When the rains may come (Science Fiction)

70. The Only Way

The Moudrin soldiers in the Lichtenheim trenches were ready to give up. The battlefield in front of them was out of their worst nightmares. Corpses of their comrades lay scattered in bits and pieces. Their tanks had been reduced to oversized trash cans, riddled with holes caused by missiles and bombs they'd never imagined could exist. Even their air-support had been rendered useless against the enemy's ground-to-air missiles supplemented by the anti-aircraft defense. And thus, their bombers and fighters also lay in the same wasteland where their comrades had been blasted into oblivion.

Private Gaznek raised his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the battlefield when the haze of the dust cleared up a bit. He grimaced at what he saw. He turned to Lt. Schwarz. "It's looking a lot more grim now, lieutenant," he said. "That line of silvery armored trucks looks undeterred by everything we did to them."

Schwarz narrowed his eyes under his steel helmet. His face was covered in numerous thin cuts and coated with dust. His demeanor was stoic but his hands clutched the full-auto machine gun in front of him to suppress the shivers from wracking his entire body.

The lieutenant didn't answer Gaznek's statement. He just looked away from the battlefield and scanned the narrow trench.

The numbers of their battalion had dipped significantly throughout the day. Schwarz was just thirty two yet he had seen more death than any thirty two year old man ever could (both on and outside of the battlefield.)

Yet what he had seen today made him question his experience as a soldier. Their battalion of three thousand men had arrived at Lichtenheim early in the morning. And in the past seven hours, three thousand men had been cut down to a measly two hundred and fifty.

"Two hundred and thirty eight," Major Cole, the field medic, reported. "Ten of them succumbed to severe injuries."

"What about the remaining two?" Schwarz asked.

"Deserted."

Private Gaznek swallowed hard. "Lt. Schwarz, maybe we should too–"

"Never!" Schwarz snapped. He looked out at the battlefield again. "The enemy is right there. And behind us is the open route to the capital of Eisenburg. Us leaving would mean letting the enemy invade our home!"

"Us staying is also going to mean the same, lieutenant," Cole said. "We are down to two hundred men from three thousand. They even shot down our air support. And they keep moving closer and closer. If we stay put we'll only get trampled over."

"Then we'll get trampled over!" Schwarz growled. He turned to private Gaznek. "Call for more backup. We'll either stop those trucks from entering the capital or die trying!"

#

The sonar techs in Schattenwolf finally got a lock on something forty one miles north east from their starting point. The attack submarine made its way at full speed since it was just a search and recovery mission, they didn't have to worry about any foes picking up on their activities.

As they arrived closer to the destination the photonic mast operator called out for Wagner from his corner in the control room. "Is this what we are looking for?" The operator pointed at his computer screen that was giving visual feedback from the ocean in real time.

Wagner and Norton leaned closer to the screen. In the deep blue shadows of the ocean, floating on top of the jagged sandy floor was the metallic cube the size of a cottage. Even while draped in the misty shadow of the salt-water, the cubical structure seemed to give off a fiery orange glow.

As Schattenwolf swam closer to the cube, the grinding hand loom noise the sonar techs had detected grew louder.

Norton nodded. "That is the atronizer. That noise you hear is its engine processing the hybrid quartet."