1635: The Eastern Front: Chapter Twenty Eight

    That very moment, Mike Stearns was wondering if Jeff Higgins was still alive. He might very well not be — and if he was dead, Mike would be the one who killed him.

    He’d deliberately left Jeff’s regiment twisting in the wind, and he’d done it for two reasons. The second of those reasons left Mike feeling a little sick to his stomach.

    The first reason was straightforward: Higgins and his men had kept the Poles in Zielona Gora preoccupied while Mike moved the rest of the division around the city to the south. Once he launched his attack, he thought he could overwhelm the defenders pretty quickly. He’d be attacking from a direction they wouldn’t expect and with overwhelming force.

    The maneuver was tough on the Hangman Regiment, of course, but that was just the chances of war.

    Hard-boiled, yes. But Mike’s other motive had been a lot colder and more ruthless. He was utterly determined that no army under his command would ever again behave the way some of its units had at Swiebodzin. That, of course, was the reason he’d formed the Hangman in the first place.

    But if Mike was a neophyte at organized warfare, he was no stranger to conflict. He knew perfectly well what would happen if his new regiment simply had a reputation for being hard on soldiers in its own division. They might be feared, but they wouldn’t be respected — and fear without respect only took you so far. Over time, they’d be looked on as the boss’ toadies. The damage to Mike’s reputation would be just as bad as the damage to their own. Nobody respected toadies. Most people didn’t think much of a boss who surrounded himself with toadies, either.

    The solution had been obvious. At the very first battle, shove the Hangman into the worst of it. If they acquitted themselves well, they’d start developing a very different reputation. People might not like hardasses, but they respected them as long as the hardass led from the front.

    And if the inexperienced young colonel whom Mike had known since he was a kid and had forced into command wound up getting killed, so be it.

    The Ring of Fire hadn’t cut anybody any slack. If it had played favorites with Mike Stearns by skyrocketing him into a position of power and prominence that he almost certainly never would have known in the world he’d left behind, it had done so at a price. The Mike Stearns in that other universe had been a lot nicer man than the one he’d become in this one.

    He wasn’t sure exactly when the change had started, but Mike knew without a doubt the moment it had crystallized. That had been the day in his office, while he’d still been the USE’s prime minister, when his then-spymaster Francisco Nasi had informed him that except for the two of them and the culprits themselves, no one in the world knew that Henry Dreeson had been murdered by French Huguenot fanatics instead of anti-Semites.

    That murder had enraged the Committees of Correspondence all over the USE. They’d been primed for a fight, anyway. All Mike had to do was keep his mouth shut and the fury would fall on Germany’s anti-Semites. The same sort of people who’d produced a holocaust in another universe, and in this one had been insulting and threatening Mike’s own wife for years.

    He hadn’t agonized over the decision. In fact, he’d made it within two seconds. He’d gone further than keeping his mouth shut, too. At his command, Nasi had turned over to Gretchen Richter and Spartacus and Gunther Achterhof every file he had on the country’s anti-Semitic organizations and prominent individuals. There’d been thousands of names in those lists. Not more than half of them had survived what came next.

    What bothered Mike wasn’t their fates, though. He had no sympathy at all for people like that. As far as he was concerned, they’d gotten what they had coming. Live by the pogrom, die by the pogrom.

    No, what bothered him was his own ability to lie so smoothly and cold-bloodedly. Granted, the Mike Stearns he’d left behind hadn’t run around compulsively telling everyone about every cherry tree he’d cut down. Still, he’d felt guilty on those occasions he had told a lie — and there hadn’t been all that many to begin with.

    To this day, he’d never felt the slightest twinge of remorse over his actions after the Dreeson Incident. None.

    How many times could a man do something on the grounds that the end justifies the means before he rubs away his conscience altogether?

    Mike didn’t know. What he did know was that today he was scraping away some more of it.

 

---

 

Christopher Long came racing up. The English officer was such a superb horseman that he didn’t think anything at all about galloping his horse across any terrain as long as it was reasonably flat and dry. Here on the southern edge of Zielona Gora, Long’s definition of “reasonably dry” bordered on lunacy as far as Mike was concerned. True, there hadn’t been any rain lately so the soil wasn’t muddy. But there were little streams and rills all over the place, some of which you couldn’t see until the last moment. In fact, Long was about —

    The Englishman came to the rill in question and casually leapt his horse over it. Ten seconds later he was drawing his mount alongside Mike’s. His face was flushed with excitement, but that had to do with the military situation, not the trivial issue of jumping a horse while going twenty-five or thirty miles per hour.

    “The Third Brigade is about to engage the enemy, sir!”

    Two things struck Mike immediately.

    The first was the invariably antiseptic nature of military terminology, which he had noticed before. “Engage the enemy.” That meant that three thousand men under the command of Brigadier Georg Derfflinger were about to start murdering and/or maiming an as-yet-unknown number of Polish soldiers — who, for their part, would do their level best to return the favor. Do unto others before they do unto you.

    Mike was pretty sure that sort of veiled language had been intrinsic to the military since the foot soldiers of Sargon “engaged” their Sumerian counterparts by running them over with chariots and hacking them to pieces with bronze axes.

    The second thing Mike noticed was a lot more modern.

    Once again, one of his brigade commanders had forgotten to use his radio. Instead, as commanders on battlefield had done since horses were domesticated, he’d sent a courier. That peculiar forgetfulness seemed to be ingrained in seasoned veterans like Derfflinger, even though the man was only twenty-nine years old.

    For that matter, Long had obviously overlooked the radio as well — and he’d just turned twenty-six.

    But now was not the time to berate anyone for being technological challenged. “Where are von Taupadel and Schuster?” They were the commanders, respectively, of the 1st and 2nd Brigades. Along with Derfflinger, they were the Third Division’s brigadiers.

    Long pointed to the northeast. “Schuster’s brigade has closed off the road to Wroclaw. Von Taupadel’s continuing to push around the city to the east.” Of the two brigadiers, von Taupadel was the senior. He’d have instructed Schuster to fortify positions cutting the Wroclaw road while he took the more challenging task of continuing the flanking maneuver. That made sense, and it’s what Mike would have told him to do had he been there. (Or if von Taupadel had thought to get in touch with him by radio, but never mind.) Schuster’s brigade was the weakest in the division because Mike had stripped troops out of the Black Falcon and Gray Adder regiments to form Jeff’s new Hangman Regiment. Its morale was shaky, too, because except for the Finnish cavalrymen all the soldiers who’d been executed for the atrocities at Swiebodzin had come from that brigade.

    Mike hadn’t punished Schuster or the colonel commanding the Gray Adder regiment. Schuster, because he’d been elsewhere at the time and couldn’t in fairness be held responsible. The colonel, because he was dead. His killing at the hands of a sniper, in fact, was one of the things that had triggered off the slaughter.

    But while he hadn’t penalized Schuster, Mike had privately made clear to him that if the 2nd Brigade was guilty of another such incident, the brigadier could expect to be cashiered on the spot. For a while, at least, Schuster was bound to be excessively cautious. So would his soldiers, for that matter. Guarding a road from behind fixed positions would be a good way to start rebuilding their confidence.

 

---

 

    Mike spent a minute or so considering the situation. Ideally, he’d wait until von Taupadel had moved his brigade far enough around Zielona Gora to cut the road to Poznan. But that could take quite a bit more time. They’d come by a circuitous route, following the Bobr river and then marching cross-country in order to approach Zielona Gora directly from the west. The easier route would have been to follow the Odra, which would have brought them close to the city. But, of course, the Poles had planned for that and built fortifications guarding the river.

    The problem that Mike was now presented with was that the road to Poznan started on the northeast side of Zielona Gora. The 1st Brigade had to march almost two-thirds of the way around the city in order to reach it. If Mike waited until they got there, the Hangman Regiment might get destroyed in the meantime.

    He decided the chance they might encircle and capture all the Polish forces in Zielona Gora just wasn’t worth the possible cost to Higgins and his men. That had always been something of a long shot, anyway.

    He turned to Long. “Colonel, we’ll send the Third Brigade directly into the city. Let Duerr take the word to Brigadier Derfflinger.” Mike pointed to some nearby woods. “He’s in there, taking care of urgent business.”

    Long frowned. “If it’s urgent business, he may be occupied for a while yet.” Mike smiled. “He should be finishing up any second now. It’s the sort of pressing business that never makes its way into fiction.”

    After a moment, Long chuckled. “I see. And myself?”

    “I want you to get in touch with von Taupadel. I want him to forget about reaching the Poznan road and just go straight at whatever part of the city he’d closest to right now.”

    Long was back to frowning. “It’ll take me some time to reach him, General. By the time I do –”

    “Radio,” Mike said. “Use. The. Radio.”

    He turned in his saddle and pointed back to his communications tent, which had been set up twenty yards away. Jimmy Andersen was standing outside the entrance flap, looking lonely and forlorn.

    “Sergeant Andersen will operate it. He knows what he’s doing. So goes Brigadier von Taupadel’s radio operator, if he hasn’t died of neglect and boredom yet.”

    Long stared at the tent much the way a man might stare at an ogre’s lair.

    “The, ah, radio, sir?”

    “Use. The. Radio. Now.”

 

---

 

    Duerr went straight to the radio tent as soon as he got out of the woods. Oddly enough, given his age and acerbic temperament, Duerr was more at ease around electronic technology than most younger officers. Within five minutes, all three brigade commanders had gotten their orders.

    A minute later, the artillery barrages began. Ten minutes later, even at a distance of half a mile, Mike could hear the sounds of infantry regiments advancing on the city.

 

---

 

    “About fucking time,” grumbled Jeff Higgins. He and two of his captains were crouched over a map inside a small bakery. They’d been trying to figure out if there was any route that might extricate them from what had essentially turned into a trap. Unfortunately, the map was in as bad a shape as the regiment was by now. Being fair to the regiment, Jeff was sure that map had been lousy even in its prime.

    Within thirty seconds, the noise produced by the artillery barrage made it impossible to talk anyway. Jeff signaled the two captains to return to their units. All they could do now was wait.

 

---

 

    After it was all over, Mike’s aides estimated that about half of the Polish forces who’d been defending Zielona Gora had made their escape to the northeast. The failure to cut off the Poznan road had allowed for that.

    But von Taupadel didn’t make more than token noises of reproach. Except for the Hangman Regiment, the division’s casualties had been light. Much lighter, he said, than was usual for an army taking a city as sizeable and as well-defended as this one had been.

    “A good day’s work, General,” was his summary conclusion. “Very good day’s work.”

    “I thought we’d need three days myself,” said Derfflinger.

    “So did I,” chimed in Schuster.

    The three brigadiers were giving Mike an odd sort of look. That expression stayed on their faces for the next half hour, too. After they left, he asked his aides if they’d noticed.

    Duerr grinned. “They’ve decided you know what you’re doing.”

    “Not exactly that,” said Anthony Leebrick. “Meaning no disrespect, General Stearns, but you’re not the subtlest military strategist the world has ever seen and your tactics are not what anyone would call complicated.”

    Long was grinning also. “You go here and hit them. You go over there and hit them too. Then both of you do it again.”

    All three officers laughed. Mike couldn’t help but join in for a moment. It was true enough, after all.

    When the laughter died out, Duerr shook his head. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

    “None of that really matters, General. Your brigadiers have come to the conclusion that the three of us came to some time ago. You are never indecisive and you are always willing to take the fight to the enemy. In war, that is what’s most critical.”

    Long nodded. “Taking this city so quickly, coming on top of what you did after Swiebodzin. They have confidence in you now, General. They may not agree with your decisions, certainly. Von Taupadel obviously thinks you moved too soon and should have let him take the Poznan road. But those sorts of things do not really matter, so long as they have confidence that their commander will command.”

 

---

 

    Mike was not a egotist, but he enjoyed compliments as much as any human being does. He wasn’t able to savor these, however. Right now, there was only one opinion that really concerned him.

 

---

 

    He found Jeff Higgins lying on a cot in one of the back rooms of a somewhat battered but still intact bakery. Jeff didn’t seem to be injured, just resting after what had been a nerve-wracking and exhausting day.

    When he saw Mike come in, he started to get up, but Mike waved him back down.

    “Relax, Jeff. This is an informal personal visit.”

    Jeff lay back down on the cot, propping his head on folded arms. After a short silence, he frowned and said, “I’m trying to figure something out. Did you set me up?”

    The frown was simply an expression of puzzlement, not anger or condemnation.

    Mike took off his cap and ran fingers through his hair. “I wouldn’t put it that way, exactly. But, yes, I did use you as what amounted to bait in a trap.”

    Jeff thought about that, for a few seconds, staring up at the ceiling. Then the frown faded and he let out a little sigh.

    “About what I figured. Did it work?”

    “Sure did. We took the town in one day with light casualties — except for your regiment, that is. I’ve been told that’s pretty unusual by people with a lot more experience at this than I have.”

    “Rough on the bait, though.”

    “Yes. It was. And I knew it would be when I sent you in.”

    Jeff lowered his eyes and looked at him. “You should have told me what you had planned, Mike. That’s the only thing that pisses me off. But it really does piss me off. The Mike Stearns I used to know wouldn’t have manipulated me like that.”

    “Fair enough. I won’t do it again.”

    Jeff chuckled, in a dry sort of way. “Yeah, you will — and plenty of times. It’s not like I don’t understand why you do stuff like that, Mike. Just don’t do it to me.”

    There was silence again, for perhaps a minute. Then Jeff sat up on the cot, swiveling his legs so his feet were on the floor.

    “What now, boss?”

    Mike shrugged. “Gustav Adolf just told me to take Zielona Gora. I don’t think he expected we’d do it this soon. I sent him a radio message earlier but I haven’t heard back from him yet.”

    “Hey, maybe we’ll draw garrison duty for the rest of the war.”

    “I wouldn’t count on it.”

    “You think?”