Marching Through Georgia

by S. M. Stirling

  "Storm storm!" the officers' shouts rang out. The Draka infantry rose; they had shed their marching loads and the lead sticks were crouched and ready. Now they sprinted forward, running full-tilt, bobbing and jinking and weaving as they advanced. A hundred meters and they threw themselves down in firing positions; the assault rifles opened up, and the light rifle-calibre machine guns. The second-string lochoi were already leapfrogging their positions, moving with smooth athlete's grace. The operation would be repeated at the same speed, as many times as was necessary to reach the objective. This was where thousands of hours of training paid off"—training that began for Draka children at the age of six to produce soldiers enormously strong and fit. Troops that could keep up this pace for hours.

  And the covering fire would be accurate—sniper accurate, with soldiers who could use optical scopes as quickly as those of other nations did iron sights.

  "BuLlala BuLala!" The battle cry roared out, as old as the Draka, in a language of the Bantu extinct for more than a century: Kill! Kill!

  The return fire was shaky and wild—the slow banging of the German Kar 98 bolt-action rifles, then the long brrrrrtttt of a MG 34. The line of machine-gun bullets stabbed out from a farmhouse on the outer edge of the village. Draka were falling. Seconds later one of the 120mm recoilless rifles fired.

  There was a huge sound, a crash at once very loud and yet muffled. Behind the stubby weapon a great cloud of incandescent gas flared—the backblast that balanced the recoil. Saplings slapped to the ground and leaf-litter caught fire, and the ammunition squad leaped to beat out the flames with curses and spades. But it was the effect on the German machine-gun nest that mattered, and that was shattering. The shells were low-velocity, but they were heavy and tilled with plastique, confined by thin steel mesh. The warhead struck directly below the muzzle of the German gun, spreading instantly into a great flat pancake of explosive; milliseconds later, the fuse in its base detonated.

  Those shells had been designed for use against armor, or ferroconcrete bunkers. The loose stone of the farmhouse wall disintegrated, collapsing inward as if at the blow of an invisible fist. Beyond, the opposite wall blew outward even before the first stones reached it, destroyed by air driven to the density of steel in the confined space of the house. The roof and upper floor hung for a moment, as if suspended against gravity. Then they fell, to be buried in their turn by the inward topple of the end walls. Moments before there had been a house, squalid enough, but solid. Now there was only a heap of shattered ashlar blocks.

  "Now!" Eric threw himself forward. The headquarters lochos followed. Ahead the mortar barrage ' walked" into the town proper, then back to its original position. But now the shells carried smoke, thick and white, veiling all sight; bullets stabbed out of it blindly. The 120's crashed again and again, two working along the edge of the village, another elevating slightly to shell the larger buildings in the square.

  * * * *

  With cold detachment, Tetrarch Marie Kaine watched the shellfire crumble the buildings, flicked a hand to silence the firing line as the rifle Tetrarchies reached the barrier of smoke. It thinned rapidly; she could hear the crackling bang of snake charges blasting pathways through the German wire. The small-arms fire died away for a brief moment as the first enemy fire positions were blasted out of existence, overrun, silenced. The medics and their stretcher bearers were running forward to attend to the Draka wounded.

  "Combat pioneers forward!" she said crisply. The teams launched themselves downhill, as enthusiastically as the rifle infantry had done; being weighed down with twenty kilos of napalm tank for a flamethrower, or an equal weight of demolition explosive, was as good an incentive for finding cover as she knew.

  "All right," she continued crisply. "Machine-gun sections cease fire. Resume on targets of opportunity or fire-requests."

  The smoke had blown quickly; a dozen houses were rubble, and fires had started already from beams shattered over charcoal braziers. The fighting was moving into the town; she could see figures in Draka uniforms swarming over rooftops, the stitching lines of tracer. They were as tiny as dolls, the town spread out below like a map…

  But then, I always did like dolls, she thought. And maps. Her father was something of a traditionalist; he had been quite pleased about the dolls, until she started making her own… and organizing the others into work parties.

  The maps, too: she had loved those. Drawing her own lines on them, making her own continents for the elaborate imagined worlds of her daydreams. Then she discovered that you could do that in the real world: school trips to the great projects, the tunnel from the Orange River to the Fish, the huge dams along the Zambezi. Horses and engineering magazines, she thought wryly. The twin pillars of my teenage years.

  It had been the newsreels, finally. There wasn't much left to be done south of the Zambezi, or anywhere in Africa—just execution of projects long planned, touching up, factory extensions. But the New Territories, the lands conquered in 1914-1919… ah! She could still shiver at the memory of watching the final breakthrough on the Dead Sea-Mediterranean Canal, the frothing silver water forcing its way through the great turbines, the humm, the power. The school texts said the Will to Power was the master-force. True enough… but anyone could have power over serfs, all you needed was to be born a citizen. The power to make cultivated land out of a desert, to channel a river, build a city where nothing but a wretched collection of hovels stood —that was power! Father had had a future mapped out for her, or so he thought: the Army, of course; an Arts B.A.; then she could marry, and satisfy herself with laying out gardens around the manor. Or if she must, follow some genteel, feminine profession, like architecture…

  But no, I was going to build, she thought. And here I am, destined to spend the best years of my life laying out tank traps, clearing minefields and blowing things up. Oh, well, the war won't last forever. Russia, Europe… we'll have that, and there's room for projects with real scale, there.

  A trained eye told her that it was time. "Forward," she called. "Wallis, stop fiddling with that radio and bring the spare set. New firing line at the first row of houses." Or rubble, her mind added. That was the worst of war—you were adding to entropy rather than fighting it. Just clearing the way for something better, she mused, dodging forward. Hovels, not a decent drain in the place.

  Chapter Seven

  "… saw little of my father. Home was the servants' quarters of Oakenwald. where I was happy, much of the time. Tantie Sannie fed me and loved me. there were the other children of the House and Quarters to play with, the gardens and the mountainside to explore. Memory is fragmentary before six; it slips away, the consciousness which bore it too alien for the adult mind to re-experience. Images remain only—the great kitchens and Tantie baking biscuits, watching from behind a rosebush as guests arrived for a dance, fascinating and beautiful and mysterious, with their jewels and gowns and uniforms. A child can know, without the knowledge having meaning. We had numbers on our necks; that was natural. The Masters did not. There were things said among ourselves, never to the Masters. I remember watching Tantie Sannie talk to one of the overseers, and suddenly realizing she's afraid… The Young Master was my father, and came to give me presents once a year. I thought that he must dislike me, because his face went hard and fixed when he looked at me, and I wondered what I had done to anger him. A terrible thought—my Mother had died bearing me. Had I killed her? Now I know it was just her looks showing in me. but the memory of that grief is with me always. And then he came one night to take me away from all I had known and loved, telling me that it was for the best. Movement cars and boats, strangers; America, voices I could hardly understand…"

  ―Daughter to Darkness: A Life, by Anna von Shrakenberg, Houghton & Stoddart, New York, 1978

  Village One, Ossetian Military Highway April 14, 1942: 0530 Hours

  Eric cleared the low stone fence with a raking stride. Noise was all around them as they ran: stutter of weapons, explosion blast, scream
s; the harsh stink of cordite filled his nose, and he felt his mouth open and join in the shout. The rifle stuttered in his hands, three-round bursts from the hip. Behind him he heard Sofie shrieking, a high exultant sound; even the stolid McWhirter was yelling. They plunged among the apple trees, gnarled little things barely twice man height, some shattered to stumps; the Fritz wire was ahead, laneways blasted through it with snake charges. Fire stabbed at them; he flicked a stick-grenade out of his belt, yanked the pin, tossed it.

  Automatically, they dove for the dirt. Sofie ooffed as the weight of the radio drove her ribs into the ground, then opened up with her light machine-pistol. Assault rifles hammered, but the German fire continued; a round went crack-whhhit off a stone in front of his face, knocking splinters into his cheek. Eric swore, then called over his shoulder.

  "Neall Rocket gun!"

  The trooper grunted and crawled to one side. The tube of the weapon cradled against her cheek, the rear venturi carefully pointed away from her comrades; her hands tightened on the twin pistol grips, a finger stroked the trigger. Thump and the light recoilless charge kicked the round out of the short, smooth-bore barrel. It blurred forward as the fins unfolded; there was a bright streak as the sustainer rocket motor boosted the round up to terminal velocity: crash as it struck and exploded. Her partner reached to work the bolt and open the breech, slid in a fresh shell and slapped her on the helmet.

  "Fire in the hole!" he called.

  Forward again, through the thinning white mist of the smoke barrage, over the rubble of the blasted house. That put them on a level with the housetops, where the village sloped down to the road. He reached for the handset.

  "Marie, report."

  "Acknowledged. Activity in the mosque, runners going out. Want me to knock it down?"

  "Radio?"

  "Nothing on the direction-finder since I hit the room with the antennae."

  "Hold on the mosque, they'd just put their H.Q. somewhere else, and we're going to need the 120 ammo later. Bring two of the heavies forward, I'll take them over; leave the other four in the line, shift positions, direct fire support on tetrarchy-leader direction. Use the 120's if we spot major targets; keep the road north under observation. And send in the Ronsons and satchelmen—we're going to have to burn and blast some of them out." A different series of clicks. "Tom, close in. Tetrarchy commanders, report."

  "Einar here. Lisa's hit, 3rd Tetrarchy's senior deeurion's taken over. Working our way in southwest to southeast, then behind the mosque."

  Damn! He hoped she wasn't dead; she'd been first in line if he "inherited the plantation."

  "John here. Same, northwest and hook."

  "John, pull in a little and go straight—Tom's going to hit the northeast anyway. We'll split them. I'll be on your left flank. Everybody remember, this is three-dimensional. Work your way down from the roofs as well as up; I'll establish fire positions on commanding locations, move 'em forward as needed. Over."

  Eric raised his head over the crest of the rubble. The peculiar smell of fresh destruction was in the air, old dust and dirt and soiled laundry. Ruins needed time to achieve majesty, or even pathos; right after they had been fought over there was nothing but… seediness, and mess. Ahead was a narrow alleyway: nothing moved in it but a starved-looking mongrel, and an overturned basket of clothes that had barely stopped rocking. The locals were going to earth, the crust of posts in the orchard had been overrun, and the bulk of the Fritz were probably bivouacked around the town square: it was the only place in town with anything approaching a European standard of building. Therefore, they would be fanning out toward the noise of combat. Therefore…

  "Follow me," he said. McWhirter flicked out the bipod of his Holbars, settled it on the ridge and prepared for covering fire. Eric rose and leaped down the shifting slope, loose stone crunching and moving beneath his boots. They went forward, alleys and doors, every window a hole with the fear of death behind it, leapfrogging into support positions. Two waves of potential violence, expanding toward their meeting place like quantum electron shells, waiting for an observer to make them real.

  They were panting, bellies tightening for the expected hammer of a Fritz machine pistol that did not come. Then they were across the lane, slamming themselves into the rough wall, plastered flat. That put them out of the line of fire from the windows, but not from something explosive, tossed out. One of the troopers whirled out, slammed his boot into the door, passed on; another tossed a short-fuse grenade through as the rough planks jarred inward.

  Blast and fragments vomited out; Eric and Sofie plunged through, fingers ready on the trigger, but not firing: nobody courted a ricochet without need. But the room beyond was bare, except for a few sticks of shattered furniture, a rough pole-ladder to the upper story… and a wooden trapdoor in the floor.

  That raised a fraction of an inch; out poked a wooden stick with a rag that might once have been white. A face followed it, wrinkled, greybearded, emaciated and looking as old as time. Somewhere below a child whimpered, and a woman's voice hushed it, in a language he recognized.

  "Nix Schiessen!" the ancient quavered in pidgin-german. "Stalino kaputt—Hitler kaputt—urra Drakanski!"

  Despite himself, Eric almost grinned; he could hear a snuffle of laughter from Sofie. The locals seemed to have learned something about street fighting; also, their place in the scheme of things. The smile faded quickly. There was a bleak squalor to the room; it swelled sourly of privation, ancient poverty, fear. For a moment his mind was daunted by the thought of a life lived in a place such as this—at best, endless struggle with a grudging earth wearing you down into an ox, with the fruits kept for others. Scuttling aside from the iron hooves of the armies as they went trampling and smashing through the shattered garden of their lives, incomprehensible giants, warriors from nowhere. The lesson being, he thought grimly, that this is defeat, so avoid it.

  "Lochos upstairs," he snapped. "Roof, then wait for me." He motioned the greybeard up with the muzzle of his assault rifle, switching to fluent Circassian.

  "You, old man, come here. The rest get down and stay down."

  The man came forward, shuffling and wavering, in fear and hunger both, to judge from the look of the hands and neck and the way his ragged khaftan hung on his bones. But he had been a tall man once, and the sound of his own tongue straightened his back a little.

  "Spare our children, honored sir," he began. The honorific he used was uork,, it meant "Lord," and could be used as an endearment in other circumstances. "In the name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate—"

  The Draka cut him off with a chopping hand, ignoring memories that twisted under his lungs. "If you want mercy, old one, you must earn it. This is the Dar 'al Harb, the House of War. Where are the Germanski?"

  The instructions were valuable—clear, concise, flawed only by a peasant's assumption that every stone in his village was known from birth. Dismissed, he climbed back to his family, into the cellar of their hopes. McWhirter paused above the trapdoor, hefted a grenade and glanced a question. At the Centurion's headshake he turned to the ladder, disappointment obvious in the set of his shoulders.

  "McWhiter doesn't like ragheads much, does he, Centurion?" Sofie said as she ran antenna line out the window; the intelligence would have to be spread while it was fresh.

  * * * *

  Inwardly, she made a moue of distaste. McWhirter was a veteran, and a man with those medal ribbons was due respect… but there was something about him that made her queasy, as if- As if he were like that thing in the Yank magazine— what was it called, Amazing Stories? Something eaten out of him, so that he wasn't really human anymore. Not that she was going to say much—the old bastard was always going on about how women were too soft for front-line formations. A roar distracted her for an instant. She looked up, saw wings slash past only a hundred meters up. Ours, she thought: Rhino twin-engine ground attack ships, the "flying tanks." Heading north at low altitude, and three flights went over before she glanced
down once more. Going to be some surprised and unhappy Fritz down there in the plains, she thought.

  With a grunt of relief, she turned and rested the weight of the radio on a lip of rock; the Centurion was facing her, that way they could cover each other's backs. She looked at his face, thoughtful and relaxed now, and remembered the hot metal flying past them with a curious warm feeling low in her stomach. It would be… unbearable if that taut perfection were ruined into ugliness, and she had seen that happen to human bodies too often. And…

  What if he was wounded? Not serious, just a leg uound, and I was the one to carry him out. Images (lashed though her mind—gratitude in the cool grey eves as she lifted his head to her canteen, and—Oh, shut the fuck up, she told her mind, then started slightly; had she spoken aloud? Good, no. Almighty Thor, woman, are you still sixteen or what? The last time you had daydreams like that it was about pulling the captain of the field-hockey team out of a burning building. What you really wanted was bed. That was cheering, since she had gotten to bed with her.

  * * * *

  Eric stood, lost in thought. His mind was translating raw information into tactics and possibilities, while another layer answered the comtech's question about McWhirter: "Well, he was in Afghanistan," he said. 'Bad fighting. We had to kill three-quarters to get the rest to give up. McWhirter was there eight years, lost a lot of friends."

  Sofie shrugged; she was six months past her nineteenth birthday, and that war had been over before her tenth. "How come you understand the local jabber, then?" And to the radio: "Testing, acknowledge."

  "Oh, my first concubine was a Circassian; Father gave her to me as a fourteenth birthday present. I was the envy of the county—she cost three hundred aurics." He thrust the memory from him. There was the work of the day to attend to.