Marching Through Georgia by S.M. Stirling

Author:S.M. Stirling [Stirling, S.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, military
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2012-08-28T00:00:04+00:00

"Got "em," she said cheerfully, raising her voice over the racket of combat. "They don't seem happy, nohow."

Eric brought the handset to his ear, willing distractions to fade until there was only the gabble of static-blurred voices. His own German was good enough to recognize the Silesian accent in the tone that carried command.

" Congratulations," he said, in the language of his ancestors.

There was a moment's silence on the other end; he could hear someone cursing a communications officer in the background, and the measured thudding of explosions heard through tank armor.

" Congratulations," he repeated, "on your losses. How many?

Fifty? A hundred? I doubt if we lost six!" He laughed, false and full and rich; it was shocking to the watching Draka, coming from a face gone expressionless as an axe. A torrent of obscenities answered him. A peasant, from the vocabulary, Eric thought. Pure barnyard. And yes, he could be distracted, enraged. Probably the type with cold lasting angers: an obsessive. The German paused for breath, and Eric could imagine a hand reaching for the selector switch of his intercom.

With merciless timing, the Draka spoke into the instant. "Any messages for your wives and sisters? We'll be seeing them before you do!

"Our circuit," he continued, and then: "Cease fire."

A pain in one hand startled him. He looked down, saw that the cigarette had burned down to his knuckle, dropped it and ground the butt into the dirt. Two-score men had died since the brief savage encounter began: their bodies lay in the fields, draped over bushes along the western edge of the forested hills, roasting and shriveling in the burning fighting vehicles down below on the road. All in the time it might have taken to smoke a cigarette, and most of them had died without even a glimpse of the hands that killed them.

He snorted. "Someday TecSec will find a way of incinerating the world while sitting in a bunker under a mountain," he muttered. 'The apothesis of civilized warfare."

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