Hans, instead, stood in the commander’s hatch atop the turret listening for… he knew not what. There were no targets for the artillery, not given that observers could not see through enough of the fog to justify using shells that were becoming slightly harder to find than they had been. There was no rifle fire from the near bank, nor railgun fire from the Posleen. Only the occasional rumble from fore or rear told of artillery laying down sporadic “harassment and interdiction,” or H and I, fires.
H and I fires could be said to be the price one pays for making the enemy’s life miserable and uncertain… and keeping him from becoming too bold.
Hans’ mind dialed out the artillery’s intermittent rumbling. His eyes he let go out of focus. His ears, enhanced by the same process that had returned him to youth, strained to find something, some hint or sign, of what had so terrified that Pole.
His ears, enhanced or not, picked up nothing. Hans cursed the fog that kept him from seeing.
Borominskar cursed the damnable weather of this world. He needed for the humans to be able to see!
And he needed them able to see well… and soon. All his plans depended on the threshkreen being able to see what they were facing. Only that, the God King was sure, would take his host to the far bank and beyond.
Would this fog never lift? Would he be forced to feed his host on the thresh gathered, to feed them before the thresh had fulfilled their purpose? The thought was just too depressing. Already he had ordered the male thresh so far gathered slaughtered to feed his oolt’os. That was of little moment. But he needed the young and the females to see his purpose through to completion. If the fog did not disappear within a few days, Borominskar knew he would have to order the slaughter of even these.
The God King tried to relax. Unconsciously his hand reached to stroke the thick, soft pelt of the blanket that warmed his haunches.
Frustrated and half frozen in the fog, Hans left the commander’s hatch and descended by the Anna’s elevator to the heavily armored, and properly heated, battle deck below.
“Commander on deck,” the 1a announced, quickly vacating Han’s command chair.
Wordlessly, Hans took the chair and placed his VR helmet on his head. The crew, their battle stations, the main view-screen, all disappeared instantly.
The helmet took its input directly from Anna. Where all was clear she used her external cameras to send clear images. Where only her thermal, radar and lidar vision could reach she supplied what could only be called a best guess. In those circumstances, the images she projected were somewhat simplified, iconic and even cartoonish.
“Anna,” Hans whispered.
“Yes, Herr Oberst,” the tank replied in his audio receivers.
“I am sorry, Anna, I was talking to someone else.”
“Yes, Herr Oberst.”
Hans’ hand stroked the little package in his left breast pocket. Anna, I have a very bad feeling about tomorrow. No, not that they will defeat me here. That, they will do, eventually, anyway. But there is something going on, something different… something I do not think my men can face. I wish so very much you could be here with me. I think you were always as much braver and smarter than I as you were better looking. And, I am alone and afraid.
Interlude
Flying their tenar side by side across the moonscaped land, Athenalras and his aide, Ro’moloristen, surveyed the mass of People following the thresh-built roads and trails to the sausage grinder of the front.
“I fear you were wrong, puppy. We have not managed to break out from the bridgehead held by Arlingas and his host.”
“Not yet, lord. And yet I think I can retain my head, and my reproductive organs a bit longer.” Unaccountably, Ro’moloristen gave the Posleen equivalent of a grin, most unusual for one ever so near to meeting the Demons of Sky and Fire.
“You seem quite pleased with yourself for one about to make a long journey with an unpleasant beginning,” growled Athenalras.
“Did I expect to make that journey, lord, I would no doubt be more subdued.”
“You know something you have not told me?” Athenalras accused.
“Yes, lord.” The junior God King positively grinned. “Borominskar is almost ready to move. And this time, I think he will get across the obstacle to his front. When he does, it will suck the threshkreen away from this front like a magnet pulls iron filings. And, then, my lord, then we shall have our breakout here.
“The host of Arlingas is relieved now,” Ro’moloristen continued. “We are feeding them thresh from our store… and the edas I am charging Arlingas is going a long way towards eliminating our edas to him. And without pressure from all sides being placed on Arlingas there is little chance the threshkreen can recover the far bank of the river.”
“Perhaps not, but there is always something held in reserve, some new unscrupulous trick with these humans. Have we tracked down and destroyed this new threshkreen fighting machine, the one that can strike our people’s ships even in space?” Athenalras asked.
“Sadly, no, lord. The hunter killer group we sent disappeared without a trace and the machine escaped our grasp. I have begun to assemble another, bigger and more powerful, hunting party. As for whether they can close the breach Arlingas made in their walls… I begin to suspect there is only the one machine, and it will not be able to do much on its own.”
Ro’moloristen continued, “The Rheinland is almost entirely cleared of thresh, and millions have been rounded up to feed our host, though the thresh thus gathered tends to be old, tough and stringy. This is only part of why Borominskar has decided to move. The other half is… well, lord… he has a great grudge he bears against the threshkreen to his front.
“And great will be the manner of his revenge for the foul way they fought him.
“Lord… with a little preparation, we ourselves might use Borominskar’s trick to grab yet another bridge.”
Chapter 16
Wiesbaden, Germany, 18 January 2008
Through the long days and nights the stream of people fleeing the Posleen hordes never completely let up, though night, weather, and enemy fire occasionally caused it to slacken. Thomas marveled that so many could have made it out of the west to safety here.
He knew one reason why so many civilians were still pouring over to safety. To meet and pass the flood of refugees, a thin continuous column of gray-green clad men and boys crossed in the opposite direction, an offering of military blood to save civilian blood.
“It’s the Germans, boy,” pronounced Gribeauval. “Give the bastards their due. When their blood is up, when it really matters, they know how to die.”
Thomas knew this was so. He knew it from the eerie flares illuminating the town of Mainz to the southwest, and from the red tracers that flew upward to meet those flares after ricocheting off of some hard surface. The German boys — boys no different from himself and his mates — still fighting and dying to hold an arc around the bridge and around the hundreds of thousands of civilians still waiting the word to cross to the north, wrote grim testimony to their own courage and determination to hang on to the bitterest end.