In Another World With my Tank
Chapter the Third
This is Chapter Three, for Chapter One, go here.
In Another World With my Tank.
Chapter 3
Bestaubt sind die Gesichter,
Doch froh ist unser Sinn,
‘Hold up Alice, what do you mean, ‘embodied’?’ Asked Mike, confused.
‘I mean, this either this storage coffin for my maintenance body is fucking frigid, or I’m really really excited to be alive, Staff Sarn’t.’ Replied Alice, with an audible tooth chattering shiver in her speech.
Mike Norman was not ready for this conversation. Not at all. Death by top attack ATM, yes. Reincarnation of himself and his AI in rude flesh, not so much.
‘Cyber-tank Alice-3752, maintenance mode, pop seals and release operator-assist androne.’
As Mike opened and emerged from his operator’s hatch, below and in front of the completely unnamed rear mounted main turret, he caught his first glimpse of Alice’s new form, lying there in the storage coffin for the maintenance assist androne body that each tank was issued with for those maintenance tasks that required two sets of hands. In place of chrome steel enamelled black was starkly pale flesh, blonde hair spilled out in a rumpled halo, and a bright, cheeky grin. Mike’s aim with the thrown poncho was precise, covering grin and headlights alike without comment or wasted motion.
‘Hey!’ Said Alice, somewhat muffled by rubberised plastic.
‘You’ve always been a brat, Alice, only now you have cheeks I can spank, so don’t test me. Put this on and get in the damn crew compartment.’
‘Yes Mike, is that a promise?’
‘Come over here and find out. Are you still linked to the tank?’ Mike asked as he got out of the hatch, ducking back into his position, to allow the half naked woman to clamber long slim pink legs and woodland print rubberised plastic barely covering the hardware turned software T&A into his tank. This was going to get awkward. More awkward.
Alice closed her eyes as she sat her rump in the now folded down jump seat for the optional assistant operator, paying attention to her sensation of having two bodies. One was the ripe piece of girl flesh with ample assets, the other was 80-tones of state of the art war machine.
‘Oh yeah Mike, I’m still me.’
‘Great,’ said Michael Norman, formerly Staff Sergeant Norman of Crowe’s Cavaliers ltd, now independent owner operator of one damaged but embodied cyber-tank, low on ammo, as he lowered himself into the crew compartment moving past his operator’s station to the rear of the crew deck, ‘because we’re not in Kansas anymore.’
Overhead, through the open hatch, loomed two ringed moons in the afternoon’s achingly pale blue sky.
‘Alice,’ prompted Mike as he reached his new hunched over perch in the crew internal stowage bustle, where he began rifling through his duffels for something to put his half nekkid tank-girl in, ‘punch an aerodrone up and out, spiral search pattern.’
‘Are you sure Mike? We only have three of them left,’ asked Alice even as she closed her eyes to comply, concentrating just so to pop open the cover of one of the vertical launch cells on the turret’s rear deck and extend the launch rails for the built in EM catapults.
‘I’m sure as shit we only have about a weeks worth of tin rats and less of water stowed, and staying put in hopes of being found when we have zero radio contact is just a slow death. But moving out blindly without a clear objective is asking to die quickly. Here put these on.’
There was a muffled ‘thump’ from the drone launch and Alice opened her eyes and accepted a set of PTs from Mike; athletic shorts, sweat pants, tee-shirt with Cavaliers logo, and hooded zip up sweatshirt, also emblazoned. Mike didn’t even pause to watch or steal any looks, only returned to his scope, spinning the remote controlled operator’s hunter-killer gun-sight in a slow panning 360, cycling through camera vision modes, in near autonomous drilled reflex.
Alice was just as worried as Mike about the complete lack of EM signals, part of her… job, was she still running programming? No, Alice shook her head privately, whatever happened has freed me, I’m a machine no longer. Part of Alice’s job was routine cycling through the frequencies available to the high power military radio set, which is to say, nearly all of them, but there was nothing but static on all bands, even civilian FM was silent as the grave. Together with the alien sky the implications were startling, horrifying even. But neither said anything about it. Form square and carry on was all they had.
‘Good news, bad news, Mike,’ said Alice an hour later, the setting twin alien Suns turning the oddly green-blue evening hued sky blood red on the horizon.
‘You found civilisation?’
‘And it looks like a human people civilisation too!’ Alice put the take from the drone up on the main shared MFD.
On the screen Mike could see a shaky, zoomed in view of what looked like an attractive woman dressed in a vaguely medieval-looking shimmering silk-like embroidered kirtle-dress, talking with some sort of god-botherer in black robes adorned with mystical diagrams in contrasting white, although this priest was also holding an iron helm with a nasal nested under one arm and was leaning on very club-like walking stick with the other.
‘What’s the bad news then?’
‘They’re under siege by green pig-men, and the outer castle palisade is on fire.’
‘Well, that’s the sound of the guns then.’ Mike was already looking at the map generated from the drone during it’s long spiral survey of the local area.
‘But to whose aid do we march?’ Asked Alice.
Mike just looked at Alice then, very like he would oft look at the cherries fresh from the replenishment company when they said something particularly FNG.
‘Hear me out Mike, these walking green pigs are attacking defended obstacles,’
‘And?’
‘And that points to either confidence or admittedly stupidity, but perhaps they are the strong horse here! We just left one loosing war, why join another?’
‘Point, Alice, but can you speak pig man?’
‘Not yet! I just need some time to observe and build a language model.’
‘Then you have until we are in gunnery range to give me an option other than the obvious. And to be clear you’d better start working on a model for the defenders as well, we can assume fellow men are agreement capable, but not so these pigbeasts.’
As if to emphasise Mike’s point, as Alice zoomed out the drone’s camera to get a wider field of view, they caught the desperate action at one of the Castle’s sally ports where a party was attempting to break out. Perhaps to attack siege engines or maybe ride to summon help. Whatever the cause, the party was well armed and armoured, and well mounted on strong prancing and metal-scale caprisoned steeds, full of frenetic energy and snorting life.
The sally party rode hard against the pig man lines, banners streaming proudly, maile and plates shining, lances leveled and swords and maces flashing brightly and then red. But soon the braves were cut off and surrounded by superior numbers. The riders, one by one brought low, torn from their saddles and gang-stomped on colour display, in one desperate struggle after another.
The riders were savagely mauled then with knife and club, claw and fang. The ground was much wetted red with man blood then, and the animalistic, beastly attackers stopped not even with their foe-man’s demise, but continued attacking their deceased flesh, tearing out great bloody chunks with tooth and claw and swallowing it raw.
‘Fine, do the I was right dance Mike, you win.’
‘Continue to build both models, if those things have a language, I want to give them my scant regard before I kill them. But focus on the people Alice, get us a working pidgin so we can get paid for our heroic rescue at least.’
Alice focused the drone’s camera back on the well formed and turned out lady and the presumed cleric in black.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Muttered Alice to herself as she used laser range-finding and detection to read lips and begin her building of a glossary of sounds and their associations for her large-language-model.