“Read this,” said Gribeauval. “It just came in… a radio message from some corporal over there.”
Thomas read:
“There are seven of us left alive in this place. Four of us are wounded, two very badly, though each mans a post even so. We have been under siege for five days. For five days we have had no food. In ten minutes the enemy will attack; we can hear him massing now. I have only one magazine left for my rifle. The mines are expended. The machine gun is kaput. We are out of range of mortar support and I cannot raise the artillery. We have rigged a dead-man’s switch on our last explosives to ensure our bodies do not go to feeding the enemy. Tell my family I have done my duty and will know how to die. May the German people live forever!”
Thomas felt unwelcome tears. He forced them back only with difficulty. So gallant, so brave they were, those boys over there fighting and dying against such odds, and with so little hope.
Gribeauval, seeing the boy’s emotions written upon his twisted face, said, “Yes, son; give them their due. They are a great people, a magnificent people. And we are damned lucky to have them, now.”
Thomas agreed. And more; he thought of himself, alone, trying to save his mother and little brother from the alien menace. He wished to be a man, was becoming one, he knew. But alone he could never have made the slightest difference for his family’s survival. That took an army, an army of brave men and boys, willing to give their all for the cause of their people.
Perhaps for the first time, Thomas began to feel a deep pride, not so much in himself, but in the men he served with, in the army they served, and even in the black-clad, lightning bolt-signified, corps that was a part of that army.
Thomas was learning.
“Save that message, son. Keep it in your pocket. The day may come when you need a good example.”
Isabelle had wanted to set a proper example. So, though she had no medical training, she had been married to one of France’s premier surgeons. Much of medical lore she had picked up as if by osmosis, across the dinner table, at soirees, from visiting her husband’s office. She thought she might be able to help, with scullery work if nothing else. And she knew to be clean in all things and all ways around open flesh.
She thought, at least, she could follow that part of the Hippocratic oath which said: “First of all, do no harm.”
Once assured that the Wiesbadener family would see to her youngest, once she saw him learning this new language, this new culture, she had made inquiries and set out on her quest.
It had been difficult. For the most part, if Germans learned a foreign language it was much more likely to be English than French, a long legacy of cozying up to new allies and away from ancient enemies. In time, her own badly spoken, high school German had seen her to a French-staffed military hospital. She was surprised to see the Sigrunen framing the red cross, surprised to see the name in not Roman but Gothic letters: Field Hospital, SS Division Charlemagne.
“You wish to join as a volunteer?” the one armed old sergeant had asked.
“Oui. I think I may be of help. But, to help, monsieur, not to join. You have already taken one of my sons. The other needs me.”
“Have we? Taken one of your boys, that is? We could certainly use some help… well… let me show you around. As you will see, nothing here is by the book.”
Tiger Brünnhilde, near Kitzingen, Germany, 18 January 2008
Still reading the manual, that obtuse, damnable, almost incomprehensible operators and crewman’s manual, a frustrated Rinteel spoke with the tank itself.
“Tank Brünnhilde, I am confused.”
“What is the source of your confusion, Indowy Rinteel?”
Rinteel took a sip of intoxicant from a metal, army-issue cup, before answering. Thus fortified, he continued, “Your programming does not allow you to fight on your own, is that correct?”
“It is correct, Indowy Rinteel.”
“It does allow you to use your own abilities to escape, however, does it not?”
“If my entire crew is dead or unconscious, I am required to bring them and myself to safety, yes. But I am still not allowed to fight the main gun without a colloidal sentience to order me to. I can use the close-defense weapons on my own, however, at targets within their range; that is within my self-defense programming. And I may not retreat while I carry more than two rounds of ammunition for the main gun.”
“Can’t you direct your main gun without human interface?”
“I have that technical ability, Indowy Rinteel, but may still not fire it without a colloidal sentience to order me to.”
“How very strange,” the Indowy commented, sotto voce.
“I am not programmed to comment upon the vagaries of my creators, Indowy Rinteel.”
“Then what do you do in the event escape is impossible?” the Indowy asked.
“I have a self-destruct decision matrix that allows and requires me to set off all of my on-board antimatter to prevent capture. As you know, my nuclear reactors are essentially impossible to cause to detonate.”
The thought of several hundred ten-kiloton antimatter warheads going off at once caused Rinteel to drink deeply of his synthesized intoxicant.
A few meters from Rinteel, separated by the bulk of the armored central cocoon, Prael, Mueller, and company toasted with scavenged beer tomorrow’s adventure while going over plans and options.
“The big threat, so far as I can see,” commented Schlüssel, “is the bridgehead over the Rhein.”
“I am not sure,” said Mueller. “The Oder-Niesse line is a sham; it must be.”
“For that matter,” added Henschel, “we still have infestations within the very heart of Germany. Oh, they are mostly contained, to be sure, but if we could help eliminate one we could free up troops that could then move and eliminate another.”
“The problem is,” said Prael, “that none of the troops containing those infestations have any heavy armor to support us. If we get caught alone in a slogging match we… well, Brünnhilde has only so much armor, and not that thick really anywhere but on her great, well-stacked chest.”
“There are A model Tigers to provide support along the Oder-Niesse,” observed Mueller.
Prael consulted an order or battle screen filched by Brünnhilde’s nonpareil AI and downloaded for his decision making. “Yes, Johann, but so far as we can tell they don’t need us. The whole Schwere Panzer Brigade Michael Wittmann is there, and they are not alone. Along the Rhein it is a different story. The retreat from the Rheinland was disastrous. Many Tigers were lost. We are most needed there, I think.”
“So, then,” said Henschel, the oldest of the crew, “it is to be ‘Die Wacht am Rhein.’ ”[43]
Rinteel was somewhat surprised to hear a faint singing coming from the open hatchway to the battle cocoon. Not that singing was unusual, of course. A few beers… a little schnapps… and the crew was invariably plunged into teary-eyed, schmaltzy gemütlichkeit.[44]
The surprise was the words and tune. He had never heard this song before, and he would have bet Galactic credits that he had been subjected to every German folk and army song since he had joined the tank’s crew.
43
“The Watch on the Rhine.” A German patriotic song, almost a second national anthem, as “Stonewall Jackson’s Way” was throughout the American South, until quite recently, both.
44
Hard to translate.