Watch On The Rhine

by John Ringo

  "Lord . . ." the Kessentai hesitated. "Lord, the edas I had to promise to Arlingas is frightful, to get him to hang onto that bridge. He says his host is on the verge of utter destruction and he wishes to fight his way out."

  "But we can make it to him? Make it in time."

  Ro'moloristen's crest fluttered with pride, pride in self and in the plan he had created. "So I believe, lord. Let me answer with my head if I am wrong."

  "So it shall be puppy," Athenalras agreed. "But I fear if you are wrong we shall all answer with our heads, if not with our reproductive organs. The host to the east?"

  "They march, lord, but not until they see our success in the west is drawing the enemy away from their front." Ro'moloristen shivered with knowledge of the blunting of the last attack over the Niesse River. What an obscenity; to burn perfectly good thresh.

  Chapter 15

  Mainz, Germany

  10 January 2008

  Isabelle's head ached and her inner body rippled with the shock of masses of incoming alien kinetic energy weapons. Within and around the city and to the southwest, these landed, raising clouds of dirt and dust into the sullen sky. Artillery lent its own measure to the frightful din.

  There were few streaks of silver lighting coming from the ground to answer the invader's fire, however. The news was clear that the enemy had hurt the Planetary Defense Batteries badly.

  Somehow, she suspected that that artillery—and luck in avoiding the incoming KE weapons—might be all that stood between her boy, Thomas, and death.

  She had seen her elder boy, once, briefly, since he had joined what she insisted on thinking of as "The Army." She could not even bring herself to say that he was a member of the Boche army. As to the branch? The insignia glittering on his collar had been almost impossible to ignore. She had put on the best face she could, even so.

  Now, he was in danger. And she knew the boy was hardly trained for war. She could only hope for the best as she, her remaining boy, and millions of people, German and French both, prepared for the long trudge to safety, could it but be found, far to the north.

  Reports from the front were uniformly bad. The Siegfried line was going to fall and soon. Only this knowledge gave serious impetus to those previously fleeing and about-to-become refugees' preparations for their flight.

  Placing her pack upon her back, taking her remaining son by the hand, Isabelle took a glance backwards in the direction of where she presumed her Thomas was. Then, forcing herself to an unnatural strength, she joined the column of refugees heading to the north.

  * * *

  Siegfried Line

  Southwest of Mainz

  11 January 2008

  Of formal training there had been precious little. The week Thomas had spent in Charlemagne had proven just enough to teach him what little need be known to fire a military rifle from a concrete bunker, that, and to issue him a minimum of uniforms and equipment.

  And minimum, when a young slender boy had to make a home in an icy concrete bunker, was little indeed. Thomas found himself shivering more or less constantly. Though some of this shivering was caused by reasons other than cold.

  He had previously been spared personal sight of the enemy, except for what the television had shown of them. The reality was frightful beyond words; a mindless horde that charged forward heedless of loss so long as they might take one human down with them.

  The boy's leader, Sergeant Gribeauval, seemed to have taken an interest in his survival. At least, the good sergeant spent a fair amount of time on his training, whenever the enemy didn't press the attack too closely. This absence of pressure was so rare, however, that the sergeant's help consisted mostly of little pointers and tips, and an occasional fatherly pat on the shoulder. Perhaps this was so because Thomas was the youngest member of the platoon by at least a year.

  He had lost count of the number of attacks that Charlemagne had repelled so far. The pile of dead enemy to the front grew and grew. Even the wire was, by now, covered with their bodies.

  This was, Thomas knew, a very bad sign, though behind the wire, between him and the aliens, a thin minefield gave some additional protection. He had helped reinforce the minefield, one day, with Sergeant Gribeauval and two others. The sergeant had often muttered about the scarcity of mines; that, and incomprehensible words about "silly royal English adulteresses."

  There was a rustle of fallen leaves from behind the boy; booted feet entering the bunker.

  "Young De Gaullejac?"

  "Oui, mon sergeant," the boy answered. His breath formed a misty frost over the plastic rifle stock to which he kept his beardless cheek pressed.

  "Pack your things, son, while keeping as good a watch to your front as you can. We have orders to pull back to the next position. Soon. It isn't as good as this one but the enemy hasn't penetrated it yet. The artillery is going to plaster the hell out of this place to cover our retreat."

  * * *

  Army Group Reserve Headquarter

  Wiesbaden, Germany

  13 January 2008

  Retreat was the only option Mühlenkampf could see. The Siegfried line and the Rheinland were lost, that much was clear. The enemy had finally gotten their act together and found the answer to the previously formidable defenses. It seemed the Germans had managed to do what they had done before, even with the Russians: teach an enemy to fight as a combined arms team.

  "Scheisse," he cursed, without enthusiasm. "Scheisse to have to go through this a third time in one lifetime."

  The rear area was a scene of terror and misery. Masses of people were evacuating to the north and west. Some of these, it was hoped, would make it to the underground cities constructed in Scandinavia. Others could seek shelter in the Alps; the Swiss had made that clear enough.

  But they had to retreat, now, to shelter behind the Rhein. Even with the threatening breach presented by the enemy presence on their captured bridge, it was the last defensible obstacle the Fatherland owned, excepting only the easily turned Elbe.

  Mühlenkampf knew that the Elbe was a place for enemy armies to meet, not for friendly ones to defend from.

  If only he had a prayer of retaking the bridgehead. But without the 47th Korps, and Brasche's 501st Brigade, he knew he hadn't any chance of doing so any more. He had tried.

  It wasn't that the Bundeswehr were bad troops, anymore. The last two campaigns for the defense of Germany had seen them make vast strides. The real swine in the army, officer or enlisted, were in penal battalions. Executing or, minimally, defanging those civilians who had interfered with the army's training and morale had also helped. But the 47th Korps had started with a bigger cadre, of generally rougher, tougher, more combat-experienced men. And that made all the difference.

  He thought he had a prayer of containing the bridgehead, if only the armies in the Rheinland could be withdrawn to the safety of the Rhine's eastern bank. Reluctantly, fearfully, by no means certain he was right, Mühlenkampf ordered his operations officer, "Call off the attack to the bridge. Leave the infantry and penal korps behind to contain the enemy, along with one panzer and one panzer grenadier division detached from the army heavy Korps. Take the rest of the Army Group—Bah! Army Group? We have about a single army left under our control—north to the other bridges. Cross them over and have them help the troops in the Rheinland to disengage and withdraw.

  "And get me the Kanzler. I need to ask for permission to use a few of the neutron weapons."

  * * *

  Tiger Brünnhilde, Grosslanghaim

  Franconia, Germany

  13 January 2008

  The crew of the tank, not least Prael, were sweating profusely, though the carefully controlled internal climate was not the cause of the sweat. Instead, it was the repeated near misses from Posleen space-borne weapons that had the crew in sweat-soaked clothing.

  Brünnhilde had more elevation than the earlier model Tigers. These latter were used in mass, and so could generally count on the dead space above the turret being covere
d by another tank, standing off at a distance. Brünnhilde, however, fought alone and so had to be able to cover more of her own dead space. Moreover, while Anna's more or less conventional, albeit highly souped up, twelve-inch gun had a mighty recoil, and could not be elevated too much without having made the model too high for more usual engagements, Brunhilde's railgun had comparatively little recoil. Thus, she could elevate to eighty degrees above the horizontal.

  She needed every bit of that . . . and more.

  "Johann, halt, facing left," ordered Prael. Mueller quickly slewed the tank to a full stop while twisting her ninety degrees to the left.

  Even while Mueller was slowing, then stopping the tank, Prael was setting his own aiming instrument on a Posleen ship, thirty miles away. When he had found the target on the commander's sight on he ordered the tank to lock on. Brunhilde's AI dutifully did so, then reported the fact.

  Nervously, Prael waited while the railgun gave off three distinct thrums, each about twelve seconds apart. Finally, Schlüssel announced, "Hit."

  Prael immediately commanded, "Reinhard, target, B-Dec, nine o'clock, very high."

  Schlüssel, acting much like an automaton, pressed the button for the gunner to take over the commander's selected target. He announced, "Got it," then began to lead the Posleen ship.

  Prael began to search the database for the next best target; began and stopped when he saw something incoming that was moving too fast and in the wrong direction to be a target.

  "Scheisse," he said. "Incoming! Johann back us up . . . fast!"

  Mueller, understanding the note of desperation in Prael's voice, immediately threw the tank into reverse. Though the tank's superb suspension and almost incredible mass sheltered the other crew from any real feeling for the destruction, Mueller's sensitive and knowing hands on the controls felt every crumbled building and even the pulverization of the town's simple and thoughtful monument to her Great War and World War Two dead.

  There was little left of the center of the tiny, picturesque farming town of Grosslangheim once Brünnhilde had backed through. The shock of the impacting KE projectile shook the rest of the town to its foundations.

  * * *

  Rinteel, too, was shaken and sweat-soaked. He had been somewhat untroubled by the occasional sniping Brünnhilde had done early on. He simply did not consider, would not let himself consider, the sentient beings on the receiving end. Brunhilde's railgun simply launched projectiles into space or sky and that was the end of it, as far as the Indowy's mind would permit.

  The material coming back, "incoming" as the human crew said, was another matter entirely. Brünnhilde picked up, but deamplified, the thunderous crashing. So too, she gave the crew, at reduced sound levels, the sense of impact when a KE projectile hit. The tank could do nothing to reduce the shaking and rocking of the tank from a near miss; the Indowy found himself tossed and bruised by the ill-fitting straps of his battle station.

  * * *

  "I've got a hydraulic leak in right track section three," Mueller announced. "Not bad but increasing. Inboard."

  "Rinteel, see to it. Schmidt, go with him and assist."

  Ignoring the two-being human and Indowy team unbuckling themselves and crawling along the floor of the tank to an access panel that led below, Prael asked, "Reinhard, have you got target on that fucker yet?"

  "Just a second . . . coming . . . almost . . . AHA!" Brünnhilde shuddered again with the release of another KE round. Instantly the hydraulic elevator and rammer fed another round to the railgun's launch rack. Schlüssel waited for the fiery bloom that confirmed a hit before firing another round.

  Already Prael was searching the sky for another target for his gunner.

  Beneath the tank, the cobblestone streets of Grosslangheim cracked and splintered.

  * * *

  Mainz, Germany

  15 January 2008

  Roman soldiers and citizens had once walked the city's streets. Feudal knights had held tourneys for her folks' entertainment. Gutenberg, of movable type fame, had been born and raised there. Smashed in the Second World War, modern Mainz, still retaining much of its medieval charm, had arisen, phoenixlike, from its ruins.

  Mainz would never rise again. Blasted by everything from space-borne kinetic energy weapons, to ground-mounted and carried arms, to human artillery fired in support of its recent defenders, the city was nothing more than a ruin of ruins. Soon enough, the Posleen harvesting machine would erase even those. Gutenberg's ghost would wander in vain looking for a landmark. Roman soldiers and feudal knights, peasants and burghers, artists and artisans; no trace would remain, all would be forgotten.

  Through the streets, dodging and flowing around the chunks of ruined buildings littering them, the Posleen horde marched like a flood. Above, silently, the tenar of their God Kings hovered, ever alert for threshkreen holdouts. There were a few of these, men deliberately left behind or detached from their units and lost amongst the ruins. But so few remained that each shot was met with a torrent of fire; plasma cannon, railgun, even high-velocity missile.

  From time to time a storm of shells would fall upon the remnants of a major intersection to splash some small part of the Posleen river like a creek struck with a rock. But, as with water, the Posleen always closed up and continued their flow. There might be thresh ahead, after all.

  Mainz—ancient Mainz, human Mainz—was fast disappearing under the yellow tide.

  * * *

  Wiesbaden, Germany

  15 January 2008

  What might have been an easy half day's march, Mainz to Wiesbaden, for seasoned infantry in good order, with an open road, had been a nightmare trudge lasting the better part of five days for the masses of panic-stricken civilians, mostly Germans mixed with lesser numbers of French.

  Each night Isabelle and her remaining son had gone to sleep—such miserable, fitful, half-frozen sleep—wherever fate had brought them to that point. Only mutual body heat and the thick blankets Isabelle had ported had kept them alive. Of food there had been none after the bits Isabelle had carried, long since exhausted. Of water there had been little beyond chewed dirty snow and the occasional muddy, chemical-tasting pool or crater. Even Germans required time to plan such a move, she thought, not without a sense of bitter vindication.

  But that sense of vindication could not last, not faced with the generosity of the Wiesbadeners who opened their hearts, their homes, and—best of all—their food lockers to the passing refugees. With a belly full, her youngest baby cradled in her arms, in a warm bed in a heated home, with the Rhine River and an army between her and the aliens, Isabelle felt safe for the first time since leaving Hackenberg.

  Only recurring nightmares about her other son disturbed her sleep.

  * * *

  Closer to his mother than either of them would have believed possible, Volunteer De Gaullejac, his sergeant, and the battered remnants of their platoon kept watch from a stout stone building looking over the bridge crossing the Rhein. Young Thomas had never imagined such a sea of humanity as he had seen crossing the bridge.

  The platoon's job, as part of the company, was to ensure that the bridge did not fall into alien hands. None spoke of it, yet each man knew what it meant. If the aliens showed up it did not matter who was on the bridge—French, German or the Papal Guard, it must be dropped.

  Thomas was not sure he could. After all, his mother and little brother might be among those thronging to safety.

  A flight of half a dozen tenar, the aliens' flying machines, appeared over the water heading for the friendly side of the bridge.

  "They must have slipped around the defenders on the far side," muttered Gribeauval.

  The aliens stopped over the river, open targets for all to see and all within range to engage, and turned their weapons on the thronging masses of noncombatants on the bridge.

  "Don't shoot boys," Gribeauval ordered. "Let the others handle it. Those aliens are trying to get us to open up. If they do, they'll swarm us, most likely,
and the bridge won't be dropped."

  Even as the sergeant spoke, from his peephole Thomas saw one of the aliens thrown from his flying sled to fall, arms and legs waving frantically, to the cold waters below. The remainder of the aliens continued to rake the refugees with railgun fire.

  Even at this distance, Thomas could faintly make out the shrieks and cries of terror of the civilians under attack. He saw more bodies, human ones, fall to the water. Some, so it seemed from the way they clawed at air on the way down, jumped to certain death rather than stand one more minute helpless under Posleen fire.

  The boy prayed that his mother and little brother had already passed safely.

  * * *

  Tiger Anna

  Oder-Niesse line

  16 January 2008

  A few refugees, slow but lucky, still managed to worm their way through Posleen lines and make their stumbling passage across the charred-body choked cookhouse that was the Niesse River. Hans had, for a while, sent patrols across to meet and guide any that could be found to safety on the western bank. Casualties among the patrols, however, had been fierce. Within days he had had to order the practice stopped. Any civilians that could find their way across would be welcome. But he would risk no more men on such a fruitless task.

  The most recent group, some seven half-starved and completely terrified refugees, were Poles. They were being fed, at Hans' order, under Anna's shelter and from the tank's own stores. A small fire had been built under the tank, as much for morale as for warmth. There was something about a fire, something ancient and beyond words. Hans had one built whenever the tactical situation permitted. The crew would often gather there, to warm their hands by the flickering light. The Poles, too, gathered by it.