Final impact

He assumed that the two or three dozen operators working quietly but briskly at the stations had trained for years before they even set foot in this place. The Continent was buried under hundreds of data tags and miniature video windows, which were themselves in constant flux as one controller or another called up some particular piece of information. As an engineer he could appreciate the complexity and the decades of development that must lie beneath such a system. So mesmerizing was the effect that he was almost tumbled to the floor when the ship dipped and rolled dramatically on the storm-tossed sea.

“Are you all right, General Brasch?”

It was Halabi, the captain. She had taken his arm with a surprisingly strong grip to save him from the indignity of a fall.

“I was just thinking that if the high command had really understood the danger of this ship, they would have devoted the entire resources of the Reich to its destruction,” he said.

“Well, then, best we keep it our little secret. Mr. Howard?”

A dark-haired man pointed a flexipad at the main display, inflating two windows from a couple of tiny data tags that were hovering over the Oder River on the German border with Poland. Brasch was instantly drawn by the movement, but forced himself to take in as much of the wider picture as he could.

It appeared, as far as he could tell, that both the Eastern and Western fronts seemed to be rapidly contracting toward the Fatherland. Fourteen, maybe fifteen Wehrmacht divisions in the Balkans were moving north. Dozens of divisions he knew to be in western Germany were now to be found heading east, or had already arrived there. The situation across Western Europe looked chaotic in the extreme. Indeed, there was no front, as such. It seemed to have collapsed in the face of the Allied assault, which was but a fraction of the size of the Soviet attack.

There could be only one explanation. Berlin was throwing everything into a defensive line to keep the Bolsheviks out, and allowing the Americans and British to advance practically at will. It was impossible to tell for sure, because of the complexity of the display. But the use of little electronic flags, just like the wood-and-paper markers on an old-fashioned map table, allowed him to get a rough idea of what was happening.

It meant the end of the Reich, one way or another.

“General Brasch, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Excuse me,” he muttered to Captain Halabi. “I am sorry. It is just so…so overwhelming.”

“The Dessaix had a CIC very similar to this one.”

“I never saw it,” he conceded, struck by the incongruity of the situation. Although he had been one of the most trusted men in the Reich, he still hadn’t been considered a safe bet by the SS, which jealously guarded all access to the Emergence technologies. Here, though, the demands of the situation and a word from Prince Harry meant that he found himself in the beating heart of the Allied war effort.

“The top left-hand screen, Herr General, if you wouldn’t mind.”

He refocused his attention on the appropriate display. Two windows were active. One displayed a Waffen-SS artillery unit busily servicing a battery of 88s; the other, what had to be Soviet infantry. Subsidiary windows leapt out of the second window, resolving themselves into close-ups with quite amazing clarity. It was as though he were hovering a few dozen meters off the ground.

“A penal battalion,” he said with distaste.

The British all turned in his direction.

“Why do you say that, sir?” asked the dark-haired man. Mr. Howard, if Brasch recalled correctly.

Brasch nodded at the close-up screen. “Observe. Only one man in three has a weapon. They are making no attempt at concealment. They simply move into the contaminated area and…well, you can see.”

They could. The Soviets ran forward, only to stumble and collapse. Many regained their feet for a few moments, only to fall again. Almost none made it up a third time. They seemed to be afflicted with fits and dementia. Grotesque spasms twisted their bodies into fantastic shapes.

“I am afraid I am unfamiliar with effects of this nerve weapon,” he admitted. “I do not think there is much I can help you with. Other than to confirm that, yes, I know Himmler’s men were working on such projects.”

“Could you sit down with some chaps in London and work out what industrial capacities the Reich might have diverted to this project?” the army officer called Hart asked of him.

Brasch shrugged. “With the ministry files I sent you, and some help, yes, I could make an estimate.”

“Good,” Halabi said. “As soon as the weather permits, we’ll get you on a chopper. Thank you, General Brasch. Your country will thank you one day, too.”

Brasch looked at the red tide pushing toward Germany’s eastern border. He wasn’t sure his country would exist in a few weeks.

“I find it hard to imagine the fuhrer would allow withdrawal on either front,” he said, genuinely perplexed at the story told by the giant electronic display.