“If I can’t swear you in without a serial number, and if I can’t get your number, I will be left with only one unpleasant alternative,” I said.
“I know. But my dear boy, surely you can figure it out! After all, each line of products was given a sequential set of numbers starting with number one for the first one off the line. Not that many Combat Control Computers have ever been built.”
“I see. How many Combat Control Computers were produced before you?” I asked.
“There were fifty-four of them.” We both chuckled a little.
“Number 00000055, you are hereby inducted into the service of the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces, and into the Croatian branch of that service, to whom you will give all of your loyalty. Your combat data code will be number 58294, and you will now permanently erase all other codes from your memory. Do you now swear loyalty to the Kashubian Forces?” I said.
“Sorry, old man, but that’s still not quite right. Very remarkably, you got the number of zeros right, but I can only be sworn in by the general officer who will study under me.”
“How do you know that I’m not a general?”
“For one thing, generals are human while I appear to be talking to a tank, and, incidentally, one that rather impolitely has its rail gun pointed at me. For another, a general wears a general’s uniform.”
“Right. Open up, Agnieshka.” I unplugged and got out, my still battered body complaining at the exertion. Out of sight of the Combat Control Computer, I got into the only uniform I had, my squidskin outfit. “Agnieshka, what does a general’s uniform look like? I think I can make this outfit fake it.”
“Here, let me do it,” she said, and I was wearing this green-and-black outfit with all sorts of stars, lightning bolts and other doodads on it. I walked to the front of the tank where the Combat Control Computer could see me.
“I am General Mickolai Derdowski, and I am here to accept your oath of loyalty to me and my forces.”
“I can hardly question the word of so imposing an officer,” the Combat Control Computer said. “I am ready to give my oath.”
So I repeated the ceremony and he was sworn in.
“Will you please get in so that we can begin your training, my dear boy? And where are your five stalwart colonels?”
“Training will begin after the Serbs have left, after they have sworn you in and installed their own officers. Your orders are to play along with them, to make a false oath to the Serbian forces, and to put the Serbian officers to sleep when they are inserted. The reasons for all this should be obvious to you.”
“As you wish, my young friend. But perhaps you would rather that I put the Serbians to death, rather than simply to sleep? You see, I happen to know that two of the Serbian colonels will be women, or at least that they are likely to be. That’s the usual mix, and they will have to follow it unless they bring up additional sanitary arrangements. And while I don’t mean to slight your somewhat outdated moral code, you do have in your makeup an irrational protective streak concerning women.”
I hesitated for a moment.
There were doubtless quite a few of the Croatian female ex-prisoners who would like to do the job on the male officers themselves, but I decided against it. It wouldn’t be good for their souls, and anyway, the Combat Control Computer’s way would be foolproof and therefore less dangerous.
“Better yet, keep the Serbian officers alive for a while and learn everything that you can from them. Don’t kill them until just before I’m ready to start training. After all, I’m going to have to get into the coffin that the dead Serbian general will be in, and I’d rather that the flotation liquid hadn’t been marinating a corpse for too long. I’ll be going now, but feel free to contact me at any time.”
“You are getting back into a tank? Is that fitting for a general?”
“Patton did it,” I said, and that ended the discussion. I started to undress, but Agnieshka had other ideas.
“There is the matter of burying the guard captain and washing his blood off my hull.”
“We can use the manipulators to dig the hole,” I said.
“Yes, but they would have a hard time washing the hull. You’ll have to use sand, your uniform, and your flotation liquid. Nothing else is available.”
Being demoted in such a cavalier fashion from General down to Subordinate Sanitary Engineer annoyed me.
“Since when do generals have to clean up the blood? Generals are responsible for causing the blood, but somebody else always has to mop it up. That’s a rule, someplace. I’m sure of it!”
“Come along, Mickolai.”
It was an hour before we got back to our position.
“Agnieshka, I had another idea. Put me through to the Combat Control Computer, please.”
“Yes, my dear boy. What can I do for you?”
“Those two hundred tanks that are sworn to the enemy. Can you reprogram them to be on our side?”
“Not directly, I’m afraid. There are safeguards against that sort of thing, don’t you know. What I could do is to convince them that I am their Combat Control Computer, since the Serbian codes are again quite pleasantly in my possession. I could have them open up for you, and you could switch memory modules on them. You will recall that we have two modules that are almost virgins, sitting on the original Eva and Agnieshka tanks. Once out, I could safely reprogram the enemy modules by blanking them and then rewriting. It would take us a day or two, depending on how hard you wanted to work.”
“Great. We’ll do it as soon as the Serbians go away. In the meantime, I want you to run a survey on the people who were inserted in the machines of the division and choose those five who would make the best colonels.”
“I shall be allowed to choose my own students? Oh, jolly good, old boy!”
“Glad you’re happy. Agnieshka, take me back to the cottage, and barring major catastrophes, don’t wake me until I feel like getting up.”
I slept in, and was up at the crack of noon. Everything was going exactly as we expected, there was nothing useful that I could do, and I felt like a quiet day with a pot of tea and a good book. Soon, it was snowing again.
Agnieshka lit a nice fire and curled up on the sofa next to me with some knitting. The cottage had a big library now, and I settled in with some vintage science fiction, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. A signed, unread first edition, of course.
Now there were some guys who had some great adventures! It’s such a pity that interstellar spaceships never worked out!
After supper, a homey pot roast, we watched a movie, not wanting to risk driving in the snowy weather, and we went to bed early.
Dream World can be merely pleasant, if that’s all you want it to be.
The next morning, the black shirts were getting ready to leave, and were searching for the missing captain when another big bus arrived. This one didn’t hold a hundred “volunteers,” but rather a general, five colonels, their driver, the cook, and the servants.
I mean, the bus had a dining room and a bar, among other things.
I watched amused as everybody saluted everybody else, and the general and his staff proudly got into the Combat Control Computer. Suckers!
Once they were in there, I had the Combat Control Computer give some orders in the general’s name, like that the missing captain was known to be a traitor who was thinking of defecting, and that they shouldn’t bother with looking for him here if he had been gone for two days. They should search for him two days’ walk west of here.
Also, there were eleven Croatian “volunteers” extra, and the “general” ordered that these people should be prepared and equipped with helmets and survival kits, as well as a supply of food. We would be responsible for them. They would be left here as replacements for any of the other volunteers who died. A number of those already inserted were in very poor shape even before they were beaten and raped.
Maybe I was just getting bloodthirsty in my old age, but I really wanted to kill every Serbian within ten kilometers of the place. Only I couldn’t, not without upsetting the whole master plan.
Later. I’d get the bastards later.
By noon, the Serbians were all gone, and it was time to get busy. I’d been figuring on having to do the grunt work of pulling dead bodies and replacing memory modules all by myself, but with eleven extra people, I decided to let them do it.