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.
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 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.