The crack of palm against cheek echoed through the bunker. Private Steiner's hand hung in the air, trembling not from regret but barely contained fury. Blood trickled from where his Pervitin-dry lips had split from tension.
"Enough." His voice scraped like steel on bone. "A week we've watched you drown. A week while the British push through our lines. A week while those things that used to be men wait in the east."
The others tensed at the mention of the Hohlmenschen. They'd started calling them that after watching a soldier execute prisoners while crying - hollow men, feeling everything but caring for nothing.
Tanya touched her stinging cheek. The pain cut through the fog she'd wrapped herself in since Christmas Eve. Since the photos. Since the coat that still smelled of family.
"You want to mourn?" Steiner's pupils were pinpricks in bloodshot eyes. "Then mourn like a soldier – on your feet, with a rifle in your hands. You're our commander. Fucking command."
Mueller stepped forward, but Tanya raised her hand. In the corner, the radio crackled with reports of British forces advancing through the Ardennes. Another German position overwhelmed by concentrated artillery and armor.
"They chose you," Steiner pressed. "Those chaos-loving ghosts you're drowning in? They chose you because they saw something worth following. Something worth dying for." His laugh held more Pervitin than humor. "So did we. Or was their faith wrong?"
The air grew thick with possibility. In the distance, artillery began its morning chorus. The British were advancing again, their hatred for the Reich growing with each passing day. They didn't distinguish between her forces and the Hohlmenschen waiting in the east. To them, all Germans were monsters now.
Tanya closed her eyes. Opened them. The woman who faced Steiner wasn't the commander who'd sought perfection, nor the broken soul of Christmas Eve. This was something new, forged in the furnace of loss and tempered by borrowed warmth from a coat that smelled of hope.
"Get me the tactical maps. All of them. And the British patrol schedules we've intercepted." Her voice carried an edge that made Mueller's eyebrows rise. "Time to show them what happens when discipline learns to adapt."
The first counterattack caught the British off guard. Not through perfect formation or textbook maneuvers, but through precise application of chaos. Her men struck at supply lines instead of front positions, used their knowledge of local terrain to split British units from their support. They didn't try to match British artillery – they made it irrelevant.
Mueller watched her plan the second assault, noting how she incorporated terrain features the British would consider tactically unsound. "The men are ready," he reported. "Though some question attacking through the marsh."
"Harrison expects us to be efficient," Tanya replied. "He expects German precision. German order." She traced the route through supposedly impassable ground. "So we'll give him something else."
The British never saw them coming. Not even Harrison, with all his methodical hatred, had expected a German force to slog through knee-deep mud rather than take the tactical high ground. By the time British artillery adjusted, Tanya's men had already breached their perimeter.
In the east, the Hohlmenschen watched and waited. Their time would come. But first, Tanya had to show her men – and herself – that there was strength in adapting, in being unpredictable, in letting tactical necessity dance with controlled chaos.
"Sir." Mueller's voice carried an unfamiliar note – respect tinged with understanding. "The men are ready for the next phase."
Tanya touched her cheek where Steiner's slap had awakened her. The British thought they understood German warfare now. They were wrong.
She was about to show them how wolves hunt.