Giessen, Germany, 22 April 2007
Dieter Schultz had held out hope, even after the news of Giessen's fall and the resulting massacre had come. But day after day passed with no news from his beloved Gudrun. Dieter began to believe that hope was forlorn.
Each new day had brought a new fight for the Korps and for the Schwere Panzer Battalion 501(Michael Wittmann). Each day brought new losses. The battalion dropped to eight Tigers, then seven. With each loss twenty-three valiant souls had flickered away in the wind.
Dieter the gunner had had the privilege of painting markings amounting to no fewer than eighty-eight kills—eight broad rings and eight narrow—on the barrel of Anna's twelve-inch gun. With no word of Gudrun, the painting was a thankless, even an unhappy, task.
Briefly there was a respite as one new and two reclaimed Tigers joined the ranks. Then again the steady drain began, replacements never quite equaling losses. Brasche commanded a mere five tanks by the time the last infestation had been cleared from central Germany, said final infestation being the command of the senior God King, Fulungsteeriot, in and around the nearly scraped away ruins of the town of Giessen.
As briefly, Dieter Schultz felt a moment's respite as the long-delayed field mail caught up with the often moving Tiger Battalion. The letter he received held something potentially grand for Dieter: a small wallet photo of Gudrun, looking much as she had the one night they had met; a short handwritten note, lightly scented; a small pack of golden, silken hair. He hoped with all his heart it was not a message from the grave.
Ouvrage du Hackenberg, Thierville, France,
23 April 2007
It was like a descent into the grave. From the spring just bursting forth into life above ground, from an open air scented with flowers, Isabelle and her sons entered through an arched concrete passageway into a dimly lit, damp, dank and malodorous sewer filled to overflowing with human refuse.
Isabelle's spirits sank with each step into the fortress and down. To either side of her, arrayed on cramped cots pushed against damp walls, a mass of hopeless humanity stared at the newcomers with blank, disinterested faces. They seemed barely human in their indifference. Isabelle felt a chill run up her spine that had nothing to do with the cold, underground air.
Still, the cold was there. She remembered back to a worse cold.
The car had long since given up its ghost to lack of fuel. The reeling army had had fuel, of course, but had steadfastly refused to turn over so much as a liter to any of the begging, pleading refugees who had then to take to their feet. Isabelle had briefly thought of selling herself for some gasoline to save her boys. She had thought about it and then, realizing that younger women and girls could make better offers than she could, she had rejected the notion.
Instead, repacking down to true minimum essentials, the family had left the auto abandoned by the road and trudged the last few hundred kilometers afoot.
The cold had been terrible at first. There were moments when the shivering boys had made Isabelle think of ending it for them all then and there. Among the minimum essentials had been a pistol, after all. Though avidly in favor of gun control, as she was—being a liberal, and though, as a doctor, her husband had had a deep revulsion for weapons that harmed or could harm human bodies—yet still, humanly, they had kept her grandfather's service pistol from the First World War, ignoring all calls for turn in.
But no, pistol or not, the maternal imperative had won out over mere misery. Her boys must live. To ensure this, she must live. The pistol remained unused.
Curiously, never once had it occurred to her, when it might still have done some good, that the pistol, more readily than her body, might have obtained a bit of fuel. More than once, trudging through the bitter cold, she had cursed herself for not thinking of that.
Berlin, Germany, 24 April 2007
The reprimand fresh in his hand, the Tir cursed the damnable and damned Germans with as much force as fear of lintatai would permit.
Cannot the Ghin see that these are no ordinary opponents? the Tir fretted. Well, I have one thing left to use.
To date the Tir had been very sparing as to which information, of that which he had received from Günter, he chose to download to the Net, in other words, to make available to the Posleen. Somehow, and the Tir did not understand the precise mechanism, he was being cut off from control. He feared, deep in his bones, that releasing all the information in one fell swoop would make the Germans—never among the least paranoid of humans—look to leaks that they might never otherwise have suspected.
But this was a desperate time. The Ghin was threatening to cut off bonuses, withdraw promised stock options, reduce salary . . . to drop the Tir's rank to de'Tir.
The Tir shivered, as much with the threatened disgrace as loss of income.
He could leak the rest. It would cost him the use of Günter, of course. But then again, Günter had probably outlived his usefulness anyway.
It was considered, even among the Darhel, bad business practice to mistreat an asset, to renege on a deal. Yet the only reward Günter had ever been promised had been the off-world evacuation of his family. No promise had even been made, indeed he had never asked, concerning moving himself to safety. The family was long since gone to a planet far from the path of the invaders.
So be it then, the Tir resolved. The Posleen will be given access to all the information I have. I just hope the idiots can make good use of it.
Giessen, Germany, 27 April 2007
From his thresh-built, gravelike shelter Fulungsteeriot cursed sibilantly. To fall so low, having come so high; this was the stuff of tragedy.
But there was nothing to be done for it; the enemy ring had grown tight around this little enclave of Posleen-hood. Information gathered from the Net told of an encircling ring of fire and steel, even now closing about the throats of the People. Already the wrecked outskirts of the ruined town were, for the most part, back in the possession of the natives. And the natives seemed curiously effective and eager to flush away the last of the Posleen. Why, it was almost as if they took things personally!
Three times Fulungsteeriot had sent his people against the ring of steel enchaining them. Not one breakout attempt had succeeded and the last attempt had not even reached the hated thresh before being broken to bits by their artillery.
Idly, the God King wondered if perhaps he should have saved some of the thresh that had been entrapped here. Perhaps, he mused, these might have been traded for safe passage. Incomprehensible, yet the thresh seemed curiously solicitous of their nestling-bearers and nestlings.
But the thought came far too late. In the first flush of victory what proper God King would think of eventual defeat, or would deny his people the fruits of their victories? Surely Fulungsteeriot was not one such. To the last little putrid nestling, the thresh of this town had been eaten. Not one, so the God King believed, had been allowed to escape.
Yet now, neither was there escape to space, not even for a senior God King like Fulungsteeriot. In their anger and hate the gray-clad thresh had not only surrounded this place, they had moved up more than sufficient of the fighting machines they called "Tigers" to prevent any vertical egress. Fulungsteeriot had tried that route, with lesser characters than himself. The radioactive ruins of not less than seven ships dotted the landscape, victims of the humans' Tigers. There was no escape upward.
A realist to the end, Fulungsteeriot made no effort to create an illusion of hope, though he had one more breakout attempt planned, one involving all of his remaining people. Still, with a mass of thresh artillery pummeling his people into scraps of flesh and rags of skin, he knew he really had nothing to look forward to except the end.
A Kenstain approached the God King cautiously; there was danger in any of the people, even the normals, when they were in a fight for life. At a respectful distance, the Kenstain gave the Posleen equivalent of a cough, a sort of strained gagging sound.
"My lord? There is something you must see, something I just noticed floating amid the ether."
"Yes? What?" asked the God King crossly.
"Just this, lord: of the threshkreen encircling us, one group is the remnant of that the People slaughtered near that place the humans called 'Marburg.'"
Desperately, Dieter grasped hard onto the threads of his illusions. Yet scanning though his gunner's sight across every spectrum, visible and invisible, and from one side of the Posleen-created desert to the next, merely served to crush whatever hope remained.
Stroking the shielded picture within his breast pocket as was his wont, Brasche's heart went out to the boy, as did that of nearly every man of the crew.
"Why?" asked the boy. "Why?"
Krueger, who felt no sympathy at all, answered harshly from the driver's station. "Because some pussy in uniform ran, boy. Read the after-action reviews; they are available on the Net. Because some little pansy took to his heels rather than face the danger, your little girl died. We don't know who it was. We don't know exactly where it began. But someone ran and started the panic.
"It was quite predictable, the way the pussy politicians shackled everyone's hands but ours," Krueger finished.
Schultz looked towards Brasche's command chair. Though he loathed his driver thoroughly, Brasche had to admit, "Yes, Dieter."
"But what can one do?" asked Schultz, plaintively.
Krueger answered, "You kill 'em when they run, boy. Give 'em no choice but to stand and fight. Hang the cowards—low or high—and let 'em kick and dance some if you have time. Shoot 'em otherwise." Krueger felt a little shiver of delight at an old memory—the kicking, jerking feet of a sixteen-year-old coward of a Volksgrenadier, cruelly suspended a mere foot or so above the ground, the noose placed behind the neck to make sure the boy could see how close salvation lay. The memory brought the same laugh Krueger had given off then, his joy in watching the coward's futile struggle undiminished by time.
Brasche nodded, hating to agree with Krueger but knowing that Schultz needed the lesson. "It's true, Dieter. The rot must be stopped as soon as it starts. Sometimes, if you train them right, the rot doesn't start for a long time; maybe not until the war is over. But when you have as much rabble in uniform as Germany today has, you don't have much choice but to use harsh measures."
Dieter took the lesson. "And if you do not, innocent and beautiful young girls die," he said.
Giessen, Germany, 28 April 2007
Under the lash and crash of the thresh's fearsome artillery concerto, Fulungsteeriot and his subordinate God Kings found it nearly impossible to drive their shattered oolt'pos into any semblance of a formation for the final break out attempt. In the end it proved impossible to create much of a formation. Worse, losses to what a thresh would have called the "chain of command" made it no easier to create a workable plan. Fulungsteeriot and his underlings found themselves feeding their oolt'os into the meat grinder with little direction beyond what a threshkreen might have called a "priority of effort."
Chance, however, plays a great part in war. It was chance, to a degree, that the wretched remnants of the 33rd Korps had been nearby, chance that Fulungsteeriot's subordinate had found the information on the Net. Though three quarters of the dug-in circumvallation holding the Posleen in was held by good troops of the 47th Panzer and 2nd Mountain Korps, the area chosen for the "priority of effort" for the breakout was held in part by the defeated and demoralized remnants of the 33rd Infantry Korps.
Well, they'd been in the general area and available. . . .
"Brasche? Mühlenkampf."
Brasche shook his head in a fairly vain attempt to clear the cobwebs. "Hier, Herr General."
"Hans, the 33rd Korps—fucking Pussy-Wehr!—is bolting again. You and your . . . let me see . . . five Tigers? . . ." Mühlenkampf waited.
Keying his throat mike an exhausted Brasche answered, "Yes, sir. Five Tigers left."
"Proceed to sector Valkyrie Three. Jugend Division will follow. But Brasche, you will get there first. You must hold the ridge until Jugend arrives."
"On the way, sir . . . Ummm . . . Herr General . . . what the fuck is going on? What am I to do?"
Mühlenkampf hesitated. Finally he answered, his voice tinged with sad determination, "Your duty, Herr Oberst."
The remnants of the 33rd Korps had not waited for the Posleen to arrive even within effective engagement range. At the first sign—sound, rather—of the approach of the teeming alien mass the Korps had taken to its heels.
Of course they had taken to their heels. These were the fleet-footed remnants, the early deciders, the least brave of all. Any good men, any good leaders? These were those most likely to have held on that fatal few seconds too long before, during the wretched rout at Marburg. In short, these were long since stuffed, in butchered parts, down alien gullets; and then, long since, deposited in malodorous lumps onto the soil thus soiled.
The good of the 33rd Korps had become shit . . . while the shit had become a sort of human diarrhea. This loose shit ran.
With a pronounced crunching sound Anna slid over a long line of civilian vehicles that appeared to have met up with the world's greatest mincing machine. Just past the line of chopped-up metallic scrap, with a deft twist, Krueger spun the Tiger Anna into a position on a military crest blocking the flight of the rump of the 33rd Korps. Like clockwork the other four remaining Tigers took their own positions, two to either side along the same crest. Between them, the five heavies covered an area approximately eight kilometers across.
Krueger, more than any other member of the crew, was required by his duties to look carefully at the close ground. Just after the line of scrap had been an open field. The driver had seen that it contained scattered piles of bones, none with any flesh remaining to them. Briefly, his eyes saw and turned past a skull from which the top had been removed as neatly as might a coconut harvester have prepared a coconut for a quick drink. Krueger was unmoved by the skull.
Ahead were the signs of panic.
Krueger and Brasche, old veterans, had seen this type of panic before. Krueger cursed, "Useless fucking shits!" Brasche simply uttered a half whisper, "501st Schwere Panzer? Stabsunteroffizier Schultz . . ."
From his gunner's station Dieter peered through the sight for the main gun. In the distance he could make out portions of the Posleen mass, pouring from the nearly erased town. Nearer, appearing as individuals and in little knots, without order or discipline, Dieter saw the fleeing remnants on the ruined Korps. His unneeded left hand reached unconsciously for a folded envelope in his right breast pocket. Pulling it out, his fingers deftly opened the envelope and reached in to caress the human spun gold contained therein. A little bright spark of pure hatred burst into flame in the boy's heart.
" . . . fire ahead of that mob. Use your coaxial Mausers. Let them know that they have run as far as they are going to. Draw a line in the earth," finished Brasche.
"And if they won't stop, Herr Oberst? If they cross that line?"
"Then the rot cannot be allowed to spread. You will kill them."
Flame, a smaller flame than the Tiger's usual cataclysmic belch, began to leap out. About two and a half kilometers ahead, just in front of the first of the routing grenadiers, a line of small, dark, angry clouds erupted at ground level.
To the fleeing sea of wit-robbed men of the 33rd Korps the advent of the highly visible Tigers seemed like the opening of Heaven's gates. Instinctively they turned towards the wide-spaced line of the remnants of the 501st, each as if he were a boy fleeing a bully and racing to hide behind his mother's skirts.
Each man of the mob—for that is what they were now—thought only safety, safety at the sight of the immovable mass of the Tigers. Each man was shocked quite speechless when that fortress-gate-of-security, mama's proffered—milk laden—breast, began to pour fire into those foremost in flight.
Some of the fugitives assumed, indeed had to assume, such was the innocence of their childhood upbringing, such had been the kidskin gloves approach to their military training, that the Mauser light cannon fire devastating the knots of those closest to the Tigers could only be a mistake. That was their mistake . . . and the last many of them ever made.
Others, no less spoiled by mama's teat and weakened military training, went into momentary shock, freezing in place.
Then they heard the voice, Brasche's voice. . . .
"Anna, give me external speakers," ordered Brasche of the tank's integral voice recognition speakers.
"Yes, Herr Oberst," the tank's AI responded.
"Order the other tanks to broadcast me as well." Immediately, small hatches in each of Brasche's five Tigers opened to permit the erection of three substantial loudspeakers each. Across a span of a dozen kilometers or more, Hans' voice rang out clearly.
"Halt, you cowardly fucking bastards, or we'll cut you down where you stand."
Hans repeated that message twice more, then elaborated. "We are the 47th Panzer Korps. That's right you shits, the SS. Believe . . . believe in your hearts. We will kill you with no more thought than we'd give to shooting a dog. Your only chance to live is to fight with whatever you have in your hands to hold the enemy. The enemy you can still hurt . . . and we will help you in it. Us? You cannot scratch us and we will butcher you if you try . . . or if you run."
Among the fugitive mass, some took the hint, reshouldered arms and began to fight back. Others, perhaps half or a bit more, just froze in panic. A few, however, judging that five widely spaced Tigers could not hope to cover every little bit of dead space, elected to try to exfiltrate through the low ground, or at least to seek a patch of cover which, while safe from the Posleen because of the Tigers' fire, was also safe from the Tigers and the obvious madmen they contained. The largest number of the fugitives who so chose were those who had thrown away their weapons and could not see any point anymore in fighting, given they had nothing left to fight with.
Several thousand of these were successful in their quest . . . for a time.
"Gunner, eleven o'clock, canister, time fuse, Posleen mass!" ordered Brasche.
Dutifully the loader had a round of canister loaded.
Some would have preferred flechettes for the Tiger's main gun antipersonnel round. It was indeed a very close call. What had decided the issue was, in essence, Teutonic thoroughness. Both were quite capable of killing Posleen. Packed in a twelve-inch shell both munitions could inundate a bit over a grid square, one square kilometer, with deadly hail.
Canister had won over flechettes because a 1.5-inch iron ball—traveling at moderate speed—would kill the Posleen quicker than even several hits by the lighter, faster, narrower flechettes. It was believed that if a Tiger needed to use antipersonnel ammunition in its main gun it would need the targeted Posleen to become "maus-todt"—dead in an instant.
For the first time since being encircled in this hellhole, Fulungsteeriot began to see some hope that the next instant would not see his body smeared and his life extinguished. Ahead, thresh fled. This he had not seen in many cycles.
Though his people had never been able to create, let alone disseminate, a plan, the wild hell-for-leather charge was possibly having a better effect than a coherent, logical plan might have. Certainly the threshkreen's deadly artillery seemed to be having more than the usual degree of difficulty in adjusting their fire to destroy these more randomly appearing and disappearing targets. The very disorder and illogic of the enterprise seemed to be working in the People's favor. There was hope.
Hope was short-lived. For some unknowable reason the fleeing thresh, most of them, halted and turned around. To the God King's surprise many actually began to fight instead of flee.
And then Fulungsteeriot saw the most horrid sight in a life filled with horrid sights.
"Target!" answered Schultz.
"Fire!" ordered Brasche.
Oh, yes, Fulungsteeriot had seen as many as 100,000 of the People in dense-packed formation die in an instant. Yet that rare sight had only occurred with the use of the major weapons during orna'adar, the oft-repeated Posleen Ragnarok. There was thus little of carnage, little of blood, the sheer heat of the major weapons incinerating almost all traces. It was a waste of good food, of course—Fulungsteeriot had often though so. But it was clean and neat.
Not so this new weapon of the vile threshkreen.
A lesser propelling charge was used for the canister. Even though the weight of the total projectile was somewhat greater than that of the depleted uranium penetrators, not nearly as much velocity was needed or desired. The crew of Anna barely noticed the recoil.
Down range about 4.793 kilometers, at a spot Anna's ballistic computer had judged ideal, a small burster charge detonated. Had the cargo of the shell casing been what is called "improved conventional munitions," or ICM, this method of dispersal could never have been used; the very bursting charge would have destroyed the deadly, precious cargo. Canister, however, was inert iron—low-grade, low-cost, low-tech stuff. The detonation of two point five or so pounds of TNT barely disturbed its pieces, though aided by nine strips of linear shaped charge evenly and linearly spaced along the sides of the shell, it did manage to split the shell open.
The densely packed mass of four thousand large iron ball bearings began to split apart. Those most towards the earth at the time of detonation naturally impacted first. Had these balls been much smaller, or had they been moving much faster, they would likely have buried themselves harmlessly into the dirt. Flechettes certainly would have done so.
But at their speed and size these balls did no such thing. Instead, they bounced. Rather, they grazed, skipping over the earth in bounces of decreasing length. Few were wasted. Most managed to pass through one, two, even a dozen or more Posleen before coming to rest. So fierce was the damage inflicted on individual Posleen bodies that the harder pieces of those bodies themselves went down with fragments of their fellows, bones and teeth, imbedded roughly in soft, vital places.
And that was only the bottom four or five hundred of a cluster of four thousand!
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 den 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 had 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 swayed 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, Ausführung 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.
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.