Weapons of choice aot-1

by John Birmingham

  "That'd be their tanker, I bet. They can refuel while they're in the air. You'd have to figure those rocket planes burn gas like a bastard… Uhm, sorry, Mr. President."

  Roosevelt waved away the apology.

  For the first time since he'd been told of the disaster at Midway he didn't feel as if he was falling helplessly down a bottomless well. No, now he was intrigued.

  Kolhammer hit a switch to crack the seal on the Raptor's bubble canopy. It opened with a slight hiss as he stripped off his mask and flipped up the helmet visor. He lost night vision, but his eyes soon adjusted from the artificial jade green of low-light amplification to the soft silver tones of moon and starlight. Any initial pleasure he'd felt at the chance to fly a fast-mover again had been lost in the sickening whirl of emotions stirred up at crossing the West Coast. They'd come in well to the north of Los Angeles, not wanting to start a panic. He'd still seen the heat dome of the city on infrared, however. It seemed impossibly small and feeble, but of course LA was nearly twelve times bigger in his day.

  It was a jarring episode. He was used to looking down on that coastline, whether in daylight or darkness, and searching for his own home; not the exact house of course, but the general area, in the center of the bay, at the edge of the city's apparently unbounded sprawl. It was one of the few safe mooring points of his life, the knowledge that Marie was down there, waiting for him. Except that she hadn't even been born yet, and if he couldn't get back to her, he'd most likely die before she was. Then their son, Jed, would never be, which seemed even more upsetting than having lost him off Taiwan. The sorrows and consequence of this fucking insanity twisted in on themselves like a snake devouring its tail.

  "Admiral Kolhammer? Sir? They're coming."

  Kolhammer shook his head and consciously pulled out of the dark well of self-absorption. He reminded himself that the woman in the rear seat had left behind two daughters, aged three and five. The Raptor was named for her firstborn, Condi.

  "Sorry, Lieutenant," he said. "I think I'm getting too old for this."

  "We all are, sir. Little kids and make-believe, that's what this reminds me of."

  The drumming of boots across the tarmac wasn't make-believe. A six-man squad was double-timing in their direction with rifles at the ready. They pounded to a halt about twenty meters away. A sergeant called out, "Which one of you is Kolhammer?"

  "Over here," he yelled back, waving a small torch.

  The sergeant spoke to a couple of his men, who trotted away into the darkness at the edge of the tarmac. Kolhammer heard the sound of an iron door swinging open and being dropped with a clang. He peered into the gloom and saw the soldiers haul a stepladder out of a pit in the ground beneath the trapdoor.

  "Five-star service," he muttered to Lieutenant Torres.

  The noncom waved the men with the wooden ladder over to a spot just below the fighter's cockpit. It bumped against the fuselage with a dull thud. For some reason the noise sealed the deal for Kolhammer. They were lost forever-of that he was certain.

  "Age before beauty, sir," said Flight Lieutenant Anna Torres with a tired smile in her voice.

  Kolhammer swung himself out and over the side. He could see men and women dropping to the ground from the AWAC bird and the refueler.

  He took the ladder in three steps, and landed back on the U.S. of A.

  It didn't feel like home.

  Nevertheless, Kolhammer was surprised to feel his heart beating faster as they approached the hut. A small cluster of men in dark coats and hats stood in the malarial glow of a yellow lamp at the foot of a set of steps leading up to…

  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  His heart gave a real lurch.

  And there, standing behind Roosevelt, was the unmistakable figure of Albert Einstein. The unruly explosion of gray-white hair was as recognizable as Elvis in a jumpsuit or Marilyn Monroe standing over a grate with hot air blowing up her dress. Kolhammer stiffened his back, an impulse that seemed to run through the other fliers at the exact same moment. They finished the last few yards in lockstep and snapped out a salute in perfect unison to the thirty-second president of the United States of America.

  Roosevelt found himself in an electric moment. He could feel the charge running through the men around him. Even Einstein seemed to flinch, or shiver. He sensed powerful currents of antipathy and fear from some of the military officers gathered around his chair. Admiral Ernest J. King, in particular, appeared to be struggling with his volcanic temperament. The man's knuckles were white, he'd clenched his fists so tightly. Even Eisenhower seemed incredibly tense.

  Roosevelt returned the salute, fumbling with his cigarette holder as he did so.

  He saw their commander, Kolhammer, hesitate momentarily as he took in the sight of Eisenhower. He saluted uncertainly. The brigadier returned the gesture after a very obvious pause.

  A few seconds of uncomfortable silence enveloped the small tableau, during which the only sound was the faint moan of the desert winds.

  Roosevelt realized that he was absorbed by the sight of these men and women, generations removed from his own. They all wore flight suits of some kind and carried rocketeer helmets, probably because they flew so high. About half of them looked to be cut from the same cloth as his own officers, educated, middle-class white men. But there was no avoiding or denying the stone-cold fact that the rest were a lucky dip of sorts. Men and women. Some white. Some black. Some Mexican and even Asiatic. And some? He honestly had no idea. The awe and amazement he'd felt at the sight of their arrival remained. But he was a politician, and in his gut, political instincts were also engaged.

  Whatever the military consequences of these people's arrival, the politics were going to be diabolical.

  "Well, Admiral Kolhammer," he said as pleasantly as he could manage, "you'd best come in out of the cold."

  The room wasn't set up for a meeting. Kolhammer had been told that Roosevelt and his advisers would be at the Ambassador Hotel in LA. Curiosity must have gotten the better of them. There were only a handful of chairs and two desks, one of which was missing a leg. A stack of books propped up one corner. There didn't even appear to be a reliable power supply. Three naked bulbs hung from wires, but a single gas lamp was the sole source of light inside the hut.

  Actually, that was untrue, he thought, as he stepped through the door. At least half of those present, including the president, seemed to be smoking cigarettes. Clouds of smoke drifted from their glowing tips, burning his eyes and throat.

  The locals backed away toward the rear of the room as Kolhammer's people surged in quietly, nodding and smiling uncertainly. They took up positions, standing at ease, in the corner to his left.

  "I'm sorry we can't offer more in the way of hospitality, Admiral Kolhammer," said Roosevelt, "but I'm afraid that's my fault. I insisted on coming out here to meet you. Couldn't stand to wait in that hotel."

  "It's really not a problem, Mr. President."

  Kolhammer wasn't sure what to say next. He'd expected to have another hour or two to compose something appropriate. He'd also been thrown by the presence of Eisenhower, and had to fight an impulse to address him as Mr. President. He really hoped he wouldn't have to deal with a young John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, or George Bush anytime soon.

  Before he could blunder into a morass of fatuous small talk, Roosevelt surprised him by saying, "Please accept my condolences for your losses at Midway, Admiral. I know they weren't as serious as ours, but we don't measure out our grief in teaspoons for the purposes of comparison. I'm sure you don't, either."

  "No sir, we do not. And thank you. We lost some fine men and women. As did you… or, uhm…"

  He was about to clarify that inaccuracy, but Roosevelt waved it away.

  "We know what you mean, Admiral. Since you're here, you'd best meet everyone now. General Eisenhower, could you do the introductions? I'm afraid I'm not as familiar with everybody, particularly the scientists, beside Professor Einstein."

  Eise
nhower looked stumped for an instant.

  Roosevelt grinned wickedly. "You're not president yet, young man. You still have to work for a living."

  A small but genuine wash of laughter ran through the room.

  They must know about Ike, Kolhammer realized. Word travels fast.

  Eisenhower had put together the short list of scientists, with the help of Professor Einstein. But he suspected the president had asked him to do the introductions because Roosevelt and one of the scientists, Professor Millikan, loathed each other. Eisenhower had joked to King they needed the rifle squad inside the building to keep the two men apart.

  Millikan, the director of the California Polytechnic Institute's physics lab, merely grunted at Kolhammer. He appeared actively hostile to most of the other fliers. Eisenhower knew him to be a bit of a nut on racial issues, so perhaps that had something do with it. By way of contrast, Theodore von Karman, the top man at Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, and Leo Szilard from Columbia University, had to be dragged away from the fliers. Robert Oppenheimer, Linus Pauling, and a relatively young man called Robert Dicke from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology restricted themselves to nods and perfunctory smiles.

  "And this is Professor Albert Einstein," said Eisenhower. "He's probably done more than anyone here to help us adjust to your arrival."

  All the time travelers reacted as Einstein shuffled forward to shake hands with Kolhammer. They treated him like some kind of big-league ballplayer or radio star, suddenly crowding around to take his hand or just touch him on the arm or the shoulder. It was odd. One of the fliers produced a thin black briefcase and handed it to Kolhammer.

  "We thought you might appreciate this, Professor," said the admiral. "It's a computer. It'll help you in your work."

  The physicist thanked him and carefully unzipped the bag. Eisenhower had been told about their electrical books, the flexipads as they called them. This would have fit the description, except that it seemed to be too large. Perhaps it was a more powerful flexipad?

  "It's called a data slate," said Kolhammer as Einstein turned it over in his hands. "The sort of calculations that'd take months to do by hand, you can do in a split second on this baby."

  Eisenhower suppressed a smirk. He could see the other scientists eyeing it covetously.

  "Does it play movies and music?" asked Einstein. "I've heard that it does."

  "Do you mind?" Kolhammer asked, taking the slate back and looking inquiringly at both Einstein and Roosevelt. Neither objected.

  The admiral brushed a corner of the slate's glass screen and it lit up, throwing out considerably more light than the single gas lamp in the room. Eisenhower could see that most of the illuminated page appeared to be a blank blue rectangle. Half a dozen or so small objects, about the size of a postage stamps, were clustered down the right-hand side of the-what would you call it, the screen? The page?

  Kolhammer brushed one with the tip of his finger and it suddenly whooshed outward to fill the entire space with a moving picture of people in evening dress. Violinists, he realized as the first sweet notes of a Paganini concerto stole into the room. A murmur arose from the scientists and even from some of the military officers. The recording sounded as real as if they were in the front row of a concert hall.

  Kolhammer handed the slate back back to Einstein, who was clearly entranced. He nodded and grinned and stroked the glowing glass plate like a blind man, attempting to "see" through his fingertips. He turned and bent over so that Roosevelt could see the display more clearly. The president took the machine gingerly, handling it like a precious crystal vase.

  "It's pretty tough, sir," said Kolhammer. "Military-grade construction. You could kick it across the room and it'd be fine."

  Einstein straightened up. He was smiling as though very pleased.

  "It is good, ja? Not everything in your world is about war making and destructive potential?"

  Eisenhower thought he detected something in Kolhammer's response-a fleeting moment of indecision, as though he wasn't quite sure of how to respond. In the end, the man shrugged and smiled with a mixture of warmth and possibly of regret.

  "No," said Kolhammer. "Not everything."

  21

  THE EASTERN FRONT, MAY 1942

  Eternity was so cold they had piled up the dead to shield themselves.

  The wind cut deeply into Brasch's bones on the short run from the trench to the forward observation post, until he wondered if he might ever stop shivering; although shiver was too mild a word for the spasms that shook him to his core. He shuddered so violently, and with such little hope the convulsions would ever cease, that he began to wonder if he might die from exhaustion.

  There was no source of warmth in the filthy dugout. The three men he found there were wrapped in so many layers of clothing scavenged from fallen comrades and Russian prisoners that they no longer resembled men. They looked like swollen, fuzzy ticks. Brasch tried to speak to them, but his voice stuttered so much he gave up. He had only platitudes to offer anyway. When the next wave came it would sweep them from the face of the earth.

  From eternity, as he now thought of it.

  Certainly this wretched country stretched out endlessly. Russia was a Hell of frozen, never-ending space and enemies without number. Thousands of them lay in the darkness just beyond this hole.

  They had stacked up a dozen or more of the most pliable bodies in the vain hope that they would offer protection against the howling wind that roared across the plain and knifed through every layer of rotting, fetid cloth. One of the Russian corpses with which they had constructed their windbreak had frozen with an arm protruding. Somebody had hacked it off with a spade, and the sharp bone stump dug into Brasch's neck, forcing him to shift into a more exposed position.

  He couldn't see the faces of the men who huddled there with him and didn't know their names. This wasn't his unit. He'd been separated from the engineers for three weeks. They were twelve hundred kilometers away, but it hardly mattered. He now fought with a battalion of Panzergrenadiers and didn't think he would ever see his comrades again. He had come forward to encourage these men in their vigilance, but was reduced instead to curling in a small ball and trying not to moan.

  Brasch knew that far in the rear, across an impenetrable sea of snap-frozen mud, lay mountains of provisions and arctic-weather gear that would never reach them. He knew because he had helped build the great depots himself and seen them fill up with thousands of hooded lamb's-wool jackets and mountains of thick blankets, with exquisitely warm insulated boots and soft cat-skin gloves. He knew there were half a million sturdy kerosene heaters still packed away in boxes-just one of which might have made habitable this dismal sinkhole in which they suffered.

  Instead they were forced to piss on their cracked and blistered hands, the only way they had of even briefly warming and cauterizing fissures and scabs filled with infected, frozen puss. Their wounds made it almost impossible to hold a Mauser, let alone fire one.

  One of the men in the hole-Brasch thought somebody had called him Franz-began to sob. Nobody moved to comfort him. Every breath produced a rattling sound from deep within his chest, and sometimes an explosive burst of coughing that sprayed them with mucus.

  The boy's wailing and coughing increased. "Mutti, Mutti…," he cried incessantly.

  Brasch painfully levered himself up to peer over the rim of hardened bodies.

  "Look alive, my friends," he croaked. "Ivan will be joining us for breakfast soon. Check your communications lines."

  A white-haired sergeant picked up the handset and raised it near his ear. The Feldwebel did not press the instrument there, though, lest it stick to his flesh in the cold.

  "Lines are fine," he grunted.

  The dawn was near enough now that Brasch could see steam pluming from his mouth. The dense forest of arms and legs once more resolved itself into an open field littered with innumerable corpses. The shell holes were now visible, too. Thousands of them, curiously delicate if
viewed with some detachment, against the vast canvas of the snow-covered steppe. Somebody had once pointed out to him how much they resembled flowers-the dark brown centers of scorched earth, a sallow tinge around the mouth of the oldest holes, red blooms of bloody snow marking the newest. Having been alerted to such a perverse notion, he was never able to shake it.

  Brasch was gathering his strength, trying to shake off the lassitude that threatened to overwhelm him, when the vague horizon that blurred between white ground and gray sky was unexpectedly thrown into sharp definition. A solid black line appeared, extending as far as he could see. His balls had just started to climb into his body when the Soviet war cry reached him.

  Ooooouuuuurrraaaahhhhh…

  Brasch wrenched the phone from the claws of the white-haired sergeant and began cranking the handle to generate a charge. When a small, impossibly distant voice answered, he screamed into the mouthpiece, demanding artillery support. The connection was poor, and the line crackled and hissed with static so that he began to suspect they could not even hear him on the other end. That faraway, tinny, nearly nonhuman voice repeated the same senseless mantra, again and again.

  "Wo sind sie? Wo sind sie? Was ist los? Wo sind sie?"

  Brasch called out his identity and demanded an artillery barrage.

  "Wo sind sie? Wo sind sie?"

  The boy screamed for his mother, reminding Brasch for one insane moment of his own son Manfred, just turned four years old. The soldier's grief and rage sounded just like Manny when, as a toddler, he ran into the sharp corner of a table, splitting open his head.

  "MUTTI! MUTTI! NEIN NEIN NEIN!"

  The sergeant and the last man, a displaced driver from a transport company, wrestled frantically with the Spandau, attempting to thread a new belt of cartridges with stiff, shaking hands. The black line on the horizon grew thicker as more and more Communists poured over the gentle rise.

  "God, there are millions of them," cried the Feldwebel, his voice cracking with terror. "We must go, Major, we have to run now, before they get here."