Ragnarok

Chapter Eighteen

Front Lines, Germany Prime

3 November 1985

The enemy were in full retreat, Hauptmann Felix Malguth thought as he spotted a bunch of black-clad soldiers fleeing west. There was no point in strafing them, but he had no compunction about flying low over their heads and giving them a scare. Maybe they would be so terrified that they would be easy meat for the groundpounders, when they finally arrived. They seemed to be slowing down as the day wore on…

…And then there was a brilliant flash of white light.

Felix barely had a second to realise what had happened before the world went completely black. A nuke. He’d been looking directly towards a nuclear weapon as it detonated. And now he was blind… panic yammered at the back of his mind as he tried, desperately, to recall how he’d been flying before he’d been blinded. He might be heading straight towards the ground, or… he fumbled, desperately, for the ejector handle. It wasn’t safe, but it was the only way to survive… he’d just have to hope he landed on the right side of the line. Friendly troops might just get him to a medic in time to do something. The SS would probably watch and laugh as he struggled to find his way home.

The shockwave struck the aircraft a second later. Felix lost control completely, the aircraft flipping over as it started to disintegrate. There was a tearing sense of pain, a flicker of light even in the complete darkness…

…And then there was nothing.

Herman had been looking northwards when there was an unbelievably huge detonation, a flash of brilliant white light that — just for a second — sent everything into sharp relief. He threw himself to the ground automatically, not sure what had happened but completely sure it was bad. The ground shook violently a second later, so violently that a number of houses in the town collapsed into rubble, a couple exploding as emplaced booby traps were detonated by the near-earthquake.

He clung to the earth, praying desperately as the shaking went on and on. What had happened? Had the SS deployed nuclear weapons? He hated to imagine it, but he couldn’t think of anything else that could create such an effect. Stockpiling a vast number of conventional explosives might have been enough — he’d seen some immense stockpiles explode during his military service — but the SS was short on everything. Surely they wouldn’t have stockpiled so many explosives when there were so many other demands on their resources?

The shaking slowly came to an end, the thunderous noise fading into nothingness. It was suddenly very quiet… Herman rubbed his ears as he rolled over, half-convinced that he’d been completely deafened. But he could hear someone screaming in pain and shock… he forced himself to sit up and peer eastwards. A giant mushroom cloud, glowing an eerie red, was hanging in the air, mocking him. Just for a second, he fancied he saw a laughing face within the blaze before it vanished into the cloud. Another mushroom cloud could be seen further in the distance…

A nuke, he thought, numbly. They detonated a nuke — two nukes.

He pulled himself up and half-walked, half-stumbled towards the screaming man. He was rubbing his eyes desperately, as if he thought he could somehow massage them back to life. Herman realised, to his horror, that the man had been looking towards the blast when the warhead went off, that he’d been blinded… there was no way to give a blind man back his sight, he thought. The medics couldn’t do anything for the poor man, but try to make him comfortable…

“Stay still,” he said. The victim was shaking like a child who’d been hurt for the first time, tears dripping down his face as he kept rubbing his eyes. “Please, stay still.”

“I can’t see,” the man said. “I can’t see.”

“I know,” Herman said. He gritted his teeth, feeling suddenly out of his depth. He was a policeman, not a doctor. Normally, if someone was injured, he would call for help from the nearest hospital. But the nearest medics were too far away to do any good. “Keep your hands off your eyes unless you want to make it worse.”

He briefly considered securing the victim — for his own good — as the remainder of the squad assembled itself. Only one man had been blinded, thankfully, but several had been injured by flying debris. And there were other dangers. Herman had heard stories about men who’d been involved in cleaning up the Middle East, after four cities had been destroyed by nuclear blasts. They’d all had health problems in later life…

“There’s nothing on the radio, but static,” the radioman reported. “I can’t get in touch with anyone.”

Herman nodded. He knew very little about how an atomic bomb worked, but he had been given a fairly comprehensive briefing about their effects, back during his training. It would be days, perhaps weeks, before radio communication became reliable again. Until then, they would be out of touch with higher command. And there were other problems too…

“We hold position,” he ordered, finally. “And I need a volunteer to take a message to HQ.”

“Jesus Christ!”

Andrew stared in horror as the mushroom clouds took shape, unable to escape the feeling that he was looking at the end of the world. The nuclear genie had been allowed out of the bottle — once — and millions of people had died. Now, two more nuclear weapons had been detonated and… and he had no idea how many people might have been killed. Or sentenced to a long and lingering death. It was impossible to be sure, but it looked as though both weapons had detonated on the ground…

And that means fallout, he thought. Everyone in the vicinity is in deep shit.

Cold ice ran down his spine. He’d been briefed extensively on nuclear weapons when he’d taken up his post and he knew enough about them to worry. A groundburst would have sucked up plenty of debris, irradiated it as it passed through the blast, and then scattered the resulting dust in all directions. The soldiers on both sides would be in deep trouble. Even taking a breath could mean swallowing radioactive poison. And the population of Warsaw was — perhaps — in worse trouble. They might have to evacuate the entire city.

And I’m not safe here either, he told himself. His skin crawled, although he was fairly sure it was his imagination rather than floating radioactivity. I might be breathing in poison too.

He looked towards Generalmajor Gunter Gath. The German was barking orders into a radio, but the screech of static was enough to tell Andrew that the Heer had lost all control over the battle. Chances were the Waffen-SS would launch a counterattack in the chaos — they’d presumably expected the nuclear blasts, although neither MI6 nor the CIA had picked up on the preparations — and the Heer would have to fight, even in the midst of stunned disorientation.

Or they might have already broken the offensive, Andrew thought. It was hard to be sure, but it looked as though the devices had been positioned alarmingly close to the lead spearheads. God alone knew how many frontline combat soldiers — and panzers — had been caught in the blasts and vaporised. The Provisional Government’s grand offensive might have just failed.

He shuddered. It had been nearly thirty-five years since nuclear weapons had been used, since humanity had realised just how dangerously powerful their weapons had become. America had recoiled in horror from the thought of using nuclear weapons, even as it had built up the largest and most dangerous arsenal on the face of the planet. But the Reich had had a different view of nuclear weapons. They were just another tool to use when necessary…

…And they might just have been enough to save Germany East from a quick defeat.

He shuddered, again. Countless theorists had claimed that a nuclear deterrent rendered a country invulnerable. It was why Britain and India had worked so hard to build up their own nuclear arsenals. But nuclear weapons hadn’t been enough to stop the Falklands War, nor had they prevented the German people from rising up against their government. They clearly had their limits.

“Send runners to the advance elements,” Gath ordered, finally. He sounded bitterly frustrated. “Tell them to fall back to the western lines — the offensive is to be discontinued.”

Andrew wasn’t surprised. The Heer had been shattered by the blasts, even if the physical damage wasn’t as bad as Gath clearly feared. There was no point in pressing the offensive after the blasts, not until the soldiers had had a chance to regroup. And by then winter might have swept over the Reich.

And who knows what will happen, Andrew asked himself, if the offensive has to be delayed until spring.

He swallowed, hard. The entire world had just changed. If Holliston was mad enough to use nuclear weapons on his fellow Germans, there was no reason why he wouldn’t be able to use them on the United States. And he did have a number of ballistic missiles under his control, even if he didn’t have the launch codes. Given time, Andrew had been warned, a competent engineer would be able to bypass the security protocols… it was clear, now, that someone had already succeeded in unlocking and arming the tactical warheads. What would happen if Holliston decided to fire on America?

The President will have to ask that question, Andrew thought. And I’m glad I won’t have to come up with an answer.

Why the hell, Field Marshal Gunter Voss asked himself, didn’t I see that coming?

He stared down at the table, barely hearing the endless stream of reports flowing into his headquarters. Two entire divisions broken beyond repair; four more badly crippled… countless men killed, wounded or exposed to radioactive dust… it was disaster on an unthinkable scale. The Reich hadn’t suffered so badly since the Hundred Days, when British, American and French soldiers had crushed the might of Imperial Germany and brought the Second Reich to an inglorious end. Now…

I should have seen it coming, Gunter told himself. I knew how ruthless Holliston could be…

He didn’t need to look eastward to know that the mushroom clouds were still drifting in the sky. Holliston had been staggeringly ruthless. Countless stormtroopers would already have been exposed to radioactive dust, even if they kept retreating rather than rallying and trying to launch a counterattack. And the citizens of Warsaw, loyal to the SS even if they weren’t loyal to Holliston personally, would have been drenched in radioactivity. He dreaded to think just how many people might have been condemned to die in screaming agony over the months and years to come…

Maybe it won’t be that bad, he thought. They improved the tactical nuclear warhead design after the first blasts…

He bit down on the thought, angrily. The nuclear weapons dropped on four Arab cities had been designed to spread radioactive fallout, but he doubted the original designs could be improved that much. To believe otherwise was just wishful thinking. No, Holliston had sentenced thousands of loyalists — military and civilian — to death, just to protect Germany East from invasion. And he might just have succeeded. Voss’s grand plan to pocket the enemy troops lay in ruins.

We thought it was unthinkable, he told himself. And we were wrong.

He looked up at the map, then down at his hands. He’d known, of course, that the Reich had to take a ruthless line with Untermenschen, but he hadn’t cared to know the details. Of course not. The Heer had honour, something the SS notably lacked. And yet, the SS’s willingness to do truly horrific deeds should have warned him that they might be prepared to unleash nuclear weapons, just to ensure they came out ahead.

They were happy to arrest countless Germans for crimes against the Reich, he thought, numbly. I should have taken that as a warning.

He pushed the thought out of his head, angrily. There would be time for a post-mortem afterwards, if they survived so long. Right now, he needed to deal with the disaster washing over his troops before it was too late.

“Contact the remaining units,” he ordered. “They are to fall back and take up defensive positions.”

He scowled. Gath should have thought to do it already, if Gath was still alive. The communications network was in such a mess that he honestly didn’t know who was still breathing, who was wounded and who was dead. But if he hadn’t, Gunter had to issue the order. The offensive had come to a screeching halt. All he could do now was salvage as much as possible and hope for the best.

“Order the reserve medics to be prepared for heavy casualties,” he added. He cursed under his breath as the full implications struck home. The Reich had a number of medical units trained to deal with weapons of mass destruction, but nowhere near enough to cope with the sheer scale of the catastrophe. “But they are to apply nuclear protocols before taking the wounded into Berlin or any field hospital.”

The protocols might kill them, a voice whispered at the back of his head. Just washing them down to remove contamination might drive them over the edge.

He told the voice to go away, sharply. There was nothing else he could do. People caught in a cloud of radioactive dust would wind up with dust settling on their clothes. Washing them down might not save their lives, but it would save others. And yet, if they had been badly burned by the blast…

“And send an emergency message to the Chancellor,” he added. “I need to talk to him as soon as possible.”

“Jawohl.”

“Message from Generalfeldmarschall Brandenburg,” another aide called. “The Luftwaffe has lost every plane that was over the blast zone.”

Gunter nodded, unsurprised. Few aircraft could hope to fly near a nuclear blast and escape unscathed. The Americans claimed their latest bombers could fly to the Reich, drop an atomic payload on their targets and return in time for dinner, but hardly anyone believed them. There were a handful of intercontinental bombers in the Luftwaffe’s ranks, yet Gunter had always been sceptical of their value. They’d have to fly all the way to America, sneak through the most formidable network of air defence bases in the world, drop their bombs and somehow make it back home. ICBMs sounded a great deal more practical, when it came to launching nuclear weapons at the United States.

And dropping smaller bombs wouldn’t be worth the effort, he thought, sourly.

“Order the Generalfeldmarschall to get a couple of recon birds up as soon as possible,” he said, pushing the thought aside. He needed to know what the Waffen-SS was doing, despite the risk to the pilots. “I want recon reports!”

“Jawohl.”

Hennecke hadn’t known what to expect when he’d been ordered to take up position in a trench, but the colossal explosion — and the giant mushroom cloud — had left no doubt as to what had happened. Someone had detonated a nuke, perhaps two nukes; the enemy offensive had weakened, then stopped altogether. They’d been caught in the blast…

“Well,” someone said, from the rear. Hennecke couldn’t tear his eyes off the cloud as it loomed over them. “What do we do now?”

“We continue falling back, as per instructions,” Kuhn growled. He jabbed a finger eastwards as he hefted his pistol. “Start moving.”

Hennecke nodded in agreement. He hadn’t been taught much about nuclear blasts, but — for a reason he had never been able to understand — it was better to keep moving rather than finding shelter at once. Kuhn kept snapping out orders as the stormtroopers staggered to their feet and started to move; Hennecke kept a wary eye on him, wondering how long it would be before Kuhn realised that only a handful of penal soldiers were still under his command. He might find the few survivors something worse to do.

The air blew hot and cold, seemingly at random, as they kept moving. Hennecke gritted his teeth, trying not to breath more than strictly necessary; he swallowed, hard, as the skies started to cloud over, as if the blast had triggered the onset of winter. He glanced back, every few minutes, watching as the mushroom cloud slowly started to break up. He’d seen too many horrors since joining the SS — and starting the march to Berlin — but there was something about the cloud that chilled him to the bone. It looked profoundly unnatural.

But it may have saved us from the rebels, he thought, as they marched into the next set of defensive lines. The stormtroopers on duty were drawing water from a well and washing down all the newcomers, despite the cold weather and colder water. And yet, will we pay a price for having used it?

He shivered, helplessly, as cold water splashed over his body. His uniform clung to his skin afterwards, mocking him as the temperature plummeted rapidly. Kuhn — of course — didn’t give him any time to be miserable, instead pointing him in the direction of countless tasks that needed doing. Despite himself, Hennecke was almost grateful. The physical labour kept him from having time to brood. Some of the other stormtroopers looked as though they were too worn to get up, let alone fight if the enemy showed themselves.

And yet, as the wind picked up, he couldn’t help wondering what it might be blowing in their direction…

…And what would happen, in the long term, to anyone who had been too close to the blasts?