They set their squidskin uniforms for Serbian colors and insignia, and then hit a snag. When the Serbs issued the survival kits three months ago, they hadn’t bothered with making sure that things fit.
There was a fair amount of trading among them, trying to get uniforms that fit properly. Then they tried out their earphones, which linked them with the professor, and he was eventually able to sort things out. The fit of our young men’s uniforms was soon good enough to permit them to impersonate the enemy reasonably well.
Then our men got back into their tanks and guns, but did not refill their coffins with fluid. This kept them dry and ready to move out, but still protected in case we had to go to plan Z.
“I wish I could join them,” Conan said.
“You’re not alone in that,” Kasia answered.
“Unfortunately, neither one of you even remotely fits the appearance required in the real world,” I said. “Kasia, you don’t even speak the right language.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean that I have to stop wishing. Sitting and doing nothing is driving me out of my mind.”
“I know the feeling,” I said. “Professor, this waiting is getting on all of our nerves. I want you to change our time scale to, say, twice real time. But take us all back up to Combat Speed the instant anything happens. And I do mean anything.”
“Ah, the impatience of youth. But as you wish, Mickolai.”
We felt no change, but motion on the screens speeded up.
“You should have said, `Ah, the impatience of hydrocarbon-based humans,’ since even us old farts are thoroughly sick of this peculiar combination of boredom and tension,” Conan said.
“I thought of saying something like that, my boy, but I feared being called a racist.”
“Nah,” Lloyd said. “If you believe that machines are superior to humans, you’re not a racist. You’re a machinist!”
The rest of us studiously ignored him.
As soon as we were parked, our tanks had released some of their drones, to tie us together with optical fibers. In stationary and fairly permanent positions such as those we had assumed, it was customary to run these fragile cables underground, where they were less likely to be damaged. We still retained communications through our comlasers, of course, but in any military situation, redundancy is always desirable.
Within a few minutes, Serbian drones came up and tied us into the base communications net, for which we formally thanked them. This let us talk to the other Combat Control Computer, and to the Serbian generals, but not directly with all of their forces. At the same time, they could only communicate to our forces through us.
This was because of a point of military etiquette. According to the lights of the Serbian command, my colonels and I still commanded our division, and would continue to do so until we were formally relieved of our command. The ceremony to demote us down to being a mere backup for the other computer and staff was not scheduled to take place until noon tomorrow. Until then, it would be impolite of them to talk directly to any of our people without going through us first.
Not that the Serbians had any interest in talking to our troops, anyway, since to them, our people were all just enemy prisoners of war, but there it was.
We, however, had a great deal of interest in talking to their tanks, guns, and personnel. You have to be able to talk to the nice people if you are going to lie to them successfully.
Shortly after the Serbian drones went home, although at the time it seemed to us to be eons, drones from the tanks we sent in underground hooked us up to the lines they had tapped into while crawling under the enemy Combat Control Computer. We could now hear everything that it heard or said. We were hooked up in parallel to it, and could transmit as well as receive.
The beam of an X-ray laser at full power heats the air it travels through sufficiently to make it white hot, and visible from hundreds of kilometers away. But according to our calculations, at eight percent of full power, the beam should not be noticeable without special instrumentation.
True, every enemy tank contained and regularly used just such special instrumentation, but the Serbian tanks were parked far away from their Combat Control Computer, with lots of trucks and guns in between. We hoped it would be enough.
Further computations said that four tanks, at eight percent power and at a range of two meters, should be able to fry the brains out of a Combat Control Computer in about three hundred twenty microseconds, which we deemed to be sufficient.
Now, admittedly, all this was purely theoretical. We didn’t have a spare Combat Control Computer to run any tests on, even if we could have gotten it to volunteer. But it was the best we could come up with, and we still had plan Z ready as a backup.
Four other tanks, also using X-ray lasers at low power and at short range, were to do a similar job of murder on the Serbian command, currently partying down at the huge officers’ club.
Once all eight tanks were in position underground, I gave the professor a few more minutes to be sure that he could imitate his opponent perfectly.
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, my fine boy.”
“Fire!”
The lasers mounted above each of our eight buried tanks exploded up through the desert sand and fired, while the professor filled the enemy’s communications net with a loud burst of static. We gave their computer three full seconds of cooking, just to make sure, and the officers’ club was raked for a whole minute.
We heard a few dozen thumps, a short scream, and the crash of a tray of glassware that sounded from the club, and then all was silent. The Serbian Combat Operations Computer made not a sound in dying. Neither target looked a bit different being dead, except that they were both a bit warmer. Fortunately, nobody but us had an infrared scanner on them.
We waited for two minutes and nothing moved.
I ordered the tanks to sink back down into the desert sand, I had twelve hundred young men get out of the safety of their armored machines, and I prayed.
Our troops straggled forward in the outwardly undisciplined fashion of modern troops. These were not the brainless strutting marionettes that passed for soldiers in the past. These were all highly trained technicians.
The problem was that they were not highly trained as infantry.
Indeed, none of them had walked a single step for three months before this day. That they could walk at all was a tribute to the exercise routines done inside their coffins. The few times they’d used their rifles had been in simulations, and we could only hope that the enemies they went up against were as poorly trained as they were. The only thing that gave me any confidence in our plan was that every one of our men was using the earphone from his survival kit. They were each in constant contact with the professor.
The professor contacted the Serbian guards at the gates, the guards at the concentration camp, and the guards at the Serbian infantry barracks, telling them that the new troops, being junior, would be taking over their duties so that they could take the night off.
Most of the Serbians were happy about the change of plans and felt it unwise to rock any boats. In any military, nice things sometimes happen; the “Fairy Godmother Department” occasionally comes through.
Some of the guards were cautious, or suspicious, or paranoid, and called in to confirm these new orders. But whoever they tried to call, they got through to the professor, who faked it from there. He told them privately that the new troops had screwed up and were being given guard duty as a punishment detail. This was a story that any trooper could believe, and only two men, sergeants both, caused any trouble.
These two came down with mild cases of broken necks and were officially put on sick leave.
A team of our guards went to the mouth of the tunnel that went back all the way to Serbia, and relieved the small detachment stationed there. After the Serbs had left, our men were reinforced with two dozen tanks, just in case something unexpected happened.
If anything did come in from New Serbia, our troops were to either let them go about their business, detain them, or kill them, as the case seemed to require, with the professor monitoring all decisions.
Another of our teams went to the officers’ club, checked out the piles of dead bodies inside, and posted guard around it.
There were some forty-five hundred dead people inside the huge club, far more than I had expected. I had seen the place on our maps, but had assumed that they had shown not the size of the building but the size of the lot it was on.