Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  "Shit, mines! Mclean, bail out! Sammi, back under cover." Shit, shit, they must've turned the Jagdpanzer around to face north; the donkeyfuckers outthought me! Tanya's mind ran through a brief litany of disgust as the Belle slammed to a too-swift halt, nosed down and rocked back. The engine bellowed, and the driver reversed along their own tracks with careful haste; it did not take a large charge to snap a tread, and a stationary tank was a deathtrap.

  Mclean's Sofia Sweetheart stopped, and the hatches opened. "Coverin" fire," Tanya rasped. Two dozen automatic weapons opened up on the buildings across the square and the whole facade erupted in dust and chips and sparks, slugs punching holes through the brick and gnawing at the wall, like a time-lapse film of erosion at work. Then the infantry weapons, assault rifles and the white-fire streaks of rocket guns. From the ridge south of town came a multiple whirrrrrcrack as the reserve-Tetrarchy opened up with high-explosive shell, most falling well short. Then a shadow moved within the black openings of the building, a long horizontal shadow tipped with the bulky oblong of a double-baffle muzzle brake.

  "Sue, can you take him?" Tanya asked, voice carefully controlled. Somebody else was trying; she could see the cannon of a Hond moving, then the flare and crack.

  "Mought." Mclean's crew were crawling back into the shadow of their crippled vehicle, two of them dragging a third. "Tricky." The main gun moved in its gyro-controlled cradle, a feint humming whine as the mantlet moved, the breech riding up smoothly.

  The Belle's commander slitted her eyes against the flash of the main gun. There was a metal-on-metal sparking from the darkness where the Elefant waited, a high brief screech of steel deforming under the impact of tungsten travelling at thousands of feet per second.

  Tanya opened her mouth to speak, but before the words passed her throat there was another crash; louder than the Draka tank-cannon, less sharp, a lower-velocity weapon. But the German antitank round was still moving fast enough when it struck the Sofia Sweetheart at the junction of turret and hull. The Draka tank lurched, and the turret's massive twenty-ton weight flipped backward like a frying pan. Tanya watched with an angry foreknowledge as it dropped straight down on the two crewmen hauling the wounded driver. A leg was left sticking out from under the heavy steel, and it twitched half a dozen times with galvanic lifelessness.

  "Century A!" she barked. "Target the center building an' knock it down, HE only. Everybody here in the village who's got a vantage, load APDS an' stay undah cover." The Elefant would have to come out sometime, or be buried under rubble. Thick armour on the front, heavily sloped, good protection; too good, as long as it had cover. Out in the open… Just a stay of execution, Fritz, she thought grimly.

  Senior Decurion Smythe saluted as she came up to the Belle. Tanya had been leaning back against the scarred side-skirts of the tank, looking with sour satisfaction at the burning hulk of the German Jagdpanzer; she came erect and returned the salute. Smythe was like that, a long-service regular. Forty, old enough to have started her military service back before women were allowed in combat units; green eyes in a leather-tanned face, a close-cropped cap of grey-shot black hair.

  "Ten fatalities altogether since morning rollcall, Cohortarch," the NCO said, in a faintly sing-song accent. Ceylonese, Tanya remembered; her family were tea planters near Taprobanopolis. "Fifteen wounded seriously enough for evacuation. Three tanks and two APC's are write-offs…"

  The Cohortarch cursed fluently in the Arabic picked up from serf playmates as a child; there was no better language for swearing. Smythe shrugged.

  "We took out better than two hundred of them," she added. "A complete armored battalion."

  "The usual odds and sods?" Tanya asked.

  "Mixed Kampfgruppe, accordin' to the prisoners; SS, 3rd Panzer, bits and pieces from here and there." Tanya nodded; the battles that broke the Fritz's Army Group Center east of the Vistula had left shattered units scattered over hundreds of kilometers, and far too many had made it back to the German lines through the Domination's overstretched forces.

  "Put in to hold us up whiles they pulled they infantry back," Smythe continued. "Oh, Cohortarch, about those prisoners?"

  Tanya paused, clenched the fingertips of her right glove between her teeth and stripped the thin leather off. The sun was still throwing implausible veils of salmon-pink to the west, and the breeze was cool on the wet skin of her hand. She removed the other glove, slapped them into a palm, looked at the enemy fighting-vehicle half-buried in the ruins of the building her guns had brought down on top of it. The saw-toothed welds had come apart along their seams, and the six-inch thickness of armor plate was twisted and ripped like sheet-wax. Melted fat had pooled under the shattered chassis, congealing now with a smell like rancid lard.

  "How many?" she asked.

  "'Bout twenty, mostly wounded."

  "Hmmmm." Tanya looked again at the wreck of the Sofia Sweetheart. Then again… "They fought well, hereabouts. We'll have to keep two or three fo' the headhunters; yo' pick 'em. Give the rest a pill, do it quick." Army slang for a bullet in the back of the neck, and utter mercy compared to the attentions of Security's interrogators. She tucked the gloves into her belt, yawned, continued:

  "Legion HQ's word is to get out of the way, the Guard's to freeze in place; the VII Janissary is movin' up into the line north of us, an' the Fritz are still tryin' to break contact."

  "We're goin' to let them?" The decurion tsked.

  " 'Bout time. We should've done bettah today; the troops are tired an' they need rest. Remembah, we've got to win the war, not just beat the Fritz, a victory yo' destroys yo'self to get is a defeat. Anyways, that fo' Castle Tarleton to decide. Meantime, we set up a perimeter an' wait until they can spare transport to pull us back, minimal support till then. Prob'ly refit 'round Lublin, they've got the rail net workin' that far west by now."

  She yawned again, nodded toward the little stream that ran behind the churchyard half a kilometer north.

  "Call TOE support, get the scissors forward." That was their bridging equipment, a hydraulic folding span on a tank chassis. "We'll laager on that-there clear spot just north of the river, less likely to be unpleasant surprises waitin'. Standard perimeter, no slackin' on the slit trenches."

  "Consider it done, Cohortarch. Ahh… L&R?" More military slang: Loot and Rape, a parody of the official Rest and Recreation. The troops' right by ancient custom, as soon as military necessity was past.

  "Loot? Here?" Tanya straightened and glanced about at the straggling village, burning thatch, splintered log walls, tumbled brick. "No pokin' about until it's cleared, nothin' here worth stepping on a mine fo'. No takin' wenches off in a corner, either, same reason; wait 'till we've got the civilians sorted." She wrinkled her nose slightly; what followed would be rather ugly, and she had never found fear a stimulant. Certainly not from some cringing peasant one couldn't even talk to… Still, it was probably the only thing worth taking, for those so inclined.

  Smythe nodded. "I'll need 'bout four sticks," she said: twenty troopers. "Church'll be best for the pen, seein's how the walls're still standing, an' solid," she continued, settling her helmet and clipping the chinstrap. Her tone had the same bored competence Tanya remembered from that time back in the Ukraine, when infiltrators had tried to overrun Cohort HQ in the night; Smythe had counterattacked with the communications technicians.

  You're an odd one, Tanya thought. You got to know people quickly in combat, needed to. Smythe was an exception. Always polite, never a laugh, nothing more than a smile. No close friends, no lover, not even any letters from home, and she had never mentioned her family. The Guard were quartered in Archona in peacetime, in the Archon's Palace when they weren't field-training on one of the military preserves. A senior NCO rated a small apartment; Smythe had kept to hers, except for the informally-obligatory mess evenings, nobody there but three servants she'd brought with her from Ceylon back in the '20's. Model non-commissioned officer, Tanya mused. Soul of efficiency, but not a martinet. And something li
ke burnt-out slag behind the eyes; wonder if I could capture it…

  "Johnny?" she called. The Tetrarch looked up from the circle of his soldiers, rose. The others stayed, kneeling or squatting, leaning on butt-grounded assault rifles.

  "Need a detail; decurion an' two sticks from yo', get Laxness on the blower an' tell off the same from 2nd Tetrarchy. Pen the locals."

  Chapter Nine

  … your congratulations on the promotion reached me at last, but I almost wish I was back in the bad old days, before women were allowed to hold combat-commands. Yes. I know, the Merarch and the Chiliarch are sending in glowing reports, the work is getting done. Still, every time we're in action I can't help feeling the losses are my fault, that we could have done it cheaper if I'd avoided some mistake. Otherwise, things are going fairly well: Warsaw should surrender fairly soon, what's left of it We're getting ready for [DELETED BY MILITARY CENSOR]. Nothing much worth stealing left mores the pity. Between Stalin. Hitler and us. that's been the story all the way west from the Kuban river—those icons from Kiev and Zhitomir excepted. We're all quite looking forward to Germany and the West provided we don't have to hammer it flat taking it. There's been some trouble with the locals, more behind the lines than at the front that's increased from east to west too. The necessary measures of repression have been fairly unpleasant although luckily the Guard hasn't had to do much in that line. It's a perfect illustration of what you used to tell me. that the owner can only be mild when the serfs obeient These Europeans are supposed to be highly educated, you'd think they would realize it on their own. but no.

  Of course, if you look at it from their point of view…I know. Pa: "We cannot afford to look at it from their point of view." Still. I wish the civilians wouldn't try to keep fighting after we beat their armies. As much for the effect what we have to do has on us as for their sakes.

  Anyway. Edward and I send our regards to everybody there at home. (I haven't seen him for three weeks: a recon-commando might as well be in a different Legion.) Tell Ma to get well, immediately—a new-minted Cohortarch decrees it! A hug to Mammy Khaloum. and thank her for the socks. (Honestly. Pa. doesn't she realize I'm not six any more?) A good long kiss to Yasmin. plus one from Edward, and tell her we're both looking forward to seeing her again. And Pa. some advice? You fought the Great War. and spent a generation battening down what we took then. Running the plantation and rear-echelon work is enoughl Stop trying to "get into it"! You and Ma've done your duty by the Race; let the younger generation handle this one. there are five of us, after all.

  Letter From

  Tanya Von Shrakenberg

  To Her Father

  Written Near Lodz, July 1943From: Postwar ArtistsBy Dion AndrewsNew Territories Press.

  Paris. 1979

  CHATEAU RETOUR PLANTATIONTOURAJNE PROVINCEAPRIL, 1947

  "Yesss, it's comin' back. The Fritz, that was like a hundred other skirmishes," Tanya said. "But yo', now that's a different matter, not very often somebody hands me two kilos a' plastique under a loaf of rye." Her smile was slow and broad, as she looked the nun up and down. "Y'haven't changed much, eithah, would've recognized yo' earlier, 'cept the penguin-suit's missin'. An' the last I saw of yo' was yo' rump, goin' away." She laughed, a rich sound full of amusement, bracing her hands in the small of her back. "Who says Fate doesn't have a sense of humor?" The grin turned wolfish. "We really should talk it over, see how our recollections differ. Might be interestin'. If yo' remembers, that is."

  Chantal and Lebrun were glancing from Marya to their owner, bewildered. Tanya was more relaxed than ever, if anything. The Pole's naturally pale complextion had gone a gray-white color; she closed her eyes for a moment, lips moving. Then they opened again, and she planted herself on her feet.

  "Yes, I remember," she whispered.

  KALOWICE MAZOVIA

  GOVERNMENT-GENERAL OF POLANDAUGUST 17, 1943

  Sister Marya Sokolowska crossed herself with her right hand and held the weeping child closer to her with her left. The cellar beneath the church was deep and wide, lined with brick; bodies crowded it, huddled together in the shuddering dark. Two dim lanterns did little more than catch a gleam on sweat-wet faces, stray metal, the sun-faded white of a child's hair tufting out from beneath a kerchief. Their smell was peasant-rank, garlic and onions and the hard dry smell of bodies that had worked long in the sun; the noise of their breathing, prayers, moans ran beneath the throbbing hammer-blows of the shells. Remember their names, she reminded herself. Wqjak, Jozef, Andrzej, Jolanta. Her father had been a blacksmith in a little village like this, though far to the east.

  There was a new burst of shells above, three in quick succession, a bang of impact on the roof, then a thud-

  CRASH as the next two burst in the enclosed space of the nave and on the floor itself. The whole cellar seemed to sway as the lanterns swung crazily, and fresh dust filled the air. The child hugged himself against her side, as if to fold himself inside her; Marya looked down into a wide-eyed face wet with tear-tracks and trails of mucus from a running nose, and reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief.

  Damn them, she thought with cold hatred, as she wiped him clean and settled down with her back to a wall, setting the child on her lap and rocking gently. Damn all the generals and dictators, all the ones who sit at tables and make marks on maps and set this loose on the people Christ died for. These folk were poor, they raised wheat to sell for cash to pay rent and taxes and ate black rye-bread themselves, and lately there had been little enough of that. The church was the grandest building in the village and the best-kept, because its people gave freely; Wojak the mason had spent two days on the roof only last month. If their own cottages were bare enough, God's house had light and warmth and beauty, and images of His mother and the holy saints, who stood between them and the awful glory of the Imminence…

  She shook her head and glanced over at the German soldiers. They were different, controlling their fear with a show of nonchalance; she could smell them too, a musky odor of healthy young meat-fed male bodies. A dozen of them strong enough to walk, a few wounded. Most of their injured too hurt to move had suicided, a custom of the SS if they could not be evacuated.

  Poor lost souls, she thought. Self-murder was certain damnation. It was hard, doubly hard for a Pole, to remember Christian charity with the hereditary enemy and oppressor. What was it Pilsudski had said? "Poor Poland: so far from God, so close to Germany and Russia." They did not ask to be sent here.

  "Politics makes strange bedfellows, sister," their officer said loudly, more loudly than the artillery demanded.

  At least, most of them did not, she thought, looking at him with distaste. An SS officer, what was his name? Hoth, yes; a Hauptscharfuhrer, the equivalent of a Captain, born near the frontier in German Silesia and with a borderer's hatred of Poles. There was alcohol on his breath, not enough for drunkenness, but too much. In daylight, his face was ten years older than his true age.

  "War makes strange alliances, you mean," she replied in crisp Junker-class Prussian; the Order taught its members well. "So does defeat." Calmly, calmly, she told herself. Wrong to take pleasure in another's downfall, even an evil man's. Vengeance was the Lord's, He would judge.

  Marya felt the SS-man's tremor; rage, not fear. "A setback," he said. "We still hold everything from here to the Atlantic, and Europe is rallying to us."

  There was a hard pity in the nun's voice. "Your man-god is dead, and his promises are dust," she said. "Now that you need us, no more slawen sind sklaven, no more slavs are slaves, eh?"

  That was still a dangerous thing to say. Officially the regime in Berlin was still National Socialist; officially, Hitler's death had been from natural causes. In fact, the generals ruled the Reich now, and German Army Intelligence had killed Hitler. For good military reasons: his attack on the Soviet Union had left the Wehrmacht overextended, and his crazed refusal to allow retreat had left whole armies to be encircled and destroyed when the Draka entered the war. Now the SS were barely
tolerated, only the hapless and powerless Jews still left at their mercy.

  The soldier gripped her shoulder, bruisingly hard. "Is your Jew-god going to protect you, sow?"

  "No," she said, looking down at the hand until he removed it. "His kingdom is not of this earth. And I am going to protect you, Herr Captain." She turned her head and called sharply: "Tarsldl"

  A shock-headed peasant came shouldering through the press, with a dozen armed men at his back; there was a German pistol thrust through the belt of his sheepskin jacket. The others grew back, and the man smiled through broken brown teeth and spat on the floor near the SS officer's boot.

  "You want me to get rid of this manure, Sister?" he asked.

  She shook her head. "You know the new orders from the Home Army," she said: that was the underground command. Not that they were in a position to enforce orders, but Tarski was a good man, devout and well-disciplined. Also tough and resourceful, or he would not have stayed alive in the resistance during the last three years of German occupation.

  "Get them out," she continued. "Through the tunnel, then into the woods and northwest to the front lines. Everything is still in motion, it should be possible. Leave a force at the tunnel exit, north of the river, well hidden. I will try and rejoin them there, if God wills."

  "Is it really needful to help these swine, sister?" Tarski said dubiously in Polish. The German soldiers glowered back at him, helpless; without the Pole they would fall into the hands of the Draka, and that meant immediate execution if they were fortunate.

  "Yes, it is. Now, the tunnel."

  The SS man showed his teeth again as Tarski groped behind the blackened coal-fired heating stove. "So that was where you hid it," he said.

  The heavy metal swung back.

  "You aren't hunting partisans now, German," she said. He glowered, then turned and led his troops into the dark hole. The man was a killer and a brute, but an experienced soldier, and every one of those was precious. The peoples of the west would not fight for Hitler, even against the Draka; now they were flocking to enlist: even an ending that left a Prussian junta in control would be paradise compared to a Draka victory. And the remnants of the SS will fight for civilization and the Church, she thought. So the Lord God turns the evil that men do to good, though they will it not. Even this Hoth was a human soul, and no soul was tried beyond what it could bear. Perhaps there was a chance of salvation even for such as him.