“I have read your history, particularly from the last of your centuries. And I do not understand it at all.”
Mueller sighed. “Rinteel… neither do we.”
The little furry alien went silent then, and turned as if to leave.
“Wait, Rinteel,” Mueller said. “What part of our history don’t you understand?”
The Indowy turned back to face Mueller, lying on his couch. “Those humans you call ‘Jews’? What made them the enemy? Why and how did they deserve what your people gave to them?”
Again, Mueller sighed. How to answer such a question?
“Rinteel, to this very day every German bright and knowledgeable enough to be entitled to an opinion goes to bed every night wondering the same thing. The Assyrians murdered cities… but at least they had a reason. Marcus Licinius Crassus crucified six thousand slaves along the Appian way… but at least he had a reason. The Mongols killed twenty million Chinese to make grazing grounds for their horses… but at least that was a reason. But the Jews?”
Mueller stopped for a moment. The very insanity of his country’s history weighed down upon his shoulders.
“Rinteel, when we spent a generation getting ready for our First World War, our spiritual poet was a man named Ernst Lissauer. He wrote a poem called “Hasengesang gegen Engeland,” a Song of Hate against England, rousing Germany’s sons to what he thought was their true enemy. Rinteel, Ernst Lissauer was a German Jew.
“When we rolled across the Belgian frontier, in 1914, and our soldiers were slaughtered in droves trying to storm the fortresses, the first man to win an Iron Cross for bravery in battle was a German Jew.
“When Adolf Hitler was recommended by his lieutenant for the Iron Cross, the officer recommending him was a Jew.
“They gave of their blood and they gave of their hearts. They fell in battle in droves for their ‘German Fatherland.’ Ten thousand of them fell in battle, Rinteel… giving all they had to give for what they thought of as their country. Rinteel, ten times that many served. More than the national average. They were us.
“And so, Indowy Rinteel, it is as if God used us, we Germans, to some purpose of his own… but we just don’t know.”
The Indowy digested that… thought upon the foolishness… thought upon the pain in Mueller’s voice. Finally he said, “It was a madness then.”
Mueller agreed. “Yes Rinteel, it was a madness.”
Part V
Interlude
Ro’moloristen thought, What a magnificent madness is the Path of Fury. Stretching across the horizon to north and south as far as the God King could see from his lofty tenar, marched wave upon wave of the People.
They marched in knots of twenty to fifty, each knot carrying by main strength a crudely lashed together wooden raft. Half the forests of France and Belgium had gone into those rafts.
Above rode the God Kings, in numbers even greater than the leading ranks of the People warranted. But from each tenar dangled a rope. The tenar would pull the rafts, and drag the People across the river to victory. The plasma cannon and hypervelocity missiles carried by the tenar flashed fire and hate at the defenders on the other side of the great river which fronted the host.
The cannon of the threshkreen were not silent. Even at this distance the thunder of thousands upon thousands of the thresh’s frightful artillery was a palpable fist. Their shells splashed down among the People, churning them to yellow froth and splintering their crude rafts.
But always there were more of the People, more of the rafts approaching the river. The artillery could kill many. It could never kill all. Slowly, the People, stepping over the bodies of the slain, reached the near bank of the river.
Ro’moloristen watched the first rank, what remained of it, disappear down into the steep river valley. He knew the People would have a nightmare of a time descending that frozen bank.
But after that, Ro’moloristen expected things to be easier for them… once the threshkreen on the far bank saw that lashed to each raft, upright on posts, were anywhere from a half a dozen to a dozen thresh nestlings.
Chapter 18
Tiger Anna, Oder-Niesse Line, 3 February 2008
The pit of Hans’ stomach was a leaden brick. Anna’s view-screen told the entire crew more than they wished to know. The Posleen horde advanced to the shallow and now frozen river… and about half of the aliens carried or prodded ahead of it a human captive.
Though the aliens and their captives were in easy range, few human defenders — and those mostly the snipers — fired upon them. Here and there Hans saw a Posleen stumble and fall, its chest or head ruined by a well-placed bullet.
There were none of the aliens’ flying sleds in the air. Those, Hans was sure, the defenders would have engaged gleefully, even as the snipers shot down any Posleen to which they had a clean shot.
But it makes not a shit of difference, killing those few. Their numbers are, effectively, endless. And their most powerful weapons today are their captives.
Schultz, sitting below Hans’ command chair trembled, the commander saw. Glancing around the battle cocoon, Hans saw that everyone in view, from Harz to the operations officer, looked sick. Harz kept saying, over and over, “Oh, the bastards; the dirty, stinking, miserable bastards.”
My boys can’t do it. They shouldn’t have to do it. We never made them that kind of soldier. Shit.
“Dieter, sit back from the gun. Anna, commander’s gun.” Relieved beyond words, Schultz sat back from the sight immediately.
“Yes, Herr Oberst,” the tank replied. From above, a gunner’s suite, almost exactly like Schultz’s, descended to encase Brasche.
“Sergeant Major Krueger, take control of the bow guns. All others be on watch for enemy flyers but do not engage. Sergeant Major, engage at will.”
With a smile, Krueger began raking the mixed formation of humans and enemy. “Fucking Slav untermensch,” he whispered. In the view-screen, men, women and children were ripped apart even as were the Posleen. The only difference was that the human’s cries could be more readily understood.
The sound was more than Hans could bear. It was as terrifying as the sergeant major’s glee, and even more hurtful. “Anna, kill external microphones. Operations, pass the word to the other Tigers: only old SS will engage. New men are not to fire upon the horde except in point self-defense.”
Seeing that the operations officer understood, Hans commanded, “Load antipersonnel. Prepare for continuous antipersonnel.”
The loader pressed the required buttons. From Anna’s ammunition rack hydraulics withdrew a single canister cartridge and fed it to the gun.
Tiger Brünnhilde, Hanau, Germany, 3 February 2008
“Feed it to them, Reinhard, feed it to the bastards.”
“Hit!” announced Schlüssel, as a small new sun formed and deformed thirty kilometers up.
“Mueller, hard right.”
Even held securely as he was by his straps, Rinteel felt the sudden, jarring turn as the driver twisted the tank and raced forward to get out of the expected Posleen riposte. As always, the Indowy was terrified speechless. As always, he was disgusted at the slaughter his human comrades were inflicting upon the Posleen when he allowed himself to think upon it.