Watch On The Rhine

by John Ringo

* * *

  The stars shone here, five or more kilometers beyond the thick fog which still rose nightly from the Oder-Niesse valley. The half-moon did as well.

  The human prisoners huddled in the center of an alien perimeter. That perimeter, two dozen Posleen normals, half facing in, half out, seemed slack somehow, the aliens' heads drooping with apparent hunger or fatigue.

  Above, circling endlessly, the lone God King's tenar traced a repetitive path, moving on autopilot, between those normals facing in and those facing out. The Kessentai's own head drooped in sleep, his crest flaccid.

  Rosenblum, carrying the team's one sniper rifle—a muzzle-braked, straight pull action, Blaser 93, chambered to fire the extraordinary Finnish-developed .338 Lapua magnum cartridge—took in the entire scene through his wide-angle, light-amplifying scope. The sergeant's job was to kill the God King, no mean feat at nine hundred meters with a moving target.

  "And don't, Don't, DON'T hit the power matrix," Benjamin had warned. "It will kill all the Posleen, but all the people as well."

  Rosenblum had promised to do his best, while privately promising himself that if it came to his comrades' survival, or that of the Poles, the Poles would, sadly, lose.

  The sergeant's ears were covered with headphones connected to his personal, short-range, radio. This was his sole hearing protection and, firing the Lapua, it was barely enough.

  In any case, the major had his patrol on radio listening silence. Who could tell what the aliens might be able to sense?

  * * *

  Listening, creeping slowly as a vine, stopping to listen some more before creeping forward again; this was the universe of Benjamin and his men.

  There were sounds to cover their movement, human cries of nightmare, Posleen grunts and snarls, and the ever steady whine of the tenar. Benjamin had counted on these to move his team quickly to within a few hundred meters of the enemy.

  Now, however, they were too close for quick movement. It fell to creep, listen, then creep some more.

  Benjamin, with two men and carrying all the team's six claymore mines, moved to the right of a line drawn between the abandoned town and the Posleen-human encampment.

  The claymore was nothing more than an inch-thick, curved and hollow plastic plate. Seven hundred ball bearings lay encased in a plastic matrix to the front. One and one quarter pounds of plastic explosive lay behind the ball bearings. Cap wells atop allowed the emplacement of blasting caps into the explosive.

  The claymore was often considered a defensive weapon and had often been derided by the ignorant as yet another inhuman "antipersonnel landmine."

  Neither was quite true. Though the claymore could and often was used as a sort of booby trap, so much could be said for a hand grenade; a weapon the aesthetically sensitive had, so far, not targeted for its attentions. Indeed, so much could be said of a tin can filled with nails and explosive and wired for remote detonation. For the most part, though, claymores were used to help protect manned defensive positions, and were command detonated rather than left for a wandering child to find.

  Yet they did not have to be used defensively. The claymore could also be used to initiate a raid, giving instant fire superiority to an attacker while decimating the defense in the same instant.

  For claymores could be aimed, and had predictable zones of destruction. Moreover, these zones of destruction were twofold, near and far, with a wide safe area in the middle. Properly aimed, to graze upward out to fifty meters, the claymore would butcher an enemy to that distance. Thereafter, however, the rising ball bearings flew too high to harm a standing man . . . until they reached about two hundred to two hundred fifty meters away, at which point their trajectory brought them back down to a man-, or Posleen-, killing height. Benjamin's plan depended on this.

  * * *

  Sixty meters away the sleeping Posleen stood like the horse it somewhat resembled. To Benjamin it looked and sounded asleep, its snarls and faint moans those of a dog having a bad dream, its head hanging down slightly.

  About ten meters past, and offset to one side, the inward-facing Posleen guard seemed likewise to be dozing.

  Carefully, oh sooo carefully, Benjamin emplaced the claymore onto the ground. He had tried forcing the pointed legs down into the frozen soil but with no success. Instead, separating those legs to form two shallow upside down Vs, he simply laid it on the ground, twisted his head to bring an eye behind it and fiddled until he had a proper sight picture.

  Fifty or sixty meters to either side of Benjamin, the other two men of his party did more or less likewise. When they were finished with the first claymores, the other two crawled further out and emplaced the second, aiming for additional pairs of Posleen guards. Benjamin saved the last claymore for a rainy, or even a foggy, day.

  All crawled back as soon as they were finished. The claymore's scant sixteen meters of wire did not suffice for the Israelis to meet at a common point. Trying to daisy chain the claymores, or to link them with detonating cord for central control, Benjamin had deemed an exercise in foolishness, given the nearness of the enemy. Instead, during weary rehearsals conducted earlier in the day, Benjamin had measured the time from separation to emplacement to retreat to firing position. This he had then doubled for safety and added fifty percent to for a bit more safety. Thus, each man had one and one half hours from separation to be returned and ready for firing.

  When his watch told him the allotted time had passed, Benjamin lifted his own small radio to his face and queried, "Rosenblum? Machine gun?"

  * * *

  "There is a human radio transmission coming from one hundred and fifty-seven measures to the southeast," the tenar beeped.

  "Wha? What!" The Kessentai was awake in a flash, though true alertness and rational thought would take longer. Checking his instruments first to confirm, he took over control of his tenar from the autopilot to which he had delegated it. For a brief moment, the tenar stood motionless in the sky.

  * * *

  "Here," answered Sergeant Rosenblum.

  "Take your best shot," said Benjamin, over the radio.

  "Wilco," the sergeant answered, settling into final firing position and confirming that his sights were set on the now-motionless God King's chest. His finger took up the slack in the trigger quickly. Then the sergeant continued applying the steady pressure taught to him long ago in a Negev desert sniper course.

  The explosion, when it came, came as a surprise.

  * * *

  The God King, just coming to full alertness, felt a horrid jolt that ran from one side of its body to the other and sent waves of shock and pain across its torso. It kept to its feet for the moment, but just barely. Twisting its head to look down at the side from which it thought the first shock had come, the Kessentai was surprised to see a small hole gushing yellow blood. Turning the other way the God King was shocked to see a plate the size of a double fist torn roughly from that side. The God King felt suddenly sick at the image of the damage wrought on its own body.

  Its knees buckling, the mortally wounded Kessentai slumped to the floor of its tenar, whimpering like a nestling plucked from the breeding pens for a light snack. Pilotless, the tenar followed its default programming and settled gently to the ground, its bulk causing the frozen grass and soil to crunch below it.

  * * *

  As soon as the sound of Rosenblum's shot carried to him, the waiting Benjamin gave his "clacker," the detonator for the claymore, a quick squeeze followed by another.

  The first squeeze had been sufficient however, as it was in almost every case. A small jolt of electricity raced the short distance down the wire to the waiting blasting cap. This, tickled into life, exploded with sufficient power—heat and shock—to detonate its surrounding load of Composition Four plastic explosive.

  The C-4 shattered the resin plate containing the ball bearings. Though these did not entirely separate, indeed at least one piece that took off down range consisted of thirteen ball bearings still entrapped together, not le
ss than three hundred projectiles of varying weight and shape were launched.

  The near Posleen had its two front legs torn off almost instantly and took further missiles in its torso. It fell to its face. The slightly farther one, facing inward, was struck by one missile in its haunches and another two in its neck. Both shrieked with surprise and pain. The further Posleen took off, bleeding, at a gallop.

  From either side of Benjamin came two more explosions. He could only hope that those claymores did their work well.

  * * *

  Little Maria Walewska, eleven years old, was trying to sleep, fitfully, against her mother's warmth. The girl was not awakened by the sound of the alien's flying machine, whining down to rest about twenty meters away, nor even by the distance muffled shot that was the cause of that.

  Instead, it was the five distinct flashing explosions that came from the other side of the guarded human "encampment" that brought her from her fitful sleep.

  Maria turned her little head in the direction of the explosions, but could see nothing. Something, many things, passed overhead, sounding like a flight of angered bees.

  Then she heard the screaming of her guards as the bees descended to strike.

  * * *

  "Human soldiers!" Benjamin screamed repeatedly as he ran forward, submachine gun at the ready. He had his doubts that the words would be understood, was pretty sure—in fact—that they would not be, since they were spoken in Hebrew. But, understood or not, surely the Poles could distinguish human speech from alien and draw the correct conclusion.

  Benjamin's first burst of fire went into the nearest of the Posleen guards, the one missing both legs. Its head came apart in a blooming flower of yellow bone, teeth and blood.

  To either side of Benjamin the two other Israeli soldiers likewise screamed as they ran. They, too, fired at any Posleen they crossed, seemingly dead or seemingly hale.

  It was called, "taking no chances."

  * * *

  "Let's take our chances and run for it," shouted a standing Pole. Without waiting for encouragement the Pole took off to the north. He had not run a dozen meters before one of the guard's railgun rounds exploded his chest. That example was enough to make all who saw fall to the ground and cling tight to Mother Earth.

  * * *

  Nestled against the earth, as soon as Rosenblum saw the God King's body reel from his shot and the sled begin to settle he turned his attention to other, still-standing, Posleen. Automatically, his right hand stroked the straight pull bolt to chamber another round. The machine gun team, engaging from Rosenblum's left front, was bowling over the Posleen on that side of the encampment. Many of them, he saw, acted as if they had been wounded and stunned. Despite their erratic movements, the machine gun team scythed them down.

  "Well, volume of fire is their mission, after all," Rosenblum muttered. "But precision is mine."

  Whereupon, the sergeant settled his sights "precisely" upon a Posleen guard, then lifting its weapon to shoot at the Poles.

  * * *

  Maria and her mother stared helpless, wide-eyed, and open-mouthed as one of their captors, one already bleeding from a roughly torn hole in its chest, lifted its weapon to spray them. They kept that stare even as the Posleen was struck again by something that traveled with a sharp, menacing crack overhead.

  Taking a .338 Lapua from straight on, the alien was thrown back on its haunches, dead in that instant.

  * * *

  Benjamin stopped not an instant while donating a staggering, disoriented, alien a killing burst from his submachine gun. Still shouting "Human soldiers!" at the top of his lungs, he soon reached the edge of the cluster of humans at the center of the encampment. From here on out, he knew, he would have to control his fire more carefully. He shouted out as much to dimly perceived Israelis to either side of him.

  Reaching the center of the human circle, Benjamin heard one more crack pass overhead—Sergeant Rosenblum in action. The line of tracers the machine gun had been drawing across his front on the far side of the Poles suddenly ceased. Benjamin looked around frantically for other signs of alien resistance but saw none.

  He queried into his radio, "Any of them left?"

  The radio answered, "Rosenblum here. I see none standing. . . . Machine gun team. I think we got them all. . . . Bar Lev here . . . none standing . . . Tal . . . scratch one last on this side." Benjamin heard a final burst, Tal's last victim, off to his right.

  He issued a final command, "Perimeter security . . . Rosenblum come on down," before settling, exhausted, on his weary, black-clad, Israeli ass.

  * * *

  Under the moonlight, a little blond Polish girl stood before him, her hand outstretched as if wanting to touch her deliverer, though fearing to.

  Benjamin smiled and took the girl's hand. Then he stood, picking the girl up, and called out, again in Hebrew unintelligible to the Poles, "To whom does this little girl belong?"

  Maria's mother, though still in a degree of shock, came over and took her from Benjamin. She turned away, briefly, before turning back with a sob and throwing her arms around her Hebrew deliverer. Benjamin patted the woman, in no very intimate way, before disengaging.

  Rosenblum, his sniper rifle slung, stood on the deck of the grounded tenar. "We've got a live one here," he announced, unslinging the rifle. "Firing one round."

  "Wait," ordered Benjamin, not quite certain as to why he hesitated. Possibly he just wanted to see one of the hated invaders in agony. He threaded his way among the mostly still-prostrate Poles; then joined the sergeant at the alien's sled.

  Looking down he saw a badly, almost certainly mortally, wounded God King, leaking its life's blood out onto the deck. The alien moaned, eyes open but poorly focused. From somewhere on the sled itself came the chittering, squealing, snarling and grunting sounds Benjamin presumed to be the aliens' tongue.

  "Pity the creature doesn't speak Hebrew, or we Posleen," Rosenblum observed.

  At that the tenar's grunting and squealing redoubled for something over a minute. When it subsided the machine announced, "I can now."

  It was too late, and the exhaustion of combat too profound, for Benjamin to be surprised at this. It had been a war of wonders all along, after all.

  Instead he asked of the alien machine, "What is this one saying?"

  "The philosopher Meeringon is asking you in the name of the Path and the Way to end his suffering."

  "Philosopher?" Benjamin queried. "Ah, never mind." He thought for a minute or two before continuing, "Tell this one we will grant his request . . . for a price."

  The Israeli waited while the machine translated. "'The demand of price for boon is within the Way,' Meeringon says."

  "Good. Ask Meeringon, 'Why?'"

  * * *

  The body of the mercifully killed God King cooled beside the tenar; Benjamin had been as good as his word.

  "Go back to the boat," he ordered Rosenblum. "The machine says it will carry you without problem. Once there use the boat to get to the friendly side. Don't risk trying to cross on this machine; they'll blast you out of the sky on sight. When you get there, find someone higher up than me. Pass the word of what the Posleen have in store. Set up a retrieval for these civilians if you possibly can. We should be along in a couple of days."

  "Sir, you really should be going, not me. You can explain this better."

  Benjamin took a look at Maria and her mother, then swept his gaze across the other Poles. "Sometimes, Sergeant, one really must lead from the rear. Now go."

  * * *

  Just my fucking luck, thought Rosenblum, standing in the freezing fog in a trench on the Niesse's western bank. Just my luck to run into these fucks. Though he shared the basis of the uniform with the German SS, he did not share a language and felt an almost genetic hatred of them.

  Still, he had to admit the bastards were polite, sharing their food and cigarettes with the half-frozen Jew with the Mogen David on his collar rather than their own Sigrunen. Another SS-wearing
man entered the trench. The Germans seemed both pleased and anxious to see the man appear from the fog.

  Thus, unable to communicate with the Germans, Rosenblum was surprised when he heard the new arrival say, in perfect Hebrew with just a trace of accent, "My name is Colonel Hans Brasche, Sergeant. What news have you from the other side?"

  Interlude

  All along the front the fighting had died down. Only at the river's edge in Mainz was there any appreciable combat action, a steady stream of reinforcing men and aliens butchering each other among the ruins. In part this was due to separation of the combatants by the River Rhine's broad swift stream. More of it was due to simple exhaustion, and the gathering of what strength remained for the final battle.

  On the west bank, the Posleen put much of their strength into building simple rafts of wood to be towed across by the tenar of their God Kings. Along the eastern bank, the Germans and what remained of European forces under their command worked frantically in the winter-frozen soil to create a new defense in depth for the anticipated assault.

  On the other side of Mainz from the river, thresh and captured threshkreen were gathered in a mass. All along the Rhine, smaller groupings of thresh were gathered outside of artillery or patroling range, one group behind each planned crossing point.

  Only three bridges remained undestroyed over the great river. To the north stood one, guarded by the fortress Ro'moloristen called, after the human practice, "Eben Emael." To the south, at the German reclaimed city of Strasburg, old fortresses held the People at bay. In the center, at Mainz where human and Posleen remained locked in a death grip, the bridges also stood.

  Ro'moloristen had gifted his chieftain with a different stratagem for each.

  Chapter 17

  Headquarters

  Commander in Chief–West

  Wiesbaden, Germany

  1 February 2008

  The twenty-year-old-appearing Mühlenkampf did not quite catch the self-imposed irony. Ten years ago, he thought, selling used cars at the sprightly age of ninety-eight, I would have enjoyed this. Now I am just too old.