Hairy!
Eventually, the exercise was over, with our squad losing only Neto.
He had had the bad luck to ram an enemy tank early in the battle. I mean really ram it. He was in an equatorial orbit around a moon of the gas giant Woden while his unfortunate opponent was in a polar one. Not even a Mark XIX Main Battle Tank could withstand that kind of a collision!
When we were back in class again, we found somebody new sitting behind Neto’s desk. The professor sadly announced that he had been forced to wash Neto out for psychological reasons.
We were all at first shocked and then furious about this!
Neto was as stable as a man could be and his grades were the best in the class, next to mine. He was a good friend and a member of the team, and now we weren’t even permitted to wish him good-bye!
But the professor was adamant and wouldn’t budge a centimeter. The Combat Control Computer was in complete charge until our training was completed, Neto was out, and that was that. I was so mad that I stormed out of class and the rest followed me, except for the new kid.
It wasn’t until the next day that somebody asked about the purpose of the long training battle.
“It was simply that you students were getting in a rut. You were getting so that you were all worrying more about next Sunday’s entertainment than about the task at hand. You are studying the Art of War, and warfare happens when it does, not when you feel like fitting it into your precious schedules!”
He said this even when he was the one who set up the schedule in the first place!
Well, maybe he was right about us getting a little lax, but dropping Neto was absolutely stupid, and everybody knew it.
The new guy, a Croatian with the improbable name of Lloyd Tomlinson, had started out in artillery. He wasn’t a bad sort, but he was three years behind the rest of us, and while we were in school he never did catch up, academically or socially.
I mean, in class, it seemed to him that he was studying with the rest of us, as we were during the earlier stage of our course. Talking to him about it during our weekends, when we met with each other in battle or socially, we decided that he was mostly seeing recordings of us, from Neto’s viewpoint. Mostly, but not exactly. A few times, what he remembered simply never happened, as far as the rest of us were concerned. But the slip-ups were few, and somehow the computer made it all work.
Still and all, our team was never quite the same again.
During all this time, the Serbs never caught on to what was happening to their prized division. Occasionally, patrols came around, looked things over, and then went away. They always heard exactly what they wanted to hear, because that’s what we told them.
Eventually, Kasia and I graduated cum laude, the only ones in the group to do so.
Along with our diplomas, we also received commissions in the forces of New Croatia. I made general and the others, except for Lloyd, who had yet to graduate, were made colonels.
I asked the professor how we could be commissioned without the knowledge of the New Croatian government.
“My boy, that could be a bit of a problem, I admit. On the one hand, it is traditional to commission you as I have done, if you were not already officers in your country’s military. The government should simply confirm your commissions once they are properly informed of the circumstances.”
“And if they don’t?”
“In that unlikely circumstance, I would imagine that you would be the de facto owner and leader of a very powerful independent mercenary company. I don’t think that the government would want that to happen. Acknowledging your commissions and paying you your salaries would be so much cheaper than any of the possible alternatives that I simply can’t imagine them not doing it.”
“I don’t think that I’d want to be a mercenary.”
“Are you really sure of that? Among other things, since you’ve obtained your forces at no cost other than a bit of time, the profit potential is enormous. Also, it could be a great deal of fun.”
“Your definition of fun must be much different from mine, professor. But as you say, the whole situation would be most improbable.”
After graduation, Kasia and I took a month’s vacation still in our coffins but in real time. The group had decided that the troops could use another month’s training, and Lloyd needed to finish his course. Neither Kasia nor I wanted to wait another four years before settling the Serbians’ hash, and getting on with our plans for a ranch, a marriage, and a family.
Lloyd stayed in school to complete the course, studying alongside of electronic copies of the other five of us, just as we were for the last five years in school. It was weird to think of him studying with me, but me not in there studying with him.
The poor kid was living in a totally faked environment. The professor said that he would learn better that way, so that’s how they did it.
I can’t help wondering what would have happened if he’d done something that couldn’t be fit in with everybody else’s reality. What if he developed an affair with Maria, for example, and she enthusiastically went along with it? What would Conan think about the whole thing?
But apparently, no such thing happened, so it doesn’t matter.
Or did it happen, but nobody knew about it?
If a tree falls in the forest, and . . . Oh, to hell with it!
Conan and Maria elected to stay in school and pick up multiple doctorates. They rarely saw Lloyd there.
For reasons of his own, which I never asked about, Mirko opted for real time in Dream World the same way that Kasia and I did.
Our timing was fortunate, because two days before we had figured to declare the initial training period to be at an end, and to start planning to head out to war on our own, orders came from the Serbian Grand Command to the people that we were impersonating. We were to report immediately to the staging area at Beach Head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
PRELUDE TO BATTLE
I called an immediate meeting of the general staff, that is to say, the professor, my five schoolmates, and me. We met where we always did every Saturday before battle—in our “war room.” It was a big place with intelligent wall screens, smart communications gear, and more three-dimensional graphics than any six old-time science-fiction movies you’ve ever seen, all grouped around a huge round table.
Anything there could and would change just by thinking of what you wanted different, or by itself, to display whatever it thought you might want. I mean, if you were talking about World War II fighter planes, there would suddenly be a precise model of a Spitfire Mark IX on the table in front of you, and a combat ready ME-109 all set to climb into and fly, right behind you.
The rules there were such that while in it, anyone could make any change he or she wanted, even to other people in the room. This required a certain amount of discipline on the part of the group, and by general consent, practical jokes were definitely out.
At present, there was an accurate model of the enemy camp at Beach Head on the table, and maps of our valley and the intervening terrain on two of the screens. The rest of the walls were done up with stands of ancient armor, mounted weapons, and battle flags, just to give the place a martial flair.
After what had been to us more than eight years of preparation, we all had an incredibly electric feeling of this is it!
We were all so excited that the professor insisted that we go back to Combat Speed to give us time to cool down.
The wall screens began to show our division moving out of the desert valley where we had stayed for so long, moving with incredible slowness.
Professor Cee then had a waiter in full Scottish regalia give us each a stiff glass of scotch while a platoon of Scots pipers filed in.
“Confusion to the enemy!” he shouted, and threw his glass into a fireplace that appeared just in time to catch the shards.
“Damn their eyes!” “Their parents were brothers!” and “But I don’t like scotch!” came from the rest of us, along with a half dozen more flying glasses.
Then, as we sat back down, the platoon of pipers let loose, and we stood it for at least thirty-five seconds before I decided that I had better take control of the proceedings.