Berlin, Germany, 1 February 2008
Everyone in Germany, from the chancellor on down, was pale with the weak winter sun. Even so, thought the chancellor, Günter looks palest of all.
“Prison life does not agree with you, I see,” commented the chancellor.
“Life as dictator seems to agree with you fully,” retorted his former aide.
The chancellor merely grinned and answered, “Let me see; I am a dictator because I would not let you and yours have your very undemocratic way with the fate of the German people? But you, and they, were not dictatorial even though you wished to flaunt the will of that people and wished to turn most of them over to an alien food processing machine? I must admit that I am at a loss to follow your logic, my former associate.”
To that Günter had no answer that did not sound hollow. Instead he retreated into an argument against the hated symbols. “You brought back the SS. That makes you nothing but another Nazi.”
“Bah! I resurrected a body of fighting men that we needed to survive, my doctrinaire friend. And good service they have done, too. If giving them their symbols back helps them fight one iota better, that it offends such as you seems a very small price to pay.”
The chancellor held up a hand to stifle further argument. “In any case, I did not call you here to bicker. I called you here to tell you that although your sentence was death, and a damned just sentence I deem it too, I have decided to commute your sentence to life in prison. But you will live out your days in Spandau Prison, Herr Stössel, you and the other four hundred and forty-seven seriously implicated traitors.”
Günter asked simply, “Why?”
“Because I think you are less dangerous, locked away and forgotten, than you might have been as martyrs.”
Headquarters, Commander in Chief-West, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2 February 2008
Mühlenkampf could not drive the image of the martyred, legless boy from his mind. Small recompense it must have been to the lad, even had he been able to understand, that I pinned a medal to his pillow. Small recompense too, to the girl he left behind him or the mother who bore him. Jesus, that is the part that I hate, the broken, crippled, dead and dying innocents that war takes.
I wish I didn’t love it so much, or feel like such a damned cheat that it is always the poor boys who suffer and die while I get away scot-free.
Still thinking upon the dying boy, Mühlenkampf mused upon a different kind of world, a different kind of war. Wouldn’t it be nice if only the real professionals, people like me, were the ones who fought and died? Ah, but would the politicians abide by the battlefield’s decision? Hah! Not a chance. As soon as they saw their own oh-so-precious hides at stake they’d be grabbing young ones like Gefreiter[47] Webber off the street and tossing them into the meat grinder.
The general shrugged. He hadn’t made the world the way it was. And it would not be one whit better for his dreams or for his pretending it was other than it was, either.
In his dream Thomas was little again. But little seemed no bad thing, not when one was warm and safe and pressed to his mother’s breasts. He had a full belly and the rosy glow of a glass of wine coursing through his veins. Life was good.
Outside of Thomas’ dream, however, life was one continuous nightmare of deprivation, hardship, and mind-numbing terror. The rare dreams now, stolen when he was able to catch some even more rare uninterrupted sleep, were all that remained to him of the lost world of… before.
The world of “now,” however, intruded on Thomas’ pleasant foray into the past. Stealthy as a cat, a new level of cold crept through his thin blanket, nibbling and biting at his consciousness, gnawing at his dream.
Thomas awakened with a shivering start.
Mühlenkampf, despite his heated headquarters, shivered himself.
Before him stood his staff meteorologist and his intelligence officer. Both looked as serious as they might have at their mother’s own funeral.
“We still have stations in Scandinavia,” explained the meteorologist. “And the Americans are still sending us data from Greenland. Iceland, too, reports confirming data. We are going into a deep freeze like we haven’t seen in fifty years.”
The general nodded, calmly, even tried to keep a confident gleam in his eye. “Will the Rhein freeze over?”
“Yes, likely, sir,” answered the meteorologist. “Within ten days at most. And yes, sir, it will freeze solid enough to support the weight of enemy bodies.”
“On the plus side, sir, the cold will not support either fog or snow, so if the aliens attack we will have clear fields of fire.”
“And that was what I wanted to talk to you about, sir,” said the intelligence man. “Clear fields of fire are all well and good, but we have this rather frightening report from CInC East…”
Tiger Anna, Oder-Niesse Line, 2 February 2008
Hans still maintained, as he so often did, his lonely vigil atop Anna’s turret. This night was lonelier than most.
No fog today, so the reports say. No fog and the enemy on the other side is just waiting for daylight. Scheisse!
But cursing fate did Hans no good. Fate was as it was, he knew. In the dim mists of time some meddlers at godhood had played genetic games with a subordinate species. That species had resisted in time and been driven forth. Eventually it had reemerged into the Galaxy, spreading death and destruction across a path that the meddling had made inevitable.
The path had led that enemy species here. Here they had been thrashed enough, and badly enough, that they were forced to think for a change. They had thought upon their problems; they had seen a possible answer.
And now, inevitably… by fate, that answer was massing on the other side.
Some part of Hans accepted fate. Some other part rejected it. A large part just wondered at his own.
Am I then doomed? Is my soul forfeit for the part I once played in a great crime? Are my comrades’? Are those of the men I command?
And tomorrow? What will be the better part, to take the burden of evil upon myself by acting alone or to share it out among those who have no guilt for any past crimes?
Unconsciously, Hans spoke aloud, “Anna, I wish you were here to guide me.”
“I am here, Herr Oberst,” answered the tank.
For some inexplicable reason, Hans didn’t want to answer in any way that might offend the tank. Yes, he knew it was just a machine. Yes, he knew it was not so sophisticated as the Galactics’ AIDs. Yet, Anna the tank had been home all the long months of this war. He felt she had a spirit of her own, even if she could not articulate it. He had felt as much for the panzers that had carried him though so much of the last war, and they not only couldn’t talk, they couldn’t even heat coffee.
“Anna,” he asked, “what am I to do tomorrow?”
The tank answered, “My programmers would have called that one a ‘no-brainer,’ Herr Oberst. As you always have, you must do your best.”
Down below, in the battle cocoon, a jubilant Krueger poured schnapps for the rest of the crew. “A great day coming tomorrow, my boys, a great day.”