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Kastrup.
Yesterday, this area had witnessed a nearly hysterical mob of Danes Reclaiming Their Homeland At Last; today, most of those Danes were already dead or dying. Not all of them were dead, though, and Bent Larsen meant to save as many of those as he could.
Bent Larsen was in command of Grossling’s Bane, eighty-odd tons of tank that would help him save as many as he could, crewed by four other tankers just as determined as he.
Of course, similar tanks already dotted the landscape, victims of the grossling onslaught, but they had been deployed early. Bent and his crew had been relegated to rear-echelon duties quite a while earlier due to an extremely elaborate prank they’d dreamed up with the assistance of a medic and five clerks. Their co-conspirators had been sent back to Bornholm, but a skilled tank crew couldn’t be wasted in the homeland, even if they were, as Admiral Olsen had opined, “DISGRACES TO THE UNIFORMS YOU WEAR!”
Now, thanks to this fluke of circumstance, these ‘disgraces to the Danish uniforms’ were all the Danes had left to send into the fray.
Bent signaled his driver, Carsten Hansen, and the great engines that powered Grossling’s Bane came to life with a roar that rivaled those of the giants ravaging the airfield. They had stealthily (but slowly, “like a granny riding her bike--and not a particularly fast granny, either”, as Curt Hansen, their gunner, put it) approached the battle on the electric motors, but for the speed a battle demanded, they had to use the oil-burners.
Grossling’s Bane was the fleetest tank in the Danish tank park, both by design and by every modification the crew could dream up (some almost as elaborate as their pranks). Command might dismiss the grosslings as “mindless beasts lurking in their holes”, but the crew of Grossling’s Bane knew different.
Five years ago, they had been putting Grossling’s Bane through her paces, exhaustively testing every facet of the great land-ship’s design, when a Sea-Beast had breached the great coastal wall nearby them. Forever after, the crew would swear the Sea-Beast had known that it would face Grossling’s Bane there, deliberately choosing to strike at the best weapon the Danes had so as to send a message: “You will never prevail.”
Through luck, courage, cunning, and sheer bloody-mindedness, Grossling’s Bane and her crew had come through with but one casualty: Orla Krause, one of the flamethrower operators, had lost a leg (“just below the knee”, as she dismissively put it).
That Sea-Beast had taught the crew of Grossling’s Bane much before it had finally died, and the most important of its lessons had been to never underestimate a grossling.
After the scars from that encounter, both on Grossling’s Bane and on her crew, had been patched up, said crew had begun making every tweak they could think of to their faithful steed. Even Jørgen Møller, their loader, had had a few good ideas.
Now, Bent and the others flung Grossling’s Bane into the fray with a fury worthy of their berserker cousins in Norway. A small knot of survivors was holding out not far away, mostly because the grosslings were busily wiping out all the tougher forces around them. That knot was Grossling’s Bane’s aim.
Speaking of aim, Curt and Jørgen were lobbing shots from the great turret gun all across the field. Grossling’s Bane wouldn’t stop for them to aim properly, but there was little chance of their hitting anything other than the grosslings swarming the battlefield.
Orla and Carsten were spraying flames across their path, sweeping a way clear through the misshapen hordes; this and their speed as they shot towards their beleaguered fellows were keeping the grosslings away for the moment, but they knew that wouldn’t last.
When at last they reached the redoubt, Carsten swept Grossling’s Bane around its perimeter a few times to get them pointed in the right direction. Before they had even stopped, a couple of the Danes they had come to rescue had already leapt atop Grossling’s Bane’s hull. The rest followed with great despatch.
The grosslings were nearly out of other targets now, allowing them to concentrate their efforts on bringing Grossling’s Bane down. A few times, the Danes riding on the hull had to fend off their assaults by hand as the land-ship swept back towards the safety of the tunnel.
There was no more ammunition for the great turret gun, leaving Jørgen with nothing to do; but the flamethrowers still had fuel, and there was still the Last Resort. These last few hectometers would be grim.
Carsten brought Grossling’s Bane around to avoid yet another knot of grosslings determined to block their escape, which brought them close enough to the wreck of Dragonfire that they could see the gaping holes in the sister-tank’s armor. If any of Grossling’s Bane’s crew had harbored any hopes that some of their fellows might have survived, those hopes were dashed by the sight. Bent, however, was intent on the survivors riding on Grossling’s Bane’s hull, and worried silently that the hulk might provide some marauding grosslings with a convenient launch platform. The live tank passed the dead one without incident, though, and pressed grimly on.
Grossling’s Bane rattled from near-misses as the guns atop the tunnel entrance fired at the grosslings all around them, but Carsten kept the throttle wide open, even when it became apparent that the tunnel gate was already closing! Bent cursed fiercely, neither knowing nor caring whether he was shouting or merely mouthing the words. Probably the rest of the crew were doing likewise.
With a great lurch and a triumphant roar, Grossling’s Bane skidded into the tunnel, barely clearing the gate before it closed, sealing the horrors off behind them.
On their final sortie in the Battle of Kastrup, Grossling’s Bane and her crew brought back fifteen men and women who would survive, and three who would not. Grossling’s Bane herself bore only minor cracks and dents, but she would not see action again, just as the Danish Army would not see action again.
Or so everyone thought...