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taken out by another drone without anybody noticing. Didyou talk to the last drone that came atyou out
of the east?"
"Ouch," I said. "Still, I think it's a chance worth taking."
"I hope so."
That was when we hit the land mine.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LAND MINES
We were doing more than a hundred and thirty when, without any warning at all, the front of the tank
bucked up with brutal force.
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If I hadn't been floating in a liquid with the same average density of my body tissues, I certainly would
have been killed. As it was, the local differences in the density of my tissues came near to tearing me
apart. I could feel my bones being yanked downward, while my lungs rammed painfully into my ribcage.
My skull bashed down into my helmet while it jerked upward, and my intestines tried to pull themselves
up out of my body.
Every joint I owned was wrenched, and I was too shaken up to think clearly.
If I'd had my wits about me, and if my reflexes had been quick enough, I would have hit the ejection
button right then and there. Only I didn't and they weren't so I stayed aboard.
I never lost consciousness, but for a time I wished that I had. I could feel us fly tumbling through the air,
to make almost half a flip and to come in upside down with our tail burying itself in the sand. There were
a few more bumps, and then all was silent, all was darkness, and I was alone.
I stayed quiet for a while, catching my breath and letting my body draw itself back together. I was
completely in the dark, I could see nothing at all and I could hear nothing but my own breathing and heart
beat. I was in pain, and only fact that I could breathe told me that all was not absolutely lost.
"Agnieshka?"
There was no answer, and a cold icicle of fear went through me. I was encased in an armored coffin and
nothing seemed to work!
"Agnieshka. Come in, please. I need you, pretty girl."
Still nothing. Think. Think, man!
I was far behind the Serbian lines. The odds of somebody coming to help me were so small that they
weren't worth thinking about. If I was going to live through this one, I'd have to do it myself.
Well. The tank was upside down and laying on its tail at perhaps a twenty-degree angle, judging from
how low my head felt. The coffin slide motor was entirely too small to move the entire tank, so that was
out.
The emergency ejection mechanism used a chemical charge to blow the coffin out. If the coffin was
buried and couldn't move, the energy in that explosive had to go somewhere, and my body was the likely
dumping ground. I obviously couldn't even think of ejecting until the rear of the tank was clear of the
ground, and just then it was sitting in the worst possible position.
Fortunately, the designers of the tank had foreseen this possible dilemma, and had made provisions for
solving it. There were eight explosive charges built into the hull that could safely flip the tank, or even
blow it six meters into the air.
I'd used the system before in simulations. I flipped open the protective lid that covered the controls,
braced myself for another brutal shock, and pressed the button that would blow the upper left rear
charge.
Nothing happened.
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When I started breathing again, I tried the upper right rear charge, since it would work equally well, only
it didn't work either. Neither did the top front charges. Or any combination of the above. The emergency
orientation system was out.
I tried the manual drive controls near my right hand. After all, for all I knew, the tank could be balanced
on something, needing only the slightest motion to topple it. I fumbled for the controls, I moved them and
they felt dead. Nothing happened at all! Everything couldn't be out! I was still breathing, wasn't I?
I tried the weapons, and they were gone, too. Well, I didn't really expect the rockets to do anything. I'd
used them up last night. But the rail gun did nothing, and the drone did not respond.
I slipped my hands into the control gloves of the manipulator arms, and while the right one was out, I
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