The most recent group, some seven half-starved and completely terrified refugees, were Poles. They were being fed, at Hans’ order, under Anna’s shelter and from the tank’s own stores. A small fire had been built under the tank, as much for morale as for warmth. There was something about a fire, something ancient and beyond words. Hans had one built whenever the tactical situation permitted. The crew would often gather there, to warm their hands by the flickering light. The Poles, too, gathered by it.
Only one spoke any German, and that little he spoke very badly. The man seemed quite frantic to Hans, pointing and gesturing at some new threat, real or imagined, coming from the other side.
Reluctantly, after the Poles had been fed, Hans directed Harz to guide them to the rear. Maybe they did have useful information, maybe they didn’t. If so, only one of the interpreters in the rear could hope to ferret it out.
Still, Hans had to credit the intensity of the Pole’s frantic and failed attempts at communication. He resolved to order an increased alert level as soon as he returned to Anna’s warm hold.
Though the night was cold, Borominskar, standing by and facing a fire, and with a patchwork blanket made of carefully chewed and sewn thresh-pelt, was warm enough. A cosslain had summoned forth the needed skills to make the blanket from his internal store. Going from feed lot to feed lot he had selected the best of the thresh, those with the longest, finest, brightest hair to make this offering to his God. Carefully trimming and cleaning the freshly gathered pelts, the cosslain had chewed them gently for days to make them change from putrescible flesh to soft, long haired, impervious suede.
The fire was warm, pleasingly so. Its random flashes, the sparks and flickering shadows it cast, brought to the Posleen’s mind a sense of peace; of relaxation, quiet and ease. Equally comforting, the blanket was bright and fluffy, the thresh would have called its fibers “blonde.” It insulated the God King well from the frozen wind, coming unbroken off of the steppes to the east.
The God King found stroking the long, thick fibers of the blanket to be strangely pleasant, almost as pleasant as contemplation of revenge upon the cowardly, never to be sufficiently dammed thresh who had half broken his host.
And the day of that revenge was near at hand.
Borominskar had had a terrible time keeping his Kessentai and their oolt’os under discipline. Hungry, the people were; hungry, frightened and furious at the cowardly thresh’s use of floating fire to defeat the last attack. They were also terrified, at some deep inner level, of facing such a death as had befallen their brethren.
The memory of all those oolt’os burning and suffocating in flame, their piteous cries breaking the sky, still made Borominskar shudder, his flesh crawl.
Still, a few more days and the gathering parties, hungry as they were, would have gathered enough living thresh to make Borominskar’s plan work. The thresh had shown no pity for his people. They might have some for their own.
Tiger Brünnhilde, Kitzingen, Germany, 17 January 2008
“The pity of it is,” said a sleepy Mueller to an exhausted Schlüssel, “with just two of these, we would be three times more effective. With a half a dozen, the enemy could be hunted as if by a wolf pack, and destroyed before they could mass effective return fire. A half dozen like our ‘girl’ here, and the Posleen could not live over Germany.”
“Yes,” agreed Schlüssel. “And then our cities would not be smashed from the air, our fortifications would have held longer, maybe indefinitely, and the poor bastards on the ground would have a better chance.”
“Is there any chance of getting at least a second Model B Tiger?”
“No, Johann,” Prael interrupted. “The information is on the Net for download; the factory and most of the raw material are being moved to one of the SubUrbs in Switzerland. But that process is going to take months to complete the move and prepare for manufacture. No telling how long before they begin to produce.”
“The Swedes?” Mueller asked.
“They have the plans” answered Prael. “They have the raw materials. They even have some railguns we shipped to them and all of the plans for Tiger A and B, both. But, again, more months, perhaps as long as a year, until the first model rolls off.”
“We do not have a year,” Henschel observed from the little cocoon of blankets he had rolled himself into to seek a few moments’ rest.
Each day in the Tiger seemed like a year of normal time to Rinteel. Besides the constant work, work, work keeping the beast running, work which, because of his dexterity, skill and instincts fell more and more upon the Indowy’s broad shoulders, there was the ever present danger, the psychic torment whenever he let it get through to him that this tank, this crew, were gleefully slaughtering sentient beings.
At least he wasn’t hungry, as he had been for a few days when the food he had carried aboard ran out. He had managed to cobble together a food synthesizer in an unused space between Brünnhilde’s fighting compartment and the exterior hull. It stood right next to what the human crew had dubbed “the Nibelung’s still.”
Rinteel found himself growing more and more dependent upon the product of that still. Through the long days and nights of battle, he had come to seek its relaxation — even the oblivion it could provide taken in excess quantities — as a respite from the horrors he endured.
He noticed too that the German crew never lost a chance to loot any alcohol they could find in any abandoned town. Though, being German and therefore almost as neat as an Indowy, the trail behind the über-tank was marked by neat piles of amber and green bottles anywhere Brünnhilde had found a half a day’s safety to stop and rest.
Right now the tank sat idle and quiet under a thick blanket of camouflage foam and snow. She needed resupply, she needed maintenance, and she needed them now.
Fortunately, the trucks carrying spare parts, ammunition and food had already begun to queue up, under cover of the snow-clad woods nearby. Already the first of the ammunition trucks was parked beside the massive hull, pallets of ammunition being lifted by Brünnhilde’s external crane and stowed below.
While resupply was ongoing, below a large crew of mechanics worked repairs to the massive yet intricate mechanisms of the tank. Still others gauged and, in teams, tightened track, checked the suspension, or performed any number of other tasks required under the fleeting supervision of Rinteel.
The Indowy had nothing to do with the resupply. Instead, he spent his time alternating between rest, food, drink, repairs and reading the manual. Much of the sleep was catch as catch can. The food was usually wolfed down. The drink imbibed served to relax him enough, if just enough, to sleep. The repairs were never ending.
And the manual was… obtuse.
Tiger Anna, Oder-Niesse line, 17 January 2008
The shallow valley of the Niesse was covered in dense thick fog. Anna’s thermals could pierce the fog easily, of course, and to a considerable distance. Even so, Hans had left his operations officer in charge below, seated in the command chair to view the screen and keep watch over the rest of the area via his virtual reality helmet.