The Iron Dream (27 page)

Feric thumbed his microphone switch and gave the order to the crew of his own tank and to the formation simultaneously: "Fire at will until all resistance is crushed!"

A low whine could be felt as well as heard in the tank as the turret crew aligned the cannon with its target. Then a great blast and shudder went through the dreadnaught, and a moment later Feric saw an orange explosion blossom in the darkness on the far side of the Ulm. At once, the deafening rolling thunder of continuous massed cannonfire shook his body even through the steel walls of the tank, a meteor-swarm of shells soared overhead, and the Borgravian positions erupted in great fountains of fire.

Once more Feric's tank fired as the formation hurtled forward; the massed fire of the black dreadnaughts continued to pound the Borgravian positions to pieces. A final fusillade sent clouds of earth and flesh flying in all directions, and then the treads of Feric's tank were splashing through the shallow waters of the Ulm. Feric thumbed his machine-gun stud as the tank tore through the Borgravian barbed wire; behind him, the tank formation filled the ah"

with the clatter and sparkle of bullets as they squashed what little was left of the fortifications totally flat.

Of the Borgravians themselves, little was to be seen save a few bloody fragments scattered among the still-steaming shell holes. Those few worthless wretches who had not been blown to pieces by the cannon had fled shrieking and howling in terror into the night. When the sun rose, the motorized infantry and the motorcycle SS

would hunt down., and annihilate these stragglers one by one, if need be. The more ruthless precision demonstrated at the outset, the sooner it would be obvious to all mu-176

tants and mongrels in the path of the Helder advance that resistance was less than useless. Thus, a well-executed policy of total annihilation of the enemy would prove the most merciful course possible in the long run.

All through the night, the tank force surged eastward through the rolling countryside of Borgravia toward Gormond without encountering anything that could reasonably be termed organized resistance.

Feric had ordered the decimation of all villages, farms, and other structures in the path of the advance, and the slaying of any Borgravian rabble stupid enough to show its corrupted face. For the most part, the habitations in these parts consisted of solitary peasant huts crudely constructed of timber held together with dried mud or dung. A single incendiary shell was more than enough to convert one of these sties to a roaring bonfire, and another shot or two sufficed to set the fields ablaze. Occasionally, crabbed creatures would scuttle from the ruins like dung-beetles to be cut down by a burst or two of machine-gun fire, but for the most part the Borgravians in the area took to their heels well in advance of the tanks, leaving it to the mop-up troops to round them up for processing. Even the occasional villages that the column encountered were deserted and undefended, so that the tanks were able to cut a wide swath of total destruction through the countryside without seriously depleting their supply of ammunition.

About an hour before sunrise, Feric spotted a red glow on the eastern horizon that seemed to flicker and crackle like a far-off conflagration.

"Look, Best," he said, "that must be Gormond!"

"Our dive-bombers are certainly teaching the swine a lesson."

Not much later, the dim far-off rumble of explosions could be heard, and by the time the sun had fully risen, the bombs falling on the city filled the air with a sound very much like thunder, great flames were clearly visible over the far-off ruins, and Feric thought he could barely make out individual aerial dreadnaughts diving on the city in their bomb runs.

Suddenly Best was pointing due east. "Over there, my Commander," he said. "I believe that's the Borgravian army."

Across the broad plain between the Helder tank force arid Gormond, Feric discerned a kind of gray mottling on 177

the scraggly gray-green landscape; this was apparently the Borgravian army assembled to put up some sort of resistance to the Helder advance.

As if to confirm this observation, a few flashes of fire blossomed from this gray scum, and a few moments later a half-dozen shells exploded harmlessly nearly a thousand yards short of the Helder tanks. The Helder gunners, for their part, knew better than to waste ammunition by firing at this range. Feric thumbed his microphone button and contacted the leader of the aerial dreadnaughts attacking Gormond.

"This is the Supreme Commander speaking. Divert a score of your planes to attack the Borgravian troops to the east of the city."

"At once, my Commander! Hail Jaggar!"

Thus by the time the gray mottling resolved itself into a sordid assortment of Borgravian mongrels in dull gray uniforms scattered across the line of advance in ragged disorder, twenty swift, sleek, black aerial dreadnaughts were already diving on the foe, one after another in a continuous series of strafing swoops, pinning the creatures down and ripping them to pieces with a steady rain of machine-gun bullets. Like great metal eagles, the planes dipped and soared, catching scores of mutated wretches dead in their tracks as they ran and leapt stupidly in panic, blowing to bits with aerial bombs the few cumbersome old dreadnaughts that the Borgravians boasted; altogether a magnificent and inspiring performance.

"Open fire!" Feric ordered his tank commandTs. "Fire at will as long as there are targets!"

Thunder shook his tank as the cannon fired, shells whistled overhead, and a forest of explosions mushroomed in the ranks of the Borgravians. Again and again and again, the tanks dropped fusillades of high explosive shells on the ragged rabble, while the aerial dreadnaughts continued to strafe the mutants with their machine guns.

Then at last the tanks themselves reached the Borgravian army, such as it was.

A vast untidy mess of trenches and foxholes had been hastily dug on the plain before the burning capital; rolls of barbed wire had been strung almost at random among these rude and ridiculous fortifications. The entire area was peeked with hundreds of smoking bomb and shell craters; the battlefield was cloaked in a pungent gunpowder mist. Fragments of smashed Borgravian equipment 178

were everywhere—shards of howitzers, bits of ruined dreadnaughts, broken and twisted machine guns—and all manner of revolting mutants in gray uniforms lay strewn all about in bloody bits and pieces.

"Hardly anything left worth bothering with, my Commander," Best observed with a certain disappointment.

This was something of a slight exaggeration, for from the cover of trenches, foxholes, craters, and twisted bits of wreckage, Parrotfaces, Blueskins, Toadmen, dwarfs, and creatures with every other conceivable genetic affliction fired rifles uselessly at the tanks, their bullets clattering off the armor plate like so many pebbles.

Feric held down the firing stud of his machine gun, sending a continuous stream of fiery lead into the monstrosities before him as the treads of his tank smashed through a roll of barbed wire and crushed a Parrotface, a hunchbacked dwarf, and a Blueskin huddled behind the wreckage of a dreadnaught. "Use machine guns!" he ordered his tank commanders. "Cannon switch to incendiary shells!"

The tanks advanced swiftly across the battlefield behind a solid wall of machine-gun bullets, crushing wire, trenches, foxholes, and Borgravians beneath their massive steel treads. At point-blank range, the cannon lobbed phos-phorous shells into the ranks of the mutant rabble. Hundreds of crabbed creatures shambled, shuffled, ran and crawled madly in all directions, their uniforms and flesh aflame. The Borgravians in the path of the tanks began to leap up out of then- positions insanely, running a few yards in a cowardly frenzy of fear, only to be mowed down by machine guns and pulped beneath the treads of the onrushing tanks.

The Holder Juggernaut rolled across the plain toward Gormond, driving the remnants of the broken Borgravian army before it; a tight formation of black dreadnaughts and streaming red swastika banners pulverizing everything in its path, leaving behind it nothing but flame, ashes, and the dead bodies of the enemy.

"What a magnificent sight, Best!" Feric exclaimed. "Can you imagine the effect this will have in Vetonia and Husak?"

"Perhaps they will now surrender without further resistance, my Commander."

"Surrender will not be tolerated in this war!" Feric said.

"We must make an example of all these mutants states."

179

In a few minutes, Feric's tank entered the outskirts of Gormond, or rather what was left of the Borgravian capital: heaps of smoldering rubble here and there enlivened by a wooden building still brightly aflame. The corpses of mutants and mongrels were everywhere, many of them decently burned beyond recognition, but all too many clearly displaying the most ghastly genetic degeneration—tiny pinheads, long dangling arms, mottled skin, of blue, green, brown, or even purple, disgusting hairy humps, chitinous beaks or even carapaces, limbs terminating in clusters of wormlike tentacles, an altogether stomach-turning display of warped and twisted protoplasm.

As the tanks stormed through this flaming chamel heap of genetic refuse, occasionally smashing a freakishly intact structure with their cannon or routing a gaggle of grotesque survivors with their machine guns, Feric's mind was drawn back to the horrid days of his exile, when these foul warrens were alive with disgusting vermin who made his every waking moment an offense to his humanity.

A Blueskin darted from one heap of rubble to the next, and Feric ripped it to pieces with a burst of his machine gun. "One less bag of twisted chromosomes to contaminate the world gene pool!" he exclaimed. "Best, you cannot conceive of the personal satisfaction it gives me to finally wipe this reeking cesspit from the face of the earth!"

Within an hour, the tank force had crunched its way through the ruins of Gormond, taking great care that not one structure was left standing, not one foul monstrosity left alive to spawn its unclean kind once more. Feric had not the slightest doubt that Remler and the SS were fully capable of purging the former territory of Borgravia of its last contaminating element and rendering it fit for incorporation into the Domain of Heldon. But it was a matter of personal honor that his own tank force should complete the purification of Gormond itself down to the last fetid structure and twisted gene. The cesspit to which the treachery of Karmak had condemned him for so many years must be expunged by fire from the face of the earth as if it had never been.

And as the tank force swept westward across the plains beyond what had been Gormond driving a horde of refugees before it like' the subhuman swine they were, Feric peered through the rear periscope and saw nothing but a 180

great pillar of smoke and fire boiling into the sky behind him where the dung heap of Gormond had been.

"I wonder if you can understand the personal satisfaction I feel at finally having totally removed this blot on the honor of my pedigree. Best," he said softly.

"But my Commander, your ability to wield the Great Truncheon of Held is clear proof that your pedigree is the finest in the world!"

Feric smiled. "You're quite right, of course," he said.

"Still I somehow feel that a personal affront has been removed, and this redoubles my pleasure at a job well done."

At this Best nodded enthusiastically. "That I can readily understand, my Commander!" he exclaimed.

The sun shone brightly over the clear waters of the Ulm as Feric's newly polished black command car, escorted by a squad of equally spotless motorcycle SS, dashed across the Ulmgam bridge and into the province of South Ulmland, which only a month ago had been the mutant pestilence of Borgravia. At his side, Bors Remler beamed with pleasure, for even at this early stage, the industry and the fanaticism of the Helder people under the direction of the SS had performed miracles toward transforming the former genetic dung heap into a wholesome province suitable for true human habitation.

The border town that had been known as Pormi and was now Bridgehead had been completely renovated. Helder engineers had completely razed the squalid huts and hovels of the Borgravian town and laid out new streets paved with concrete in a pleasing pattern that combined a regular grid with a series of avenues radiating out from five great circular plazas. Many new buildings had already gone up and scores more were under construction. The public edifices were of black stone or pink-veined marble, constructed on an appropriately grand scale and suitably embellished with gleaming bronze traceries and heroic statuary in which the theme of continuity between the heroes of the past and the greater heroes of the Swastika predominated. The more mundane structures were of glazed brick in cheery hues of yellow, blue, red, and green, and more of them than not boasted artfully carved wooden facades. Bridgehead already boasted several hundred Helder colonists. These, along with the construction crews, lined the streets of the half-finished model town, 181

waving little paper swastika flags, cheering, giving impromptu Party salutes, and shouting "Hail Jaggar!" as Feric's car promenaded by.

For his part, Feric could not help grinning with pleasure as he stood erect in the back of the open car returning the salutes. Having just returned from a triumphant tour of Westlands, the new province which only a week ago had been Vetonia, he knew with total ac-curacy just how well the war was going. The southern and northern wings of the Helder army had linked up two weeks after the opening of the campaign, well ahead of schedule, and had squashed the Vetonian army flat within three days, and then utterly demolished the capital of Barthang with Waffing's newly operational guided missiles. This took the remaining backbone out of what was left of Vetonia and sent the rabble screaming into the southern wildlands or into Husak. Now Waning was leading the army across Husak, and Kolchak was expected to fall in a day or so. Once the Husak capital was pulverized, the war would have reached its successful conclusion, and all that would remain would be the task of purifying the conquered lands and colonizing them with true humans.