The Saga of Tanya the Merciless

Bennett's watch lay shattered in the mud, its hands frozen at 05:47. Tanya knelt beside it, fingers trembling as they traced the cracked glass. He'd always wound it precisely, even in chaos. The thought caught in her throat like barbed wire.

Behind her, Mueller cleared his throat. "Oberst. Wir haben keine Zeit für—" [Colonel. We don't have time for—]

"Halt den Mund." [Shut up.] The words came out sharp enough to make him flinch. She pocketed the watch, its weight a fresh wound against her heart.

The valley still echoed with artillery's aftermath. Precise craters marked where each deserter had died, positioned with mathematical certainty. British efficiency. Harrison's revenge, served cold and exact.

Mueller's men maintained their positions with practiced grace, their movements fluid but controlled. No Pervitin-jittery tension, no wasted motion. They'd found their own balance between discipline and humanity. But they stepped around the deserters' bodies without pause, without acknowledgment.

"Drugs in their blood," Mueller observed clinically, nudging Morris's corpse with his boot. "British ammunition in their flesh. Chaos in their minds until the end."

Tanya's hand tightened on Bennett's watch. "They were more human than you'll ever understand."

The morning mist carried something new. Mueller noticed it first, his spine stiffening. Through the trees came sounds no soldier made – too precise, too measured. Like clockwork wrapped in flesh.

The first figure emerged at exactly six hundred meters. Standard field uniform, perfectly pressed. Standard rifle, impossibly clean. Standard march step, executed with machine precision. Behind it came others, moving in formation so perfect it hurt the eyes.

"Gott im Himmel," Mueller breathed. His hand shook as he reached for his binoculars.

Tanya didn't need them. She recognized her own work, twisted into nightmare. Every motion calculated to seven decimal places. Every step measured to the millimeter. Their eyes... their eyes held nothing at all.

Harrison's artillery opened up again. The shells followed textbook patterns, timed to mathematical perfection. The new soldiers flowed through the barrage like liquid mercury, each movement anticipated, each step precise. No fear. No hesitation. No humanity.

One of Mueller's men broke formation, retching. The Pervitin-edge in his system rebelling against what his eyes refused to process. Mueller shot him a cold glance but said nothing. Even his discipline fractured before such perfection.

The British guns fell silent. Through drifting smoke, Tanya watched Harrison's forward positions dissolve. No screams. No desperate last stands. Simply precise elimination of inefficient elements. The perfect soldiers advanced through death like economists through ledgers, calculating optimal paths in blood.

"Sie kommen," Mueller warned, his voice tight. [They're coming.]

"Ja." Tanya touched Bennett's watch again. "My first students. Before I understood the cost."

The perfect soldiers moved closer. Their uniforms bore no unit patches, no identifying marks. Only small silver pills dissolving under tongues that never spoke. Chemistry beyond Pervitin, beyond humanity. Optimization made manifest.

Harrison's men died in exact sequence. No wasted ammunition, no messy struggles. Just precision. Just perfection. Just horror with a calculator's soul.

Mueller's loyalists formed ranks, their imperfect humanity suddenly precious. Fingers trembled on triggers. Breath came ragged and real. They would die as men, facing things that had abandoned such weaknesses.

The perfect soldiers halted at precisely one hundred meters. Their leader's voice carried across the distance with mechanical clarity: "Oberst. The equation requires completion."

Tanya stood. In her pocket, Bennett's broken watch ticked phantom seconds against her heart. Behind her, Mueller's men readied weapons with shaking hands. Before her, her creation waited with infinite patience, infinite precision, infinite nothing.

The war had evolved beyond drugs, beyond orders, beyond optimization. It had found something worse.

It had found perfection.