The Fall of Night (25 page)

They passed through several villages as they drove onwards.  Anastazy insisted on stopping long enough to tell the villagers what was actually happening; all they’d heard had been the Russian radio broadcast telling them to remain in their homes.  For farmers, that wasn't an option; they had to keep working or the farms would go bust.  Anastazy spoke, bitterly, of European farming regulations that had been driving the farmers out of business; taxes, more red tape, everything that farmers dreaded wrapped up into one.  The Russians needed food; Robinson wondered if the Russians would make the farmers grow as much as they could, or would they simply collectivise the farms as they had done in the days of the Soviet Union.

He looked to the east.  Was there any resistance at all?  His force, and the remains of the German force, was on the run…and they hadn’t seen a single friendly aircraft.  If the Russians had really been landing behind Polish lines, they might run into Russians in front of them as well, and that would be even worse.  The question of fuel continued to nag at him; European units could take all kinds of fuel – the only real benefit that had come from integration – and they had taken some from the villages, but what happened when they ran out?  Matthews had warned that they might have to leave the CADS on auto-engage and abandon them; there seemed to be little choice.

He turned his head to the west and kept walking, one step at a time.

***

In no particular order, Natasha Belova was brown-haired, beautiful enough to set hearts fluttering even as a child and one of the smartest Russian women on the planet.  She had won a scholarship at age twelve and had spent ten years in America, learning from the best, before spending a year in Japan, finally returning to Russia to share what she had learned in the field of computer science with her fellow Russians.  Natasha had been one of thousands of Russians who had studied abroad, spies in all, but name; she had taken what the Americans had shown her and used it to benefit Russia.

She stood, now, in the centre of the American base and smiled.  The soldiers of Unit One had searched the base and removed a handful of documents, but their commanding officer had told her that they were more or less useless. 
Captain Vladimir Ivanov had cursed the Americans, assuming that they had destroyed files, but Natasha had reassured him; the Americans had merely kept most of their information in their computers.  The handful of books, articles and porn magazines were hardly vital strategic information.  It was the computers, all around her, that were important; she could hardly wait to get inside them and see how the Americans had made them all tick.

She touched one and the screen lit up.  The Americans used sensors on their computers these days; the system would probably recognise that she wasn't cleared for any information and refuse access, but that hardly mattered.  The screen lit up…and showed nothing, nothing at all.  A moment passed, and then an image of a Jolly Roger appeared, a tiny primitive GIF straight out of the early years of computing.

GUTEN MORGAN, INGLANDER SCRUM, printed on the screen.  YOU HAF NO WAYS OF MAKIN ME TAK.

Natasha laughed…and sensed that something was wrong.  She touched the side of the computer and felt something, an odd otherworldly tingle, passing through her arm.  Muttering under her breath, she pulled at the panel, which came off.  It should have refused to be opened, but it opened…and a massive cloud of dust billowed out at her.  She jumped backwards, sneezing; the dust had caught in her throat.  She gagged, reaching for her water bottle, and washed her mouth out before looking back at the computer.  A terrible sense of doom overtook her.

“Shit,” she breathed.  Only a few components, ones that she was sure had been home-produced, were still active; somehow, the remainder of the computers had been reduced to dust inside their cabinets, without letting her sense that anything was wrong.  She opened a second, then a third, and then a fourth; it was the same story with all of them.  Whatever the Americans had done, it would be impossible to recover any data or even more than a little useful data.  “Bastards!”

Her grand triumph had just turned to dust.

Literally.

Warsaw is burning. Warsaw is fighting its enemy in this last mortal battle. All the promises let us down, the help did not arrive. Lack of food and lack of potable water paralyses and weakens. Yet we fight: with the enemy, with the fire and with the epidemics. Everyone is fighting.  Whole city is tied in this mortal struggle. You send us letters of compliments and best wishes from London and Paris. We don't want wishes any more, nor
do we await your help. It's too late for help.  Before it arrives there will be only rubble here, a corpses-covered, levelled terrain. What we await is revenge. We expect that you will start fighting one day, just like Warsaw is.

“The Americans screwed us!”

General Aleksandr Borisovich Shalenko found it hard to contain his fury, made worse by the fact that he knew that he had been the one who had concluded that they had managed to successfully take control of the American base intact.  Major Fletcher had stated that he wouldn’t destroy any files…but he had already done it, somehow.  The report from Natasha Belova, who had almost been in tears, had been clear; they would get nothing from the American systems, but dust.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” President Aleksandr Sergeyevich Nekrasov said.  Shalenko felt his heart sink; the Russian Government had historically had a long history of blaming the messenger, or the commanding officer, for any mistakes, even if it hadn’t actually been their fault.  Nekrasov was different, but at that moment, the remembrance that terror and death were very close was chilling.  He had promised to secure the American base…and Fletcher had been laughing at him behind his weakness.  “Still, we could hardly expect the Americans to roll over.”

Shalenko understood, once again, the frustration that led to atrocities.  He had spent years rebuilding the professional Russian army and he had trained them, as best as he could, to avoid committing atrocities.   He wouldn’t hesitate to cause a civilian slaughter if the civilians were in his way, but he shrank from mass slaughter for no good purpose.  It was the task of the pacification units to continue preparing Poland – and the rest of Europe – for integration into the Russian Federation; they were criminals and Kazakhs, not true soldiers.  They would also have Warsaw, once he took it; they were only in theory under his control.

His lips twitched.  If they caused his supply lines to be broken, he’d kill them all personally.

“The Americans said that they would destroy nothing,” he snapped.  He paused; Natasha’s report had been clear and concise, and it had reported an impossible precision of devastation.  The computers had looked intact when he had walked through the base; Natasha had claimed that only the interior, part of the interior, had been damaged.  The Americans had even engaged in a little taunting.  “They broke the terms of their surrender!”

“The Americans have made it clear that the destruction was carried out as soon as Operation Stalin actually began,” Nekrasov said, coldly and very calmly.  The chill in his voice worried Shalenko, even if it was not directed at him personally; the President seemed more angry at himself than anything else.  “Under the circumstances, we could hardly treat them as surrendered prisoners who grabbed guns and started to shoot.”

He held up a hand before Shalenko could say anything.  “No, we will honour what we told the American Government, through their Ambassador; the men will be returned to America though Turkey, which has agreed to take them,” he continued.  “The loss of the computers and the other systems there is irritating; my people here can’t figure out how it happened.  One thought is that the Americans somehow caused the molecules in the computers to come apart, but how…?  No one seems to know.”

Shalenko nodded.  “Mr President, one day we will be able to do it ourselves,” he said.  “Did Unit One find anything of interest apart from American porn magazines?”

“Not much,” Nekrasov said.  They shared a mischievous grin before Nekrasov was all business again.  “What is the current status of the offensive?”

He could have downloaded it from the Battlespace Management System, Shalenko knew; his friend wanted his impressions, not the cold dispassionate figures.  “We have secured most of our targets for paratrooper drops and supply lines,” he said.  “The Shock Armies are spreading out to push deeper into Poland while the smaller armies are preparing to take Warsaw and secure the city.  Once that is completed, we can turn our attention to further north and link up with the northern prongs.”

Nekrasov nodded once.  “And resistance?”

“We have smashed most of their forces on the ground in the first few moments of actual combat,” Shalenko said, proudly.  “A number of isolated units stood their ground and fought to the death, a handful more started to flee back to Germany.  Air resistance has been almost non-existent; we have lost a handful of aircraft to ground-based systems and one accident at a captured airport.  So far, there is no sign that the enemy has begun to organise coordinated resistance or even a general withdrawal.  It will become harder from here, of course, but we have smashed most of the forces they would use against us.”

“That is acceptable work,” Nekrasov said, as they shared a glance.  “What about the civilians?”

Shalenko winced.  “There have been thousands of injuries or deaths,” he admitted.  “Around twelve of our men have been remanded to the penal units on charges of rape and in one case shooting a child by accident.  The general population in areas we occupy are staying in their homes, out of sight; there’s a lot of panic further west, despite our radio broadcasts.  I fear that there will be more deaths before we have finished.”

“Remember, it is the human capital that we need as well as the land,” Nekrasov said, seriously.  “Some elements of the population will resist us, and when they do they will be eliminated, but the general population must remain as unhurt as possible by the fighting.  Please bear that in mind.”

“Of course, Mr President,” Shalenko said.  “Have you made that point to the FSB as well?”

“Yes,” Nekrasov said shortly.  “They have the task of purging enemy society of unfortunate individuals, but otherwise they are to behave themselves, or you can have them for the penal battalions.”

Shalenko nodded his head.  “Then with your permission, I will return to supervising the fall of Warsaw,” he said.  “Once the city has fallen, we can resume our offensive west.”

***

“The enemy tanks are advancing,” the spotter’s voice murmured.  The tactical combat communications system lent a faint air of unreality to the entire scene.  The distant sound – and sometimes not so distant – of long-range gunfire and rockets could be heard in the background; it was just like an exercise, with one very real difference.  They could get killed out in Poland.  “They’ll be on your position in five minutes at most.”

Captain Guntar Markus was scared, much as he hated to admit it, even to himself.  He had been deployed to Poland as part of a large force of Eurotanks, mainly German-crewed.  The Poles hadn’t been that welcoming, even though they had largely overcome their fear of Germany from the last war; EUROFOR’s failure to deter the Russians from pushing the limits had shamed the Poles.  Markus had never expected to be part of a very real war; he had never fired his Eurotank’s main gun in action before, outside drills.  No one had expected the Russians to launch a major attack.

The German commander of the Eurotank division had been a martinet; it had saved Markus’s life.  The orders from Camp Warsaw had been to spread out the division, even though any natural-born tank crewmen knew that that was inviting disaster, in order to provide some support to the Polish forces near Warsaw.  There had been little point in it; the 7
th
Panzer was well out of position to either guard the border or provide reinforcements.  As far as he had been able to tell, their task was really to hold the Poles’ collective hands.

His commander had seen it as a good chance to engage in some training and sent Markus – and a force of six tanks – out on a training drill.  Two hours after they had started their stealthy manoeuvres designed to practice an advance against an unsuspecting foe – the irony was killing him – the skies had echoed with the sound of thunder…and lit up with the flashes of explosions.  The Eurotank’s systems were among the best in the world; Markus had a ringside seat as Russian shells crashed down on Polish and European positions…including the command post for the 7
th
Panzer.  The jamming had made it impossible for Markus to request orders, until they had established a brief link with EUROFOR Command, but there had been no orders.  Moments later, they had even lost that link; there was no way to know what was going on.

There
had
been some intelligence, albeit very limited.  The Russians had launched a major offensive…and they were targeting the mobile forces with air strikes.  The European tanks, designed to be stealthy, had been missed, or at least Markus’s small unit had been missed.  He’d forced down the rising flow of panic and sent out his small Polish escort to act as spotters, knowing that all he could do was delay the enemy.  At least his position was good for that, if nothing else; there was no longer a serious uplink to EUROFOR Command.  His men had tried to contact higher authority…and failed completely; it was almost as if they were the only human beings left in the world.  Only a handful of helicopters, heading west, had passed the tanks…and the tanks had remained unnoticed.  Markus was pleased; they might just have a chance to hit the enemy a major blow.

The Polish road leading into Warsaw would be a major angle of attack for the Russians, Markus was sure; it was basic tank tactics to ensure that your forces could move as quickly as possible, and trying to take tanks through the mixture of woodland and marshes was a recipe for disaster.  If he tried to move his own tanks, even though his Poles knew the region much better than any enemy unit could know it, they would be certain to be spotted, but if they kept their heads down, they would be unlikely to attract attention.  They would have a chance…

“Understood,” he muttered back into the tactical microphone.  The entire system used a low frequency that was supposed to be undetectable by any known ELINT system, but Markus knew better than to trust it completely.  A burst of radio or radar energy could strip away their protection within seconds, leaving them exposed to Russian precision bombing, perhaps even missile fire.  The attack on the command post had been ruthless; he didn’t hold out much hope of being able to surrender if the Russians caught them.  “Move.”

He checked his vehicle’s batteries again.  The power cells that were changing the entire face of the world – and might have played a role in precipitating this attack – were supposed to be rechargeable from any power source, from other tanks to a main power grid.  In theory, even without recharging their systems, they could have made it all the way across Poland, but he suspected that that was very much a best-case scenario.  If they had to power the tank’s impressive array of systems, the power drain would become critical much faster…and once they ran out of power, they would be stranded.  One hand caressed the service pistol he wore at his belt; if necessary, his men would try to make their way across country.  Someone, somewhere, had to be organising resistance.  He was sure of it.  The Russians couldn’t have killed everyone in Europe.

“Shift in the background noise,” the gunner muttered.  He was also the EW officer for the Eurotank; the three-man crew had had to have special training to cope with all of the requirements, even with the massive automation that had been installed into the hull.  The passive sensors, thank God, didn’t trigger Russian alarms.  “There’s a Russian drone up there, watching for trouble.”

“Think good thoughts,” Markus murmured.  The tank’s optical sensors were peering down the road now; the audio sensors were reporting the noise of oncoming vehicles.  He wished that he could say that he was surprised that the Russians had a drone overhead, but it was standard practice; the Russians had stolen the plans for the American Dragon Eye micro-drone and improved upon it.  “Prepare to engage the enemy.”

Suddenly, he saw them…and he felt a spurt of cold rage.  Part of him had never quite believed in the threat, even though he had known what was happening; war in the heartlands of Europe seemed a nightmare from the preceding century.  He saw, now, the black shapes of the latest, most modern, Russian tanks, and shuddered.  They were at war.  The Russian T-100 tank was known for being as capable as a late-model Abrams tank, with optional versions for amphibious and anti-insurgency operations, but he was certain that he was facing a tank designed for offensive warfare.  There would be no insurgency in Poland, at least, not yet; the Russians wouldn’t issue the anti-insurgency tanks until much later.  He was facing the cream of the Russian Army.

“Bastards,” he hissed.  Two Russian helicopters, anti-armour and ground support units, he suspected, could be seen floating in the distance and coming towards his people.  The Russians weren’t acting as if they knew that the EUROFOR troops were there, but it could have been a trick; he forced himself to remain calm, waiting for the first chance to hit the Russians a major blow.  The line of Russian tanks seemed endless…and unstoppable.  “
Bastards
!”

He checked the gunner’s panel quickly.  “Choose your targets,” he muttered.  Little strands of laser light, connecting each of the tanks to one another, flickered out, designating targets.  The Russians would probably detect a laser targeting system, but one wasn’t needed for the Eurotanks, not at this range.  The Russians were still coming along, watching for trouble, but unaware of the presence of his tanks.  “Stand by…”