Watch On The Rhine

by John Ringo

  And now—had God above smiled upon him?—the girl actually sat at the table nearest to his. Close up Dieter found her even lovelier than he had at a distance; this despite a fairly obvious attempt at portraying a sophistication the girl probably lacked. She pulled a cigarette out, and held it, nonchalantly, awaiting someone to light it.

  "Give me your lighter, Rudi," demanded Schultz of Harz. "Now, please. You know I do not smoke."

  With a smile that could only be described as sympathetic, if amusedly so, Rudi passed the tiny machine over. Dieter was at Gudrun's side in the next instant, flame springing from his hand.

  The girl smiled warmly and thanked Dieter who, taking it for encouragement, promptly sat beside her, introducing himself.

  "Ah, my name is Gudrun."

  "I am very pleased to meet you, Gudrun. Very."

  The girl didn't ask if he was in the army; such was obvious from the field gray Dieter wore. She did ask of his unit and job.

  "I am the gunner for a Tiger III in the 501st Heavy Panzer Battalion, 47th Panzer Korps," he answered.

  Gudrun recoiled momentarily. "The SS Korps? The Nazis?"

  Laughing, Dieter answered, "We're not an SS Korps, Gudrun. Why, according to my chief, Sergeant Major Krueger, we are not fit to wipe the boots of real SS men. They did train us," he admitted.

  "Then you are not a Nazi?"

  "Me?" Dieter laughed again, louder. "No, Liebchen.31 I was a student when they drafted me and gave me a choice. Sort of a choice. Not much of one, as a matter of fact." He shrugged. "And my grandfather told me I would be better off training under the old SS than under the new Bundeswehr. So there I went.

  "And you?"

  "I am in school still, learning to be a tailor," she answered. As she did the music in the hall changed to something slow.

  "Would you care to dance, Gudrun the tailor?"

  * * *

  Brasche had let all but a skeleton crew go to the dance. Krueger was here in the Tiger III, christened, if that was the right word, "Anna." Likewise was the new boy, Schüler, who had just been assigned. A couple of others manned the auxiliary MauserWerke twenty-five millimeter cannon stations by remote from the armored battle center deep inside the tank. The loader, whose job actually involved running the elevators and automatic rammers that brought the three-hundred-five-millimeter projectiles and their propellant to the main gun's breech and fed them to it, stood by.

  The other sixteen men of the Anna's crew, including Schultz and Harz, were in Giessen trying for a last chance at love before entering the coming fray.

  But Brasche had had no interest, this despite having the body of a twenty-year-old again. He had met one girl in his life who had meant anything to him. And that girl was lost to him forever; all but an image in a photo, a clip of hair, and other images and feelings indelibly engraved on his heart and mind.

  That girl, the original Anna—once of flesh and blood, smiled out at him from a photo held lightly in Hans' hand.

  * * *

  Gudrun was light and graceful in Dieter's arms as they danced. The boy himself was no dancer. And yet, at its best, dance, like the act of love, brings souls together in union and harmony. So it was with this couple, bodily movements meshing into unity of bodies. By the time the dance ended, Dieter knew he had found the one right girl for him. They simply fit. Perfectly.

  The soft sweet smell of her perfume lingered in Dieter's brain, doing its intended job of short-circuiting that brain. The two walked backed to Gudrun's table, arms about each others' waists, leaning against each other.

  At the table they talked. And both knew that the talk was serious. There was little time for the boy-girl games so beloved of the romances.

  "I want you, Gudrun," Dieter announced simply. "Now. Here or nearby. Anywhere, really. But now."

  The girl looked forlorn. Her face shone with desire at least equal to his own. Still, reluctantly, she shook her head No.

  "I have a boyfriend, Dieter. With the 33rd Korps, 165th Infantry Division. It wouldn't be right . . . not until I can tell him about you . . . about us."

  Schultz understood and said so. "But after you have spoken or written?"

  "Then, yes. You and I," she agreed.

  He nodded his head in agreement, "Yes. You and I."

  At that instant there came a commotion from the entrance way. Dieter saw Harz threading his way through the thickening crowd.

  "It's on, Dieter," announced Harz. "'Gericht.' Sie kommen." They're coming.

  * * *

  From his elevated perch high atop Anna's turret Brasche saw the lightning streaks slashing down and up—Posleen spacecraft softening the defenses and human Planetary Defense Centers snarling their defiance. Regretfully, reluctantly, he replaced the other Anna in the small folder he had carried by his heart for nearly sixty years.

  "Anna, down," he commanded and the Tiger's voice-recognition software sent a command to move the tiny elevator platform on which he stood down into the heavily armored command center of the tank.

  Krueger was there with the skeleton crew. As often was the case, the sergeant major was regaling the boys with tales from the last war. So far as that went, Brasche could not and did not object. Sometimes, though, Krueger told of other things, vile things. This Brasche loathed, as indeed he loathed the man.

  "It was great, I tell you, boys. Great. Your pick of the women in those camps. And some of them were lookers, too, even if they were just Jew bitches."

  "How did you end up in one of the camps?" asked Schüler. "I thought you were a combat soldier."

  "Well, I was only there for about six months, you see. While I was healing up from being shot by the Russians. At Ravensbrück, it was. A women's camp. There were so many we never even asked their names."

  That was enough, more than enough, for Brasche. "Sergeant Major, that will be all. Men: to your posts. The enemy is coming. We move to meet them as soon as the rest of the crew returns."

  The crew began to scramble to battle stations. Instinctively, Hans' hand moved to caress the left pocket of his tanker's coveralls, his "Panzerkompli," and the small folder it contained. He kept his face carefully neutral.

  * * *

  Harz looked away, neutrally, as Dieter and Gudrun said their last goodbyes, whispered endearments and hopes for a future. "The bus is here to take us back now, Dieter. I am sorry; we must go."

  Reluctantly, Schultz disengaged himself from Gudrun's arms. Her hands were the last things he let go of. Even then, he could not help but lift one hand to his lips and press them against it.

  "I will come back," he said. "I promise."

  Gudrun immediately dissolved into tears. In a wavering voice she answered, through her tears, "I will be waiting. I, too, promise." The girl's head hung in unfeigned despair. "I promise." Through her mind raced the thoughts that this would be the only chance, that Dieter could not wait for her to break things off with the other boy.

  But there was no time. The recall was sounded. Action called. The bus awaited.

  "Write to me," she cried. "Please write," and she hurriedly jotted an e-mail address down on a napkin.

  Dieter, his heart at once overjoyed and breaking, nodded, took the napkin, released her hand, and turned to go. Already, outside the recreation center, a bus awaited. Inside the bus the troopers sang:

  "Muss I' denn, muss I' denn, Zum Stadtele hinaus, Stadtele hinaus, Und du, mein Schatz bleibst hier. . . ."32

  * * *

  From his command chair, Brasche looked over his crew with satisfaction. There was no scuffling or confusion as men took their seats and strapped themselves in. Only young Schultz, his main gunner, seemed distracted.

  "What is it, Dieter?"

  "Nothing, Herr Oberst," the boy answered.

  Brasche raised a quizzical eyebrow. "The boy's fallen in love," answered the ever-helpful Harz. "Nice girl, too, if looks do not deceive." Harz' hands made curvy motions in the air, exaggerating a bit Gudrun's willowy figure.

  Schultz fla
shed his friend an angry look. Brasche merely smiled. "Rejoice then, Unteroffizier Schultz. Now you know, perhaps, what is worth fighting for."

  Brasche consulted the map display affixed to the left-hand arm of his command chair. On the display he traced the route he wished his battalion to follow with a finger. He pressed a button to send the route to each of the other twelve Tiger IIIs in his battalion. Then he keyed a throat mike. "Achtung, Panzer. Aufrollen."33

  Interlude

  Even at the center of the B-Dec, itself surrounded by C-Decs and Lampreys, Athenalras felt the gravitic surge as kinetic energy projectiles passed nearby. The ship bucked around him from the force of the passage.

  "Food with a sting, indeed," he snarled, as a nearby vessel disintegrated in his view-screen.

  Athenalras cursed the loss, then issued orders for a concentration of fire against the thresh battery that had destroyed his ship. From dozens of ships, relativistic hail rained down on an obscure mountain in the French Pyrenees. To the defenders, below, it looked like a cone of fire from the hand of God, obliterating everything at the point of the cone.

  Far above, another screen showed the Posleen commander a glowing patch of ground, no longer so mountainous. The area was soon obscured from space by rising clouds of dirt and ash, flames from the ruined surface glowing through the angry, dark nebulae.

  Athenalras' crest lifted triumphantly as crocodilian lips curled up in a sneer. "Defy me now, little abat."

  As if on cue, Ro'moloristen announced, "Incoming fire, my lord. Heavy fire."

  Goaded beyond endurance by the loss of the Pyrenees battery, five previously masked, human-manned, Planetary Defense Bases—one each from the Vosges, Apennines, German Alps, Swiss Alps, and Atlas Mountains—lashed back. More of Athenalras' ships perished in rapidly expanding clouds of disassociate matter.

  The God King cursed the foul thresh of this evil world yet again. He sent further orders to his ships. More deadly hail fell from the skies. In the Vosges, the Apennines, the Alps and the Atlas, snow flashed to steam, mountains shivered and quaked, men were charred to ash in instants.

  On both sides losses in the space-to-shore battle were heavy. Yet the Posleen could afford the loss the better.

  Seeing little resistance remaining below—little enough, in any case, to allow a landing, Athenalras determined the time was right. Besides, who knew if the damned humans had more batteries lying in wait. Safer on the ground.

  "Land the landing force," he ordered. The Kessentai of his immediate entourage raised joyful cries of victory around him.

  Chapter 6

  They descended in waves of waves, tens of thousands of Posleen landing craft. Far out in space they split into three large task forces, one large group for Europe and North Africa, and one smaller one each for India and South America—those places already being largely taken over by the Posleen who had come before. The Latins and Hindus had really never been in any position to defend themselves.

  The invader touched down first on the North African littoral. Along the Nile, and in its delta, Egyptians—Moslem and Christian alike, prayed for deliverance. It was not forthcoming.

  West from Egypt, along the fertile North African coast only the ubiquitous Bedu survived in any numbers. The city and town dwellers disappeared into the invaders' sharp-fanged maws.

  Three globes, three out of a total of seventy-three in this wave—fifty-eight of them in the Europe/North Africa force, were all it took to overrun, in a matter of days, the seats of one of Earth's most ancient civilizations, that and the broad sweep of one of its most ancient areas of barbarism.

  Three additional globes were sufficient to drive the Italians, such as lived, reeling into the Apennines and staggering north to the Alps. The streets of the Roman Forum echoed with the clatter of the invaders' claws on ancient cobblestones.

  In the ruins of Madrid the last survivors of the Spanish Legion battled to the death amongst the shattered stones of El Prado. Elsewhere throughout Iberia, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers died at their posts to gain a few days, a few hours, for their civilians to reach the shelter of the Pyrenees, and the Sub-Urban—underground, in this case—towns waiting there. In some cases, this was sufficient.

  Four globes had landed in once-sunny Iberia.

  England felt as many of the enemy touch her soil. Yet the English had succeeded in raising an army suited to her station. The Posleen who landed there met only cold, bitter resistance, walls of stone and walls of flying shards from artillery. In the end, the United Kingdom managed to hang on to her territory and people from a line just south of Hadrian's Wall. This was no mean achievement.

  The single globe devoted to the Swiss and Austrians made the mistake of landing in a fortified Swiss valley. Hidden guns suddenly appeared all around the landing site. Infantry that could be numbered among the best and sharpest shooting in the world sprang up as if from nowhere. The Posleen force that had touched down disappeared without survivors.

  The single globe each that landed on Belgium and Holland left only those survivors as managed to escape to Germany.

  France and Poland, bearing the brunt of the Posleen effort, found themselves drawn and quartered. Paris held out for the nonce, as did Warsaw. A few other cities, prepared for defense in advance, did as well. Neither French nor Poles could be said to have been quite prepared for the magnitude and ferocity of the attack. Wishful thinking had beguiled the French while the Poles, never so numerous, still struggled under the legacy of forty-five years of Communist misrule and its resulting inefficiency and corruption.

  Charitably, it could at least be said of both that they had fought hard, died well, and brought no disgrace upon their ancestors.

  Seven globes hit Germany, bearing nearly thirty million Posleen. These were globes commanded by Kessentai that Athenalras didn't like very much or think very highly of. There were thirteen large panzer Korps—thirty-nine panzer and twenty-six panzergrenadier divisions, though many times that in infantry, to meet them.

  The odds in Germany were worse for the Posleen than they had ever faced in their history. Five of those heavy divisions awaiting them were called "Wiking, Hohenstauffen, Frundsberg, Jugend and Götz von Berlichingen." One battalion was called the "501st Schwere Panzer (Michael Wittmann)."

  * * *

  Paris, France

  27 March 2007

  It was snowing outside when the phone rang.

  Her husband had had time to make one call, and that very brief. "I love you, Isabelle. Always remember that. But it turns out that this threat you denied is real, after all. And it looks like it is concentrating on us and the Poles. My unit will be in action soon. You, however, must get yourself and the boys ready to flee. I cannot tell you where to go to or how to get there. But watch the news carefully. Do not trust everything the government says. And when it is time to move, move you must . . . and quickly."

  Then, as if her answering that she understood were some kind of signal, the husband had said again, "Remember I love you," just before the phone went dead.

  The next hours were filled with frantic packing of long unused camping equipment, food, and some minimum essential winter clothing. Why had she not packed sooner? Isabelle cursed herself. With each new series of meteorlike, incoming flashes of death from space the conviction had grown that she had made a terrible mistake.

  She couldn't stop blaming the Americans, though, for needlessly bringing on this war.

  As Isabelle packed one bag after another, her elder son, Thomas, had taken them down to the family automobile and carefully stowed them.

  Once the car was packed, Isabelle strapped into its usual place the restraining seat for the baby of the family. Then she and Thomas cleared away the accumulated snow from the windows.

  * * *

  Wäller Kaserne

  Westerburg, Germany

  27 March 2007

  Outside the headquarters snow fell, driven by the wind and collecting in drifts chaotically. Inside, paper and words flew
in an equal blizzard. But inside, the will of one man reigned over the chaos of the frightful news.

  "Major landings at Ingolstadt, Tübingen, Aschaffenburg, Meissen, Schwerin, Nienburg, and Guemmersbach, Herr Generalleutnant," announced the aide de camp, Rolf, finger stabbing down at each fresh Posleen infestation marked on the table-borne map. "Minor ones all over the map."

  The phone rang. Neither Posleen invasion nor four years of steady allied bombing during the Second World War had ever quite succeeded in inconveniencing the Bundespost, the German telephone system.

  "Generalleutnant, it is the chancellor for you."

  Mühlenkampf took the phone, announcing himself.

  He listened for several minutes before answering, "Yes, Herr Kanzler, I understand. You can count on the 47th Panzer Korps."

  The general replaced the phone on its cradle, exhaling forcefully. To his staff he explained, "The infantry is folding and running almost everywhere. Some of the towns are holding though. Aschaffenburg has fallen, but Würzburg and Schweinfurt are holding out. We are going to move south, relieve those towns, and destroy the invaders utterly."

  The aide listened for the remaining words. Those words remained unspoken. Finally, he asked, "What about our left and right units, Herr General?"

  Mühlenkampf shook his head. "The other twelve heavy Korps are already committed. The only infantry in range to have any effect is crushed . . . they were crushed in a matter of hours. We're on our own in this."

  * * *

  The autobahn was a steady-moving river of vehicles, both soft and armored. Civilians moved north in two streams to either side. Their faces were haggard, drawn, frightened.

  Mixed in among the civilians, mostly weaponless, trudged soldiers in the thousands. These were broken men, from broken formations. Leaderless, these men were also demoralized, dispirited and disheveled.

  Off from the autobahn, at a distance, Brasche stood in the turret of Anna, watching the mixed crowd pass. Their eyes filled briefly with hope at the Tiger's imposing heft and incredibly vicious-looking gun. Then, one and all, the refugees would glance behind them, remember what they had seen, the horrors of Posleen on a feeding frenzy, and hopelessly trudge on.