Chapter 18

Dear Will,

I guessed that Marissa was probably reading these letters. The return address has her name not yours and the one time I tried to mail the letter to you the man handling it told me that it had to go to your sponsor and not you. It only made sense that she'd be reading the letters.

It's nice to know that she's worried about me, but the instructors we have definitely are already working on solving the problems you pointed out. They show us film from some of the battles that have been fought against the Sa'arm. There is no question that on the surface they have many advantages. In fact the tanks we are learning on will be nothing like what we use for real, but I guess the real ones can't be brought to Earth. Erica and I have seen the specifications of the model we earned. Externally it looks like an old WW2 Sherman Firefly mod, but it makes the WW2 tank look like its made of tissue paper. The tank is well armored, fast and with a good gunner can be accurate at up to eight miles. The only problem will be reloading. Erica and I have a system that we can install, but its slow. A good loader can have a new shell in the gun in seconds. Our system takes nearly two minutes to reload. But we never sit and fire. That's the big key.

You see, you are right that the Sa'arm can instinctively triangulate any object three or more of them can see. But they use only what our instructor likes to call the Mark I eyeball. If you are moving and changing direction and speed they struggle to lock on. Add in the fact that you can use smoke generators to block their vision and there are ways to be safer. I'd never want to try to fight them in the open, but on heavily forested or hilly terrain, tanks can do well, as long as you never sit around admiring your work.

But we've also been told that we won't be sent to heavily infested planets. Once the Sa'arm get established there are too many of them for these new tanks to be effective. Instead we'll be used to take on scout landings and help delay them if they land on a planet where we have a colony. At least that's what the instructors have been told. Erica's aunt pointed out that there are no guarantees that the military won't throw us into some big useless battle, but I'm not afraid. Someone has to hold the line. At least you can rest a bit easier knowing that Erica and I haven't been hit in the last three weeks of training. Even when the others knew where we had to be, your sister managed to make them miss.

I know, I'm bragging and I shouldn't. Erica and I have been having trouble outside the tanks. The next four tanks in the rankings are teams with all men, and the guys really hate being beaten by two teenage dancers. I guess its nice to be able to talk about how good it feels. Erica and I love it.

Of course, we love our other activities too. The troupe performed Grease as planned. It was a ton of fun. They even allowed Erica to play the part of Frenchy on the last two nights. If you don't remember, she's the one who drops out of high school to go to beauty school and ends up having the song "Beauty School Dropout" sung to her. Erica and I laughed so much when she was offered the part. The musicals are so successful that they added a fourth to the schedule, but they haven't told us which one. Instead we are performing Wicked next ... and ... I got the part of Elphaba!!!! I don't know why, but the director picked me. Sure I have to wear green face paint for the entire musical, but the songs are so much fun to sing.