came up to meet her face, dun-colored mud on massive linked grey steel flecked with rust. Impact, earth, hands on her collar. Warmth, and a fading…

  * * * *

  "Here they come," Eric said. Engine rumble and steel-squeal from around the curve. He sucked the last drops from the canteen and tossed it behind him. The tanks were visible now. A line of them, turrets traversed alternately to left and right; even as lie watched, the first one fired into the base of a building and the walls collapsed, straight down with an earthquake rumble. The tank came on through the cloud of debris, its machine-guns winking from turret and ball-mount in the glacis plate of the bow. Hounds went crack overhead, tracer drawing lines through the air where he would have been if he had stood. Then the second tank in line fired into the ruin on the opposite side of the road, and the others. They were going to repeat that, all the way to the central square. Then back out again, until nothing moved; then they would squat on the ruins, while foot soldiers searched for the entrances. After that, it would be like pouring insecticide down a broken ant heap…

  "Neal!" he called. "That last round, make it count!"

  Eight tanks, probably with infantry following up behind. Eight was nearly half of what the Fritz had left; unfortunately, Century A had run out of antitank just slightly before the enemy ran out of tanks.

  "Yep."

  It might have been marksman's instinct that brought the heavyset rocket gunner to her knees for a better aiming point, or a coldly calculated risk. A mistake, in either case; a machine-gun bullet punched her back just as her finger stroked the trigger. The rocket lanced into the already holed personnel carrier five meters before the moving tank, slewing it around and actually clearing the road for the advancing SS armor.

  "We'll never stop them now." Eric did not know who had made that statement, but there was no reason to doubt it; heading back into the bunker would be simply a slower form of death. Neal's heels drummed on the clinking rubble for an instant, then were still. The beams overhead had begun to burn, set alight by a stray incendiary round. Long and slim, the barrel of the lead tank's 88 was swinging around to bear on them.

  * * * *

  "They'll never stop them," Trooper Huff said. There was nobody else alive on the rooftop across the laneway from Eric's position to hear her. She looked down at Meier's slumped body; if the burst had come up through the floorboards a few centimeters farther right, it would have struck her instead. As it was— She forced herself to look down at the wound in her thigh; there were bone splinters in the pulped red-and-purple wound, and the blood was runneling down past her clenched hands. Shock was keeping out the worst of the pain, but that would come. If the blood loss did not kill her first; she estimated that at no more than two minutes, with unconsciousness in less.

  The centurion was across the way, with five others. And Patton.

  "Heavy," she muttered, fumbling at the dead trooper's body. She had had an improvised antitank weapon with her, a bundle of unscrewed grenade heads strapped around an intact stick-grenade with a bungiecord. Suicide system, she thought: that was the nickname for it. "Scarcely applies nahw, do it?"

  The journey to the edge of the roof was endless, her wet fingers fumbling with the tab of the grenade. She imagined, that she could hear it sizzling, once she pulled the button. Up, use it like a crutch, gotta see't' place dang thing…

  The second tank had an alert pair of eyes head-and-shoulders out of the hatch, with the pintle-mounted MG38 ready to swing; that was one reason for the inechelon formation. There is a natural tendency to fire too high when aiming up; still, the first round of the burst took Huff just above the nose, and left with her helmet and much of the top of her skull. The bundle of grenades dropped at her feet, harmless except to corpse and roof; the body twisted off the edge, turned once and landed broken-backed across the hull of the wrecked personnel carrier below. Blood and pink-grey brain dripped into the burning oil, hissing.

  "They shot Huff! The dirty bastards shot Huffl" Parton's voice cracked. Then she was moving, fast and very smooth, scooping up the satchel charge, arming it, hurdling the low wall into the street and across it while bulle
ts flicked sparks around her feet. Less a dash than a long leap, screaming, a forward roll through the puddle of flame that surrounded the wreck. Still screaming as she vaulted with her uniform and hair burning onto the deck, three steps down it with the plating booming, over the body, diving into the air head-first toward the SS panzer. A shrieking torch that the green tracer slapped out of the air to fall beneath the treads. The satchel charge detonated.

  Tank designers crowd their heaviest plating onto the areas that are likely to need it: the mantlet that holds the gun, the glacis plate at the bow, the frontal arc of the turret. Not much is left for the rear deck… or the bottom of the hull. The satchel charge held twenty pounds of plastique, confined between the forty-four ton weight of the tank and the unyielding ground. Thin plating buckled as the globe of hot gas expanded; there was no time for it to go elsewhere. Pieces of it bounced through the fighting compartment, slicing, supersonic. Fire touched the wrenched-open cases of 88mm ammunition on the floor of the panzer, still nearly a combat load.

  The first explosion bounced the tank onto its side and threw it across the road, a huge armored plug across the laneway. The second opened the hole in its belly into a splayed-out puncture wound, like a tin can left too long in the fire. Yet the hull barely moved; recoil balanced recoil as the turret and its basket blew out the other side of the vehicle, flying twenty meters down the laneway and demolishing a wall with its ten-ton weight. Surprise froze the Draka for a moment. Eric recovered first.

  "Back down, back down, quick, go go go," he shouted, slapping shoulders and legs as they went by him, back toward the narrow opening at the rear of the room. Already, figures in camouflage uniforms were trying to edge past the blockage of the wrecked tank, and he snapped a burst at them. They fell; hurt or taking cover was impossible to say even at ten meters' distance as thick metallic-smelling smoke drifted across his eyes. The pain of the Holbars hammering against his raw shoulder brought him back to himself, and he slithered feet-first to the opening. Hands caught and assisted him; they half-fell into the welcome gloom, scrambling back beyond a dog-leg that kept them safe from a grenade tossed down their bolthole.