In Another World With my Tank
Chapter the Second
This is Chapter Two, for Chapter One, go here.
In Another World With my Tank.
Chapter 2
Der Tag glühend heiß
Oder eiskalt die Nacht,
‘Heads up Cavaliers, the 555th are in full retreat, multiple inbound tokamak-class land-cruiser signatures have been detected, and the cobbled-together multi-national division that is the triple-nickel ain’t got the bottle nor the kit to fight even one, never mind the accompanying battle groups. Three to one odds are long even without hypersonic delivered tactical nukes.’
Alice could see Mike through her cabin camera, see him as he scowled, distorted in the fish-eye lens yet handsome all the same, even as he grimaced at the Old Man’s voice coming over the command over-ride push. He obviously didn’t like where this was going. His hands worked almost without thought, Mike never even looked away from from his visual scanning as he typed, to bring up a contour map of the local AO on a secondary MFD in his fighting compartment. Alice cloned the feed into her own visual channel. There, only one bridge within less than a day’s road-march or more. This whole cockamamie offensive was about to get cut off and destroyed because the Nafotards couldn’t be bothered to bring up bridging units, or worse, didn’t have any to bring up.
‘General Howe has formally requested of me that us Cavaliers cover their withdrawal. Ordered it to be frank. Of course, I told him to pound sand, is what I’d like to tell yall, but you people know as well as I that our contract obliges us to consider militarily necessary orders as legally binding. On pain of forfeiture of the advance payment, breach of contract penalties, and negative appraisal of future contract bids on government tickets. I’m not going to lie to you men, we’re up shit creak and ain’t got no paddle. So I’m asking for volunteers. Four tanks to hold this side of the Dnipro bridge for as long as possible so the rest of us can live to fight another day.’
Alice knew the moment that Colonel Crowe asked for volunteers that they were dead. Staff Sergeant Michael Norman, her operator, her commander, her man, was that kind of man. She almost regretted quashing that dear John letter from that gold digging tramp of his, almost. She wasn’t quite sure when her emotional simulation daemon had been transformed by some sort of glitch, transformed into something more than a simulation, only that she felt like she was possessed by Mike’s love, like a piece of him was animating her subroutines, bringing them to a semblance of life. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
But even if he wasn’t afraid for the life of his mate, hostage to fortune and the good conduct of the bio-reservist reservation mercenaries, he would still have turned his face to the enemy, to the baleful artificial suns blossoming, that his beloved brothers might live. Again, that’s just who he was. She wanted to despise that sort of humane romance in him. It was getting her and him kilt after all. But she couldn’t. He was hers, her commander, her operator, her man, and that’s all there was to it.
Alice-tank-intelligence-3752 was therefore ready with options to suggest when Mike prompted her to move out. Routes, hull-down positions, fire plans, call for fire plans, all pre-plotted and ready for his approval. Mike barely glanced at her options, picking the optimal positions for himself and his scratch forlorn-hope of volunteer dead men. That’s why men still operated and AI ran support, killer instinct.
When the final blow came, Alice was at peace with her fate. To die here, with the best human-man, the best operator, her commander, all hers, well that was worth something after all. It was certainly more than that ungrateful wench back home would get.
‘Lock on warning. Lock on warning. Thermal flare detected. Launch warning, guided missiles in the air. PD engaging. Brace for impact. Impact.’ Alice said.
Then there was nothing.
Then there was something.