Ragnarok (Twilight of the Gods Book 3) Read online

  “Nothing,” he said, twenty minutes later. “Nothing at all.”

  He shook his head, bitterly, as they made their way back into the cold afternoon. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but the air felt colder, as if winter was coming early. German citizens were meant to keep emergency supplies somewhere within reach at all times - it was something the Nazi Party taught in schools - yet the church had been bare. But then, the coddled folk of Germany Prime felt safe. They had no reason to believe that they might have to fight for their lives at any moment, that they might be attacked ... let alone that the entire country might be attacked. The risk of nuclear war had declined, hadn't it?

  And so they stopped building shelters and worrying about life after the blast, he thought, bitterly. And so they turned on the guardians of the Reich.

  He swallowed, hard, as he heard an aircraft high overhead, but when he looked up he saw nothing. A friendly aircraft, perhaps? Hiding within the looming clouds? Or an enemy aircraft hunting for panzers to plink from the sky? He’d heard whispers about entire SS panzer divisions wiped out by enemy aircraft, whispers he’d studiously ignored. But now, all of a sudden, those whispers seemed all too plausible.

  Gritting his teeth, he peered into one of the ruined buildings. Someone had already been through it, he realised; they’d torn through a shattered wardrobe, taking clothes and whatever else they could find in a desperate bid for survival. The only remaining clothes were clearly designed for a teenage girl. Normally, he would have been reluctant to wrap them around his body - there was no hope of actually putting them on - but now there was no choice. The laws against cross-dressing - cross-dressers were automatically sent to the camps - were no longer important. All that mattered was staying alive long enough to reach friendly lines.

  “Bitch,” one of his companions muttered.

  He held up a pair of blue jeans, clearly intended for someone a great deal slimmer than the average stormtrooper. Hennecke felt his lips thin in cold disapproval. There was no shortage of clothes from the textile combines in Germany East, but whoever had owned the jeans had preferred to buy American-made clothes off the black market. The single pair in the house - he pretended not to see his companion stuff the jeans into a bag - had probably cost more than everything else in the wardrobe put together. He knew precisely what his father would have said - and done - if he’d caught Hennecke or any of his siblings with American clothes, but their family lived in Germany East. They knew, all too well, just how cruel and uncaring the world could be.

  And besides, buying American clothes helps them to fund wars against the Reich, he thought.

  He took one last look at the remaining clothes, then led the way outside. There was no way to know what had happened to the original owner. She might have been evacuated by the rebels, she might have hidden somewhere in the countryside ... or she might have been rounded up and shipped to the camps by the loyalists. Or she might have been raped and murdered by prowling stormtroopers. Rape was officially forbidden, but discipline had been breaking down even before the retreat from Berlin. The Waffen-SS hadn't known what to do with a rebellion and a civil war, rather than yet another pacification campaign.

  Let us hope she made it out safely, he thought.

  He was too tired to be angry with her, really. No one had really expected a civil war, not when the Reich had held together since 1933. Everyone knew the Reich would last a thousand years. But now, old certainties were falling everywhere. No one knew their place any longer. Soldiers were turning on their officers, workers were turning on their managers, women were turning on their husbands, collaborator governments were starting to savour the taste of freedom ... nothing was the same any longer. And, no matter who won the civil war, it was hard to imagine things going back to the way they were before the rebellion. The old certainties were gone.

  Darkness was falling when they finally walked into friendly lines. A handful of stormtroopers, looking reassuringly competent rather than refugees; a couple of armoured vehicles, hiding under camouflage netting; an officer, looking as though he was definitely in command. Hennecke was relieved, even though he rather doubted the officer had experienced the maelstrom of Berlin. He had the supercilious air of a man who hadn't had his confidence knocked out of him.

  “Heil Holliston,” Hennecke managed. “Herr Sturmbannfuehrer.”

  The Sturmbannfuehrer looked him up and down for a long moment. Hennecke realised, in a flash of sudden horror, just how awful he must look. He was a Hauptsturmfuehrer, yet he couldn't be said to have taken command or done anything, really, apart from lead a handful of men to safety. But he’d lost touch with his unit during the retreat ...

  “Heil Holliston,” the Sturmbannfuehrer returned. His gaze moved to the other men. “Go to the tent, report to the officer there. You’ll be fed, watered and assigned to new units.”

  Hennecke felt cold. The Sturmbannfuehrer spoke of stormtroopers as if they were animals ...

  He watched his men go, suddenly wishing he’d never been promoted. It had been a battlefield promotion, the kind of promotion he’d dreamed of before he’d discovered what it entailed. He’d led men into battle; he’d watched them die, even as he’d been spared himself ... going back to the ranks would be a demotion, but he would almost welcome it. The war hadn't been what he’d been promised. It had never been what he’d been promised.

  “You should have taken command,” the Sturmbannfuehrer said, coldly.

  Hennecke said nothing. He knew the Sturmbannfuehrer was correct. He’d outranked everyone else in the little group. He could have issued orders, he could have done ... done what? There had been nothing he could have done, save for continuing the retreat until they reached friendly lines. But they’d shuffled into the lines like Untermenschen slaves doing their best to avoid a full day’s work. His men had looked pathetic ...

  ... And so did he.

  A pair of stormtroopers seemed to materialise out of nowhere. Hennecke had been so absorbed in himself that he hadn't seen them coming. The two men looked absolutely perfect; their uniforms clean and tidy, their boots and buttons shined until they almost glowed, their faces utterly impassive. It was clear that they had never seen combat.

  “Take this swinehund to the pen and hold him there,” the Sturmbannfuehrer ordered.

  Hennecke had no time to protest before the two stormtroopers frisked him - removing his pistol, his knife and a handful of tools - and then frog-marched him through the concealed camp. It was larger than he realised, he saw; a dozen tents, all carefully hidden under netting and guarded by SS stormtroopers. One tent was clearly set aside for the wounded; he glanced inside, ignoring the grunt of complaint from his escorts, and winced as he saw thirty men lying on the hard ground. A pair of medics were doing what they could, assisted by five young women, but it was clear that they were badly overworked ...

  He stared in horror until his escorts yanked him forward. He was no stranger to blood and gore, but the sight before him was horrific. Men had lost arms and legs, their bodies hideously mutilated ... even if they were somehow rushed to better medical facilities, their chances of ever living a normal life again were slim. It made him realise just how many men might have been killed by their own side - a mercy kill - or left to bleed out and die during the retreat. The medics had strict orders - standing orders - to concentrate on the soldiers who could be saved. There wouldn't be anything, not even morphine, for the ones who had no hope of survival.

  And some of the ones left to die could have lived, with proper treatment, he thought.

  His escorts kept dragging him forward until they reached the pen, a small region fenced off and guarded by armed stormtroopers. It didn't look very secure - Hennecke was sure he could escape, easily - but he knew better than to try. The stormtroopers guarding the fence wouldn't hesitate to shoot him down if they caught him trying to escape - and no one, least of all their superiors, would give a damn. Hennecke was an embarrassment. It was quite possible that he’d be taken out an
d shot within the next hour. Or perhaps they’d just slit his throat.

  There’s probably a shortage of bullets, he thought, morbidly.

  He glanced at his fellow prisoners as his escorts thrust him into the pen, then marched off to torment someone else. A number of soldiers - he was still the highest-ranking, he noticed - a trio of older men in civilian clothes and a pair of young women. He wondered, as he found a space on the ground, why they were being detained. If they were insurgents - or whatever one called treacherous rebels - they would have been shot already. Maybe they were just hostages for someone’s good behaviour. Neither of them seemed inclined to talk to him or anyone else.

  There was nothing to do inside the pen, so he lay down on the hard ground and closed his eyes. He’d long-since mastered the art of sleeping whenever he had a spare moment, even though the ground was uncomfortable and there was a very real prospect of being shot by his own side. But it still felt as if he hadn't slept at all when he was woken by the guards, who escorted him and the other soldier prisoners out of the pen and down to where a grim-faced Brigadefuehrer was standing. He honestly wasn't sure how long he’d slept.

  “You cowards fled,” the Brigadefuehrer snapped. His gaze raked over the prisoners, cold and hard and utterly devoid of mercy. “You could have fought. You could have organised yourselves. You could have given the rebels a bloody nose. Instead, you fled.”

  Hennecke resisted the urge to say something in his own defence. There was nothing he could say. The SS was looking for scapegoats. And if they’d chosen him ...

  “You should be dispatched to the camps,” the Brigadefuehrer added. “But we have need of you here. You’ll be assigned to a penal unit instead. If you survive ...”

  Hennecke barely heard the rest of the speech. He’d heard horror stories about penal units. A soldier who was assigned to one would be allowed to return to his unit - his record wiped - if he survived a month in the penal unit ...

  ... But the odds of survival were very low.

  It might not matter, he told himself. In the distance, he heard thunder - or shellfire. The odds of any of us surviving are very low.

  Chapter Two

  Germanica (Moscow), Germany East

  29 October 1985

  They had lost.

  To lose was unthinkable, but they had lost.

  No, Karl Holliston told himself, firmly. We have not lost. We have merely suffered a setback.

  He sat in his office and studied the map on the wall. It was updated every hour on the hour by his staff, but he didn’t need the updates to know it told a tale of disaster. The Waffen-SS, the most powerful fighting force on the planet, was retreating from Berlin, pursued by the panzers of the treacherous Heer. A handful of units, he’d been told, were fighting a rearguard action, but there was no point in trying to make a stand until the SS was well away from Berlin. Entire formations had been shattered, first by the meatgrinder of Berlin and then by the enemy counterattack. Putting the Waffen-SS back together would take weeks, perhaps months. Karl was all too aware that he didn't have months.

  Winter is coming, he thought, grimly. That will buy us some time, at least.

  He glared down at his hands. He’d been a child during the great conquests, back when the panzers had captured Moscow and pushed the borders of the Reich all the way to the Urals, but he’d heard stories. His time as Himmler’s aide had given him a chance to hear stories his boss had never heard. Men freezing in their uniforms, panzers and their supporting units breaking down because of the cold, even personal weapons failing because it was just too damn cold. The Waffen-SS had learned a great many lessons about fighting in the extreme cold over the last forty years. But far too many Heer units knew them too.

  The office was massive, easily large enough for a hundred men. But he was alone. He knew, all too well, that his position had been badly weakened. No one gave a damn what the ordinary citizen thought - and the average citizen of Germany East was solidly behind the Waffen-SS - but his military and political subordinates posed a very different problem. Karl had declared himself the Fuhrer, the first true warlord since Adolf Hitler himself; as long as he succeeded, as long as he met no significant setbacks, his position was completely unchallengeable. No one would dare to question him ...

  But now he had suffered a massive setback.

  He was honest enough to admit it, at least to himself. The planned reconquest of Berlin had failed, miserably. There was no way, now, to destroy the rebel government. And of thousands of stormtroopers had been killed in the fighting. It was enough to weaken the resolve of a lesser man. Karl knew, all too well, that quite a few of his subordinates were lesser men. They’d sell out to the rebels in a heartbeat if they thought they could maintain their power and position. But he could do nothing. Purging every senior officer who might pose a threat would not only weaken his command structure, it would almost certainly prompt a coup. There were too many officers, even among the loyalists, who would assume that they too were going to be purged.

  His hands touched a thin folder on his desk. Karl picked it up and opened it, reading - again - the nuclear codes for his stockpile of tactical nuclear warheads. His engineers hadn't managed to unlock the launch codes for the missile fields in Siberia, something that bothered him more than he cared to admit, but he had some nuclear warheads. And yet, using them might also prompt a coup.

  He shook his head in frustration. It had been a mistake, he acknowledged now, to allow the stormtroopers so much freedom during the march to Berlin. No one gave a damn about how Untermenschen were treated, but the citizens of Germany Prime were Germans. The censors had slapped down hard on any whispers of atrocities, yet all they’d managed to accomplish was to give the darker rumours credence. A wave of mass slaughter, of rape and looting ... there was no way to deny it, no way to convince the population that he hadn't ordered the SS to punish Germany Prime. Victory would have blown those rumours away. Instead, they’d grown in the telling.

  And if you added all the death reports together, he thought sourly, we would have slaughtered the entire population several times over.

  His phone rang. “Mein Fuhrer,” Maria said. His ruthlessly efficient secretary was still guarding his door. “The cabinet has arrived. Oberstgruppenfuehrer Alfred Ruengeler is being escorted from the airport and will arrive momentarily.”

  “Understood,” Karl said. He forced himself to sit upright, checking his appearance in a small mirror. Hitler had never had to worry about how he presented himself to his subordinates. “Have them escorted in when Ruengeler arrives.”

  Making them wait was petty, he acknowledged, but he didn't dare do anything that suggested he was losing his grip on power. And he wasn't, he told himself firmly. He still controlled a formidable force, he still ruled Germany East ... he still had the nuclear devices. There had been setbacks - there was no disguising the fact that there had been setbacks - but he hadn't lost.

  And I still have my source in the enemy camp, he thought. His private staff had received two more messages from his spy, telling him that the enemy were still trying to consolidate their gains after the Battle of Berlin. We have not lost.

  He leaned back in his chair as his cabinet started to file into the giant office, Ruengeler bringing up the rear. The man looked torn between defiance and a grim acceptance that he was probably about to die. Karl didn't blame him. He needed a scapegoat for the retreat from Berlin and Ruengeler, the man who had been in command of the operation, was the most likely choice.

  Pity I can't put the blame on someone who wasn't there, Karl thought, darkly. It would be a great excuse to purge some of the unreliable swinehunds.

  His gaze swept their ranks as they took up position in front of him. Territories Minister Philipp Kuhnert and Industries Minister Friedrich Leopoldsberger, two men who had served on the Reich Council before the civil war. Both reliable, if only because they knew they wouldn't survive an enemy victory. Gauleiter Emil Forster, a stanchly conservative official who could
be relied upon to do whatever it took to serve the Reich; Gauleiter Hugo Jury, a fanatical loyalist; Gauleiter Staff Innsbruck, a wavering weakling who should never have been promoted above his level of competence. Karl would have liked to dispose of the man - he was simply unreliable - but Innsbruck had too much support from the lower orders. His position would need to be undermined thoroughly before he could be purged.

  And he wasn't in command when we lost the battle, Karl thought, sourly. It was hard to believe that anyone would consider Innsbruck a strong candidate for anything more important than street-sweeper, but Innsbruck hadn't lost a major battle. A pity he can't be used as a scapegoat.

  “Heil Holliston,” they said, in unison.

  Karl allowed himself a flicker of amusement, although it didn't show on his face. Some of them - Jury in particular - sounded enthusiastic, but others seemed rather more dubious. The Reich hadn't had a real Fuhrer since Adolf Hitler had died, the Reich Council choosing to establish a figurehead ruler rather than fight over who should take the throne. To them, his claim to supreme authority was a deadly threat. The power Hitler had wielded had been utterly unconstrained. Karl doubted that any of them were foolish enough to believe that he wouldn't use the power, once he held it. Purging Germany East of those who doubted him would be a good first step.