A Boy and His Tank (15 page)

"American Black People got a planet that could have been a second Earth, only it was a lot nicer. Soviet Uzbeckistanis got a planet of lush green endless plains, and the Catholics of Northern Ireland got an unearthly paradise with the understanding that they had to take their southern brothers and sisters with them.

"Four dozen Middle Eastern minorities got the desert planets of their dreams, and even the Israelis were persuaded to go away after the last of their foreign aid was cut off. And the Yugoslavs got a lovely planet with two small continents and five dozen big islands, enough for each of their various mutually antagonistic minorities.

"With hundreds of fine planets being given away, a Kashubian politician named Bogdan Dzerzdzon decided that his people deserved one, too. He filled out all the paperwork very neatly in triplicate, stood in line, and held his hand out."

"Quincy, we're getting into the part of the story where I know better than you, because Bogdan Dzerzdzon was my own great-grandfather," I said.

"I didn't realize that you came from such a famous family."

"It's no big thing, since the old man had an awful lot of children, and most of them were not particularly legitimate. Actually, he's my biological great-grandfather on both sides of my family, but my parents didn't find out about it until they already had six kids, and there wasn't much they could do about it. For obvious reasons, my great-grandmothers weren't very eager to talk about the true parentage of some of their children, and the facts came out only after they got to genotyping everybody as a standard practice. But that's another story."

"No, you go on. I'd like to hear about what his family thought about the whole affair."

"If you like," I said, trying to pick up on his breezy style of talking. I did in three more beers telling him the true story of Bogdan Dzerzdzon, or at least the one that my grand-uncle told me.

"A good story, Mickolai, but you missed the part about how we all had to vote on accepting the Wealthy Nations Group offer, and we all went to the polls again on the Japanese proposal."

"Well, you were the one who voted for them. I wasn't around to be asked! I just got caught in the grinder for what you old people did!"

"I suppose you have a right to feel a little bitter about what happened, but all I can say is that it sure seemed like a good idea at the time. And speaking of time, it's getting late, and I promised Marysia that I'd do some PT before I went on duty. Even though I'm planning to go the cyborg route, she still nags me about keeping in shape. What say we run an obstacle course together? And some hand-to-hand combat would be nice, up against a real human. I've never felt right about fighting with a woman, even if she really is a tank," he said.

"Personally, I make Agnieshka put on a male persona before I'll fight her, for the same reasons that you mentioned. I don't mind killing Lech in the least! But working out with you? Sure, why not? I get nagged about PT, too."

So we ran his course, which was different from the one I usually ran with Kasia, but was just as hard. We barely kept up with one another, although we both knew that it was faked to keep us even. I half expected Agnieshka to come bouncing along and join us, but she didn't. Just as well. She can be embarrassing at times, and I wouldn't want her wearing one of her topless outfits in public.

Quincy was very good at hand-to-hand combat, and even better with a knife. One of the advantages of fighting in a simulation is that it's absolutely realistic. You really do kill your opponent, before you both get up healthy and go at it again. Instead of pulling your punches and faking it, the way you have to when your only body is actually on the line, you can go ahead and break his neck or stick a knife into his heart and watch him bleed all over you. Or, up against Quincy, you get
your
neck broken, or die in other unpleasant ways.

What's more, it
hurts
to have your neck broken, and a knife in the gut feels just like a knife in the gut! Agnieshka insists that pain is a good teacher, but I think that some things are taken entirely too far for the sake of realism. I knew that they had to be faking Quincy's strength to be up to mine, him being eighty-five years old and all, but in skill and killer instinct, he was just plain better than I was.

After dying four times, I said, "Enough! But just for fun, let's try it with me in my real body against you, as your body actually is."

Agnieshka and Marysia were suddenly watching us from the sidelines.

"A reasonable experiment," Quincy said, "But let's fake it to the point that we have hair and suntans. There's no point in blowing the esthetics entirely."

"Done. Ladies, would you arrange it, please?"

Suddenly, I was up against an octogenarian with a full head of pure white hair, a long white beard, and a big knife. He was scrawny, but his thin body was wiry and quick. We circled a few times and then he pounced. In moments I was flying through the air, to come down embarrassingly on my own knife.

I rolled over with my sharp blade sticking in my own left lung and said, "Damn you."

And then I died.

When I was alive again, Quincy was once more his younger self.

"Now that was interesting!" he said. "Two out of three?"

"Do you enjoy torturing kittens often? Where did you learn to fight like that?"

"Oh, various places. Then I taught it for forty years, in the marines and later at the university."

"I cry foul."

"You want to fight about it?"

"No, but I'll stand you to a beer," I said. "Let's do that again tomorrow. Only let's do it
slowly
."

"You're on, kid."

In our Dream World, Quincy's house was now only a few hundred meters from my own. On our way home, I said to Agnieshka, "Why didn't you warn me about him being a martial arts master?"

"If you'd asked me, I could have found out, Mickolai, but I don't ordinarily keep the records of every soldier in the army in my memory banks. Besides the memory space it would take, wouldn't it be an invasion of privacy?"

"Since when did you start worrying about privacy?"

"Since never, actually. Well. Before you go back on duty, we just have time to clean up, eat supper, take a nap, and make love, although it doesn't have to be in that order." She was suddenly naked.

"You are a very lecherous lady. Why can't you be more quiet and demure like Marysia?"

"Humph. Shows what
you
know. Do you want me to tell you what
they
do when they're alone?"

"No. I don't want to hear about it."

I went on shift to find that I had all fourteen of our squad's tanks reporting to me. Word had come down that for the next twenty-four hours, we were each to work a single, six-hour shift and get plenty of rest. The situation had stabilized enough such that the general was planning a major counteroffensive, and we were to be a part of it.

It was dead quiet for the first half of the shift, but then one of the forward drones heard the slithering sound of an enemy drone coming toward him.

When tunneling underground, a drone or a tank puts out a great deal of sonic power in the ultrasonic range, but the particular frequency used is absorbed by sand so efficiently that it is almost undetectable beyond a few meters. About all you can hear is the sound of the sand resettling behind the vehicle.

I reported the incident to the Combat Control Computer and had our drone take out theirs when they were close enough together for the explosion to do the most good. I was surprised to hear a total of four drones explode! One of ours and three of theirs. They were advancing in force, but the Combat Control Computer wasn't convinced of it.

A few minutes later, I heard the slithering sound at another forward point, did the same as before, and this time five separate explosions were heard. At least
I
could hear them, with my augmented senses.

The Combat Control Computer finally agreed that this looked like a serious attack, and I had all my forward drones pop to the surface and pull back as quickly as possible. A drone that can only go five kilometers per hour underground can do fifty on the surface.

I gave them thirty seconds to run so that most of them would have time to survive, and while I was waiting I ordered up more ammunition for the entire squad, since I was planning to expend a lot of it. I also had my three coworkers awakened and brought on-line, to watch the show and help me count the pieces.

Then I let loose on the field before us with everything we had. In four minutes, thirteen rail guns and a laser made absolute hash out of more than fifteen square kilometers of desert and grassland. We raked the field to dust and toothpicks with a mathematically determined orgy of destruction, and took out two hundred and eleven Serbian drones that I'm sure of. Probably, there were a lot more that we didn't hear, but it was statistically unlikely that a single one of the enemy drones survived, even if there had been a thousand of them.

At the same time, coordinated by the Combat Control Computer, the squads on either side of us joined on in the fun as well. They brought the total up to almost fifty square kilometers of land, and more than six hundred enemy drones trashed. It was quite a show, but the artillery barrage they threw at us in retaliation topped it.

For five solid minutes, shells were incoming and it seemed like it would never end. I assigned each of the other humans three or four rail gun tanks each, plus their own, to protect and fight with, and even had Agnieshka working under Quincy, while I took control of Eva with her laser and nothing else.

The laser tank can blind more than a dozen shells for every one that a rail gun can destroy, but she needed an observer that much more than the others to do the spotting for her. I did it myself because the records showed that I have more talent for this sort of the thing than any of the others.

What's more, I think that without the laser, we all would have bought it. Eva couldn't actually destroy a shell in time, but she could mess up their fuses and sensors, and scramble their suicidal little brains in a hurry. And once the smarts were out of a smart shell, it was fairly easy for the others to take out. More importantly, we could safely ignore those that weren't coming in for a direct hit. I tell you, that night we went through some very interesting times!

In the end, the barrage just stopped. Maybe they ran out of ammunition. The surprising thing was that we came through it without losing a single one of our squad. The same couldn't be said of the squads on either side of us. They totaled nine casualties, with five down for good, and two of those had people in them. Nobody I knew, of course, but death is somehow a lot more real when it happens to the good guys instead of to the faceless enemy.

But the general and the Combat Control Computer liked this sort of thing. You see, the Serbians had a fixed supply of munitions, which they had taken from us when we had reneged on our original deal. We were bringing up fresh supplies as fast as our transporters allowed, and that was a lot. They had to try to beat us in a hurry, because time was on our side, and everybody knew it.

The Combat Control Computer told us to stand pat where we were, since they had already thrown everything they could afford at us. I was less than enthused by this order because our ammunition was very low, and Kazimierz, Zuzanna's tank, was entirely out.

But orders were orders, and Agnieshka wouldn't have allowed me to disobey them.

I sent our drones, at least those that had survived, back out to watch for any more trouble, told my human teammates to go back to sleep, and went back on guard duty. Before my shift was over, ammunition trucks came right up to the front lines and we could replenish, for which I was grateful.

In another minute of firing, we would all have been out, and being out of ammunition is being dead when artillery is coming in.

Reloading went quickly, since all of our tanks had at least one manipulator arm, and I was able to turn the squad over to Quincy in good condition. We even had a full compliment of drones.

My shift over, I felt like some more socializing, and asked Agnieshka to call Zuzanna to see if we could come over. I shortly found myself on the usual forest path, but with a few major changes.

I was suddenly wearing a gaudy velvet medieval outfit, with tights, boots, and a cape! I was wearing a sword and a dagger, and I was on a big horse that was decked out in barding that matched my outfit.

Agnieshka was also in costume, with a low cut, green velvet dress that matched her eyes. She was riding to my right on a sidesaddle.

I knew enough about history to know that this stuff wasn't exactly authentic. Like, my tunic was fastened shut with a zipper! It was all similar to what you'd see in a 1950s Hollywood movie.

Before I could ask what it was all about, we were met by a very attractive young woman on a sidesaddle who was wearing garb similar to Agnieshka's, but sky blue and even more richly embroidered.

She had clear blue eyes, very long blond hair, and an enchanting smile.

"Good morning, my lord and lady! Thou wouldst know the way to Camelot?"

I couldn't figure out if she was asking or offering to tell us. I thought for a moment about trying to answer her forsoothly, but decided not to since I'd likely make a hash of it.

"Good morning. I take it that you are Zuzanna," I said.

"Indeed, my lord, thou art uncommon well informed. 'Tis a lovely day for a ride in the wildwood! Shall we be off?"

I decided
what the hell
and fell in with her game. Soon we were racing through the woods, going much too fast for conversation. Zuzanna's horse was even faster than ours, and soon she was a hundred meters ahead of us. Suddenly, a knight in black-and-gold plate armor charged out from some bushes at the side of the trail. He caught up with Zuzanna and pulled her from her saddle.

"Help! Save me, Lord Mickolai!" she shouted, kicking and hitting the knight's armor with her fists.