Neu Kelheim, New Hartz Mountains, Jascaria planet
The village of Neu Kelheim might have been lifted in its entirety from Old Earth, every part of it as authentically German as Fed technology could make it, or so the public relations people said. Sadly, it was far from authentic; not one molecule of the place had ever been near Old Earth. But it was perfect, even if had ended up a theme park version of the real thing: too perfect. Not that he cared much. Fake or not, it was a pretty place: Its main street ran between bars, shops, cafes, and restaurants interspersed with guesthouses and hotels, the buildings a mix of styles under pitched roofs loaded with snow, all marked with the angular black slashes, extravagant swirls, and decorative diamond shapes of Fraktur script.
Best of all was the air: Bitterly cold under a violet sky fast darkening into night, it was generously laced with the smells of fresh bread, roasting coffee, wood smoke, beer, and a hundred other more subtle aromas from restaurant kitchens.
His senses overloaded, Michael picked his way carefully along a sidewalk covered with recent snow toward the station. With not long to go before Opera kicked off, Jaruzelska had decided a short break would do the troops good. By some miracle-Michael suspected the intervention of a higher power, namely, Damishqui’s executive officer-Anna had wangled a couple of days off at the same time. Michael needed a rest badly. What with planning meetings, simulator sessions, and working long hours to get the new dreadnought squadron commanders up to speed, not to mention trying to persuade Fleet to cough up the marines he needed, sleep had become an optional extra. He was bone-tired, his state of mind not helped by the awful knowledge that he would soon be throwing Reckless and the rest of the dreadnoughts right down the throats of the Hammers. The prospect gnawed at him. Even when he was busy, images of rail-gun-firing Hammer ships would reach down out of his subconscious to twist his stomach into a knot. When he did manage to get to his bunk, sleep came only with the help of the behavioral therapies loaded in his neuronics by Indra’s postcombat trauma teams backed up by drugbots. Worst of all, the same awful nightmare had returned to torment him night after night.
“Goddamnit,” he swore despairingly. It would be one hell of a weekend if he could not stay awake during the day only to thrash around escaping imaginary ships all night. Anna would not be impressed.
On time to the second, the train flowed out of the forests that surrounded Neu Kelheim and glided into the station, coming to stop with a soft hiss. Moments later, Anna fell into his arms. Michael buried himself in her neck, overwhelmed by her warmth, her smell, the feel of her skin silk-soft against his mouth, the touch of her hair across his face.
Eventually, Anna pushed him away. She looked him full in the face. “Hello, Michael,” she said softly.
Michael and Anna walked out of the restaurant onto Neu Kelheim’s main street. It was quiet, streetlights throwing soft puddles of light onto sidewalks blanketed with welltrampled snow under a moonless black sky thick with stars. Michael breathed in deeply and then wished he had not, his lungs seared by the brutal cold. He said a short prayer of thanks to the geniuses who had made his cold-suit while it sealed itself around him, only a small patch of his face left exposed to the bitter night air.
“Come on, slowcoach,” Anna said cheerfully.
Michael suppressed a groan when they set off hand in hand. His suggestion-that it was time for bed-had been shot down out of hand. So, with a full stomach topped off with a bottle of decent Riesling, Michael followed Anna through the snow on a freezing cold night too dark to see anything not illuminated by streetlights.
Anna seemed to know where she was heading, so Michael followed dutifully across snow crunching underfoot, made brittle by the day’s sun, resigned to his fate. They made their way up the main street, across the town square with its impressively large bell tower, and into Neu Kelheim’s cliff gardens, hectares of geneered plants from hundreds of planets, all shapeless under heavy blankets of snow.
Just when Michael started to protest, Anna turned. “Here we are,” she said, “Neu Kelheim’s Pavilion of the Winds. Very famous, something you’d know if you’d done your homework.” She pointed to a small pavilion, a simple structure of hand-carved timber set hard up against the cliff edge, the path to its entrance marked by a string of firefly lights.
“Bit bloody cold for this sort of thing, don’t you think?” Michael grumbled past his cold-suit, trying not to think of a warm room, never mind an even warmer bed.
“Not at all,” Anna said, her tone of voice making it clear that Michael did not have much say in the matter. “Come on.”
When his eyes adjusted slowly to the dark, Michael saw why Anna had wanted to come to this place. The pavilion was built to screen out the light from the park behind them. A single bench ran across its open face, looking out into the void, a sheer drop falling the best part of 2,000 meters down fractured basalt cliffs into the rain forests that carpeted the foothills of the New Hartz Mountains. The air was so clear, the horizon was visible: a rough-edged black shape sawed out of the stars, the only light coming from the soft orange splashes of the towns and villages scattered over the blackness of the forest.
For a long time they sat there, unmoving, silent. “We’ll be all right, won’t we?” Anna said finally.
Michael swore wordlessly; talk about the 10 million Fed-Mark question.
“Think so,” he said after a while. “Damishqui will be in the right place covering the withdrawal, and the dreadnoughts can take pretty much anything the Hammers can dish out. It’s the rest of the poor bastards I worry about. Too many of them will not be coming home. But like I say, the dreadnoughts will be fine.”
“I wish I believed that. I’ve been through the operations order, Michael. I know what you’re up against. I’m worried it’ll be a bloodbath.”
“Listen, Anna,” Michael said fiercely. “I cannot predict what’ll happen any more than you can. But we have a few things going for us. The Hammers have no idea we’re coming, dreadnoughts are tougher than anything the Hammers ever sent into space, and Jaruzelska is running the show. The way I see it, we have better cards than the Hammers, and if we play them well on the day, yes, we’ll come through this. When it comes to the dreadnoughts, they’re not indestructible; no ship is. But I’ve taken them into action enough times to know that the Hammers still have not worked them out. They’re faster, accelerate better, turn quicker, have better armor, and I’ll have twenty-nine of the ugly bastards to back me up. They can take a lot of punishment, so I really think we’ll be okay.”
“Like I said, I wish I believed that.” Anna squeezed his hand hard. “No, that’s wrong. I guess I do believe it, if only because I have to. Otherwise, what the hell’s the point?” She sighed. “Come on, that’s enough sightseeing. Let’s get back. If it gets any colder, my nose is going to freeze and drop off.”
“Can’t have that,” Michael said as they walked back through the gardens. “It’s such a pretty nose even if it is a bit on the large-”
Whatever else Michael planned to say vanished when Anna scraped a handful of bitterly cold snow off a small wall and shoved it into his mouth.