As the hour of midnight approached, Feric Jaggar assumed his position in the observer's seat of the lead Helder tank. Beside him in the driver's position, Ludolf Best's eyes shone with excitement and fanaticism. The true battle in this campaign would be with time itself, for the Borgravian army hardly qualified as a joke. Therefore the vanguard of the force that Feric had assembled just inside the southeastern margin of the Emerald Wood consisted of a hundred and fifty tanks, well stocked with incendiary and high-explosive shells. Combined with the devastating force of a hundred dive-bombers even now winging their way toward the Borgravian capital, these tanks would be enough to pulverize all organized opposition within Borgravia in a matter of hours. As the tanks swept eastward across Borgravia, motorized infantry and motorcycle SS
would mop up in their van, and by the time the tank force reached the Vetonian border. Render would already have Classification Camps under construction.
Feric had decided to lead the initial advance into Borgravia himself and remain at the head of the Helder forces cleaning out that cesspit until Gormond was leveled; this for personal reasons as well as considerations of general morale. He could conceive of few sights that 174
would please him more than that of the wretched Borgravian capital in which his youth had been wasted smashed flat and going up in flames.
Best had been checking his timepiece eagerly almost every thirty seconds. Once more he checked it; then, with a boyish grin, he started the tank engine. "It's time, my Commander!" he said.
Smiling at Best's youthful enthusiasm, Feric drew the Great Truncheon of Held, stood up, and thrust the shaft of his weapon high over his head through the open hatch of the tank, its gleaming headball catching a silvery flash of moonlight. Abruptly, the night came alive with the chattering thunder of scores of gas engines sputtering and
.catching. The powerful thrumming of the engine of Feric's own tank set the very molecules of his flesh marching to a stirring martial beat. Feric sheathed the Steel Commander, dogged the hatch above him shut, strapped himself in, turned on his throat microphone, and gave the long-awaited command to Best and to his forces: "Forward!"
Grinding earth and shrubbery beneath its massive iron treads, the tank leapt forward, out of the clearing which served as the marshalling area. As Best slowly brought the tank up to speed, Feric looked through his rear periscope, and saw a solid sea of tanks following close behind, surging across the clearing and onto the road that led to the Ulm fording. The formation was simplicity itself: Feric's tank at the point, and behind it ten ranks of fifteen tanks each. The motorized infantry and motorcycle divisions would not begin their advance behind this shield of Steel until two hours later.
At Bogel's instigation—though certainly not without Feric's wholehearted approval—the tanks had been decked out for this occasion in heroic grandeur. The body of each was painted a glossy black, while the turrets were scarlet with great black swastikas in white circles on either side. In addition, a red swastika flag streamed proudly from the radio mast of each dreadnaught. As the formation of tanks reached the broad plain that debouched upon the Ulm, this inspiring spectacle was being televised not only throughout Heldon but to Husak and Vetonia as well, the better to paralyze their forces with well-justified fear of the armed might of Heldon. What a grand sight this phalanx of gleaming black might accented with bold scarlet and heroic swastikas made as it swept toward the Ulm, filling the air for miles around with man-made 175
thunder and surrounding itself with a great cloud of boiling dust!
At this longitude, the Ulm was little more than a shallow stream; the Borgravian border fortifications on its far bank consisted of little more than a few trenches filled with mongrels behind rolls of barbed wire. Nevertheless, as the tanks ground toward the river through the darkness, the night was suddenly lit up by flashes of fire from the Borgravian positions, and Feric could hear a few random bullets spatter harmlessly off the impenetrable armor of his dreadnaught. No doubt the squadrons of aerial dreadnaughts that had crossed the border half an hour ago had alerted the pathetic wretches, for all the good it would do them.
Feric thumbed his microphone switch and gave the order to the crew of his own tank and to the formation simultaneously: "Fire at will until all resistance is crushed!"
