Christopher Nuttall - Ragnarok

“We can’t, not immediately,” Krueger said. “Quite a few farmers were drafted into the army, Herr Chancellor . That had an impact on productivity. But we also drew most of our food from Germany East. Germany Prime — alone — cannot feed itself forever. We have already started expanding our farming capabilities, but it will be several years before they make an impact.”

He sighed. “And if we have an industrial collapse at the same time,” he added, “we will be staring at outright chaos.”

“Take food from the French,” Volker said, after a moment. “Or buy it from the Americans.”

“The French don’t produce enough food to meet our demands — even if they were willing to meet our demands,” Krueger warned. “They never pushed production — they knew we’d steal it. And the Americans will expect us to pay.”

“And we don’t have any cash,” Volker said. The Reich’s stockpiles of foreign cash had always been very limited. “There’s nothing we can use to pay the Americans.”

“If indeed they have the food on hand,” Krueger added. “They might not be able to meet our demands either.”

Volker cursed under his breath. The Americans had been helpful, but he couldn’t help thinking that the United States would welcome a German collapse. Whoever won the war would need to spend years rebuilding, years the Americans could use to make themselves invincible, utterly untouchable. They were already too far ahead of the Reich…

…And they weren’t even his real problem.

He gritted his teeth. “And if the entire population starts to starve…”

“We lose,” Krueger said, bluntly. “We need to take action, quickly.”

“And that means we need this war to end, quickly ,” Volker agreed. “And if we don’t win soon, we’ll lose.”

Germanica (Moscow), Germany East

29 October 1985

They were scared of her.

Gudrun clung to the thought, even though she felt utterly naked and utterly helpless. The SS was scared of her. They had stripped her down to her underwear, searched her so thoroughly that she doubted there was even a millimetre of her body that hadn’t been inspected, then chained her up so carefully that she could barely move. And if that hadn’t been enough, they’d repeated the search at regular intervals. Did they think she’d somehow managed to conceal a weapon even as they carried her into the very heart of their territory?

She knew it was insane — she knew they weren’t scared of her — but it was all that gave her hope. They’d driven her east, then transferred her to a plane. She wouldn’t even have known they were flying her to Germanica if one of her guards hadn’t said it out loud, clearly unaware she was listening. Or perhaps it had been deliberate. They’d wanted her to fear…

“They will try to break down your resistance,” Horst had told her. It felt like years since they’d been students together, plotting how best to bring down the Reich . “They will want to make you feel helpless, as if you have lost all control over yourself. And if you let them convince you that you are hopeless, you’re doomed.”

But it was hard, so hard, to keep from feeling helpless. Gudrun had been arrested before, but the SS hadn’t known who or what she was. They’d seen her as just another troublemaker, a student in the wrong place at the wrong time… and the experience had nearly proved too much for her. Now… they knew who she was; they knew what she’d done. She had no reason to expert mercy.

And the only reason they went to so much trouble to take me alive , she thought, was because they want me for something .

She shivered, helplessly. The temperature had been dropping for hours now, ever since she’d been taken from the airport and dumped into a prison cell, but none of the guards had offered her anything more substantial to wear. Her bra and panties, already torn by the repeated strip searches, provided no protection at all. She couldn’t help wondering if she would catch her death of cold before the SS started torturing her, then decided the cold was probably part of the torture. Horst had warned her that they would do everything in their power to break her will, but his words hadn’t been anything like enough to convoy the sheer sense of helplessness and futility pervading her body and soul. Her life was definitely no longer her own.

The cell itself was completely empty, save for a bed and a bucket she was too chained up to use. She suspected it was yet another humiliation, although they hadn’t fed her anything like enough for it to be a real problem. And they hadn’t made any attempt to hide the cameras either, hanging four of them from the ceiling and wrapping them in steel mesh. Absurdly, the sight almost made her giggle. She was chained — and even if she hadn’t been, she was too short to reach them, even if she stood on the bed.

But they might have taller prisoners , she thought, Horst was a head taller than her — and she knew the SS prized height. For all she knew, Horst was a dwarf compared to some of his former comrades. Besides, the Slavs she’d seen had all been short and ugly, but was that true of all Slavs? And they clearly don’t want to take any risks .

She forced herself to relax, even though it was futile. Her wrists and ankles ached; the metal belt they’d wrapped around her hips dug into her flesh and she was hungry, terrifyingly hungry. She’d never really gone hungry in her life, even though some of the food she’d had to choke down at school was barely a step or two above the slop fed to prisoners and Gastarbeiters . Now, she couldn’t help feeling as though she didn’t have the energy for anything. It wouldn’t be long, she suspected, before she died…

…And the hell of it was that a quick death would probably be a relief.

The cell door opened. Two burly male guards stepped through, glaring suspiciously at her as if they expected her to have vanished somewhere in the last hour. Gudrun resisted the urge to rattle her chains at them; instead, she just waited — reluctantly — as they glanced around the cell, then yanked her to her feet and shoved her through the door. They didn’t speak to her, they never did. Only one of her captors had spoken to her since she’d been taken prisoner and Gudrun hadn’t seen her for days.

She forced herself to stand still as they ran their hands over her body, telling herself — desperately — that it was Horst who was touching her. But it was hard to believe it — truly believe it — when their rough fingers were pinching at her flesh and tugging down her panties to check that she hadn’t managed to conceal something between her legs. And this time, they were worse. Their hands were rubbing at her clit as if they expected her to enjoy it, their breathing growing deeper and deeper with anticipation as they pushed her over to the table and bent her over. She realised, feeling a surge of fear, that she was about to be raped…

“That will do,” a cool voice said.

The guards started, then let go of her. Gudrun twisted her head and saw Hauptsturmführer Katharine Milch standing there, looking grim. The older woman — the first woman she’d seen wearing a uniform — looked hellishly intimidating. If she had a right to wear that uniform, Gudrun thought, she wouldn’t just be as good as a man, she’d be better. And she’d saved Gudrun from a fate worse than death…

…Or had she?

Did they really plan to rape me , Gudrun asked herself, or was she always meant to save me from them ?