Watch On The Rhine

by John Ringo

  * * *

  God, if there is a God, please, if the aliens look, do not let them see. So Brasche prayed and so, if perhaps using different words, prayed every man of the brigade.

  Whether a distant God, scarcely in evidence on the Earth as it was, was paying attention, or the Posleen ships' masters were not paying attention, the swarm of alien ships flew closer and closer to the irregular waiting line of Tigers, Hans never knew. He only knew that the time eventually came when he was able to order, "All Tigers, Fire. Fire at will."

  * * *

  Siliuren of the Rif barely noticed the voice of his ship's AI. Indeed, the ships never put into their artificial voices any intonation that might have been characterized as attention grabbing.

  It wasn't until the third time the ship said, "There appear to be twenty-one enemy fighting machines ahead," that the God King asked, "WHAT?"

  It was the last question he ever asked.

  * * *

  "First and Third Battalions, bend in your flanks," ordered Hans. "Let's trap as many of the bastards as we can. Little brothers,"—the brigade's panzers and panzer grenadiers—"cover our flanks until we are done."

  The Brigade Michael Wittmann, much reduced in strength but not one whit in fighting heart, not one whit in their hate, rolled forward to its last victory.

  Interlude

  Frankfurt bowed down, weighed to the ground under its own ruins. In its way, the gray, ugly city was more to Posleen architectural tastes than were the brighter, homier of the thresh's dwelling places.

  But "more" was a far cry from "entirely." Athenalras was not sorry to see his people tearing the place down and rebuilding it in Posleen style. Especially was he not sorry to see the places which armed the threshkreen stripped to bare earth. His clan had suffered greatly, wounds without precedent and without imagining, from their battles with the humans.

  "God how I hate the vile abat," muttered the God King lord.

  "My lord?" questioned Ro'moloristen.

  "I came here, young one, with a bright and shining host. What have I left? Between the threshkreen's radiation weapons, their fighting machines, and their damned artillery and their infantry which refuses to run unless they see an advantage in it, I lead but a pale, bled-out shadow of a clan. The long body of water the thresh call the 'Rhein' is choked to within a few measures of its surface with the bodies of our people. In the east, their rivers Oder and Niesse overflow their banks for all the bodies of the People deposited in them. Their mountains are ringed with our dead. Their fields are carpeted with the remains of the host, sacrilegiously ungathered."

  "But my lord . . . we have destroyed them. The Germans reel north and south to barren wastes."

  "We have destroyed ourselves. Do not count the humans down, my eson'sora, until the last breeding pair are digested. And that, I fear, we shall never do.

  "I wish we had never come to this world," finished Athenalras, lord of the clan.

  Chapter 19

  Lübeck, Germany

  1 March 2008

  Seven Tigers, along with a half a battalion each of panzers and panzer grenadiers, reinforced with all that remained of the Brigade's artillery—a couple of undersupplied batteries, stood lonely guard south of the town. To the north and the west, the shattered Kampfgruppen48 of nine Korps—perhaps the equivalent of a dozen or fifteen divisions, preinvasion—dug in furiously. A further four Korps, or the scraps that remained of them, were turning Hamburg into a fortress to grind the alien enemy. From Hamburg, stretched thin along the Elbe River's broad, deep estuary, what remained of the Bundeswehr and a few SS, all bridges before them blown, awaited the final enemy onslaught.

  Ferries operated by the Bundeswehr Pioneere49 evacuated what could be evacuated of the millions of trapped civilians and soldiers lining the Elbe's southern banks. All, perhaps, could have been evacuated in a matter of days had the bridges been left standing. And yet all knew, now—at last—they knew, that some evils were worse than others, and that killing the helpless was not always the worst evil.

  It had been a long, hard and bitterly contested withdrawal for Hans Brasche and his men. They had made stands at Potsdam and northwest of Wittenberge and around Schwerin. Each temporary stand had bought time. Each moment of time had bought human lives moved to safety. The price for the salvation of those civilian lives had always been the same: blood and steel and fire, unmarked graves and fat-bellied aliens, gray- and black-clad bodies left to rot or—more likely—to feed the enemy host.

  Each stand was a physical defeat, seeing the Brigade driven back leaving smoking tanks and ruined men behind. Yet each stand had bought the seeds, O let it be so, of future victory.

  Hans was as proud of his men as ever he had been of the men he had led in Russia . . . or the legionnaires . . . or the Israelis, once he had earned Israeli trust.

  Hans' left hand stroked his right lapel, feeling the Sigrunen sewn there. And they are clean, my soldiers. No crimes to their name, not even the crimes of necessity. Their sins, if any, I have assumed. And I was likely damned anyway.

  Well, thought Brasche, I will find out soon enough.

  * * *

  Kiel, Germany

  3 March 2008

  Most of the refugees had to make the weary trek north on foot with occasional wheeled transportation to assist. Medical units, such as were not needed at the front or, more importantly, were needed to care for the wounded, assembled with their charges instead at Kiel on the Baltic coast for movement by sea to Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, and even Glasgow, all cities still in human hands and likely to remain that way. Some combat units, those judged too exhausted and depleted, also mustered at Kiel for the northward journey.

  In a scene reminiscent of Dunkirk, or the Japanese evacuation of the Aleutian Islands, masses of people waited in tents, or shivering in the cold open air, for word that another ship was loading, and they were to join it.

  The Posleen, of course, attempted to stop the evacuation, as a farmer might prevent the escape of a turkey destined for the dinner table. Yet Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and British Planetary Defense Batteries were generally successful at keeping the alien ships at bay. Moreover, the Swedes had jury rigged several stout merchant ships with salvaged Posleen railguns. These last gave the aliens fits as they never remained in one place long enough for the Posleen to engage.

  Despite the defenses, though, more than one human merchant vessel lay sunken and smoking at its moorings among Kiel's many wharfs and quays. Still, out in the fjord, the city's natural harbor, everything from huge container ships to little two person sailboats bobbed among the waves, awaiting the call to come in and dock. Though Posleen fire occasionally succeeded in pelting the harbor from space, the greatest danger to the ships and boats assembled was each other.

  Harbormasters from the usual, civilian, port authorities, supplemented by the sailors of the Germany Navy, kept order as best they could. This best was poor enough, given the density of watercraft in the fjord. More than one crash had occurred, with resulting great loss of life.

  * * *

  This one has lost his will to live, thought the doctor, a psychiatrist trying desperately and, in the case of Thomas De Gaullejac, unsuccessfully, to heal the hidden wounds of war.

  The boy had been cleaned up now, his black uniform exchanged for a fresh gown of hospital green. The trench-bred lice were gone; his hair was cut. Even so, his weight was down and continuing to plummet. He ate, when he ate, only on command . . . and then, only if watched.

  The doctor had tried everything he knew. When all of that had failed he had even called in a chaplain, thinking, Where art and science fail perhaps faith may help. Sadly, the boy appeared not to have been raised to be terribly religious. The chaplain's "God's inscrutable will" had fallen on deaf ears.

  The doctor knew the story behind young Volunteer De Gaullejac. This had been drawn out early on, before his disease of the mind had taken him over so fully. Once the course of the boy's guilt had been determi
ned, the doctor had tried a different approach, calling in one of Charlemagne's officers to explain to Thomas that he had not been unique; that almost the entire front had seen men unable to kill the helpless victims of the Posleen's human shield.

  "That does not mean that I didn't also fail," De Gaullejac had insisted. His condition had taken a turn for the worse then, enough so to make the doctor regret having brought in the soldier to assist. It was at that time also that it had become necessary to watch the boy to ensure he ate.

  * * *

  Isabelle watched over her remaining son like a brood hen guarding her last egg. She had seen more than one child, separated from its parents, wandering lost and alone between Wiesbaden and here at Kiel. The fact that she never saw the same child twice spoke grim volumes about the likely fate of many of those children. Though her heart had ached for them, she saw the children only in passing, as the division used its motor transport to race away from the aliens.

  Mother and son had boarded ship only a few hours before. Because they were a family unit, however small, the ship's Norwegian crew had found them a small, a very small, stateroom for the voyage. Though after the filth she had seen in the last few months the ship seemed almost eerily clean, an unpleasant aroma—residue of recent passengers who could not take a rough sea voyage, perhaps—pervaded the vessel's interior.

  Instructing her youngest to remain there in their stateroom, Isabelle had gone to help with loading and billeting the rest of the hospital staff and their patients on the ship.

  * * *

  Her name was Cordelia and she was out of Haifa. Once her stern had sported the Flag of Liberia, a ruse that fooled no one but was considered useful in carrying cargos to ports, mainly Muslim ones, that would never have accepted an Israeli-flagged vessel.

  Now, however, there were no Muslim ports of any significance left in the world. The little blue-and-white ensign fluttering on her short mast told the world, and any Posleen who dared come close enough, that here was an Israeli ship.

  The ensign was the only clean thing about the ship, for she had carried a load of passengers from Haifa before the fall of that town, and had been continuously engaged in ferrying Israelis and Europeans to the north, and war materials to the south, for over a month with no chance for maintenance or even sanitation.

  Cordelia stank to the heavens.

  She was also, just possibly, the sweetest sight Oberstleutnant David Benjamin, Judas Maccabeus Brigade, had ever seen . . . and to hell with the stench.

  In command of the remnants of the brigade, some three hundred twelve worn-out and filthy men and women, sans heavy weapons or other equipment, and in control of about fifteen thousand Israeli refugees, Benjamin oversaw the loading of these tattered remnants of his people as they boarded ship.

  Benjamin turned his attention from the loading at the approach of a Mercedes staff car bearing the insignia of a German field marshal. He had saluted, something Israeli soldiers did rarely in any case, before he recognized the gray-clad, young-looking man who emerged bearing a white baton.

  "Where are your Sigrunen?" he asked confrontationally. Hans Brasche was the only man in the world who wore the double lightning flashes that Benjamin could really stand to be around. He and Mühlenkampf had never quite managed cordiality, despite what the Israeli recognized as the German's sincere attempts at amends.

  "I didn't need them anymore," the German answered, simply. "I had made my point, given my former followers and comrades back their self-respect. And now, commanding far more regular troops than SS, I have dispensed with them for myself. They were only a symbol, after all, one that meant different things to different people."

  To this Benjamin had no response. He could accept that the Sigrunen meant something different now—the lightning sword of vengeance—to most Germans, to most Europeans, and even to a fair number of Israelis. But to him they were just hateful and nothing would ever change that.

  "Your destination is Stockholm, I believe?" queried Mühlenkampf.

  "Yes, Stockholm and then by rail north to a Sub-Urb. They are collecting all that remains of Israel at the same place."

  "I wonder if that is wise," mused the field marshal.

  "Wise or not," quipped Benjamin, "it is still necessary. Mixed in with you lot and you and the Posleen would end up accomplishing what Hitler never could, the extinction of the Jewish people as we all interbred. There are just too few of us left."

  "That's what I mean. Maybe we should all be extinguished as separate peoples. Maybe we should become just a human race."

  The Israeli shook his head in negation, looked the German straight in the eyes and answered, "I remain a Jew."

  Mühlenkampf glanced at the Jew's Iron Cross. "You remain, my friend, a lunatic. But I am glad all the same that we are of the same species.

  "Good luck to you anyway, lunatic. Good luck and Godspeed." Mühlenkampf held out his right hand in friendship.

  For reasons he could not at the time understand, Benjamin—standing not far from the Israeli flag fluttering at Cordelia's stern, and only after a moment's hesitation, accepted.

  * * *

  Isabelle looked over the stern at the receding German coastline. She wondered whether they would manage to get everyone out in time or if, as seemed likely, some other woman might have to wander hospital wards murdering the hurt and sick to save them from a worse fate.

  It was a moment of inexpressible loneliness. Part of this was the voyage and the loneliness of the sea. But the greater part was that there was no one she could talk to, not one person to whom she could unburden the sickness in her soul. The chaplain? She had left the church long ago; there was no salvation there for her. The psychiatrists? Her husband, and she was certain now that he was her late husband, as Thomas must by now be her late son, had been a real doctor. She had picked up his attitudes towards those he deemed "quacks."

  The others among the hospital staff were also out of bounds. They all knew what she had had to do. Perhaps they even understood. But she had heard the whispering. She would never find a friend among them. She was unclean now.

  The sea beckoned to her. A short plunge and the icy waters would clean her. She had no fear of death for herself, not anymore. Yet her remaining son held her to this world as if by chains stretching like an umbilical across the generations.

  She shook her head, no. The sun was setting, the sea was calm. She thought she might risk a meal. Isabelle turned from the stern, walked the deck, and reentered the ship.

  Isabelle barely noticed the slump-shouldered youth being fed by a nurse in the ship's galley. Lost in her own miseries she walked to the line along which food was dispensed. Then she turned, dropped her tray and ran.

  She reached the youth and dropped to her knees beside him, wrapping arms tightly around neck and torso. "Oh, Thomas, my son, my baby!"

  To the surprise of the nurse feeding him, for the boy had slipped ever deeper into some hell of his own, Thomas' eyes showed a little life for the first time in days. He even turned his head towards this strange woman.

  "Mama?"

  * * *

  Tiger Brünnhilde

  North of Hanau, Germany

  4 March 2008

  "Motherfuckers," muttered Prael as he counted the numbers against him and selected a priority target for Schlüssel. Brünnhilde's railgun once again thrummed.

  "Hit," announced Schlüssel, without energy or enthusiasm.

  Prael had no new target for Schlüssel. The enemy had become clever, staying out of Brünnhilde's range until they could assemble a group and then driving into to unleash a furious attack. It was hell on the commander to both scan the skies for priority targets and direct Mueller, the driver, out of the likely impact area of incoming Posleen fire.

  But that was the intermittent threat. The imminent danger to the tank were the hordes of enemy normals and God Kings roaming unhindered through Germany's heartland. Though Brünnhilde and her crew had, so far, crushed and scattered all comers.

/>   The price of that had been the wearing away of the tank's ablative armor to the point where several spots might well permit a high-velocity missile, or plasma cannon burst, to get through.

  If the Posleen were not so poor at cooperating, thought Prael, we'd have all been dead long before now. But, no. The dumb shits come with their ships and they come with their infantry and flyers. But they never manage to do so at the same time. Still, eventually they will do so by chance and then we are dead with our armor in the state it is. Hmmm. Maybe something can be done about that.

  The screens showed blank for the nonce, a condition unlikely to continue for long. Prael said, "Rinteel, we seem to have a little quiet time. Take Schmidt and go topside to see if you can't undo some ablative plates and fix them where they are most needed."

  "Wilco," answered the alien, with unconscious irony. More manually dexterous than Schmidt, he unbuckled himself quickly.

  "Fifty-seven enemy ships inbound," announced the tank in her usual monotone. "At current rates of closure they will be in range in six seconds. Several hundred enemy flyers closing as well, in range in fifty-two seconds. I have no information on infantry. . . ."

  Interlude

  My lord and chief is not the same as once he was, Ro'moloristen thought. These humans have broken his heart.

  On an intact bridge over the river the humans called the "Elbe" Athenalras advanced on foot to meet Borominskar. Ro'moloristen's chief, though senior as the People reckoned things, walked unsteadily, like an old Kessentai ready to enter "the Way of the Knowers."