These direct linkups at Combat Speed are quick!
The earth exploded as our laser and rail guns broke the surface and sprayed out their deadly accurate beams of fire. In the visual range, both types of weapons looked the same, a blindingly bright, absolutely straight beam of white light. My sensors nearly overloaded, but I could tell that some of the Serbs were able to shoot back. Then the world went black around me, and I thought for a moment that I was dead!
I had been observing through Number Nine, and she was out of action. Then Agnieshka switched me back to her own sensors, and I was alive again.
In three seconds, all the exposed enemy tanks were out, as were our own Number One and Number Nine. Then all eight of our remaining tanks opened up on the hill covering 11 and 12, and two seconds later the hill was completely gone, as were 11 and 12. Quickly, I ordered a full one-second burst at each of the destroyed enemy war machines just to make sure that they stayed dead.
I saw three of their tanks eject their observers, and two of the humans got out of their coffins immediately. But an unarmored human body isn’t likely to survive within a hundred meters of a rail gun blast, so I ignored them. They both went down anyway.
Then, to my complete surprise, Number One and Number Nine came back on the circuit. They had each lost their rail guns and a sensor cluster, and near hits had taken out their fiber-optic links, but they were otherwise intact. It seems that the enemy thought that we were firing from the cover of the hills behind us, and most of their shots had been high.
Of course the hills behind us were mostly gone, but the ranchers who owned this land probably wouldn’t complain too much about that.
We had an absolutely one-sided victory, and the ladies let out a cheer! The Combat Control Computer and the general were complimentary as well, except for asking why I hadn’t called for help from the units on either side of me. I said that I had felt that speed was more important than firepower, and they had to agree that it had turned out that way.
The real truth was that I had entirely forgotten about the other units on my flanks. Dumb.
Then the third ejected enemy coffin opened, and the observer got out. I was about to send a drone out to pick the troop up when Number Three fired a short burst at him. Or her. I couldn’t tell. But the general never got a prisoner, and I bawled out Number Three. There was no point in killing him, whatever sex he was.
I sent up another radar rocket to verify our kills, and it stayed up for a full six seconds before someone over the horizon shot it down. The culprit was beyond our range, but we told the people in artillery about him, and a few minutes later his position lit up in the grey dawn. Artillery expects most of its rounds to be shot out of the sky, but those guys use smart shells, and every time a round is knocked out, the gunnery officer knows who, where, and what did the knocking.
The sensible thing to do with a shell that is not coming directly at you is to ignore it, but not everybody is that cool under fire. Every time you shoot, you expose yourself to more artillery fire. The firefight went on for some minutes, and while we lost a few artillery pieces to theirs, the Combat Control Computer scored it up as a decent victory for the good guys. But that wasn’t my squad’s fight.
My ladies and I had at least two minutes before the Serbs could possibly hit us again with tanks, but there was always the chance that they’d gotten a good enough artillery fix on us. Our present positions were now marked by a vast wave of heated air moving up above us and the piles of dirt thrown up when the girls had elevated their weapons, not to mention a few long trenches dug by the Serbian rail guns. One of them was over a kilometer long and two meters deep! Being buried a meter wasn’t good enough, and at our next stop, I resolved to have Agnieshka put me three meters down. Of course, if we were hit when we were that deep, there was no chance that I could bail out, but I preferred to not be hit in the first place.
Therefore I ordered Number One and Number Nine to stay below the surface for the first three kilometers while retiring to the repair sheds that were two hundred kilometers behind our lines, and I had all my other units, including Agnieshka, advance eight hundred meters, again below the surface, and the Combat Control Computer approved it.
We were soon linked up again through our sensor clusters, and a few minutes later the drones had our fiber-optic backup links in. The fibers are thin and fragile things. You can lay one behind you as you go, but there’s no way to move one that goes out to your side without breaking it. They’re cheap insurance, though, and they provide unjammable communications, especially back to the Combat Control Computer.
I spent six more hours madly switching from tank to tank, waiting for something else to happen. In twenty-two hours on the front, I had seen exactly seven seconds of action. Once I got more experienced, I learned that this was way above average. War is mostly waiting around for something to happen, and then being too scared to think when it finally does.
It was close to noon when Agnieshka heard from the Combat Control Computer. For one thing, I’d been advanced to Tanker Third Class, with all the pay and privileges of that exalted rank, whatever they were. For another, Number One and Number Nine were coming back, all fixed up. But the glorious news for me was that my relief was coming. Within the hour, a tank with a real live human in it would arrive, and I could go to sleep!
I’d hoped that Kasia would be in that tank, but no such luck. We had thirty thousand filled tanks on the line now, and the odds were against us meeting for a while.
The new guy was Radek Heyke, and he seemed competent enough, even though his diction left a bit to be desired. The fact that he’d named his tank Boom-Boom gave me a funny feeling about him as well.
He’d reviewed our positions on the way up, and had fought the same battle I had four times in simulations, so there wasn’t much to tell him. He settled in fifty meters to my left, but elected to stay only a meter down, where he could bail out if necessary. Well, that was his decision, even if I was nominally in command. You see, he was only a Tanker Fourth.
Of course, the Combat Control Computer could take over any time its little electronic mind wanted to.
Once Radek was in the comm link, I watched him switching around for a minute. He seemed to be doing all right, so I switched out and found myself in my cottage by the lake.
I was dead tired, but Agnieshka joined me in the shower and I made no objection. She gave me a wonderful rubdown, knowing as she did exactly where I needed it, and then fetched me a glass of peach Schnapps. She was naked and looked a bit eager, but I just fell on the bed and was asleep before she pulled the covers over us both.
In the morning, Agnieshka was still there in my arms, her long red hair covering the pillow, pretending to sleep. I felt remarkably horny, and while I wished that I could have been with Kasia, well, she wasn’t there and Agnieshka was. From a physical standpoint, Agnieshka was wonderful, and this time I didn’t have to beat her up first.
Laying on my back, watching her as she straddled me, I felt ashamed all over again, that I could have hit someone so lovely.
She gave me another rubdown and then fixed us a nice breakfast.
“Radek is still doing well?” I asked over coffee, eggs, and sausages.
“Yes. He’s had no problems. It was a quiet night. Between the losses you gave them and the pounding they got from the artillery, the Serbs haven’t tried anything again in this sector.”
“Good. When do I relieve him?”
“At midnight. You have an hour yet, and then your job will be easier, to a certain extent. We will have two more tanks with observers coming up then, and the plan is to split the squad in two, with two tanks with observers and five without in each small squad. That will let you work six hours on and six off, for a while.”