The Free World War
Page 1
The Free World War
The Free World War
Matthew Frend
Winchester, UK
Washington, USA
First published by Cosmic Egg Books, 2019
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Text copyright: Matthew Frend 2018
Maps Designed by Stephen M. Perrine
Edited by James Hallman – Writeworks
Cover artwork “Hellcat – Lorraine 44” by Pete Ashford
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ISBN: 978 1 78904 168 2
978 1 78904 169 9 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947791
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Contents
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Kursk, Russia July 5th, 1943
Mojave City 2265 CE
St. Querin, Germany July 1945
St. Querin, Germany July 1945
The Great Hall Mojave City 2265 CE
St. Querin, Germany July 1945
Mojave City 2265 CE
Mannheim, Germany December 14th, 1945
Mojave City 2265 CE
February 13th, 1946 Near Linz, Austria
Mojave City 2265 CE
February 14th, 1946 Near Enns, Austria
Mojave City 2265 CE
February 14th, 1946 Near Enns, Austria
Feb 18th, 1946 Steyr, Austria
Mojave City 2265 CE
Feb 18th, 1946 Steyr, Austria
Mojave City 2265 CE
Feb 18th, 1946 Jihlava, Czechoslovakia
Feb 18th, 1946 Linz, Austria
Prague, Russian occupied Czechoslovakia. Feb 19th, 1946
Near Slavonice, Czechoslovakia Feb 24th, 1946
Znojmo, Czechoslovakia Feb 26th, 1946
Passau, Germany March 25th, 1946
Passau, Germany Town Center March 25th, 1946
Mojave City 2265 CE
Passau, Germany March 25th, 1946
Passau, Germany Town Center March 25th, 1946
Mojave City 2265 CE
Passau, Germany March 25th, 1946
Mojave City 2265 CE
Passau, Germany March 26th, 1946
Passau, Germany March 30th, 1946
April 21st, 1946 Bialystok, Poland
Mojave City 2265 CE
Bialystok, Poland April 23rd, 1946
New York Times April 24th, 1946
April 24th, 1946 Supraśl River, North-west of Bialystok, Poland
Mojave City 2266 CE
Bialystok, Poland May 2nd, 1946
May 11th, 1946 North-East of Bialystok, Poland
Mojave City 2266 CE
Krynki Salient, May 12th, 1946 0730 HRS
Mojave City 2266 CE
Krynki Salient, May 13th, 1946 0330 HRS
New York Times September 24th, 1946
Washington Post November 2nd, 1946
Mojave City 2266 CE
December 9th, 1946 North of Tula, Russia
Moscow January 13th, 1947
New York Times March 20th, 1947
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Guide
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Start of Content
Kursk, Russia
July 5th, 1943
The showers of dirt and calamitous thunder that had rent the air for the past hour stopped abruptly. Lieutenant Valentin Rhuzkoi uncurled from the fetal position, pulled himself up and peered over the lip of his trench. He squinted at the wasteland of craters and ruined emplacements, wrapped in a mangled maze of barbed wire.
“Oh bozhe moi!” he muttered, spitting out a mouthful of crud he’d breathed in during the artillery barrage. Glancing around, he wondered if he had any men left.
“Positions!” he yelled, raising his field glasses and scanning the defensive perimeter. Helmets began to bob up from the scorched ground to either side.
A light breeze pushed a veil of thick smoke toward them, the remnants of the barrage’s last volley. Gray figures loomed through the mist.
“Three hundred yards! Infantry!” he shouted, still unsure how many of his company had survived. How many dead or injured? How many buried alive by the hundreds of shells that had landed directly on their positions? Then a darker shape caught his attention.
“Jagdpanzer!”
The lumbering tank destroyer coughed. A shockwave of pulverized earth slammed him back to the floor of the trench.
He feared his men might answer, but they were well drilled and held their fire, waiting for the Germans to close in.
None came.
The Panzer grenadiers melted into the ruptured landscape, allowing their armor to advance past them.
Lieutenant Rhuzkoi scrambled up the incline of the collapsing trench, half blinded, and dug around for his Kalashnikov.
Another explosion. He could barely breathe as hot, concussed air was sucked away, replaced by choking dust and smoke. He felt something solid, grasped and pulled, then flung it away. Just a bloody arm.
Shots rang out. The sixty-ton monster kept coming on as his men fired their rifles with futility. A few of them leapt out of their holes and threw firebombs.
They were gunned down as shattered glass and flames smashed uselessly against the steel flanks of the Ferdinand.
A Red Army machine gun opened up. The grenadiers were assaulting in groups, leap-frogging from cover to cover. Rhuzkoi saw one get tangled in wire. Halted only for a second, but he jerked suddenly and then fell limp as machine gun bullets thudded into his torso.
The Ferdinand fired another HE round and the machine gun died. Their anti-tank guns already destroyed by the artillery, the Russians had nothing to fight back with.
Rhuzkoi brought his hands up … two clenched fists of scorched clay.
Enough death. Enough blood on his hands.
“Surrender!” he cried to his men as he rose from his trench.
He raised his arms above his head and his hands emptied, the Russian soil falling back down to lay with his dead comrades.
Now Night her course began, and, over Heaven
Inducing darkness, grateful truce imposed,
And silence on the odious din of war.
John Milton
Paradise Lost
General George S. Patton looked out over a vast frozen white plain from his hilltop vantage and imagined the thousand miles beyond.
A figure as solitary as the windswept landscape, he closed his eyes and his mind traveled across the forests, hills and then the rolling steppes, until it reached Moscow.
He shivered, not against the chill breeze, but from Napoleon’s ghost brushing his shoulder, and reminding him of the tragic failure of 1812.
His eyes opened moments later, blazing brightly with a renewed purpose. He would succeed where the Grand Armee and Barbarossa had fallen short. He would take Moscow.
The war-horse was being called to arms once more.
Mojave City
2265 CE
“My love … will you read to me?”
“So am I as the rich, whose blessed key,
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.”
“Sweetheart that’s wonderful! Am I your treasure?” Eya asked.
“Yes my heaven, you are a precious jewel,” Arjon admitted, his voice bursting with emotion.
Eya gave him that look, “Would you like to play now?”
“Wouldn’t you prefer to go out?” Arjon asked.
Locks of candy-apple flame swept around her shoulders as Eya stopped to pick a rose.
“I’m not sure if anyone will be out tonight …” she said, “because of the celebration tomorrow.”
“We could go to the Nature Green tonight, have a swim in the lake … and then go into the City tomorrow night for the celebration!” Arjon enthused.
“When will you work?” she asked sweetly.
“Anytime! You know that our time together will always come first.”
“Let’s wait until tomorrow then … the Green and then to the City!”
As the sun sank into the horizon, their bower adjusted to the approaching night. Hesta, the artificial intelligence that embellished their home and managed the practical and mundane tasks, adjusted the air inside their home so that it took on a balmy comfort. Inconspicuous lighting glowed from behind ferns and other greenery, and the window tinting changed to enhance a view of the sunset.
“As long as you’re happy …” Arjon agreed, “… I’ll go to my den and do a little work before dinner.”
Eya thought briefly about what she would prefer to do. The candy-apple red suddenly burst into crimson fire, as nano-crystals in her hair responded to her mood.
“Mmmm … work later … play now!”
Hesta planned the evening meal. She knew what the bower’s occupants desired by monitoring biometric sensors, and would time the meal’s delivery so that it did not interrupt them. She checked their current locations – Arjon in his den and Eya in her studio. Their serotonin readings indicated recent satiation. She would ensure that a stimulant such as chocolate, which also produced endorphins, was included in the ingredients so that the meal would not be too disappointing.
While the AI cooked, Arjon sat at his cluttered oaken desk. The outline of the dark timber portrayed its natural form, carefully crafted as though it were carved from a still living tree. In his hands, a rare paper copy of an antique document transfixed his attention.
“Hesta, I’m going to need a detailed search of military records circa 1945.”
“Data from confirmed sources is available,” she replied.
“I’ll need all personnel files on the following individuals, plus Military Police records, and also transport logistics records for US Army Signals battalions operating near the Mannheim area of Germany in December 1945.”
He pressed a spot on the display in front of him and Hesta went to work.
“Once you have all of that, I want you to build a local data matrix – I’ll want to do some data-mining on it.”
“Understood. The data matrix is estimated to be two petabytes and will be completed within fifteen minutes.”
“Great, that seems fast! Is that be
cause of your latest upgrade? The client should be pleased – I’m charging their attorney by the hour and I got the impression they are on a budget.”
“Confirmed.”
He pondered for a moment while Hesta began processing. Being a lawyer must have been very laborious in the past. Weeks or even months of leg-work and trawling through documents to put together a case. Now his artificial assistant could do all of that, he just needed to provide direction.
And what a different world it must have been in the twentieth century.
He smiled as he imagined the kind of work he would have been doing in the previous centuries.
Defending criminals, settling civil disputes … Qwerty … so much work for the legal profession.
In a world of all-pervasive harmony, his role had evolved into one where the scant demand for his talents lay not in the resolution of conflicts, or recovery of material wealth, but more in the uncovering of the truth – and the restoration of personal honor.
He walked from his den and across to Eya’s studio. She was concentrating on her work, a photon-sculpture, and wasn’t aware of his presence. He stood and watched her for a moment as she deftly manipulated light emitting plasma into an ultra-modern abstract form. It reminded him of a hologram of a stellar nursery he’d once seen. Swirling bands of color were being drawn into a burning core where a new star would be born.
He had to drag his gaze away as he continued into the room. “Beautiful!”
She giggled appreciatively; “Have you finished already?”
“Soon. I’ve got a hunch this one would have taken a while if not for Hesta’s upgrades – they’ve improved her virtualization performance.”
She broke herself away from her work and embraced him.
“But you’re not going to let it change our plans for tomorrow?” she cooed.
“No, no, no … and the whole team’s confirmed. It shows we all must think alike.”
“So it’s an important announcement then?” she asked, curious as to why all of his co-workers would also be going.
Arjon sighed, artists … he thought, in a world of their own most of the time. But he found it refreshing that his wife could be so detached from an event that his colleagues had been speculating about for weeks.
“Very important. It’s a new Enlightenment.”
“Really!”
“Yes … it’s been over fifty years since one was ratified.”
She moved back to her sculpture, “That long? We must be running out of ideas that are in need of being proven… right.”
As soon as she said them she felt uncomfortable with her words. She looked up at Arjon, “I mean …”
“I know what you mean …” Arjon smiled. “It’s not as though we know everything there is to know about our existence. And you’re right – the Center of Truth sometimes establishes a concept as being wrong.”