Siegfried Line, Southwest of Mainz, 11 January 2008
Of formal training there had been precious little. The week Thomas had spent in Charlemagne had proven just enough to teach him what little need be known to fire a military rifle from a concrete bunker, that, and to issue him a minimum of uniforms and equipment.
And minimum, when a young slender boy had to make a home in an icy concrete bunker, was little indeed. Thomas found himself shivering more or less constantly. Though some of this shivering was caused by reasons other than cold.
He had previously been spared personal sight of the enemy, except for what the television had shown of them. The reality was frightful beyond words; a mindless horde that charged forward heedless of loss so long as they might take one human down with them.
The boy’s leader, Sergeant Gribeauval, seemed to have taken an interest in his survival. At least, the good sergeant spent a fair amount of time on his training, whenever the enemy didn’t press the attack too closely. This absence of pressure was so rare, however, that the sergeant’s help consisted mostly of little pointers and tips, and an occasional fatherly pat on the shoulder. Perhaps this was so because Thomas was the youngest member of the platoon by at least a year.
He had lost count of the number of attacks that Charlemagne had repelled so far. The pile of dead enemy to the front grew and grew. Even the wire was, by now, covered with their bodies.
This was, Thomas knew, a very bad sign. Though behind the wire, between him and the aliens, a thin minefield gave some additional protection. He had helped reinforce the minefield, one day, with Sergeant Gribeauval and two others. The sergeant had often muttered about the scarcity of mines; that, and incomprehensible words about “silly royal English adulteresses.”
There was a rustle of fallen leaves from behind the boy; booted feet entering the bunker.
“Young De Gaullejac?”
“Oui, mon sergeant,” the boy answered. His breath formed a misty frost over the plastic rifle stock to which he kept his beardless cheek pressed.
“Pack your things, son, while keeping as good a watch to your front as you can. We have orders to pull back to the next position. Soon. It isn’t as good as this one but the enemy hasn’t penetrated it yet. The artillery is going to plaster the hell out of this place to cover our retreat.”
Army Group Reserve Headquarter, Wiesbaden, Germany, 13 January 2008
Retreat was the only option Mühlenkampf could see. The Siegfried line and the Rheinland were lost, that much was clear. The enemy had finally gotten their act together and found the answer to the previously formidable defenses. It seemed the Germans had managed to do what they had done before, even with the Russians: teach an enemy to fight as a combined arms team.
“Scheisse,” he cursed, without enthusiasm. “Scheisse to have to go through this a third time in one lifetime.”
The rear area was a scene of terror and misery. Masses of people were evacuating to the north and west. Some of these, it was hoped, would make it to the underground cities constructed in Scandinavia. Others could seek shelter in the Alps; the Swiss had made that clear enough.
But they had to retreat, now, to shelter behind the Rhein. Even with the threatening breach presented by the enemy presence on their captured bridge, it was the last defensible obstacle the Fatherland owned, excepting only the easily turned Elbe.
Mühlenkampf knew that the Elbe was a place for enemy armies to meet, not for friendly ones to defend from.
If only he had a prayer of retaking the bridgehead. But without the 47th Korps, and Brasche’s 501st Brigade, he knew he hadn’t any chance of doing so any more. He had tried.
It wasn’t that the Bundeswehr were bad troops, anymore. The last two campaigns for the defense of Germany had seen them make vast strides. The real swine in the army, officer or enlisted, were in penal battalions. Executing or, minimally, defanging those civilians who had interfered with the army’s training and morale had also helped. But the 47th Korps had started with a bigger cadre, of generally rougher, tougher, more combat-experienced men. And that made all the difference.
He thought he had a prayer of containing the bridgehead, if only the armies in the Rheinland could be withdrawn to the safety of the Rhine’s eastern bank. Reluctantly, fearfully, by no means certain he was right, Mühlenkampf ordered his operations officer, “Call off the attack to the bridge. Leave the infantry and penal korps behind to contain the enemy, along with one panzer and one panzer grenadier division detached from the army heavy Korps. Take the rest of the Army Group — Bah! Army Group? We have about a single army left under our control — north to the other bridges. Cross them over and have them help the troops in the Rheinland to disengage and withdraw.
“And get me the Kanzler. I need to ask for permission to use a few of the neutron weapons.”
Tiger Brünnhilde, Grosslanghaim,
Franconia, Germany, 13 January 2008
The crew of the tank, not least Prael, were sweating profusely, though the carefully controlled internal climate was not the cause of the sweat. Instead, it was the repeated near misses from Posleen space-borne weapons that had the crew in sweat-soaked clothing.
Brünnhilde had more elevation that the earlier model Tigers. These latter were used in mass, and so could generally count on the dead space above the turret being covered by another tank, standing off at a distance. Brünnhilde, however, fought alone and so had to be able to cover more of her own dead space. Moreover, while Anna’s more or less conventional, albeit highly souped up, twelve-inch gun had a mighty recoil, and could not be elevated too much without having made the model too high for more usual engagements, Brunhilde’s railgun had comparatively little recoil. Thus, she could elevate to eighty degrees above the horizontal.
She needed every bit of that… and more.
“Johann, halt, facing left,” ordered Prael. Mueller quickly slewed the tank to a full stop while twisting her ninety degrees to the left.
Even while Mueller was slowing, then stopping the tank, Prael was setting his own aiming instrument on a Posleen ship, thirty miles away. When he had found the target on the commander’s sight on he ordered the tank to lock on. Brunhilde’s AI dutifully did so, then reported the fact.
Nervously, Prael waited while the railgun gave off three distinct thrums, each about twelve seconds apart. Finally, Schlüssel announced, “Hit.”
Prael immediately commanded, “Reinhard, target, B-Dec, nine o’clock, very high.”
Schlüssel, acting much like an automaton, pressed the button for the gunner to take over the commander’s selected target. He announced, “Got it,” then began to lead the Posleen ship.
Prael began to search the database for the next best target; began and stopped when he saw something incoming that was moving too fast and in the wrong direction to be a target.
“Scheisse,” he said. “Incoming! Johann back us up… fast!”
Mueller, understanding the note of desperation in Prael’s voice, immediately threw the tank into reverse. Though the tank’s superb suspension and almost incredible mass sheltered the other crew from any real feeling for the destruction, Mueller’s sensitive and knowing hands on the controls felt every crumbled building and even the pulverization of the town’s simple and thoughtful monument to her Great War and World War Two dead.