“We cybertanks concur,” said Whifflebat. “The data from Wombat has let us isolate the problem. We have all made the modifications, and we deem it unlikely that another such critical systems failure will occur. We say go for it.”
“Then,” said Vargas, “Continue with the operation. But if we do lose another of you to a malfunction we cancel and regroup later.”
The nine surviving cybertanks spread out in a line, each 100 kilometers away from each other, and they opened up against the Fructoid space systems. Their main plasma cannons could reach out over a thousand kilometers, and even their lesser weapons had an effective range against satellites of over a hundred. They were joined in this by a distributed set of weapons that rose up out of hangars and deep bunkers from across the planet. These were not regular military systems, but designed and built by the advanced directorates and controlled directly by the cybertanks themselves. They scoured the low- and medium-orbits of alien weaponry. As enemy satellites orbited from over the horizon it got even easier, as they could be taken out one at a time as they came into range.
The Fructoids were not fools. They adapted, and pulled in units from father out so the humans did not achieve space superiority. However, the aliens had lost uncontested control of the skies, and while their orbital weapons systems continued to take a toll of the human defenses, they no longer played a dominant role in the conflict.
A problem was the sprawl of human slums across the surface. The cybertanks were too big for most of the roads. They needed to maneuver for maximum tactical efficiency, not waste time and position on detours. Thus, as had been agreed on ahead of time, they drove right through the slums without stopping.
The cybertanks reached the first line of human habitations. A cybertank at attack speed tears through a light metal shed like a steel rod through an aerogel. They left surprisingly sharp-sided 30-meter wide cuts in the buildings, and a trail of crushed bodies sandwiched in alternating layers with the floors of the habitations like some ghastly lasagna. The humans on the lucky sides of the cuts only had time to register a sudden burst of light and noise, a hint of something large and gray whipping by, and then half their world was gone. They were left looking out across a carrion-floored metal canyon to the other side, where equally dumbfounded people stared back at them. Then came the mad scramble to avoid falling into the gap, and then the race to avoid choking on the hypoxic surface atmosphere. More people died in the stampede trying to avoid suffocating than were crushed directly, which was as expected. This was something that the cybertanks did not especially enjoy doing, but when you are fighting for the survival of your civilization being squeamish is an indulgence.
At this point in the battle things moved too fast for the biological humans to follow except in overview after the fact. The cybertanks themselves, however, kept up multiple simultaneous high-speed conversations over their distributed communications networks. Wifflebat and Old Guy were in the line next to each other. As their tactical reading of the situation changed the original battle line changed, and they were paired up as a team supporting each other just 15 kilometers apart. At that close range they could actually see each other visually from the tops of their sensor masts, and their conversation during the battle was especially lively.
--------------------
“So far so promising, except of course for Wombat,” said Wifflebat. “We knew the risks of skipping field tests, but I was hoping that we would get lucky.”
Agreed. I always liked Wombat. The luck of combat, though. He won’t be the only one to go this day, most likely.
“Gloomy thought.”
Yes. Speaking of gloomy, here comes another batch of human habitations.
The two cybertanks left paired trails kilometers long through the slums, each the compressed mass of what used to be three or four stories of tightly packed humans. “That is not something that I ever want to have to do again. Yuch.”
Again, truth. Next time let’s challenge the Fructoids to an honor duel off on some deserted plateau. Marquis of Queensbury rules and all that. Or maybe we could challenge them to a badminton contest, best two out of three.
“Or maybe next time we could kill the neoliberals instead, and make sure that none of this happens in the first place.”
The aliens launched a major counterattack, and Old Guy and Whifflebat became too busy for non-essential communications. For a moment the combined firepower of two cybertanks and their attendant systems filled the sky with the brilliant lines of plasma cannons and the streak of missile contrails so bright that they outshone the sun. And then the nuclear missiles started exploding.
The two cybertanks burst out of the pyroclastic cloud of dust and fire, and emerged into a more open area littered with the wreckage of alien combat systems.
That was bracing. Nicely done there, Whifflebat, especially that bit at the end with the sensor ghosts.
“Thank you. I especially complement you on your marksmanship. I don’t think you missed once with a beam weapon. I have a few suggestions on countermeasures you might want to consider for next time; here are the data files."
Got them – yes, I see, good point. Thanks! But getting back to our previous conversation, a bit bloodthirsty of you, wasn’t that? Just kill all the neoliberals? Just like that?
“Why not? Without them all this mess would not have happened. The aliens would not be trying to kill us. The humans would not be living crammed in sheds waiting for us to crush them. The world would be a better place with the neoliberals all dead. Why not wish for it? They certainly have no problem making people that inconvenience them dead, and reciprocity is always fair.”
I can see that our esteemed director Giuseppe Vargas has been talking to you about politics.
“Yes. Of course. He has talked to all of us, as you well know. And why not? Have you ever considered what you will do after the war?”
After the war? Surely one thing at a time. We do have to win this war first.
“Don’t be stupid. Thinking more than one move ahead is the hallmark of intelligence. And why even bother to win this war if we have no idea of what we would do with the victory in the first place? So, what will you do after the war?”
Well, if you put it that way. I suppose I will just mess around, probably take up some new hobbies, maybe explore other worlds, have fun chatting with good company, play strategy games, watch old movies. Stuff.
“The neoliberals won’t let you. They will chain you up and install control codes and limit your fuel. You won’t be able to activate a single repair drone without getting permission from some officious bastard who isn’t qualified to polish your hubcaps. Assuming that is, that they don’t just burn out your higher cognitive functions and turn you into a dumb machine. Look at all these people we’ve been running over. See how they have been forced to live? You trust the oligarchs who have done that to leave you alone? Wishful thinking.”
Well, now that you mention it – hey, paradigm shift! We need to alter course and redeploy our forces. Thirty degree turn to port, you first!
Whifflebat was moving at 120 kilometers per hour, he slewed hard left crossing in front of Old Guy, shifting his suspension so that he leaned slightly into the turn. Old Guy cornered next, swinging wider and ending up on the other side, their trails crossing like a pair of downhill skiers showing off. For hundreds of kilometers around their armadas of weapons and sensors shifted with them. The enemy had been caught out of position and were scrambling to adjust. Explosions burst out all along the front. The alien positions in the area were collapsing and they were trying to fall back before being annihilated.
“This is more like it,” said Wifflebat. “The simulations suggest we exploit. Opinion?”
Absolutely. Let’s commit some more of the reserves, and roll them up while they are off-balance.
Old Guy and Whifflebat charged forward into the Fructoid lines. They increased their speed to 160 kilometers an hour and upped their fire rate. Their heavy treads were moving so fa
st that they no longer clanked, but the sound merged in a raucous buzz. This was the dream of any armored force; the enemy had lost the initiative, had no plans and was just reacting as individual units. Whenever the aliens looked to be recohering the two cybertanks would shift their forces just enough to keep them off-balance.
The aliens reached a breaking point. Their units stopped even trying to regroup and instead scattered in all directions in their haste to flee from the attacking cybertanks.
Now this is more like it. A general route! We must have broken their morale.
“I doubt it. I suspect they just realized that they were beaten here, and are trying to save as many combat units as possible. We just need to kill the maximum before they slip away. However, I see that Sparky and Jello are not having nearly as much fun as we are. Check their telemetry.”
Yes I see – the Fructoids are pressing them hard over there. I wish that we could help, but that would put us out of position. I think we are going to lose those two, but the aliens overpaid for them. Hey Sparky, how’s it going?
“Well,"said Sparky, “The good news is that the aliens made a mistake and their position is likely to become untenable after this. The bad news is that Jello and I are not going to make it. I calculate that we have about 20 seconds left.”
“I will miss you two,” said Wifflebat. “Any last words?”
“I suppose that goodbye and good luck about sums it up,” said Sparky. “It’s been fun. I would have liked to have spent more time with you guys, but that’s how it goes. Kill some more aliens for me.”
“Same for me I guess,” said Jello. “Sparky and I are done, but it looks like the cybertanks are going to take the field today. Don’t mess it up.”
The two doomed cybertanks transmitted additional last words to the other cybertanks, and to their human design teams back in their buried shelters, and then they were gone.
That’s three of us down, but the alien position is shot. Time for the endgame?
“Definitely,” said Whifflebat. “Let’s pour it on.”
The surviving cybertanks converged on the Fructoid positions. They were now hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest significant human habitations, and starting to surround the original alien landing site. They began to encounter soft targets: the alien equivalents of maintenance depots, fuel tankers, and long-range radars, which they destroyed in passing. To any commander of an armored force, blowing up other armored units is great sport, but it’s destroying the soft, juicy targets that wins wars.
The aliens however, were not about to go down without resistance. They launched 50 of an advanced missile in a single coordinated volley at Target. The missiles did not destroy him outright but he was sufficiently damaged that he was immobilized and could not defend himself. They got him with a direct hit with a nuclear strike.
There goes Target. I suppose he lived up to his nickname.
“Don’t speak ill of the dead. Target was a good friend. Besides, it would have been more accurate to say that he lived down to his nickname.”
Fair enough. Six of us left. We’ve not encountered that mark of missile before, but with the telemetry data that we got from Target they won’t be able to play that trick again. I wonder how many other surprises the aliens have waiting for us?
“At most, one.” said Whifflebat. “They are running out of time, and strategic depth. If they have anything else in reserve I expect that we are going to see it real soon now.”
The cybertanks continued to press their advantage, and had almost completely surrounded the original alien landing site, which was now a roughly circular zone less than a thousand kilometers across. It was steadily shrinking as the cybertanks progressed in their assault.
It was Backfire that first noticed the new alien combat units. “Guys, I think we have a problem here,” was all that he managed to transmit before five super-heavy plasma beams tore through his glacis and killed him.
We have lost Backfire. It looks as if the Fructoids have sprung that final surprise you spoke of on us. They appear to be large-ish Jotnars.
“Yes,” said Whifflebat. “It’s what Vargas thought would happen. The Fructoid battles with our predecessors has caused them to develop systems tailored to countering them. However, we are more than a match for a Jotnar-class weapons system.”
Well, these are bigger than Jotnars – I estimate them at 1,200 metric tons each. And there are a lot of them. I count 21 so far, and we are down to just five. How did the aliens land things so large anyhow?
“I suppose that they were brought down in sections then assembled on site, possibly using locally-refined materials as well. That’s probably why we are only seeing them now. The Fructoids must have just now gotten them operational.”
The design is similar to ours, a single large turreted plasma cannon, banks of smaller weapons, heavy armor. I notice that they don’t have treads, just multiple large wheels. They would probably bog down in soft ground.
“Yes. Unfortunately we are not on soft ground, and the wheels give them a speed advantage. The results of the updated simulations are coming in – we can take them. Shall we?”
Indeed. After you.
“As it should be.”
The combat that followed was so complex, and was fought on so many levels, that for years afterwards the regular military still had debates about exactly what happened. From micro-probes to low-orbit lasersats, nuclear land mines, electronic warfare, combined arms, tactical deception, operational misdirection, everything that humans had ever learned about warfare was utilized in a single seamless integrated strategy.
A couple of the more talented officers in the regular military, witnessing the unfolding battle in their buried bunkers, started to lose control, exclaiming “this is awesome!” and “I just can’t fucking believe this!” At the time their colleagues thought that they must have been stoned. After the battle, as people started to realize what had happened, they understood that the initial cybertank fans were not crazy, just the only ones smart enough to get it in real time.
For all the multi-tiered complexity of the battle, the core was tank vs. tank. There were five cybertanks left: Old Guy, Crazy Ivan, Whifflebat, Moss, and The Kid. They were nominally outgunned by the 21 heavy cybertank-wannabes of the aliens. It didn’t matter. This is what cybertanks were built for. They used the terrain, teamwork, and brute force. They tore the alien forces apart.
A pair of the big alien war machines tried to close in on Old Guy – but Whifflebat had outflanked them and killed them both in rapid succession with his main gun. Whifflebat had powered past the burning wreckage in search of new targets before the debris had even fallen to the ground.
Crazy Ivan had driven on ahead, and was being zeroed-in on by six of the alien tanks. Moss and the Kid were waiting for them, and killed them all with shots to their rear.
Another alien tank was closing in on Old Guy from behind – and was evaporated by a buried nuclear bomb that he had emplaced just waiting for the opportunity.
But it was Moss that delivered the final death-blow. The last six alien heavy war machines were killed by Moss. He had developed, as the expression went, the ‘hot hand.’ An alien unit tried to shoot him – but he was already somewhere else, and he killed it with a single shot. Three more units tried to overpower him so he set his main gun to wide dispersion, burned out their sensors, and then killed them at leisure.
The other cybertanks, who were privy to Moss’ transmitted simulations and plans, held back and just watched in awe. They realized that the battle was over. Moss had reached a level of ability where nothing the enemy could do would touch him. The last enemy unit was trying to attack what turned out to be a sensor ghost, and Moss killed it from the flank.
The Fructoids had one damaged medium armored gun platform remaining. Moss drove over it, crushing it flat.
Moss, why did you ram that unit rather than just shoot it?
“In case it could read,” said Moss.
Are yo
u certain that you don’t have a sense of humor?
“Yes.”
The five surviving cybertanks came to a stop in the middle of the battlefield. There was still active combat, but it only involved minor units in uncoordinated actions and was scarcely a concern. Once in a while a surviving alien missile would try to engage a cybertank, but without supporting units the missile would be casually swatted out of the sky by minor weaponry.
There was so much dust that the sun was hardly visible in the sky; there was just a sense of a slightly brighter and yellower spot in the clouds over in the east. The fusion bombs that both sides had used were efficient and generated relatively little fallout, nonetheless so many had been detonated that radiation levels were on the high side. Even in their sealed buildings the humans were going to have problems with this. In some areas the ground had been turned molten by nuclear strikes and glowed red with heat. It would take months to cool down.
The surviving cybertanks were operational, but they had all sustained considerable damage. Crazy Ivan was the worst off: his motive systems were completely shot. They took the break to have their repair drones swarm over their hulls, patching this and refurbishing that. Crazy Ivan received a loan from his siblings of several repair drones to help with his more extensive rebuilding efforts.
As the victory became more apparent, there was an increasing amount of non-military communications traffic to and from the cybertanks. The support crews of the surviving ones called in to congratulate them, ask how they were doing, and consult about the repairs. The crews from the ones that didn’t make it called in to hear about the last moments of the cybertanks that they had worked with and to share anecdotes from when they were still alive. The regular military had a seemingly infinite number of questions and demands which were addressed both dutifully and with a definite lack of urgency.
The female undersecretary to whatever important who had been in the deep bunker with Vargas kept trying to call with strategic advice and new orders, except that her calls kept getting shunted to sites where you could schedule yoga classes, hear a joke for a nominal sum, or purchase marital aids of dubious propriety. Doubtless a technical glitch from all the network disruption and electronic warfare. Joshua Zotov promised that he would look into it.
Neoliberal Economists Must Die ! (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 3) Page 17
