A low whine could be felt as well as heard in the tank as the turret crew aligned the cannon with its target. Then a great blast and shudder went through the dreadnaught, and a moment later Feric saw an orange explosion blossom in the darkness on the far side of the Ulm. At once, the deafening rolling thunder of continuous massed cannonfire shook his body even through the steel walls of the tank, a meteor-swarm of shells soared overhead, and the Borgravian positions erupted in great fountains of fire.
Once more Feric's tank fired as the formation hurtled forward; the massed fire of the black dreadnaughts continued to pound the Borgravian positions to pieces. A final fusillade sent clouds of earth and flesh flying in all directions, and then the treads of Feric's tank were splashing through the shallow waters of the Ulm. Feric thumbed his machine-gun stud as the tank tore through the Borgravian barbed wire; behind him, the tank formation filled the ah"
with the clatter and sparkle of bullets as they squashed what little was left of the fortifications totally flat.
Of the Borgravians themselves, little was to be seen save a few bloody fragments scattered among the still-steaming shell holes. Those few worthless wretches who had not been blown to pieces by the cannon had fled shrieking and howling in terror into the night. When the sun rose, the motorized infantry and the motorcycle SS
would hunt down., and annihilate these stragglers one by one, if need be. The more ruthless precision demonstrated at the outset, the sooner it would be obvious to all mu-176
tants and mongrels in the path of the Helder advance that resistance was less than useless. Thus, a well-executed policy of total annihilation of the enemy would prove the most merciful course possible in the long run.
All through the night, the tank force surged eastward through the rolling countryside of Borgravia toward Gormond without encountering anything that could reasonably be termed organized resistance.
Feric had ordered the decimation of all villages, farms, and other structures in the path of the advance, and the slaying of any Borgravian rabble stupid enough to show its corrupted face. For the most part, the habitations in these parts consisted of solitary peasant huts crudely constructed of timber held together with dried mud or dung. A single incendiary shell was more than enough to convert one of these sties to a roaring bonfire, and another shot or two sufficed to set the fields ablaze. Occasionally, crabbed creatures would scuttle from the ruins like dung-beetles to be cut down by a burst or two of machine-gun fire, but for the most part the Borgravians in the area took to their heels well in advance of the tanks, leaving it to the mop-up troops to round them up for processing. Even the occasional villages that the column encountered were deserted and undefended, so that the tanks were able to cut a wide swath of total destruction through the countryside without seriously depleting their supply of ammunition.
About an hour before sunrise, Feric spotted a red glow on the eastern horizon that seemed to flicker and crackle like a far-off conflagration.
"Look, Best," he said, "that must be Gormond!"
"Our dive-bombers are certainly teaching the swine a lesson."
Not much later, the dim far-off rumble of explosions could be heard, and by the time the sun had fully risen, the bombs falling on the city filled the air with a sound very much like thunder, great flames were clearly visible over the far-off ruins, and Feric thought he could barely make out individual aerial dreadnaughts diving on the city in their bomb runs.
Suddenly Best was pointing due east. "Over there, my Commander," he said. "I believe that's the Borgravian army."
Across the broad plain between the Helder tank force arid Gormond, Feric discerned a kind of gray mottling on 177
the scraggly gray-green landscape; this was apparently the Borgravian army assembled to put up some sort of resistance to the Helder advance.
As if to confirm this observation, a few flashes of fire blossomed from this gray scum, and a few moments later a half-dozen shells exploded harmlessly nearly a thousand yards short of the Helder tanks. The Helder gunners, for their part, knew better than to waste ammunition by firing at this range. Feric thumbed his microphone button and contacted the leader of the aerial dreadnaughts attacking Gormond.
"This is the Supreme Commander speaking. Divert a score of your planes to attack the Borgravian troops to the east of the city."
"At once, my Commander! Hail Jaggar!"
