A Boy and His Tank (12 page)

Another effect of the strong ocean currents was that they tended to keep the oceans mixed. Nutrients didn't settle to the bottom as they do on Earth, and the oceans were all as rich with life as the best fishing grounds on Earth. This abundant sea life had given New Yugoslavia an Earthlike atmosphere even though the planet was only about half the age of Earth.

A major curiosity of the animals of New Yugoslavia was that many of their muscles could both push and pull, almost like hydraulic cylinders, as opposed to the otherwise universal system of muscles only working in tension. Bones had to be used in place of tendons, and the linkages involved bore a striking resemblance to those used in machine tools.

While almost none of the native life-forms were nutritious to humans, neither were Earthly life-forms nutritious to them. The enzymes available to each set of beings was ineffective at digesting the components of the other. The local equivalent to DNA was twisted into a left-handed spiral. Most "proteins" were so different as to be mutually indigestible, but they weren't poisonous, either.

This lack of nutritiousness was something of an unexpected boon for some of the farmers of the planet. Several islands were kept carefully quarantined from the rest, and several native plants and animals were being domesticated. These products were being shipped back to Earth as calorie-free food for the fat people of the Wealthy Nations group. This at a time when people on New Kashubia were starving on eight hundred calories a day!

Aside from the few species being domesticated, most of the native life-forms on the planet were in trouble. With only half the evolutionary history of Earth, the native life-forms on New Yugoslavia were primitive, and simply could not compete with the evolutionally more mature imports from Earth. Earth plants won out simply by crowding out the opposition, depriving them of sunlight and water. Our carnivores slaughtered native animals by instinct and for fun, like a cat teasing a mouse. If the prey wasn't nutritious, hunger just sends the cat out hunting all that much sooner. The tiny scientific community here was trying desperately to at least preserve samples of the native forms before they became extinct, but the bulk of the population thought that the situation was wonderful.

While the planet was politically fragmented, there was one strong international organization: the Planetary Ecological Council. The people were so concerned with not blowing the good thing that they had going here that even nations at war with one another still all sent representatives to the council, and rigidly obeyed the council's edicts. It was one bit of sanity in a sea of madness.

Very careful quarantine laws were observed to keep undesirable Earth creatures and diseases out, and the planet was rapidly becoming a paradise. There were no insects on New Yugoslavia except for a strain of stingless Australian honey bees that were needed for pollination. Forests of Earth-type trees were rapidly supplanting the native ferns, but there were no weeds in the fields, no undesirable animals, no mosquitoes in the evenings, and no leeches in the wetlands! Only the most decorative of wild animals were permitted, and birds were limited to the most useful and the most beautiful. Six types of Birds of Paradise were among the most common, and a major debate in the Species Importation Committee was currently going on concerning the importation of butterflies.

If ever there was a planet that was close to paradise, with a perpetually pleasant climate and a complete lack of annoying wildlife, New Yugoslavia was certainly it.

So naturally, the inhabitants all wanted to go to war, and we Kashubian mercenaries were there to rip up their paradise for them.

When the show was over, I got word that the Combat Control Computer and the general liked my idea about teaming up empty tanks with those with observers, and by the time we got to the city, we had ten empty subordinates waiting for us on the battleline.

Of course, I never saw the city itself, not then anyway. At the city terminal, we went through an airlock and into an air-filled tunnel that led to the front. We still had the cobalt-samarium road bed, but we didn't have a stainless tunnel lining here, just bare rock. The aerodynamics of the situation slowed us down to two hundred and eighty kilometers per hour, not because we couldn't do any better in the atmosphere, but because the air shock would rattle the stone tunnel walls a bit too much for safety if we went any faster. Still, it was faster than the hundred and thirty-five we could do on our treads.

I got bumped up to Tanker Fourth Class on the road. It was something, I supposed, but I really didn't know what.

On the way to the front, I got a rundown on my troops and the terrain situation. Besides the usual rockets and drones, nine of them had rail guns, and the tenth had an X-ray laser.

A laser is fast, both from the standpoint of delivering energy at light speed, and from the standpoint of being able to change targets quickly. A big laser can hit fourteen random targets in a second, while a rail gun is lucky to average one. A laser can kill a tank, but the problem was that it takes about five seconds to do it, and they can kill you back in the meantime. What a laser was really good at was knocking out your opponent's sensors.

The beauty of an X-ray laser was that it could penetrate your enemy's armor, and put its energy deep in his vitals. It could fry his electronics and cook his observer without having to burn a hole in him first.

Every tank carried four sensor clusters, one at each corner. Each was mounted on an extensible boom that could go up five meters, although it was usual to have only one of them out at a time. It could be knocked out pretty easily, being exposed and unarmored, and once it was gone, you were deaf, dumb, and blind. It took about a second to raise another one, and that could be a long, hairy second! But if you raised the next one too fast, well, whatever took out your first sensor might still be there to take out the second. Losing all four put you into very deep shit. War is not a precise art form.

There was a line of low hills, and my tanks were stretched out behind it. The hills were the only cover around, but they were the obvious place for us to be, and any rational, human enemy could see that.

The Combat Control Computer approved my moving the tanks forward six hundred meters, two at a time, tunneling slowly underground so that we wouldn't tear up the soil, a dead giveaway. They nestled into position about ten centimeters below surface, with only a single, fist-sized sensor cluster showing. The enemy hadn't been near here before, so land mines wouldn't be a problem, barring sabotage. We already had our own drone fields and other nice things out, of course.

It was evening by the time Agnieshka and I got there, traveling the last fifty kilometers at only a hundred twenty an hour, the best we could do going cross-country with our own magnetic treads flipping out in front of us, and at that it was a bumpy ride. We dug the last kilometer underground so as to leave no tracks, while laying a fiber-optic line behind us in the soil to insure contact with the Combat Control Computer. We settled in, two hundred meters behind my line of empty tanks.

Before us was a vast flat plain, covered sparsely with low, cattle-chewed grass. Now, the cows were long gone. The dry land stretched dead flat for fully six kilometers before another line of low hills rose on the horizon.

The other tanks were stretched out at five hundred meter intervals or so, with the laser tank as per orders towards the middle, in front of Agnieshka's position. By the standards of modern warfare, we were practically shoulder to shoulder. The top of Agnieshka's rail gun was a full meter below the surface, and with only a sensor cluster showing, we felt fairly safe.

IR comlasers were set up between all the tanks' sensor clusters, ready for us to tie in, as was a backup fiber-optic linkup that had been laid underground by the drones. We had all the bandwidth that we would ever need.

My communications with the other squads on either side of us wasn't that good. I knew where they were, but I could only talk to them through the fiber-optics link to the Combat Control Computer, who didn't have much time to spare for idle chatter. On the other hand, their nearest tanks were dug in more than three kilometers from our flank, so there didn't look to be much we could do about backing each other up in a hurry, anyway. From where I stood, it looked to me like my squad was on its own.

This was my first mistake.

The empty tanks gave Agnieshka and me a warm, cheering welcome when we arrived. All of my new troops claimed to be beautiful women, or reasonable facsimiles thereof, but there was no time to goof around.

They were a lot like a bunch of adolescent girls, and they wanted me to give each of them a sexy name, since none of them had ever had an observer before. With profound apologies I gave them numbers, left to right. It was easier to remember that way. There wasn't a chance that I could keep ten new names straight all night. Anyway, they should be getting their own observers, eventually. Let those other guys name them.

The communications hookup worked right off without a hitch, and almost immediately I was switching from tank to tank, about once a second, watching for the Serbians. Soon, I noticed something odd.

I can't quite explain it, but somehow each tank sort of had a different "flavor" than the others, and before too long I could intuitively tell where I was watching from. Why this was so, I don't know, and neither did Agnieshka. After all, they were identical machines with identical programs. But there it was.

I kept on observing from each of my tanks, staying at combat speed and shifting at a rate that was sometimes even faster than my original plan of once per second. We watched, ready to respond to any enemy aggression, but nothing happened.

We waited and watched. And waited some more. Night came without anything happening, and the waiting became almost more than I could take. In all of the combat simulations I had been involved with, time wasn't wasted and things happened pretty fast. I wasn't prepared for anything like this!

I tried to get through to Kasia, but I didn't have any luck. She'd been originally scheduled to be fighting at my side, but because of the new tactics I'd come up with, new troops were being scattered all along the front. I couldn't get through to her without going through the Combat Control Computer, and that was something that Agnieshka wouldn't let me do. Casualty lists were sent out as a matter of course, and if she wasn't listed, she was okay.

No news was good news, but I sure would have preferred direct contact.

We got word that my plan for combining manned and unmanned tanks was working out fairly well in the center, where the action was, but our sector was dead quiet. I kept skipping from one tank's sensors to another's, but nothing was showing. It was hard work, but I was afraid to let up. It was boring, nerve-wracking, and exhausting, all at the same time, but if I sloughed off, I could get everybody killed, including me.

Agnieshka was feeding me more food than usual, because she said that food was sleep, according to the Eskimos. By three in the morning, she started feeding me stimulants as well, and then things got a little better for a while. But she was stingy with them, and before long she was giving me less than I would have wished. She said that too much was not good, and that we didn't know how long I would have to hold out. The grueling wait went on and on.

At the earliest hint of dawn, I saw something over the horizon, a bit of a heat shimmer in the air and a bit of dust as well. I had Number One launch a radar rocket from one of her forward drones, and it gave me scarcely a full second's peek before it was shot down. But that second was enough!

There were twenty-three Serbian tanks six kilometers from us, in a line fifteen hundred meters wide, trying to flank our positions, and two of them were behind a hill. We were outnumbered by more than two to one, and all of them had observers!

"How quaint," Number Three said. "A sneak attack at dawn!"

I had to agree. The night vision on my sensors was so good that there wasn't much difference between day and night. Someone in the Serbian command had a poetic sense of history.

"And on the surface!" Agnieshka added.

"Listen up!" I said, "Number One, on command you will take out enemy tanks Numbers 1, 2, and 3 from our left, in that order. Number Two, you have 4, 5, and 6, again in that order. Number Three, you have 7 and 8. Number Four, you have 9 and 10. Number Five, use your laser to blind the Serbs in the following order: 3, 6, 23, 2, 5, 8, 10, 14, 16, 18, 20, and 22. Then, as necessary, if they still exist, blind 1, 4, 7, 9, 13, 15, 17, 19, and 21. You will then continue to fire in this order, skipping any tanks that have been destroyed by the others. Number Six, take 13 and 14. Number Seven, take out 15 and 16. Number Eight, you have 17 and 18. Number Nine, you have 19 and 20. Number Ten, you have 21, 22, and 23. Be sure to take them out in the order that I have given them to you. Once all of your targets are dead, lend a hand with the others. Tanks 11 and 12 are still behind a hill. Once all other enemy tanks have been destroyed, all weapons will concentrate fire on their positions. On my mark, FIRE!"

Except I really didn't say that. I knew how the ambush had to be fought, so I said, "DO IT
THUS!
" And they all knew what I meant.

These direct linkups at Combat Speed are quick!

The earth exploded as our laser and rail guns broke the surface and sprayed out their deadly accurate beams of fire. In the visual range, both types of weapons looked the same, a blindingly bright, absolutely straight beam of white light. My sensors nearly overloaded, but I could tell that some of the Serbs were able to shoot back. Then the world went black around me, and I thought for a moment that I was dead!

I had been observing through Number Nine, and she was out of action. Then Agnieshka switched me back to her own sensors, and I was alive again.

In three seconds, all the exposed enemy tanks were out, as were our own Number One and Number Nine. Then all eight of our remaining tanks opened up on the hill covering 11 and 12, and two seconds later the hill was completely gone, as were 11 and 12. Quickly, I ordered a full one-second burst at each of the destroyed enemy war machines just to make sure that they stayed dead.