Ragnarök
"Stay behind the barrier! There's room for everyone! Follow the officers' instructions! Any violation will result in severe punishment!" It was a battle between an immovable object and an unstoppable force. A raging storm against an ancient mountain peak. Human reason versus human insanity. Five dozen military police from the counterinsurgency units, supported by the Federal Office for the Environment, tried to establish order at the barracks' main lock, from which, as if sucked through a straw, a mass of civilians at least six times their size tried to squeeze through. The refugees mostly came from the surrounding villages, but license plates from the Lake Constance region, the Black Forest, and the state capital could also be found in the abandoned cars around the city. Some carried only what they were wearing. Others held backpacks and suitcases full of luggage above their heads, others held small children or pets to prevent them from being trampled by the crowd. Spotlights from the roofs of police and fire engines swept over the heads of the crowd. In the bright floodlight, the people's pupils, dilated with fear, glowed like a cat's, adding a touch of intimidation to the otherwise black, shapeless mass.
"Everyone will be admitted! Maintain order and have your papers ready! Everything will be fine!"
"Captain, I want another dog unit here at the gate, immediately," Volz ordered. Like most of his men, he had been sleeping for the past few days to further fortify the barracks and make room for the refugees. His eyelids grew larger by the day, as did the number of empty stomachs that needed to be filled.
"Immediately, sir."
"And any news from the falcons yet?"
"Not yet, sir. But the radio operators said they'd get back to us as soon as his birds reached the castle ruins," Captain Beyer replied.
"Good, inform me immediately as soon as you have the first pictures, Captain."
"Yes, sir."
In his eyes, the Lagerheuberg and its associated military training area had always been a mirror of German history since their founding in the Kaiserreich. Before, during, and after the First World War, units of the Baden Army and the Reichswehr were stationed here. During the Second World War, the camp was a gathering place for men of the SA, the SS, the Wehrmacht, and some allied countries, including Italy and the Vichy government. In the postwar period of the Federal Republic of Germany, French troops and American nuclear weapons followed. And now, after reunification and the turn of the millennium, just in time for the almost exactly centenary of its inauguration, the camp was a gathering point for emergency personnel and refugees in the southwest during the so-called Dragon Crisis, which represented the first chapter in the Chronicles of Fire: Swarm Attack!
"Further back! Get your water cannons ready! Come on, men, keep calm and concentrate!"
They slept underground for millennia; the ash rain of their own fire had triggered a global ice age, forcing these giant, flying reptiles to hibernate underground in cycles. Two years ago, the same effect had struck again, only this time in reverse. Planet Earth's new alpha predator, with its insatiable greed like that of locusts, had poisoned the oceans, strangled the skies with poisonous gases, and set the forests on fire. CO2 emissions had torn a huge wound in the ozone layer, their planet's natural protective shield. The sun was heating the planet like an egg under a heat lamp, awakening the dragons again. Pure irony, we are making exactly the same mistake as our predecessors: We are forcibly changing the planet until it turns against us. The planet used cold against the dragons. And now it used dragons against humans. And if they did their job well, the lizards would regain control of the Earth "But not as long as we still have a say in the matter."
"Sir?" The man next to him must have overheard his angry whisper.
"Nothing, Decker, I was just thinking out loud." They crawled out of their caves, melted free from glaciers that had preserved them for eternity over generations. And where there was one, there were quickly dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. The more fire they rained from the sky, the more people returned fire and shot back, the faster the earth heated up. The more cities and forests burned. The more dragons were awakened. Paris went up in flames. They lost London in the first year of the crisis. Florence. Rome. Athens. New York. The largest cities were hit first, since they had the most Prey was crammed together. People fled in all directions. Underground. To the sea. To the mountains. To the polar regions, and everywhere else their feet and diesel supplies could take them. The Heuberg military training area became a collection camp, with several hundred people now camped in tents and vehicles within its fenced-in area. Here they received food and medicine. Here they found shelter. Here they maintained order. At least for the moment.
"Sir, the falconers have reported in. Lieutenant Stöckel is reporting." The interior of the Dingo had been expanded into a mobile command center. A two-dimensional map of the barracks and the surrounding terrain was projected onto half a dozen different screens, interspersed with smaller panels with live feeds from their scout birds.
"What's the situation, Stöckel?"
"Birds One through Three are back, Sir, but Four is still absent."
"Your signal and your camera?"
"Both offline, sir." This war was primarily fought in the air, as their enemy preferred to attack from above. Therefore, they ramped up the production of remote-controlled and autonomously flying drones. But this required factories, workers, and supply lines of resources. As an alternative, they relied on birds of prey. Falcons and eagles were equipped with cameras so they could spy on the enemy without attracting much attention. They deployed owls at night. Currently, there are over two dozen of them. The last flock was just finishing its patrol down by the old ruins scattered along the banks of the Danube.
"Send out two more birds. The latest reports from Neuhausen Eck indicate that Swarm Eleven is currently expanding its territory. I want to know when they spread here." At first, the dragons stayed close to their breeding grounds. But as soon as they had young, they began to fly out to establish their own territories. Their own clutches of eggs. In Germany, it was now assumed that there were at least forty, and across Europe even more than three hundred, recorded territories inhabited by swarms resembling bee colonies in size and complexity. In addition, there were wandering loners and outcasts who roamed the fringes of the contested zones between humans and their own kind, stalking the weakest on both sides.
"I understand, sir, we... we... are there..." A static glitch. Stuttering. A tremor in the lieutenant's already rough voice, then both the picture and the radio cut out. Silence filled the command vehicle.
"Corporal?"
"It's not our fault, sir, their signal must be jammed. I'll try to get them back up and..." Before the radio operator could finish, Volz had already jumped out of the Dingo again and reached for his radio. He looked up at one of the extended telescopic platforms, which, distributed along the fence, replaced watchtowers from which snipers monitored the area.
"Majewski, position south-southwest, towards the castle ruins, do you see anything there?"
"Negative, sir, the wind is driving the clouds of smoke from Tuttlingen and Neuhausen towards us. The entire horizon is obscured by a thick bank of fog." They were already familiar with this. Some didn't attach any deeper significance to the fact and simply dismissed it as a coincidence, a convenient circumstance for their enemy, but an increasingly growing number of experts and front-line soldiers saw it as serious evidence of the high intelligence of these beasts. Of their ability to learn, adapt, and even develop complex hunting strategies. Their behavior was compared to that of wolves or orcas. They deliberately set fire to entire areas to confuse their prey with the rising ash clouds, to disorient them. They even preferred to move only within these clouds of poisonous gases and scorching hot air. To hide in this veil where neither conventional nor thermal imaging cameras could detect them, and to sneak up on their fortresses and cities. Volz climbed onto the roof of his Dingo and peered in the general direction of the castle ruins near Hausen im Tal, but his field of vision ended where the wooded hills rose. Something inside him sent a chill down his spine.
"Decker, get everyone in, immediately." He had jumped down from the roof of the Dingo.
"Sir?"
"Into the shelters. Point the anti-aircraft guns south-southwest. Towards Hausen." A gust of wind hit him in the face. It practically swept over them. A whip made his head spin 180 degrees. He looked up at the flags on the roofs, which were rigidly pointed southwest. Until suddenly a strong gust of wind spun her around.
"Dragon." A word that was once so full of magic and wonder, a word that once captured the imaginations of children and adults alike and inspired books. The sound that had inspired him to stories and films made his heart stop in his chest for a moment: "DRAGON!"
A bright flash of light shot across the sky, and for a moment the night was lit as bright as day. Then the shock wave knocked him off his feet. Only the stench of molten metal and burnt flesh, which had the effect of smelling salts, brought him back to his senses. His left eye was red. Blood dripped from a gash on his forehead. Screaming. Roaring. His ears were ringing. And when they stopped, the world literally drowned in voices.
"Lieutenant Colonel Volz..." Two or three hands grabbed him and pulled him back to his feet. He looked up at the telescopic boom lifts where their snipers were. The boom lifts were now torches whose baskets illuminated the driveway.
"Where is he? How...how many?" Even half-dead and still dispersed across multiple meta-levels, his instincts reacted like a wind-up mechanism.
"Three or four at least, sir. The first wave completely melted our fence and two Dingos. They're preparing for their second strike, sir."
"Launch decoys. Lure them to the western flank. Prepare all guns. Bring the civilians in!" Ice-cold water pelted him. The fire and police cars sprayed the masses of refugees and soldiers with water. Not to disperse or break up the crowds, like at demonstrations in the past, no, the water served to give them a small chance. Wet fabric burned less well. But when you were standing right in the middle of the blazing geyser of a thousand-degree flame, even the thickest protective suits were of little use.
"Decoys ready, sir!"
"Fire first charge. Second only when you see them." Due to the general demand for war, the units had to get creative. After all, the whole world was learning for the first time what it meant to kill dragons. What they already knew was that dragons, like all reptiles, were attracted to warmth. This is why warm-blooded animals were such tasty prey for them, but this could also be used. They had set up groups along the fence and throughout the rest of the compound and stretched camouflage netting over them. Swarms of balloons were hidden underneath. His men lit the fuses, setting the lanterns ablaze. As soon as they soldered the ropes, thousands of colorful balls rose into the pitch-black night. A few wore burning sheepskins on their bodies. It may not have been a technical feat, but these balloons sometimes bought precious minutes in battle, distracting them from wasting their ammunition. Much like the Allied Phantom Army in World War II. What's more, the balloons were filled with garish neon colors. When a dragon thundered into the swarm to fight the perceived intruders, it was bathed in bright colors. Dragons had pitch-black scales, making them difficult to see at night and in their smog clouds. With neon yellow or green on their skin, it was a little easier.
"They're coming! Second wave! Take cover!" The second attack was just as fierce as the first, only this time their destructive fury was primarily aimed at the lantern swarms above them. It was only a brief moment, but it also exposed their vulnerable underbelly. In the parking lot west of the entrance to the Alb Barracks, old Gepard-type anti-aircraft tanks were lined up next to newer Mantis and other guns. With combined fire, they fired at the swarm. Volz saw four of them in a tight formation. A large mother at the front and three younger ones.
"Prepare your harpoons! Nine-iron! Take the mother first!"
"Here they come!" Their weapons systems could only be gradually adapted to the new enemy. Dragons' scales were hard, and they attacked in swarms. This quartet represented only the first scouts of a larger army. These were only the hungriest.
"Harpoon ready!" his captain shouted.
"Load second battery!" The second trench decoy rose. The bright lanterns illuminated the night sky enough for him to see the black silhouettes well enough to aim. Harpoons had been strapped to the roofs of the patrol's foxes, the kind that had been used to hunt whales, the giants of the ocean, until the last century. Now we hunt the giants of the sky with them. The principle was almost exactly the same: the harpoon was fired at the dragon's vulnerable belly and flanks, its wings, and its tail. The barbs dug into the dragon's flesh. The ropes with which the harpoons were attached to the tanks were tightened by the dragons themselves, and then, when the ropes were at their end, the dragons ripped open their bellies with their own strength. Volz had already done this eight times, each time With increasing success. The gunner at the front of the vehicle gave him instructions. The mother was huge, almost the size of a humpback whale, and that's without its tail and wings, which had a wingspan the size of a small soccer field. All in all, it was like fighting an Airbus A400M. Only less, faster, and it breathed fire.
"Right side! Now!" When dragons swooped down on you, they only had a few seconds to fire before unleashing their own flame breath. Seven seconds, that was the rule of thumb. Within seven seconds of launching the attack, you had to aim at your target, adjust the angle, and pull the trigger to hit. And through all of this, the gunner had to maintain eye contact. And he had to hit. With dragons, there were no second attempts. If you missed, you were burned before you could close the hatch to the tank. Volz practically ripped the trigger off the harpoon as the mother began her dive. The iron whizzed toward her chest, below her left wing. It didn't hit her heart; neither the iron nor her aim was hardened enough for that. But that wasn't what dragon harpooning was about. All that mattered was that the harpoon hooked. The lizard's fiery breath missed, the bolt under her wing altering her trajectory so much that the swath of destruction shot right past her fox, melting the asphalt beneath her wheels into candle wax.
"Harpoon in. How many more meters?"
"Just under 200, sir."
"Good."
"Have you heard that they're working on remote-controlled guns in Stuttgart?"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yes, they're supposed to be able to operate the harpoons from inside the tanks using cameras," a gunner told him.
"So where's the fun in that?" They fastened their seatbelts. They held on tight. They gritted their teeth and silently recited a prayer. A scale on the screen showed them how many meters of rope were left on the winch. It was like a countdown. When they reached zero, it was the end of the line.
"Are you a Muslim or a Cem?"
"Yes."
"Good, you pray to Allah, I pray to Jehovah."
60 meters. 50. 40. Like sand in a glass, time was running out. When they reached zero, the entire fox was caught in a jolt. The rope was at its end. The centrifugal force of the kite met the weight of the fox, which was also anchored to the ground. The sharp barbs cut through the reptile's skin and flesh. Most of the harpoons ripped out right then or their tips broke off, but that didn't matter; the damage had already been done. The colliding forces tipped the fox to the side. It almost flew over. Nevertheless, the mother dragged her a few meters behind her before she herself struck the ground. Between ten and fifteen tons of flesh fell unchecked like a giant boulder and hit the ground. If the direct shot, the sudden loss of blood, or the shock hadn't killed the dragons, they broke every bone in their bodies as they fell.
"Reconnaissance, report, target destroyed?"
"This is Fennek II, target destroyed, Lieutenant Colonel."
"And the others?"
"The two smaller ones split off to check on the mother. The third prepares to attack." Dragons were both territorial and hierarchical. The best decoys to lure them into traps were freshly dead or dying dragons. This either attracted relatives protecting their pack mates or ones they wanted to eat. They were also cannibals.
"Next time we should try pesticides again," said Cem, who had hit his head.
"It doesn't kill them, it just makes them high." Said Volz.
"And?"
"And, high, they're even angrier." They'd already conducted experiments where the balloons had been filled with poison gases. Arsenic or anthrax. Sometimes even with small containers filled with hydrofluoric acid. That had mixed results: Half of them had little effect. Chemical warfare agents mainly hit land, air, water, and themselves. Volz had already heard reports of dragons beating their wings or simply being driven by the wind to drive the poison clouds back to the trappers. Such traps were useful if placed far out in the wilderness, away from their towns and barracks, but they were of little use for defending a garrison.
"Fenneks, you take the twins. We'll get the big one. I want dragon wings hanging on our garrison gate by tomorrow. We're still lagging behind the national average, folks." Hell was more bearable if you took it with humor. Among the army units and the entire nation itself, there were actually smaller and larger competitions to see who could shoot down the most kites. Raffles, bingos with the various Dragon heads, wings, and claws...it was like the ancient Olympic Games. The losers got nothing and often paid with their lives. The winners earned the right to call themselves "Dragon Slayers." They collected the teeth of the dragons they had slain and distributed them to the men of the units that had succeeded. Sometime in twenty or thirty years, Volz would show his children and grandchildren all his necklaces with dragon teeth. Dragon wings, dragon scales, and glasses with dragon eyes. All precious mementos of a catastrophe long since defeated and almost forgotten.
"What are we missing, Cem?"
"Well, I think last time we had two sabertooths, four blade whips, and eight bloodsuckers. That puts us behind Panzer Battalion Nine Hundred and Eleven."
"If I lose again this month, heads will roll, I promise you." Their country and almost the entire world were ablaze, thousands had already died, and millions more were threatened and on the run, but soldiers never lost their sense of humor. By trying to make a game out of shooting dragons, they tried to take the fear out of their enemy and no longer feel quite so helpless themselves.
"Sir, those two are putting up a great fight, we need support!" Even on the ground, dragons were dangerous. They were larger than elephants and faster. Their long tails were like thorn-covered whips that could either cut a person in half or crush them. They now knew that their enormous mouths contained eighty-eight teeth, and their bite was by far the most powerful in the entire animal kingdom. Stronger than that of crocodiles, sharks, or hippos. They were composed almost entirely of muscle, and these were armored with several layers of scales. They had begun to learn to attack their shells first, as they had come to automatically perceive them as competitors in "their" territory. Even when they lay on the ground with their wings slashed, they fought like the wild beasts they were. Often, they were even more deadly on the ground than in the air, Volz found. Like sharks on land. They ran, snapped, and bit, engulfing grass, trees, and anything they could grasp with fire to protect themselves. Sometimes they literally built a protective wall of flames to keep their pursuers at bay.
"Platoon Two and Four, help them. Can we spare a fire engine?"
"Negative, sir, the civilians are still a third out in the open field. Without water cannons, they have no cover!" The adrenaline of the hunt couldn't disguise how costly it was to bring down even a single dragon, let alone an entire swarm. But every minute the dragons spent dealing with him and his men was another minute for the civilians to get to safety. One more minute for us is three more minutes for the others. Dragons liked to eat meat while it was still smoldering.
"Here comes the next blow. Line up. Five, four, three..." The second dragon was smaller than the large mother, but now their anchors were already weakened. This time, after they had harpooned it, the dragon yanked them off the ground. Their fox flipped over and rolled over itself. How far, Volz could only guess. So, as soon as his head stopped pounding again. Blood was running over his lips, but strangely, it didn't flow down his chin from there, but continued up the tip of his nose and then dripped upwards. That was Volz's first clue that they were upside down.
"Oh, shit..." he cursed, feeling himself hit the ground again. Cem had unbuckled his belt without warning him. Or he had warned him, and Volz hadn't been able to process the information properly.
"We have to get out of here, we…" A blow like a battering ram, like a galley trying to impale another ship with its spike. Half the interior of the Fuchs slammed back at them.
"That's it," Cem guessed. The metal above them began to groan. The dragon scraped its claws across the Fuchs's upturned belly. These transport vehicles were designed to protect their soldiers from bullets, fragmentation grenades, and improvised explosive devices, but not to withstand the sheer destructive fury of a multi-ton predator. Not for very long, at least.
"Any support out there?"
"Marder IV here, sir. I'll keep him busy. As soon as I say, run to the barracks," a voice reached them over the radio.
"Lehners, you can't do this alone. The armor…" Shots. A loud rumble like a strobe light of blows rattled against the Fuchs's outer hull. But most of the cartridges hit the dragon that had just finished its transporter as a chew toy.
"Now, guys, come on! Run! I'll distract him!" The rear hatch to the Fuchs was already halfway off its hinges. Cem wedged himself under Volz's arm and vice versa. Both were struggling to walk under their own power. It was a good thirty-five meters to the barracks, and right between them, a single Marder infantry fighting vehicle was squaring off with a specimen weighing at least twelve tons, the largest predator species the earth had ever seen. A representative of the fire-breathing beasts that had once burned even the Tyrannosaurus Rex to ash. There were three men in the tank: the driver, the gunner, and the commander. The six-man team of Panzergrenadiers had already gotten out before the battle to help them both. The Marder was one of the Bundeswehr's main weapon systems, older and more experienced than the Puma infantry fighting vehicle and one of the world's best tanks. And the dragon was the king of all beasts. Neither side fell back or was willing to give up the field to the other without a fight. Even when the Dragon lost its right claw to the Marder's anti-aircraft shell, it didn't even consider fleeing. Even when the Marder's main gun was knocked off by the Dragon's tail, it didn't retreat; instead, Commander Lehner simply rammed the Dragon with a 30-ton combat weight.
The Dragon buried its claws in the tank's left flank, directly between the track gears. This shredded its knuckles like a blender, but also blocked the tank's tracks. The fight ended when the Dragon tried to bite the Marder open for good. Its fiery breath detonated one of the last anti-aircraft shells inside the tank. This blew its skull open and killed the entire crew. Thanks to Lehner's squad, Volz, Cem, and many others made it to the barracks, with their basements converted into shelters, in time. Of the twins that remained with their mother, only one escaped the fighting; the other remained with its mother, with torn wings and a ripped open stomach. The Heuberg camp survived that night, although a quarter of the buildings suffered fire damage. The rest followed in the following days and weeks as the swarm from Tuttlingen spread ever further north.