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.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A BATTLE, OF SORTS
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.
Then we simply drove through the gate, past the single guard, and proceeded to our assigned parking spots.
I was beginning to think that now would be a good time to pass the Scotch around, since my nerves certainly needed it, but I didn’t do it.
I just sat there, trying to look like the calm, confident leader that I wasn’t, to keep up the morale of the others.
They all looked calm enough. Probably, they were faking it just to keep my morale up.
The Serbians had an almost all-male army, and most of those in the lower ranks were fairly young.
After parking their tanks and guns, some ten percent of our forces got out of their machines. They were all young, physically fit men who thought that they could fake a Serbian accent reasonably well. In the fading twilight, they washed, shaved, and smeared themselves with that combination skin dye and suntan lotion.