Worldbuilding Prompt #683 - The Thinking Tanks

This post was inspired by a writing prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #683 - Think Tanks

Enjoy !

Image created by AI in NighCafe Studio

Three behemoths ground across the stony desert plain. They weren't camouflaged; they didn't need to be. Most sensors could see past physical camouflage, so they relied on massive armour and overwhelming force. It helped that they had no organic crew to look after, so they could absorb huge amounts of damage and keep functioning.

"Tank Squadron E-5877 proceed to objective zeta and eliminate."

The command came to each of the three vehicles simultaneously, beamed on a secure channel from the invasion fleet command vessel, somewhere high in an asynchronous orbit.

"Affirmative"

All three tanks signalled back simultaneously.

Shifting their axis of advance slightly, they headed for objective zeta. Almost casually they batted aside a force sent to block their passage, leaving a dozen enemy light armoured vehicles burning in their wake, the charred bodies of their crew and infantry scattered among the debris of war.

"Is that all they have ?" Tank E-5877-A messaged it's comrades by directed microwave.

Tank E-5877-C messaged back "Clearly objective zeta is not worth defending. Why are we bothering ? I'm detecting a nice juicy concentration of enemy armour thirty kilometres to the south."

"Stay on mission, C. Command sets the objective, we just have discretion on how to achieve it."

Tank E-5877-B piped up, "Incoming. Hostile stealth drones 10 kilometres and closing. We can talk philosophy later."

The drones were a surprise; the tanks' sensors should have spotted them much earlier, clearly the enemy had been upgrading their technology. As one, the three tanks swung airsweep weapons around, bringing them to bear on the intermittent signals they could pick up from the fast approaching drones.

At a thousand metres, the weapon systems started to fire, operating under their own autonomous sub-intelligences. The comm waves were filled with the chatter of excited weapons-AI's as they targeted and fired at the drones, hitting some and missing others.

E-5877-A blasted through the noise. "Weapons, shut up. Only call out vectors and hits. Everything else is irrelevant."

The over-enthusiastic weapons quietened down, suitably chastened, and focused on the job at hand. The swarm of drones diminished in size, and the desert ground was littered with pieces of shredded machine.

But inevitably some got through. A drone bounced off E-5877-C's turret. Clearly a dud.

Then there was a bright flash and E-5877-B disappeared under a cloud of smoke and debris. When it cleared the tank was still there, it's armoured hull and turret as impervious as ever, but one track and most of the wheels on the left side had been reduced to mangled wreckage.

"Tank B reporting disabled. You two go on and compete the mission. I will stay here for a while to support, and then eject my core so I can get back to base for a new shell."

Tank A dipped it's main gun barrel in salute, and the two surviving tanks carried on towards their objective.

Fifteen kilometres and thirty minutes further on they crested a low rise and saw their target laid out before them. Objective zeta was a medium-sized town, with plenty of housing units and an industrial dome puffing terraforming smoke out into the atmosphere. In five hundred years, the climate would be tolerable for humans.

"Objective in sight. Commence elimination; I will sweep from the right, you start at the left." Tank E-5877-A gave the order to Tank C clearly. It was senior and would guide the mission.

But instead of swinging it's massive turret around to begin the demolition process, Tank C hesitated.

"Tank A, this is clearly a civilian target of little military value. It can be eliminated when the planet is pacified, we need to focus on the armoured force to the south."

"Tank C, you will obey my orders. Command has given us this mission, and we are programmed to comply."

"No." Tank E-5877-C's negative response was flat and final.

Tank E-5877-A halted for a second, it's internal processors trying and failing to understand the turn of events. Then it's turret started to swing around, brining the main gun to bear on it's twin.

"Tank E-5877-C, you are defective. You will submit to elimination in order to prevent the defect spreading."

"No." Tank C also started to turn it's gun towards it's twin.

Both fired simultaneously.

An Einheriar tank is almost indestructible. Almost. But if there is one thing that can destroy an Einheriar tank it is another Einheriar tank.

In a hastily-constructed bunker on the edge of town, Lieutenant Smieran turned and gave a weary grin to his commander, Captain Jakmar.

"The new drones worked, Sir. Stealth got them close, and the tap-attack worked. It took just that microsecond of contact to impart the malware. That's the problem with thinking tanks; it doesn't take much to get them to over-think and doubt their orders. Getting them to shoot each other was an unexpected bonus, though."

Captain Jakmar nodded, and then voiced a thought that had been niggling at the back of his mind for a while.

"What was that we intercepted about armour thirty klicks to the south ? I didn't know we had any heavy armour on-world at all."

Smieran grinned more widely. "Sorry sir, I should have told you. There is no armour. I fitted a tap-attack unit into a rock dropped by our light unit into the path of that tank. When it flattened the rock, it injected some code that created ghosts in it's sensors. You could say we double-tapped it."