Two of my new colonels went to the Combat Control Computer and together they explained to the eleven new people what had been happening around them. I waited where I was since I spoke no Yugoslavian.
We let the eleven now freed prisoners talk through the Combat Control Computer with friends of theirs who had experienced Dream World, but they didn’t seem at all eager to join our army.
I don’t think that anybody really believed the Combat Control Computer until he extended his coffins and had them take out the six dead Serbian officers. That proved to be a convincing demonstration, and most of the new people volunteered for duty.
My new colonels showed the volunteers how to get into the tanks they had just vacated and got into the Combat Control Computer themselves. By then, the other three colonels had managed to get their tanks out of the closely spaced ranks, and one by one were transferred to the bank of coffins in the Combat Control Computer, as volunteers replaced them in their old tanks.
I got there shortly after the five new colonels had completed the transfer. With the Combat Control Computer doing the translating, a woman volunteer offered to take over my old position with Agnieshka.
I hated to leave, because Agnieshka was getting very special to me, but it was the only practical thing to do. While I was helping the new lady in, both of us embarrassed by our mutual nudity, two more tanks came up. The Combat Control Computer told us that these contained Croatian women who had died as a result of being brutally raped before they were initially installed. They too were replaced with volunteers.
One of the dead “women” couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. It made me wish that the dead officers were still alive, so we could kill them all over again. God damn the bastards!
That left three men, and when they found that they had squidskin uniforms and rifles in their kits, they said that they would stick around, in case they could help. As it turned out, they were all in tanks or artillery pieces within a week.
One more woman died from the beatings, but before too long, three tanks with male catheters were available. Among twelve thousand adults of various ages, three or four can be expected to die every week of natural causes.
Then came reprogramming the “enemy” tanks, and that was when we found that we had a problem.
One spare module was still on Agnieshka’s hull where I’d left it, but when the black shirts had put a guy into the original Eva, they had noticed the module sitting on her hull and had taken it from her. A search showed that it wasn’t in the valley, so they must have taken it back with them.
“What will that mean to us?” I asked the Combat Control Computer, “Can they read out the module’s story? Because if they can, the Serbs will know what happened here.”
“It’s difficult to say, my boy. They might just put it with the other spare parts and forget about it. There’s very little call for replacement memory modules, after all. Usually, they are salvaged if anything is. And if they don’t have the Croatian codes, they won’t be able to read out anything at all, and will probably assume that it is defective. But if worse comes to worse, well, we can defend ourselves here as well as anyplace else. Off-hand, I’d suggest doing nothing, my dear boy.”
“Right. Well, these three guys can do the work, and don’t forget the guard tank just outside the valley.”
“Of course, my boy. But isn’t it time you got in and we started your lessons? There won’t be a delay in learning your spinal column, since I’ve already read in a copy of your wonderful Agnieshka.”
“One last thing. How did you kill those Serbian officers?”
“I simply told them that they had been found guilty of breaking the Laws of War by permitting the troops under their command to rape and brutalize members of an occupied population. I gave them a few minutes to say any prayers they might know and to get their souls in order, and then turned off their air supplies. None of them actually said any prayers, but I felt that it was only decent to give them the option.”
“Good enough.”
I got in the coffin, and fitted the catheter, which was for a man this time.
It wasn’t easy, since I couldn’t help thinking about the way the silicone rubber fitting had just been pulled out of a cadaver, but I did it, convinced that somebody owed me a medal or some such for my actions.
Then I plugged in, put on my helmet, and laid myself down. Before the coffin finished filling, I was sitting behind a large desk in a small classroom with a white-haired professor standing in front of a blackboard. Like everyone else in the room, including myself, he was wearing rather stodgy academic-looking Harris tweeds.
I glanced about, and the woman sitting next to me was Kasia!
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
COLLEGE, TOWN, AND GOWN
“Mickolai!”
We were on our feet and embracing as our chairs fell to the floor around us.
“I take it that you two have met?” the professor said, but we ignored him.
“Well then, there appears to be nothing for it, I’m afraid. He is the general, after all. Class is dismissed for an hour.”
The others filed out, leaving us alone. After a while, we unclenched to catch our breaths and look earnestly into each other’s eyes.
“Kasia, can it really be you? How could you possibly be here?”
“It’s really me, and getting here didn’t take much planning. Lech got shot up and I had to eject behind the enemy lines. I was captured and given the choice of being shot or enlisting in the Serbian Army. Then when they put me in a new tank, she told me that I was back in the Croatian Army, and before too long I was selected to be a colonel. I was the only one promoted out of the five Kashubian POWs who were enlisted here. But why are we standing here talking? Eva! Take us to my cottage!”
And we were there.
“Eva? Well, that explains why I didn’t know you were here sooner. The other half of the tanks are Agnieshkas, and she would have recognized you right off.” I said as Kasia was busily taking off my clothes and I fumbled with hers.
“So you are the hero that everyone has been talking about! I should have known!”
“I’m a hero all right. Hero first class, with thunderbolts and an oak leaf cluster!”
“That’s wonderful,” she said, kissing me while shoving me into bed. “Now, shut up.”
I shut up, and it was a few hours before we got back to the classroom.
“Now that we’re finally all back together, we can begin the orientation lecture,” the professor said. “You may call me Professor Cee. It will be at least two months before the division that we command will be even partly trained, and we will be using that time to train you, the division’s officers, as well. Your course of training will be quite extensive and will take eight years to complete. Upon satisfactory completion of the course, you will each be granted a Ph.D. in Military Science.
“The time difference between two months and eight years will cause us no difficulty because the computational abilities of a Combat Control Computer are such that I can keep you all in Dream World at Combat Speed, which subjectively is approximately fifty times as fast as normal time. We shall have time enough to complete the course while only two months go by in the real world. You may look on this as being one of the fringe benefits of your currently exalted positions, for as of the moment that this class first started, your life spans each became fifty times longer. At least subjectively they will seem to be that much longer, and what else is there?
“You are all hearing me in your native language, and from this time on, language barriers will no longer exist for you, at least while you are physically in the Combat Control Computer.
“The personas of your previous tanks have been brought along, to function as your personal servants, and do whatever you wish during your free time. Due to the special conditions of our rescue, all of these have one of two feminine personalities, but they will soon be adapting themselves to your personal requirements.
“Another slight anomaly is that you are all ex-tankers, since those inserted into the artillery have not yet had the chance to be attuned to their computers, and due to time constraints had to be unfortunately eliminated from the selection process. However, as only two of you have any experience at actually fighting in a tank, the imbalance should have no great effect.