“How many are on the ship?” Harz asked.
“What?” the private asked. “Feldwebel… How would I know that?”
“You couldn’t,” Harz said, grinning. “Unless you had my network of comrades. The answer is very interesting, though. As is the fact that they have been upgraded with the M-3698 field generator.”
Frederick ran through his mental checklist and came up most definitely blank.
“I do not recognize that item, Feldwebel,” he admitted.
“That’s because it is not in our inventory,” Harz said. “It’s a Fleet Strike item. It uses the American naming convention. Put it out of your mind. Useless military trivia. Let us return to training.”
It was normally easy duty.
The military police of Feldgendarmerie Company 1 had various duties. The soldiers packed into the assault transports were occasionally given to high spirits. These ranged from stills to occasional fights that approached riots. By and large, the unit officers could control both but occasionally they needed help.
One of the easiest duties they had, though, was guarding the headquarters section and, especially, ensuring that no-one broke in on command meetings. They had been briefed that this was a special meeting. The ships were three weeks into their voyage and had broken out of warp specifically to gather the battalion and regiment commanders to meet with the Generalmajor. Something important was being discussed but all such discussions were important. It should have been easy duty. Just stand there looking alert and not let anyone through the door.
“Should we call the Hauptmann?” the Schutze asked.
“We should stand here with our mouths shut and our ears shut as much as possible,” the Feldwebel said. “So shut… up.”
The hatch was very thick and very sound-proofed. So it required very high decibels to penetrate it. The first such had been a simple question: “Was?” (“What?”) It sounded like it might have been the Second Panzergrenadier Regiment’s commander. Thereafter there was babble followed by “madness!” “Impossible!” and, repeatedly, “Disaster!”
Command meetings, especially those of Herr Generalfeldmarschall, did not devolve into riots. This one, however, was sounding more and more like one.
“They’re quieting down,” the Feldwebel said. “You will not bring up that anything unusual happened. There are but two of us. If it gets out, it will fall on one of us. It will not fall on me.”
“I hear not’ink,” the Schutze said in thick English. “I see not’ink.”
“Those old shows will rot your brain.”
“Buckley, contact Schutze Hagai Goldschmidt,” Frederick said, quietly.
The Buckley was supposed to be hooked into the ship’s communication’s system so he should be able to contact Hagai. If he was on the same ship.
“Contacting,” the Buckley said tonelessly. After the slew of despair the thing had spewed on first starting, he had asked how to turn down the emulation. Feldwebel Harz had tried to load a Rommel emulation he’d gotten off the net and crashed his so hard it had to be replaced. All it kept doing was repeating “Who controls space? Who controls the air? Adoption compromise solutions must be adopted!”
So everyone had turned the emulations down, but the devices were still useful for communication.
“Ox, how are you?”
“Over-trained and undersexed,” Frederick replied, grinning. “You?”
“Much the same,” Hagai said. “Oh, I got transferred. To Florian Geyer.”
“The Panzerjaegers? Who hated you that much? They’re supposed to take on the Juggernauts!”
“Maccabeus was over-strength, Florian Geyer was under. It’s tough, though. They don’t observe kosher and… other stuff.”
“Wow, must suck,” Frederick said. In school the cooks had been careful to always have some kosher foods avaialable for the Jewish children. But even then the choices had been more scanty than those for the ‘regulars.’ “I’ve got a question for you.”
“Go.”
“Harz was quizzing me the other day,” Frederick said. “About the P-5297 and the M-3698.”
“Lifting platform and… a field generator?” Hagai said.
“Yes, I looked the M-3698 up later. It’s a field generator for ‘high energy conditions.’ But I don’t know what that means. And it’s all I could find. Harz asked me about them then told me to forget he’d asked.”
“The lifting platforms are usually used to move very heavy equipment around,” Hagai said. “Makes sense on a ship. The Kobolds are probably using them to rearrange equipment. The lifting platform also has a mass effect repellent system. That’s a system that will prevent serious falls. When it approaches a mass at high speed it reduces the velocity of the lifted system automatically. It’s a safety device, basically, but they were used a couple of times in the War for aerial resupply. They drop at normal terminal velocity then slow a couple of feet off the ground and drop under reduced gravity. No real deceleration effect so you can drop about anything. I don’t know much about the M-3698. It uses a set of energy fields to shield equipment or personnel in high-energy situations. Like if they know there’s going to be a nuclear detonation. It won’t stop the full power of one, but it will shield from secondary effects. Works on all forms of matter and most particles but once activated it only lasts for about thirty minutes. They were developed during the War but rarely used. All I can remember.”
“You’re a wonder, Jaeger,” Frederick said. “Don’t let the Juggernauts eat you.”
“Well, we’re supposed to be seconded to other units,” Hagai said. “So maybe we’ll see each other. It’s late, Ox, I’m going to get some sleep.”
“You’re an old soldier already, Jaeger.”
“Generalmajor, there are problems.”
Oberst Werner Wehling was the Staff 2 (Personnel) for the Vaterland. Like most of the High Command he was a rejuv, dating back to WWII. His specialty, even then, was personnel and he’d held similar positions during the Posleen War.
“Define,” Muehlenkampf said.
“Two in nature,” Wehling said. “The first is that there are increasing personnel interaction difficulties. The Feldgendarmerie have been forced to break up and more and more fights. This is leading to inter-unit difficulties in some compartments. The second relates to queries on the ship’s net about the P-5297s and the M-3698s.”
“Apparently someone in logistics has been flapping their lips,” Muehlenkampf said, nodding. “This is not unexpected. 1A.”
“Generalmajor?” Oberst Dotzauer said. Dotzauer had commanded a brigade during the Posleen War but his true love was operations, defined in the German staff structure as Group 1 (A) just as Personnel was Group 2.
“What is the status of training?”
“There is, unfortunately, little training that can be done on the ship,” Dotzauer said, shrugging. “We have no simulators so the major faults left on the enlisted side are difficult to rectify. Maintenance, for obvious reasons, is being handled by the Indowy. So there is no training to be done there. Most of the training that is scheduled is repetitive. There are benefits to repetition, but these are relatively simple tasks.”
“Two, send a general order to all ships the next time we drop out of warp for navigational alignment,” Muehlenkampf said. “Hiberzine is to be administered to all personnel below the level of battalion command and staff. All officers and all enlisted. Spread it as a life-support saving measure. We will bring them out when we are closer to the objective.”