Watch On The Rhine

by John Ringo

  * * *

  Marburg an der Lahn, Germany

  29 March 2007

  What a dirty, filthy trick, thought Pieter Friedenhof, crumbling the letter he'd received from Gudrun with the morning meal. "That fucking bitch," he said aloud. "The stone-cold cast-iron twat," he fumed. "How dare she leave me at a time like this? And for some low-browed Nazi?"

  The boy broke down and wept for a time, even as he cursed the name of "battle maiden." With each curse and each wracking sob he felt trickle away the very reasons he had been willing to stand fast and die, if need be, to defend his home, his family, his girl.

  Weather reports spoke of snow coming from the south, but Pieter felt already as if a blizzard had descended upon his heart and soul.

  * * *

  Hammelburg, Germany

  29 March 2007

  The radio crackled in Brasche's ears, "Battalion Michael Wittmann? Mühlenkampf hier."

  "501st Schwere Panzer hier, Herr General."

  "Brasche? Gut. Very good. Look Hansi, we've got a problem. We've held the enemy along this line for two days now but it looks like they've given up unsupported frontal charges for the nonce. I'd be happy for the breather except that those fucking landers are going to chew up our forward men something awful. I want you to—"

  "General, I have an idea," Hans interrupted.

  For a moment the radio was silent: Mühlenkampf mulling the Knight's Cross he knew hung at Brasche's throat.

  "What's your idea, Hansi?"

  "Have everyone on the forward trace except the dismounted infantry shut down completely. Hold the line with artillery—the shells are holding up well, yes?"

  "We've enough," conceded Mühlenkampf. "But the reports are clear, Brasche: there are always leakers through the heaviest barrage."

  "Not so many that the riflemen and machine gunners can't handle, for a while anyway, Herr General. And if you keep using the panzers those C-Decs and Lampreys will eat them for a snack."

  "Taking care of those is your job, Hans," Mühlenkampf insisted.

  Brasche wiped a few beads of sweat, nervous sweat, from his forehead. "Yes, Herr General. But at five-to-one odds I won't be able to do enough . . . not without a little cleverness."

  "Wait, out," ordered Mühlenkampf as he tried to force rational thought through a sleep-starved brain.

  Brasche insisted, "There's little time to decide, sir. My way has a chance."

  "What is your way, Hansi?"

  Brasche proceeded to explain. As he did so those of his own crew grew wide-eyed and shuddering. Was their commander stark raving mad?

  * * *

  Marburg an der Lahn, Germany

  29 March 2007

  "This is madness," muttered the demoralized Friedenhof from the relative safety of a reverse slope. "Madness."

  In the boy's ears, the sound of the enemy grew ever closer, an ominous cacophony as distinct from the overhead rattle of defending artillery as, in a more traditional day, had been the pounding of hoofs from setting of pikes or the drawing of sabers. As steadily as grew the crescendo of clawed feet tramping ground, boma blades being drawn, hisses and snorts and incomprehensible grunts, each foot soldier of the 165th Infantry division felt and even seemed to hear his own heart pounding ever more frenziedly in his chest.

  Suddenly, like a cloud of mist arising from a river, the enemy appeared. He came first as a swarm of flying sleds, the God Kings' tenars. These the snipers of the division Jaeger35 battalion took under fire. Yet there were more tenar than snipers, and they were hard to hit and, oh, very well armed. Though more than a few of the sleds disappeared in actinic spheres, snipers were blasted to bits and burned to cinders by return fire for each tiny victory they earned over the invaders.

  Scant minutes following the appearance of the tenar-riding God Kings, Friedenhof's eyes widened as the rest of the host made its sudden appearance. They appeared to him as a solid mass, a veritable phalanx of reptilian, centauroid flesh—all snapping teeth and flashing blades. Artillery began carving huge slices from that body, as from the bodies that composed it. Yellow flesh and blood, yellow bone and sinew soon festooned the very top of the landmass to Friedenhof's front.

  Heedless of the losses, the alien horde swarmed down and towards the reverse military crest along which the defenders had erected their defenses.

  Suddenly, on command, the Germans began to lash back. MG-3s, direct descendants of "Hitler's Zipper" of World War Two fame, lent the air the sound of an impossibly large number of sails being ripped apart at the hands of an impossible number of giants. Prone gunners were pushed back by the hammering recoil of their guns. The air filled with the smell of cordite and weapons oil boiling away from heated feed mechanisms. Posleen screamed and reared and stumbled and writhed in every manner of undignified death by lead.

  Coming through the hell of lead and fire the defenders poured forth, the Posleen next hit a thin line of the mines called "Bouncing Barbies." These devices, accidental byproducts of an impromptu experiment gone badly awry at distant Fort Bragg, North Carolina, years before, waited patiently for the sense of the enemy sufficiently close and in sufficient numbers.

  A knot of twenty Posleen, perhaps as much trying to avoid the worst of the shell and machine gun fire as to close with the humans, activated a Barbie. The mine used a small, integral antigravity device to lift itself one meter into the air. It then put out a linear force field to a distance of six meters. Eleven Posleen fell immediately, alive but legless, their stumps waving helplessly in the air while they shrieked and sprayed yellow ichor into the air and onto the ground.

  Its work done for the nonce, the force field shut off to conserve power even as the mine's antigravity propelled it sideways to cover another small piece of the front. Amidst the yellow blood, the mine's yellow plastic casing quickly became indistinguishable.

  It had only been through the last-minute agency of the Americans that the Germans even had Barbies. Their own political left, or so much of it as the Darhel had been able to suborn, had prevented development of any such unpalatable devices as new mines on their own. As they had prevented the development of usefully small and clean nuclear weapons . . . and poisons . . . and anything that smacked of militarism. "No threat can justify the development of such horrid arms," had been the cry. "No threat could possibly justify . . ."

  Thus, despite last minute emergency deliveries, the German army had but few Barbies, and fewer nuclear and antimatter munitions.

  * * *

  Hammelburg, Germany

  29 March 2007

  "All panzers, load antilander munitions. Prepare for a steady stream of depleted uranium. Adjust yield for the targets as per doctrine. And be fucking quiet."

  Half the battalion had already loaded rounds designed to deal with Posleen landers. The other half began the process of opening breaches, withdrawing propellant casings and projectiles, and reloading with depleted uranium penetrators and their more powerful propellants.

  The loading went quickly and smoothly. Though they had tried, the suborned left had not been able to interfere with the building of German precision machinery. Even the formerly Communist east had for the most part overcome the red-inspired tendency to produce mechanical dreck in the interests of meeting norms and quotas.

  As for the DU penetrators themselves, the left would have shrieked their fury to a ritually denied Heaven could they have known how the otherwise simple rounds had been modified . . . and why. The use of depleted uranium itself had been a close run thing in the Bundestag, the German Parliament. "Ecologically unsound. Environmentally unsafe. Polluting . . . filthy." Aesthetically unappealing. Heretical. Upsets me at my vegetarian breakfast. Forces me to contemplate that which must be denied.

  But the left had never known, indeed had had the information concealed from them, that each DU penetrator had been partially hollowed out to make room for a modest amount of antimatter in a containment field. An American firm, working clandestinely with the BND, had developed and
provided the weapons, again at nearly the last minute. These, penetrator and carefully contained antimatter, had been mated in great secrecy.

  The antimatter device was unique. It had been desired to have a variable-yield weapon, something like the unspeakably politically incorrect tactical nuclear weapons once possessed by both the Americans and Russians. Yet, if depleted uranium had raised a furor, how much worse would have been the ruckus over Germany developing nuclear weapons? Antimatter did not generate quite the same knee-jerk reaction, even though it was generally less fine-tunable than nuclear munitions.

  A solution was found to the problem of variable yield, although it was not a solution without its costs and complexities. That solution was a dual containment field. The primary field, which normally held all the antimatter, was very strong, strong enough, indeed to withstand the explosion of a portion of the projectile's antimatter right next to it. The secondary was weaker, and rather unstable, relatively speaking.

  It was possible, with the device, to dial a given amount, up to roughly thirty percent of the antimatter contained in the primary field, into the secondary. Any greater amount would destroy the primary and create a very large, antimatter-driven, explosion. But with the lesser, the primary field would hold even as the projectile, now given a substantial boost by the lesser explosion, drove through the far wall of the enemy lander. A timer would detonate the remaining antimatter when it was high enough not to appreciably affect the Earth.

  There was, of course, the possibility of having all the antimatter go off in a single cosmic catastrophe. This, of course, might well affect the Earth and the people who, in ever diminishing numbers, populated it.

  It was also possible to set the weapon for no antimatter explosion. In that case, the antimatter would remain entirely within the primary containment field and never, in theory, explode until it reached a point far out in space.

  Thus thirteen Panzerkampfwagen VIII As, colloquially known as Tiger IIIs, loaded between them enough antimatter to flatten a small city, even a stone-built German small city.

  * * *

  Marburg an der Lahn, Germany

  29 March 2007

  The ancient stone castle stood silent and untroubled, overwatching the ancient town below. From his hastily scraped fighting position, the castle and town beckoned Pieter Friedenhof with the hint, if not the promise, of safety.

  "It's madness, madness I say!" shouted Pieter to his chief, a small and determined looking Hauptgefreiter manning an MG-3. "Madness to stay here."

  "Shut up, Friedenhof, you pussy, and—"

  The gunner's next words were lost as a Posleen three-millimeter railgun round caused his head to explode in a shower of red mist and red and ivory flecks. Pieter took but a single glance before emitting a wordless shriek. More than half crazed himself with fear, Friedenhof turned from his dead comrade, turned from his gun, turned from his duty.

  The boy began to run. As he did, others nearby saw. They too began to desert their posts. Like an epidemic, swiftly and without understanding on the part of its carriers, the panic spread. This portion of the front knew a rapid collapse.

  * * *

  Hammelburg, Germany

  29 March 2007

  Even some of the men of SS-trained 47th Panzer Korps had their limits. Under the sustained fire of sixty-seven Posleen craft a few men here and there on the forward trace had begun to run. In Brasche's screen he saw a platoon of Leopards break cover and run from what could only have been a Posleen reconnaissance by fire. The tanks' sprint for safety carried them scant yards before a plasma beam slagged, first one, then another, and still a third. The fourth Leopard, the platoon leader's tank from the turret numbers, skidded to a stop untouched. The crew began bailing out frantically.

  The plasma beam touched the tank, igniting it instantly. Caught in the heat-bloom, the four crewmen were heat-seared, flash-cooked. Their writhing bodies fell smoking onto the fresh snow, their own heat melting through it.

  "Christ," whispered Brasche, the name coming familiar to his lips even though it had been years, decades really, since he had believed.

  The Posleen landers apparently grew tired of playing cat and mouse with the defenders, spoiled idiot boys bored with their play. Half an hour after flushing that one platoon of Leopards, scant reward for so much effort, they ceased fire and began a stately move northward.

  "Steady, boys . . . wait for the command. . . ."

  * * *

  Brasche never tapped his machine gunner to command the beginning of the ambush. The harvest walked by unreaped and confident.

  "An understrength platoon of Viet Minh," Intelligence had insisted. "Not more than twenty of the little yellow Commie bastards. Your squad should be able to handle them easily."

  Hans cursed the damned frog intelligence officer, though the near presence of over ninety of the enemy ensured that he cursed silently. He wondered if the effort at silence was in vain; the Viets ought to be able to hear his heart pounding.

  How could they be so wrong, those "intelligence" maggots? He wondered, as well. The signs are everywhere to see if they only had eyes to see. The enemy grows in strength daily, while we grow weaker. Why deny the reality we face every day? We're losing this war, too.

  But we won't lose for lack of trying on my part, Hans thought, determination growing in his heart. He quietly patted his machine gunner—BE STILL. As the last of the Viet Minh passed his position, Hans stood, quietly and carefully. He drew his knife, faced up the trail in the direction into which the Communists had faded, and began, silently, to follow.

  * * *

  The enemy landers moved without a perceptible sound, gliding along on their heavy-duty antigravity drives. Although there was no sound, the antigravity created a feeling in those caught below like unto a mix of nausea and the sense of having millions of ants crawling over one's body. One was passing directly over the Tiger Anna now.

  Caught in the sickening field, Brasche resisted the desperate urge to scratch. Dieter Schultz's friend Harz could not resist the need to vomit. Soon, despite the efforts of the Tiger's air cleaners, the vile aroma of human puke filled the fighting bay. That odor initiated a chain reaction. Soon Brasche looked down upon a crew of quietly cursing, frantically scratching, and intermittently vomiting men.

  All looked utterly and hopelessly miserable.

  Hans forced his own gorge down repeatedly. He kept his attention fixed on the tactical display, showing each of his Tigers, the sixty-seven enemy landers, and the trace outlines of the 47th Panzer Korps. At length he saw that all of the enemy had passed.

  "Achtung! Panzer! Boys, crank 'em and turn 'em around one hundred and eighty degrees. We're going to follow these bastards, shooting them in the ass all the way, until none are left. Kill them from the rearmost forward. Kill them as you bear."

  Ahead at the driver's station Krueger gave off an evil laugh. Likewise did most of the men. Only Schultz, face frozen to his gunner's sight, did not.

  The tank began to hum as natural gas from its two main fuel cylinders began feeding the huge Siemens electrical generator that drove the engines. A steady vibration arose as Krueger applied the power and twisted the steering column. From outside the panzers it looked like thirteen small avalanches as the snow-covered foam cracked, tore and powdered. The well-trained Schultz was already twisting his gunner's spade to turn the multihundred-ton turret to line up the huge 12-inch smoothbore cannon on the nearest of the enemy.

  "Gunner!" ordered Brasche, "Sabot! DU-AM . . . point one kiloton. C-Dec!"

  "Target!" answered Schultz, as one finger dialed the charge in the penetrator down to one tenth its potential power.

  "Feuer!"

  * * *

  The last Vietminh in the snaking column never knew what hit him. Brasche's feet, silently padding along the soft jungle floor, gave no warning. The thick tropical growth overhead hid the moonlight from making a tell-tale flash from the knife. All the doughty little Communist knew was that a sudden hand clam
ped over his mouth even as an agonizingly cold dart lunged into his kidneys.

  Overcome with the worst agony a man can know, a pierced kidney, the Viet made no sound. Some pains are too great even to permit a scream. It was a relief to the dying soldier when Brasche eased him down to the dank floor and drew the razor-sharp knife across his jugular.

  Knife still in hand, Hans Brasche followed the column seeking his next victim, another Vietminh too much concerned with the dangers and difficulties ahead, too little with creeping death from behind.

  * * *

  Dieter would never forget that first image of the death of the C-Dec. Each tiny moment was engraved into his memory, of course. He would always feel the click of the firing button under his thumb. He would never quite forget the tremendous roar that shook even to the bowels of a seventeen-hundred-ton tank. The shock of recoil too would remain with him, the massive cylinders compressing until they could go no more, even though aided by the inertia-inverting devices once tested by Schlüssel and Breitenbach. He would recall the tank's rear suspension taking up the rest, then the sudden vicious spring back from full battery into firing position . . . the stout knock to his head that even his padded gunner's sight could not quite mute.

  But it was the death of the enemy he would always remember best.

  That death began as a faint flash on the C-Dec's hull. So faint and quick was it that the eye barely registered. In what seemed the tiniest moment came the real flash, as the antimatter within, deliberately set to its lowest practical setting, came into contact with true matter.

  This Dieter could not, of course, see. Nor did he see the remaining antimatter, that not released by the primary—and stronger—containment field. What he could and did see was the image of light suddenly streaking out in linear fashion from each of the corner junctures of the alien ship's twelve sides. The light would have been blinding to the naked eye. Even in Dieter's thermal sight the picture overloaded briefly.

  In that instant of overloading, the Posleen ship came apart. When his image returned, Dieter saw twelve separate pieces, flying in twelve directions.