Watch on the Rhine lota-7

by John Ringo

  “Stop that,” Hans commanded. “It isn’t your tattoo and it isn’t a past you had no choice in. It’s… that I have a tattoo as well.”

  “No, you don’t,” Anna insisted. “I’ve seen your arm.”

  “Mine,” Hans sighed, wearily, “isn’t on my arm.”

  “But…” Anna covered her mouth under eyes gone wide with too much understanding. She turned and fled the trench and went alone into the fire-flickered night.

  * * *

  There were no more “tracers” in space, no new suns that burst brilliantly before fading into nothingness. The battle there was over and Hans had no doubt who had won — more importantly, lost — it. Earth’s skies, once briefly recovered, were once again in the possession of the invader.

  Mühlenkampf cleared his throat. “They will be on us tomorrow, gentlemen, if not sooner. Best return to your units now.”

  Silently, sullenly, perhaps a bit fearfully the men began to separate and depart, each to his division, brigade or regiment.

  * * *

  Kraus-Maffei-Wegmann Plant, Munich, Germany, Midnight, December 18 2007

  The shining behemoth positively gleamed with menace. Where Anna and her sisters dazzled, the new model stunned. From the tip of her railgun to the back of her turret, from the top of that narrow, sharklike turret to the treads resting on the concrete floor, from the twin mounds housing close-in defense weapons on her front glacis to the slanted rear, Tiger III, Ausfürhung B was a dream come true.

  “She’ll be a nightmare to the enemy,” observed Mueller, for once satisfied with the armament.

  Indowy Rinteel, at loose ends since the Darhel Tir’s withdrawal, had joined the team to help with the railgun. He had no human-recognized degree in engineering, but many Indowy, and he was one, had an almost genetic ability to tinker. Rinteel agreed entirely about the “nightmare” part.

  Prael snorted through his beard with disgust. “She might well be. But she is only one nightmare where we needed a veritable plague of them, dammit. It has been the old story. Too little, too late.”

  “We pushed for too much,” conceded Mueller. “We should have used the railguns we salvaged to upgrade the existing Tigers.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” countered Nielsen. “They will still do good service supplementing the Planetary Defense Batteries.”

  “This one could do as well,” observed Breitenbach.

  “No,” corrected Henschel, “for we do not even have a crew for her.”

  “Be a shame to just let her be captured or destroyed to prevent capture,” said Schlüssel. “And it is not entirely true that we do not have a crew. We, ourselves, know her as well as any crew could, and if we alone are not enough to man the secondary weapons… well… she is much more capable, her AI is much more capable, than the A model’s.”

  “You are suggesting we steal her?” asked Prael.

  Mueller smiled. “Not ‘steal,’ Karl. Just take her out for some combat testing is all. And I used to be a very good driver.”

  * * *

  Assembly Area Wittmann, Tiger Anna, Thuringia, Germany, 18 December 2007

  Tonight’s fireworks put those of the previous evening into the shade. Between roughly ten thousand individual Posleen ships, the globes having broken up, and the fires of several hundred Planetary Defense Batteries and Earth-bound railguns the skies were one continuous stream of pyrotechnic entertainment.

  What was it Admiral Nelson said? wondered Hans. Ah, I remember: “A ship’s a fool to fight a fort.” He was right, of course, a ship is. But get enough ships and it becomes only a matter of time, not of foolishness.

  There was no practical shielding, no defense, for ship or shore battery. The defenders had only the triple advantages of being able to choose when to unmask, to reveal their position by opening fire; that the Posleen had no cover whatsoever; and that, as a practical matter, they tended to handle their ships somewhat badly. They were, after all, a fairly stupid race. Still, these paltry favors were more than matched by Posleen numbers.

  Hans considered some folksy wisdom on the subject: “Quantity has a quality all its own,” and Stalin’s famous jibe, “Quantity becomes quality at some point in time.”

  The Communist bastard was right about that one, too, thought Hans, remembering distantly, the sight of burning individual Panthers and Tigers, a collection of half a dozen or more Soviet machines dead before them, while endless columns of Russian T-34s passed the burning German machines by.

  A — relatively — nearby Planetary Defense Battery opened up with a furious fusillade of kinetic energy shots, the bolts leaving eye-burning trails of straight silver lightning in the sky. Overhead, a half dozen or more new stars blazed briefly. Then the combined might of hundreds of Posleen ships poured down onto the PDB, blasting it to ruin, raising a mushroom cloud, and even shaking Hans as he stood in his hatch atop Anna’s turret.

  We are hurting them, maybe even hurting them badly. But it won’t be enough.

  As if in confirmation, a veritable torrent of Posleen fire poured through down from the heavens to fall somewhere far to the west.

  That would be for the benefit of the French, I think.

  * * *

  Ouvrage du Hackenberg (Fortress Hackenberg), Thierville, Maginot Line, France, 18 December 2007

  Not for the first time, Major General Henri Merle cursed his government’s pigheaded refusal to cooperate with anyone. On the remote television screen that adorned one wall of his command post he saw a nightmare he had somehow hoped he would never see again, a sea of reptilian centaurs chewing through wire, mines, and machine gun and artillery fire to get at the defenders. The actinic glare of the Posleen railguns crossed over and through the red tracers of France’s last defenders.

  The command post shook slightly with the steady vibrations of the fort’s three automatic cannon firing from their retractable turrets. On the screen the fire of the short-range guns, short ranged because the turrets were too small to permit much recoil, drew lines of mushrooming black clouds through the enemy host, leaving thousands of destroyed Posleen bodies in their wake. Each gun was capable of sending forth several dozen one-hundred-thirty-five-millimeter shells per minute by virtue of their unique chain-driven feeding system. All of that was done automatically except for feeding of the shells into the conveyor system that hoisted them aloft. That job was done by dozens of sweating, straining men in ammunition chambers far below.

  We built this thing to deter the Germans from attacking straight into our industrial heartland, mused Merle, with a grin. We succeeded too. They obliged us by going through Belgium instead. Then we kept the forts up in pretty pristine condition for twenty years in case the Russians decided to get jolly. Maybe it really did help deter them too, never know. Now finally we are using them, after a frantic race to restore them, to hang on to this last corner of la belle patrie.

  “And they’re working,” he said aloud. “Killing the alien bastards in droves. And the damned government just had to throw that away by refusing to cooperate with the Germans.”

  “Sir?” queried Merle’s aide.

  “We could have had a couple of Boche armored corps here with us,” answered Merle. “We could have had a few score infantry divisions too, to help us hold this line. But, no. Impossible. We would only let them help us if they were willing to let us dictate policy. Tell me, Francois, if you were the Germans, if you were anyone, would you let the government of France, any government of France, dictate policy to you?”

  “Certainement pas,”[39] answered the captain, with a wry — and very cynically and typically French — grin. “Who could be so foolish?”

  “No one, and so no more would I. And so, though we are murdering those alien assholes by the bushel, they are still going to get through. They are going to take these forts, peel us like hard-boiled eggs, and then feast on the contents. And then they’re going to go past us…”

  The command post suddenly shook more violently than the automatic cannons al
one could account for. Merle was tossed from his seat by the shock.

  “Merde, what was that?” he asked, rising to his feet.

  “I don’t know, mon colonel.”

  The phone rang. After all these decades the telephone system still worked. The aide, Francois, answered. Merle saw his face turn white.

  As Francois replaced the ancient telephone on its hook he said, “Battery B. It’s… gone. The aliens somehow penetrated all the way down to the ammunition storage area. Hardly anyone escaped. The area’s been sealed off to prevent fire from spreading.”

  Now Merle’s face paled. “My God, there are twenty thousand civilians down there below the ammunition for that battery.”

  “Lost, sir.”

  “Do we still have communication with the Germans behind us?” Merle asked.

  “I believe so, sir. Why?”

  “Get me Generalleutnant Von der Heydte on the line. I am going to place this fortress under his command and ask him for any aid he can spare to save our people. While I am doing that I want you to begin calling the other sector commanders and giving them my suggestion they do the same. Fuck the government. We haven’t had a decent one since Napoleon the First, anyway.”

  * * *

  Saarlouis, Germany, 18 December 2007

  Von der Heydte was stunned. “The bloody frogs are asking us to do what?”

  “They want us to take over, sir. At least General Merle does, and some others. I understand we are getting calls all along the front. They can’t hold. Their army, at least, knows it. And they have decided to ignore their government.”

  “Okay… I can buy that. And they would be a useful addition to our effort if they will just cooperate.”

  “General Merle sounded eager to cooperate, sir. His exact words were, ‘Tell General Von der Heydte I am submitting myself and my entire command to his authority.’ But there’s a catch.”

  “Aha! I knew it. What catch?”

  “Sir, they want us to open up our lines to permit the evacuation of several million civilians. Several hundred thousand in General Merle’s sector alone.”

  “Can we?”

  “Risky, sir. We could conceivably open a lane or perhaps two. I don’t think we have the engineer assets to re-close more than two, anyway. But even they will be narrow passages. I doubt we can get everyone through. And, sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, they’re a very proud people. You know Merle and the other frogs wouldn’t be asking if they thought they had a prayer of holding on their own.”

  “I see,” and Von der Heydte did see. “We’re going to have to put some of our own people out there and at risk to cover the evacuation.”

  Von der Heydte thought some more, then walked over to observe his situation map. Noting the location of one division in particular, he dredged through his memory for an answer. Finding that answer he ordered, “Call Mühlenkampf. Yes, ‘SS’ Mühlenkampf. Ask if I can borrow his Charlemagne Division. Tell him he’ll likely have a mutiny if he doesn’t give them to me, because I am not above asking them to come directly. And tell him he is unlikely to get many of them back.”

  * * *

  Fortress Hackenberg, Thierville, Maginot Line, France, 19 December 2007

  The men in the dank and malodorous depths of the fortress still noticed her, even under the pale, flickering light. Though well past the bloom of youth, and despite the deprivations and terrors of the last nine months, Isabelle De Gaullejac was still quite a fine-looking woman beneath her grimy, unwashed face. Cleaned up, and when she could clean herself Isabelle was fastidious, those men would have called her “pretty” — if not beautiful.

  Still, there was beauty and then there was beauty. Standing, Isabelle had a bearing and obvious dignity that was proud, even almost regal. Whatever she lacked in classic line of features her girlish shape and posture up made for, and more.

  The pride was personal. The regality was perhaps the result of genetics, for she came from a family ennobled for over five hundred years.

  She had grown up in a real castle, not one of those palaces that went by the name. Her girlhood home had been a hunting castle used by King Henry, Henry the Fowler, in the Middle Ages. Thus, the cold, damp, dirty and detestably uncomfortable hell that was the bowels of Fort Hackenberg was no great shock to her. She had hated King Henry’s castle as a girl. She hated Hackenberg now. But she could deal with the one as she had dealt with the other, through sheer will to endure.

  But it was with relief that she greeted the news the fort was to be evacuated. Gathering up her two sons, one teenaged and the other a mere stripling, she dressed them as warmly as the meager stocks of clothing they had been able to carry permitted. Expecting a long march to safety, she packed a bag of necessities. These included food, some medicine for the younger boy, who had picked up a cough in the fort, a change of clothing each, and a bottle of first rate Armagnac. Two of the wretched army blankets the family had been issued were also stuffed into the bag. She was not a small or weak woman and so, while the pack was heavy, she thought she could bear it, if her teenager, Thomas, could help a bit.

  One particle among a smelly sea of humanity, she stood at a rear entrance — when Germany had been the threat it had served as a sally port to the front — and held her boys under close rein while awaiting the word to move.

  Others gathered to her, many others. That air of royalty, of command, which she radiated drew the confused, the lost, the helpless and hopeless to her as if she were a magnet. She took it, as she took nearly everything, with calm.

  She was not calm inside, however. She had long since lost touch with her husband. Isabelle feared the worst.

  There was a murmur of sound from behind her. Isabelle turned to see a tall man, tall especially by French standards, easing his way through the crowded corridor. When he passed close by, she saw even in the dim light, that his uniform was midnight black. On his collar she saw insignia that made her want to spit at the soldier.

  He reached the thick steel doors at the end of the corridor and stood on something, a concrete block Isabelle assumed it was, perhaps one that held up one of the great steel doors. In clear French the man announced, “I am Captain Jean Hennessey of the 37th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, Charlemagne, and I am here to lead you to safety.

  “This fortress is going to fall very soon. Even now the rest of my battalion is taking up position to hold the crest and the interior of the fort as long as possible to allow all of you — as many of you as possible — the chance to escape. We are going to have about a twelve-mile walk from here to a place where we can cross German lines. You represent food to the aliens, so they will try to cut down any they can to feed themselves once we are gone from the cover of this fortress. My battalion will do all it can to prevent that. Once we are out of enemy range, the battalion will execute a fighting withdrawal to cover your escape.”

  Though a scion of royalty, Isabelle’s politics had always been far to the left of center. She wanted desperately to shout Hennessey down, to curse him and the hated and hateful insignia he wore. But then the tug of one of her boys on her arm made her reconsider. She could not risk angering one who might be their salvation.

  Interlude

  Even Athenalras, no stranger to slaughter, was visibly subdued as he heard the reports of the massacre of his people as they attempted to drive forward across the entire front. He had always believed that numbers — numbers and courage — more than anything else decided fate on the Path of Fury, that mass above all would stagger and crush the enemy.

  But the only thing staggering about his numbers were the numbers of the People he had lost. Their bodies draped like decorations upon the wire and ground all across the front. In psychic agony, for the Posleen leader did care for his people as a whole — if not so much for individuals, Athenalras’ crest sagged. The tenar-mounted God Kings had suffered no less than the mass of the People attacking on foot. The loss of so many sons was like an icy blade plunged deep into Athenal
ras’ bowels. “There are not enough tears to mourn the dead,” he exclaimed. “I want to call off this attack.”

  “It is their blasted fortifications,” Ro’moloristen said, bitter, helpless fury boiling in his heart. “From this miserable hole called Liege, to another place they call Eben Emael, to here facing this Maginot line, we are trying to break their weapons by hurling bodies at them.”

  “Can we get through? In the end, can we beat our way through?” asked Athenalras.

  The young God King’s crest erected. “We can, my lord; we must! For something is becoming ever more clear. If we do not exterminate this species it will exterminate us! They are too good, too brave and above all too clever. With fewer numbers and worse weapons, infiltrated and betrayed by their political leadership, attacked with devastating power from space, they are still nearly a match for us. I have some sympathy for these thresh, yes, a degree of admiration, too. But give them as little as ten years of peace and the existence of these thresh dooms our people.”

  Chapter 12

  Headquarters, Army Group Reserve,

  Kapellendorf Castle, Thuringia, 20 December 2007

  Afraid even to whisper it, Mühlenkampf could not help but think, We’re doomed.

  In the end, though they had hurt the Posleen fleet badly, the Planetary Defense Batteries, even supplemented by salvaged railguns, had failed. Mühlenkampf had known they would. Their presumptive failure had be the major reason behind the creation of Army Group Reserve in the first place.