John Ringo - Watch on the Rhine

Mueller, emerging from the test shelter, itself a metal bunker, looked at the body and shook his head wearily. “I did want a railgun. Continuous acceleration. Greater — much greater — ammunition storage…”

The Israeli, Benjamin, interrupting, asked of Prael, “At what point did the metal give way?”

Instead of answering directly, the German handed the Jew a printout.

“I see,” said Benjamin. “Hmmm. Could we reduce the charge… no, I guess not, not and achieve the kind of velocity we must have…” The Israeli had, in an earlier day, riding his Merkava against his national enemy, punched out more than one Arab-manned, Russian- or Ukrainian-built, tank.

“Nor can we reduce the weight of the projectile and still achieve the penetration we must have,” finished Mueller.

“GalTech,” offered Nielsen.

“The chancellor, acting on the advice of the BND, has decreed not,” answered Henschel. “For what it’s worth, I think he is most likely right in that. The Galactics have their own agenda. That agenda might or might not include the presence of humanity after the war.”

Scratching an ear absentmindedly, Benjamin observed, “When David went out to fight Goliath, King Saul offered the boy the use of Saul’s own armor and weapons. The boy refused, claiming that he would do better with his own weapon than with others the use and feel of which were unfamiliar to him. David was right. Your chancellor is right. Our prime minister agrees. This must be a human weapon, something the Galactics cannot interfere with.”

“Isn’t there some way we can strengthen the recoil cylinders by making them simply bigger?” asked Mueller, pushing his pet railgun to the side for the nonce.

“No,” said Prael, rubbing his face briskly with a frustrated hand. “We’ve looked into that. We can reduce the cylinders to eight and make them somewhat larger and stronger. And then the breech of the gun hits the back of the turret. Scheisse! We tried to cut it too fine.”

Though they had not been present for the test, the resounding crash from the destruction of the recoil cylinder had sent a shock wave through the entire plant, drawing Schlüssel and Breitenbach at a run. They entered the test chamber, took one look at the cylinder, another at the corpse, and crossed themselves like the good Catholics they were. Schlüssel, perhaps not so good a Catholic as Breitenbach, said, “Fuck!” immediately after.

What had happened was so obvious that neither Prael nor the others felt the need to explain to the two newcomers.

“Oh, well,” said Schlüssel. “There’s some good news. Breitenbach, here, has gotten something very interesting from the Americans. Tell them, Stephan.”

In his left hand Breitenbach carried a small black box, attached to and trailing a harness. “Better I should show them, nicht wahr , Reinhard?”

Schlüssel sighed, resignedly. Impetuous boy! “Oh, yes. By all means show them, since you must.”

Without another word, Breitenbach turned on his heel and left the area. When he reappeared some minutes later, standing on a steel walkway seventy feet above the factory floor, the harness was around his body. Schlüssel directed the others’ attention upward with a nonchalant finger.

With a boyish cry, and to the wide-eyed amazement of all of the others but Schlüssel, Breitenbach hurled himself over the railing guarding the walkway. He fell, faster and faster, shrieking with a boy’s mindless joy. So fast fell he that the eyes had difficulty following. Henschel’s eyes didn’t follow at all as he had closed them against the seemingly inevitable impact.

The impact never came. Eighteen to twenty feet above the plant floor, Breitenbach’s body began to slow. The rate of slowing continued to increase. By the time Breitenbach had reached the floor, he was able to settle onto his feet as gently as a falling feather.

“What the hell caused that?” demanded Mueller.

Schlüssel shrugged. “The mathematics are beyond me, frankly. Had she not written them down, the American girl who discovered the principle would likely have found them beyond herself as well. Long story there, so I am told.

“But look at it this way: that black plastic device on Stephan’s harness takes the energy of falling, saves it, and then twists it sideways to turn it into an energy of slowing. We believe we can use this in the suspension system for the tank — without a major redesign being required, by the way — and reduce the robustness of the shock absorbers to save perhaps fifteen or twenty tons of weight. To say nothing of reducing the maintenance required.”

Mueller’s eyes, which had never narrowed to normal after Breitenbach’s plunge, grew wider still. Prael’s eyes began to dance in his head, unable to focus on anyone or anything. Henschel and Benjamin exchanged thoughtful glances.

Heads swiveled slowly as all eyes turned to the ruin of the recoil cylinder. A new light gleamed in those eyes.

Isabelle’s husband entered her kitchen wordlessly, a paper clutched in one hand.

She did not see the paper, initially. She saw instead a much-loved face gone ashen.

“What is wrong?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, but just thrust the paper at her.

With a trembling hand she took the proffered form letter and read it through quickly. Uncomprehending, she shook her head in negation. “They can’t do this to you, to us. You did your time in the army as a boy. They have no right.”

The husband quoted from the scrap of paper he had already read fifty times, “In accordance with our time-honored heritage and traditions, all Frenchmen are permanently requisitioned for the defense of the Republic.”

“But you are a doctor, not a killer,” Isabelle objected.

“Killers get hurt,” answered the husband. “Then they need doctors. I report the day after tomorrow.”

She stood there for a long moment, stunned, unable to speak further.

Quietly, a long and snaking column of armed men marched up the forest trail in the dead of night. In the darkness, only the eyes gleamed, and occasionally the teeth. The faces were darkened by burnt cork and grease paint… and a fair amount of simple dirt. Frozen dirt and gravel below crunched softly under the soldiers’ boots.

The boys, as Brasche thought of them, had done well so far with their basic training. Marksmanship was of an acceptable order, though Brasche had serious reservations that any amount of normal training would be adequate to teach anyone to shoot well when there was an enemy shooting back. He had served on the Russian Front, after all.

But “well” is a relative term , he thought, too. And we have a few tricks, ourselves, that just may help. Brasche smiled with wicked anticipation at what awaited the boys ahead.

The boys’ ostensible mission was to counterattack to retake a section of field entrenchments lost to a notional Posleen attack. In fact, as Brasche and a few others running the exercise knew, the techniques of the counterattack through the trenches were purely secondary. The objective of the exercise was to frighten the boys half out of their wits so that once they recovered those wits would be harder to frighten.

Brasche heard static breaking over the radio at his side. He answered with his name.

“ Oberst Kiel here, Brasche. My men are in position.”

“Excellent, Herr Oberst .” Brasche glanced quickly at the rear entrance to the trench system just as the first of the new troops began his descent into it. “The party should be beginning right about… now.”