Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

The Helder motorcycle troops and infantry had sustained quite heavy casualties, but the Helder artillery was virtually intact, no more than fifty tanks had been lost, and the air force was as good as new. A great deal of ammunition and petrol had been expended—to telling effect—but when Walfing’s reinforcements arrived, that problem would be ended.

“Our present task is crystal clear,” Feric told Best. “We must hold this position at all costs until Waffing’s troops arrive.”

Best’s reaction to this was something less than enthusiastic. “I’d far rather advance against the enemy no matter what the odds than hold a defensive line no matter how impregnable, my Commander,” Best said.

Feric could only nod in agreement; this was nothing less than his own deepest feeling and the proper attitude for a Helder soldier. Still, there were times when the good of the Fatherland required the relinquishment of one’s own fondest desires. No doubt the troops, too, were less than happy at this defensive deployment Something must be done to maintain morale.

In order to maintain the fire of his troops, Feric quit his tank, donned a fresh black uniform and spotless scarlet cloak, and conducted an inspection tour of the front lines mounted on the black-and-chrome motorcycle of a fallen SS hero, with Best following behind on another cycle. He kept the Steel Commander always in prominent view, its thick silvery shaft and mighty headball newly polished and shimmering in the sun.

Although these troops had fought with ceaseless ferocity for nearly two days without sleep, to a man they expressed nothing but the keen desire to once more have at the enemy. This was evident in the fanatic determination burning in their eyes, the loving care they lavished on their weapons during this respite from combat, the snap and dash of their salutes, the fire with which they shouted “Hail Jaggarl” and the spontaneous cheering that went up each time a Helder artillery barrage sent cannisters of death whistling overhead to burst in the midst of the enemy.

Feric had not been touring the lines for more than half an hour when a vast surge of forward motion became visible all along the front of the Zind lines.

“What is it, my Commander?” Best asked.

“It appears that we’re about to have our thirst for battle quenched once more,” Feric said. Wave after wave of Warriors bulled their way through the great carnage heap of their own fallen comrades and came running across no-man’s land toward the Helder line with blazing submachine guns.

Feric set his own submachine gun in its firing rack; all along the line of Helder fortifications, tank cannon and field pieces were leveled at the onrushing enemy sea and tremendous barrages of high-explosive shells tore the creatures to pieces as they dashed across the desolated earth, while an endless chain of plummeting dive-bombers blasted great gaping holes in the backup formations.

Soon the great horde approached machine-gun and flamethrower range. “Open fire!” Feric roared.

At once, hundreds of thousands of machine guns opened up all along the Helder line. The first rank of Warriors was quite literally blasted off its feet and smashed backward. The next rank suffered the same fate as the Helder troops continued to put out solid walls of hot lead all along the front, and the rank after that. But all the while the total Zind force advanced inexorably over the fallen bodies of their comrades straight into the mighty teeth of the Helder guns.

As he watched his own bullets rip through half-a-dozen barrel-thighed naked monsters sending gobbets of flesh into the air as the creatures fell, Feric suddenly realized that there were no war-wagons in evidence.

“These are no ordinary Zind Warriors, Best!” he called out. The creatures were not marching forward in the usual utterly precise formations. Further, their heads, though shrunk far below the human standard, had larger craniums than those of the fighting creatures the Helder had thus far faced, and there was something about the jaws and mouth that set Feric’s teeth on edge. Then the flamethrowers of the tanks obscured the front of the Zind assault with a tidal wave of flaming petrol, through which Feric could hear a terrible shrieking, howling, and moaning even above the sound of the guns.

Half-smoldering Warriors erupted through this curtain of flame, firing their submachine guns savagely in their death throes and pushing the Zind advance to within a hundred yards of the Helder trenches. Feric drew the Great Truncheon of Held, waved it grandly over his head, gunned his engine, and roared out of the protection of the fortifications straight at the onrushing masses of feral giants.

With a great cheer, a hundred thousand SS and army motorcyclists dashed out to join him. Thousands of these heroes were instantly felled by the guns of the Warriors; Feric could feel bullets whistling all around him. But in a few moments, the wave of motorcyclists had reached the Zind monstrosities. Guns were useless, and it was truncheon to truncheon.

Feric found himself in a forest of huge, filthy, hairy legs. Power surged through his being from the Great Truncheon; he swung his weapon through the air like a switch. The superhuman blow smashed through dozens of the vile limbs like so much rotten cheese, toppling a score of the howling obscenities to the earth, where they thrashed about like decapitated snakes. As he smashed the skulls of the crippled creatures like so many melons, he noted that their eyes were glowing coals, their mouths frothed with blood and filled with razor-sharp teeth.

These creatures were a far different breed from the Warriors Heldon had previously faced. Each fought independently, and with the frothing battle frenzy of an enraged catamount, fearlessly pitting their massed brawn against the iron will of the Helder fanatics on their steel machines.

With great swipes of their huge truncheons, they dashed cycles and riders alike to pieces, a camelian drool spewing from their vile lipless mouths. But huge and ferocious as these monsters were, they fell far short of the superhuman heroism of the Helder soldier fighting at the side of his beloved Supreme Commander. These magnificent specimens in trim field-gray or tight black leather threw themselves at creatures twice their size with battle cries on their lips, fire in their blue eyes, and truncheons arcing through the air like hammers of doom. Attacking these racial heroes was like dashing into the whirling teeth of some great buzz saw.

Monster after slobbering monster ran howling at Peric only to be dashed to a pulp by the Great Truncheon of Held; soon the shaft of the Steel Commander was lubri-cated with thick red blood and the shiny black leather of Feric’s uniform was set off with a hundred scarlet splatters. The hand-to-hand fighting went on for what seemed like days, but could hardly have been an hour. It was impossible for Feric to judge the course of the battle, for his universe was contained by solid walls of hairy, stinking, drooling giants with an unquenchable thirst for true human blood. As fast as these creatures smashed through the barricade of corpses that Feric had piled around his motorcycle, they themselves felt the bone-crushing wrath of the Steel Commander. Nevertheless, the creatures kept coming, as if filled with some crazed and powerful longing to meet their own dooms.

At length, Feric began to notice that fewer and fewer Warriors were coming at him with each minute mat passed. A half-dozen giants ripped aside the bodies of their comrades shrieking wordlessly; these Feric felled with almost foolish ease. Three more fell a few moments later. Then long moments passed during which nothing whatever happened. Feric was alone inside a great crater whose walls were the broken and bloody corpses of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the enemy.