Behind Hans the sunless, predawn, sky flickered as if lit by a thousand strobe lights; the entire artillery—over three thousand guns—of Army Group Reserve, sending their gifts to the Posleen dug in well south of the city.
The city itself was holding out still, most likely because fully half the Posleen that could have attacked it were instead facing southward against the looming threat of Army Group Reserve. Even so, the town was hard-pressed and begging frantically for succor from Mühlenkampf. The "gifts" to the Posleen were also a gift to Magdeberg's defenders, heartfelt gifts sent with the promise of many more to come.
Schultz, not needed at his gunner's station for the nonce, helped bring round the morning's repast, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, some long-shelf-life milk—"nuclear milk," the men called it—a roll and some sort of unmentionable meat, a grayish, greasy, half-inch-thick slab of embalmed beef. Brasche, concentrating on the intelligence updates coming in via radio, absentmindedly took the eggs, roll and meat, but pointedly refused the milk. Schultz could not blame him; the price of extending the shelf life was milk that tasted of old gym socks. Nutritious it may have been. Good, it was not.
"Gut,"—good—Hans muttered. The enemy were apparently not lifting their ships in an attempt to silence the army's batteries, or—at least—not yet.
The artillery was forced to fire into an intelligence void, to a great extent. Nothing humanly or remotely piloted was able to survive for more than the instant it took to be destroyed if they attempted flying above or even near the Posleen. Not one human-built satellite survived in space to look down upon the enemy. No human-piloted space-going vessel could hope to approach Earth, with the fleet largely destroyed and the few, wounded survivors huddled and licking their wounds somewhere in the direction of Proxima Centauri. A Himmit ship might have done some real good, had one been available. Sadly, none were.
What could be done had been and was being. Florian Geyer had done everything humanly possible to get through the Posleen perimeter—tried everything, paid in full measure, and failed to do more than define the edges of that perimeter. A few towns within the area of infestation held out yet; these provided a little local intelligence—telling as much where the enemy was not as where he was—for the gunners to use in targeting. The maps also told a bit, though given the aliens' very different military philosophy from that of their human opponents, Hans was skeptical of the value of map reconnaissance. The Posleen just didn't think like human beings.
The most valuable recon assets in the Germans' hands were artillery-fired television cameras encased in time-fused shells that gave anywhere from a few to fifteen minutes of visual insight before falling too low to do any good. These were rare items, however. Like the precious neutron bombs, there had not been time to build many of them. They were also used, generally speaking, in conjunction with the artillery-fired neutron bombs, the cameras spotting useful targets and the atomic weapons then "servicing" those targets.
The problem was, though—as Hans knew, that the enemy had had a chance to spread out and dig in. There were few concentrations, few that the cameras had found anyway, that justified the use of the deadly little enhanced radiation packages. Moreover, one of the genuinely effective defenses against the brief burst of high-intensity neutrons the bombs emitted upon detonation was simple earth; and the Posleen had dug in deep in the few days granted them.
Meanwhile, Magdeberg—and Berlin, past that—called frantically and continuously for aid.
The chancellor looked over the situation displayed on one of the three view-screens that filled one wall of his deep underground office. In blues and reds this screen showed graphically the state both of the defending forces, in blue, and the aliens, in red, infesting Germany and pressing at her borders. He had been satisfied, over the last two days, to see two of the large red splotches disappear as Army Group Reserve under Mühlenkampf eliminated all but one of the landings south and southeast of Magdeberg. Other, local, reserves had seen to some few others.
Matched against the good news, however, was a pile of bad. The Siegfried line in the west defending the Rhein and the Rheinland was holding, true. But casualties were atrocious, indentations had been made, and the state of resupply, given how many Posleen-controlled areas lay athwart supply routes, was perilous.
In the east things were worse, much worse. The Vistula line was simply crumbling and, nightmare of nightmares, the enemy had managed to seize at least one bridge over the river at Warsaw.
The story of how this had happened was somewhat confused. As near as could be determined, though, a great flood of humanity had been on the bridge in desperate flight when the Posleen first appeared. Unwilling, or perhaps unable, to commit mass murder by blowing the bridge, the defenders had delayed just a bit too long. The enemy's flyers had massed and blasted the defending demolition guard to ruin before the bridge could be dropped. A hasty counterattack was put in using whatever was locally available. That having failed, however, and the aliens pouring across at the rate of several hundred thousand per hour, the German and Polish formations strung out along the river were about to be forced into conducting a desperate fighting withdrawal to the Oder-Niesse line.
And the Oder-Niesse line is less than a sham, thought the chancellor. There are few heavy fortifications. Those that exist are very old and weak and were low priority for renovation in any case. The river itself is as little as three feet deep in places. And even where it is deep enough to drown the bastards there are places where it has frozen over.
Tearing his eyes from the distressing display, the chancellor turned to his senior soldier, Field Marshal von Seydlitz. "Kurt?" he asked, "Is there a chance we can hold the river? Regain the bridge?"
"Essentially none, sir," Seydlitz responded, wearily. He was about a week behind on sleep. "I had considered that the neutron weapons might make a difference. But my nuclear weapons staff has pointed out two distressing facts. One is that we have only half a dozen of the things close enough to get in range to be fired at the crossing. The other is that the bombs work best with a highly concentrated area target. The Posleen are concentrating before crossing, true. But once they reach this side they are dispersing very rapidly. Moreover, those actually on the bridge at any given time represent a very unremunerative linear target. We might kill as few as twenty thousand per round among those who have already crossed, perhaps five or six thousand of those actually on the bridge. We can eliminate anything up to one million by hitting the far side with all six weapons."
Seydlitz sighed. "The General Staff calculates that this will slow them down by perhaps an hour. Herr Kanzler, the hour saved now is not as important as holding the Oder-Niesse line later. We will need those weapons then."
"The Oder-Niesse line?" asked the chancellor.
"It isn't much but it's all we have," answered Seydlitz.
"Give the orders. Fall back. Cover the retreat of as many Polish civilians as possible."
Seydlitz nodded an acknowledgment, then continued. "We're still going to lose many of the troops and by the time they reach the Oder they may be nothing much more than a demoralized rabble for a while . . . but I agree we should run while we can.
"But, Herr Kanzler, we have another problem, though it is an indirect one and won't become insurmountable until the Siegfried line collapses."
"The Rhein bridges?" asked the chancellor.
"Yes, sir. For now the enemy who seized both sides of the bridges from above is staying put. But they have infested an area of more than twenty-five kilometers radius, are digging in frantically, and are seriously inconveniencing supply to the men on the Siegfried line covering the Rheinland."
"Recommendations?"
"Halt Army Group Reserve in place. Let them reorganize and shift them around. Then throw them at that landing."
The chancellor thought, weighing options. Though he had done his military time as a young man he was no soldier and knew it. He was, however, a supreme and—at need—a supremely ruthless politician; his resurrection of the SS showed that.
"No," he answered. "if Berlin falls so soon it will take the heart out of our people. Let local forces contain the landing athwart the Rhein. After Army Group Reserve has cleared out Saxony-Anhalt, Pomerania and Mecklenberg we can turn them around. But for now? No."
The artillery storm was not abating. Even so, unnoticed, it was lifting from over eleven narrow preplanned axes. Indeed, the axes were so narrow that the shell-shocked Posleen cowering there barely noticed any change in the pummeling they were receiving.
Under the lash of the guns, terrified Posleen, normals and God Kings both, huddled and trembled. Never in all their previous history had the People experienced anything against which they were so completely helpless as they were against this threshkreen "artillery."
Worst of all, no place and no being was safe. Oolt'ondai Chaleeniskeeren, as much as the lowest of his oolt'os, shivered and quivered and quaked in a bunker fronting the bay of a trench at each near miss. Unable even to eat of the thresh'c'olt, the Posleen iron rations, brought to him by a cosslain, the God King alternately cursed the cowardly thresh who infested this world and the fate that had brought him and his people here.
The Posleen knew he could have taken his tenar and climbed above the shell storm. The problem with that was a certain number of the enemy's projectiles operated off of electronic fuses that were perfectly capable of being set off by the near presence of a tenar. Reports from Posleen refugees from the south made this abundantly clear; the sky was no safe place to be when the threshkreen unleashed their unholy storm.
Thus, the tenar of each God King, as much as the God King himself, lay vulnerable in hastily dug holes in the ground. Chaleeniskeeren's, or what was left of it, lay ruined in its hole a few strides away. Idly, the Posleen wondered how many of the tenar would be left riderless by the barrage, even while other God Kings were left with ruined transportation. Robbed of their flyers, much of the host's power would be lost.
The ships were safe enough from most artillery. Built of materials thick and strong, they shrugged off all but the worst of the threshkreen's projectiles. What they could not shrug off were the radiation-emitting weapons. These turned the very metal of the ships into radioactive poison. Within the effective radius of those weapons the end, even for those in the ships, was only a matter of time, that . . . and shitting, puking, twitching agony. Fortunately, the thresh seemed to have few of them.
The artillery impacting near Chaleeniskeeren lifted off and began to strike another area. It had done so half a dozen times before. The first few times it had lifted, the Posleen had rushed for firing bays and tenar. Then it had returned, slaughtering them like abat. Now the lifting was cause for nothing more than a brief sigh of very temporary relief, not for exposing themselves.
Chaleeniskeeren couldn't help the nagging feeling that the threshkreen were actually training him to stay put when the fire lifted.
Though half deafened by the shelling, Chaleeniskeeren felt rather than heard a strange rumbling coming through the ground. Shelling or not, trained by the thresh to stay put in the relative safety of the bunker or not, the rumbling was too strange, too out of his experience, not to investigate.
Lowering his head to squeeze under the bunker's low door, the God King stepped out into the bay of the trench and risked looking out into the smoky haze.
Nothing, nothing but craters and smoke.
And then he saw it, a low-lying predatory shape, moving cautiously on treads through the haze, an angular projection on top swinging its main weapon right and left, searching for prey. Soon the first shape was joined by another, then a third and fourth. Wide eyed, the God King saw thresh on foot scattered among the larger shapes. He watched, shocked, for but a moment before raising the shout, "To arms! To arms! The threshkreen are upon us!"
God, this is worse than Kursk, Hans thought as he watched on the main screen as infantry and tanks, locked in a close-quarters death struggle with the alien enemy, rolled back the shoulders of the eleven narrow lanes the artillery had torn in the Posleen line. For the Germans, this was a combined arms fight with a literal vengeance. Their lighter panzers, Leopard IIA7's, blasted apart bunkers, lent their machine guns to the fray, and ran over individual aliens to squeeze out their lives like overripe grapes. In close support, carrying the detailed fight to the foe, the German infantry, heedless of loss, cut, slashed, blasted and burnt their way through the trenches. Meanwhile, the artillery concentrated on sealing the areas of penetration off and pureeing any large groups of the enemy that attempted to mass for a counterattack.
But the affair was hardly a massacre. Stunned, demoralized and weakened though they were, the Posleen still fought back with more ferocity than any human enemy, even the mindlessly brave Russians, would have shown after the pummeling they had received.
Part of this, Hans suspected, was merely a matter of numbers. Given more defenders, there simply had to be, as a statistical matter, more who would be capable of rising above the shell-spawned terror. While Posleen trenches were being filled with alien bodies, more than a few German soldiers richened the manure.
On Anna's main screen, Hans saw a Leopard take a direct hit from a Posleen hypervelocity missile. The tank seemed to belch fire as the turret, propelled by its own on-board ammunition and fuel, was hurled nearly a hundred meters into the air. That the Posleen firing almost certainly succumbed to return fire within instants could have been scant comfort to the spirits of the disintegrated Leopard crew.
Brashe's 1c, or intelligence officer reported, "Sir, we are getting emanations consistent with the movement of between twelve and twenty enemy landers, C-Decs, B-Decs, and Lampreys, all."
"All Tigers," Hans ordered over the radio. "Targets appearing in the next few seconds. If they are joining the battle, kill them. If they are fleeing, kill them. When you reach them on the ground, kill them."
Chaleeniskeeren and his oolt'os had held their line as long as possible, even inflicting some losses on the enemy. That period of time had not been long enough. Now, engaged in something like a fighting withdrawal, with his children being mercilessly butchered alongside him, the God King once again cursed both the evil, heartless and merciless threshkreen even as he cursed this planet and everything which had led to it.
Cowering in a deep crater, peering over its lip, Chaleeniskeeren was lifted bodily and slammed down by an explosion of a power he had not imagined outside of the major weapons. The night sky, for the battle had already lasted through the day and into the night, was briefly illuminated by some monstrous, incredible thing. From off to the left, another massive explosion shook the earth and by its momentary light Chaleeniskeeren caught a clearer glimpse of the monster to his front.
"Demon shit," he whispered, wide-eyed and awe-struck.
"Clear emanations, C-Dec, Eleven O'clock, Six thousand, five hundred meters," intoned the 1c.
"I see it," answered Brasche. "Gunner!" he ordered, "Sabot! DU-AM . . . point one kiloton. C-Dec!"
"Target," Schultz responded, robotlike, as he swung Anna's turret to the left, elevating her gun until a tone told him he had a target lock.
"Fire!"
As always, the tank was rocked back, shuddering under the recoil of the main gun. Ahead, a roughly spherical ball of light appeared as the depleted uranium sabot from Anna's gun first penetrated the Posleen ship, then released ten percent of its antimatter to react and annihilate itself with the DU, splitting the ship along its seams.
To left and right, other Tigers fired to briefly light the night with muzzle flash and, often enough, impact on the selected target. There was no return fire from the Posleen ships, leading Hans to suspect they were more interested in flight than fight.
"But that won't last," he muttered.
"Sir?" asked the 1c.
"They're trying to get away," he answered. "That would be fine; I'd encourage them in flying away. The problem is they won't stay away. The other problem is that if they see no escape they'll turn on us."
"Yes, sir," replied the 1c. "But they are pretty bad at working together. We have a fair chance of taking them on, even all of them, if they come after us."
"I concur, Intel. Orders remain unchanged. Kill 'em all."
It had been a long night, as the rising sun promised another long day. Mühlenkampf barely listened to the reports of successful penetration of the Posleen lines, barely listened to reports of casualties and objectives taken.
The worst part, thought he, looking out from a glassless window at the street below his commandeered headquarters building, is the emptiness of the town, that, and the piles of bones everywhere. He shook his head sadly. This town had a quarter of a million people in it even before the war, nearer to a third of a million since. Some got away to the south before the aliens entered it. But most did not and we have found not one living soul. God damn these aliens to the deepest pits of Hell! God damn whoever or whatever it was that made them come here.
The town was still standing; the Posleen had not had time to begin deconstruction before the initial counterattack had driven them out on the twenty-second. But human beings were easier to kill and eat than buildings were to demolish.
Below Mühlenkampf's lookout, a column of truck-borne infantry passed. He studied the faces carefully, looking for signs of panic or demoralization. He saw none. What he saw instead was simple hate, as the message of Halle's depopulation sank through even the thickest skulls.
"Good," he whispered. "A little hate will give them the spine to go on a bit longer."
An aide interrupted Mühlenkampf's reveries. "Herr General, we have reports from the 501st that they have reached the main concentration of enemy landers. General Brasche reports that his Tigers are destroying many of them on the ground and almost at will."
Today it was a massacre. Unable safely to lift their ships to escape, the Posleen were fleeing to the north on their tenar or, more commonly, afoot. The 47th Panzer Korps was pursuing with as much speed and fury as the old SS had ever pursued routed Russians. While the SS pursued, the remainder of Army Group Reserve continued the drive to the northeast and northwest to relieve still embattled Magdeberg and Berlin.
The trail of Brasche's mixed brigade was littered with the ruin of Posleen hopes. It was also littered with the ruin of hundreds upon hundreds of ships, large and small.
More and more, though, the Posleen, individually, were turning at bay to go down fighting rather than be helplessly butchered from behind. Because this was, in every case, the decision of individuals or, occasionally, small groups, the ships facing Brasche's Tigers were, generally speaking, both outnumbered and, because they had to lift about the ground cover to move at all, easily spotted and shot down.
This is not to say that the massacre was entirely one-sided. Five Tigers, three of them lifeless smoking hulks glowing cherry red in places, also dotted the path behind the brigade. Hans had hope that the other two might be recovered and recrewed.
"Emanations. C-Dec. One o'clock. Eight thousand meters," announced the 1c.
"Brigade halt," Brasche ordered. "Engage her as she shows."
Chaleeniskeeren knew it was the end, as it had been the end for each of his followers. He knew that he could run no further, certainly not in his weakened condition.
The God King rested against the metallic side of a C-Dec, a Posleen Command Dodecahedron. The C-Dec was unmanned, and Chaleeniskeeren strongly suspected he knew why. The waves of heavy gamma radiation cutting through his body like knives told him this ship had fallen to one of the threshkreen's radiation weapons.
"No matter," he snarled. "I am dead anyway."
Arising, he walked unsteadily on his four legs until he reached the main hatch.
"Halt and announce yourself," the ship commanded.
The God King knew the drill. All Posleen Kessentai knew the drill for taking over abandoned property without incurring edas, the often crushing debt that was the common lot of all but the most senior and richest of the People.
"I am Oolt'ondai Chaleeniskeeren, son of Ni'imiturna, of the line of Faltrinskera, of the clan Turnisteran. Is there anyone aboard?"
"My internal sensors show no life aboard this vessel, Chaleeniskeeren of the Turnisteran. I am called 'Feast-deliverer.'"
"What is your radiation count, Feast-deliverer?" he asked.
"In the range of certain death in less than one twenty-fifth of this planet's revolution about its axis," the ship answered.
"I claim this ship for myself and my clan, in the name of the Net and of the Knowers; in the name of the People, and of survival."
"This is the way of the Path," the ship answered, as it lowered the ramp.
Chaleeniskeeren's olfactory organs were immediately assaulted by the smell of feces and vomit. Clearly, those of the People who had died within were many, to raise such a stench. Steeling himself, he entered the ship.
Near the ramp, just inside of the hatchway, Posleen lay everywhere in every manner of undignified death. Here a cosslain had ripped open his own torso to get at the source of his pain. There another lay in a pool of mixed vomit and feces. Some few had, apparently, gone feral, lashing out at each other in their death agonies.
Stepping over bodies with every third lurch forward, Chaleeniskeeren made his own tortured way to the control chamber. There he found God Kings slumped in death, their faces twisted with the horror of their passing. Staggering, the sole living being aboard, Chaleeniskeeren reached the command panel. He had to tear away the God King who clutched it fast in full rigor mortis.
Standing in the command position, Chaleeniskeeren heard the ship intone, "Oolt'ondai Chaleeniskeeren, son of Ni'imiturna, of the line of Faltrinskera, of the clan Turnisteran, I recognize you under the Law of the Net, and the Ways of the Path and of the Knowers, as rightful lord of this vessel. What is your command?"
"Lift off," answered the new commander, unsteadily. Already the edges of his vision were darkening. "Lift off and head generally for the human forces. Control to me."
"I can't get a lock, sir," shouted a frantic Dieter Schultz. "That ship is behaving like I have never seen an alien ship act before."
Hans saw that this was true. Weaving, bobbing, even skating along the ground, the ship was an impossible target. A few rounds from other Tigers of the brigade passed nearby the target; passed, and missed. Suddenly, the alien ship shot straight up, moving faster than Anna's elevating mechanism could follow, moving eventually further than it could follow.
"That ship shrieks gamma radiation," announced the 1c.
"It's gotten away," exclaimed Schultz, in frustration.
Hans shook his head in short, violent jerks. "No. The Posleen never act that way. That ship had a dying alien at the helm. Anna, send the message to the brigade. All hands, brace for impact and a major antimatter explosion."
"Take control . . . Take control, Feast-deliverer, for I no longer can hold the helm."
"Your orders, Oolt'ondai? Shall I head for some safe planet?"
"No, ship. There can be none, not in the long run. Can you identify the huge threshkreen war machines below?"
"There are more than twenty, Oolt'ondai."
"Pick one, ship; one that is near others."
"I have done so."
"Good," said Chaleeniskeeren, crest gone flaccid and head hanging in pain and shame. "Crash us into it."
Hans dreamt of happier times . . .
The wedding was informal, as was to be expected in the austere Israeli compound. The girls had pooled their resources, come up with a makeshift dress and veil, some high heels. The only building suitable for the gathering was the mess. There was, of course, no organ to play the wedding march. Even so, a young Israeli trooper was managing a fair rendition on a violin.
Looking back over his shoulder, to where his bride appeared, Hans noted with interest that his Anna wore no makeup anyway. Well, it wasn't as if she needed it.
After that first night there had been no others. He had asked her to marry him as the sun arose the next morning and brought a filtered light for the hut. Lying there, the faint sun illuminating her hair spread across his one thin pillow, she had taken his breath away.
Glimpsing her standing nervously at the entrance to the mess, she took his breath away now, too.
The ceremony was conducted in Yiddish. If there was a living rabbi who spoke pure German he must have been far away. Curiously, though he still had to stumble through the ritual, he found he understood the rabbi better than Anna did. It must have been the Russian he had picked up on the eastern front.
Another woman, a widow—Hans desperately didn't want to enquire as to the mechanism of her widowhood—had donated to the cause a simple gold ring. At the rabbi's command, he placed the ring on Anna's finger, then kissed her.
In the ensuing party, deliriously happy, Hans still found time to talk to the rabbi in private.
Harz was the first of Anna's crew to regain consciousness. He was pleased to sense that the tank was still upright.
First things first, Harz thought, groggily. On hands and knees he crawled to Schultz, checked him briefly for damage, and confirmed he was alive and, as near as cursory and inexpert examination could determine, unbroken.
A few slaps across the face raised Dieter to a semblance of awareness.
"Back to your station, old son, while I check on the commander."
With the groggy Schultz climbing back into his gunner's station, and the main battery about to be, hopefully, functional, Harz went on to the second priority—the commander.
Brasche was already awakening against the bulkhead of the inner fighting compartment when Harz reached him. Harz saw the commander's arm hanging at an odd angle, red fluid leaking through his uniform, and a red stream pouring from his head to cover his face and trickle onto the deck. "Casualties?" Hans croaked.
"Dunno, sir," replied Harz. "No report."
The brigade Ib, or logistics officer, arising from the tank's deck and climbing back into his secondary gunner's station under his own power, took one look at his screen and answered, "Heavy, sir. Very heavy, especially among the Tigers. I see five of them flashing black on my screen. Though whether they are dead or dying or what I cannot tell. And I suspect our panzer grenadiers will be in worse shape. The artillery seems to have come through well enough."
"Damn," said the stunned Brasche, in a weak voice.