The ominous display prompted him to voice a concern. “General Patton, I wonder if a tank this powerful may provoke alarm, even an overreaction, from the Soviets …”
“My government doesn’t think so General. In fact, they’re now more concerned with the sorry fate of Eastern European countries resulting from communist muscle-flexing … and the Soviet’s recalcitrance at the negotiations over the United Nations.”
“It’s widely known you have significant influence in Washington General. Can you elaborate on how your government’s foreign policy is shaping this clearly overwhelming show of force?”
Another squadron of fighter bombers flew overhead with a deafening roar.
McCreery couldn’t make out what Patton said, except for “…’uck up those goddammed Bolsheviks …”
As the 3rd Army exercise continued deeper into the forest, General Patton stood up in the front row, facing the gathering he was about to address, when an aide came running up from a nearby communications post.
“General!” shouted the aide, rushing onto the platform.
Patton looked at him with some surprise at the interruption, but waited for an explanation.
“Sir! It’s the Russians!” said the aide both breathlessly and loudly enough for everyone to hear, “They’ve just crossed the border and are attacking towards Linz!”
The crowd, shocked at the news, began jumping to their feet. Then, as though they were suddenly struck by the magnitude of it, in unison they turned toward General Patton, standing before them like a rock.
The American General called to them in an unnaturally calm voice. “By God … those bastards don’t know what they’re in for.”
∞
Mojave City
2265 CE
“Popcorn?” asked Arjon as he settled down next to Eya.
She ducked her hand into the bowl and a few spilled into his lap. Picking those up while he prepped the playback, he asked her, “How was your afternoon in the studio?”
“Oh alright, I didn’t get much done … still a little drained. I spent some time searching through archives for some inspiration.”
“Wow … that sounds tedious for you … find anything?”
“Not for my work. But I found a centuries-old proverb … I thought it was appropriate for the new Enlightenment.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes …, ‘To be alone and without love … is a wasted body.
To not be alone, without love … is a wasted soul.’”
Arjon smiled. “Wonderful, and yes, so appropriate.”
As he finished setting up Hesta’s simulation, he mused, “There are still those who struggle to live the Ideal … who fall by the wayside, or into decadence, and have to depend on the Pillars for guidance.”
Eya sighed, “Lost souls … well, perhaps being more enlightened will help them to find a more meaningful purpose.”
“Alright, here we go …” Arjon said.
“What? No BlindFold?” asked Eya.
“I thought we should do without the intensity of VR. This could be very disturbing.”
“Okay then,” Eya agreed, gripping Arjon’s hand. “I’m ready.”
At first the images are in black and white, inducing the viewer to interact with the era more readily. The first few scenes flow by, accompanied by a commentary from a simulated Humphrey Bogart voice-over.
Images of world leaders of the time, Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin and Churchill, are interspersed with enhanced archival footage of significant events.
The stage is set. Now the simulations begin.
A wall is built in Berlin, Chinese communists invade a peaceful Tibet. Jewish children, survivors from the Holocaust, hunger-strike aboard a rusty freighter in the Mediterranean so they can be allowed to enter Palestine.
Eya cries in horror, “Oh my! What was that?”
“We can go back in more detail later … I did say this may be distressing.”
The chaos continues.
Chinese communists implement collectivism which leads to a famine causing the death by starvation of tens of millions of their people. A primitive spherical satellite orbits the Earth, tanks crush their own citizens in a city square, millions are massacred in Rwanda, the flagship of an environmental group is bombed in a New Zealand harbor by French Special Forces.
The two gentle utopians watch in horror as the Earth unravels from the clean, tranquil, prosperous world they know … into an alternative of dysfunctional insanity.
Eya snuggles closer and looks up at Arjon, “Makes you appreciate what we have doesn’t it?”
He can’t speak. Transfixed by sorrow and compassion for the human race, he can’t believe such a change could be attributed to the events surrounding just one man.
Eya squeezes his hand, “Whose life was it you said had made all of the difference?”
Arjon, wiped a tear from his eyes, “A General …” and then the enormous irony hit home.
“Man … what a paradox.”
“So, what did he do that was important enough to change the world?”
“Not just him … it was the butterfly effect … everything that flowed on from the events in the late 1940s … until today – because he survived a car accident.”
Arjon sighed, exhausted. They were both emotionally drained. Although they were used to experiencing virtual reality using the BlindFold, the simulation had been more intense … it had burned deeper … because they could both sense the truth when they were seeing it.
“Can you take any more of this, or do you need to see something lighter?”
“Lighter, yes … an episode of Asteroid Renovations … and something nice!”
“Nice and light … coming up.”
Arjon went to the bower’s replenishment bar. Hesta had already prepared Eya’s favorite, Cocoa soufflé with vanilla-bean cream. Arjon asked the AI to make him the same.
“As its not to your usual taste I wasn’t sure if that’s what you wanted … your serotonin levels are outside of your usual profile … but diagnosis indicates that ingestion of tryptophan will be beneficial to your biorhythm – hence the egg whites in the soufflé.”
“As long as it’s unsweetened it’ll be fine. Thank you Hesta.”
He returned to the recreation space to find Eya already in a better mood. She accepted the dessert gratefully.
“I’d be interested to know more about your General,” she said, “… but without any simulations. Just some history – documentary style.”
“I’ll have Hesta look it up. My research from the case was specific to the time of the accident. I believe there was mention of his influence in Washington. Then Arjon thought for a moment, and added, “… and of course he was involved in the wars in the twentieth century … I remember that from my elementary history.”
“Good … bring it up at the next dinner party … I’m sure Grillon and Margeaux will be enthralled!”
∞
… and the orbs
Of his fierce chariot rolled, as with the sound
Of torrent floods, or of a numerous host.
Paradise Lost
John Milton
Feb 18th, 1946
Jihlava, Czechoslovakia
A postcard from winter – a lonely road ringed by square miles of white wedding-cake icing, is watched over by frosted pine trees. The muffled echo of an axe cutting through brittle wood splits the early morning silence.
Several blows, then a loud crack follows the final swing. The snap of elastic cables precedes the hollow thump of tall timber dropping into a snow bank.
A grin of missing teeth flash from beneath a thick black beard at the sight of the fallen telegraph pole. The peasant shoulders his axe and starts retracing his footprints back to the tree-line. He knows at the same time on a dozen other roads in southern Czechoslovakia, his partisan brothers are also severing the telegraph lines.
The main communications are now cut between Prague and several key towns, including Brno, Ji
hlava and Tábor. A zone from south-east to south-west of the capital is now enclosed in unseen isolation.
Efreiter Ilya Grigorovich squints against the reflected glare from the morning sun on the snow. A Defender of Leningrad, his survival of the intervening years on the Eastern Front only came about through the good fortune of being assigned to the duties of Ambulance driver.
With the end of the war came a fall in demand for those services. Deciding to stay in the Red Army for the regular pay, he was at this moment regretting that decision, as he did almost every day. He could be sitting beside a fire in the Urals instead of standing atop a guard tower outside this little town in Czechoslovakia.
Tramping his feet on the steel mesh floor of the forty-foot high platform to keep warm, he chuckles at the previous night’s debauchery. Re-living his exploits in the town with his comrades always gives him comfort on his lonely vigils. There had to be some compensation for being sent to this frozen outpost, and after all, Josef Stalin himself had condoned the widespread rape of the conquered womenfolk.
That was not surprising, as he’d heard stories of Stalin’s Chief of NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria, being chauffeur-driven through the streets around the Kremlin so he could select women to take back to his apartment for “special” treatment.
Ah, such a time to be a proud member of the victorious Soviet military.
The sky is clear, but the sun is still too low on the horizon to provide any radiant heat. He lifts his field glasses and does a routine scan along the road stretching into the distance.
Is that a vehicle approaching?
Sometimes a large deer would wander out of the trees, and in the glimmering haze resemble a car. He watches as the dark shape wavers in the dazzling glare from the snow.
It seems to be growing, and getting … longer.
His brain, still slightly addled from last night’s alcohol saturation, tells him it might be a serpent, a Zilant, winding its way toward him. He puts down his glasses and moves to the telephone.
Dead.
He turns to look down the road again, “Klyaat! There are hundreds of them!”
A sound begins to rise up, drowning out the bleakness of his solitude. It is a sound he hasn’t heard for many months … since the battle for Vienna.
Artillery!
The rushing crescendo of a speeding train screams in his ears. His last thoughts are not of his nightly drunken plundering, but of the terror of shelling, of cowering in trenches, shin-deep in blood, urine, shit and mud.
The freight train arrives as the guard tower disintegrates amidst multiple explosions. A storm of metal beams and railings rains out in every direction. The surrounding white accepts the wreckage, and the shattered remains of Ilya, into its cold, welcoming blanket.
General Vlasov stands watching from the rear of his armored combat car. Around him, a cluster of self-propelled artillery barks and belches flame and smoke.
He feels elation. He sees the death of those soldiers ahead as the beginning of a great liberation.
First, free the Czechoslovakians, then ultimately, his own countrymen.
The booming retort of the 203mm guns rings painfully in his ears again and again. He feels no discomfort, however, only the oncoming realization of years of hope. An end to the desperate struggle to end the tyranny strangling his homeland.
He looks at his watch. Ten past nine. He could expect a progress report from his “other” army shortly. His other army, the 2nd Armored Division under the command of Major General Meandrov, whose men were wearing the same uniform as the Red Army soldiers ahead of him, should just now have crossed into Allied occupied Austria and be moving on Linz.
An opening act full of deception. He smiled at the parodox. He and the men of his RLA were playing the roles of both the villians who were starting a war, and the heroes who would finish it.
∞
Feb 18th, 1946
Linz, Austria
“Fighters!”
Plumes of snow and dirt spat up from the ground, as deadly rivulets of lead raced across the road.
“Into the trees!” screamed an officer.
White-camouflaged vehicles swerved to avoid each other as they left the congested road and sought the cover of the forest. A tank exploded, its turret hatch flew off, propelled into the air by a jet of flame.
Volleys of 130mm HVAP rockets launched from the underwing racks of P47 Thunderbolts streaked into the convoy. RLA tanks, trucks and scout cars were destroyed, and pillars of fire and black smoke erupted along the miles of road filled by the dispersing column.
From the relative safety of the trees, Major Rhuzkoi watched as the American fighter-bombers flashed past overhead. The thumping blast of anti-aircraft fire from a flak half-track followed them as they disappeared over the tree-tops.
“Too bad we have no air-force,” he said with futility.
“Oh, come now Valentin,” replied Colonel Blackett standing beside him. “You know they wouldn’t last two minutes in these skies.”
He scanned the airspace above the road to the west. Clouds were merging into a more general gray-white gloom. Good.
“Maybe more snow on the way … that’ll keep the bombers grounded.”
“Mount up!” the Major shouted.
The column of RLA 2nd Armored Division armor resumed its march on Linz.
Minutes later, they passed through a small town on the outskirts of Linz, the streets still lined with rubble from the Red Army’s spring offensive of 1945. The destruction of much of the town during the initial assault had been a violent precursor to what had followed. The Soviet soldiers had been particularly vengeful in this region – Linz was where Adolf Hitler had grown up.
Shocked civilians, their memories of the weeks of pillage and rape still vivid, retreated indoors at the sight of the new invaders. They all knew the difference between the white-circled star of the occupying US Army, and the red one painted on these vehicles.
Beyond the town, the ground opened out into a sparsely treed flat, leading up to a river. Miles ahead, the darker line of thick forest led south along the tributary of the Danube.
Blackett knew that any bridges would still be intact. That was part of the plan.
“We’ll hold up here,” he said to Rhuzkoi. “Have your men setup defensive positions facing to the south.”
It was a poor move tactically, but they knew that. The token forces to their west would be holding the bridges, crossroads and other key points around Linz. This RLA column, and another one following the line of approach along the Danube, could easily sweep past them and take the city. That wasn’t going to happen.
Blackett dismounted from the command car, and Rhuzkoi followed him. They walked a short distance toward a gentle slope. Topping the rise, they could see for several miles in the milky light of the early afternoon.
“Now we wait,” said Blackett.
The major took a deep swig from a hip flask. The potato spirit, distilled by his troops in the mountains they had left during the night, was warming to the throat, bracing him against the chill air.
He offered the flask to his friend.
“But not for long,” the Russian said gravely.
Raising his field glasses to the south, he gasped as an awe-inspiring sight came into focus.
Dozens of tanks followed by more than a hundred armored troop carriers approached in line-abreast formation.
Blackett passed the flask back to Rhuzkoi. “Shit we’re gonna be in for it …”
The colonel lifted his glasses. He could make out the shapes of the new T32s, nicknamed the Grizzly, and a few of the slower moving heavies from the 10th Armored Division.
Blackett dropped his field glasses and looked around at their own forces. The armor comprising the RLA column, mostly older Russian KV1s, would be no match for what they would be facing.
The American troops to their west around Linz were about to see a show.
“Prepare to fire!” shouted an officer to one side.
Rhuzkoi drank again. “To tomorrow!” he toasted. “May we all live to see it!”
Blackett smiled grimly. Amen to that … we’ve got to make this look good.
∞
∞
Prague, Russian occupied Czechoslovakia.
Feb 19th, 1946
General Ivan Fedyuninsky, Commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, sipped calmly from his teacup. The aroma of Lapsang Souchong tended to help him retain his focus.
“What is their strength?” he asked the officers seated at the conference table around him.
“It is unknown at this stage General,” answered one of his division commanders.
“We believe it must be the 3rd Army … although reports suggest there are units of … uncertain nationality,” added another.
“Uncertain!” Fedyuninsky snapped, shedding his calm demeanor.
The officers flinched as one at the outburst. No one dared speak while the General regained his composure.
“Well … find out. Fast!”
Notes were scribbled and passed to runners. Several left at an urgent pace for the communications department of the headquarters.
Fedyuninsky turned to a colonel from the NKVD.
“We need to inform General Secretary Stalin of the identity of the attackers … as soon as possible.”
The NKVD Colonel nodded affirmatively.
“In the meantime,” the General continued, “mobilize all Divisions in the southern sector immediately to support those already engaged.”
He glared around the table. “Bring me an updated plan to defend the approaches to Prague …” he glanced at his watch, “… in time for a conference in four hours from now.”
An officer marched into the hall carrying a signal.
“Comrade General,” he said as he saluted and passed the paper to Fedyuninsky.
The 2nd Ukrainian Front Commander took another sip of tea as he read the message, then, looked searchingly around the table once again. It was as though he were looking for a victim, someone to return his glare with a shameful expression on their face and so expose their guilt.
The Free World War Page 6
