Ian Tregillis - Bitter Seeds

We'll see about that , thought Klaus.

Behind them, his sister marched alongside the Twins. Her power, like that of the identical psionicists, had a quiet potency that didn't lend itself to pomp and flash. Although Gretel had survived the errant shell in Spain without a scratch: she had known exactly where to huddle, and when. But like the Twins', her demonstration was scheduled later in the day.

Klaus sneaked a glance at her. Like the rest of them, she wore a crisp, perfect new uniform. But in one hand she also carried a bent, ragged, black-and-white umbrella. The old thing jarred with her uniform. It seemed so out of place that for a moment he couldn't help but check the sky. But the day had dawned clear and blue and bright. So bright, in fact, that sunlight glinted on the newly created insignia pinned to their collars: SS siegrunen cleaving a skull, like lightning bolts energizing the Willenskrafte.

The munitions range where the most rigorous skill testing took place had been transformed into a makeshift parade ground. White-coated technicians had taken up shovels and filled the craters. Everything received a new coat of paint. Bunting hung from every sill, swastika flags from every eave.

The doctor had started the program that eventually became the Reichs behorde on his family farm. It was fitting, then, that the dozen buildings now comprised by the complex huddled around the original house. The wood-and-brick farmhouse with blue trim was the nexus of the Reichsbehorde. The doctor lived on the third floor, where he enjoyed an unobstructed view of the surrounding training grounds. Klaus and the doctor's other children lived in his shadow, on the second floor. And the original laboratory still occupied the first floor, although it had fallen into disuse as the complex had expanded. The other buildings—the laboratories, barracks for the mundane troops, machine shops, chemical huts, toolsheds, the ice house and pump house—flanked the farmhouse, forming the arms of a U.

The farm's greatest virtue was its isolation. It was surrounded on all sides by oak and ash trees.

Klaus and his companions marched to the center of the training grounds, turned in formation, and came to a halt in front of the riser where the doctor sat with his two distinguished visitors. For all the pomp, it was a small ceremony. Only Himmler, the doctor's patron of many years, and one of his subordinates, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Greifelt, had arrived from Berlin. The nascent Gotterelektrongruppe was the Reich's greatest weapon. As such, its true nature was, for the time being, a closely guarded secret. The mundane troops attached to the REGP knew a single untoward comment could land them in contempt of the Gestapo.

Klaus had never seen Himmler in person. He was surprised to find the Reichsfuhrer was a chinless baby-faced man.

Klaus and the others stood at attention while Himmler heaped glowing praise upon the doctor's lifelong dedication to the pursuit of knowledge. It had begun with the doctor's brief flirtation with the Thule Society twenty years earlier. But while the theosophical underpinnings of the Society's belief in the vanished “Aryan supermen of lost Atlantis” had resonated with many, the doctor had quickly rejected the society's meaningless preoccupation with mysticism and struck out on his own. His guiding stars were science and rationality, and between them he charted a course not for pointlessly lamenting lost greatness, but actively re-creating it. And so he built his orphanage, reasoning that children were closest to the wellspring of greatness, the least corrupted by everyday existence.

He believed in human potential , thought Klaus, and so he created us .

Back then, Klaus and the others had been little more than striplings. Formless bricks of clay waiting to be molded by the potter and tempered by the kiln. Klaus occasionally wondered, with idle curiosity, if he and Gretel once had other siblings.

The orphanage had been in place for years when Himmler and von Westarp were introduced by a former colleague in the Thule Society. Doctor von Westarp's eminently practical approach earned an enthusiastic supporter in Himmler. Thus, when Himmler became the leader of the SS, one of his first actions was to create the Institut Menschlichen Vorsprung, the Institute of Human Advancement, to house the doctor's research. He also made the doctor an SS-Oberfuhrer, senior colonel, enabling him to work without interference.

A few years later, the IMV became the Reichsbehorde fur die Erweiterung germanischen Potenzials, the Reich's Authority for the Advancement of Germanic Potential. For administrative purposes, Himmler shoehorned this into the RKF Hauptamt because on paper, von Westarp's research fell under Greifelt's purview: the “strengthening of Germanism.” But this was an administrative formality, and in reality, the doctor continued to report directly to the Reichsfuhrer.

And today the doctor's many years of work had come to fruition. He had transformed a handful of mewling babes into the vanguard of a new SS, men and women so great that a new unit of the Verfugungstruppe had been created for them, complete with their own insigne. Today von Westarp's children became officers of the new Gotterelektrongruppe. And so, Himmler concluded, the spiritual and intellectual father of the REGP deserved the Reich's gratitude and its highest honor.

Hollow-cheeked Greifelt listened to these remarks with alternating looks of boredom and puzzlement. He had never been to the REGP, had never seen the doctor's work. Klaus suspected that Himmler had discouraged any such visits. Greifelt was a technocrat, an accountant in soldier's garb.

Herr Doktor von Westarp became the first recipient of the Spanish Cross, First Class, for superior contributions to the struggle against communism in Spain: sword-bearing eagles surrounding a golden Iron Cross, at the center of which diamonds ringed an opal swastika. It sent splinters of sunlight across the grounds every time the doctor's chest swelled with pride.

His children received the much smaller bronze Victory in Spain medals intended for members of the Condor Legion.

Then it came time for the demonstrations. Today the doctor could revel in the glory of his achievements, as his children personally showcased their abilities to the doctor's patron and putative superior officer for the first time. The show would also serve as a rehearsal for the private demonstration planned for the Fuhrer's fiftieth birthday next month.

Reinhardt strode across the munitions range while two technicians readied the bipod of an MG 34 machine rifle. He cloaked himself in flames and motioned for them to begin.

Reinhardt stood at attention, head high and chin thrust out, unfazed by the ammunition vaporizing against his chest. The bullets disappeared as violet coruscations within a man-shaped corona of blue fire. Himmler's expression went blank. He adjusted his round wire-rimmed glasses and leaned over to say something to the doctor. The doctor nodded. Greifelt's mouth and eyes went wide. He gaped at Reinhardt, unblinking, even after Doctor von Westarp helped him to his seat.

In true combat, the barrage would have knocked Reinhardt on his ass. Klaus had seen it—and laughed—many times. Although the salamander's willpower could subvert lead, strip it of its strength and render it harmless to flesh, it could not subvert momentum. The stream of superheated vapor would have sent him sprawling across the parade ground, mussing his hair and new uniform.

But that would have been undignified. Reinhardt had demanded a concrete slug be buried in the ground, with tungsten-alloy stirrups for his toes. And lately what ever Reinhardt demanded, he received.

A shame. Sabotaging the stirrups would have been simplicity itself. On a different day, a less auspicious day, Klaus would have done it without reservation.