CHAPTER ELEVEN

I FIGHT MY FIRST BATTLE

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 lasers 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.

I saw three of their tanks eject their observers, and two of the humans got out of their coffins immediately. But an unarmored human body isn’t likely to survive within a hundred meters of a rail gun blast, so I ignored them. They both went down anyway.

Then, to my complete surprise, Number One and Number Nine came back on the circuit. They had each lost their rail guns and a sensor cluster, and near hits had taken out their fiber-optic links, but they were otherwise intact. It seems that the enemy thought that we were firing from the cover of the hills behind us, and most of their shots had been high.

Of course the hills behind us were mostly gone, but the ranchers who owned this land probably wouldn’t complain too much about that.

We had an absolutely one-sided victory, and the ladies let out a cheer! The Combat Control Computer and the general were complimentary as well, except for asking why I hadn’t called for help from the units on either side of me. I said that I had felt that speed was more important than firepower, and they had to agree that it had turned out that way.

The real truth was that I had entirely forgotten about the other units on my flanks. Dumb.

Then the third ejected enemy coffin opened, and the observer got out. I was about to send a drone out to pick the troop up when Number Three fired a short burst at him. Or her. I couldn’t tell. But the general never got a prisoner, and I bawled out Number Three. There was no point in killing him, whatever sex he was.

I sent up another radar rocket to verify our kills, and it stayed up for a full six seconds before someone over the horizon shot it down. The culprit was beyond our range, but we told the people in artillery about him, and a few minutes later his position lit up in the grey dawn. Artillery expects most of its rounds to be shot out of the sky, but those guys use smart shells, and every time a round is knocked out, the gunnery officer knows who, where, and what did the knocking.

The sensible thing to do with a shell that is not coming directly at you is to ignore it, but not everybody is that cool under fire. Every time you shoot, you expose yourself to more artillery fire. The firefight went on for some minutes, and while we lost a few artillery pieces to theirs, the Combat Control Computer scored it up as a decent victory for the good guys. But that wasn’t my squad’s fight.

My ladies and I had at least two minutes before the Serbs could possibly hit us again with tanks, but there was always the chance that they’d gotten a good enough artillery fix on us. Our present positions were now marked by a vast wave of heated air moving up above us and the piles of dirt thrown up when the girls had elevated their weapons, not to mention a few long trenches dug by the Serbian rail guns. One of them was over a kilometer long and two meters deep! Being buried a meter wasn’t good enough, and at our next stop, I resolved to have Agnieshka put me three meters down. Of course, if we were hit when we were that deep, there was no chance that I could bail out, but I preferred to not be hit in the first place.

Therefore I ordered Number One and Number Nine to stay below the surface for the first three kilometers while retiring to the repair sheds that were two hundred kilometers behind our lines, and I had all my other units, including Agnieshka, advance eight hundred meters, again below the surface, and the Combat Control Computer approved it.

We were soon linked up again through our sensor clusters, and a few minutes later the drones had our fiber-optic backup links in. The fibers are thin and fragile things. You can lay one behind you as you go, but there’s no way to move one that goes out to your side without breaking it. They’re cheap insurance, though, and they provide unjammable communications, especially back to the Combat Control Computer.

I spent six more hours madly switching from tank to tank, waiting for something else to happen. In twenty-two hours on the front, I had seen exactly seven seconds of action. Once I got more experienced, I learned that this was way above average. War is mostly waiting around for something to happen, and then being too scared to think when it finally does.

It was close to noon when Agnieshka heard from the Combat Control Computer. For one thing, I’d been advanced to Tanker Third Class, with all the pay and privileges of that exalted rank, whatever they were. For another, Number One and Number Nine were coming back, all fixed up. But the glorious news for me was that my relief was coming. Within the hour, a tank with a real live human in it would arrive, and I could go to sleep!

I’d hoped that Kasia would be in that tank, but no such luck. We had thirty thousand filled tanks on the line now, and the odds were against us meeting for a while.

The new guy was Radek Heyke, and he seemed competent enough, even though his diction left a bit to be desired. The fact that he’d named his tank Boom-Boom gave me a funny feeling about him as well.

He’d reviewed our positions on the way up, and had fought the same battle I had four times in simulations, so there wasn’t much to tell him. He settled in fifty meters to my left, but elected to stay only a meter down, where he could bail out if necessary. Well, that was his decision, even if I was nominally in command. You see, he was only a Tanker Fourth.

Of course, the Combat Control Computer could take over any time its little electronic mind wanted to.

Once Radek was in the comm link, I watched him switching around for a minute. He seemed to be doing all right, so I switched out and found myself in my cottage by the lake.

I was dead tired, but Agnieshka joined me in the shower and I made no objection. She gave me wonderful rubdown, knowing as she did exactly where I needed it, and then fetched me a glass of peach Schnapps. She was naked and looked a bit eager, but I just fell on the bed and was asleep before she pulled the covers over us both.

In the morning, Agnieshka was still there in my arms, her long red hair covering the pillow, pretending to sleep. I felt remarkably horny, and while I wished that I could have been with Kasia, well, she wasn’t there and Agnieshka was. From a physical standpoint, Agnieshka was wonderful, and this time I didn’t have to beat her up first.

Laying on my back, watching her as she straddled me, I felt ashamed all over again, that I could have hit someone so lovely.

She gave me another rubdown and then fixed us a nice breakfast.

"Radek is still doing well?" I asked over coffee, eggs, and sausages.

"Yes. He’s had no problems. It was a quiet night. Between the losses you gave them and the pounding they got from the artillery, the Serbs haven’t tried anything again in this sector."

"Good. When do I relieve him?"

"At midnight. You have an hour yet, and then your job will be easier, to a certain extent. We will have two more tanks with observers coming up then, and the plan is to split the squad in two, with two tanks with observers and five without in each small squad. That will let you work six hours on and six off, for a while."

"It makes sense," I said.

"Mickolai, do you feel any remorse about yesterday?"

"About hitting you? Yes, I still feel bad about that."

"No, I mean about the battle we fought. You killed twenty-three human beings, you know, and some men would feel guilty about it."

"I don’t know. Maybe I should, but somehow I don’t. I mean, they were just readouts on my sensors. Maybe if I saw their dead bodies in front of me, it would be different, but now, well, they were just a bunch of enemy tanks who were trying to kill me. And you, of course. Actually, I don’t feel anything about it, except I’m still damned annoyed with Number Three for killing the one who bailed out. I’m not proud of what I did, but I’m not ashamed, either."

"That’s good Mickolai. I was worried about you. Some soldiers break up after their first battle."

"I think I’m okay. How about a walk by the lake before we go back to the war?"

"How about a run through the obstacle course, followed by a little hand-to-hand combat?"

"No! Agnieshka, I’m still sort of tired. Yesterday was a long day!"

"Have it your own way, lover, for today anyhow. But we’ve got to keep you in shape, even if we are in combat. But if you won’t do PT, how about some combat simulations? I have a dozen new ones from the fighting on the front in the last day or so."

"How is Kasia? Is she still all right?"

"She’s not on the casualty lists, Mickolai. She should be fine."

"Tell you what. You send her a message telling her that I’m okay and that I still love her, and I’ll run through these simulations with you."

"You’ve got a deal," she said.

So there I was in a tank that didn’t feel like Agnieshka, with two empties subordinate to me. After a minute or so, an enemy popped up out of the ground on my left flank, not half a kilometer away. I knew it was a Serb because you always knew where your own people were, and he wasn’t one of us. While the Serbian was taking out one of my empties, I had the other two of us blow him out of the ground.

Then I was scouting way out in the open, alone, and was soon under an artillery attack. I started shooting out their shells while yelling for help and giving our own artillery the trajectories of the incoming shells, but their rounds were getting closer every time.

Their rate of fire was about half again faster than I could knock them down, and the mathematics of the situation seemed inexorable. I popped out of the ground, and started running in a random zigzag, but those damned artillery shells had terminal guidance systems, and things didn’t get any better.

Worse, I was running the risk of stepping on a land mine.

Finally, I let loose with my rockets, to help out my overloaded rail gun, and I started knocking them out higher up. Things improved until I ran out of rockets. Then the shells started advancing on me again. They were exploding only eight hundred meters above me, and I was almost out of rail gun needles when suddenly the barrage stopped. Some of our artillery had finally killed theirs.

Hairy!

"Interesting," Agnieshka said. "You even used your radar rockets to intercept their shells."

"So? I would have used rocks if I could have thrown them far enough!"

"Perhaps, but the soldier who made that recording didn’t think of using his radar rockets that way."

"Then what did he do?"

"He died."

"Oh."

She ran four more simulations on me, and on the last one, I was killed. I didn’t see any way out of it and I still don’t. When there are five of them and one of you, and you don’t even have the advantage of surprise, you’re a dead man.

Agnieshka said that she didn’t see a way out either, but I had nailed one of the Serbs, and that was one more that the original poor bastard had done.

Then we were back to the real war.