“Feuer!” shouted Brasche into the general circuit, once he was sure all the Posleen had fallen into his trap. Nine twelve-inch guns crashed as one; piercing seven of the spacecraft and splitting them apart amidst blinding flashes of antimatter. “Fire at will.”
Eleven remained. Those eleven began spitting back their fire in the form of kinetic energy projectiles, plasma beams and high-velocity missiles. But here the advantage lay with the humans. By coming over the ridge, the Posleen had at least temporarily confined themselves to an area within the humans’ ability to sense and target.
And the Tigers’ heavy armor could take all but a very unlucky hit. The Posleen craft could not take any hit from those massive cannon.
A second volley rang out, almost as solidly as had the first — mass-produced precision machinery remained something of a German specialty, after all. Despite return fire and jinking to avoid being targeted, a further five Posleen targets were smashed and split. Six remained.
Used to having every advantage, from numbers to technology to sheep fighting heart, this was too much for the aliens. They attempted to make a run for it.
Seeing the enemy flee, a most heartwarming sight, Hans Brasche had but a single command, “Pursue.”
Interlude
“They pursue our people as if they were themselves thresh, these threshkreen,” muttered Athenalras. “It’s… it’s… indecent!”
Ro’moloristen repressed a Posleen chuckle; it would never do to annoy his chief and lord. Perhaps the junior was made of sterner stuff. Certainly he was of less senior stuff. Though somehow he thought himself to be less ruthless. Braver? He didn’t know.
Yet he felt brave as he answered, “They do what they do for their people, as we do for ours. Yes, they have many disgusting habits. Yes, their architecture is somewhat absurd, their industry and science primitive. Yes, they do not fight as we do, in the open for all our peers to see and the Rememberers to sing of.”
“But, my lord, they fight hard and they fight well. And there is something somehow touching in the way that their old will throw down their lives for their young, their males for their females.”
Athenalras looked at Ro’moloristen as if the young God King had gone quite mad; for a human male to toss away his life for a female was as if a God King were to give itself up for a Posleen normal. It was very nearly the ultimate in obscene conduct, to a proper God King.
Ro’moloristen backtracked quickly. “I did not say I approved, my lord. It’s just that such courage is somehow moving. As if these lessers, these females and nestlings, embodied some value so infinite we cannot even guess at it.”
Chapter 9
Giessen, Germany, 22 April 2007
Dieter Schultz had held out hope, even after the news of Giessen’s fall and the resulting massacre had come. But day after day passed with no news from his beloved Gudrun. Dieter began to believe that hope was forlorn.
Each new day had brought a new fight for the Korps and for the Schwere Panzer Battalion 501(Michael Wittmann). Each day brought new losses. The battalion dropped to eight Tigers, then seven. With each loss twenty-three valiant souls had flickered away in the wind.
Dieter the gunner had had the privilege of painting markings amounting to no fewer than eighty-eight kills — eight broad rings and eight narrow — on the barrel of Anna’s twelve-inch gun. With no word of Gudrun, the painting was a thankless, even an unhappy, task.
Briefly there was a respite as one new and two reclaimed Tigers joined the ranks. Then again the steady drain began, replacements never quite equaling losses. Brasche commanded a mere five tanks by the time the last infestation had been cleared from central Germany, said final infestation being the command of the senior God King, Fulungsteeriot, in and around the nearly scraped away ruins of the town of Giessen.
As briefly, Dieter Schultz felt a moment’s respite as the long-delayed field mail caught up with the often moving Tiger Battalion. The letter he received held something potentially grand for Dieter: a small wallet photo of Gudrun, looking much as she had the one night they had met; a short handwritten note, lightly scented; a small pack of golden, silken hair. He hoped with all his heart it was not a message from the grave.
Ouvrage du Hackenberg, Thierville, France, 23 April 2007
It was like a descent into the grave. From the spring just bursting forth into life above ground, from an open air scented with flowers, Isabelle and her sons entered through an arched concrete passageway into a dimly lit, damp, dank and malodorous sewer filled to overflowing with human refuse.
Isabelle’s spirits sank with each step into the fortress and down. To either side of her, arrayed on cramped cots pushed against damp walls, a mass of hopeless humanity stared at the newcomers with blank, disinterested faces. They seemed barely human in their indifference. Isabelle felt a chill run up her spine that had nothing to do with the cold, underground air.
Still, the cold was there. She remembered back to a worse cold.
The car had long since given up its ghost to lack of fuel. The reeling army had had fuel, of course, but had steadfastly refused to turn over so much as a liter to any of the begging, pleading refugees who had then to take to their feet. Isabelle had briefly thought of selling herself for some gasoline to save her boys. She had thought about it and then, realizing that younger women and girls could make better offers than she could, she had rejected the notion.
Instead, repacking down to true minimum essentials, the family had left the auto abandoned by the road and trudged the last few hundred kilometers afoot.
The cold had been terrible at first. There were moments when the shivering boys had made Isabelle think of ending it for them all then and there. Among the minimum essentials had been a pistol, after all. Though avidly in favor of gun control, as she was — being a liberal, and though, as a doctor, her husband had had a deep revulsion for weapons that harmed or could harm human bodies — yet still, humanly, they had kept her grandfather’s service pistol from the First World War, ignoring all calls for turn in.
But no, pistol or not, the maternal imperative had won out over mere misery. Her boys must live. To ensure this, she must live. The pistol remained unused.
Curiously, never once had it occurred to her, when it might still have done some good, that the pistol, more readily than her body, might have obtained a bit of fuel. More than once, trudging through the bitter cold, she had cursed herself for not thinking of that.
Berlin, Germany, 24 April 2007
The reprimand fresh in his hand, the Tir cursed the damnable and damned Germans with as much force as fear of lintatai would permit.
Cannot the Ghin see that these are no ordinary opponents? the Tir fretted. Well, I have one thing left to use.
To date the Tir had been very sparing as to which information, of that which he had received from Günter, he chose to download to the Net, in other words, to make available to the Posleen. Somehow, and the Tir did not understand the precise mechanism, he was being cut off from control. He feared, deep in his bones, that releasing all the information in one fell swoop would make the Germans — never among the least paranoid of humans — look to leaks that they might never otherwise have suspected.
But this was a desperate time. The Ghin was threatening to cut off bonuses, withdraw promised stock options, reduce salary… to drop the Tir’s rank to de’Tir.