Königstiger: Odin's Warriors - Book 3

by Aeryn Leigh

  Artillery gun pits were dug by the Seventh's Artillery Regiment, formed in chequerboard formation three kilometres to their rear, just over the other side of the rise, where the peninsula widened out and kept on going. Three mechanised batteries spread over the line, as artillerymen prepared the nineteen 105mm and twelve 150mm pieces of artillery, bemoaning the fact they had at most one-hundred and sixty rounds for each gun.

  Both armies toiled in the silver moonlight. Millions of galaxies shone overhead, the vista mind-boggling if anybody had the chance to appreciate it. Shooting stars flared overhead, in groups of two and three, a long chain of meteor showers.

  Wolfgang positioned the 501st Heavy Tank Battalion a little way up the plain, just in front of the secondary trench, the 501st intermingled with what remained of the Seventh's Anti-Aircraft Battalion, the Flak Abseiling. Soldiers unloaded crated upon crates of shells for the 20mm, 37mm and 88mm AA guns, praying that most of them wouldn't be duds.

  When the first sun broke the horizon, two hours of hard labour showed the fruits of their endeavours. With the forested, sloping sides of the super volcano on their hard left and the lake in front, and the beginning of the great gleaming wall stretching over the horizon dead centre, and ocean cliffs on their far right, the stage for battle was set. The armies were still digging in an hour later when the first artillery shell landed in their midst.

  The die was cast.

  The battle for Elysium had begun.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  KNOWN UNKNOWNS

  THE SPORADIC SHELLING continued right through the morning, causing little casualties, making Wolfgang wonder if they were being practised upon by troops in training. If the situation wasn't so serious, Wolfgang felt he could almost thank the enemy for doing so. Nothing concentrates the mind on the task at hand than the high pitched, whistling sound of a random artillery shell. Deeper, deeper. Wolfgang peered through the Zeiss battlefield binoculars, trying to put himself in the enemy's position.

  It was all worrying. Not only were these creatures big, powerful, multi-legged, and hard to kill without a lot of direct large calibre gun fire, but according to Merrion Blackheart they were also intelligent and able to use and operate simple machinery. One of the creatures that had burst out of the ambush tripwire bunkers held a Maxim machine-gun in its front limbs, and used it to deadly effect.

  The Inquisition city laid behind those walls. These daemons, as General Versetti called them, had stripped the naval port and industrial zone of all military assets and material. But they couldn't swim in deep water. So, they must have arrived here on this island by some kind of ship or vessels, and when he pressed the Republic on that point, they did report a small fleet of sailing warships just offshore the naval port. The same warships left abandoned by a military stronghold two-hundred miles to the south-east.

  Okay, he thought. I am a big, bad creature. I make landfall the northern part of the island, and just like the Republic was doing, sweeping south killing all that resisted. You leave the industrial zone, and its bountiful resources, and move south, and take out the enemy city. Once you have the enemy city under control, and your rear and flanks secure, you then advance back to the industrial zone, and what? Get back on your ships and sailed to the next island? Build something? Claim this island for your own territory and send expeditions of elsewhere?

  Wolfgang rubbed his temples. The nearest section of wall was just on the extreme range of his Königstigers, before its curved further away and round to the south. The top section appeared empty. The moment something did appear on the top of that wall, Hans would target and fire.

  A Republic legionnaire approached his tank, accompanied by Corporal Becker. "The general wishes to speak to you, Major. At your earliest convenience."

  Wolfgang nodded. He bowed farewell to his friends, dismounted from the tank and followed them back up the support trenches, all the way to the rear lines and to the command headquarters. The contrast between drab German army field tents and the rich, colourful Roman Legion quarters was striking. Men toiled away even way back here, excavating deep, sturdy command bunker. Correct that. Men and women. Of all races. Wolfgang still had a hard time accepting that. But hearing the history of this world, as long as you were a warrior, whatever brought one here was an equal opportunity kidnapper.

  Major Brutowsky stood outside the Roman tent. He saw Wolfgang, and stuck his head inside momentarily, before lifting the fabric up and allowing Wolfgang and the corporal access.

  General Sarah Versetti sat on a war chest, flanked by Marion on one side and a tall black man, radiating violence. The sum electric force of the man's hate stopped Wolfgang in his tracks. Directed right at him.

  "I ain't working with no Nazi scum, period," the man said. Wolfgang didn't need a translator to understand to the word Nazi, as the corporal translated to his right.

  Nazi? Where did that come from? "Could someone explain what is going on?" Wolfgang said.

  Merrion cleared his throat. "Major Wolfgang, this is Commander Lucius James Junior, Captain of the B 17 Damage Inc., United States Air Force, who just like you, was brought here against his will last year."

  The corporal finished translating. The air thickened. Wolfgang and Lucius stared at one another.

  "I am going to say this very slowly," said Wolfgang. "I am a patriot of Germany. I joined the German army before the Nazis rose to power." He waited. "Trust me, if Adolf Hitler was in this room himself, I would punch the bastard back to Austria. His delusions of grandeur and competence have cost me far too many friends than I dare admit." He took a step forward.

  Lucius also took a step forward. "You know where I've heard that before? From Ella Fucking Gruder. Damn you folks can have great blinkers on. Tell me, Major Wolfgang Mauss, holder of the Knights Cross with all the fucking pips, surely you know about the concentration camps. You are aware of them, right?"

  Wolfgang swallowed. "I am, or was, yes. It's not something generally talked about."

  "Yeah right," said Lucius. "But let me ask you something. If I had lived in Germany, minding my own business, been a productive member of society, kids and family and all, would I have been sent to those camps? Along with my family? Being a sub-mensch?"

  "Yes," said Wolfgang, straight out.

  "Exactly. But let me make this fucking clear. There's no going back to Earth. You're trapped here, just like the rest of us. You say you're not a Nazi, then fine. It took me awhile to get that about Ella, and she's more than proved herself, many times over. But you, Mister Wolfgang Mauss, I don’t trust for shit. Actions Major, not words. Now General, Merrion, excuse me. I've got a flight to arrange." And with that, Lucius left the tent.

  Wolfgang blinked a few times. Allied servicemen here? And Negroes to boot? Mein Gotts. This would take adjusting to.

  Merrion seemingly read his mind. "You haven't got the time," he said. "Is this going to be a problem?"

  "No," said Wolfgang, eventually.

  "Good," said the General. "Lucius informed me the most effective way to direct artillery fire is with an aerial observation plane, correct?" Wolfgang nodded. "And understand you have wireless communication devices in your arsenal. I have the planes, you have the wireless sets. Work with Lucius, and make it so. Dismissed."

  Wolfgang saluted, and walked back out of the tent with a somewhat shaky corporal.

  "Should we tell them about Laurie and the boys, or Ella and the Nordic combat armour?" said Merrion.

  "Let's keep it a surprise for now. In the meantime, Lieutenant Colonel, keep an eye on our new friends, German and American alike. It would seem petty human politics are a universal constant."

  WOLFGANG REQUISITIONED AN OPEL 3-TONNE TRUCK, and the few remaining survivors of the Seventh's Signal Company, a handful of engineers and set off down the highway with Merrion and Lucius and the ever-present corporal. Wireless equipment sat in the middle of the tray. Three kilometres down the road, they reached the makeshift airstrip and the perimeter defences setting up around
it.

  Wolfgang gave a low whistle as the Opel pulled up alongside the fragile, rudimentary aircraft, and they all jumped off the back.

  "She's no Damage Inc.," said Lucius, "but she gets the job done. Ella did well. We call this a Gruder Mark IV. The good thing about this aircraft, is that being so small, they don't need a big damn airstrip."

  A red-haired woman dressed in oil covered lambskin coveralls approached the group and saluted Lucius. "We are ready when you are, Sir. The motor has been repaired."

  Lucius saluted back. "Good work, Inger." He turned and noticed the German engineers and signal corps still staring open mouthed at the fabric covered monoplane. He grinned. "Well then, ladies and gentlemen, let's make ourselves an artillery spotter, Elysium style. The sooner we win this, the better. I've got homework to mark."

  THE FIRST GROUND attack came that night. Big, voluminous clouds covered the sky, reducing moonlight and by extension visibility. Dozens and dozens of aliens climbed straight down the closest wall section and scurried blindingly fast for the lake, going under the waters. By the time the waves lapped upon the nearby shore, 2.5 km away according to the nearest gun battery, two captured 75 mm French short barrelled howitzers and a single 105mm, the Germans finalised their calculations. Having pre-plotted firing points like every other gun crew that afternoon, they made some quick final adjustments due to the north-west wind and falling temperature, and crucially, timing fuses.

  They wanted to make damn sure enemy could not use the lake as a viable crossing. With their commander’s blessing, they fired. Night became day momentarily from the muzzle flash. The first salvo targeted the middle of the lake, and many, long heartbeats later, struck the lake's surface and detonated metres below, creating great plumes of fountaining water as the equivalent of depth charges detonated. The battery to their right fired, its salvo creeping thirty metres back.

  An alien wail bled through their subconscious hearing, like fingers down a chalkboard. The third battery fired, a trio of 105s directly at the closest shoreline, as the demonic survivors broke through the choppy surf. Bursts of luminescent green sprayed into the night, as limbs and torso were blown apart by multiple thirty-two pounds of high-explosives and solid steel. Two creatures made it out of the water entirely and were cut down by burst of quad-linked 20mm cannon fire.

  Nothing moved. The dead bodies twitched, still gushing radiant, green blood, pooling into streams which flowed back into the lake and formed a spreading pale green slick, slowly fading into black.

  Germans and Republicans cheered.

  As it turned out, this would be the last time any human had something to smile about, for a very long time.

  When the Republic Air Force's single aircraft took to the skies that morning, the rest of the night uneventful, the frail machine barely made it over their lines before a stunning beam of white light shot up from behind the middle section of wall five kilometres away, and lanced right through the port wing. Soldiers on the ground took a collective breath as the mortally-wounded aircraft with a gigantic hole in its wing staggered from the blow, then started a corkscrew spiral down and around and down above them, crash landing up over behind the HQ.

  Moments after the crash, the faint rumble of enemy artillery washed over the Republic and Seventh's lines, the sound rolling uphill. Then came the whistles, and after it, death.

  Minute after minute, hour after hour, they took incoming fire.

  Cannonballs struck the tops and sides of tanks before ricocheting, causing little to no damage to armoured vehicles but wreaking havoc to any soldier caught above in open ground. Grapeshot and chains were fired from seemingly impossible range, astounding the soldiers of the Republic. Cannonballs being fired over three miles away? Sorcery. Be that as it may, they were subjected to such attacks for the rest of day.

  Hans scored their Königstiger's first kill that afternoon, and made a personal long-distance record, as a daemon climbed up the closest wall tower 4,300 metres away. His first shot slammed into the wall just below it, and didn't exploded. A dud. Again. Haplo and Hans swore yet once more, cursing the use of slave labour and forced conscription in Germany's ammunition plants. Fourteen seconds later, the creature, out of pure arrogance or stupidity hadn't moved, disappeared as exploding green mist. That 88mm shell was good.

  They were rewarded with a change of weaponry. Along their seven mile earthworks, explosive shells now detonated.

  IN THE HOURS BEFORE DUSK, Lucius and his team got the Mark IV flight worthy. The benefit of such a crude aircraft was the metre-wide energy beam destroyed simple cloth fabric and a few odd spars. What took time was getting another spare propeller attached, a fast-vanishing resource, and convincing Flight Leader Inger Tucker to take once more to the skies. That dazzling energy lance spooked everyone, make no mistake. The fine downy hairs on her face shrivelled and burnt, in that single micro-second flash of heat. Even on Elysium, it was a cliché to say your very life flashed beneath your eyes, but there it was. Every time she blinked, she saw nothing but white.

  "I'm not going back up there," she said. She stood next to Lucius, at the nearby pile of supplies, as they drank mugs of water. "At least until we know what the range of that thing is."

  "And we won't know what the range of that thing is, until we know. I'm not meaning to be damn cryptic, but it must have some physical limit."

  "Doesn't cryptic mean something else?"

  "Does it?"

  "I think so sir, the words you are looking for is known unknowns."

  "Known unknowns?"

  "You know, what we know, what we do not know, since that is to say we cannot know unknown unknowns, and what we do not like to know."

  "This is more Griffin's area of expertise. Physics is mine. Inger?"

  "Yes?"

  "Can you fly?"

  A pause. "Yes, but only if you stick to applied mathematics."

  Lucius laughed. "That's my Inger. Now this time, begin your flight over our lines as damn high as you can take her. We're going to get a fix on those bastards, and give 'em hell. Now go. Night’s coming fast."

  LATER THAT NIGHT, as dirt granules fell from the ceiling of the freshly-built Command Bunker as nearby shells exploded, Wolfgang and his commanders joined the Republic's leaders and Inger around the makeshift map table. The battery-powered lantern swung from a wood batten above, casting a pale, yellow light.

  Flight Leader Tucker finished arranging the small model pieces on the map. "There," she said, "that's the best I can remember." Her words tumbled like lead, just as her body did, fatigue taking its toll like the mind-numbing masses of enemy creatures she'd observed on the other side of the wall, and on this side too, far to the south.

  Between them, their forces numbered over twenty-thousand.

  And against them, maybe one-hundred thousand. Two hundred. Potentially even more. The earth was covered thickly in the things.

  "You may go, Flight Leader," said General Versetti. "You will need sleep for the morning. Well done." Inger saluted, and rejoined her armed escort waiting in the next trench, ready to take the most valuable reconnaissance they had back to the relative safety of the airfield.

  "Well on the bright side," said Merrion, "it's going to be hard to miss."

  IN THE SMALL hours of the night the first wave attacked, a solid line of black from horizon to horizon. Every artillery piece and cannon that could fire did so. A fearsome light show of red and orange reflected off the clouds as hundreds of shells arced towards the swarming hordes, and landed dead amongst them. Chalkboards screeched as the string of green bloomed, and still they came, rapidly approaching the two-mile marker.

  General Versetti gave the order. Along the Republic lines, they heard the horn blast ring three times, and with exquisite care took out the yellow-tipped ordnance and loaded the shells into breeches. The soldiers on the forward front line gripped their weapons tighter, huddling in their trenches as the enemy saturated shelled their own positions.

  A fourth horn. The Re
public batteries fired. Shells struck soft earth and carapace alike, detonating in mushroom clouds of yellow gas causing an aural shriek so loud soldiers dropped their weapons and smashed their hands against their ears as the cacophony went past the threshold of pain.

  No-Man's Land was one giant wall of yellow fog, shapes moving here and there in the mist.

  No daemons charged them, and the poison gas cleared, the wind blowing downhill and to the west, as luck would have it.

  Wolfgang counted thirty-eight minutes off his watch he reset every dawn, before the poison cleared. She wasn't bluffing after all.

  The daemons retreated, dragging their dead and wounded, leaving behind their artillery barrage, which intensified by a factor of three.

  Now the casualties began. Germans tried to dig out their comrades buried alive as trenches took near-hits. Republic soldiers did the same, but one primary section of Republic-occupied trench took a direct shell and obliterated an entire manipular in one fell stroke, raining blood and limbs and guts and gore over everything nearby.

  On the entire hillside, soldiers cried out for medics.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  NORDIC RIDDLES

  "HOW MANY MORE DAYS IS THIS going to take!" Marietta thumped the side of the gunship's open ramp, and successfully hurt her hand. She massaged her palm. It was high-noon, and the suns packed quite a sting. She moved to the shadows.

  "We're working on it," said Ella, just coming back outside for a quick breath of open air, after spending every waking hour of the last two days trying to restart the gunship. Amelia tried to fly it, and it did not start even for her. "With Magnus we have decoded, well think we have anyway, you know, the refuelling instructions. But they are protected by a lock. A verbal password."

  "How hard can it be?" She looked around her, and at Ella's expression. "Never mind. Tell me again this Nordic riddle?"

  "What is that lamp which lights up men, but flame engulfs it, and wargs grasp after it always."