Watch on the Rhine

Berlin, Germany, 6 June 2007

“Herr Bundeskanzler,” Mühlenkampf bowed his head slightly while clicking his heels. “You wished to see me?”

“I have another mission for you, Herr General.”

“How can that be,” Mühlenkampf asked duplicitously, “beyond preparing my Korps for the next onslaught?” The general was very sure indeed as to what mission the leader of Germany had in mind.

The Kanzler rarely enjoyed games. Especially did he not now, now that his people’s future hung in the balance. He said as much, adding, “Germany has enemies, enemies she has nurtured at her own breast. They cannot be allowed to sabotage us any longer.

“No, damn them!” fumed the Kanzler. “Nor will they until about five percent of them are removed from office!”

“Well, Herr Kanzler, surely your precious democratic constitution has provisions…”

“Not for this, General. Not for what must be done now.”

“Ohhh, I see. You want my Korps to break the law, do you?”

The chancellor glared. “Desperate times, General…”

Mühlenkampf smiled broadly and happily. “There will be a price for this, Herr Kanzler.”

The chancellor had been prepared for this. He opened a drawer, causing the general to stiffen momentarily. From the drawer he withdrew a small rectangle of black cloth, embroidered with silver thread. “I have had two hundred thousand of these made. The Treasury will pay for as many more as you need. Is this a fair enough price?”

Mühlenkampf’s smile disappeared for a moment, his face growing as serious as the snows of Russian, as the falling naval gun shells of Normandy. “To give my people back their pride and their dignity, Herr Kanzler? To let them be publicly proud of what they once were, soldiers, and among the best? Yes, sir. The price is fair.”

Berlin, Germany, 12 July 2007

Under a different torchlight from that under which the Posleen had feasted upon French cuisine, under a moving river of fire, gleamed eyes bright and clear. New uniforms, black and forbidding though graced here and there with silver, paraded under the torchlight. No swastikas were to be seen. But other symbols, once forbidden, were there in plenty.

I wish that I had had the foresight to have Leni Rieffenstahl rejuvenated before she passed away in 2003. What a propaganda scene she could have made from this,

The Kanzler’s eyes could not make out the black uniforms through the glowing haze. Never mind, he knew they were there. He had placed them there.

I knew… way back when I saw the ruin of that American city, I knew that this day must come. It was so obvious… desperate times call for desperate measures and no one has ever seen more desperate times.

Now I have my corps d’elite. Grateful they are too, especially their leaders, for being given back their little symbols. And now, with them, I do what I hate to do… but must.

“Desperate times…”

Günter was livid, absolutely livid. These SS bastards must pay, there must be an expiation! It was nothing less than criminal for them to be singled out for praise, to be given back their symbols. He said as much, forcefully, to the Bundeskanzler.

“Fine,” answered the Kanzler, calmly, from behind his desk. His fingers rapped out their impatience as he asked, “Why don’t you go arrest them? Strip the Sigrunen from their collars with your own hands.”

Günter sputtered with outrage. “Don’t take that line with me, old man. The Greens who put me on you as a watchdog made you and they can unmake you as well.” Günter never mentioned his close connections to the Darhel, of course — those were secret.

“No,” answered the Kanzler. “No. That was once true, but no longer. I used to need your Green Korps. But now? Now I have the Black Korps, my green-hued friend.”

The Kanzler touched a button on his desk. Instantly his door sprang open and two uniformed men entered, accompanied by one other man in the usual BND trench coat. With wide-eyed horror, Günter saw that the uniforms were midnight black… and that they were adorned with certain silver insignia long since forbidden.

“Herr Greiber,” the Kanzler enquired of the trench-coated man, “do you have a report to make on my former ‘assistant’?”

With an East Prussian heel click the BND agent answered, “Indeed I do, Herr Bundeskanzler. Indeed I do. Treason most foul.”

At the Kanzler’s hand gesture, the agent proceeded to lay out Günter’s many crimes, his many collaborations with the Darhel that had redounded to Germany’s detriment. The case was clear and the evidence overwhelming. When the agent was finished the Kanzler asked, “Günter, have you anything to say for yourself?”

Still not quite believing this unfortunate twist of fate, the Kanzler’s former aide shook his head. “You planned this,” he accused. “From the beginning you planned it. You wanted to resurrect the SS, the whole Nazi apparatus. Admit it!”

“The ‘whole Nazi apparatus’? No. I admit only that I wanted to save our people… that, and that I would accept no limits on what was permissible to ensure this.”

“But don’t you see? Can’t you see?” Günter insisted, his eyes shining with all the self-righteousness of the true believer. “There were too many of us… and we were too greedy. We have a chance, once the Posleen have finished culling us and commenced to fighting among themselves, to build an Ideal Germany. Under the guidance of those who understand we could have saved our planet, eventually, and with fewer humans — and those less greedy and wasteful — we could have maintained our holy mother Earth inviolate forever.”

The Kanzler picked up on a few key concepts in Günter’s diatribe. “And you, my friend? You would have been one of those knowing guides, would you not? How were you to live while our people served as feedlots? An off-planet trip? Along with your wife and children? Yes, I am sure that was part of your holy vision too, was it not? Because you were special and the rest of the Volk were not?”

Günter began to defend himself, to object. Then he recalled that the chancellor was half right. He had demanded that his own family be moved to safety. He thought that maybe, just maybe, deep down inside he had expected to join them.

He could not defend himself on that charge. He attacked from a different angle. “You were returning Germany to the Nazis!” he accused.

The chancellor did not answer directly. Instead, he asked one of the black-uniformed men, “What is your name, son?

“Schüler, Herr Kanzler,” the young one answered instantly, springing to a stiffer attention.

“Schüler, are you a Nazi?”

“No, mein Herr. I am just a soldier, like other soldiers.”

“Do you know any Nazis in the 47^th Korps?”

“One, mein Herr,” Schüler answered, simply and directly. “He is a bad man and we all hate him. He is, however, a very good tank driver so we put up even with him, for the Fatherland.”

Turning back to Günter and snorting with derision, the Kanzler said, “Never mind. It matters not. You will believe what you will believe.” Turning to the other black-uniformed man he asked, “Has General Mühlenkampf reported on progress?”

The shorter but more senior of the two answered, “The general reports that most suspect members of the Federal Legislature are under arrest, along with the A list of suspects within the Bundeswehr higher command echelons. In addition, leaders of the more radically antihuman of the political parties are almost entirely in the bag… Though some have already been executed… er, shot while escaping. Several dozen appear to have disappeared from Germany entirely, along with their families. The Darhel are not to be found either. Still, isolation of whatever Darhel may remain moves forward apace.”

“Good, very good,” answered the Kanzler, though inside he felt utterly dirtied. His old gray head nodded in Günter’s direction. “Please add this one to the bag.”

Ouvrage du Hackenberg, Thierville, France, 14 July 2007

And so now I finally understand what it means to languish in a prison.

It was Bastille Day in France, rather, in that tiny portion of France still in human hands. It had always been a big holiday for Isabelle, more for its progressive, revolutionary character than for its patriotic. This Bastille Day, however, she felt little urge to celebrate, this despite the double ration of the French staff of life, wine, ordered by the fortress commander.

The wine was bitter and poor, a modern day version of the Vinogel, concentrated wine, France had at some times in the past issued to her soldiers. Reconstituted with water, this modern Vinogel had little to commend it beyond that it tasted faintly of having something like grape in its ancestry… that, and that it had mind and sense-numbing alcohol.

And Isabelle wanted her senses numbed, wanted desperately for some escape from this new horror that jokingly went by the name, “life.”

She had heard there were cities abuilding underground, cities safe and warm where a human might hope to live something like a real life. Hackenberg, despite the season, was anything but warm. Indeed, the walls of this underground prison exuded a steady flow of cold wet moisture and sucked away whatever warmth one’s body might produce. No single person, nor all the fifty thousand packed in like sardines with Isabelle and her sons, could warm the place by so much as half a degree.

And though the place was, literally, a fortress, Isabelle knew that this did not add to the safety of herself and hers, but rather detracted from it. A fortress was also a target, thus so were she and her boys.

The boys’ father too, had been a target, so she had to assume. For there had been no word, not since the brief phone call that had announced the invasion, the destruction of her country, and the impending slaughter of its people.

That knowledge, that her beloved husband had almost certainly fallen to the invaders, was like a knife twisted into her innards. That pain made Isabelle pour, more than drink, the wretched reconstituted wine down her throat.

Even as dissidents and derelicts poured into holding pens, so too did information, vital information, flow to every nook and cranny of Germany’s multifaceted war effort.

Did information flow? It was as nothing compared to the flow of refugees. Did refugees flow? Then so too did power, as Germany acquired, unintentionally, a stranglehold over everything needed by the refugees, and by the remnants of their armed forces. Most of these forces were absorbed by the Bundeswehr. Still, Mühlenkampf and his men had done good service and deserved reward. The Kanzler therefore decreed the expansion of 47^th Panzer Korps into what was called “Army Group Reserve.” In addition to acquiring another two panzer and four good motorized infantry Korps, as well as the penal division composed of the remnants of the more than decimated 33^rd Korps, Mühlenkampf also assumed control of a large number of newly created foreign formations. Division Charlemagne marched again, in lock step with divisions and brigades of Latvians, Estonians, Poles, Spaniards and others.

Of these, Division Charlemagne was an oddity. For it was the only Francophone formation under German control. Unlike the other, overrun, states of Europe, the French resolutely refused to subordinate their interests to anyone else’s command. Their army guarding the much reoriented Maginot line, the four or five million remaining French men, women and children huddled either in camps between the Line and the Rhein, or shivered in dank misery in the bowels of the line itself.

(Magnanimously, the French had offered to integrate their forces, but only if a French commander was named, certain key French interests put in first place. Inexplicably, the Germans had failed to see the advantages to this approach.)

Charlemagne came to be recreated when the commanding general of a French armored division had simply mutinied against what he called the “institutionalized stupidities” of the French High Command, then gathered up his soldiers and their dependants, and reported to the German border seeking employment. Supplemented by numerous individual volunteers, some of those being veterans of the original division who had come to Germany to volunteer anew, Charlemagne was a large division even by the inflated standards of the Posleen War.

Losses, of course, had been staggering. By the time Germany was cleared of Posleen infestations, many divisions that had once boasted strengths as high as twenty-four thousand now contained barely half that. Yet there was a new ruthlessness in Germany, a ruthlessness that cared little for the “rights” of individuals, much for the survival of the Volk.

Student deferments? Gone. Alternative service? Gone. Refusal to serve? Conscientious Objector status claimed? The Penal Formation once known as the 33^rd Korps grew to meet and then exceed its former strength. And the hangmen were often kept quite busy.

Nice, safe and comfortable billets in the rear? “No more, my son. You are going to the front. Women can do your job well enough.”

Only workers vital to the war effort were spared the sweep of conscription. Many of these were agricultural. Many others were industrial. Some were scientific and industrial both.

Kraus-Maffei-Wegmann Plant, Munich, Germany, 15 July 2007

“I could wish our antilander munitions had been even slightly less powerful,” sighed Mueller.

Karl Prael raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Simplicity,” answered Mueller. “If we hadn’t blasted all of the Posleen’s C- and B-Decs to flinders, there might have been enough of their anti-shipping railguns to retrofit every Tiger in the inventory and the ones that will be rolling off the assembly floor in the near future, and to provide a great number of more or less fixed defense batteries. As it is, we have a few score serviceable guns, no more. Sixty or seventy where we might have had six or seven hundred… maybe even several thousand.”

“You understate things,” Prael observed. “We have recovered sixty or seventy so far, but we have hardly begun to scrap even half of the alien wrecks littering the countryside. It is almost certain that there will be enough railguns for the complete run of Tiger III, Ausführung B. Pessimist,” he finished with a smile.

“Maybe,” conceded Mueller. “Maybe… if we can scrap the wrecks while doing no further damage. If we can modify the railguns to fit our existing carriages… or our carriages to fit the guns. And if we can even get them here for modification and mounting.”

“And if we have time,” muttered Prael, head sinking. “When do you think, really think, we’ll have the B model in hand?”

Mueller bit his lower lip, shaking his head, “We won’t have a prototype for as much as four or five months. I think we have been too ambitious.”

Prael understood, even agreed. The B model Tiger was a leap ahead of the original, mounting not just a railgun capable of striking the enemy even in space, but also nuclear propulsion, much thickened and enhanced armor, a new AI suite. And these were only the major differences. There were numerous minor ones as well.

“It is time,” announced Prael, looking at his watch. Nodding, Mueller agreed and the two walked to a room containing the other members of the core design team.

It was supposed to be a party, a farewell party. The world had seen more joyful occasions. Most funerals were at least equally festive.

Certainly Schlüssel’s face showed unhappiness. Equally so Henschel, the bearded Nielsen, and the usually ebullient Breitenbach wore long faces.

“Must you go, David? Really? Must you?” asked Breitenbach.

Benjamin quietly nodded his head. He had been this way — dour and quiet — ever since the news had come the previous December of the fall of Jerusalem; wife gone, family gone, friends gone. A few hundred thousand Jews had been evacuated, most of them being given shelter by Germany and the United Kingdom. Certainly anti-Semitic France’s strong and vocal Muslim minority had put up vigorous protests towards the notion of sheltering the religious and cultural enemy.

But Germany, long-guilty Germany — ever seeking forgiveness, had opened up. Her strong merchant fleet along with the Kriegsmarine and the Royal Navy had braved a gauntlet of Posleen fire (much of it only generally aimed, as the Posleen understood wet water vessels but poorly) to bring out the Jews.

Two hundred thousand of them came, mostly the very young. Yet there had been enough young men, and women, six or seven thousand, of an age to fight. And fight they most certainly wanted to. Yet how? With whom? There was only one group in the German military used to assimilating foreigners… yet that group?

Mühlenkampf had offered, promising them their own unit. He had asked quite humbly for this chance to make up, in however small part, for a sordid… nay, horrid… past. He had even sent Hans Brasche, the history of whom he knew, to talk to the refugees and to Benjamin.

“Yes, I must go,” answered the Israeli. “My job is done here… but there is more I can do.”

Understanding at his core, Breitenbach stepped back, looking Benjamin over from top to bottom. A small silver star of David graced the Israeli’s right collar, the four pips of a major his left. Silver buttons held the tunic closed. A silver embroidered armband encircled his left sleeve, at the cuff.

The armband proclaimed, in silver letters, Hebrew and Roman, one above the other, “Judas Maccabeus.”

The uniform was midnight black.

Headquarters, Army Group Reserve, Kapellendorf Castle, Thuringia, 25 July 2007

The group headquarters had taken possession of an ancient castle as its headquarters. Inauspiciously, the castle had once served as the headquarters of the Prussian Army before its disastrous defeat by Napoleon in the twin battle of Jena-Auerstadt in 1806. Cool and damp it was, made worse by its surrounding moat. It was not convenient, and one had to go outside to use the latrine. Yet it is, for the nonce, home, thought Mühlenkampf. And it is centrally located.

“Time, gentlemen. It is of the very essence. Whether Germany lives or dies depends on time more than anything. And we think we have less than six months until the next wave lands on our heads.”

“General?” asked Brasche of Mühlenkampf. “Do we have reason to believe they will come right down on us like last time?”

Mühlenkampf’s eyes swept the room. Not one man lower than a lieutenant general… except for Hans, recently promoted to full colonel. And yet Hans, not the others, asked the good questions. “Ordinarily, Hansi, I would say they are stupid enough to use the same trick twice. This time I expect it because they just may be smart enough to do so.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because it is unlikely we will be able to handle it. Within six months the numbers of the enemy to our east and west may have grown to as many a one billion each — yes, they mature that fast! That is the equivalent of perhaps ONE HUNDRED FORTY-FIVE THOUSAND infantry divisions on each front! Though they can move faster and with less train than any infantry division ever known, of course.”

Mühlenkampf continued, “There is actually a fair chance we could defend against each of those assaults. With foreign troops, recent expansions, and the culling of the slackers, Germany actually can place three hundred or so divisions along the Rhein, about as many facing the Vistula, and a like number dispersed throughout the center of the country. And we are digging in and pouring concrete like mad. All that while still leaving a significant reserve in the center, mostly ourselves.

“North and south our flanks are secure, of course, against any ground assault. And our Tigers,” he said, with an appreciative nod towards Brasche, “appear capable of dealing with many times their number.”

Brasche answered truthfully, “We can if we get enough of them. The system has not brought me up even to my old, preattack, strength. I have no strong hope that they’ll fill me to my new strength of forty-one Tigers.” He paused briefly. “I am training the new recruits on the seven Tigers I currently have operational. And new and rebuilt Tigers are coming at a rate of about one every six days or so. ”

Free to recruit for themselves, the 47^th Korps had set to that task with a will. Posters, radio, television and internet carried the message of the now black-clad, Sigrune-bearing “asphalt soldiers.” Even the ranks of the Bundeswehr helped here, in two ways. More than a few men of the Bundeswehr opted to transfer. And from others came the message to younger brothers — and even to sons — that the 47^th Korps, openly called “the SS Korps” now, was an altogether worthy group, vital to the Fatherland’s defense.

That the girls seemed more interested in the men of the more glamorous and dashing “Schwarze Korps” only helped matters.

Recruits, high-quality recruits, were plentiful. The ranks swelled and over swelled. The 501^st, recently redubbed the 501^st Schwere Panzer Brigade (Michael Wittmann), drew enough to expand its three skeletonized line companies into full battalions, and its headquarters and support company into three more such plus another battalion for brigade headquarters and general support. The addition of a large artillery regiment — seventy-two guns and twenty-four multiple rocket launchers, engineer demibattalion, air defense demibattalion, plus a reinforced battalion each of panzer grenadiers and reconnaissance troops completed the package. In all, Hans would command close to forty-six hundred troops.

The cadre for these men and the formations they comprised was obtained from diverse sources. First of course were the survivors of the original 501^st. This mix was somewhat enhanced by intensive training courses for those deemed most worthy. Additionally, Bad Tolz had been identifying potential junior officers and noncoms all along. These, leadership training once completed, helped fill up both the 501^st and the 47^th Korps. Some cadre was obtained also from the regular Bundeswehr, from those who wished to escape any residual trace of the, admittedly dying, political correctness that had infected that force, sending many a young soldier to premature death and leaving many a town, like Giessen, ripe for the slaughter.

Lambs to the slaughter, mused Krueger, lambs to the slaughter.

As had Dieter Schultz and his peers once stood in shivering fear before the terror inspiring Krueger, now the new men likewise quaked. The cold of the Bavarian Alps had added to Dieter’s shivering. Now, in the mild Thuringian summer, Krueger needed nothing more than the black uniform with the silver insignia; that and his icy cold blue eyes and frosty mien.

The SS man stopped to slap the face of a new recruit whose face showed just a little too much fear. The boy was knocked to the ground by the blow, then kicked while he lay stunned by a high, polished jackboot. “An SS man recovers from any blow immediately,” announced Krueger, adding another, fairly mild, kick for punctuation. “Up, boy!” Then, loud enough to carry, “You’ll all learn to become tougher and more resilient than Krupp’s steel.

“Why,” he added, a trace of utter loathing in his voice, “you’ll even become more resilient than the Jews, and they put Krupp’s product to shame.”

Krueger shivered himself at the thought of the new formation, this “Judas Maccabeus” brigade. Fucking untermensch. It is a disgrace, it is.

Walking, no strutting, down the ranks of the new men, Krueger reminded Brasche of nothing so much as a fighting game cock, proud and aggressive. Of course I loathe the son of a bitch, mused Brasche, loathe him for so many reasons. Nazi bastard!

Brasche stood too far off to hear what Krueger said to the new men. He had a good enough idea; he had seen and heard it all before, seen it in some rather strange places, too.

The Israelis hadn’t wanted him at first; they’d made that painfully clear. They believed him when he’d said that he had never taken part in any crime against Jews. They believed he wanted to make amends. They knew he had skills they needed desperately and lacked almost totally. But ex-SS… ?

Hans had countered with the irrefutable argument, “You want me dead, most of you. I cannot blame you for that. So send me where I can die.”

The Israelis were not that generous, and so he found himself not leading — the Israelis had been very clear he was never to lead Jews in battle — but training the scraps of diverse and wretched humanity passing through a small camp for a brief course in battle before being shipped off for butchery somewhere along the frontier.

So too he found himself teaching by pointing, slowly and painfully learning Hebrew, eating Kosher food — unaccustomedly bland. He had never felt more alone. Uncomfortable, too, for while others could strip to the waist in the fierce Middle Eastern heat, he could never remove his T-shirt, the covering for the tattoo that marked him for what he had been. Even to shower Hans had to wait until all else were done, that, or arise at an obscene hour.

There were a couple of bright spots. One was Sol, an ex Camp KAPO, one of the imprisoned Jews who actually had done, had been forced to do, most of the hands-on dirty work in the concentration camps. Sol, a Bavarian from Munich, spoke native German of course — despite that distressing south German accent. Better, he had his own sins in plenty and was disinclined to judge. They could speak sometimes, share a beer, remember better days… even hope for better days. They never talked about the war or the camps; each sensed in the other a horror not to be raised or erased.

The other bright spot was Anna, a dark blond Berliner girl who even spoke in a somewhat more upper crust version of Hans’ own native dialect. Hans didn’t know much of Anna’s history, only that she had been in the camps at some time during the war.

Of her history he knew little; and he was loathe to conjecture about more. But in the here and now he also knew she was beautiful — breathtaking, really, with sculpted features and body coupled to bright and kind shining green eyes. Her mien and manner showed a spirit even the camps could not crush. Though most of the Israeli girls scorned makeup, Hans noted that Anna seemed to actively despise it. No matter, she was more than beautiful enough without artificial adornment.

Lastly he knew he was unworthy… so that whenever Anna made to get closer he withdrew. Withdrew? Rather it was more like he fled in barely concealed terror whenever the girl approached on any but professional matters. Hans could not bring himself, ever, to look into those green eyes. He avoided the north side of the camp, the women’s area, like the very plague.

“You are a fool, Hans,” said Sol one day as the two sat on barracks steps over an evening’s friendly beer.

At Hans’ quizzical look the Israeli laughed. “The girl follows you like a puppy. Why do you always run the other way?”

Heaving a deep sigh was Hans’ only answer.

“Don’t lie to me, old son,” said Sol, taking a quick sip of warm and insipid beer, “not even by refusing to answer. I see your face when you look in her direction. I can practically hear your heart race when she walks by upwind.”

“I know,” Hans whispered, softly. “But I just can’t.”

“In the name of God, why not?”

“Because I am unworthy,” Hans answered, simply.

“You little shits think you are worthy to become SS?” demanded Krueger, still strutting. “I’ve ass-fucked quivering little Yid whores at Ravensbrück who were more worthy than you, you filth.

“They, at least, had staying power. It remains to be seen if you turds do.”

At which, much self-satisfied, statement Krueger commanded, “Right, face… Forward, march… Double-time…”

Headquarters, Army Group Reserve, Kapellendorf Castle, Thuringia, 17 December 2007

Hans shuddered with the cold. Though snow lay all around, covering castle, land and ice in the moat, the sky was, for the nonce, clear. Christmas carols — sung by a local group of schoolchildren for the benefit of the headquarters staff — carried far in the dense, icy air, ringing off castle stone and leafless tree.

Standing on an arched stone bridge over the moat, leaning on its stone wall guardrail, Hans stared into the sky at the twinkling stars. He willed his mind to blankness, seeking rest in temporary oblivion.

In this Hans was successful, so much so that he never noticed the tapping of boots on the stones of the bridge.

It was only when Mühlenkampf laid a hand on his shoulder and announced, “The next wave is here, Hansi,” that Hans awoke from his reverie.

“So soon? I had hoped we would have more time. Maybe even get half equipped with the new-model Tigers. Get a few of them, at least.”

“They only just finished putting the prototype through its tests, Hans. The only way we will ever see them is if we can hang on for at least a year.”

Hans nodded then looked skyward. “Up to the navy for now, though,” he said.

Already new stars began to appear and quickly die as the two fleets met in a dance of destruction.

Battle cruiser Lütjens, Sol-ward from Pluto’s orbit, 17 December 2007

The ship’s commander, Kapitän Mölders, could not help but be amused at his ship’s station. Being a part of Task Fleet 7.1 was unremarkable. But, along with another battle cruiser, the Almirante Guillermo Brown, and half a dozen of the ad hoc frigates converted out of Galactic courier vessels, being an escort for Supermonitor Moscow certainly was worth a minor chuckle. What would Lindemann or Lütjens have said? he wondered, thinking of those two brave and worthy German seamen who had gone down with the original Bismarck early in World War Two. Mölders would have chuckled too, except that he, Moscow, those half dozen frigates and two more task fleets were racing at breakneck pace into a death absolutely certain.

There was no chance of victory in any sense except that of taking a few with them. The Posleen wave, sixty-five globes, each composed of hundreds of smaller ships connected for interstellar travel, was simply too great, unimaginably great. And Earth’s defending fleet was simply too small.

Victory, if it came, depended on the ground forces. Victory, for the fleet, would be giving those ground forces the greatest possible chance. Final victory was something not one man or woman aboard the ships had any hope of ever seeing. No more so did Mölders.

On Lütjens’ view-screen Mölders saw a brilliant new sun appear for a long moment. A message from Moscow poured into his ear through an earpiece kept there. Mölders’ eyes widened, then turned suddenly soft.

“Gentlemen,” he announced in a breaking voice to the bridge crew, “that sun was the Japanese battle cruiser Genjiro Shirakami.[38] It has rammed an enemy globe and detonated itself. Supermonitor Honshu believes that that globe was completely destroyed.”

“So we only have another sixty-four or so to go, eh, sir?” whispered Mölder’s exec.

Headquarters, Army Group Reserve, Kapellendorf Castle, Thuringia, 17 December 2007

Lightning flashed and new-born suns flared in space over head. Hans wondered idly at the details, but knew deep down that the details could not matter. He had seen the estimates; Mühlenkampf had shared them with his senior officers. The human fleet was doomed and was not going to do all that much good, either. Still anything was better than nothing and the blooming suns of destroyed ships, coupled with the silvery streaks of hypervelocity anti-ship missiles, made for quite a show.

But he had seen similar shows before, ones that had kept his attention even more raptly…

The attack seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere. One moment found Hans fast asleep in his barracks. The next thunder-crashing moment found him leaping from his bunk, fully alert as only a very combat experienced veteran could come alert. He reached instinctively for the Schmeisser he had acquired on his own ticket as well as the combat harness that held an extra half dozen magazines for the sub-machine gun. Carrying both in his hands and shouting in his wretched Hebrew for the dozen men who shared the small hut with him to take their positions along the camp’s perimeter, Hans stumbled to the shelter’s door. Jacking the Schmeisser’s bolt once, Hans left the hut with Sol’s shouts ringing behind him, directing the others.

Outside was bedlam. Mortar rounds splashed down to briefly light the area with sudden lightning and lingering thunder. Tracers arced through the camp, seemingly from all around. Though this was the first attack it was not the first time Hans had cursed the sloppiness of the amateur, ad hoc, wretchedly trained Israeli army. No wonder the Arabs had gotten through somewhere along the none-too-distant front and come here for easy pickings.

Fierce cries of “Allahu akbar” resounded from a shallow streambed to the north as the volume of fire began to pick up from that direction Not quite sure why, Hans began moving in that direction. Half dressed, more importantly perhaps half undressed, shrieking women began to streak by in their flight. He called out repeatedly, “Anna? Anna?”

One Israeli girl shouted to him, “Anna stayed behind to fight and cover us!” Hans moved out, alone, into the night.

He found her spitting and cursing defiance at the three Arabs who had her pinned and spread-eagled for a fourth crouching between her legs, tugging at whatever covered the lower half of her body. His experienced finger caressed the trigger four times, then a fifth to make sure of one still-twitching, towel-headed form.

Hans reached down and grabbed the girl’s shirt. As he did so he noticed that she was trouserless and that her rifle, bolt jammed open, was empty. Standing erect again, Hans began to half trot backwards, dragging the girl and firing backwards to discourage pursuit.

Mortar fire was still falling, making life on the surface unsafe for man or girl. Coming to a narrow slit trench, Hans jumped in and dragged Anna down with him, pushing her gently to the trench’s dusty floor.

“You’ll be safe here, Anna. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

It was only then that she began to cry, small half-stifled whimpers at first, growing with time to great wracking sobs. Hans tried his poor best to comfort her with little soft pats while keeping a watch topside for approaching dangers. The raid seemed to be ending, the Arab’s fire slacking off. The camp was better lit now, what with half a dozen buildings burning brightly. Perhaps that was what had driven the Arabs off. Natural raiders and almost hopeless as soldiers, they would rarely press an attack without every conceivable advantage.

In time, under Hans’ gentle care, Anna’s sobs subsided. “They were going to rape me,” she announced, needlessly. “You should not have risked yourself. It would not have killed me.”

Hans shrugged. “Perhaps it would not have, girl. They very well might have though, their fun once done.”

Anna echoed Hans’ shrug. With an unaccountable angry tone she said, “I have a name, you know? Anyway, little matter if they had.”

“Don’t say that!” he shouted with unusual ferocity, then, more gently, almost a whisper, “I know you have a name, Anna.”

“Why?” she asked. “You’ve never shown you care. Not until tonight anyway.”

“I care, Anna. I always have.”

“You never showed,” she accused.

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not? Because I was a camp whore? Because I have a tattoo?”

Hans felt a wave of sickness wash over him. “I knew about the tattoo. I never knew about the… other.”

“I was though, for years. For the guards at Ravensbrück.”

Hans remembered some disgusted words from another SS man during a very brief sojourn at Birkenau. His sense of sickness grew greater still, great enough to show.

Misinterpreting, Anna turned her face away to hide forming tears. “It was not by my choice, never by my choice. But I understand why you won’t want anything to do with me…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sir?” queried Merle’s aide.

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know, mon colonel.”

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

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

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

“Lost, sir.”

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

“I believe so, sir. Why?”

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

Saarlouis, Germany, 18 December 2007

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

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

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

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

“Aha! I knew it. What catch?”

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

“Can we?”

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

“Yes?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headquarters, Army Group Reserve, Kapellendorf Castle, Thuringia, 20 December 2007

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

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

The landings had begun. Reports came of at least fifteen apparently major landings across Germany and Poland, along with hundreds of minor ones. The total numbers of enemy on the ground was staggering. Mühlenkampf’s intelligence officer estimated that the total numbers were in the scores of millions.

Germany and what remained of Poland were in danger of being literally inundated under an alien flood.

In some places that flood was being controlled. Newly developed weapons had their influence, chief among them the neutron bombs that the extreme left would never have permitted had they been allowed continued influence. And, though there were never enough of them — there had not been time to build enough of them — and though they were not always in the right place to be used, even so, the enhanced radiation weapons left whole swathes of the enemy puking and dying at many of the landing sites.

The enhanced radiation weapons, “neutron bombs” they were often called, were actually a regressive technological step in weapons development. They differed from more usual nuclear weapons only in not having the heavy uranium shell fitted around the central fissile core that made the nukes so much more powerful, blast-wise, than their predecessors. The uranium shell enhanced this blast by containing and harnessing the neutron emissions of that core.

But the neutrons, unharnessed, were deadly enough in their own right. Emerging from the relatively small blast they acted like tiny bits of shrapnel, passing through bodies and killing the cells they passed through. Enough of them passing through a healthy human would kill within minutes. Moreover the death was miserably demoralizing to any who saw it and lived. Even at a considerable distance they would kill in anything from hours to days. Those deaths were more wretched still.

Best of all, the smaller blast did less physical damage and left comparatively little residual radiation. Indeed, only where it struck steel or a steel alloy did the neutrons create a long-term radiation hazard, by making the metal itself give off gamma radiation.

One bomb — a single one-hundred-fifty-five-millimeter shell — used timely, was said to have killed as many as one hundred thousand Posleen within twenty minutes of its detonation. Scores of ships had been captured intact, though highly radioactive, at that one site. Moreover, casualties in the nearby civilian towns had been negligible, as had environmental damage.

Some Posleen the neutron bombs were not needed to destroy. One of the Posleen landings, for example, had had the misfortune of coming down between Erfurt and Weimar; smack in the middle of Army Group Reserve. The aliens’ resistance there had been both brief and futile.

Despite these little successes, Mühlenkampf still thought, we’re doomed.

“Well, first things first,” he announced to his staff. “And the first thing is to smash through to Berlin to relieve both its defenders and its people. On the way I want to eliminate the alien infestation between Magdeberg, Dessau and Halle. Then we’ll spread out to clear up the area behind the Vistula line. There’s not much between Berlin and Schleswig-Holstein, so the Berliners should be able to make out on their own if they have to withdraw later.”

Siegfried Line, Germany, 21 December 2007

It had been a nightmare for Isabelle, her two sons, and the thousands of other refugees fleeing the Posleen onslaught with them. Emerging for the first time in weeks from embattled and falling Fort Hackenberg, she had been immediately plunged into a very close simulacrum of hell. All around, seemingly at random, fell horrid, frightening bolts from the sky. To their din was added the freight train rattle of German and French artillery passing overhead. Behind her, muffled by the high ground, the torrent of human artillery lashing out from the fortress and other places to rip at the enemy was like a distant but ferocious thunderstorm. Ahead of her, the ground had been plowed and beaten into a moonscape. Also from behind came the occasional flash of a Posleen railgun round striking down at the refugees.

Any refugee that was hit was left for dead; the enemy’s railguns destroyed mere flesh beyond hope of recovery. An occasional pistol shot sounding from the rear announced those few occasions when a straggler, or a wounded refugee, was given a final mercy.

Captain Hennessey led the way, one of his sergeants bringing up the rear of the column. Isabelle’s long, child-dragging strides would have placed her beside him if she had permitted it. Even the desire to get herself and her boys safely away from even random enemy fire was not great enough to make her willing to foul herself by proximity to the French SS man, however. She did find she was close enough to hear him speak into the radio from time to time, and even to hear what was said to him.

The news from that radio was frightening: reports of death, destruction and defeat as the covering battalion from Division Charlemagne was decimated and driven back, again and again, by the massive alien assault. Some of the news made Hennessey stiffen with pain, she could see. Some made his chest swell with pride and his bearing assume a regal posture to match her own.

Once, perhaps, she saw him reach up to wipe something from the general vicinity of his eyes.

The sounds of fighting, distant but growing closer, put speed to the refugees’ feet. The overflight of artillery grew, if anything, more intense as Charlemagne’s soldiers, much reduced in numbers, were forced to call for and depend on it more with each lost man and combat vehicle.

At length, Isabelle saw Hennessey relax. The German border was in sight.

He was met by another soldier in the field gray of the more traditional German regular army, the Bundeswehr. Briefly, she wondered if there would be some scene of hostility between the two, coming from different services and even different nations. But, no, the two met as if long-lost brothers, placing hands on shoulders and shaking hands briskly, illuminating the scene with gleaming smiles.

An old woman with a timid smile came up to Isabelle, drawn apparently by the younger woman’s shining inner strength. “Madame?” the older one asked, “what is going to be done with us? Where shall we go, what shall we do?”

“That is a very good question, madame,” Isabelle answered. “Let me go and find out.”

With that, Isabelle forced down her disgust. In truth, that was somehow easier now than she would have expected. Dragging her two children behind her, she walked directly up to Hennessey and the German. Then she stopped and asked the men the same questions.

The German answered, in rather cultured French, actually, “From here, you will be billeted temporarily in some of the public buildings in Saarlouis. We are arranging food and bedding, medical care too, but it will take a little time and you may spend the night hungry and cold. We did not expect this, you see.”

“I see,” she said, quietly then paused to think. Behind her the long snaking column of refugees advanced miserably through a fairly narrow marked lane. A loudspeaker announced, in appallingly bad French she thought, that the refugees must stay within the markings as the land to either side was heavily mined. He also began to announce the same message the German had given to Isabelle, so she thought no more about the old woman.

For reasons she could not articulate, she resisted joining the stream and stayed there by the side of the French and German officers, watching that human flood pass by.

Eventually Hennessey said, “You really should go on, madame. Please, do. Take your children to safety.” To the German he said, “And Karl, you have everything well in hand here. I have things to do.”

She nodded once, briskly, then turned and with the boys began the fearful trudge through that narrow lane in the broad belt of death. She never saw the look of farewell the German gave to the Frenchman. She might not have understood it if she had.

Isabelle was worried at first if the Germans had really gotten all of the mines out of the way. The thought of stepping on one, worse, of one of her babies stepping on one, send a tremor through her. Then, she consoled herself with the knowledge that the Germans, give the Boche their due, were a very thorough people; that, and that failure to make the trip would see her and her babies eaten.

She enjoyed French cuisine of course; she had no desire to become it.

Past the fields of mines, Isabelle glanced to left and right. Her eyes began to pick out details, a solid-looking slab of concrete here, a vicious-looking barbed wire obstacle there. Three times she passed artillery batteries firing furiously. She had never in her life imagined such a painful torrent of sheer sound.

Kraus-Maffei-Wegmann Plant, Munich, Germany, 21 December 2007

“God, isn’t she the sweetest sounding thing you’ve ever heard,” whispered Mueller, though the intercom from his drive station.

“What do you mean?” asked Schlüssel. “This lovely bitch makes no sound at all except for the tracks.”

Mueller laughed. “I know, my friend. And had you spent any time in panzers you would know how sweet a sound silence can be.”

The positions they had chosen for themselves were somewhat contralogical. At least they were not the obvious ones. Though Mueller and Schlüssel had worked in the design team, respectively, on gun and drive train, Mueller’s army experience as a driver and Schlüssel’s Navy experience as a gunnery officer had put them back in those positions. Breitenbach had no military experience whatsoever but had worked on both armor and close-in defense weapons in the design team. Thus he took command of those and of the half dozen factory workers who had volunteered to run them. Henschel was old, and though one could never have imagined him as loader on a conventional tank he was more than capable of running the automated feed system of any Tiger. A nuclear specialist, Seidl, one of those who had installed the Tiger’s pebble-bed reactors, was in charge of power. One of the factory concession cafeteria workers volunteered to run the small kitchen and double as a secondary gunner. Lastly, Prael, because he knew the AI package to perfection, and because Tiger IIIB relied heavily on its AI, was selected by acclaim to command the tank.

Indowy Rinteel, who was not a member of the crew, felt a strange sadness, and — more than a sense of loss — a sense of something missing from his own makeup. These humans were so strange. They had treated him very kindly from the beginning. No, “kind” was not all. They had been tactful, enough so that he was sometimes almost comfortable among them, despite their size and flashing canines.

Kind and tactful, both, they had been; gentle almost as the Indowy themselves were gentle. Yet, apparently gleefully, they were preparing to go forth to kill and, likely, to die. Rinteel could understand the willingness to die for one’s people. He had come to Earth knowing that, in attempting to sabotage Darhel plans he might well be caught and killed.

What he didn’t understand was this ability to kill. Alone among the known denizens of the galaxy only the humans and the Posleen shared this unfortunate ability. Didn’t they see how it imperiled their souls as individuals?

Or, perhaps, did the humans see? Did they see and decide that, some things were not only worth dying for, they were worth damnation for? It had to be thought on.

The ammunition hoppers were full. Where Tigers like Anna and her sisters carried a mere fifty rounds, the comparatively infinitesimal bulk of this tank’s magnetically propelled projectiles allowed the portage of no less than 442 mixed rounds. The range on its gun would allow taking out Posleen ships even in fairly high orbit.

Fuel was obviously not going to be a problem.

“You know, gentlemen,” observed Prael, “this tank needs a name.”

“Pamela?” queried Mueller, thinking of his wife.

“Deutschland?” offered Schlüssel, thinking of the ship.

“Bayern,” asked Breitenbach, “for where she was built?”

Prael laughed. “You louts have no culture. Have you never attended the opera? Bah! ‘Louts,’ I say! Think, men. What is she but a Valkyrie, a chooser of the slain? What are those Mauserwerke bulbs on front but a Valkyrie’s tits? And what are we but men on a death ride? No, no. This tank must be ‘Brünnhilde’!”

Rinteel did not get the joke. He rarely understood human humor, and what it was about the two weapons mounts on front that raised such a terrifying show of teeth from the humans was completely beyond him.

But that it was humor, he recognized easily. Indowy ideas of “funny” were different from those of humans but that they had a sense of humor was beyond dispute.

They are about to die and they laugh. They are about to kill and they laugh. Truly they are a subject worthy of study.

Rinteel reached a sudden decision. Walking up to Prael in the head downturned, insecurely shuffling, Indowy way, he asked, “Friend-human Karl?”

“Yes, Friend-Rinteel?”

“I was wondering… do you think you might have room for one more?”

Prael seemed to think for a bit. Then he answered, eyes twinkling, “We’re riding a Valkyrie to Valhalla. Why… Rinteel… it would be just plain wrong not to take along a Nibelung.”

Rinteel did not at all understand the fresh gales of laughter, though he understood that he was welcome to come.

Vicinity Objective Alfa, between Dessau and Halle, Germany, 21 December 2007

What the Posleen thought about the megadecibel playing of “Ride of the Valkyries” as the 47^th Panzer Korps smashed into them, Hans had no idea. But he figured it couldn’t hurt anything.

The Korps advanced with, as usual, Panzeraufklarungsbrigade (Armored Reconnaissance Brigade) Florian Geyer in the lead. At a high price in blood and steel, this group had mapped out the enemy’s posture, running rings around them and determining that this was by no means a single landing, but gave every indication that it was composed of no less than three different, apparently noncooperating, groups. In any case, the daring men of Florian Geyer got away with things during their reconnaissance that they never should have had the Posleen worked together.

Hans was quite certain that Army Group Reserve could simply roll over the enemy. But he saw Mühlenkampf’s cleverness. If they were noncooperating, as the Posleen often — usually — were, then they might well be reduced one at a time rather than all at once. It would cost a little more time but was very likely to save precious blood and steel. Hans wholly approved of saving both, where possible.

Not that he thought it would make a rat’s ass of difference to the ultimate outcome of the war.

With his panzers spread out over thirty kilometers, behind and covering Divisions Hohenstauffen and Frundsberg, Hans awaiting the rising of the Posleen ships to meet the armored spear even now plunging through their collective skin in search of the vitals.

But not one Posleen ship arose from this group to contest with the humans. So fast was the thrust, so apparently unexpected, that the enemy were simply crushed asunder with frightful haste. Having a little time for himself, Hans stroked his left breast pocket.

Hans was somewhat surprised at Sol’s vehemence towards the men who shared the hut. Certainly the chewing out he was giving them bore some relation to their clumsiness and torpor when the camp had been struck a few nights before. But it seemed to Hans extreme. Nonetheless, he could not fault Sol for insisting that the crew spend an entire night in punishment drills for their laxity. Perhaps it would help next time.

He did wonder why Sol had waited so long, however.

He had been trying very hard to get Anna, and that look of horror on her face, out of his mind ever since. His effort was without success so far. He had wondered too if she would spread the word of his origins. It would make life impossible here, he knew. Perhaps that would be for the best though. He’d have to be moved if his past became widely known. At some other camp — the Israelis ran a few others like this one — perhaps he would have a chance to continue his work of making what poor amends he could, without being in agony over the daily presence of a woman he adored but could never have.

He had been trying to forget Anna, and the sins inflicted on her, but without success. She filled his mind and his heart, yes and also his desires, more profoundly than any woman he had ever even imagined. Walking from the training field to the little hut, he was awash in emotions he had never really believed existed before.

In this state of distracted misery, he entered the darkened hut to hear, “There is something I must know.”

“What?” he asked of the shadows. “What did you say? Anna?”

“Did you work the camps? I must know.”

He realized from the voice that it was her. “Not the way you mean it,” he answered.

“It is a simple question,” Anna insisted. “You were either there or you were not.”

“I was there once, at Birkenau, for about three days. But I didn’t, couldn’t, stay.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Because it sickened me.” And Hans told her of his very brief sojourn into efficient and organized murder of the helpless.

“Did you kill Jews?” she asked, expanding her interrogation.

“If so, and it is very likely,” he admitted, “not because they were Jews, but because they were armed partisans trying to kill me. That, or Soviet soldiers.”

There was a long silence as the girl digested the information. Finally, she announced, simply, “Fair enough.”

Again the hut was filled with emptiness for long moments. With eyes adjusting to the dim light, Hans saw Anna place a pistol on his makeshift nightstand.

Hans asked, “What was that for?”

“To kill you, if you had been one of them. And then to do the same to myself, for having to live in a world without you.”

Hans began to approach her. “Anna, I…”

“Wait!” she ordered, holding an open palm towards him. “Before you come closer there are things you must know. Ugly things. Please, sit.”

Hans did so, taking Sol’s rickety chair from next to his bunk and placing himself on it, facing the girl.

“I am from Berlin, a Berliner Jewess,” she began. “My father was a professor, my mother a housewife. My father had once been a promising violinist, but he was also a reserve lieutenant and when the Great War began he joined his regiment and went off to serve. He fought for almost four years, before losing an arm and winning a second Iron Cross, an Iron Cross First Class, for bravery. Of course, he could not play violin anymore but the talent was still there. He could teach and he did. And I remember he was very proud of those medals.”

Anna’s voice was surreally calm. “To look at me is to see a version of him. He looked about as Jewish as I, which is to say not very. Even when the Nazis came to power, he and we suffered less harassment than most Jews did. And he was protected by that Iron Cross, for Hitler himself had decreed that the laws against the Jews were not to apply to decorated veterans.

“My mother and I had no such protection. Or if we did, the lesser Nazis chose to ignore it. We were picked up, and he, a man who had shed his blood, had himself been maimed and lost his life’s dream for Germany, followed us voluntarily to the camp, the one at Ravensbrück. Though this was normally a woman’s camp a special exception was made for my father, for some reason.

“I was thirteen years old.”

Anna shuddered then, apparently at the memory of what she was about to say.

“Under the overcrowding, the lack of food and medicine, and the cold, my mother soon sickened and died. With the loss of her, my father lost his will to live as well. He followed her into the grave within two months.”

“I was alone in the world; all alone, Hans. Can you imagine? I suppose I would have died too, without an adult to protect and maybe steal a little food for me. But then, as happens, I changed, began changing anyway, from a girl to a woman. And the guards began to notice.”

Now it was Hans’ turn to shudder; he knew what was coming next. “Anna you don’t have to — ”

“Yes I do!” she screamed, eyes wild in her face. Then, after some internal struggle, she said, a little more calmly, “I do. You have to know; you have a right to know.

“The first one was not the worst. He beat me, of course, never even tried to simply tell me what to do. He beat me then tore my clothes off and bent me over one of the hard wooden beds we had.”

Hans could not remember ever hearing a voice more hate-filled. “Oh, how I screamed and cried and begged and pleaded. That only made him hit me more. The beating lasted a lot longer than the fucking did, too. Maybe that was why he did it, because the filthy swine couldn’t last more than thirty seconds.

“When he was finished he turned me around and slapped my face three or four more times. As he turned to leave he tossed half a moldy sausage onto the floor. He said, ‘Eat that, Jew bitch. When I come back I’ll have a different kind of sausage for you to eat.’”

“And I suppose he did, too,” Hans said, bitterly.

Anna began to rock, gently, back and forth. “Oh, yes,” she answered, distantly, as if from a far away place. “He, and the other guards. Sometimes ten or twelve of them a night. Sometimes all at once. Sometimes they would make a ‘party’ of me.” The rocking grew more intense.

With a voice struggling not to break, she continued, “Hans, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can imagine that they did not make me do. They would even take me out of the camp sometimes and sell me to passing soldiers. For my troubles, they would feed me a bit, maybe give me a toothbrush and some tooth powder, used clothing once in a while, even some cheap makeup for ‘special’ occasions.” She shuddered yet again. “That’s why I so despise makeup, you know? They would make me put it on like a Reeperbahn[40] prostitute and then taunt me that I was just another Jewish whore.

“The worst part though was that not one of them, even once, not in all those years, ever called me by my name. You remember I got angry with you when you called me ‘girl’? The kinder ones would sometimes say, ‘Bend over, girl,’ or ‘Get on your knees, girl.’ But usually it was ‘Jew-bitch, Jew-whore, Jew-slut.’ That sort of thing. I wasn’t even a human being, just a fuck and suck machine.”

At the memory of that last, that ultimate humiliation of being stripped of even a semblance of humanity, Anna lost control completely, breaking down into great, wracking sobs and a flood of long-suppressed tears. Hans, teary-eyed himself, was out of his chair in an instant, holding her, cradling her, stroking her hair and whispering how sorry he was, how much he loved her.

Finally, regaining a measure of control, she wrapped her arms around Hans, squeezed tight, and whispered, “Don’t be sorry. It is over. And you didn’t do any of it. But can you care for me now, now that you know?”

His own nose running slightly, Hans muffled back, “Now that I know what? That you were raped? That you survived? Thank God you survived, my love. You did nothing wrong and I could not love you more if you were as much a physical virgin as I hold you to be a spiritual one.”

Relieved beyond measure, Anna melted into him then. But almost immediately stiffened again. “There is another thing. Something else you must know. I got pregnant, more than once. The first time I was not quite fifteen. The last time I was a bit over seventeen. It was an inconvenience to them, having to take me to the doctor and bribe him to abort me and keep quiet about it. So the bribed the doctor to… ‘fix’… me. I say ‘fix.’ They said, ‘spay.’ Hans, I can never have children.”

Beyond guilt and even beyond pity, Hans felt an indescribable sense of personal desolation. Nonetheless, he answered, “No matter, Anna. Please… believe, that doesn’t matter to me.”

With a last sniffle and a long, quiet pause, Anna came to a sudden, but long contemplated, decision. She stood up, drawing Hans upward with her. She forced a smile and looked deeply into his eyes and said, “I asked Sol to make sure we would not be disturbed; not for all night. I am twenty-three years old.” She began to lead him to his bed, a smile appearing on her face for the first time that night. “That is too old to be any kind of a virgin, don’t you think?”

Though the night sky was illuminated by the battle raging ahead, Hans Brasche ignored it, preferring instead to stroke the pocket containing all that was physical that remained of his love, and submerging in the memory of a first, blessed, night among thousands that were to follow.

The first of the three Posleen landing areas was cleansed before midday on the twenty-second. The second, having more warning, took longer. Not only did it take longer, but this time the Posleen did manage to loft a number of their ships. Hans’ brigade went into action then, his forty Tigers ripping into the newly arrived Posleen. These died, but they died hard, taking seven of Hans’ precious tanks to hell with them. Losses among the rest of the Korps were likewise not trivial.

The third landing south of Berlin was ready when the 47^th Panzer Korps met them on Christmas Day.

Tiger Anna, South of Magdeberg, Germany, 25 December 2007

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.

Federal Chancellery, Berlin, Germany, 25 December 2007

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.”

South of Magdeberg, Germany, 25 December 2007

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!”

Tiger Anna, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, 25 December 2007

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.”

South of Magdeberg, Germany, 25 December 2007

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.

Tiger Anna, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, 25 December 2007

“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.”

Forward Headquarters, Army Group Reserve, Halle, Germany, 26 December 2007

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 501^st 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.”

Tiger Anna, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, 26 December 2007

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 47^th 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.”

East of Magdeberg, Germany, 26 December 2007

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.”

Tiger Anna, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, 26 December 2007

“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.”

Aboard Feast-deliverer, 12 miles above Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, 26 December 2007

“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.”

Tiger Anna, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, 26 December 2007

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 mak up 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.