A Boy and His Tank (30 page)

On the wall screens around us, slowly, smoothly, our forces were taking up combat convoy positions. The slowness was only apparent because our army was moving in the real world and had to move in real time. We were at Combat Speed, fifty times faster.

Back in history, it often took weeks, even months, for an army to go from a training situation to full combat readiness. With our personnel and machines, we were able to start moving in seconds.

The Combat Control Computer—containing all present company—was near the center of the column and surrounded by the other supply trucks. The artillery took up rolling positions around us, and was itself surrounded by our ten thousand tanks. By the time we were completely deployed, our "column" would be twelve kilometers wide and thirty-five long.

I blinked over to one of my favorite restaurants in town, and everyone there acted as though this was the ordinary way of doing things. I ate an excellent meal a bit too quickly, and blinked back with a heavy feeling in my stomach.

Then I spent the next two and a half hours studying the military situation, trying to work out a battle plan of my own.

Maybe it was nerves, but a simple, straight-forward way of attaining all of Kasia's objectives safely wouldn't gel in my brain.

Yet Conan's plan of blowing hell out of everything was definitely out unless all else failed. There just wasn't any way to take out a heavily armored enemy standing next to defenseless civilians without killing the civilians too. Rail guns were just too powerful. Conan's was a worst-case backup plan at best.

Kasia was the first one back, and since we were alone, she just naturally sat on my lap.

"You got it all figured out, love?" I asked.

"We think so. There are one or two rough patches left, but I think you'll like it."

"I hope so. I like your objectives, but I wasn't able to come up with a way of doing it that I liked enough to try."

"Well, we did always agree that I was the smart one," she said, giving me a quick kiss and getting up. The others were entering the room.

"So how are we to get a fair hearing when the judge is snuggling up with the opposition?" Conan joked.

"Because whatever we decide to do, my only body is really in a coffin two feet away from yours, and if you think that I would let the bunch of us, and mainly me, get killed just to butter up my one true love, you're stupider than I look. Especially when she doesn't need any buttering up. So. We're all here. You have the floor. Use it. Or are you going to make your lovely better half do it for you?"

"Hmmm . . . Using my better half to do it on the floor? An attractive thought, but I don't think I could get her to do it on the floor in public, so we'll put it off until later. You probably want to hear about how we're going to fight the battle, anyhow."

"True. We'll catch the raree show later. For now, talk about the battle," I said.

His plan was straightforward. We would cruise into the Serbian camp in a manner that looked casual but actually put every one of our tanks into a precisely prearranged position, shown on one of the big wall screens. The enemy Combat Control Computer, the communications building, and the officer's club would be simultaneously destroyed by preassigned tanks.

Fifty milliseconds later, every enemy tank would be simultaneously destroyed in the same manner, followed closely by everything else, including the tunnel to New Serbia and the local boom town where most of the Serbian troops were watering. The entire battle was scheduled to last just under eight seconds, worst case.

At no time did any rail gun fire get closer than two hundred meters from the concentration camp, but it still looked fishy to me. Two hundred meters was fairly safe for an unarmored human when one rail gun opened fire, but ten thousand?

I turned to the professor. "Compute the radiation dosage, blast damage, and chemical poisoning for each person in the concentration camp. Compute the casualties and total number of civilian deaths that are likely to occur if we carry out this attack."

"It will take me a few minutes," the professor said.

This surprised me. Up until now, his answers had always been instantaneous.

"Conan. You never asked him this question when you were planning your attack, did you?" I asked.

"Not exactly. But I knew that a rail gun was safe at two hundred meters, and . . . "

"Bullshit! You're not that stupid! You just didn't
want
to ask!"

Conan started to make a loud reply when the professor stood up.

"Assuming that all the internees are on the surface, and not dug in, I'm sorry to say that casualties and deaths are the same. That is to say, one hundred percent of them would die from thermal radiation alone. The same could be said for blast shock, chemical poisoning, and ionizing radiation. The plan requires that a quite sizable amount of energy be dissipated in a relatively small area over a very short time. A firestorm is almost certain to be generated, and there would be many casualties even among our own troops, even if the enemy never got off a shot, which is most unlikely. I must say that I was surprised at the results myself and double-checked all of my calculations. How could you possibly guess the results, my dear boy?"

"Human intuition, professor. Conan, we will label your proposal `plan Z.' Kasia, you're up."

I knew that Kasia would be speaking for her team since Mirko hated public speaking, even in front of a small group of old friends. Kasia started in and held our attention for the next hour.

In the end, I said, "I like it, but it's far from perfect. We will commit to it to the extent of getting the eight X-ray equipped tunneling tanks far out ahead of the mass of our forces. We'll call them `Forward Scouts,' if anybody asks. See to it, professor.

"It's getting late, but we will reconvene at ten, tomorrow morning subjective. Computer, put Kasia's proposal in writing, with suitable graphics, and put a copy of it on each of our desks. I want each of us to have a critique of Kasia's proposal ready in the morning. And by `each of us' I include the professor, Kasia, Mirko, and myself. That's all for now. Get a good night's sleep."

I don't think any of us did. I was up working until five in my office, and the bed was empty when I got there. Kasia's office light was on, but after eight years of living with the lady, I knew better than to disturb her when she was busy. I was too tired to accomplish much, anyway.

We were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at ten, but I suspect that some computer enhancement was involved.

In subjective time, we had until seven o'clock tomorrow evening to agree on a plan. It would also be seven o'clock local real time, when we would drive into the enemy camp. This was not by accident, but by a convention we had decided on years ago, and the computer had arranged our subjective "start" time to make it all work out.

We went over Conan's critique first, then Mirko's, and Maria's, before we broke for lunch. Lloyd got his digs in on a full stomach, followed by Kasia's new thoughts, the professor's, and finally mine.

Actually, I didn't have much to contribute, as it turned out, since almost all of my points had already been covered by someone else. And the professor had even less, since he, as the computer, had already talked it over with each of us as we worked on our critiques.

But given the fact that our lives, the lives of twelve thousand of our troops, and the lives of eleven thousand or so civilians in the concentration camp were all on the line, well, boredom, overkill, and repetition beat the hell out of leaving something out, losing the battle, and dying!

We reached consensus a little after midnight.

"Professor, I think that's about it. See to it that all the troops are briefed on the plan, and make sure that each of them knows his or her part in it. Make sure that everyone is in the best possible shape at the time of battle. Also, make sure that the tanks, at least, know the full details of the modified plan Z, just in case everything screws up and all hell breaks loose. Is there anything that I have left out?"

"Yes, my dear boy. You should have me put the six of you to sleep, so you'll be fresh for tomorrow's fun and games."

"I was going to suggest that, yes."

"Well, don't suggest it. Order it. And for yourself as well."

"You heard the man. No loving tonight, gang, and to all a good night!"

Then we all blanked out.

And woke up at six in the evening of the next day, still sitting at the round table.

Conan looked at the clock and said, "Now that was downright rude! We're going into battle, and you haven't even given me time to kiss my girl good-bye properly."

I was miffed for the same reason, but didn't want to say that to Conan.

"What for? In the modern army, she gets to go there right next to you! Anyway, it wasn't my fault. The long sleep was the professor's idea."

"It was
too
your fault," Maria said. "You forgot to tell him when to wake us up."

"Damn straight. Come on, woman. We've still got time for a quickie," Conan said.

"Hold on!" I said. "Professor, does anything need doing in the next half hour?"

"Nothing but breakfast, my dear boy. Everything else is right on schedule."

"Right. Take a thirty-minute breakfast break, everyone."

Conan, Maria, and Lloyd blinked out. Lloyd was having an affair with a girl from town, so I suppose that he really was leaving her behind, in some sort of a way.

"Professor, why did you wait so long before waking us, dammit?"

"If I'd woken you at eight in the morning, you would all be in a nervous frazzle by now. Trust me, my dear boy. Mother knows best."

I just glared at him for a bit, then said, "I order you to never call me `my dear boy' again."

"You're getting frazzled already," Kasia said. "Come on, time's a wasting."

And suddenly, we were home again. I guess she figured on having breakfast in bed.

At seven, we were all at our places in the war room, the digger team was approaching the enemy gates, and our forward units were just coming into sight of the Serbian base at Beach Head, on the horizon.

Our scouting tanks had encountered no enemy units on the whole trip in, which was passing strange. They had no deep patrols going into the deserts surrounding their base, and seemed to be depending for security solely on radar and visual observation from Beach Head. Even at that, their radar coverage was sporadic and their visual observation could not have been of much use, since with the planet's small axial tilt, the summer days were not much longer than those of winter, and the sun was already setting.

"I simply can not imagine a modern army acting so incompetently. After all, their general and his staff had to have gone through the same course that we did," I said to the professor.

"Doubtless true, my good boy. But a quality product requires not only good workmanship, but good raw materials as well. Now, you proved your basic worth by `liberating' this division in the first place, and then by allowing me to select the very best potential colonels from the large available pool. Serbian selection methods are more traditional, with the accomplishments of one's ancestors being more important than personal ability."

"Garbage in, garbage out," Lloyd said.

I grunted.

"There's another reason for the way the Serbs do things," Maria said. "We Croatians have only a weak military tradition, and you Kashubians have none at all. When the professor taught us a way to do things, we didn't fight him. At most, we worked harder at being creative, of coming up with new tactics to fit our new weapons. But the Serbians have been strongly militaristic for the last six centuries. Some of their families have contributed their sons to the army for twenty generations. Their children have grown up hearing the war stories of their ancestors. They've grown up knowing the way things are done, and no mere machine is going to tell them differently."

"An interesting thought," I said.

"She's right," Conan said. "Consider the way draftees have almost always made better soldiers than volunteers. The way ninety-day wonders generally make better combat leaders than regular officers."

"It still isn't enough. Traditions don't make you stupid," I said.

"I guess you've never met a peasant," Maria said.

"Maybe they're not being stupid," Kasia said. "Maybe they just know that when the enemy is far away, the smart thing to do is to relax and build up your strength, that too much concern with security at the wrong time can be counter productive."

"But their enemy is
not
far away," I said.

"That's not being stupid. That's being misinformed," Lloyd said.

"Whatever. Keep your eyes open, gang."

Despite all that was said, I knew that the Serbs
had
to have something up their sleeves, something that we were missing.

But what?

The tension was getting to me in the stomach, and an antiacid tablet appeared on the table next to my water glass. I downed it, thinking that it would have made a lot more sense for the computer to simply have not given me an acid stomach in the first place.

The eight tanks assigned to the task of tunneling under the Serbians were approaching the base's perimeter, timed to enter underground at the same time as the first of our surface units. The noise of our arrival would cover any slight sound that the tunnelers might make.

Everything was going so smoothly that there was nothing to do but wait.

Combat Speed is wonderful when things are popping faster than you can think, but when you are sitting there waiting and trying not to chew off your knuckles along with your fingernails, it can be a major drag.

I found myself almost wishing that some problem would crop up, just to have something to do.

As we approached the gate of the base, we got a message from the Serbian general who thought he was our commander, welcoming us and telling us to hurry up, since the party was already going strong. I had the professor answer for us, since for months he had been impersonating the Serbian officers we'd killed, saying we'd be along as soon as possible.