Marching Through Georgia

by S. M. Stirling

  "Da! Da!" he shouted.

  The decurion dropped away. The partisans had opened up all along the treeline, thirty of them thickening up his firepower quite nicely. The SS were rallying, crawling forward now; a MG34 machine-gun began firing in support, and an 88mm shell from one of the tanks smashed a giant hornbeam into a pillar of splinters and fire. Thick green-wood smoke began to drift past as the first Germans reached the woodland and crashed through the tangled resiliency of the bushes. They were still taking casualties, of course, and still under fire from the village on their left flank. The Draka paused to smack a fresh drum into his Holbars, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. In a moment they would fall back, into the thick woods; the partisans could cover that. Fall back to the next ambush position; the trees would channel pursuit nicely. He doubted the Germans would come farther than that, this time.

  Beside him, the Russian was laughing.

  * * * *

  Eric watched as the SS infantry halted, rallied, began to fight their way into the woods. The armored vehicles had swiveled their weapons to support them; only the assault gun kept the village under fire, the heavy shells going over their heads with a freight-train-at-night rush. And the flakpanzers, moving forward and risking their thin plating to hose their quadruple 20mm autocannon over the village, short bursts that hit like horizontal explosive hailstorms. The Draka in the bunker dove for the floor, away from the firing slits. Not that there was much chance of a hit even so; the antiaircraft weapons ate ammo too rapidly to keep up the support fire long enough to saturate an area, but there was no point in risking life for a bystander's view. The action was out of range of their personal weapons, anyway.

  Eric continued his scan, forcing the mind's knowledge of probabilities to overcome the hindbrain's cringing. Some of the SS infantry carriers were reversing, ready to reembark their crews; the Fritz commander must be a cool one, prepared to cut his losses.

  The Centurion closed his eyes for a moment, struggling to hold the battle whole in his mind without focusing on its component parts. Know how a man fights and you know what he is and how he thinks: the words ran through him like an echo. Who… Pa, of course; that was one of his favorite maxims. How had the German commander reacted? Well, ruthlessly, to begin with. He had sacrificed that warcar to gain information. Not afraid of casualties, then. Bold, ready to gamble; he'd tried to rush through with no more than two companies, to push as far up the pass as he could before the Draka solidified their defense.

  Eric opened slitted eyes, scratched at the itching yellow stubble under his chin. Damnation, I wish I had more information. Well, what soldier didn't? And he wished he could have spent more time with the partisan leader, pumped him for details, but it was necessary to send him off to contact the others, if anything valuable was to come of that. After showing him enough dead Germans to put some spirit in him and backbone back into his followers, not to mention what Dreiser had done, that was good work. Escape from the cauldron of death that Russia had become was a fine lure, glittering enough to furnish enthusi-asm, but so distant that it was not likely to make them cautious.

  But it would have been good to learn a little more about this man Hoth in Pyatigorsk. Still… there had been a bull-like quality to the attack. Plenty of energy, reasonable skill, but not the unexpected, the simple after-the-fact novelty that marked a really inspired touch. The Liebstandarte had always been a mechanized unit, no doubt the SS commander knew the value of mobility, but did he understand it was as much an attitude as a technique? Or was he wedded to his tanks and carriers, even when the terrain and circumstances were wrong?

  What was that speech of Pa's again? Don't think in terms of specific problems, think in terms of the task. A commander who was a tactician and nothing else would look at the Draka position in the village and think of how to crush it; one problem at a time. I would have tried something different, he thought. Hmmmm, maybe waiting until dark, using the time to bring up reserves, filtered infantry through the woods in the dark and then attacked from both sides. It was impossible to bypass the village completely, it sat here in the pass like a fishbone in a throat; but there were ways to keep to the principle of attacking weakness rather than strength…

  Ways to manipulate the enemy, as well. Pa again: If you hurt him, an untrained man will focus on the pain. In rage, if he's brave and a fighter; without realizing that even so he's allowing you to direct his attention, that your Will is master. Eric had found that true in personal combat; so few could just accept a hurt, keep centered, prevent their mind's eye from rushing to the sensory input of the threatened spot. The way some chess players focused on this check rather than the mate five moves into the future. Discipline, discipline in your soul; you aren't a man until you can command yourself, body as well as

  mind. Without inner discipline a man is nothing more than a leopard that thinks, and you can rule him with a whip and a chair until he jumps through hoops.

  He reached for the handphone of the radio, brushing aside an old resentment. So you're a bastard, I'm not so stupid I can't see when you're right, he thought at the absent form of Karl von Shrakenburg.

  Three quick clicks, two slow: recognition signal for the mortars. Focus on the valley below: the German panzergrenadiers falling back from the edge of the woods, dragging their hurt, the SS armor opening up again on the bunker positions, trying to keep the gunners' heads down and cover the retreat. Bright muzzle flashes, the heavy crack of high-velocity shot. Flickering wink of automatic weapons, and the sound of the jacketed bullets on rock, like a thousand ball peen hammers ringing on a girder. Stone rang; raw new-cut timber shifted and creaked as the shells whumped against rock and dirt filtered down from above and into his collar. He sneezed, hawked, spat grit out of his mouth, blinking back to the brightness of the vision slit.

  Wait for it, wait for it. Now: now they were clustered around their vehicles.

  "Firefall," he said.

  Thick rock hid the sound of the automortars firing, the fumpfumpfump as their recoil-operated mechanisms stripped shells out of the hoppers and into the stubby smooth-bore barrels. Eric raised the field glasses to his eyes; he could see a flinching as the veterans among the SS troopers dove for cover or their APC's, whichever was closest. Survivors, who knew what to expect. Rifles and machine-guns pin infantrymen, force them to cover, but it is artillery that does the killing, from overhead, where even a foxhole is little help. And all foot soldiers detest mortars even more than other guns; mortar bombs drop out of the sky and spread fragments all around them rather than in the narrow cone of a gun shell. Much less chance to survive a near miss, and there is more explosive in a mortar's round than an artillery shell, which needs a thick steel wall to survive firing stresses.

  CRASH. CRASHCRASHCRASH… Tiny stick figures running, falling, lifting into the air with flailing limbs. Lightning-wink flashes from the explosions, each with its puff of smoke. Imagination furnished the rest, and memory: raw pink of sliced bone glistening in opened flesh; screaming and the low whimpering that was worse; men in shock staring with unbelief at the wreck of selves that had been whole fractions of a second before; the whirring hum of jagged cast-iron casing fragments flying too fast to see and the cringing helplessness of being under attack with no means of striking back…

  "Sofie," he said. She started, forcing her attention back from the distant vehicles.

  "Ya, sir?"

  "Can you break me into the Fritz command circuit?" The SS personnel carriers were buttoning up, the hale dragging wounded up the ramps and doors winching shut. Even thin armor would protect against blast and fragments. The tanks had raised their muzzles, dropping high-explosive rounds in the village on the chance of finding the mortar teams that were punishing their comrades. Brave, since it risked more fire from the antitank guns in the forward positions, but hopeless. More hopeless than the Germans suspected; there were only three of the automortars with the Draka, their rate of fire giving them the impact of a century of conventional weapons
. At that, the shells were falling more slowly, one weapon at a time taking up the bombardment, to save ammunition and spare the other barrels from heat buildup.

  Another of TechSec's marvels, another nightmare for the supply officers, a detached portion of Eric's mind thought. Officially, Technical Section's motto was "Nothing But the Best"; to the gun-bunnies who had to hump the results of their research into battle, it was commonly held to be "Firepower at All Costs."

  Sofie had unslung the backpack radio, opened an access panel, made adjustments. Draka Held radios had a frequency-randomizer, to prevent eavesdropping. It was new, experimental, troublesome, but it saved time with codes and ciphers. The Fritz, now, still… She put fingers to one earphone and turned a dial, slowly.

  "Got "em," she said cheerfully, raising her voice over the racket of combat. "They don't seem happy, nohow."

  Eric brought the handset to his ear, willing distractions to fade until there was only the gabble of static-blurred voices. His own German was good enough to recognize the Silesian accent in the tone that carried command.

  "Congratulations," he said, in the language of his ancestors. There was a moment's silence on the other end; he could hear someone cursing a communications officer in the background, and the measured thudding of explosions heard through tank armor.

  "Congratulations," he repeated, "on your losses. How many? Fifty? A hundred? I doubt if we lost six!" He laughed, false and full and rich; it was shocking to the watching Draka, coming from a face gone expressionless as an axe. A torrent of obscenities answered him. A peasant, from the vocabulary, Eric thought. Pure barnyard. And yes, he could be distracted, enraged. Probably the type with cold lasting angers: an obsessive. The German paused for breath, and Eric could imagine a hand reaching for the selector switch of his intercom. With merciless timing, the Draka spoke into the instant. "Any messages for your wives and sisters? We'll be seeing them before you do!

  "Our circuit," he continued, and then: "Cease fire."

  A pain in one hand startled him. He looked down, saw that the cigarette had burned down to his knuckle, dropped it and ground the butt into the dirt. Two-score men had died since the brief savage encounter began: their bodies lay in the fields, draped over bushes along the western edge of the forested hills, roasting and shriveling in the burning fighting vehicles down below on the road. All in the time it might have taken to smoke a cigarette, and most of them had died without even a glimpse of the hands that killed them.

  He snorted. "Someday TecSec will find a way of incinerating the world while sitting in a bunker under a mountain," he muttered. 'The apothesis of civilized warfare."

  "Sir?" Sofie asked.

  Eric shook himself. There was the work of the day to be done; besides, it had probably been no prettier in chain-mail.

  "Right. Get me the medics, I want a report on what happened in Bunker B. Put… Svenson, wasn't it, down on the treeline? Put him on as soon as he reports in; that was well done, he deserves a pat for it."

  "So do you, sir."

  Startled, he glanced over at her as she finished rebuckling the straps of the radio and stood with a grunt. Teeth flashed in the gloom as she reached over and ceremoniously patted him on the back; looking about with embarrassment, he saw nods from the other troopers.

  "Luck," he said dismissively. Combat was an either-or business: you took information always scanty and usually wrong, made a calculated guess, then stood ready to improvise. Sometimes it worked, and you looked like a hero; sometimes you slipped into the shit head-first. Nobody did it right every time, not against an opponent less half-hard than the Italians.

  "Bullshit, sir," Sofie said. "When yo' stop worryin' and do it, it gets fuckin' done." She shrugged at his frown. "Hey, why give the Fritz a call in the middle of things?"

  "Because I always fancied myself as a picador, Sofie," he said, turning to watch the Germans disappear down the valley, infantry carriers first, the tanks following, reversing from one hull-down position to the next so that they could cover each other. "Let's just hope the bull I goaded isn't too much for our cape."

  Chapter Twelve

  02/04/42

  Strategos Cynthia Carstairs

  Planning Staff. Supreme C.H.Q.

  Castle Tarleton. Archona

  Chiliarch Denford de Foumeault

  Harmost [Military Governor]. North Italy, Milan

  Your request of 07/10/41.

  Service to the State! [Handwritten Postscript]

  Look, Dennte. I know we're asking you to make bricks without straw, but there just aren't any more troops or administrators to send you. I can't even spare any reliable old-territories serf personnel; we've stripped the Police Zone to the danger point to support the offensive. Hell, we're running the place with grandmothers and schoolkids as it is; Security tells me there's another of those loony cults running through the factory compounds, claiming all the Draka are being spirited away by their master Satan.

  You'll just have to make do with what you've got; we persuaded the Security people to scale back on their liquidation-and-deportation schedule. I thought you said that would help? We can let you have some of the aerosol nerve gas. if you'd rather.

  Tech Section was pleased with those job-lots of equipment and skilled workers you've been sending: something about "heavy water." whatever that means. Maybe one of the bombardment rocket projects. Anyway, keep up the good work and don't wear yourself out on the Woppo wenches.

  Love, Cynthia

  P.S. No. you can't have a combat command, either. You're too valuable there.

  Draka Forces Base Kars, Province Of Anatolia April 14, 1942: 0600 Hours

  The barrage lit the sky to the east, brighter than the false dawn. Forty kilometers, and the guns were a continuous flicker all along the arch of the horizon, as of heat-lightning, the sound a distant rumbling that echoed off the mountains and down the broad open valleys.

  Johanna von Shrakenberg stood to watch it from the flat roof of the two-story barracks. She had risen early, even though her lochos was on call today and so spared the usual four-kilometer run; slipped out from between Rahksan and the sleeping cat, and brought her morning coffee and cigarette up here. The cold was bitter under the paling stars, and she was glad of the snug, insulated flight suit and gloves. Steam rose from the thick china mug, warm and rich, soothing in her mouth as she sipped.

  The guns had been sounding since the start of the offensive. She tried to imagine what it was like under that shelling: earth and rock churning across square kilometers, thousands of tons of steel and explosive ripping across the sky… the artillery of sixty legions, ten thousand guns, everything from the monster 240's and 200's of the Army Corps reserve to field guns and mortars and rocket launchers.

  "Only the mad inhuman laughter of the guns," she quoted softly. Beyond that was the Caucasus, and the passes where the Airborne legions had landed in the German rear. Her brother among them… she shook her head. Worry was inevitable and pointless, but Eric's grip on life was not as firm as she would have liked. The sort of man who needs something or someone to live for, she thought. I wish he'd find one, this business is dangerous enough when you're trying.

  Dawn was breaking, rising out of the fire and the thunder. Shadow chased darkness down the huge scored slopes of the mountains, still streaked with old drifts. Rock glowed, salmon-pink; she could see a plume of snow trailing feather-pale from a white peak. Below clusters of young trees marked the manors the Draka had built, and fields of wheat showed a tender, tentative green. A new landscape, scarcely older than herself.

  There had been much work done here in the last generation, she thought; it took Draka to organize and plan on such a scale. Terraces like broad steps on the hillsides, walled with stones carted from the fields; canals; orchards and vineyards pruned and black and dusted with green uncoiling buds. All of it somehow raw and new, against this bleakness made by four thousand years of peasant axes and hungry goats.

  Well, only a matter of time, she mused.
Already the Conservancy Directorate was drawing a mat of young forest across the upper slopes; in another hundred years these foothills would be as lush as nature permitted, and her grandchildren might come here to hunt tiger and mouflon.

  The scene about her was also Draka work, but less sightly. Kars was strategic, a meeting of routes through the mountains of eastern Turkey, close to the prewar Russian border. The conquest back in 1916-1917 had been a matter of foot infantry and mule trains and supply drops by dirigibles. Castle Tarleton had enough problems guarding six thousand miles of northern frontier without transportation worries; even before the Great War was over a million laborers had been rounded up to push through railways and roads and airship yards.

  So when the buildup for the German war began there was transport enough; just barely, with careful planning. The air base around her sprawled to the horizon on the south and west, and work teams were still gnawing at scrub and gravel. Others toiled around the clock to maintain the roads pounded by endless streams of motor-transport; the air was thick with rock dust and the oily smell of the low-grade distillate the steam trucks burned. Barracks, warehouses, workshops, and hangars sprawled, all built of asbestos-cement panels bolted to prefabricated steel frames: modular, efficient, and ugly. On a nearby slope the skeletal mantis shape of an electrodetector tower whirled tirelessly.

  Johanna flicked the cigarette butt over the edge of the roof and drank the last lukewarm mouthful of coffee. "Like living in a bloody construction site," she muttered, turning to the stairwell.

  The bulletin board in the ready room held nothing new: final briefing at 0750, wheels-up half an hour later, a routine kill-anything-that-moved sweep north of the mountains to make sure the Fritz air kept its head down. Merarch Anders was going over the maps one more time as she passed through, raising his head to nod at her, his face a patchwork of scars from twenty years of antiaircraft fire and half a dozen forced landings. She waved in response, straightening a little under the cool blue eyes. Anders was the "old man" in truth, forty-two, ancient for a fighter pilot. He had been a bagbuster in the Great War, flying one of the pursuit biplanes that ended the reign of the dirigibles. And even in middle age the fastest man she had ever sparred with.