Free We Install by Harry Turtledove Page A

driver had given him. His comrade’s faces said they were as delighted as he had been. The combat vehicle got moving again.
    A roar from the turret announced the launch of an antitank missile. Sack clutched his assault rifle and hoped it hit. If it didn’t, the Red panzer would return fire, and the Marder wasn’t armored against the big, fast, hard-hitting shells a 150-millimeter panzer cannon threw.
    The Marder didn’t blow up in the next few seconds, so the missile must have done its job. The combat vehicle stopped about a minute later. “This is where you get out, lads,” the driver announced over the intercom. “Good luck. Gott mit uns .”
    â€œ Gott mit uns ,” Sack echoed as he reluctantly left the relative safety of the Marder . He and his mates formed a skirmish line, each man six or eight meters from his comrades. The driver let them get a couple of hundred meters ahead, then followed, his cannon ready to deal with any threats their personal weapons could not handle.
    Glancing left and right, Sack saw more men heading up into the front lines with his squad, more combat vehicles moving with them to provide covering fire. He and his comrades were pushing through the battered German trench lines when the real Red artillery bombardment began. He leaped into a hole (he had endless variety from which to choose), held his helmet on his head with one hand, and waited for the nightmare to end.
    It lasted two solid hours that seemed two years long. The ground shook and jerked, as if in unending earthquake. The Reds were giving it everything they had, rockets, shells, all different calibers, every weapon firing fast as it could. They wouldn’t have much ammunition left when the barrage was over, Sack thought dazedly somewhere in the middle of it, but that might not matter, either.
    The pounding let up at last. When Sack raised his head, he saw the German lines, already cratered, now resembled nothing so much as a freshly plowed field. Through the rain, through the mud, through the rubble, seemingly straight for him, came the Red ground attack.
    It was, in its way, a magnificent sight. The green-clad troops stormed forward almost shoulder to shoulder, assault rifles blazing, a wave of men to swamp the Germans who still survived. Panzers and armored fighting vehicles rumbled forward in their wake; jets and assault helicopters roared overhead with missiles and cannon to engage German armor.
    Sack wanted to empty his magazine into the onrushing horde. But if he and his comrades opened up too soon, the Asiatics would just dive for cover before enough of them could be slaughtered. “Fire discipline,” he said out loud, reminding himself.
    He and his comrades showed their training. Almost everyone started shooting at the same instant. The pieces of German artillery that hadn’t been knocked out added their voices to the fire fight. The infantry in green went down like wheat cut too soon. But as the first wave fell, another took its place.
    A brilliant white flash marked an enemy panzer brewing up; some infantryman’s wire-guided missile had struck home. But it was like fighting the hydra; for every head cut off, two more took its place. Sack scrambled backwards to keep from being outflanked and cut off.
    He looked back toward the Marder that had brought him into action. It was burning. How many divisions had the Reds managed to crowd into their fucking bridgehead, anyhow, and how much heavy equipment? Too many and too much was all he could think as he retreated past the combat vehicle’s corpse.
    Something moved behind the Marder . As if it had a life of its own, his assault rifle swung toward the motion. But before he squeezed off a burst, he saw it was Lothar Zimmer. He pointed the muzzle of his weapon at the ground. “You still alive, Zimmer?” he croaked.
    â€œI think so,” the other German said. He looked as battered, as overwhelmed, as Sack felt. Staring