Watch on the Rhine lota-7

by John Ringo

  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 dem 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 Bundeswehr 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 has 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.”

  “Schultz? Post!” Krueger ordered. Feeling awash in emotions he could but dimly understand, Dieter complied. They both ignored the unteroffizier’s wheezing, throat already constricted, “I have a family!”

  Laying a, for once, comradely arm across young Schultz’s shoulder, Krueger began speaking in a most calm and reasonable tone.

  “See this little weeping bastard shaking atop this drum, Stabsunteroffizier Schultz?” The question was plainly rhetorical and so Krueger continued without pause, without waiting for an answer. “He’s worried for himself, worried for his own family and circle of loved ones. He never gave a thought, not a single thought, to anyone outside that circle. You know that is true, don’t you, Schultz? That this piece of shit knows nothing of duty, of comradeship?”

  That too, was rhetorical. Krueger plowed on, his every word a sneer made manifest. “He never cared for her… for a million others like her. He only cared for himself and his own. He neither cared nor imagined how your little honey might have shaken in fear before the aliens butchered and ate her.” Krueger emitted an evil laugh. “More than you ever got to do with her, isn’t it, boy? And it’s all the fault of this cowardly, trembling bastard and the others like him.”

  Dieter himself trembled. Whether it was disgust at Krueger’s unwelcome touch, hate for the barrel-mounted piece of human filth in front of him, or the knowledge of his permanent loss, Schultz could not have said. But when Krueger removed his unwelcome arm and said, “Kick the barrel, Schultz,” Dieter didn’t hesitate.

  The condemned gave a short, and quickly stifled, moan as Dieter’s leg came up, his foot resting on the barrel’s rim. It only took a little nudge before the barrel began to tip over on its own. Frantically — but futilely — the man’s feet scrambled to keep the barrel upright. It tipped over and rolled several feet, leaving the feet of the condemned to dance on air.

  Dieter watched the man die from beginning to end. At first, before the rope had tightened much, one could hear labored, raspy breathing, interrupted by frequent pleas for mercy. The feet kicked continuously as the dying man sought salvation automatically. Dieter observed that each kick, each twist of the body, actually caused the rope to tighten. Soon the noose itself had moved far enough with the tightening loop to begin to cause great pain to the neck. For a brief time the feet kicked even more frantically, causing the rope to tighten further.

  And then the air supply was fully cut off. Some quirk of physiology or of rope placement must have allowed blood, some portion of it anyway, to continue to flow to the brain. Dieter could see in the man’s bulging hideous eyes that he was conscious nearly to the last, conscious and in agony both physical and mental. The tongue swelled, turned color and thrust outward past the lips. The face turned blue… then black.

  At length, the kicks grew fainter… and then ceased altogether. The dead man s
wayed in the light spring breeze, eyes focused on infinity. Dieter watched until the last spark of life had gone out. He felt…well, he couldn’t really say how he felt. But he also could not deny that he had no regret and no pity for the lifeless meat hanging before him.

  He turned to Krueger and said, “Let’s finish the job then, shall we, Sergeant Major?”

  And an SS man is born, thought Krueger.

  * * *

  Not far away, riding atop Anna’s turret, Hans Brasche watched the dispatching of the cowards with a certain detachment. He had seen it all before… so many times: a veritable orchard of hanged men, and not a few women — Russian, German, Czech, Baltic… Vietnamese. He was quite desensitized, really.

  And had the Legion caught me, I too would have had my neck stretched, he mused.

  * * *

  As jungle wounds often will, so had Hans’ battle wounds festered. For many weeks after his evacuation his doctors at the French army hospital at Haiphong would not have given very good odds on his survival.

  But the man had heart, had been young and in good health prior, and had a strong will to live. Gradually his body, aided by that marvel penicillin, had begun to triumph over the alien organisms infesting it. Health returned, and with it color. Soon he was nearly whole.

  Nearly, however, is a far cry from being quite ready to return to the fetid jungle. The doctors insisted upon a longer period of recuperation than the French Army, less still the Legion Etrangere, would have really liked.

  Hans didn’t mind though. He managed to enjoy quite a romp through Haiphong and Hanoi’s best brothels and bars. He was actually beginning to grow tired of the frolic when one day he stopped to read a French language newspaper at a quaint sidewalk café not far from Haiphong’s wharfs. It seemed that Israel, a Jewish state, had recently come into existence and was currently fighting for that very existence.

  I wonder, thought the former SS officer, I wonder if there might be some expiation there…

  Paying his tab, leaving a small tip and folding the newspaper, Hans headed for the wharf to enquire into departures.

  * * *

  There were other infestations, course. Yet the enemy was plainly on the defensive over a swath running from the old Maginot line (where the remnants of the French Army had used the hastily restored fortifications to stop the enemy cold, in the process saving several million French civilians who huddled within it and behind its “walls”) to the River Vistula (where German and Pole had fought like brothers together, as few would argue they should have fought together — almost seventy years earlier against the menace to the east).

  And then one day a break was announced — a break and a day of thanksgiving, by no lesser personage than the Bundeskanzler himself. Germany was on the way to being saved, so he said, along with significant parts of France, Poland and the Sudetenland. That this was so, noted the chancellor, was due to the diligence of German workers, the intelligence of German scientists… and — first and foremost — the courage of German soldiers.

  Of these, the Kanzler singled out two groups. The first of these was the research and development team now laboring on the Tiger III, Ausfürung B project. The second was the group which had, at one time or another, fought on every front. This group had been the rock against which Posleen assault had dashed in vain. This was the group that had shown fortitude amidst every defeat, courage despite every loss, determination over the worst odds.

  This group was the Forty Seventh Panzer Korps. And to them, the Kanzler both gave and promised some signal honors.

  The chancellor also had some interesting words to say concerning treason.

  Berlin, Germany, 7 May 2007

  I suppose it is for the best, thought the Tir. And I have never liked this cold, gray, ugly city, anyway. Less still their nasty language — an excuse for them to spit at each other under the guise of polite conversation.

  But, he mentally sighed, I was so looking forward to the rewards of the job.

  The message had come by special courier directly from the Ghin. The Berlin operation was to be shut down and all Darhel personnel withdrawn before the humans drew all the logical conclusions and came for them with implements of pain.

  A week the Tir had, a mere seven cycles of this planet about its axis, to shut down his operations. Being a good businessman, in Darhel mode — which is to say honest in all that could be seen, dishonest in all else, the Tir had to evacuate his underlings and a select list of those that were important to them. That, as much as anything, would ensure the ruin of his plans for this miserable “Deutschland” place.

  He was so sure that downloading the humans’ plans and dispositions to the Net would make the difference, would see these humans thrashed and… well… threshed. But it was all for naught. The plans had changed too quickly, even as he was having the information downloaded it had been becoming obsolete. Damn these quick-thinking omnivores. Damn especially those vile SS humans whom even their own side could not control or predict.

  Why, WHY, WHY hadn’t these damned Germans been like the French? A logical people, in so many ways, the French. And their politicians were so vain and easy to manipulate through flattery and feeding their paranoia. Damn the Germans to the Hell of their superstitions.

  Demotion, disgrace, reduction in salary, loss of bonuses and options… the Tir would have wept like a human if only he could have. He would be lucky not to be reduced to an entry level position.

  Absently, his mind seething dangerously, the Tir used his inappropriate carnivore’s teeth to rend sticks of vegetable matter placed on a tray before him. The food never really satisfied, but he, like all Darhel, was forbidden the animal protein he, and they, craved. Lintatai was the result of eating the forbidden foods.

  Boredom and disgust was the result of feeding on the permissible.

  Interlude

  It was time for a feast, for an honoring of the fallen and celebration of the victories won. A people of somewhat primitive instincts, amidst great roaring bonfires the Posleen God Kings gathered on an island in the middle of a river flowing through what once had been the capitol of the former inhabitants of this realm. The fires cast an eerie, shifting glow upon God Kings and waters both.

  Around the celebrants, where once had stood a mighty city, it was as though the hand of some rampaging giant on a scale beyond imagining had scraped the Earth raw. Thresh architecture had, generally speaking, no value except as a source of raw materials. All buildings must be erased to make room for Posleen settlers, Posleen civilization.

  One major exception existed. By and large, elements of a thresh transportation net were left intact wherever Posleen conquered. A road was a road, after all.

  Especially noteworthy was the Posleen penchant for leaving bridges extant. Generally speaking, the Posleen didn’t handle water well and were glad to make use of such bridges as could be taken intact.

  Upon the cobblestones of one such bridge clattered the claws of Athenalras and such of his staff as he wished to personally honor, including Ro’moloristen. Torches glowing to either side cast their light on Posleen… and on a herd of thresh meant to serve as the evening’s provender.

  For this celebration, nothing but the best would do. The thresh for the feast had been selected for youth and tenderness. The replicators aboard the ships of the People had poured forth the mild intoxicants that only God Kings partook of, and they — as a rule — but sparingly.

  Glistening with the sweat of fear in the torchlight, the young thresh wept and bewailed their impending fate. The flickering torches shone on the tears of terror.

  Part III

  Chapter 10

  Berlin, Germany, 6 June 2007

  “ Herr Bundeskanzler,” Mühlenkampf bowed his head slightly while clicking his heels. “You wished to see me?”

  “I have another mission for you, Herr General.”

  “How can that be,” Mühlenkampf asked duplicitously, “beyond preparing my Korps for the next onslaught?” The general w
as very sure indeed as to what mission the leader of Germany had in mind.

  The Kanzler rarely enjoyed games. Especially did he not now, now that his people’s future hung in the balance. He said as much, adding, “Germany has enemies, enemies she has nurtured at her own breast. They cannot be allowed to sabotage us any longer.

  “No, damn them!” fumed the Kanzler. “Nor will they until about five percent of them are removed from office!”

  “Well, Herr Kanzler, surely your precious democratic constitution has provisions…”

  “Not for this, General. Not for what must be done now.”

  “Ohhh, I see. You want my Korps to break the law, do you?”

  The chancellor glared. “Desperate times, General…”

  Mühlenkampf smiled broadly and happily. “There will be a price for this, Herr Kanzler.”

  The chancellor had been prepared for this. He opened a drawer, causing the general to stiffen momentarily. From the drawer he withdrew a small rectangle of black cloth, embroidered with silver thread. “I have had two hundred thousand of these made. The Treasury will pay for as many more as you need. Is this a fair enough price?”

  Mühlenkampf’s smile disappeared for a moment, his face growing as serious as the snows of Russian, as the falling naval gun shells of Normandy. “To give my people back their pride and their dignity, Herr Kanzler? To let them be publicly proud of what they once were, soldiers, and among the best? Yes, sir. The price is fair.”

  Berlin, Germany, 12 July 2007

  Under a different torchlight from that under which the Posleen had feasted upon French cuisine, under a moving river of fire, gleamed eyes bright and clear. New uniforms, black and forbidding though graced here and there with silver, paraded under the torchlight. No swastikas were to be seen. But other symbols, once forbidden, were there in plenty.