desert-colored polygons in their vision-blocks. From the Ethernet lines
dangling from metal frames overhead, SIMNET packets began to flow to and
from the gloss-black Computer Image Generators, and the SIMNET recording
angel, the big network machine they called "Radcliff," started to monitor
the battle.
In another area of the simulator barn, the wily Threat commander brooded
over his color Macintosh. Capt. Baker, a US Marine tactical instructor on
loan to Fort Knox, was taking on the entire American force
single-handedly. The Yankee opposition were sealed inside their
simulators, gazing nervously at the pixelated desert and jockeying for
position. But Baker could see the entire landscape at a glance. His
on-screen map showed red roads, yellow badlands, the milling icons of the
blue Friendlies, and the red lozenges of his own approaching Threat task
force, rumbling forward west of Baseline Purple.
Capt. Baker followed Soviet tactical doctrine scrupulously. He gave his
unmanned, computer-generated tanks and armored vehicles their instructions
with deft points-drags-and-clicks of his Macintosh mouse.
His strategy was to spot or create a weakness in the Yankee defenses, pour
as much of his armor through the chink as possible, then roll at
blitzkrieg speed to a target deep behind enemy lines: "Objective Kiev."
Capt. Baker coolly sent three groups of digital scouts to certain death.
In the north, Bravo Platoon was the first to spot the approaching enemy
scouts. Three Bravo tanks lurched suddenly from ambush and blasted the
mechanized transports into smoking digital wreckage. The dying transports
took a posthumous vengeance, though, by calling in an artillery
bombardment on the Yankee position. Bravo Platoon saw red and yellow
impacts spike their hillside landscape, and a vicious crump of high
explosives burst from the Perceptronics audio simulators.
A second enemy probe tried the center of the American line. Alpha Platoon
called in a hasty artillery strike of their own against the enemy
reconnaissance. Unfortunately, the map coordinates were badly garbled in
the growing excitement. Lethal "friendly fire" now whumped and blasted
around Alpha Platoon's own scouts. One scout was killed by an enemy
transport; the other shot dead by friendly tanks as it fled into the
trigger-happy muzzles of its own backup units.
By now the radio traffic was going wild. Back at the SIMNET system
operator's omniscient "Stealth Station," every howl and yelp was spooling
onto a cheap K-Mart boombox for later analysis by trainers.
Under the stress of battle, the American chain of command was
disintegrating, and the engagement was becoming a wild scrap.
But one Alpha tank survived. He had found a slope of ground in a sharp
