Watch On The Rhine

by John Ringo

  Schultz looked towards Brasche's command chair. Though he loathed his driver thoroughly, Brasche had to admit, "Yes, Dieter."

  "But what can one do?" asked Schultz, plaintively.

  Krueger answered, "You kill 'em when they run, boy. Give 'em no choice but to stand and fight. Hang the cowards—low or high—and let 'em kick and dance some if you have time. Shoot 'em otherwise." Krueger felt a little shiver of delight at an old memory—the kicking, jerking feet of a sixteen-year-old coward of a Volksgrenadier, cruelly suspended a mere foot or so above the ground, the noose placed behind the neck to make sure the boy could see how close salvation lay. The memory brought the same laugh Krueger had given off then, his joy in watching the coward's futile struggle undiminished by time.

  Brasche nodded, hating to agree with Krueger but knowing that Schultz needed the lesson. "It's true, Dieter. The rot must be stopped as soon as it starts. Sometimes, if you train them right, the rot doesn't start for a long time; maybe not until the war is over. But when you have as much rabble in uniform as Germany today has, you don't have much choice but to use harsh measures."

  Dieter took the lesson. "And if you do not, innocent and beautiful young girls die," he said.

  * * *

  Giessen, Germany

  28 April 2007

  Under the lash and crash of the thresh's fearsome artillery concerto, Fulungsteeriot and his subordinate God Kings found it nearly impossible to drive their shattered oolt'pos into any semblance of a formation for the final break out attempt. In the end it proved impossible to create much of a formation. Worse, losses to what a thresh would have called the "chain of command" made it no easier to create a workable plan. Fulungsteeriot and his underlings found themselves feeding their oolt'os into the meat grinder with little direction beyond what a threshkreen might have called a "priority of effort."

  Chance, however, plays a great part in war. It was chance, to a degree, that the wretched remnants of the 33rd Korps had been nearby, chance that Fulungsteeriot's subordinate had found the information on the Net. Though three quarters of the dug-in circumvallation holding the Posleen in was held by good troops of the 47th Panzer and 2nd Mountain Korps, the area chosen for the "priority of effort" for the breakout was held in part by the defeated and demoralized remnants of the 33rd Infantry Korps.

  Well, they'd been in the general area and available. . . .

  * * *

  "Brasche? Mühlenkampf."

  Brasche shook his head in a fairly vain attempt to clear the cobwebs. "Hier, Herr General."

  "Hans, the 33rd Korps—fucking Pussy-Wehr!—is bolting again. You and your . . . let me see . . . five Tigers? . . ." Mühlenkampf waited.

  Keying his throat mike an exhausted Brasche answered, "Yes, sir. Five Tigers left."

  "Proceed to sector Valkyrie Three. Jugend Division will follow. But Brasche, you will get there first. You must hold the ridge until Jugend arrives."

  "On the way, sir . . . Ummm . . . Herr General . . . what the fuck is going on? What am I to do?"

  Mühlenkampf hesitated. Finally he answered, his voice tinged with sad determination, "Your duty, Herr Oberst."

  * * *

  The remnants of the 33rd Korps had not waited for the Posleen to arrive even within effective engagement range. At the first sign—sound, rather—of the approach of the teeming alien mass the Korps had taken to its heels.

  Of course they had taken to their heels. These were the fleet-footed remnants, the early deciders, the least brave of all. Any good men, any good leaders? These were those most likely to have held on that fatal few seconds too long before, during the wretched rout at Marburg. In short, these were long since stuffed, in butchered parts, down alien gullets; and then, long since, deposited in malodorous lumps onto the soil thus soiled.

  The good of the 33rd Korps had become shit . . . while the shit had become a sort of human diarrhea. This loose shit ran.

  * * *

  With a pronounced crunching sound Anna slid over a long line of civilian vehicles that appeared to have met up with the world's greatest mincing machine. Just past the line of chopped-up metallic scrap, with a deft twist, Krueger spun the Tiger Anna into a position on a military crest blocking the flight of the rump of the 33rd Korps. Like clockwork the other four remaining Tigers took their own positions, two to either side along the same crest. Between them, the five heavies covered an area approximately eight kilometers across.

  Krueger, more than any other member of the crew, was required by his duties to look carefully at the close ground. Just after the line of scrap had been an open field. The driver had seen that it contained scattered piles of bones, none with any flesh remaining to them. Briefly, his eyes saw and turned past a skull from which the top had been removed as neatly as might a coconut harvester have prepared a coconut for a quick drink. Krueger was unmoved by the skull.

  Ahead were the signs of panic.

  Krueger and Brasche, old veterans, had seen this type of panic before. Krueger cursed, "Useless fucking shits!" Brasche simply uttered a half whisper, "501st Schwere Panzer? Stabsunteroffizier Schultz . . ."

  From his gunner's station Dieter peered through the sight for the main gun. In the distance he could make out portions of the Posleen mass, pouring from the nearly erased town. Nearer, appearing as individuals and in little knots, without order or discipline, Dieter saw the fleeing remnants on the ruined Korps. His unneeded left hand reached unconsciously for a folded envelope in his right breast pocket. Pulling it out, his fingers deftly opened the envelope and reached in to caress the human spun gold contained therein. A little bright spark of pure hatred burst into flame in the boy's heart.

  " . . . fire ahead of that mob. Use your coaxial Mausers. Let them know that they have run as far as they are going to. Draw a line in the earth," finished Brasche.

  "And if they won't stop, Herr Oberst? If they cross that line?"

  "Then the rot cannot be allowed to spread. You will kill them."

  Flame, a smaller flame than the Tiger's usual cataclysmic belch, began to leap out. About two and a half kilometers ahead, just in front of the first of the routing grenadiers, a line of small, dark, angry clouds erupted at ground level.

  * * *

  To the fleeing sea of wit-robbed men of the 33rd Korps the advent of the highly visible Tigers seemed like the opening of Heaven's gates. Instinctively they turned towards the wide-spaced line of the remnants of the 501st, each as if he were a boy fleeing a bully and racing to hide behind his mother's skirts.

  Each man of the mob—for that is what they were now—thought only safety, safety at the sight of the immovable mass of the Tigers. Each man was shocked quite speechless when that fortress-gate-of-security, mama's proffered—milk laden—breast, began to pour fire into those foremost in flight.

  Some of the fugitives assumed, indeed had to assume, such was the innocence of their childhood upbringing, such had been the kidskin gloves approach to their military training, that the Mauser light cannon fire devastating the knots of those closest to the Tigers could only be a mistake. That was their mistake . . . and the last many of them ever made.

  Others, no less spoiled by mama's teat and weakened military training, went into momentary shock, freezing in place.

  Then they heard the voice, Brasche's voice. . . .

  * * *

  "Anna, give me external speakers," ordered Brasche of the tank's integral voice recognition speakers.

  "Yes, Herr Oberst," the tank's AI responded.

  "Order the other tanks to broadcast me as well." Immediately, small hatches in each of Brasche's five Tigers opened to permit the erection of three substantial loudspeakers each. Across a span of a dozen kilometers or more, Hans' voice rang out clearly.

  "Halt, you cowardly fucking bastards, or we'll cut you down where you stand."

  Hans repeated that message twice more, then elaborated. "We are the 47th Panzer Korps. That's right you shits, the SS. Believe . . . believe in your hearts. We will kill
you with no more thought than we'd give to shooting a dog. Your only chance to live is to fight with whatever you have in your hands to hold the enemy. The enemy you can still hurt . . . and we will help you in it. Us? You cannot scratch us and we will butcher you if you try . . . or if you run."

  * * *

  Among the fugitive mass, some took the hint, reshouldered arms and began to fight back. Others, perhaps half or a bit more, just froze in panic. A few, however, judging that five widely spaced Tigers could not hope to cover every little bit of dead space, elected to try to exfiltrate through the low ground, or at least to seek a patch of cover which, while safe from the Posleen because of the Tigers' fire, was also safe from the Tigers and the obvious madmen they contained. The largest number of the fugitives who so chose were those who had thrown away their weapons and could not see any point anymore in fighting, given they had nothing left to fight with.

  Several thousand of these were successful in their quest . . . for a time.

  * * *

  "Gunner, eleven o'clock, canister, time fuse, Posleen mass!" ordered Brasche.

  Dutifully the loader had a round of canister loaded.

  Some would have preferred flechettes for the Tiger's main gun antipersonnel round. It was indeed a very close call. What had decided the issue was, in essence, Teutonic thoroughness. Both were quite capable of killing Posleen. Packed in a twelve-inch shell both munitions could inundate a bit over a grid square, one square kilometer, with deadly hail.

  Canister had won over flechettes because a 1.5-inch iron ball—traveling at moderate speed—would kill the Posleen quicker than even several hits by the lighter, faster, narrower flechettes. It was believed that if a Tiger needed to use antipersonnel ammunition in its main gun it would need the targeted Posleen to become "maus-todt"—dead in an instant.

  * * *

  For the first time since being encircled in this hellhole, Fulungsteeriot began to see some hope that the next instant would not see his body smeared and his life extinguished. Ahead, thresh fled. This he had not seen in many cycles.

  Though his people had never been able to create, let alone disseminate, a plan, the wild hell-for-leather charge was possibly having a better effect than a coherent, logical plan might have. Certainly the threshkreen's deadly artillery seemed to be having more than the usual degree of difficulty in adjusting their fire to destroy these more randomly appearing and disappearing targets. The very disorder and illogic of the enterprise seemed to be working in the People's favor. There was hope.

  Hope was short-lived. For some unknowable reason the fleeing thresh, most of them, halted and turned around. To the God King's surprise many actually began to fight instead of flee.

  And then Fulungsteeriot saw the most horrid sight in a life filled with horrid sights.

  * * *

  "Target!" answered Schultz.

  "Fire!" ordered Brasche.

  * * *

  Oh, yes, Fulungsteeriot had seen as many as 100,000 of the People in dense-packed formation die in an instant. Yet that rare sight had only occurred with the use of the major weapons during orna'adar, the oft-repeated Posleen Ragnarok. There was thus little of carnage, little of blood, the sheer heat of the major weapons incinerating almost all traces. It was a waste of good food, of course—Fulungsteeriot had often though so. But it was clean and neat.

  Not so this new weapon of the vile threshkreen.

  * * *

  A lesser propelling charge was used for the canister. Even though the weight of the total projectile was somewhat greater than that of the depleted uranium penetrators, not nearly as much velocity was needed or desired. The crew of Anna barely noticed the recoil.

  Down range about 4.793 kilometers, at a spot Anna's ballistic computer had judged ideal, a small burster charge detonated. Had the cargo of the shell casing been what is called "improved conventional munitions," or ICM, this method of dispersal could never have been used; the very bursting charge would have destroyed the deadly, precious cargo. Canister, however, was inert iron—low-grade, low-cost, low-tech stuff. The detonation of two point five or so pounds of TNT barely disturbed its pieces, though aided by nine strips of linear shaped charge evenly and linearly spaced along the sides of the shell, it did manage to split the shell open.

  The densely packed mass of four thousand large iron ball bearings began to split apart. Those most towards the earth at the time of detonation naturally impacted first. Had these balls been much smaller, or had they been moving much faster, they would likely have buried themselves harmlessly into the dirt. Flechettes certainly would have done so.

  But at their speed and size these balls did no such thing. Instead, they bounced. Rather, they grazed, skipping over the earth in bounces of decreasing length. Few were wasted. Most managed to pass through one, two, even a dozen or more Posleen before coming to rest. So fierce was the damage inflicted on individual Posleen bodies that the harder pieces of those bodies themselves went down with fragments of their fellows, bones and teeth, imbedded roughly in soft, vital places.

  And that was only the bottom four or five hundred of a cluster of four thousand!

  The others came down at different times and different speeds. Yet all remained dangerous as they skipped and bounced, gleeful children of the gods of war, through the Posleen mass. Reptilian skulls were smashed, throats torn open, arm and legs roughly amputated. Many a Posleen found itself in possession of a large ball bearing inside its brutalized torso.

  In all, the four thousand ball bearings, ricocheting and bouncing to the end, managed to graze over two point four million linear meters worth of death and destruction in an area only one square kilometer in scope.

  The bleeding, sundered and torn Posleen horde shrieked as one in pain and despair and destruction.

  * * *

  Sitting atop his motionless tenar, Fulungsteeriot winced at the sound of agony multiplied to near infinity arising from the Posleen mass. The God King's eyes swept over the scene with horror.

  "What sins have the People committed that we should ever deserve this?" he asked of no one who could answer.

  Where once a mass of nearly one hundred thousand had charged, now only scraps remained. Fulunsteeriot saw one oolt, both forelegs amputated, circling unsteadily on shaking rear legs around the pivot of its too-weak centuroid arms. Others, a very few others, hobbled on three legs. Sometimes the lost leg still hung by a slender shred of muscle, dangling down uncontrolled and tangling the other limbs, the wrenching causing the victims to keen wildly and pitiably.

  Many, perhaps as many as ten thousand, sought to stuff intestines back into torn frames. Sightless ones roamed with arms outstretched.

  Worst of all to see, perhaps, were the three of four thousand of the unscratched. Once attacking proudly, borne up by the mass of their fellows, these for the most part now stood still, shuddering like the horses they somewhat resembled, when those horses, taken to the slaughter house, see their herds disappear before them in blood and horror.

  Other muffled crumps and mass shrieks of agony told Fulungsteeriot that his attack had failed utterly. He snarled, set his teeth, flourished his crest. Fulungsteeriot might not have been the brightest of the Kessentai, but he was as courageous as any. He drove his tenar straight at the nearest of the enemy machines, seeking a warrior's death.

  * * *

  Giessen, Germany

  1 May 2007

  "Todt durch den Strang." Death by the rope.

  This was the verdict of the drumhead court-martial, issued en masse to two hundred thirty-seven of the two thousand three hundred and fifty-nine cowards who had sought shelter for themselves under the Tigers' protective glare, while contributing nothing to the fight.

  The Jugend Division had found them, passed them, and noted them for the next echelon, which arrested them. Then several days had followed wherein certain elements within the government had demanded the cowards' release. Mühlenkampf had refused. Much to his surprise, the overwhelming bulk of the Bunde
swehr had agreed with him, going so far as to refuse to obey any orders issuing from the Chancellery that might have led to such a release.

  From the over two thousand, only ten percent had been chosen to expiate the sins of the rest.

  "We can hang you all," the court had announced. "And you all deserve it. Yet we find it expedient for the Fatherland if the deaths are more drawn out, and contribute more. Ten percent seems enough to remind the rest of your future duty."

  Guarded by representatives of both the 47th Korps and the other, Bundeswehr, Korps which had done good service in the area, the procession of death formed three groups.

  In the interior, nearest the mostly scoured town, closest to the largest concentrations of gnawed civilian bones, marched those condemned and about to be executed. Brasche had chosen Dieter Schultz to be the representative/guard from the 501st for this group. Krueger had insisted that he also be included and, despising the man or not, out of deference to his service Brasche had sent the old SS man as well.

  Just a few hundred meters further from the town, in line with those about to die slow deaths, equally guarded, marched the decimated rest of the condemned. These men's death sentences were momentarily in abeyance, in the hope that more useful deaths might be found for them.

  Furthest away were the rest, sightseers of a sort. Men who wanted to see men they despised die.

  * * *

  "Please, no," begged a twenty-four-year-old Unteroffizier as Krueger placed a loop of thin rope around his neck. "Please," the doomed man repeated, "I have a wife and a small child. Please?"

  "You should have thought not just of them, but of others like them you were abandoning, before you ran, you wart on a circumcised cock," answered Krueger without heat, without any noticeable emotion at all, really. He motioned for the rope party to pull the rope taut, stretching it across the lamppost and forcing the condemned to mount the fifty-five-gallon drum before him.

  "Make the rope fast," demanded the sneering Krueger once the now openly weeping Unteroffizier was mounted atop the drum. Instantly, the four men on the rope party complied. The free end of the rope was lashed to a fire hydrant the Posleen had decided to leave in place until they might understand it better. "Don't leave the swine any slack, you crawling shits."