A Boy and His Tank by Leo Frankowski

“It makes sense,” I said.

“Mickolai, do you feel any remorse about yesterday?”

“About hitting you? Yes, I still feel bad about that.”

“No, I mean about the battle we fought. You killed twenty-three human beings, you know, and some men would feel guilty about it.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should, but somehow I don’t. I mean, they were just readouts on my sensors. Maybe if I saw their dead bodies in front of me, it would be different, but now, well, they were just a bunch of enemy tanks who were trying to kill me. And you, of course. Actually, I don’t feel anything about it, except I’m still damned annoyed with Number Three for killing the one who bailed out. I’m not proud of what I did, but I’m not ashamed, either.”

“That’s good Mickolai. I was worried about you. Some soldiers break up after their first battle.”

“I think I’m okay. How about a walk by the lake before we go back to the war?”

“How about a run through the obstacle course, followed by a little hand-to-hand combat?”

“No! Agnieshka, I’m still sort of tired. Yesterday was a long day!”

“Have it your own way, lover, for today anyhow. But we’ve got to keep you in shape, even if we are in combat. But if you won’t do PT, how about some combat simulations? I have a dozen new ones from the fighting on the front in the last day or so.”

“How is Kasia? Is she still all right?”

“She’s not on the casualty lists, Mickolai. She should be fine.”

“Tell you what. You send her a message telling her that I’m okay and that I still love her, and I’ll run through these simulations with you.”

“You’ve got a deal,” she said.

So there I was in a tank that didn’t feel like Agnieshka, with two empties subordinate to me. After a minute or so, an enemy popped up out of the ground on my left flank, not half a kilometer away. I knew it was a Serb because you always knew where your own people were, and he wasn’t one of us. While the Serbian was taking out one of my empties, I had the other two of us blow him out of the ground.

Then I was scouting way out in the open, alone, and was soon under an artillery attack. I started shooting out their shells while yelling for help and giving our own artillery the trajectories of the incoming shells, but their rounds were getting closer every time.

Their rate of fire was about half again faster than I could knock them down, and the mathematics of the situation seemed inexorable. I popped out of the ground, and started running in a random zigzag, but those damned artillery shells had terminal guidance systems, and things didn’t get any better.

Worse, I was running the risk of stepping on a land mine.

Finally, I let loose with my rockets, to help out my overloaded rail gun, and I started knocking them out higher up. Things improved until I ran out of rockets. Then the shells started advancing on me again. They were exploding only eight hundred meters above me, and I was almost out of rail gun needles when suddenly the barrage stopped. Some of our artillery had finally killed theirs.

Hairy!

“Interesting,” Agnieshka said. “You even used your radar rockets to intercept their shells.”

“So? I would have used rocks if I could have thrown them far enough!”

“Perhaps, but the soldier who made that recording didn’t think of using his radar rockets that way.”

“Then what did he do?”

“He died.”

“Oh.”

She ran four more simulations on me, and on the last one, I was killed. I didn’t see any way out of it and I still don’t. When there are five of them and one of you, and you don’t even have the advantage of surprise, you’re a dead man.

Agnieshka said that she didn’t see a way out either, but I had nailed one of the Serbs, and that was one more that the original poor bastard had done.

Then we were back to the real war.

CHAPTER TWELVE

MORE WAR

I stayed teamed up with Radek because the pair of new guys weren’t both guys. They were a husband and wife who had volunteered with the understanding that they wouldn’t be separated. I suggested that they team up with Radek and me such that they could take their relief time together, but no. They said that they would rather be in the same sub-squad so they could protect each other, and I let them have their way.

The Combat Control Computer assigned the married couple, Quincy and Zuzanna Tsenovi, observerless tanks Numbers Six through Ten, and gave Radek and me the rest. This meant our little squad had four rail guns and one laser on line, and two tanks with rail guns sitting idle because they were holding observers.

“Radek, I don’t like it, but we’ll have forty percent more firepower if we use our own guns as well as those on the empties.”

“Shit, I don’t like it either, but they tell me you’re the boss. Maybe it had to happen sometime, what with more troops coming all the time. Look dude, I’m tired, and I’m going to sack out. Use Boom-Boom any way you want to. Shit, but I’m tired.”

So I had Agnieshka and Boom-Boom move up to the line with only ten centimeters of dirt above us and started in on guard duty, switching from tank to tank.

Then the Combat Control Computer ordered us to start using the tanks with observers to add to our firepower about three minutes after I had already done it. Probably, they had planned it that way all along. I don’t know why I bother worrying about things.

I soon discovered that our empties no longer had numbers. While I had slept, they’d used their feminine wiles on Radek, and talked him into giving them names. At least he used an alphabetical scheme in naming them. Besides Agnieshka and Radek’s Boom-Boom, we had a Candy, a Dolly, an Eva with the laser, a Fanny, and a Go-Go.

Not what I would have picked, but the girls seemed happy with the arrangement, and the names weren’t hard to learn. Led by Boom-Boom, the most outspoken, they promised me a wonderful time, a mass orgy, as soon as the Serbs were beaten. I told them to shut up and pay attention to the enemy.

But as night wore on, their outlandish suggestions went over and over in my mind, like a catchy but annoying tune. I worried it, the way you worry a sore in your mouth with your tongue. You see, I’d never been involved in anything with more than one woman, and I guess the concept of having a bunch of them intrigued me.

I mean, a man only has the one set of equipment. What could you possibly do with all the extra women? I tried to imagine it and couldn’t come up with anything plausible. Yet you hear stories about all those oriental sultans with their huge harems. How did they use all of those women? They must have had some reason for keeping them, besides prestige.

But what?

It was another quiet shift, and at dawn, Radek relieved me. Agnieshka still wanted me to do some PT, but I had other ideas.

“You are still linked up with the other half of the squad, aren’t you? Well, Quincy has just come off duty. I want to pay him a social call. I’m still wide awake, and I’ll do my exercises later,” I said.

“Very well, if you promise. Can I come along, too?”

“Sure.”

Agnieshka was very properly dressed as we walked down a forest path much like the one in front of my cottage. But instead of a cottage, Quincy and Zuzanna had a cluster of oval, flying-saucer-looking things on stilts, like the ones that that Finnish company makes and brings in with a helicopter.

I rang the doorbell and Quincy answered. A stairway came down like the one in Forbidden Planet, and he was waiting for us at the top of the steps. He looked to be a healthy man in his early thirties, tall, sandy-haired, and athletic. He was casually dressed in grey slacks and a blue t-shirt.

“Good morning,” I said as we climbed up to the circular living room. There was a long circular couch around one side and a sheet metal fireplace in the middle. Racks of books and tapes lined the walls, and Mozart played softly from some large stereo speakers.

“I’m Mickolai Derdowski and this is my tank, Agnieshka. We thought we would pay you a social call.”

“Welcome! You are our first visitors. It’s a pity my wife Zuzanna isn’t here, but she’s out working. This is Marysia,” he said, gesturing to a very young—barely pubescent—girl in a conservative maid’s outfit.

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