TANK
By John Stilwell
July 2004
DAY 4:
It was two A.M. and the ground hadn't shook for
hours. The nineteen-year-old soldier cowered in the heart of
darkness. Only a few days earlier he had been surrounded
by his fellow troops. Freckle faced and innocent, he had
beamed with confidence and yelled boasts as loud as the
others. In space above, the largest United Forces fleet ever
assembled waited for the coming invasion. They'd been told
they would have the element of surprise and superiority in
numbers. Standing next to the new cybertanks he felt
invincible! Let the monsters come! In the three years since
the war started, the enemy had taken four colonies but not
this one! This time it was payback!
They came alright. They came only hours after the
defenses had finished being put into place. Now he was
cold and shaking in a muddy hole on the front lines of a
world he'd never heard of until just a couple week earlier. It
was dark and raining and his friends were all dead or so he
guessed. The UF fleet hadn't stopped the enemy armada.
Not long after the monsters hit dirt-side, they rolled over his
position like a tidal wave. Fast four-legged things darted
back and forth between the legions of the two-legged
horrors. Large ambling crab creatures carrying large packs
struggled to keep pace.
It was too strange and confusing a scene for him to
quickly understand what he saw. Were they all soldiers?
Was the wall coming at him legions of alien warriors from
different worlds? Or were the two-legged ones the soldiers
and the four-legged ones their version of war dogs and pack
mules? Hell, he couldn't even tell the difference between
their transports and their tanks! Either way, tanks, killer
robots and a frightening array of creatures flowed down the
hills at them like a flash flood! It was a Hindu nightmare in
armor with running and flying machines for heavy support.
Ambush! The Monsters took an awesome amount of
punishment but just kept coming! The Cody's lunged into
the heart of the mayhem without a care for their own safety.
When the enemy fell back, the troops gave a great cheer and
started to counter attack. That's when the flies came. A
swarm of tiny flying robot bombs came at them. Thousands
of them! They swept in close and started to explode!
One... Ten... A hundred at a time. It was a massacre! How
do you kill flies with an assault rifle?
The answer: you don't. So he had whipped out his
emergency hole digger and dove into the fresh foxhole and
plugged the top. Now he imagined that he was in his own
coffin. His skin crawled at the thought. It took the last of
his self-control not to claw his way through the hardened
foam and dirt cap above his head. But it was two A.M. and
the ground hadn't shook for hours.
He tried to pass the hours by thinking about the good
times, like school and girls. He used to acting silly in class.
But that train of thought led him to the lessons; in particular,
classical fiction. One was about hell. About souls banished
there, doomed to spend eternity deep underground in tiny
cells. The cells were just a bit too small to stand up in and
just a bit too narrow to lay down. They were just like the
hole he was in now. He was a larva buried in the ground,
hoping no predators came digging... But it was two A.M.
and the ground hadn't shook for hours!
He needed to know what was going on in the world
above his head. Was he alone? Had they won or lost? Had
the front moved on, leaving him behind enemy lines? The
young man stood up as best he could in the small enclosed
space and pressed his head against the foxhole's earthen lid.
Dare he take the chance of exposing himself? In his
spiderweb body armor, far tougher than old fashioned
Kevlar, he felt naked. If the monsters spotted his infrared
signature, his heat against the cold background, he'd be dead
for sure.
Taking no chances, he attached one end of a fiber
optic cord to his nightvision goggles and snaked the other
end out like a periscope into the darkness of the cruel world
above. He could see the silent battlefield that surrounded
him. Cold shivers ran down his back when he saw a
dismembered hand, laying on the overturned dirt, close to
his position. It was large and ominous. The goulish fingers
seemed to be reaching out for him. He quickly twisted the
fiber so it'd swing in an arc away from the horror. The only
other thing he saw was smoke pouring out of the Kurt, a
medium sized cybertank of the new kind. Its battered armor
body was gouged and pulled as if it had been made out of
clay. The new robot tanks were supposed to be better than
the old ones. These weren't simple artificial intelligence
units but the new state of the art brain dumps. They were
supposed to be more agile and clever because they actually
thought like the best of the best tank commanders in the
United Forces! (Sigh) It looked so pathetic now. A child's
toy, broken and cast aside.
The Cody's had been the first to go. Small, agile
scout tanks, they threw themselves suicidally at the enemy
in the first minutes of the attack. It was like David against
Goliath but the lightly armored Cody's ultimately failed to
take the wind out of the Monsters' advance and were
brushed away. The Kurts stayed with the troops thus
survived longer than the Cody's.
In the rear, the heavy Bruno's anxiously fired shell
after shell from their massive guns. But few of the heavy
rounds ever made it to their targets. It was a lesson learned.
Light is faster than metal. Unbelievably, the Monsters shot
most of the shells out of the air. What should have been a
lethal pounding became an impotent fireworks display in the
sky.
It was either courage or claustrophobia that caused
the young man to cautiously open up his foxhole and
attempt to creep out into the night like a trap-door spider
leaving his hole. Suddenly the sky exploded and he fell
back into the bowels of the land. Above him the fireworks
ended with a single pop! It was silent again. All he knew
was that his fiber and goggles weren't working anymore.
After a time, he cautiously poked his head out of the foxhole
for a second time and wondered what had just happened.
He didn't know until later what had saved his life.
* * *
Kurt-311 was hurting but being a robot, he couldn't
feel pain. He was stuck out in the open with his camouflage
paint burned off and his cermat armor cracked, twisted and
pulled. He was venting smoke from a small internal fire that
wouldn't quite burn out. His primary fuel cells were ruptured
so he couldn’t drive and many of his systems were fried.
However, he could still think and his two smaller guns still
worked. It probably didn't matter though because it was two
A.M. now and the ground hadn't shook for hours.
Kurt-311 was using passive infrared to keep an eye
on the silent battlefield. To his left the ground shifted
almost unnoticeably. Then nearby an iris of red slowly
opened like a portal to the fires of hell. Guns aimed, he
waited patiently for whatever was inside to poke its head out
of the hole. It was a man! One of ours! The tank felt
relieved, then angry. The fool! Didn't the young punk know
that the natural heat he radiated made him stick out like a
sore thumb in the infrared spectrum? He ached to call to the
man and warn him to stay under cover but his
communications laser had been shot off.
A hundred meters out, there was movement. A beast
machine raised up on its two remaining legs. Its nose gun
wiggled. Kurt-311 opened up on the enemy vehicle with
everything he had. His two small guns peppered the other
but the rounds bounced pathetically off its hardened alloy
shell. Not hurt, it returned fire. Kurt-311 was disabled in
the first few seconds. He was blind! What to do? Have to
save the man! In desperation he launched a small rocket in
the general direction where the enemy machine should still
be. The rocket was meant to miss the enemy so the beast
wouldn't try to intercept the missile until it was too late.
A wise man once said that if deprived of their
technological advantage, war was reduced to men with
clubs. In Kurt-311's last moments of life, he hoped the
soldier was bigger than the Monster should the alien
machine have a passenger and not be a robot like himself.
After three years of fighting, very little was known about the
creatures that came to loot and pillage the human race.
Pop! The EMP bomb detonated, radiating a harsh
electro-magnetic pulse. Short ranged and safe to people, it
was lethal to all electronics it touched. The field expanded
with lightning speed, frying all the circuits for a hundred
meters in every direction. Silence. After a little while, the
young soldier poked his head out of the hole in the ground
for a second time and wondered what had just happened.
He didn't know until later what had saved his life.
DAY 11:
"How do you feel?" the young technician asked.
"Where am I?" Kurt-311 asked. He was blind and
confused.
"Mobile depot," Corporal Heidi Hill, the technician
replied.
Kurt started a status check. He remembered now.
He was supposed to be dead. "But how?" Most of his
systems were coming up green. The EMP should have fried
all of his circuits. He noted that his ammo bays were empty
and his particle cannon's safety was on. Being disarmed
made him feel naked. And it wasn't the fun kind of naked.
"You got lucky," Heidi explained as she fiddled with
her test equipment. "You took a real beating out there. You
would have been scrapped but the Monsters hit us pretty
hard. We need every soldier we can get. Especially your
kind. Can you tell me who you are?"
"Me?" Kurt-311 replied. "Commander Kurtis
Robinson, one thousand twenty seventh armored Calvary."
"No, I mean…"
"A robot? Yes, I'm a brain dump of Commander
Robinson. I know that I'm just a shadow of his mind and
not the real him. I misunderstood your question."
"Good." The woman unplugged a circuit board and
changed out two of its components. When she plugged it
back in, Kurt-311's vision returned. She was a cute
brunette, slender and standing half inside of his body. "The
master copy of your database here at depot was lost in a hit
an run attack just after the big battle. You were pretty far
gone. I had to copy a lot of programs and data files from
another Kurt. I wasn't sure I could do it. I really didn't
know what I was doing. You're really complicated you
know. You're beyond anything I've ever worked on before.
The C.O. is going to be psyched to hear I actually got you
running again!"
Heidi bent down on her knees, disappearing into the
access space for a moment. Kurt felt strange sensations as
she played with his circuits. After a long moment, she stood
back up with grease on her face and a circuit board in her
hand. "Ah… Can I ask you a question? What's it like to be
a brain dump? I know that you're just a scan of some tank
commander's brain, turned into digital data and run in a
simulator, in the heart of this machine but…"
"But?"
"Well, did it hurt?"
"Hurt?" Kurt was amused. It wasn't the first time
he'd been asked this question. He knew what she really was
asking. "No," he replied dramatically, "I never felt a thing."
He would have grinned from ear to ear had he had a face.
The woman froze. "You mean? You gave your life
to…"
"To fight as a thousand instead of just one man?"
Heidi was speechless. All she could do was nod her
paling face.
Kurt-311 roared. The hidden speaker gave good
fidelity to his hearty laugh. "The real me is still alive! God,
where do you people get these urban myths from?" The
technician looked relieved. "The MRI scan I took wasn't
very different from what a doctor does when he scans for a
brain tumor. And before you ask, I know the real me is still
alive because I've talked to him."
"Really?"
"Sure. Not very often, you understand. There are
over five hundred of my model. It’d be kind'a hard for him
to be a pen pal to all of us." Kurt dodged the fact that he'd
only seen himself once. The real Commander Robinson had
been present for the christening of his production run. There
was a short awkward speech. He never liked public
speaking and was happy that his real self was stuck with the
chore.
Kurt-311 flirted all afternoon. When Heidi left he
was debriefed, where he learned that the United Forces fleet
had destroyed the much smaller alien taskforce but at a
heavy cost and not until after a sizable landing force hit dirt.
His own battalion had deflected the main ground invasion
but at the staggering cost of ten to one. They didn't know
anything about the alien psychology but it was a fair bet that
the Monsters were going to keep fighting. With their
spacefleet destroyed, they had no way home.
Afterwards, he retreated to his virtual club for a
virtual drink. It part of an entire artificial world that existed
inside the tank's ample computer system. When he was on
duty, his body was the tank. His feet were its treads. His
voice was its speakers and comm links. He could see from
heat to across the visible light spectrum and far into the
radar bands. His fists were the powerful guns. Off duty, he
had a virtual body. It looked just like his real self, average
height, medium build, dark hair and blue eyes.
The place looked like any other Officer's Club. It
was a box with a bar. Ordinary people hung out, mostly in
uniform. (Sip) The drink was cool and refreshing. He felt
numb all over while virtual girls danced on the dance floor
that wasn't really there. The room wasn't really there. Hell,
he wasn't really there either so it was OK.
A virtual woman walked by with her male
companion. They were only actors though. Merely the
computer pretending to be people. They looked real enough
but were short on small talk. He, on the other hand was a
person pretending to be a computer. Very different!
For real socializing, he had to invite over other brain
dumps. Before the big battle, he'd linked to several of the
other tankers to have a blowout party. The Cody's were a lot
of fun but got out of control. Through the course of the
evening, he'd grown to wonder about their maturity. As for
the other Kurts, well, hanging out with yourself can be
boring.
The Brunos were a little gruff but OK. Commander
Bruno Koslowski had been with the Mobile Artillery since
Kurt was just a kid. Bruno was happiest when everybody
else was just a little afraid of him. He was the get down-to-
business type who'd been doing the same job since you were
in diapers. You couldn't teach him a thing and if you tried
you were in trouble because if there was anything he hated
more than a wiseguy, it was change.
During the selection process they'd been warned that
it would be unsettling to wake up as a machine. The lab
boys described it like this. Imagine you woke up inside a
vending machine and you were destined to spend the rest of
your existence making change and dropping soda cans into a
slot for an endless line of customers. It doesn't take much
imagination to realize that you'd be very unhappy. Even if
you volunteered, you'd eventually get bored, frustrated and
angry. It'd only end in suicidal depression.
Well, here he was, a soda can dispenser. He knew
that the new tanks were critical. Three years into it and
parallels could already be seen between this and earlier wars
of attrition on Earth. The enemy had them out classed and
on the defensive. In general, UF lost ten for each one of the
monsters. Back home industries were pumping out war
materials at faster and faster rates. Unfortunately, you can
build a hundred tanks in a day but it takes years to make a
great soldier. The real test would be the side who lost their
best pilots and commanders last! That's why he had to
volunteer! He was the best of the best Tankers. By letting
the lab boys take a snapshot of his mind, they could mass
produce him at the same speed as the tanks they needed him
to drive. Now every tank would be driven by crack,
experienced personnel!
In a way this assignment was strangely freeing. It
was like playing a computer game. It didn't really matter if
he lost -- died -- because he was just a machine and the real
him was living a real life somewhere. Maybe the real him
would get married soon. They were and still are hooked on
Angela. Maybe they'll have kids one day. He'd love to see
pictures of them. He imagined attending the wedding. The
groom standing straight and tall. His brother, the best man,
looking on. Then Angela makes her appearance, walking
radiantly down the isle. Himself, a tank, would have to stay
in the back row of course so everybody else could see and
share in her beauty.
"He has to do the hard work, while I get to play,"
Kurt-311 thought. Maybe I'll shoot him a hello, he decided.
He linked up with a couple other Kurts who happily
accepted his offer and entered his virtual club. The party
pulled him in and the night sped away. He had a whole
virtual world to enjoy during his down time. He'd been
reading up on how to make actors, the virtual people and
new settings. It was going to be a lot of fun building his
own world.
At bartime, the virtual owner, another actor sent him
home. Kurt-311 stumbled to his virtual bungalow by the
virtual sea. He remembered the letter he wanted to write to
himself. Tired, he put together a simple how-do and sent it
on its way. It'd be a while before he got a response through
the interstellar pony express. Only starships could cross the
distances between the stars in days and weeks. Light and
radio waves still took years. Finished, he fell into his plush
virtual bed. "Angela…" he whispered longingly as he
drifted off to virtual sleep.
DAY 27:
Though the Monsters hadn't managed to land any
aircraft when they hit dirtside, they were quick to negate the
disadvantage. The UF recon satellites were picked off one
by one from the planet surface. Likewise, UF fighters didn't
fare any better. The Stealthy terrain following Hellcat tank
busters were the only survivable aircraft in the fight. It was
going to be an old fashion cat and mouse game.
It had been a long hard two weeks. Kurt-311 was
scouting when the probing attack came. It should have been
a Cody doing this kind of stick-out-your-neck duty but they
had lost all the ones in his sector in the big battle. The
Bruno's were too big and slow for jungle fighting so he and
his squad of foot soldiers -- Feet -- were trying to find the
enemy without becoming automatic pop-up bullet stoppers.
The jungle was getting thick when two fast, bird-
legged machines ran past on either side. They seemed to be
the alien equivalent of the Cody's. They were fast but didn't
pack much of a punch. Kurt-311 tried quickly swinging his
main gun but hit a tree. Angry, he peppered the runners
with his small bores. He crippled one but not before they
had killed half his squad. He cursed and spun his treads
high speed in reverse. Two of his Feet jumped out of the
way as fifteen tons of vengeance heaved backwards, spun
and charged the remaining running machine.
With his jammers screaming full blast, the alien
couldn't call for help.
It shot at him as it dodged back and forth between the trees
but Kurt's ablative armor only laughed. The saplings and
bamboo-like grasses fell before the tank's massive weight.
A bit cliché, Kurt played Wagner's, "The Ride Of The
Valkyrie". The runner was fast but it had to dodge zig zag
through the trees while the tank pursued in a straight line,
mowing the jungle down at sixty kilometers per hour!
They went over a hill and down into a valley. The
trees opened up, into tall grasses and a dozen Monster
vehicles. Taken by surprise, Kurt ran over a transport half
loaded with enemy troops. (Crunch!) He whooped and
hollered, driving in circles, shooting and shooting. His big
gun wailed to the percussion beat of his small bores. The
music blared! He generously spat out grenades until his
grenade feeders were empty. Finally spent and victorious,
he rolled out of the burning carnage and back to the remains
of his squad. As fate had it, no more of his men had been
lost and the runner had had a driver! The first prisoner of
the war! With all priority, they returned to base.
DAY 29:
"Hey hero!" Corporal Heidi Hill shouted at the tank
as it lumbered over to her for repair. She whistled and
patted Kurt-311 on the side like a horse. "Boy did you take
a licking!"
"You should have seen the other guy," the tank
boasted playfully.
"I heard about the warpath you went on." She eyed
dents and scars along Kurt-311's right side. "Keep that up
and we'll have to rename you Cody-311!" From the sound
he was making when he rolled into her part of the camp, he
probably had a couple cracked wheels. The electric drive
motors, one built into each of the wheels were probably shot
too. That'd be simple enough to replace.
"Thanks!"
"That wasn't a compliment."
"Huh?"
"You probably haven't heard, what with partying
with the Monsters then spending all day with the Intel boys.
We're fresh out of Cody's"
"I don't understand? There were over five hundred
of them!"
"Best I can figure, the Monsters were scattered when
we jumped them making planetfall. Now that they're
grouping, we're having a harder and harder time when we
find them. The Cody's were too anxious to fight. Too
foolhardy. When they smelled alien blood, you couldn't
hold them back. They'd just rush in." Heidi laid down on
her back, on a wheeled board. She rolled underneath Kurt-
311's belly. The treads looked good. There were three
obviously bad wheels. As she rolled out from under the
back of the tank, she picked up the conversation without
skipping a beat. "I've talked to a few. Can't reason with
them. They say they agree with you then do whatever they
feel like. Now there aren't any left."
That night at his club, he drank a drink to his fallen
comrades! "To the Cody's!"
"Hell of a bunch!" Angela, an actor, toasted back.
He'd created her just that night. Kurt was amazed at how
sexy her figure made the slinky dress look. He should have
thought of this sooner!
DAY 40:
The new and improved nightclub was classier than
the stock officer's club the lab boys had provided him.
Using the software toolkit, he had quickly expanded the
room, raised the roof, added balconies and alcoves. The
colors were bright and lively. The patrons, the actors
anyway, were now based on currently popular super models
and celebrities. He was surrounded by the best facsimile of
the beautiful people tax dollars could buy!
"Let's party," he leered at Angela. Being an actor,
she wasn't much on conversation but the rest of the details
were pretty good! He touched her. Her eyes may be vacant
but she felt right. This was going to be a great night!
"God damn it!" one of the Bruno's at a nearby table
barked.
"Hold that thought," he said to Angela and went over
to see what the ruckus was about. The four Bruno's he'd
invited in had as of late taken to hanging out with
themselves, bitching and complaining. They didn't like
being put on the front lines. "It's not how we do things,"
they'd complained. But since they couldn't hit the enemy
from a distance, the only option was to get in close where
the Monsters wouldn't have time to react.
"What's the problem?" Kurt asked socially. "You
guys still going on about being passed over for that
promotion fifteen years ago? Maybe you should let it slide
what with you not being real and all."
"We're obsolete!"
"Come again?"
"You heard us. Got word today that we'll be getting
new tanks soon and they're not us!"
Kurt looked back at Angela. Obediently, she was
still holding that thought. Yeah! Actors have their strong
points. He turned back to the Brunos, his eyes turning last,
"Sorry guys. But as they said when we signed up for this,
we're not meant to last forever!"
They snickered. "Did we mention that new medium
tanks will be arriving along with the Cody replacements?"
"More Kurts?"
"Pay attention squirt. We're all obsolete. The new
medium tanks are not Kurts. So, when we're gone, we're all
gone."
"Oh… But we're not even a year old yet."
"Sorry about it, pup. You forget we're the prototypes
and engineers love to change things."
"You know generals," Another Bruno added.
"They'll want to get rid of the old to make room for the new.
Meaning that we'll be getting all the suicide missions!"
Kurt felt he should have been concerned by this
news but wasn't. He was anxious to get back to Angela so
he pretended to be depressed and left.
DAY 45:
Word was passed down that there were Monster
sightings two valleys over. This was a bad sign. It meant
that the enemy had infiltrated their lines and half of the
colonists on this world were only a couple hundred klicks
further on.
Kurt rumbled past a pair of Brunos. He lit them up
with his secure communications laser. "Hey guys! How's
life?"
"Sucks!" they snarled.
"Good to hear it!" Kurt replied cheerfully and
continued on down the road.
DAY 48:
The Monsters made better time advancing towards
the coast then expected. Kurt laid down suppressing fire as
the pilots of two downed Hellcat tank busters limped to
safety. So far, the capital city was untouched. The Brunos
proved to be poor close-in fighters so they had been moved
to the outskirts of the city, the last line of defense as the
population evacuated. Strangely, the Monsters should be
able to hit the city but so far hadn't. It was as if they wanted
to give the locals time to flee.
DAY 50:
Perimeter duty was as boring and stressful as it gets.
The tank was left on automatic again while Kurt drank
inside his virtual nightclub. It was one of the perks of
living inside one's mind. He clinked shots with his two
Angela's and looked forward to experiencing male fantasy
number one. Finally, he'd had enough teasing and they left
for his bungalow.
The three staggered into the bedroom. He'd had so
much to drink that he could hardly see straight. He
playfully slapped one of the Angela's on the rear as the two
shapely women slowly got undressed and slid into his bed.
Kurt found the spray can of whipped cream and tumbled in
between them.
Suddenly, he was cold sober and staring at the
jungle. His body was the tank. His feet were treads and his
fists were guns. His automatic sensors had detected
something out there and yanked him into the real world. His
simulated drinking was automatically filtered out when he
exited his virtual world. After all, you couldn't have a drunk
tank!
Moments later, a general drove up and asked Kurt-
311 how he was doing. Kurt made the appropriate response.
The General continued with a little more small talk and a lot
of morale boosting slogans before continuing on with his
inspection of the front line. As the General disappeared
down the path, Kurt scolded himself for being so careless.
He didn't know what they could do to him for abandoning
his post but there had to be something nasty. He'd never
take a chance like that again! An hour later he was back in
bed with the two Angela's with the tank on automatic.
DAY 52:
"How come you never come visit me except when
you want something?" Heidi joked.
Kurt rolled up to the pretty technician, leaving an
ugly black smoke trail in his wake. "Because if I did, you
might think I was partial on you."
"Oh yeah? Well, big boy, let's see what you've got?"
Two mechanics hooked up diagnostic equipment while
Heidi walked around behind and opened the access hatch to
his power unit. "My but you really are a big boy!" she
declared, trying not to laugh at her own joke.
"You must say that to all the Kurts!"
Heidi turned serious, "Not anymore."
Kurt sobered up. "How many?"
"There can't be any more than thirty five of you left."
"Damn!"
During the repairs, Kurt retreated to his nightclub.
He'd modified his virtual body so he was a little taller and
had washboard abs. Angela, ever attentive, sat next to him
with her new and improved figure. "Four hundred and sixty
five of me gone," he lamented. For the first time since
waking up as a machine, he felt mortal. The fighting was no
longer a game.
DAY 54:
Kurt left the mobile depot and rolled out of the city.
At its edge, he passed a general. The man was furious. He
was angrily screaming orders at a Bruno. "How dare you
refuse a direct order! I will have you dismantled you
stinking piece of …" he raged.
Kurt would have found the sight of the puny man
trying to intimidate the forty ton killing machine humorous
but he had big problems on his mind. He'd just received a
reply to his letter to the real him. It was from his mother.
She obviously mistook him for being a friend of the real
Kurt. In the letter she tearfully explained that Commander
Kurtis Robinson had been killed in action. His transport had
been hit on a mission somewhere. God! He hadn't even
gone out fighting!
DAY 56:
Rage changed to fear as he realized what he'd done.
He'd rammed a Monster heavy tank, flipping it upside down.
It was more agile then himself and most of its millipede legs
still worked. The only thing keeping it from righting itself
and finishing him off was the fact that he was sitting on it.
It kept trying to flip him off but his fifteen ton bulk was too
heavy. Still, it tried.
It was a Mexican standoff. At the current angle,
only his small bores could hit it and they were ineffective on
this monster. If he got off so he could use his big gun on it,
it'd certainly kill him. Other enemy forces came to its
rescue. "Help me!" Kurt screamed over all his comm
channels. His particle cannon shattered runner after runner
as they came out of the woods at him. Feet, both his and
theirs were too smart to get close to this battle of the titans.
His reactive armor blew off in the first volley from the
intense barrage and his ablative hull below was beginning to
erode.
A Hellcat popped over the horizon and erupted in the
tempest. Then when Kurt thought he had the upper hand,
the metal millipede monster below him exploded, actually
flipping himself through the air, landing on his back. From
his helpless and awkward position, he watched the tree line
explode and collapse. In a few minutes, it was all over.
Several Bruno rolled by on either side. Kurt shot one with
his communications laser. "Thanks buddy! I'm glad you're
on our side!"
"Screw you!" the Bruno snarled back.
DAY 57:
Kurt was really shaken. He'd almost died! The real
him was dead so that left himself and seventeen other Kurts.
They may just be Ghosts in the machines but at least they
were still kicking! Jesus! He could have died!
DAY 58:
There were skirmishes everywhere. They had been
pushed into the city. Where was the air support! The fleet
should be bombing from space! Where were they?
Kurt was scared and on the defensive. Panic was
passing through the scattered ranks like a fever. Must
think! If there was only time to think! He crashed through a
warehouse wall and hid in the shadows. Feet ran past the
large hole in the wall he'd just made. Since they were
running from the fight, why shouldn't he? What good was
he dead? If he saved himself then he could fight another
day! Wasn't that the point? Eventually one side or the
other would run out of soldiers to kill. So, to kill as many
of the enemy as possible, he'd have to pick his battles. Run,
Ambush and run!
A thousand voices were yelling over the comm
channels in his head. The ground vibrated. Millipedes! In
terror, he blindly rammed through the nearest wall, bursting
out into the street. Missiles screamed over him. Smoke
trails of dead and falling Hellcats rose to the heavens. The
building he'd just exited exploded as he turned and fled
deeper into the city. There was chaos everywhere! They
were routed!
He figured he could hide himself under the sea. He
was waterproof after all, so he headed for the port. At the
top of the hill overlooking the bay, he looked back. Smoke
and fire blanketed half the horizon. Explosions boomed to
his left and to his right. At the shoreline, Feet were
climbing onto fastboats. One was so overloaded that it was
capsized as he watched.
He remembered the mobile depot, behind in the
midst of the fighting. Surely it had been overrun by now.
Did she escape? She had to be safe! He couldn't go back to
check. It'd be suicide! As long as he survived, the real him
wasn't really dead. In a strange way, he had become the real
him! He wasn't a mere machine but a unique individual who
deserved the same right to survive as the soldiers below,
fleeing into the ocean on fastboats. He started to roll down
the hill but stopped when he thought he heard the word,
"depot," in the sea of voices screaming for help over the
airwaves. "Heidi!" he called. Nothing.
Kurt stood there in indecision for several long
moments. Finally, he spun and sped back into the fight.
The Monsters were closer behind him than he'd realized.
The enemy were taken by surprise by the ferocity of his
counter attack. Charging, he fired his particle cannon so fast
and continuously that its barrel glowed red!
Screaming insults, Kurt crunched over enemy troops
in the narrow streets and rammed several runners.
(Screech!) They crunched beneath his treads and ground
into the concrete walls on either side of the narrow alleys as
he rampaged across the city. Finally, he angrily burst into
the depot grounds. God, it was still occupied! The
personnel had been cut off and were dug in.
Kurt spun around shooting anything nonhuman that
dared to stick its head in the open. Monster troops
abandoned their assault on the main depot building or died
where they stood. As fast as he could, he circled the
building over and over again. He was determined that
nothing would cross his circle of death. They'd have to go
through him first!
Three runners shattered before they could use their
needle-nose guns on him. Then a millipede machine burst
into the large parking lot! Kurt raced at it blasting away
with everything he had. The gleaming monstrosity fired
lightning back, blowing his turret off!
Unfazed, Kurt kept on coming, hoping to ram and
flip it over like before. It fired a second time, ripping open
his side. Fuel sprayed through the huge gaping wound and
caught fire. Mechanical and electronic components hung
out in greasy chains as he slid, spraying sparks to a halt at
the monster tank's armored feet.
In his fading vision, he saw a line of houses behind
him collapse. Two Kurts and five Brunos exploded onto the
scene, firing away. Kurt-311's daring counter attack had
rekindled their courage. Charging, they trumpeted battle
music as loud as their speakers could blare. One of the
Kurts was instantly gutted by a direct hit and rolled to a
silent stop but the rest kept coming. The millipede twisted
under the violent hammering. One of the Brunos and the
other Kurt caught fire but the rest kept coming! The
Millipede crumpled and erupted. The monsters retreated!
Kurt-311 died.
Across the city, the few remaining cybertanks
pursued. Soon the ground stopped shaking and the
surviving technicians and mechanics poked their heads out
of the ruined building. It wasn't until later that they knew
which cybertank had saved their lives.
DAY 72:
The Monster's back had been broken and mopping
up operations were underway. It'd take a long time to be
sure that they'd chased down every last one of the vile
creatures. The civilian population was returning to their
homes and the long job of rebuilding had started.
The sun was high and hot when the transports
carrying the new cybertanks landed. Corporal Heidi Hill was
on hand in the staging area to help coordinate the unloading.
Ten by ten the new models rumbled out of the ships and
headed to the new permanent depot for inspection before
being sent out after the enemy. First came the light scout
Oscars followed by the Davids, the new heavy artillery
tanks. The Amandas, the first of the anti-aircraft
cybertanks rolled past followed by the new medium tanks.
When Heidi saw that they were Kurts, she couldn't help but
shed tears of joy.
The End
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Author's notes:
This is the 1st of three robot tank stories. I grew up reading BOLO books.
I wanted to write my own robot tank stories but didn't want to copy Keith Laumer's
work. Spending much of my adult life writing software, I found creating a character
who is a machine is very hard! Most fictional machine characters are people who
just happen to be made of metal. The two exceptions I can think of are HAL in Arthur
C. Clark's "2001,
a Space Odessey" and Laumer's BOLO's. Machines can't have personalities. They only
follow a set of instructions a person has written. Any unpredictability
is caused but software bugs.
As an undergrad, one of my classes was in writing digital simulators. You
create a virtual environment. Inside this environment you build your
prototype machine. You test it, working out the bugs. Planes are designed this way.
They are "flown" many times in the computer before the real plane is ever built.
In the case of a calculating machine, once it exists in a virtual
environment, you can use it. You never have to build the real machine.
One of my Master's courses at Johns Hopkins was Artificial Neural Networks.
The idea is to design a machine based on the human brain. In the simple
sense, you create human-like machine neurons.
You then teach the network to perform a job. When I realized that if you
could somehow scan a person's brain to determine all the neuron connections, biases,
etc... you could take this database and put it into a simulated neuron network
and simulate a human. I had it! A working concept that I could use to create my
fictional machine character. To date I have written three Tank stories. I also used this idea in
my Novel "Death Is..."
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