Ian Tregillis - Bitter Seeds

Will shook his head. “Honestly, I haven't the faintest idea. This is a form of the craft utterly unknown to me. But I'd like to know how it works.” It looked like magic without blood. Was that even possible?

Marsh looked at Stephenson, then back to Will. “You'll do it, then? You'll help us?”

“I am at your service,” said Will.

“Welcome to Milkweed,” said Stephenson.

9-10 May 1940

Ardennes Forest, Belgium

The Gotterelektrongruppe sped through a moonlit forest in a six-wheeled Panzerspahwagen. Klaus rode in the back, along with a massive store of replacement batteries. The road swerved around hills and dipped through gullies. The armored scout car had minimal suspension; every bump in the road jostled the occupants as they sped along.

A two-hundred-meter-wide swath of old-growth forest and underbrush disappeared in their wake, flattened and incinerated in an orgy of willpower. On the left, impenetrable stands of beech and spruce disappeared behind the bulwark of blue fire racing alongside the truck. On the right, centuries-old oaks and sapling firs disintegrated as though ripped apart by a giant thresher.

The car was designed for a crew of five; they numbered six. Reinhardt and Kammler sat in front, crammed next to their driver. Buhler huddled behind Kammler, in the gunner's seat. His leg jounced up and down as he yanked on the imbecile's leash. Gretel was in the rear, next to Klaus, where the radio operator normally sat. She sat with her head tipped back, eyes closed but looking ahead.

Reinhardt and Kammler drained their packs with wild, amphetamine-fueled abandon. Klaus relayed new batteries up front as his comrades swapped out the depleted packs. At first they had stopped every few kilometers to change the batteries. After a while they had found a rhythm, though, and now they moved like clockwork.

They were the tip of the spear. By morning, the three Panzerkorps of German Army Group A would barrel through the newly opened forest, circumventing the Maginot Line and tearing into France's soft, undefended interior.

Their leaders called it Operation Sichelschnitt: the cut of the sickle.

The engine rumble made a contrabass counterpoint to the white noise whoosh of fire and imploding wood stock. Outside, the night smelled like the workshop of an overzealous carpenter, singed sawdust and pulped lumber. It stank inside the car. Kammler had crapped himself.

“Crush. Crush. Crush,” Buhler rasped. Hours of screaming, then chanting, the same mantra had given his voice the texture of sandpaper.

At some point during the night, they crossed from Belgium into France, though even with a map it was impossible to tell when or where.

Gretel sat up. She said, “Fortification, two minutes ahead. Sentries will hear us forty seconds from now.” Klaus shifted his weight as their driver, a combat driving specialist reassigned from the elite LSSAH unit of the Waffen-SS, applied the brakes. “Seventy seconds from now. Ninety.” The truck puttered to a stop. “The sentries will not hear us,” Gretel concluded.

She turned, smirking. “But Hauptsturmfuhrer Buhler will fall in a thistle when he goes to piss in the woods.”

“Crazy bitch. You say that every time we stop. You're trying to make me hold it all night.”

She shrugged.

Everyone climbed out. Buhler handed Kammler's leash over to the driver, who wrinkled his nose. The crackle of underbrush receded as Buhler strode off to relieve himself. Reinhardt leaned against the cab. He lifted a cigarette to his mouth with trembling hands. The amphetamines had him wound so tightly, he almost vibrated. Moonlight shone in the whites of his eyes. A tiny orange flame momentarily engulfed the tip of the cigarette. Klaus knew that the cigarette wouldn't mask the taste in Reinhardt's mouth.

The heavy fortifications—the grands ouvrages —of the Maginot Line didn't extend through the Ardennes. The forest had long been considered impassable with heavy armor. And so it had been, until to night.

But the French had sprinkled smaller fortifications— petits ouvrages —through the portion of forest that extended across the border. These, too, had to be destroyed to ensure the flawless rollout of the Blitzkrieg. Klaus's ability was useless for clearing timberland. But he had no equal for clearing fortifications.

Klaus hefted a pack from the overloaded car. He checked the contents. Thirty kilograms of PETN were sufficient to tear open the heaviest ouvrage like a tin can. But when detonated inside the steel-plated walls, it would turn the fort into a meat grinder.

Gretel joined him as he double-checked the gauge on his battery harness. She pointed. “That way. Follow the gully until you reach the clearing. You'll find the fort in the crook between two hills.”

“How are you feeling?” Klaus asked. “Do you need a new battery yet?” She didn't say anything.

Klaus had advocated a plan where Gretel stayed behind, away from the battlefront, relaying her directions via the Twins. But in order to plumb the next twelve hours and shepherd them safely to the other side, she first had to twine her future with their own. Or so she insisted.

Twined futures hadn't helped Rudolf.

“Why don't you stay with the truck? It'll be safer than—”

She raised a hand, cutting him off. She cocked her head. A moment later the rustle of underbrush and a muffled “Damn it!” drifted out of the silent forest.

“Thistle,” she said. Klaus sighed.

A stream of invective preceded Buhler all the way back to the truck. “Crazy fucking mongrel whore,” it concluded.

They regrouped. Reinhardt crushed out his cigarette. Buhler took Kammler's leash again. “Stay here,” he ordered the driver. The pale-faced zealot saluted.

They tromped off along the gully that Gretel had pointed out. Klaus led with his sister at his side. Behind them followed Reinhardt, Buhler, and Kammler. Runoff from recent spring rains splashed beneath their boots. They pushed through a thicket the hard way—Reinhardt and Kammler were too wound up on amphetamines to perform subtleties of Willenskrafte.

They crawled on their stomachs just under the lip of the ravine as the underbrush gave way to a tiny clearing. An ouvrage loomed before them in the shadows. It looked like an inverted breadbox pimpled along the top with retractable machine gun turrets.

Klaus adjusted the straps over his shoulders. He reached for the clasp on his battery harness.

“Wait,” Gretel whispered. “Let the sentries pass.”

She patted him on the side. He looked at her. Occasionally, when meeting her gaze, he saw something coiled up in her madness, steely and cold. But to night the moonlight stilled the depths behind her eyes. She smiled. A real smile, with even a hint of warmth.

Her hand lingered. “Go now, brother.”

Klaus took a deep breath and plugged in. The taste of copper flooded his mouth. He crested the streambed and headed for the fort. Nine inches of steel and concrete ghosted through his eyeballs, his bones, his thumping heart. The French fortifications presented as much resistance to Klaus as an open window presented the wind.

Smaller forts like this could house a few hundred fighting men, depending on the internal configuration. This one was shaped like a T. A subterranean garrison at the long end of the central tunnel probably held two hundred men or more. But it was the middle of the night, and most of the troops slept through Klaus's silent infiltration. He entered at the top of the T, between the two gun turrets.