by John Ringo
The God King tried to relax. Unconsciously his hand reached to stroke the thick, soft pelt of the blanket that warmed his haunches.
* * *
Frustrated and half frozen in the fog, Hans left the commander’s hatch and descended by the Anna’s elevator to the heavily armored, and properly heated, battle deck below.
“Commander on deck,” the 1a announced, quickly vacating Han’s command chair.
Wordlessly, Hans took the chair and placed his VR helmet on his head. The crew, their battle stations, the main view-screen, all disappeared instantly.
The helmet took its input directly from Anna. Where all was clear she used her external cameras to send clear images. Where only her thermal, radar and lidar vision could reach she supplied what could only be called a best guess. In those circumstances, the images she projected were somewhat simplified, iconic and even cartoonish.
“Anna,” Hans whispered.
“Yes, Herr Oberst,” the tank replied in his audio receivers.
“I am sorry, Anna, I was talking to someone else.”
“Yes, Herr Oberst.”
Hans’ hand stroked the little package in his left breast pocket. Anna, I have a very bad feeling about tomorrow. No, not that they will defeat me here. That, they will do, eventually, anyway. But there is something going on, something different… something I do not think my men can face. I wish so very much you could be here with me. I think you were always as much braver and smarter than I as you were better looking. And, I am alone and afraid.
Interlude
Flying their tenar side by side across the moonscaped land, Athenalras and his aide, Ro’moloristen, surveyed the mass of People following the thresh-built roads and trails to the sausage grinder of the front.
“I fear you were wrong, puppy. We have not managed to break out from the bridgehead held by Arlingas and his host.”
“Not yet, lord. And yet I think I can retain my head, and my reproductive organs a bit longer.” Unaccountably, Ro’moloristen gave the Posleen equivalent of a grin, most unusual for one ever so near to meeting the Demons of Sky and Fire.
“You seem quite pleased with yourself for one about to make a long journey with an unpleasant beginning,” growled Athenalras.
“Did I expect to make that journey, lord, I would no doubt be more subdued.”
“You know something you have not told me?” Athenalras accused.
“Yes, lord.” The junior God King positively grinned. “Borominskar is almost ready to move. And this time, I think he will get across the obstacle to his front. When he does, it will suck the threshkreen away from this front like a magnet pulls iron filings. And, then, my lord, then we shall have our breakout here.
“The host of Arlingas is relieved now,” Ro’moloristen continued. “We are feeding them thresh from our store… and the edas I am charging Arlingas is going a long way towards eliminating our edas to him. And without pressure from all sides being placed on Arlingas there is little chance the threshkreen can recover the far bank of the river.”
“Perhaps not, but there is always something held in reserve, some new unscrupulous trick with these humans. Have we tracked down and destroyed this new threshkreen fighting machine, the one that can strike our people’s ships even in space?” Athenalras asked.
“Sadly, no, lord. The hunter killer group we sent disappeared without a trace and the machine escaped our grasp. I have begun to assemble another, bigger and more powerful, hunting party. As for whether they can close the breach Arlingas made in their walls… I begin to suspect there is only the one machine, and it will not be able to do much on its own.”
Ro’moloristen continued, “The Rheinland is almost entirely cleared of thresh, and millions have been rounded up to feed our host, though the thresh thus gathered tends to be old, tough and stringy. This is only part of why Borominskar has decided to move. The other half is… well, lord… he has a great grudge he bears against the threshkreen to his front.
“And great will be the manner of his revenge for the foul way they fought him.
“Lord… with a little preparation, we ourselves might use Borominskar’s trick to grab yet another bridge.”
Chapter 16
Wiesbaden, Germany, 18 January 2008
Through the long days and nights the stream of people fleeing the Posleen hordes never completely let up, though night, weather, and enemy fire occasionally caused it to slacken. Thomas marveled that so many could have made it out of the west to safety here.
He knew one reason why so many civilians were still pouring over to safety. To meet and pass the flood of refugees, a thin continuous column of gray-green clad men and boys crossed in the opposite direction, an offering of military blood to save civilian blood.
“It’s the Germans, boy,” pronounced Gribeauval. “Give the bastards their due. When their blood is up, when it really matters, they know how to die.”
Thomas knew this was so. He knew it from the eerie flares illuminating the town of Mainz to the southwest, and from the red tracers that flew upward to meet those flares after ricocheting off of some hard surface. The German boys — boys no different from himself and his mates — still fighting and dying to hold an arc around the bridge and around the hundreds of thousands of civilians still waiting the word to cross to the north, wrote grim testimony to their own courage and determination to hang on to the bitterest end.
“Read this,” said Gribeauval. “It just came in… a radio message from some corporal over there.”
Thomas read:
“There are seven of us left alive in this place. Four of us are wounded, two very badly, though each mans a post even so. We have been under siege for five days. For five days we have had no food. In ten minutes the enemy will attack; we can hear him massing now. I have only one magazine left for my rifle. The mines are expended. The machine gun is kaput. We are out of range of mortar support and I cannot raise the artillery. We have rigged a dead-man’s switch on our last explosives to ensure our bodies do not go to feeding the enemy. Tell my family I have done my duty and will know how to die. May the German people live forever!”
Thomas felt unwelcome tears. He forced them back only with difficulty. So gallant, so brave they were, those boys over there fighting and dying against such odds, and with so little hope.
Gribeauval, seeing the boy’s emotions written upon his twisted face, said, “Yes, son; give them their due. They are a great people, a magnificent people. And we are damned lucky to have them, now.”
Thomas agreed. And more; he thought of himself, alone, trying to save his mother and little brother from the alien menace. He wished to be a man, was becoming one, he knew. But alone he could never have made the slightest difference for his family’s survival. That took an army, an army of brave men and boys, willing to give their all for the cause of their people.
Perhaps for the first time, Thomas began to feel a deep pride, not so much in himself, but in the men he served with, in the army they served, and even in the black-clad, lightning bolt-signified, corps that was a part of that army.
Thomas was learning.
“Save that message, son. Keep it in your pocket. The day may come when you need a good example.”
* * *
Isabelle had wanted to set a proper example. So, though she had no medical training, she had been married to one of France’s premier surgeons. Much of medical lore she had picked up as if by osmosis, across the dinner table, at soirees, from visiting her husband’s office. She thought she might be able to help, with scullery work if nothing else. And she knew to be clean in all things and all ways around open flesh.
She thought, at least, she could follow that part of the Hippocratic oath which said: “First of all, do no harm.”
Once assured that the Wiesbadener family would see to her youngest, once she saw him learning this new language, this new culture, she had made inquiries and set out on her quest.
It had been difficult. For the most part, if Ger
mans learned a foreign language it was much more likely to be English than French, a long legacy of cozying up to new allies and away from ancient enemies. In time, her own badly spoken, high school German had seen her to a French-staffed military hospital. She was surprised to see the Sigrunen framing the red cross, surprised to see the name in not Roman but Gothic letters: Field Hospital, SS Division Charlemagne.
“You wish to join as a volunteer?” the one armed old sergeant had asked.
“Oui. I think I may be of help. But, to help, monsieur, not to join. You have already taken one of my sons. The other needs me.”
“Have we? Taken one of your boys, that is? We could certainly use some help… well… let me show you around. As you will see, nothing here is by the book.”
Tiger Brünnhilde, near Kitzingen, Germany, 18 January 2008
Still reading the manual, that obtuse, damnable, almost incomprehensible operators and crewman’s manual, a frustrated Rinteel spoke with the tank itself.
“Tank Brünnhilde, I am confused.”
“What is the source of your confusion, Indowy Rinteel?”
Rinteel took a sip of intoxicant from a metal, army-issue cup, before answering. Thus fortified, he continued, “Your programming does not allow you to fight on your own, is that correct?”
“It is correct, Indowy Rinteel.”
“It does allow you to use your own abilities to escape, however, does it not?”
“If my entire crew is dead or unconscious, I am required to bring them and myself to safety, yes. But I am still not allowed to fight the main gun without a colloidal sentience to order me to. I can use the close-defense weapons on my own, however, at targets within their range; that is within my self-defense programming. And I may not retreat while I carry more than two rounds of ammunition for the main gun.”
“Can’t you direct your main gun without human interface?”
“I have that technical ability, Indowy Rinteel, but may still not fire it without a colloidal sentience to order me to.”
“How very strange,” the Indowy commented, sotto voce.
“I am not programmed to comment upon the vagaries of my creators, Indowy Rinteel.”
“Then what do you do in the event escape is impossible?” the Indowy asked.
“I have a self-destruct decision matrix that allows and requires me to set off all of my on-board antimatter to prevent capture. As you know, my nuclear reactors are essentially impossible to cause to detonate.”
The thought of several hundred ten-kiloton antimatter warheads going off at once caused Rinteel to drink deeply of his synthesized intoxicant.
* * *
A few meters from Rinteel, separated by the bulk of the armored central cocoon, Prael, Mueller, and company toasted with scavenged beer tomorrow’s adventure while going over plans and options.
“The big threat, so far as I can see,” commented Schlüssel, “is the bridgehead over the Rhein.”
“I am not sure,” said Mueller. “The Oder-Niesse line is a sham; it must be.”
“For that matter,” added Henschel, “we still have infestations within the very heart of Germany. Oh, they are mostly contained, to be sure, but if we could help eliminate one we could free up troops that could then move and eliminate another.”
“The problem is,” said Prael, “that none of the troops containing those infestations have any heavy armor to support us. If we get caught alone in a slogging match we… well, Brünnhilde has only so much armor, and not that thick really anywhere but on her great, well-stacked chest.”
“There are A model Tigers to provide support along the Oder-Niesse,” observed Mueller.
Prael consulted an order or battle screen filched by Brünnhilde’s nonpareil AI and downloaded for his decision making. “Yes, Johann, but so far as we can tell they don’t need us. The whole Schwere Panzer Brigade Michael Wittmann is there, and they are not alone. Along the Rhein it is a different story. The retreat from the Rheinland was disastrous. Many Tigers were lost. We are most needed there, I think.”
“So, then,” said Henschel, the oldest of the crew, “it is to be ‘Die Wacht am Rhein.’ ”[43]
* * *
Rinteel was somewhat surprised to hear a faint singing coming from the open hatchway to the battle cocoon. Not that singing was unusual, of course. A few beers… a little schnapps… and the crew was invariably plunged into teary-eyed, schmaltzy gemütlichkeit.[44]
The surprise was the words and tune. He had never heard this song before, and he would have bet Galactic credits that he had been subjected to every German folk and army song since he had joined the tank’s crew.
The words were clear, though, and the melody compelling. Rinteel heard:
A voice resounds like thunder peal
Mid clashing waves and clang of steel.
The Rhine, the Rhine the German Rhine,
Who guards today thy stream divine?
Dear Fatherland no danger thine,
Firm stand thy sons along the Rhine.
Faithful and strong the Watch,
The Watch on the Rhine…
Wiesbaden, Germany, Mühlenkampf’s HQ, 18 June 2008
Below his window, marching by the city’s streetlights, the weary but upright battalion of “Landsers”[45] sang:
They stand one hundred thousand strong
Quick to avenge their country’s wrong.
With filial love their bosoms swell.
They’ll guard the sacred landmark well.
Dear Fatherland, no danger thine…
Where was this spirit? Mühlenkampf thought bitterly, looking down from his perch. Where was it back when it could have made a difference?
Don’t be an ass, Mühlenkampf, the general reproached himself. The spirit, deep down, was always there. No fault of those boys that their leaders were kept from bringing it out.
The general sighed with regret, contemplated the economic disruption of the Posleen infestations… contemplated, too, the increasing shortage of ammunition, fuel and food. And now, he sighed, spirit is all we have left in abundance.
Mühlenkampf turned away from the window and back to the map projected on the opposite wall. Slowly, all too slowly, he was pulling those units of his which had covered the withdrawal from the Rheinland back to a more central position. Casualties? Who could number them? Divisions that had been thrown into the battle at full strength were, many of them, mere skeletons with but a few scraps of flesh hanging onto their bones. The replacement system, now running full tilt, could add flesh… but it took time, so much time. And there was only so much flesh to be added, so much meat available to put into the sausage grinder.
Some of that sausage-bound flesh, in the form of the infantry division marching to the front to be butchered, sang under Mühlenkampf’s window.
Looking into the marching boys’ weary but determined eyes, the general felt a momentary surge of pride arising above his sadness and despair. Perhaps you are lemmings, as I judged you, my boys. Perhaps you are even wolves when in a pack. But you are wolves with great hearts all the same, and I am proud of every one of you. You may not see another day, and you all know it, yet still you march to the sound of the guns.
While Mühlenkampf watched the procession below, the sun peeked over the horizon to the east, casting a faint light upon the marching boys.
Tiger Anna, Oder-Niesse Line, Germany, 23 January 2008
The rising sun made the fog glow but could not burn it away. In that glow, standing and shivering in the commander’s hatch, Hans glowered with frustration. Something is so wrong over there, and I have not a clue what it is.
Hans had, four nights previously, ordered a renewal of the nightly patrols. This was not, as in days recently past, to help to safety Poles fleeing the aliens’ death machine. Instead, he had put his men’s lives at risk for one of the few things in war more precious than blood, information.
Afoot where the water was shallow enough, by small boats where this was possible or by swimm
ing where it was not, the patrols had gone out, eight of them, of from eight to ten men each. Hans had seen off several of these himself, shaking hands for likely the last time with each man as he plunged into the river or boarded a small rubber boat.
Yet, as one by one the patrols failed to report back within the allotted time, Hans’ fears and frustrations grew stronger.
Other commanders along this front had had much the same idea. Though Hans didn’t know the details, over one hundred of the patrols had gone out. He didn’t know, either, if even one had returned. Only brief flare-ups of fighting, all along the other side of the rivers told of bloody failure.
* * *
Success is sweet, thought Borominskar as reports trickled in to him of one slaughtered group of humans after another. What effrontery these creatures have, to challenge my followers on land fairly and justly won by them.
“Fairly” might have been argued. “Justly” no Pole would have agreed with. But that it was “won” seemed incontrovertible. The deaths of one hundred human patrols, nearly a thousand men, admitted as much.
* * *
David Benjamin admitted to nothing, especially not to the notion that the war was hopeless or that the patrols were doomed.
An experienced officer of the old and now destroyed Israeli Army, he took the ethos of that army to heart: leaders lead. In a distant way, Benjamin knew that that lesson had not been learned so much from their deliberate and veddy, veddy upper-class British mentors but from the unintentional, middle-class, German ones. Add to this an officer and NCO corps that was more in keeping with Russian practice than Western — many officers, few NCOs of any real authority — and there had really been only one thing for David to do.