We Install by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online

past few months—and especially the past few days—he couldn’t force himself to find it funny. Hardly more than a year before, German motorized patrols were operating east of the Volga and pushing toward Astrakhan over a steppe that seemed empty of foes. Now the Volga line was long forgotten. If the army couldn’t hold the Reds along the Dnieper … if they couldn’t do that, where would they stop them?
    Deciding such questions was not a lance-corporal’s concern. Sack watched the western bank of the Trubezh ever so slowly draw nearer. How long could crossing a couple of hundred meters of water take?
    Too long—the barge was still wallowing toward the far shore when he heard another fighter-bomber screaming in on an attack run. Cannon shells whipped the river to creamy foam; underwing rockets lanced down on tongues of flame. Sack’s scream was lost in those of his comrades.
    One instant he was huddled in the barge, the next flying through the air, and the one after that floundering in the cold, muddy Trubezh. He must have swallowed a liter of it before he clawed his way to the surface and sucked in a lungful of desperately needed air. Then his boots touched bottom. He realized he was just a few meters from shore.
    He splashed up onto the western bank and threw himself down at full length, more dead than alive. Or so he thought, till a roar in the sky warned that the enemy plane was coming back for another pass. He scrambled on hands and knees toward a shell hole that might offer some small protection.
    He rolled in on top of another man who’d beaten him to it. “I might have known it would be you, Wachtmeister .”
    Pfeil grunted. “You can get hurt around here if you’re not careful.”
    Both men buried their heads in the wet dirt, waiting for another dose of guns and rockets. But it didn’t come. The Red fighter-bomber sheered off and streaked away eastward, two Luftwaffe fighters hot on its trail. Moments later, a blast louder than shellfire said one enemy aircraft, at any rate, would never harass German ground troops again.
    Sack and Pfeil both shouted like men possessed. They pounded each other on the shoulders, clasped hands. “The air force is good for something!” the lance-corporal yelled, in the tone of an atheist suddenly coming to Jesus.
    â€œEvery once in a while,” Pfeil allowed. “Haven’t seen much of those bastards the past few weeks, though.” Sack nodded. Too many hundreds of kilometers of front, too few planes spread too thin.
    The two battered soldiers used the momentary respite to get away from the riverbank. Sack spotted an abandoned farmhouse, half its roof caved in, that looked like an ideal spot to curl up and rest for a while before getting back to the war. When he pointed it out to Pfeil, the staff sergeant grinned. He hurried past his junior to take the lead in exploring the retreat.
    He and Sack both entered with rifles at the ready, in case partisans were lurking inside. And indeed, the farmhouse was occupied—but by German soldiers in too-clean uniforms with the metal gorgets of the military police round their necks. “What unit, gentlemen?” one of them asked with a nasty smile.
    â€œFirst platoon, third company, second regiment, Forty-First Panzergrenadiers ,” Sack and Pfeil answered in the same breath.
    â€œWhere’s the rest of it?” the military policeman demanded.
    â€œBack in the hospital, dead on the field, drowned in the f— in the Trubezh,” Pfeil said. “Oh, I expect some of our comrades are still alive, but we got separated. It happens in battle.” His tone implied, as strongly as he dared, that his questioner had never seen real combat.
    If the military policeman noticed the sarcasm, he didn’t show it. One of his companions might have, for he said, “At least they have all their gear, Horst. Some of those fellows have been coming back