Watch On The Rhine

by John Ringo

  "What can I do to help?" Günter asked.

  * * *

  Had the Tir had the slightest clue he was being overheard, no doubt his lies would have been even more carefully couched. So thought Deputy Assistant Clan Coordinator, and Bane Sidhe11 operative, Rinteel.

  Listening to the conversation between the Tir, Günter, and the others in the Tir's office, Rinteel's mind kept revolving around one word. Agendas. The Darhel have one. The humans have another. We have still a third. But ours at least leaves the humans free and frees us. Surely they will be difficult to deal with, so violent, so aggressive, so selfish as they are. And yet, so long as the Posleen exist and are a threat, they will need us . . . to produce their machines of war, to maintain them. They will dominate us, no doubt. Yet my people can have a future in every way brighter under human dominance than ever we have under the overlordship of the Elves. The humans, at least, have some sense of fairness. The Elves have none.

  The conversation in the Tir's office was very difficult for Rinteel to follow. The office was bug proof, the Indowy knew. He had tried to bug it but, alas, without success. The Darhel's AID, unlike those given to the humans so lavishly, was untappable, at least by any means available to the Bane Sidhe.

  But every gate has its fence, every rat hole its exit. In this case it was simple sound. Coming from the speakers' voice boxes, the sound vibrated the walls of the Tir's office. These walls in turn caused the air of the surrounding rooms to move. This air, it its own turn, vibrated other walls. In time—and space—the very exterior of the building moved, oh slightly, slightly.

  And nearby, and in direct line of sight, a Bane Sidhe listening post picked up those vibrations. A Bane Sidhe computer, constructed by the Indowy but designed and programmed by Tchpth, the deep-thinking "Crabs," painfully translated these vibrations into speech. The translation required intimate knowledge of each speaker's voice. The slightest thing could upset it; a cold, a sore throat. And with new speakers the machine was hopeless until examples of their speech could be obtained.

  Thus, while one of the speakers, a new voice, was beyond the computer, the words of the Tir came through clearly.

  Listening carefully to the sometimes garbled translation, Rinteel thought, I must speak with the ruler of these people. Alone.

  Interlude

  "What is it about this place, these thresh, that puts them so far forward on the Path of Fury?" asked Athenalras of Ro'moloristen.

  "That remains unclear, my lord. The records we have gleaned indicate only great, fearsome ability on the path. Well . . ." The junior hesitated.

  "Yes," demanded Athenalras, crest extending unconsciously.

  "Well, my lord . . . the thresh records indicate great, perhaps unparalleled ability in war . . . but almost always followed by ultimate defeat."

  "Bah. Great ability. Great defeats. Make up your mind, puppy."

  Carefully keeping his crest in a flaccid and submissive posture, Ro'moloristen hesitated before answering. "My lord . . . in this case I think the two may just go together. A defeat seems not to stop or deter these gray thresh. They always come back, always, from however stinging a loss, and they are always willing to try again."

  The senior snorted. "Let them come back after they have passed through our digestive systems."

  Chapter 2

  Kraus-Maffei-Wegmann Plant

  Munich, Germany

  27 December 2004

  Karl Prael, a goateed, heavyset man of indeterminate years, closed the massive vault door against the ear-splitting and mind-numbing sounds of a tank factory on a frenzy of production. A country that had turned from producing a few hundred tanks a year to over one thousand per month could no longer worry about the niceties of noise-pollution-control measures. The workers in the plant, the much-expanded plant, put on protective ear muffs and soldiered on.

  Outside of the plant, of course—this being Germany, Germany being Green, and many—though not all—of the Green leadership having sold out to the Darhel, there was a continuous noisy protest against the plant, the projects it housed, the war effort, the draft . . . the name-your-left-leaning cause.

  The din inside the vault was little better.

  Prael had come to the project team from a cutting-edge software company. His job was fairly easy, or straightforward at least: produce a software and hardware package to control a light-cruiser-sized tank mounting a single heavy-cruiser-sized gun. This he could do; had nearly done, as a matter of fact. But the rest of the team . . .

  "A railgun! A railgun, I say. Nothing else will do. Nothing else will give us the range, the velocity, the rate of fire, the ammunition storage capability, the . . ."

  Ah, Johannes Mueller is heard from again, thought Prael.

  "Then give me a railgun," demanded Henschel, pounding the desk in fury, and not for the first time. "Tell me how to build one. Tell me how to keep it from arcing and burning out. Tell me how to generate the power. And tell me how to do those things now!"

  "Bah!" retorted Mueller. "All of those things can be fixed. Half the problem in engineering is merely defining the problem. And you just have."

  "Yes," agreed Henschel. "but the other half is fixing it and for that there is no time."

  "We do not know there isn't time," insisted Mueller.

  "And, my friend," said Henschel, relenting, "we do not know that there is time, either."

  Mueller sighed in reluctant agreement. No, they didn't know if there was going to be time.

  "If you gentlemen are finished shouting at each other?" queried Prael.

  Mueller turned his back on Henschel, throwing his hands in the air. "Yes, Karl?"

  "I have some news; several pieces actually. The first is this," and with that Prael began handing around copies of a small, stapled sheaf of paper. "The decision on specs has been made. This is it, and we are going to design it."

  An elderly gentlemen, bearded and face lined and seamed with years spent in the outdoors looked over the sheaf. "They've rejected the idea of powering every idler, have they?"

  "Yes, Franz, they have. They have also . . ." and Prael gave a brief and irritated moment's thought to the thousands of Greens protesting outside the plant, " . . . they have also rejected powering the thing with a nuclear reactor."

  "What? That's preposterous," interjected Reinhard Schlüssel, the team's drive train and power plant designer. "We can't power this thing with anything less than nuclear. That or antimatter."

  "We can, we must, we will," answered Mueller. "Natural gas. We can do this."

  "I see they have at least accepted the use of MBA"—molybdenum, boron, aluminum—"armor," observed Stephan Breitenbach from where he sat by a paper-laden desk. That's something."

  "Limited MBA, Stephan. The stuff is too expensive and too difficult to manufacture to do more than reinforce the basic metal."

  Breitenbach shrugged off Henschel's comment. Something was better than nothing. And the weight saved did suggest that natural gas would be an acceptable fuel.

  "There is one more bit of news, quite possibly bad," observed Prael with an evil grin. "They are sending us an advisor. Well, two of them actually. One is a man, just back from the Planet Diess, an Oberst12 Kiel. He'll be along in a few weeks at most. The other is—"

  The vault door opened. In, stiffly and commandingly, stepped a tall, slender man, dressed in Bundeswehr gray under black leather, and sporting the insignia for a lieutenant general of Panzertruppen. But the officer seemed much too young to be . . .

  " . . . Gentlemen, I am pleased to introduce to you Generalleutnant Walter Mühlenkampf, late of the Reichswehr, the Freikorps, la Armada de Espaňa, the Wehrmacht, and the Waffen SS. Now he slurps at the Bundeswehr trough. I see you found your own way, Herr General."

  * * *

  Berlin, Germany

  28 December 2004

  The Kanzler had not yet come. It seemed impossible that he should be lost in this, his city.

  As much as an Indowy could fume, Rinteel fume
d. A complete lunar cycle of this people's time I have sought a private conversation with the ruler of these Germans. How many will die for that lack of time? How much more is the cause, are the causes, imperiled?

  His human . . . guards? Yes, they were obviously guards. Even so they treated him with indifference. Strangely, this made the solid little, green furred, bat-faced form more comfortable, rather than less. Nothing on this world was better guaranteed to send an Indowy, even a brave one—and Rinteel was regarded among his people as preternaturally bold, into a panic as the sight of those bared carnivore fangs the locals used as a sign of pleasure.

  Fortunately, the humans of the BND never smiled. Thus, the Indowy had only to deal with their single-mindedness, their barely suppressed innate violence. This was quite job enough.

  In the presence of these barbarian carnivores, Rinteel could not even work out his frustrations with pacing. He could only wait patiently for the Chancellor to arrive.

  * * *

  Bad Tolz, Germany

  28 December 2004

  In this out of the way Kaserne, home at different times to elite units ranging from German Schützstaffeln to American Special Forces, Hans Brasche looked skeptically over ranks of recently arrived, rabbit-frightened recruits shuffling forward in lines to be assigned to their quarters and their training units.

  They look bigger and healthier than my generation did. But then I suppose they have eaten better than we did. No Depression for them, no lingering effects of the long British Blockade. The Wirtschaftswunder13 did them well.

  Yet their eyes seem watery, the complexions sallow. There is no toughness in them, no hardness. Too much fat. How are we to make bricks without straw?

  Hans glanced away from his charges and looked around the Kaserne. The Americans kept the old home up well. It has not changed much, thought he. Not since I was here as a boy of twenty.

  * * *

  "Und so, you wish to become officers of the Waffen SS, do you?" demanded the harsh looking Oberscharfsführer of the stiffly standing ranks of Junkerschule14 hopefuls.

  I want nothing, thought Hans Brasche, carefully silent. Nothing except that my father not beat my mother for my failings that he attributes to her. He would have me here, not I. But for her sake, here I must be.

  "To become worthy to lead the men of the SS," continued the noncom, "you must become harder than Krupp's steel, more pitiless than an iceberg, immovable like the mountains that surround us." The NCO gestured grandly at the Bavarian Alps clutching at every side.

  "There is no room in the SS for divided loyalties. So all among you who have not yet left the church stand forward."

  Hans, along with rather more than half his class, obediently stepped forward. From behind the Senior NCO marched forward a number of juniors—beefy men, every one of them.

  Hans never saw the fist that laid him out.

  * * *

  That won't work here, he thought, coming back to the present for a time. These kids hardly know of the concept of a God. Unless, perhaps, it resides between their girlfriends' legs . . . or is to be seen on the television. They have no innocence . . . no naiveté. They have no symbols. They seem to have neither hope nor faith. Not in anything.

  Bricks without straw.

  Perhaps the general will have an answer. We have a few days yet.

  * * *

  Berlin, Germany

  28 December 2004

  "I have the answers you have sought, Herr Bundeskanzler," Rinteel said, simply.

  Long, long had the Indowy waited. Long had he been forced to push away and conceal his terror at the near presence of so many vicious carnivores. When the chancellor had finally—in secret—arrived, the Indowy was filled with relief. Here, at least was one barbarian who did not completely tower over him. Though the white-haired "politician's" smile was even more fearful than the blank stares of his guardians.

  "What answers, Indowy Rinteel? What answers when I do not have even the questions?"

  Rinteel forced his eyes to the chancellor's face, no mean feat for one of his people. His face twisted into the mode, Honesty in Word and Deed, automatically, though he knew the human could not recognize or understand it.

  "Then let me offer the questions, Herr Bundeskanzler. Why, when faced with an invasion nearly certain to exterminate your people, does your political opposition resist every attempt to improve your chances of survival? Why, when the Posleen will extinguish most of your world and pollute the rest with alien life forms, do those most concerned with maintaining the ecological purity of your world do all in their power to undermine your defenses? Why, when the coming enemy is so powerful, are even your military leaders—some of them—so slow to push the rearmament, so almost incredibly incompetent in its execution? Why do those most in love with the notion of state control of your economy, high taxes and centralized planning, resist using these very means to assist your people's survival?"

  The BND guards' faces assumed a somber and even angry mien. To this the Indowy was immune. At least they are not baring those flesh-rending fangs.

  "I have considered these things," admitted the chancellor.

  "Then consider these as answers," said Rinteel, handing over a human-compatible computer disk. "And consider that you should trust no one. This disk contains less than all of the information. There is someone, perhaps close to you, whose words we could not decipher."

  "I understand," said the chancellor, though in truth he did not, not fully.

  "I hope you do," Rinteel answered. "For, if you do not, you will have little time in which to do so."

  * * *

  Kraus-Maffei-Wegmann Plant

  Munich, Germany

  28 December 2004

  "And how long will you be here with us, Herr General?"

  Mühlenkampf answered, "A few days at most, this time. And I shall return from time to time. I am, of course, always available for consultation, should I be needed. I have been studying up on modern systems ever since I came out of rejuvenation."

  "Very good," returned Prael. "And added to your vast combat experience, we expect to produce something quite remarkable. Would you like to meet the rest of the team?"

  "By all means. Please introduce them. And show me the plans."

  "Plans first then, I think. And while I am at it I will introduce the team members responsible for each part." Prael directed Mühlenkampf's eyes to a table upon which stood a model of a tank.

  "Nice appearance, anyway," muttered the general noncommittally.

  "Oh, it will be more than appearance, Herr General," answered Prael. "This is going to be, by at least two orders of magnitude, the most powerful panzer ever to roll."

  "We will see what we will see," commented Mühlenkampf. "Why this absurdly long gun?"

  "Johann?"

  Mueller stepped forward. "Because they wouldn't listen to me about a railgun, Herr General."

  Prael snorted. Mueller never missed a chance.

  "You must forgive me," said Mühlenkampf, "but what is a railgun?"

  "My pet project . . . and dream," answered Mueller. "It's a weapon that passes electricity along two bars. The electricity creates a magnetic field. The field catches, and then propels forward at great speed, a projectile."

  "This is possible?" queried the general, realizing instantly the potential of such a weapon.

  "Possible," admitted Henschel, introducing himself. "It is possible, General Mühlenkampf, but not possible just yet."

  Mueller shrugged. "In time. A year or so, maybe. Okay, maybe two," he admitted, looking at Henschel's scorning face. "In any case, Henschel here is right. It will not be ready quite in time. What you see, General Mühlenkampf, is a three hundred five millimeter gun, much lengthened over its one hundred twenty millimeter predecessor, and using an American-designed propellant system. Since I can't have my railgun, I am reduced to designing the recoil system for this one. Also, since the specialties are somewhat similar, I oversee the design of the suspension with Herr Schl
üssel here."

  "Reinhard Schlüssel," introduced the bent-over, gnomelike veteran of the German Navy. "It is also my job to design the turret for the tank. Though Benjamin here has been of inestimable value."

  Mühlenkampf cocked his head. "Benjamin?"

  "David Benjamin," answered the only truly swarthy man in the room. "Of Tel Aviv," he continued coldly, so as to keep a hostile note out of his voice. "I am here on loan from Israeli Military Industries. We intend to build a few of these ourselves, and to purchase several more."

  The time for apologies passed before they ever became fully due, thought Mühlenkampf. None I could make would make up for anything.

  Instead he answered, merely, "Very good. I have been most impressed with the design for all four versions of your Merkava panzer. Sensible. Wise. I am pleased you are here, Herr Benjamin."

  The Israeli shrugged as if to say, It would please me more were you displeased to see me, SS man.

  Filling the stony silence that followed, Prael said, "Indeed, you can see the ancestry of the tank in the Merkava."

  "Yes," agreed Mühlenkampf, glad for any bridge over the impasse. "That pushed-back turret especially. How big is this thing?"

  "The Tiger Drei," answered Henschel, finally naming the project, "Is twelve meters wide, thirty-one meters long and weighs approximately seventeen hundred and fifty tons, fully combat loaded. It is very heavily armored."

  "Mein Gott!" exclaimed the general, the implications of the size of the scaled-down gun on the model finally sinking in. "What could possibly drive the need for such a monstrosity?"

  "Come here, Herr General, and I shall show you the answer," answered Henschel, unveiling several models of Posleen landing and attack craft.

  * * *

  Bad Tolz

  3 January 2005

  The general also did have an answer; though the answer was not one designed to please his nominal political masters, or—most particularly—some elements of their support.