Free A Boy and His Tank by Leo Frankowski Page A

orientation lecture I'd been promised. Twice, since I flunked the first quiz she gave me.
    The main rail gun fired four thousand rounds per second, not per minute. That repetition rate was necessary so that each tiny osmium needle flew in the shock wave of the round ahead of it, and after the first few they were all traveling through a pretty hard vacuum. They had to, or they'd all be vapor within a few meters, not just the first ones. One of the reasons for the tank's armor was to protect it from the shock of its own weapons. She made me learn that twice.
    When that was over, I found myself in a sort of motel room, rather Spartan but clean enough. I showered and went to bed. In a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. When I got up and answered it, Kasia came in.
    "I managed to deal us into an all-nighter," she said with her brown eyes flashing.
    "Wonderful," I said, and meant it. "I think I've already paid the room rent."
    "What do you mean, Mickolai?"
    I told her about my day.
    "Oh, you poor baby. They say that Hell hath no fury like an Aggressor Mark XIX scorned."
    "Nothing we can do about it, love. Let's just make sure that I get my money's worth."
    And you know, she made it all worth while.
    She left in the morning, and after eating my goo, I was back on that cold endless plain, doing pushups. And in the evening, I was back with Kasia. This went on for a week, with no time off for Sunday. It was rough, but the nights with my one true love made life worth living.
    Then one day after fourteen hours of pattern identification, I was in the forest again, and Kasia joined me there, wearing a gym suit.
    "I proved to them that we're both ahead of schedule, and wrangled us some better working conditions," she said. "At least from now on, we get to do our Physical Training together, so long as we don't slough off. Come on!"
    She took off running, and I was soon at her side, just barely able to keep up with her as we went over a long and very difficult obstacle course.
    "I can hardly keep up with you," I gasped. "I would have thought that I'd be better than you at this."
    "You probably are, love," she said, breathing hard. "I think they're faking the distances that we're each going. After all, the idea is to give each one of us an optimal workout, and to use each of us to motivate the other."
    "That makes some kind of sense," I said, rounding the last curve in the path. "I see I have my cottage back."
    "I thought that it was my cottage. The tanks probably all use the same set of stock backdrops," she panted.
    We showered up together and took turns giving each other a good, thorough rubdown. Supper was good roast beef, and in the morning after breakfast, we were allowed to do PT together again before we parted for another day in the tanks. This went on for a solid week, and then Agnieshka told me that we'd earned a Sunday off.
    Kasia and I are both fairly religious, but we spent the whole of Sunday morning just lazing in bed with the stereo playing softly. Going to a faked-up church seemed sort of useless. I mean, if it wasn't real, with a real priest, what was the point?
    Kasia cooked a nice brunch, we took a walk by the lake, and we discovered that we had a sailboat, or at least she did. It had her name on it, anyway. Neither of us had ever sailed before, and we were wet and giggling by the time we finally figured out how to get the silly thing underway, but sure, we had a good time. That evening, we found a tavern at the far end of the lake, with Italian food, candlelight and a strolling violin player. Not having any money, I just signed the check. Kasia gave the sailboat to the violin player for a tip, with the understanding that he had to share it with the waitress, and they were both delighted. We took a cab home. Why worry about the sailboat when none of it was real?
    The next week was more of the same, but now we were doing vacuum simulations. The enemy is harder to spot in a vacuum, with no air currents to give him