Caught in the sickening field, Brasche resisted the desperate urge to scratch. Dieter Schultz’s friend Harz could not resist the need to vomit. Soon, despite the efforts of the Tiger’s air cleaners, the vile aroma of human puke filled the fighting bay. That odor initiated a chain reaction. Soon Brasche looked down upon a crew of quietly cursing, frantically scratching, and intermittently vomiting men.
All looked utterly and hopelessly miserable.
Hans forced his own gorge down repeatedly. He kept his attention fixed on the tactical display, showing each of his Tigers, the sixty-seven enemy landers, and the trace outlines of the 47th Panzer Korps. At length he saw that all of the enemy had passed.
“Achtung! Panzer! Boys, crank ’em and turn ’em around one hundred and eighty degrees. We’re going to follow these bastards, shooting them in the ass all the way, until none are left. Kill them from the rearmost forward. Kill them as you bear.”
Ahead at the driver’s station Krueger gave off an evil laugh. Likewise did most of the men. Only Schultz, face frozen to his gunner’s sight, did not.
The tank began to hum as natural gas from its two main fuel cylinders began feeding the huge Siemens electrical generator that drove the engines. A steady vibration arose as Krueger applied the power and twisted the steering column. From outside the panzers it looked like thirteen small avalanches as the snow-covered foam cracked, tore and powdered. The well-trained Schultz was already twisting his gunner’s spade to turn the multihundred-ton turret to line up the huge 12-inch smoothbore cannon on the nearest of the enemy.
“Gunner!” ordered Brasche, “Sabot! DU-AM… point one kiloton. C-Dec!”
“Target!” answered Schultz, as one finger dialed the charge in the penetrator down to one tenth its potential power.
“Feuer!”
The last Vietminh in the snaking column never knew what hit him. Brasche’s feet, silently padding along the soft jungle floor, gave no warning. The thick tropical growth overhead hid the moonlight from making a tell-tale flash from the knife. All the doughty little Communist knew was that a sudden hand clamped over his mouth even as an agonizingly cold dart lunged into his kidneys.
Overcome with the worst agony a man can know, a pierced kidney, the Viet made no sound. Some pains are too great even to permit a scream. It was a relief to the dying soldier when Brasche eased him down to the dank floor and drew the razor-sharp knife across his jugular.
Knife still in hand, Hans Brasche followed the column seeking his next victim, another Vietminh too much concerned with the dangers and difficulties ahead, too little with creeping death from behind.
Dieter would never forget that first image of the death of the C-Dec. Each tiny moment was engraved into his memory, of course. He would always feel the click of the firing button under his thumb. He would never quite forget the tremendous roar that shook even to the bowels of a seventeen-hundred-ton tank. The shock of recoil too would remain with him, the massive cylinders compressing until they could go no more, even though aided by the inertia-inverting devices once tested by Schlüssel and Breitenbach. He would recall the tank’s rear suspension taking up the rest, then the sudden vicious spring back from full battery into firing position… the stout knock to his head that even his padded gunner’s sight could not quite mute.
But it was the death of the enemy he would always remember best.
That death began as a faint flash on the C-Dec’s hull. So faint and quick was it that the eye barely registered. In what seemed the tiniest moment came the real flash, as the antimatter within, deliberately set to its lowest practical setting, came into contact with true matter.
This Dieter could not, of course, see. Nor did he see the remaining antimatter, that not released by the primary — and stronger — containment field. What he could and did see was the image of light suddenly streaking out in linear fashion from each of the corner junctures of the alien ship’s twelve sides. The light would have been blinding to the naked eye. Even in Dieter’s thermal sight the picture overloaded briefly.
In that instant of overloading, the Posleen ship came apart. When his image returned, Dieter saw twelve separate pieces, flying in twelve directions.
“Holy Christ,” muttered the gunner.
“Christ, holy or otherwise, has nothing to do with it, boy,” answered Brasche. “Gunner!” he ordered, “Sabot! DU, inert. Lamprey!”
To Anna’s right and left, other panzers spit out destruction even as Schultz searched in his sight for his next victim.
Seven khaki-clad bodies lay upon the trail behind him. Seven times had Hans’ knife swept and the red blood splashed. And still young Brasche pursued. There was an eighth victim ahead, even a ninetieth if the strength of his arm held out.
“I don’t understand this,” said Harz. “We are slaughtering them from behind like so many deer. They have to notice us. Why haven’t they reacted?”
“It isn’t a question of what is there to be seen. I have seen the reports on the Posleen ships myself,” Brasche answered. “They can see us. Absolutely, they can. Their ships sensors are more than capable of that.”
“Then what, Herr Oberst?” queried Harz.
“We’re here to be seen, Unteroffizier. But they just are concentrating on other threats and opportunities elsewhere. To their front, specifically. And even if one has seen us? They do not communicate or coordinate very well.”
In Hans’ view another dim shape, a C-Dec he was certain, began to materialize. “Gunner! Sabot! DU-AM… point one kiloton. C-Dec!”
“Target!”
“Feuer!”
Marburg an der Lahn, Germany, 29 March 2007
Friedenhof ran, his lungs straining at the bitter cold air. Snow swirled around everywhere, everywhere blotting out sight. No matter, young Pieter’s eyes were fixed on the barely perceived snow-covered ground to his front. His own beating footsteps and the pounding of his own blood in his ears drowned out the sounds of massacre coming from behind. They drowned out, too, the soft padding of alien claws on the snow-covered ground behind him. Friedenhof missed completely the hiss of a boma blade being drawn. He had no clue of its descent.
Even the fall of his dismembered body was softened and hushed by the new fallen snow. Pieter never heard.
In the awkward confines of his command ship Fulungsteeriot rejoiced aloud, his followers baying around him. That for Athenalras and his sacrifice mission into the center of this continent. The thresh, these dreaded gray-clad thresh, were in a pure panic, running hither and yon. Briefly, Fulungsteeriot knew a moment of regret; the more they ran the less food they could provide his host.
But — never mind! The thresh-filled town of Giessen lay ahead; a town, he was sure, swarming with young and tender flesh. The host would eat well, this day… and for many days yet to come.
Interlude
Ro’moloristen looked out upon a scene from hell, though to him it seemed no more hellish than would a slaughterhouse to a human. From every direction, humans had been herded here, to the vicinity of Athenalras’ command ship, to serve as a larder. Like a slaughterhouse too, this group of humans was being efficiently and ruthlessly processed for food.