Earth-349: The
Haunted Tank
by Anton
Psychopoulos, Ph.D.
Disclaimer
#1: This story is inspired by a story
in Superman #349, but is not limited
by that story or any other.
Disclaimer
#2: This story makes use of copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc.,
and other publishers. It is written for
amusement only and is not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.
Disclaimer
#3: This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the easily offended.
Through
her screen of dirt-colored cheesecloth, "Jeb" Stuart scanned the
dusty landscape, eyes tracking in neat five-degree arcs in a fashion so
long-practiced that she often found herself using it to walk across Baghdad
city streets on leave.
Heavily-accented
English came up from below.
"What's it look like, Jeb?"
Stuart
dropped down, leaving the cheesecloth canopy erected, sinking into the
(relative) safety of the tank's interior and forsaking the (relative) cool of
her lookout position. Aside from her
leather football helmet, she wore only red cotton bikini panties, but was still
dripping with sweat. Her gunner, Cpl.
Yasmeen Farad, who had asked the question, wore less than that: only a scarf
wrapped around her hips to keep from sticking ot her leather seat.
"It
looks as flat as Prince Reo's butt."
"And
about the same color, right?" asked the third member of the crew, Sgt.
Fatima Aoud. She wore nothing around
her hips at all (insisting that coverings would lead only to infections), just
a sturdy brassiere that kept her generous breasts from resting sweatily on her
chest.
Stuart
raised an eyebrow. "Why, how would
I know?"
The
three tankers laughed.
The
Stuart tank had served Allied forces
well in the Second World War, but was declared obsolete soon after. But less prosperous, less industrialized
countries could not be so choosy, and so some twenty-odd years after war's end
there were Stuarts in service, defnding the Federal Republic of Mesopotamia
against the Asranian invaders.
And
with American tanks had come American "technical advisors" to train
Mesopotamian tank crews. And surely
there could be no better training exercise than to take a tank to the front and
put it to work.
Lt.
Jessica Elizabeth Bowen had been married to George Stuart for a week before it
occurred to her that she was now J.E.B. Stuart, or could be if she so
chose. Being a self-described
"tank girl" from an early age, she definitely did so choose. When she heard that the Mesopotamians were
buying mothballed tanks and needed experienced tankers, preferably women, to
train crews, she used every angle she could to get an assignment there.
A
chance to renovate and command a classic tank, plus the opportunity to see and
assist the young republic of Mesopotamia?
She'd have done just about anything to get the job.
She
might have wound up in a Pershing, or even one of the Panzers the U.S. had
confiscated after the war, but damned if she didn't wind up with her own little
Stuart.
Mesopotamia
had emerged from World War II as the only republic in the Near East, surrounded
by hostile, backward states like Syria, Hejaz and Asran. The Mesopotamians were committed to creating
a modern, free society. Not a copy of
the Western nations but something new, something they called an "Islamic
republic". At first nobody was
sure what that meant, but their commitment to democracy and human rights struck
a chord with many Europeans and Americans, and the new nation in an ancient
country had received continuing support from governments and private charities.
Islam
placed limits on interaction between men and women. Interpretations varied, but the basics were quite clear. The surest way to avoid trouble was to
segregate the sexes, and means were found to do this without sacrificing
efficiency or wasting the talents of either men or women.
Two
separate education systems were set up.
Separate housing for unmarried men and women was built in cities. Men went to male doctors, women to female
doctors. Women rode in yellow buses,
men in gray ones. The legislature was
composed entirely of men, the judiciary of women (a feature of the Iroquois
constitution which had not found its way into that of the U.S.).
Originally,
the Mesopotamian armed forces were entirely male, but the population of young
men was so severely depleted by the long war with the Asranian invaders that a
new dispensation had to be made. Now
most of the air force were women, and the crews of two-thirds of the navy's
ships. And all of the tank crews. It was a sensible arrangement; an air base
or a ship could be crewed entirely by women, with no men around to offend their
modesty, and the same for a tank company.
Jeb
took off her helmet and mopped her brow.
Holding the helmet, she looked it over.
It was certainly getting plenty of wear out here; the gold was scuffed
and patchy, and the leather had a couple of good gouges in it. No condition for the gold-leafed helmet from
a tanker's dress uniform to get into (the late General Patton would have
cried), but she wore it for luck, and hoped she would keep it with her for the
rest of her time in Mesopotamia.
Officially,
she was on "inactive reserve" status, in Mesopotamia on a student
visa. She was drawing no U.S. Army pay,
and accumulating no time-in-service or time-in-rank. Officially, she was wasting her time and hurting her career by
taking a year off this way.
In
practice, she and a couple of hundred other American officers had volunteered
to be lent to the Federal Republic, in a program designed and approved
(unofficially, of course) by President Robeson himself. When she returned to the U.S., she'd write a
brief paper for the War College and, supposedly on the strength of this
"scholarship", be given a commendation that would ensure her next
promotion came promptly. Robeson's
word, and his handshake, were a better guarantee than any official contract on
that count.
She
put the helmet back on and climbed back up to her perch.
The
sky was a lifeless blue except for a patch of cloud off to the northeast. Jeb watched the horizon, keeping the cloud
in the corner of her eye, hoping that the geenral would speak to her today.
After
a few minutes, she noticed that the cloud had indeed taken on the familiar form
vaguely suggesting the head, chest and arms of General Stuart, namesake of both
the tank and herself. It had happened
on her first patrol in Mesopotamia, and by now she was almost taking it for
granted.
"Morning,
General," she whispered. "See
anything ahead for us?"
A
soft voice spoke, not "in her head" as cliche would have it, but
definitely not from the cloud, or from anywhere else she could tell.
<<Enemies
and weapons change from one age to the next, Jeb,>> the General said, <<but some things
are always the same. Soldiers look out
for one another, and officers look out for their troops.>>
Some
days the General would say something like, <<Go around the hill with
plenty of room>>, or <<Make sure the main gun is ready to fire
before you enter the valley>>, but Jeb had learned that his more cryptic
advice was often the most important.
"Thank
you, General," she murmured as the cloud became merely drifting water
vapor.
Below
her, Jeb heard Yasmeen and Fatima speaking softly, assuming their Arabic would
not be understood over the engine noise.
"Do
you think she is mad?"
"Who
can say? Is she not entitled to go a
bit mad, having to stick her head up into the gray weather?"
Jeb
snorted, amused. "Gray
weather". Typical dry Mesopotamian
humor, to call bullets and shellfire by such an innocuous name.
Okay,
so the girls knew she talked to the General.
She could live with that.
The
tank lurched under her as though it had been kicked by Superwoman. She was tossed upward out of her seat, her
helmet slapping against the canvas shade, then slammed down again.
Jeb
dropped down into the tank, slamming the hatch.
"I
think we ran over a mine," Yasmeen shouted as the tank stopped shaking and
it became obvious that forward motion had stopped.
"Didn't
think they had any anti-tank mines left," Fatima said as she rotated the
turret, looking for a target.
Jeb
shrugged. "Reo's boys are
clever."
Something
came rolling from the east. Fatima
tracked on it, then relaxed when she saw it was a Mesopotamian jeep carrying
four heavily-robed women. The tankers
pulled their own abayas from under their seats and tossed them on, preparing to
climb out and join their comrades in assessing the damage.
One
robed figure climbed out and walked towards the tank, carrying something
heavy. Jeb moved to raise the hatch,
then froze. Something was wrong. Yasmeen felt it, too, and began swiveling
the machine gun onto the robed figure, but it darted forward, getting too close
for the gun to reach. Through a view
slit, Jeb saw the intruder lift a cover from the basket, revealing a dozen
antipersonnel mines, crudely wired together and attached to a detonator. It was a piece of garbage no self-respecting
demolitionist would own up to, but it could easily destroy Jeb and her
crew. It was probably similar to what
had halted them.
The
three in the jeep threw off their robes, revealing Asrani uniforms, and trained
rifles on the tank.
Jeb
looked at her crew.
"We
can go out, or let them kill us in here."
"Cooking
in a gasoline fire is a bad way to die, Jeb," Yasmeen said softly.
"Going
with the Asrani might be worse," said Fatima.
Jeb
shrugged.
"Let's
live awhile longer. Something better
might come along if we're alive to see it."
"Come
out! Now!" the least-ragged Asrani
called, in English. Most likely, it was
their only common language; few Asrani spoke Arabic, and fewer Mesopotamians
spoke Pursi.
Jeb
pushed back the hatch and climbed into sight, tottering on her seat as she
raised her hands.
"No
covers!" the officer snapped.
"Covers off first, no hiding weapons!"
"Bullshit,"
Jeb muttered, but complied, pulling her robe over her head and standing in just
her helmet and panties for a moment before she began the delicate task of
climbing off the tank, avoiding the hottest surfaces. On the ground, hands up, she watched her crew climb out, wearing
only what they had in the tank. Yasmeen
tembled, tears flowing, clutching the scarf around her waist, one arm over her
breasts, but Fatima stood with arms raised, meeting the Asrani men's eyes
better than Jeb could.
The
officer grabbed Yasmeen's arms and pulled them over her head, laughing at her
cry when the scarf fell away.
"Babylon
whores," he sneered, moving on to Fatima.
He snapped her bra but did not try to remove it yet. "You girls go to nice camp, have lots
of big strong Asrani soldiers to protect you.
You make lots of Asrani babies to make up for Asrani you murder."
He
moved on to Jeb, knocking the helmet from her head.
"Blonde
American whore. No babies for you. You, we take to Taharan, for the Shah. He want to add American soldier bitch to his
collection, want one very badly. But
his girls, he has them fixed. No royal
bastards allowed."
Jeb
thought of her crew in a rape camp, bred like animals at their captors'
whim. She thought of her husband, and
the children she wanted to have with him some day. She thought about how likely it would be, if she attacked this
Asrani bastard, that they would all be killed, and how of the various fates
they'd been offered today, a bullet was by far the most attractive.
"What,
you mean little Prince Reo actually has seed in those little raisins between
his legs?"
Calling
the Shah "Prince Reo" (refusing to recognize his overthrow of his
father, the old Shah) was almost as vile an insult as impugning their leader's
manhood. The Asrani turned pale. Jeb was just bringing her knee up to his
crotch when a gun spoke behind her.
Jeb
flung herself to the ground, unthinking, tackling the Asrani officer. She tried to pin his arms, and found that
they were limp; there was a red hole in his forehead. She groped for his sidearm, heard more shots, from a higher-pitched
weapon, sat up with a pistol and found no living targets. Yasmeen, still weeping, held an Asrani
Kalashnikov, standing over the dead men like some very modern symbolic nude.
They
checked the men for signs of life, then pulled on their robes and went to work
on the tank. The right tread was
damaged, but they got it patched adequately to get them back to camp.
Just
before they left, Fatima bent over the Asrani officer's body, studying his
face.
"Leave
it, Sergeant. Why do you want to look
at that?"
Fatima
said nothing, merely climbed into the tank.
But half an hour later, she said, "Jeb, the first man was shot, and
then Yasmeen grabbed a gun from one of the Asrani. She didn't shoot him."
Jeb
felt a chill, but tried to shrug it off.
"So? Who did shoot him?"
"I
don't know. But he was shot with a
round from our machine gun. And none of
us were in here."
"So
what, so what, just shut up," Yasmeen snarled, barely controlling herself.
"Yes,
Fatima," Jeb said wearily, "Say nothing more."