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    Tank
    Tank
    Tank
    Ebook151 pages2 hours

    Tank

    By Christopher Blankley

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    WANTED.
    HEROES TO SERVE THEIR COUNTRY.
    The War against the Reds has dragged on for sixty years. The Continent sits divided. While the east still lives free, the west struggles under the thumb of the Soviet Menace. Despite endless campaigns, generation after generation of young men sent off to war, the front lines between the two states remains static. A stalemate. A zero-sum game.
    Gunny is certainly not the hero anyone expected to find. She's just sixteen, a girl from Saint Paul. But after scoring a record high on a mysterious test in school, Gunny is shipped off to Boot Camp and soon finds herself in the gunner's seat of a Patton Tank.
    Could she be the hero that finally breaks the stalemate between the US and the Reds? After all, what can one, young girl do against the might of the Soviet Army? But America has never seen a hero quite like Gunny before.

    TANK: The Battle of Brigham Field is the first installment in the exciting action/adventure series TANK. Follow Gunny and the crew of number Seventy-Seven as they battle the Soviets in an alternate Twenty-First Century.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChristopher Blankley
    Release dateDec 31, 2015
    ISBN9781311010834
    Tank
    Author

    Christopher Blankley

    Seattle is my home and the backdrop of many of my books. I am not a detective, or a zombie, or living in an alternate version of the 21st Century, so my life and my books pretty much just overlap with the Seattle thing. If you like detectives, zombies, alternate histories, even Seattle, you might like my books. I do. I like you. There, I said it. I’ve written over a dozen books, including the aforementioned ones about detectives and zombies and alternate histories. Did I mention Seattle? Seattle's in some of them, too.

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    • 5/5
      Really enjoyed the world being built in this, Diesel punk feeling without getting silly.

    Book preview

    Tank - Christopher Blankley

    TANK

    by Christopher Blankley

    Copyright © 2014 by Christopher Blankley

    other books by Christopher Blankley:

    The Cordwainer

    The Bobbies of Bailiwick

    The Bobbies of Bailiwick and the Captive Ocean

    The Raft

    That Nietzsche Thing

    STEM

    email the author at: blankley@gmail.com

    PART 1

    The Battle of Brigham Field

    Chapter 1

    WANTED.

    The title read, with letters ablaze in red.

    Heroes to Serve Their Country.

    The front page of the paper continued, in smaller, black print. Was it an advertisement? Or an order?

    Join the New Offense! Cleanse Our Shores of the Demon Reds. Tomorrow is a new Morning in America. A New Front.

    It was propaganda. Boilerplate stuff. Gunny almost stopped reading then and there.

    It is MANDATORY that all Citizens submit to testing!

    That grabbed her attention. That was something new. Testing? Testing for what?

    Community Managers will soon be in YOUR neighborhood. Participation IS REQUIRED. The test takes less than five minutes. It is fun and educational. Be prompt to your appointment. Follow the instructions and try your best. There is no punishment for failure, and VICTORY to be gained by success!

    Gunny shrugged, putting the paper away. She gave the matter no more thought.

    Until three days later, when her turn came.

    They pulled her out of third period French.

    Of course, back then, no one called her Gunny. Just Rebbecca – Rebbecca Brewster. Little Rebbecca, with the long black hair. Thinking back, Gunny could hardly remember who that girl was – who she'd once been. It was like she'd always been Gunny, inside, dressed up as Rebbecca. It seemed silly now, in review, to call herself anything else.

    The Community Managers waited in the School's Cafeteria, three women in dark brown uniforms, with jackets and long skirts. As Gunny pushed through the Cafeteria doors, she found three lines of students already waiting for a turn at some sort of console. Irritated and confused, Gunny joined the back of the left-most line.

    She stood on her tiptoes and tried to see what awaited at the end of the queue. Shots? Blood work? Coordination and Agility Tests? She'd taken all of those before under very similar, mysterious circumstances – some people from the Army, pulling children out of class and lining them up in the Cafeteria. But Gunny couldn't make out anything over the heads and shoulders of the taller boys. There were no lab coats, no olive drab privacy screens, just some sort of contraption on stilts.

    If there had been any instructions, Gunny had missed them. Or perhaps it was one of those tasks Gunny was already supposed to know how to do. There'd been lots of those – boxes filled with wooden blocks you had to line up into a pattern or pictures of ink blots that were supposed to look like something.

    The Managers administering the trials would always frown and cluck their tongues when Gunny utterly failed to grasp some acuity test or other. And the other children in line would sigh and let out whistles and tell Gunny to hurry up, for the Prophet's sake...

    Perhaps, if Gunny got a good look at the kid in front of her taking the test, she could, at the very least, make an attempt to pantomime his performance. Then she wouldn't look totally lost when her turn came. Then, perhaps, the other kids wouldn't call her dummy and make jokes about how girls should stay in French Class and not waste everyone's time holding up the line...

    And that was just what Gunny did – she waited patiently until the boy in front of her stepped up to the left-most console. There he waited as the brown-uniformed Manager gave the young man a few seconds of instructions, pointed at something on the round television screen at the center of the device, and then stepped back. The boy took hold of two sticks protruding from the console, and then exploded into a rapid series of spasms, struggling to yank the sticks back and forth, while watching something dance on the screen before him.

    Gunny watched it all, keenly.

    His test lasted less than twenty seconds. When he'd finished, the Community Manager jotted down some piece of information off the screen.

    Without comment, she waved the young man away.

    It was Gunny's turn. She stepped forward with confidence. She was certain, even if she had no real concept of what she was about to do, that she'd be able to mimic the young man's frantic performance. She might understand nothing, but she could certainly look like she did. And Gunny knew that looking like you knew what you were doing was the easiest and quickest route back to French Class.

    Gunny stepped up to the console and instinctively grabbed the twin sticks in her fists. No one had instructed her to do so. Two neon, green blobs on the television screen jiggled wildly as she touched the handles. They danced around the small television screen to the merest nudge of the corresponding stick. 

    Instantly, Gunny knew there would be no need for her to pantomime another child's attempt to take the test – in a single heartbeat she understood the function and operation of the console. The slightest shift of her left palm moved the left green dot to the top left corner. She did the same with the right, ever-so-slowly moving the right dot around the screen.

    You didn't need to jerk it, the boy before her had no idea what he was doing. A tiny shift in your grip was more than enough...

    Eager are we? The brown-uniformed Manager said over Gunny's left shoulder. Gunny leapt back in surprise, caught in the act. She let go of the two metal controls.

    I'm sorry, I just- Gunny stammered, wiping her sweaty palms on her skirt. She shouldn't have touched the console. She hadn't been told...

    It's alright, the woman gave Gunny an encouraging smile. She was middle-aged and her face was less sour and professional than it'd looked from the back of the line. You can't damage it. Take a control in each hand, try to keep the circles inside the boxes, okay? Just try you best.

    Okay, Gunny nodded, confidently returning her hands to the sticks.

    Ready? the Manager asked.

    Gunny nodded.

    Go.

    Before Gunny, two white squares appeared around the green dots. For an instant, they perfectly framed the glowing, green blobs. Then, as if someone had let go of the neck of a balloon, the squares began to dance impishly left and right, up and down around the screen. When a green dot left the confines of its white square, it flashed red.

    Gunny panicked, momentarily forgetting her goal, then she recovered and quickly but gently teased the red dots until they turned back to green.

    How long Gunny was at the testing console she couldn't say – ten seconds or ten minutes? Time flew by. All her concentration was on the white squares and the green dots. As the test went on, things started to fly out-of-control. The squares turned into whirling blurs, wildly flying around the screen, crossing over each other, and dancing on opposite sides of the screen. But Gunny never lost her cool. With the slightest shift of her grip, she kept the dots inside the squares. She hardly ever let them slip loose and fade to red.

    Then, as unceremoniously as the test had begun, the white squares vanished. Gunny let go of the two sticks and the green dots floated back to their resting positions in the center of the screen.

    Very good, the Community Manager whispered to Gunny as the Manager leaned in to read a number off the screen. Have you taken this test before? she inquired. She asked her question so quietly that Gunny almost missed it.

    Gunny shook her head, rubbing her palms together.

    Alright, you can go back to class, the Manager nodded and pointed at the Cafeteria doors.

    Gunny nodded back, and then gave a small bow. Then a curtsy. But she didn't leave. Just a minute ago, all she could think about was escaping the Cafeteria and getting back to class. Now, she didn't want to leave. She wanted to take the test again, see if she could beat her own score.

    Go on, the woman in the brown uniform insisted.

    Gunny snapped to life. She wasn't going to get a second try. She turned and scurried off, past the long line of waiting children, back through the doors and down the hall.

    Back to French Class and Rebbecca Brewster's life. But Gunny could still see the two green dots dancing before her eyes.

    Chapter 2

    Today, the soul of our Great Nation takes a single, but crucial, step towards its inevitable and eternal quittance, Lt. Colonel Stoner said to the mustered recruits, as they baked in the hot Kentucky sun of the Parade Grounds. This graduation not only marks your successful completion of Basic Training, but denotes the opening of a new, if final, chapter in the grand struggle that has entangled and ravished our Nation for six, long decades.

    Gunny shifted uncomfortably in her Class A's. She tried not to fidget like the bored child listening to an old man's speech that she quite literally was. She stood at ease, the side cap mostly hiding the stubbly haircut that had not yet fully recovered from its Boot Camp buzz.              

    Ah! The thick wool of her uniform was

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