Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

“In short, my Commander, you now have at your disposal a force awaiting only your orders to spring into action!”

“Well done, Waffing!” Feric said with considerable enthusiasm as the High Commander reseated himself. The army and the SS needed only quick action in order to hone their fighting edge. The only question now was where and how.

“Do you think we’re ready to annihilate Zind, Waffing?” he asked.

Waffing lost himself in thought for a few moments. “I have no doubt we could defeat Zind if we attacked now,” he said. “But the war would be a long and arduous one.

Give us six months and our army will have doubled its size, well have thousands of tanks and planes, and the speed of our advance across Zind will be limited chiefly by the velocity of which our tanks are capable. We’d pulverize the swine in a lightning war.”

Feric pondered this assessment of the situation. It would certainly be better to wait a few months until the hosts of Heldon were up to projected full force before launching the final attack on Zind. On the other hand, the army could use some immediate action.

“Waffing, would it be possible for Zind to attack us within the next six weeks?” he inquired.

“Hardly,” the High Commander replied. “Their logistical system is quite sluggish. We would know of such an assault far in advance. No such preparations are now under way.”

Feric rose to his feet, his mind made up. He tamed to face the huge war map on the wall behind him, and addressed his commanders.

“Within two weeks, Heldon will march. One great column will sweep through Borgravia, take Gormond, and proceed westward into Vetonia. At the same time, the northern arm of our forces will march into Vetonia through Feder, linking up with the southern army at the capital. The combined force will then storm across Husak along a wide front, smash all opposition, and drive the remnants of the Husak forces into the western wildlands to perish. As our troops secure Borgravia, every mud hut in Cressia, Arbona, and Karmath will be leveled by the air force and the vermin driven into the southern wildlands.

Thus we will secure our rear for the final showdown with Zind. Should this entire operation take more than a month, I will be sorely disappointed.”

The jaws of the old generals fell open at the audacity of this plan; Waning, however, pounded his fist on the table, grinning with pleasure. “If the operation takes more than a month, my Commander,” he declared, “I will personally shoot every officer in the army, then demote myself to the rank of a common foot soldier, put the muzzle of my submachine gun in my mouth, and execute myself for high treason!”

Feric chuckled with good-natured appreciation of Waffing’s drollery. Waning himself could not contain his own high spirits and burst into guffaws. In a moment even the dour generals joined in the merriment.

Still, Feric realized that the very spirit that moved Waffing to make such an extreme vow would move him to carry it out in the inconceivable event that such expiation should prove necessary. What a fine troop of heroes it was his honor to command!

As the hour of midnight approached, Feric Jaggar assumed his position in the observer’s seat of the lead Helder tank. Beside him in the driver’s position, Ludolf Best’s eyes shone with excitement and fanaticism. The true battle in this campaign would be with time itself, for the Borgravian army hardly qualified as a joke. Therefore the vanguard of the force that Feric had assembled just inside the southeastern margin of the Emerald Wood consisted of a hundred and fifty tanks, well stocked with incendiary and high-explosive shells. Combined with the devastating force of a hundred dive-bombers even now winging their way toward the Borgravian capital, these tanks would be enough to pulverize all organized opposition within Borgravia in a matter of hours. As the tanks swept eastward across Borgravia, motorized infantry and motorcycle SS would mop up in their van, and by the time the tank force reached the Vetonian border. Render would already have Classification Camps under construction.

Feric had decided to lead the initial advance into Borgravia himself and remain at the head of the Helder forces cleaning out that cesspit until Gormond was leveled; this for personal reasons as well as considerations of general morale. He could conceive of few sights that would please him more than that of the wretched Borgravian capital in which his youth had been wasted smashed flat and going up in flames.

Best had been checking his timepiece eagerly almost every thirty seconds. Once more he checked it; then, with a boyish grin, he started the tank engine. “It’s time, my Commander!” he said.

Smiling at Best’s youthful enthusiasm, Feric drew the Great Truncheon of Held, stood up, and thrust the shaft of his weapon high over his head through the open hatch of the tank, its gleaming headball catching a silvery flash of moonlight. Abruptly, the night came alive with the chattering thunder of scores of gas engines sputtering and .catching. The powerful thrumming of the engine of Feric’s own tank set the very molecules of his flesh marching to a stirring martial beat. Feric sheathed the Steel Commander, dogged the hatch above him shut, strapped himself in, turned on his throat microphone, and gave the long-awaited command to Best and to his forces: “Forward!”

Grinding earth and shrubbery beneath its massive iron treads, the tank leapt forward, out of the clearing which served as the marshalling area. As Best slowly brought the tank up to speed, Feric looked through his rear periscope, and saw a solid sea of tanks following close behind, surging across the clearing and onto the road that led to the Ulm fording. The formation was simplicity itself: Feric’s tank at the point, and behind it ten ranks of fifteen tanks each. The motorized infantry and motorcycle divisions would not begin their advance behind this shield of Steel until two hours later.

At Bogel’s instigation—though certainly not without Feric’s wholehearted approval—the tanks had been decked out for this occasion in heroic grandeur. The body of each was painted a glossy black, while the turrets were scarlet with great black swastikas in white circles on either side. In addition, a red swastika flag streamed proudly from the radio mast of each dreadnaught. As the formation of tanks reached the broad plain that debouched upon the Ulm, this inspiring spectacle was being televised not only throughout Heldon but to Husak and Vetonia as well, the better to paralyze their forces with well-justified fear of the armed might of Heldon. What a grand sight this phalanx of gleaming black might accented with bold scarlet and heroic swastikas made as it swept toward the Ulm, filling the air for miles around with man-made thunder and surrounding itself with a great cloud of boiling dust!

At this longitude, the Ulm was little more than a shallow stream; the Borgravian border fortifications on its far bank consisted of little more than a few trenches filled with mongrels behind rolls of barbed wire. Nevertheless, as the tanks ground toward the river through the darkness, the night was suddenly lit up by flashes of fire from the Borgravian positions, and Feric could hear a few random bullets spatter harmlessly off the impenetrable armor of his dreadnaught. No doubt the squadrons of aerial dreadnaughts that had crossed the border half an hour ago had alerted the pathetic wretches, for all the good it would do them.

Feric thumbed his microphone switch and gave the order to the crew of his own tank and to the formation simultaneously: “Fire at will until all resistance is crushed!”

A low whine could be felt as well as heard in the tank as the turret crew aligned the cannon with its target. Then a great blast and shudder went through the dreadnaught, and a moment later Feric saw an orange explosion blossom in the darkness on the far side of the Ulm. At once, the deafening rolling thunder of continuous massed cannonfire shook his body even through the steel walls of the tank, a meteor-swarm of shells soared overhead, and the Borgravian positions erupted in great fountains of fire.