by John Ringo
"It is just you and I left now, Sergeant Major Krueger, just the old SS. It's fitting, don't you think, that we who were there at the first should also be there at the last?"
What is this fucking maniac talking about? thought Krueger. I don't want to be anywhere at the last. I don't want there to even be a "last" for me. And what is this friendly tone? We both know we detest each other.
Sensing that the sergeant major would make no answer, Hans removed the hand and walked, no longer trying to be silent, back to his command chair.
"Where you there at the first, Sergeant Major?" Hans asked.
"I was SS from 1938 on, yes, Herr Oberst."
"Really?" asked Hans, conversationally. "I looked over your record of course, when you were assigned to me. It indicated only that you served with Totenkopf Division from 1942 onward. What did you do before then?"
"Sonderkommando, Einsatzgruppe C, Totenkopfverbaende.50 Then I pissed someone off and was sent to the front," Krueger answered.
"Totenkopfverbaende?" Hans queried. "In the camps?"
"Yes, Ravensbrück," the sergeant major said.
"Ah. I was never there, though I did do a very short time at Birkenau. I had a dear friend who was at Ravensbrück. Tell me, Sergeant Major, were the women there really as pliable as all that?"
Krueger didn't answer. Instead he asked, "Are you going to let me go?"
* * *
Dieter attempted to shrug off Harz's iron grip. "Let me go," he demanded. "I am going back."
"No, damn you, you are not going back! If I have to deck you and carry you out over my shoulder you are going to follow the commander's last orders: run, live, breed, return and fight for our country again."
"But I don't want to do any of those things," Dieter said, simply. "Maybe if Gudrun were still alive . . ." The sentence drifted off, unfinished.
"And it does not matter a whit what you want, old son. What matters is where your duty lies. And it does not lie in getting killed to no purpose. Would your Gudrun want that, do you think?"
* * *
"But why would you want to go, Sergeant Major? Isn't this what you always dreamed of, a final Götterdämmerung?"
"Maybe that is your dream, Herr Oberst. It has never been mine. I enjoy life too much to want to throw it away."
* * *
Seeing the confusion on Dieter's face, Harz pressed on that point. "Don't you think she would want you to live? I saw her face, friend, that one night. She was in love with you; don't you ever doubt it. She would want you to live . . . and be happy."
* * *
"You are happy with your life then, Sergeant Major? You are happy with yourself?"
"Why should I not be?"
"Oh, I don't know," answered Hans. "I find that I have rarely been so. Though there was a time . . ."
Behind him, Krueger heard the sound of cloth ripping, of stitches being torn. Still he did not turn around. There was something to be feared in the commander's tone of voice now, something he could not quite put a finger to. There was an edge, perhaps, to the commander's words, some bitter undertone.
"I was always under someone's orders, you see, Sergeant Major, all the time of my youth unto my later manhood. Never my choice. Never my will. And there was only the one person, gone now, whose will actually meant more to me than my own."
"Now, however, I find I am free."
* * *
Locked in place as if by chains, though the chains binding him were moral rather than physical, Schultz simply stood in place with his head hanging.
What an easy thing it would be, he thought, to return to the tank and fight and die. Never to feel the loss of a loved one again. Never to have to worry about my mother and father, or my sister. Maybe even, if the priests were right, to find my Gudrun again. How sweet and easy and attractive going back would be.
How cowardly it would be. Krueger, for all he was a bastard, made me tougher than that. And Oberst Brasche, too, showed me the way of duty and courage that comes from inside. Krueger would despise me for taking the easy way. But Brasche would be disappointed in me and that would be worse.
Dieter looked Harz directly in the eye. "You are right friend. We have much suffering to do yet before we earn our freedom and our rest. Lead on to the north."
* * *
"Very well then, Sergeant Major, you have certainly earned your reward. You may go and claim it."
In a flash Krueger was out of the driver's chair and grabbing at his pack. He began stuffing some extra necessities into it.
Anna announced, "We have enemy ships coming this way, Herr Oberst."
"I am sure we must, Anna. Well, this won't take long. You had best hurry, Sergeant Major."
Krueger stopped stuffing the pack and began to walk the row between the battle station chairs lining both sides of the battle cocoon. Krueger stopped, taken aback, at seeing a square black cloth rectangle lying on the tank's metal deck. A similar rectangle graced Krueger's own lapel, though on his the SS showed.
Krueger looked up to where Hans sat. He saw that Hans' right lapel was bare where the silver SS had once stood. "Why?" Krueger asked.
"I told you, Sergeant Major. I am free now . . . well . . . almost free. I still have my restrictions. And I never wanted to wear that symbol again. For the rest, it was fine. It meant something good. To me it did not. But I felt I had to wear it and try to bring honor again to it for the others."
Hans reached into his tunic's left breast pocket and withdrew a little package. A thin folded cloth something or other he set aside on his chair's armrest, as he did a small folded paper. The last item, a picture, he handed to Krueger.
"Does she look familiar, Sergeant Major?"
"Maybe," he answered with a shrug. "Pretty girl. Your wife?"
"Yes, she was. Look carefully," Hans insisted. "See if you can't remember seeing her before."
"I don't have time for . . ." And then Krueger saw that Brasche had his pistol drawn.
"What the hell is this?"
"I told you to look carefully."
Heart beating fast, Krueger looked down at the picture again. "Okay, yes, I have probably met the girl. I don't know who she is though."
Brasche smiled then and said, "I didn't expect you would know her name, Sergeant Major. My wife was called 'Anna.' This tank is named for her.
A set of memories tugged at Krueger, memories of a little, emaciated Jewess being used by a squad of men. He dropped the picture and began to reach for his own pistol.
Hans' pistol spoke and then spoke again. Krueger was spun to the floor. He lay there on his back, going into shock, bleeding to death.
Krueger's eyes lost focus for a moment. When focus returned he saw a broadly smiling Brasche standing over him, pistol pointed directly at Krueger's head.
"This is for my wife, Anna, whose name you never asked, you NAZI SON OF A BITCH!"
* * *
Beaten in war or not, the Germans were still thorough. Several miles up the road, Harz and Schultz were met by buses, just returning from dropping off one load of refugees to pick up another. The loading was orderly and soon the two were in line on an asphalt parking lot awaiting boarding. Their route, so they were told, would take them into Denmark, across several bridges, and even underwater, before they reached Sweden.
Dieter stopped before joining a line to board a bus. He looked around at a homeland he did not expect ever to see again. Suddenly, without a word, Dieter began walking off the asphalt to the nearest patch of bare earth. There, while Harz looked on without comprehension, Dieter started digging at the earth with his helmet. Soon he had the helmet half filled and another pile of dirt beside the little hole. Dieter reached into his pocket and removed a plastic bag. This he placed onto the dirt in the helmet. Then he filled the helmet with the remainder, tamping it down carefully. He walked back to Harz and the forming line carrying the helmet by its strap.
"And what was that in aid of?" asked Harz.
"At first, when I was diggi
ng, I just wanted to bury Gudrun, the only part of her I have to bury anyway, as a human should have been buried. But then I thought that someday, children will ask us, 'What is Germany?' And I thought I might be able to point to this helmet, filled with the rich soil of home and the last remains of as pure a spirit and heart as Germany ever produced, and encased in and protected by a helmet of war as only soldiers ever could have protected Germany. And with that, maybe I will be able to explain."
* * *
Anna's picture was retrieved from the floor where Krueger had discarded it. Safe in Hans' pocket again, it was joined by his little packet of her hair. He smiled at the nearness, warmly, and thought, Soon, love, soon.
"Anna, full automation. Prepare for continuous antilander fire. Close-in defense weapons under your control. Engagement parameters Posleen flyers and infantry."
"Yes, Herr Oberst," the tank answered.
"Anna, call me Hans, can't you?"
"Yes, Hans, I can call you by your given name. Hans, those Posleen ships are almost in range, and there are more of them than I thought. I am loading DU-AM now."
"Thank you, Anna. How much time?"
"Two minutes, Hans."
"Very good."
Hans took the small folded cloth something, and began to open it into a yarmulke. "Commander's gun," he announced. His gunner's controls descended around him.
As the first Posleen ship appeared in his sight, Hans began to recite, "Hear, O Israel . . . the Lord is God . . . the Lord is One . . ."
Epilogue:
In a further future...
The Heavens twisted. Normal star patterns were distorted and covered as the battle cruiser Derflinger, leading the human fleet, began to emerge from hyperspace. Derflinger was followed by Kaiser and Kaiserin, the latest supermonitors Bismarck and Tirpitz, the heavy cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Scheer and Hipper. A parsec away materialized a similar fleet, containing Musashi and Yamato, Kongo, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu. In between, led by escorts, emerged the combined transport fleet.
Slowly and majestically, the three sub-fleets closed on their target, a major world of the hated Darhel. From below, semirobotic defenses attempted to hold the avenging humans at bay. These were semirobotic in the sense that they required a living operator to release them to fight, but fought on their own. Only this roundabout method saved the Darhel "operators" from lintatai, the catatonia and death that came from actively using violence.
Aboard the transport fleet's flagship, a special vessel on loan from the Americans and named the "Chesty Puller," the landing force's chain of command met in the orders room. They had met not so much to consult or plan or even to order as to share a few hours conviviality before the landing.
Shudders ran through this ship as it sent cargo after cargo of kinetic death down onto the Darhel world. In the viewing screen Mühlenkampf and his mixed corps of SS and samurai officers watched with satisfaction as bright lines of dozens of descending KE projectiles ended in actinic flashes before giving birth to clouds of angry black.
Initially a few ships seemed to try to make an escape. Shrieking useless admonitions that they were full of noncombatants, the ships attempted to run the human-imposed blockade. But centuries-old human laws of war held it perfectly legitimate to engage civilians trying to flee a siege. Nothing in those laws required that a siege be intended to have any long duration. The more numerous escort vessels saw to the would-be escapers, while the heavies continued pounding the planet's surface.
Another happy shudder ran through the Chesty Puller. Smiling grimly, the shudder reminding him of his last session with a woman, Mühlenkampf lifted his glass in a silent toast, thinking, and aren't we just giving you a good fucking, you elven pieces of shit?
The destruction being visited upon the Darhel initially looked carefully planned as one by one their planetary defense batteries were silenced. This actually took several hours to accomplish, hours enjoyably spent in sweet contemplation of revenge, present and future. Though the ship had rung with the occasional hit from the Darhel shore batteries, this too had ceased.
With the defense batteries suppressed, the fleet was able to turn its attention to population centers. LTG Horida, leading a corps of Armored Combat Suits in His Imperial Majesty's Service, grunted satisfaction as one Darhel city after another was beaten to dust. Just so were our cities scathed . . . at your instigation, evil kamis . . . demons.
The slightest of smiles informed the face of Brigadier General Dieter Schultz. "Brigadier General" he was, for the SS retained the normal rank system of Western armies and had never gone back to the arcane rank system they had once used, an inheritance of the old Sturmabteilung, or SA. The double lightning flashes still glittered on his collar, though, as his silver armband proclaimed "Michael Wittmann." Schultz would lead the heavy armor contingent in the conquest. He looked forward to testing his brigade of E-model Tigers against the Darhel's half-baked pseudo-robots. He was eagerly certain his Tiger, Gudrun, would make short work of them.
By Dieter's feet rested a combat helmet of a kind not seen anymore except on parade. That helmet never left his side. Never. The helmet was filled, apparently, with dirt, a few flowers growing from it.
After one particularly vivid strike, Harz, the Michael Wittmann Brigade's sergeant major, clinked glasses with Toshiro Nagoya, Operations Officer for Horida. Benjamin, of Judas Maccabeus, thinking of his lost homeland, his slaughtered and scattered people, whispered, "An eye for an eye . . . blood for blood."
A ship's chime rang over the intercom. "Gentlemen, time," announced a soft female voice. That was Admiral Yolanda Sanchez, the bloodthirsty Philippine bitch—as she was often referred to, in command of the Combined Fleet, ordering the men to their landing bays.
The revels broke up, officers and senior noncoms moving briskly to join their waiting men and combat vehicles. As each left he used his right hand to reverently tap a pseudo-glass casing containing a folded suede blanket, blonde and still bright after many centuries. Above the blanket, fixed to the wall, was a Posleen head, its face twisted in an agonized rictus.
Last to leave was Mühlenkampf. Still looking at the screen in the view of which a world and a civilization died, he mused softly, but as if the Darhel could hear, "The Aldenata—idiot children—thought they were doing one thing when they fiddled with the Posleen and ended up doing something very different. They were as wrong about their tampering with you Elves. But then, given both those lessons you still thought you were even more clever and that you could change us to suit your purposes. Now it is you getting a very different result from any you planned on.
"We, on the other hand, are going to change you and we will succeed. This is because our sights are set lower. We only wish to change you from living to extinct.
"I hope you are pleased with what you have created. . . ."
* * *
Far, far away, many parsecs in fact, the ghost of Michael Wittmann, and many another, too, smiled in his bier.
Afterword
"I am, of course, not a lover of upheavals. I merely want to make sure people do not forget that there are upheavals."
—General Aritomo Yamagata,
Imperial Japanese Army, 1881
This story began on a dare, of sorts.
John Ringo created a very interesting, and very bloody, series called, generally, either the Posleen Universe, The War Against the Posleen, or The Legacy of the Aldenata. The series presupposes an alien invasion—a sort of Mongol Horde in space—and a decadent galactic civilization which is able to give Earth much needed technology to defend itself and which needs humans as soldiers to defend it, the controlling Galactics having been genetically and/or culturally manipulated into a helpless pacifism. Much of the tech described is very neat stuff, of course, but the social ramifications are staggering. This is the major reason why the reader will not see as much Galactic Technology (GalTech to the uninitiated) in Watch on the Rhine as one might have expected. The one aspect of GalTech that seems
to have the greatest potential social impact is the ability to rejuvenate human beings.
John had solicited contributions from fans, of which Tom is one, for short stories and novellas to deal with areas of the Earth, and of the wider war, that his series was simply not going to cover. These were to be collected, those that met the grade, into an anthology.
Initially, Tom wasn't all that interested, having other fish to fry (like the series John and he are planning on doing . . . hint, hint. Finish the outline, John). But the more Tom thought about it, and the more he considered the twin impacts of both rejuvenation and a war of extermination being waged by these aliens, the more fascinated with the idea he became.
The conversation went something like this:
Tom (who may have been drinking at the time): You know, bro', thinking about Germany, the coming invasion and rejuvenation, they're going to need all the trained and experienced combat soldiers they can lay their hands on.
John (who may not have been drinking at the time): Well, duh.
Tom: Did you ever think about where they are going to get them? Can you say Waffen SS?
John: Cooool. Let's do it. I'd love it. More importantly, Jim would love it.
So we asked Jim. Then we cornered him. Then we started the arm-twisting. He kept twisting free. But we were persistent . . . and the rest was going to be future history.
* * *
In the course of writing this collaboration we talked about the nature of the Posleen War, aka the War against the Posleen, by the hour. Tom added a fair bit to John's understanding, and of course John's interactive responses ("No Goddammit, Tom, we can't effing crucify the Greens." "Can we hang 'em? No drop?" "Oh, all right.") added to Tom's basic thought-universe. Of course Tom is a Lieutenant Colonel of Infantry (qualified Ranger, Inspector General, Spec Ops Civil Affairs bubba, etc.) and takes all things related very seriously (Remember, you may not like the effing IG . . . but the IG sure likes effing you). John likes some jokes with his mayhem. Maybe you can tell the difference.
