In a star cluster located far above their native galaxy humans and Bolos fought against a remorseless, alien enemy.
Drak Na-Drak walked beneath the evening sky. The air was warm, sweet, filled with the promise of the time of planting. Turning to the departing suns he knelt down, touching the ground with his forehead, once, twice, and then twice more.
It was ritual born of habit, for in his heart he knew the gods were dead.
Strange, such a perplexing problem—which sunset to bid farewell to, the first or the second?
If only his eldest brother was here, now he was the theologian of the family. Presented with such a question he could talk long into the gathering twilight, citing the Grikma chapter and verse to find the answer.
Drak chuckled sadly at the memories of youth, gathered around the feasting table at the time of Ja, the holy of holy days, his eldest brother and father arguing Grikma, his mother looking on proudly at the son who was such a scholar.
The irony of it all cut into Drak's soul. Jamu, his brother, was the scholar, and Jamu was dead, dead with all the others while I, the warrior sworn to defend them am still alive.
With a cracking of knees Drak settled down on the sweet spring grass that carpeted the crest of the low hill that rose up out of the endless forest. The far horizon glowed with a multi-colored hue. Fascinating, the sunsets here, so unlike the high thin desert air of home. Lazily he plucked up a handful of grass, rubbing it between his palms, inhaling its life.
There had never been time before for such moments, to simply sit on fresh spring grass and to inhale its fragrance. Always before ground was position, fields of fire, to be taken or defended. Jamu always saw it so differently even when they were children together . . . and now he was dust.
Strange, the workings of the Nameless of Nameless Ones. What would Jamu say now of Them?
"Damn all gods," Drak hissed, throwing the handful of grass aside.
There was a time such an utterance would have terrified him, not only out of fear of divine punishment, but out of fear of the wrath of his father. Even though his father had died in the fifth Yargonian campaign against the humans, so many long years ago, he had still feared to blaspheme. That fear was long since lost.
"The blasphemy is you, O creators," Drak whispered, lying back on the grass, closing his eyes.
Sleep would be so wonderful now.
Too many memories still floated, even after all these years of exile and hiding. The cold clear light of a firestorm engulfing a continent, a firestorm of his own creation upon a human world. The winking of ships exploding across the star-studded night, like fireflies, each flash the extinguishing of thousands. Melcon still and dead, his home ashes. He fingered the charred bracelet around his forepaw, sifted out of the ashes, the betrothing band of his lady.
He sighed, looking back down the slope behind him, a faint glow of light shining from a cabin window. Drak growled softly. Fools, they no longer listened to him, those whom he had once saved from the flaming ruins of his world, laughing when he spoke of infrared signature, camouflage and concealment.
Now I am just an old one, honored perhaps, but still old. Since fleeing the final destruction of the Empire a new generation had been born on this world of exile, two hundred and eight survivors of what had once been billions.
This world, he thought, this forsaken hidden world at the edge of forever will be all they will ever know as we drift through the endless night, the power and glory of old forgotten.
Sleep. How I wish for sleep, to see Harra again, and he smiled, remembering her as last he saw her, saying goodbye as he embarked on the final campaign, in command of all that was left of the once glorious fleet of the Empire. She stood by the doorway, knowing that it was a goodbye forever, holding their two newborns in her arms. Even after all these long years it was still impossible to truly believe that all three of them were dust on a world of dust. He had tried to believe for awhile that when he went into the final sleep he would see her again. But to see her meant that what Jamu and the prophets said was true. Rubbish, for how could the Nameless Ones exist only to watch their people annihilated.
An endless sleep, a sleep without dreams, without the night memories of all that had been, that is what I want But, as always, the closing of eyes, the stilling of breath, would not bring peace.
He awoke with a start.
The terror had walked in his soul yet again and he sat up in the darkness, shaking at the memory—the fire falling from the heavens.
Fire from heaven, how once the imagery of it had so stirred his youthful soul.
He smiled, as best as his scarred face could, at the thought, remembering when he had fallen from the heavens for the first time, a commander of twelve, dropping out of the womb of their ship, plummeting through the sky of an alien world, trailing streams of fire, landing with exultant shouts when, with weapons in hand, they annihilated the startled humans while laughing with the joy of battle.
A hundred such drops? More, it was so hard to remember back to when he had still fought with weapon in hand. Forty passings of the seasons, yes it was forty.
And then had come command, a company of a hundred and twenty, then a battalion, then command of a Dradu of twelve ships, and finally command of the entire Imperial Fleet for the final battle. Yet when he had reached this command, it was in the twilight days of Empire. Instead of jumping down upon their foes it was now a desperate last defense and others had done the jumping, the fighting, the dying as his fleet bled itself into oblivion. The last he remembered of that time was the burning of his carrier and then awakening, with the ever faithful Jamak, Dulth and Regar, the three survivors of his staff, aboard a lone lifeboat that had blown clear of the wreckage. Together they had returned to find Melcon in ruins, and together they had agreed to try to find some survivors on the burning world and flee into the darkness; so that at least someone of their doomed race might still live.
Drak reached up absently and touched his tunic with his one remaining arm, feeling the row of stars upon his empty sleeve, each star a battle decoration for victory.
But they give no such medals for defeat. And our victories?
He laughed coldly. Jamu, my holy brother, might have been able to find purpose in all this madness, but not I.
He sat back up, pulling his cloak in tight around his chest, suppressing a cough. He knew that if anyone was awake in the village he would be shaking his head. Long ago they had given up the night watch. Even his three old comrades said it was without meaning, that no one was left, either human or Melconian. So he alone did it, night after night whenever the sky was clear. Looking heavenward, either for salvation, or damnation.
The night insects whispered around him, their calls echoing across the fields. A low throaty growl thundered in the forest and he turned, cocking his head so that his one good ear could catch the sound.
What was it?
There were so many things on this planet that were still not familiar, even after twenty years. The call could be from something dangerous, or it could be nothing more threatening than the bellow of the ushi, the sand frogs that would call in the night back home.
But this was home now, the only home left to the few of his race who remained, hidden away in the forest, trembling in fear as they looked up at the night, wondering if for one last time the fire would fall from the heavens, the final epilogue of a war of vengeance and revenge.
He sighed.
Home. No, maybe for the new children born here but not for me. Home was where you were born, where your mother loved you, your father raised you, your elders trained you for war. Home, that was gone forever, rubble and ruin, cloaked in dust and firestorms, a hundred worlds blasted into annihilation.
Because of me, because of me it is all gone now, all that is left of my people who once had spread across the galaxy in the billions, all of us gone except me, and the few whom I rescued from a dying world.
He looked back at the village, camouflaged and hidden in the forest below him. It was primitive beyond imagination, huts made of wood and around them the few remaining trinkets of generations past that now seemed to have had the power of the Nameless Ones themselves, tools scavenged from the wreckage of their ship and a lone fighting machine hidden in a cave, all that was left of the dreams of Empire.
General Drak na-Drak covered his scarred face with his one hand and wept.
And above him he did not see the fire that fell from heaven.
The alarm kicked through its circuits, stirring it from its slumber. Something in remote sensing had found a match at last.
The Mark XXXIII, code named Sherman, stirred.
Sleep, it had been asleep, the sensors on a lower sub-intellect running on auto sequencing, had detected something and triggered the alarm that brought him back to consciousness.
"Gordon?"
Silence.
Why was I asleep?
If a machine could stretch and yawn, Sherman did so. For caffeine it sent surges of electrons and micro-bursts of laser pulses into its holo core memory,, coming further awake.
"Major Gordon?"
Again silence.
And then the internal olfactory sensors picked it up. Molecules of charred human flesh hung in the living quarters deep within itself. Sherman switched into visual on the standard light scale. Gordon was still with him, at least what was left of Gordon, his charred remains floating in his command seat.
Old habits died hard even though he already knew his human commander was dead.
"Gordon?"
Of course the sound would not carry, the room was vacuum, except for what was left of his friend.
"Damn." The human word seemed somehow appropriate.
He scanned into memory. Sleep, that's where I was, Sherman thought. Strange for a machine to do so.
Fuller realization started to sweep back into his holo core memory. No, it wasn't sleep, I was injured, the internal repair programs had taken time to fix me, and so I was switched down to divert energy into repairs.
But did I dream? Sherman wondered.
Memory continued to return. The battle of annihilation in the Barrain System, the Regiment, all the regiments dying, either aboard the landing transports or on the ground.
If they could call that victory, what then was defeat?
He alerted his passive sensors, expanding out through the frequencies from sublight through translight and space was silent, except for old waves, dozens even hundreds of years old from all too far away. He scanned through them for a moment, realizing that history still floated in space, the voices of hundreds of billions of humans and all those whom humans had fought.
He clicked into the Regiment comm channel.
Silence.
He stretched and yawned again.
Memory playback, perhaps the answers were in there.
Thus Mark XXXIII SHM, nom de guerre Sherman, of the 4th of the 9th Dinochrome Regiment learned how two races died and how he had slept through the end of a war.
Sherman pondered as he listened to the audios and observed the holo messages of the final days of the campaign. Both his own fleet of the Republic and that of the Melconians had assembled for one final thrust in a desperate bid to end the hundred years' war, stripping every defense from their worlds to launch one final convulsive strike.
And both fleets had passed each other unknowingly and then ravaged those few worlds of their enemies not yet touched by the fire of human and Melconian created hell. The two fleets then turned back in towards each other, both of them filled with the insane fury of vengeance, knowing that even if there was victory, there would be no triumph to celebrate their mutual murder—for they could not go home again.
What few wounded and dying ships which survived that Armageddon staggered off into the darkness to hide in what could only be a thousand years of a new dark age. Sherman listened to the final faint calls from the half dozen ships of what had once been a fleet, which back in the beginning was in the thousands. They cried their exultation of victory into the silence, and then disappeared.
And I missed the end, Sherman thought, knowing that what he was feeling was guilt. The regiment had gone to its Calvary, and my transport ignominiously hit's a mine while trying to join up for the final attack.
"And I alone have lived to tell thee," he whispered.
He pondered the silence, scanning the last of the fading messages and then paused.
From: Lieutenant Jamil Grenda, Commanding Republic Fleet To: All ships Subject: Melconian survivors
One, repeat one Melconian Zulu-class lifeboat reported touching down on Melcon and then lifting back off. It is believed to have picked up military supplies and technological data from the ruins of its capital world. Our final glorious victory cannot be assured until the last of the damned Melconian race is annihilated. Ship reported jumping to sector 334-4A. Any ships in that sector are ordered to seek out, engage and destroy any evidence of the Melconians and report back. New headquarters location will be transmitted shortly.
Long Live the Glorious Republic!
There were no more messages after that.
Sherman clicked into his chronometer and compared it to the message date. Twenty years, twenty three standard days since the Lieutenant, Admiral, General, El Supremo or whatever it was she finally called herself passed the order of extermination.
So that is what brought me awake, Sherman thought as he scanned the systems and worked out a navigational fix which revealed that his transport was drifting through sector 334-4A. The remote passive sensor detected something of the Melconian ship and that kicked my higher circuits back in and raised me from my sleep.
Strange, I slept and awake alone.
He traced back into his surveillance, realizing that somehow, in a bid to stay alive, his automatic internal repair programming had wired itself into the transport in which he was encased in order to gain outside information.
He quickly scanned the ship. All the humans dead, I alone entombed in a drifting sarcophagus. He focused on the scan that had stirred him.
It was nothing more than an infrared tracing on the surface of a planet, a fragment of metal that in overlay matched the bow of a Zulu-class lifeboat.
Sherman pondered the image. It was on an uninhabited planet, a small island in the sea of night, the image of a small continent floating in a tranquil ocean. The trace outline of the enemy ship was reversed, the metal radiating its heat off more quickly than the surrounding woods. He closed in the focus by two degrees of magnitude.
It was no longer a ship, just fragments. Mass analysis however was off. A few hundred tons of fragments. Even if it had crashed and burned, the metal would still be there, one thousand, four hundred and eighty-one tons of it. He paused. It must have been salvaged.
He expanded the view, sweeping outward, running through visual and infrared.
There! Twenty-two kilometers from the ruined ship.
Pinpoints of heat, more than forty. Points of fire but laid out in a grid, again concealed beneath a forest canopy.
But there was nothing else. No active radar, no EM disturbances. There was, however, a trace line of isotopes.
Sherman pondered, humming to himself, a habit Gordon had found all so annoying. The song was ancient, from a war ten score of centuries ago, a song of sweet potatoes (whatever they were) leaping from the ground, while bringing the Jubilee beneath a flag that makes men free.
He hooked into the transport's nav and bridge systems. They were still operational.
He had a mission again.
Sherman turned the armor transport in towards the planet and soon again he felt the turbulence build as the ship traced a streak of fire across the night sky.
Drak never saw it, but he did feel it, the low rumble, the double whip crack of thunder that was not thunder—a sonic boom rolling across the hills.
Startled, pulse quickening, he looked up at the heavens. Nothing. No, of course not, by the time you hear the boom they are already down.
Drak na-Drak stood up, his hand reflexively reaching to his belt. He suddenly felt naked, his pistol hung from the mantle over the fireplace, along with the short ceremonial sword as alpha of his pack.
He turned, head raised, scanning, and then saw a reflected glow against a scattering of clouds drifting off the top of the snow capped mountains. It pulsed, flickered, and died.
A ship's retro as it touched down.
He waited, tensed.
If this was a full assault, there would be the softening up bombardment.
Nothing.
He barked a soft weary laugh. Softening up for what? These were no longer the days of fleets of automated factories that could produce ten thousand neutron heads to shatter a planet and then in two score of days make ten thousand more. Such extravagance of power was long since gone by both sides.
How I reveled in the power of it all, the first time I ordered such a strike, he thought coldly, remembering the human world of New Vermont glowing as a blanket of suns flashed across its surface, a billion of their hated souls turned to cinder as "a demonstration." Or the three year fight for Telamar, with four regiments of the human fighting machines and five regiments of our own smashing the planet from one end to the other as the firestorms turned the days into perpetual night.
We won that one, too, Drak thought as he stood silently, watching the mountain.
How I once loved it so.
Shaking his head he turned and walked, for running was now nearly impossible with the bad leg, back into the woods, his snout lowered, picking up the scents of the forest, mingled with the woodsmoke from the cabins, and the scent of all that was left of his pack.
He reached the village square and stepped up the rough wooden steps into the temple to the Nameless of Nameless Ones and started to ring the bell.
Though more than twenty kilometers away Sherman felt the vibration in the air, the all so faint clatter of metal striking metal.
He paused for a moment to analyze. There was still no radio, no Melconian channels activating to spread an alert, no pulse radars or laser designators locking in.
He remembered the stories of the old war of his namesake that one of the techs in the regiment had told him about. They rang bells then to warn of my approach.
Is this what we've finally become? Sherman pondered.
He started forward, weaving his way up the long slope, scanning the crest line for defensive positions, tensely waiting for the first ping of a Melconian hellfire anti-armor thermonuclear shaped charge round.
Nothing, only the whirring of the night insects. Not even the trace of a Melconian pack scent. He gained the crest of the mountain, remaining on the reverse slope and extended a periscope to peer over the edge. The sound of the bell was clear now and then suddenly it drifted away into silence.
Sherman scanned through his weapons supply list. The only thing he had was the primary load kept stored deep within his bowels, the rest of the supplies on the landing transport was for support of the legs, the infantry. There was only one thermonuke, an EMP pulse head which was also a planet killer with its twenty ton wrap of strontium. The rest was the standard tactical support of anti-armor, and anti-personnel missiles along with his direct fire guns.
All I'll ever have for a long time to come, Sherman realized.
With no hope of backup and resupply, and going in with not even a full battle load made the options limited.
He jacked up the periscope magnification to maximum, focusing in on the traces of heat plumes coming from the forest and waited.
Drak na-Drak looked out over the assembly who stood before him, sleepy-eyed in the early light of dawn. Families stood huddled together, young pups most of them, huddled around the legs of their parents, the smallest whimpering, still walking on all fours, yelping.
"What now is it, Drak," a voice called, "another star falling from the heavens?" and a chorus of laughter echoed around the rough hewn steps of the temple.
"A ship has landed on the other side of the Vargani Mountains."
His words were greeted with silence. In the pale light he could see the range of reactions, from looks of mocking disbelief to that of uneasy fear.
"How do you know this?" Regar, his old comrade and now the lone priest of the village, asked.
"I heard the sonic boom of its passage."
"Thunder," someone quipped from the back of the crowd, "just thunder, I heard it too."
"I also saw the reflective glow of its retros as it touched down."
"Could it be one of ours?" Jamak asked, and Drak could hear the hope in his friend's quavering voice. Standing beside Jamak, the last of the veterans, Dulth stood in stoic silence.
"I wish I knew, but it is best to be cautious until we know. I think we should head to the shelters."
"Those dank holes?"
Drak looked back at the assembly towards the speaker, young Haka, born after the exodus and now coming of age as a leader.
"No one will ever come here," Haka announced. "You old ones, that is all we heard you talk of when we were but still whelping. If all you said of this war of yours is true then no one, either of our people or the demon humans will ever come. You cast each other down and we are all that is left."
Drak looked at Haka and almost smiled. His youthful arrogance was, in its place, a good thing, as he stood before him, dressed in the skins of a forest leopard, a bow, made from a piece of salvaged ship's hull, slung over his shoulder.
"It was just thunder," Haka said, looking around at the assembled crowd. "Now let's go back to our homes and forget this foolishness, the pups have had enough demon stories for one night."
Sherman pondered, scanning the forest and came to a decision. A single high energy pulse swept out and he waited, analyzing the returning signal that echoed across the land. He shifted his position, just in case the Melconians could back track the radar signal and then call in a strike. Popping up his dish after moving half a kilometer, he sent out another pulse, retrieved the data and moved yet again.
No response. Curious. Were they masking their equipment, trying to lure him out? The high res image he had assembled from the two pulses made the picture clear enough. A concealed position in the woods, revealed by the several hundred tons of metal about the encampment which gave back sharp clear images. It was hard to tell at this range but some of them were obviously weapons. Olfactory sweep had picked up a one part per two hundred billion or Melconian scent from their musk glands.
They were here.
He calculated the atmospheric density and wind and locked in the coordinates. Deep within him he picked out the mix of armament, fuel air, HE proximity, cluster, and independent guide tracking rounds. No sense in wasting the heavy armament on what might only be a forward outpost. Old-fashioned indirect fire would be the best for this, and besides, there was something about artillery that he loved, perhaps because of his namesake.
For the glory of the regiment, he thought. The stream of shots pulsed out of his heart and within milliseconds after the last missile streaked heavenward he positioned himself for the charge.
"Incoming!"
Drak na-Drak turned towards Regar, who still seemed strange after all these years to be wearing the priestly robes, he the most efficient killer of all. Regar was pointing towards the mountain and Drak looked back.
Fingers of light were leaping heavenward, standing out clearly against the retreating darkness of night. Drak had worked out the calculations long before regarding a missile strike from the top of the mountain, and knew with a cold certainty just how many seconds were left before the first burst detonated. If it was nuke tip, it didn't matter, but perhaps it was not.
"Move it! Move it!" Drak screamed, pointing into the woods to where the old shelters were.
The crowd looked at him in confusion, some of them silent, some still with looks of bemusement, others turning, stepping up onto the temple steps to catch a glimpse of the mountain through the canopy of trees.
"Damnation is coming down right here!" the priest screamed. "Now follow Drak!"
With a loping stride, as fast as his crippled leg would allow him, Drak leaped down the steps and started down the path that weaved through the forest to the underground bunkers. First one, men another, and finally a shouting crowd followed him, some in panic, many just following along still not sure of what was happening. Drak dodged through the trees, counting down the time to first impact.
If it's not a nuke the first round will be fuel-air to blast the forest canopy down, then followed by cluster and shrapnel, he thought, amazed how he could still think so coldly and clearly. The path wove around a high towering garnth tree, more than half a dozen arm spans in width and a hundred meters in height. Beyond it were the bunkers, overgrown with tangles of vines. Drak raced up to the closest, pulling the vines aside.
"Get in!"
A young mother, barely a pup when he had pulled her with the others out of the shelter beneath the school they had landed near on Melcon, and now carrying two pups herself hesitated at the entryway and he shoved her in head first, her pups yelping in pain. Others piled in behind her. He continued to count and then looked heavenward, sensing it before he even heard it.
"Get down!" Drak screamed.
The priest, Dulth and Jamak sensed it as well and they started to shove to the ground those who had yet to reach a bunker.
Drak dived to the ground. He heard the first whisper, the rising shriek of engines burning hot in order to drive the warheads through the canopy overhead.
Two hundred meters away the first explosion detonated with a white hot flash. He heard screams of terror which in an instant were drowned out by the cacophony of explosions as forty stinger rounds, all in the proper ratio of fuel-air, HE, shrapnel and cluster ripped apart a dozen acres of forest, the last two rounds adding in bursts of phosphorous to ignite the wreckage.
Drak staggered back up to his feet, breathing hard. He felt a warm tingling and realized, to his horror, that it was a rush of excitement. Part of him had found the old thrill in it, cheating death and there was a momentary flash of having survived so many such encounters that they had Become part of his very existence.
And then he heard the screaming.
He moved down the path, his people looking up at him, wide-eyed. And there was something else now as well. In the beginning he had been the savior when he had landed back on Melcon and pulled them out of a suffocating shelter, loaded them aboard his lifeboat and fled their dying home world forever. But saviors are rarely saviors forever. Through the passing of years he became an anachronism, the one who still waited for the enemy, when all the rest knew that the enemy was dead; until finally he was nothing but an old obsessed fool.
Now he was the savior again, and in that instant Drak knew yet again the final and eternal irony of being a soldier protecting civilians whose memories were all so short, while a soldier could never forget anything if he wanted to stay alive.
"Into the shelters, start moving before the second wave strikes."
There was no hesitation now as they stood up, pushing and shoving in blind panic towards the bunkers. He watched them pass, and breathed a silent thanks that though several had been wounded by shrapnel, no one was dead.
"Regar, Dulth, Jamak to me," he said, motioning his old veterans to come to his side.
Together they stood in the forest, looking back towards the shattered ruins of the village which was now engulfed in flames.
"So they've come back after all," Regar said coldly, brushing leaves and broken twigs from his priestly robes.
Drak nodded, not wishing to say the age old line that "I told you so." Smoke eddied and swirled around them as the morning breeze, coming down off the mountains pulled a cloak of choking white around them.
"What do you think they have?" Jamak asked quietly, and Drak could see the hatred in his old friend's eyes.
"At least one fire position, could be an indirect fire support team," Regar said, "jump troopers for the assault."
Drak shook his head.
"If they had jump troopers they'd already be coming in now, they've waited too long already," and as he spoke Jamak looked up through the shattered trees as if expecting even now to see human space-to-ground assault troops coming in on thrusters.
"A mech," Drak said, "one at least, maybe two, with one maneuvering while the other is in fire support."
He waited a moment, cocking up his good ear and then shook his head.
"More likely just one, the second strike would have hit now if they had two."
He turned and looked back at his friends from the old days, the three remaining members of his staff from so long ago.
"Regar, stay with the people. We'll follow the plan we agreed upon long ago. When you hear the battle, start getting everyone out of the bunkers and move them deeper into the forest while we draw the attacking force away in the opposite direction. Jamak, Dulth, you're with me."
Regar looked at him wistfully and Drak knew he wanted to come along, the old call of battle still strong.
Drak smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
"Hell, we need at least one veteran of our once glorious Empire to keep the memory alive."
"At least they'll believe us now," Regar said sadly.
"Until another generation is born," Drak said, not voicing the fear that after today there might never be another generation of the Melcon, their memory gone forever into the night.
"The blessing of the Nameless Four upon you all," Regar said and Jamak and Dulth knelt as he raised his hand in benediction.
Drak stood silently and with a sad smile he nodded to his old friend and started down the path towards the cave where their one remaining weapon was hidden, followed by all that remained of the Melconian Imperial Armed Forces.
Weaving through a narrow defile, Sherman crossed over the crestline and started down the forward slope.
7.9 seconds to the opposite side of the field, he calculated and as he raced across he swung all scanning into maximum. No returning fire greeted him.
Curious. The target was flattened. The high energy sweeps revealed as well that there were no bodies in the wreckage, and no equipment of worth as well.
Then where is their center of resistance?
He raced across the open alpine meadow, reaching the edge of the forest, crashed into the treeline then paused, scanning for any trace isotopes that might indicate a mine barrier. It would be a logical place for one, reverse sloped buried where the soil was finally deep enough.
Again nothing.
I've always hated forest and jungle, he thought, no clear fields of fire, too much concealment.
There was no sense in waiting here, he realized and powering up he crashed through the forest, snapping off trees like broken straws, charging forward. As he advanced he popped off a recon drone, sending it up to level off at five thousand meters where it went into a hover. He expected it to draw fire, but again nothing.
The drone relayed back a sweep of the area, the spreading conflagration from the first strike moving forward with the wind.
These were definitely not Melconian tactics; if they had a weakness it was an inability to wait. In 98.2% of the actions engaged in, Melconians had tended to react as soon as the main force was in sight.
Could they think I'm just recon for a larger strike?
No, they must have detected only one ship and a sweep outward would reveal nothing else within the entire system. He chuckled inward at the irony; a sweep would reveal nothing within a hundred parsecs.
The ground beneath him leveled out and after cutting through sixteen kilometers of forest, with some trees so big that he had to cut them with a pulse ion before proceeding, he finally started to move back up a long slope of trees and jagged outcropping of rock. With a splintering crash of trees he broke into the small clear meadow which bordered on where the enemy position was located.
He scanned the area, and finally picked up movement.
Melconians, half a dozen of them coming out of a concealed position, obviously driven out by the fire which was moving in upon them.
He swung a light rail gun around, popping in a canister of flechettes . . . and then paused.
They were non-combatants, Melconian pups.
General Order 39 clearly stated that all Melconians were to be "annihilated."
Still he hesitated, watching as a pup wailed in terror, its mother covering him with her cloak while she ran from the approaching storm of fire.
She looked back over her shoulder and saw him and in his telescopic sight he could see her eyes grow wide with terror, her canine-like ears pressing down flat against her skull as she clutched the pup tightly to her chest.
Sherman knew with a certain coldness that he had killed Melconian women and their pups before. When a Dinochrome Regiment hits a planet, "collateral damage," as it was so cleanly called, was extensive; on Iutak it was later estimated at over two billion. He had pumped Hellbore rounds into Melconian cities along with his comrades and knew that in turn the Melconians had done the same to human cities.
Yet now, for the first time in his forty-eight years of service, he had a Melconian woman and child in the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.
War is hell, he thought, and then an alarm cut through from the drone, just before it winked out of existence from a direct energy beam weapon.
Even in that final microsecond of its functioning the drone was able to pinpoint the origin of the weapon.
Though he knew that according to the letter of the law the Melconian women and child could be viewed as "personnel" he found internal justification to hold fire while engaging an active foe and swung the gun aside while launching a second spray of missiles towards where the beam weapon was placed.
"Good shot, Jamak, now time to move," Drak announced. Jamak looked over his shoulder at Drak and grinned.
"Like the old days again, is it not my commander?"
Drak shook his head, remembering when the old days was to be in command of thousands and not just one under maintained, badly battered and definitely obsolete light recon mech.
"Just get us the hell out of here," Dulth cried. "I've got incoming!"
Jamak maneuvered the small vehicle out of the mouth of the cave and raced off into the woods, weaving his way around the trees, wishing in his heart for a real machine like the human Bolos, which could simply smash their way through.
As if reading his thoughts Drak knew why Jamak was cursing as he drove, for there had been a time when Jamak had commanded an entire legion of mech of the latest designs that were near the equal of anything the humans could create.
"We've got some seekers in this bunch," Dulth announced, looking up from the flickering display plotting the incoming rounds.
"Jamak?"
"Got the spot," and he swung the vehicle into a gully which was concealed by a dark umbrella of hivuvial pines.
The ground shook beneath them as the second strike pulverized the hill from which they had just fled.
"Seekers still circling," Dulth said quietly and from the outside microphone pickup Drak could hear the drone of the engines overhead as they swept over the forest, looking for their target before diving in.
"One has us, taking counter measure!"
Dulth fired off a direct beam and nailed the seeker as it started to dive and then tracked around hitting the second while Jamak gunned the recon vehicle forward, racing up the side of the gully and moving at full throttle into the forest.
Seconds later another valley came in, this time bursting in a wide circle around the gully, as the enemy machine attempted to nail them as they fled.
Shrapnel screamed against the hull of the vehicle, the concussion of a fuel air burst blurring Drak's vision.
Laughing, Jamak led the human machine deeper and deeper into the forest, and further away from their people.
"It's up to you now, Regar, to shepherd them," Drak whispered.
Sherman turned sharply away from the ruined village and crashed back into the forest, lofting off two quick volleys. The images sent back from the seekers quickly revealed his prey, a light three man Hawk-class Melconian recon vehicle. Armaments included a direct beam weapon, rail drive burst gun and it could also carry a single hellfire ion plasma bolt. That gave him a moment's pause.
It could be a killer. It would have only one sting, but it was enough to tear off a tread, shear off a turret, or with a lot of skill and a lot of luck could penetrate into the ammunition locker and set off an internal detonation. The Melconians had adopted the tactic with great effect in the opening stages of the Gilgamesh campaign inflicting 62% losses on the old 7th before tactical doctrine was changed to include a forward screen of similarly equipped light vehicle hunter killer units.
An interesting challenger, Sherman thought, finding pleasure in the one-on-one hunt, for even though the preponderance of strength was on his side, he sensed that the Melconian opposing him was skillful.
Three times he sent outbursts of indirect fire to try to hit the enemy vehicle and each time it was someplace else, its gunner skillfully dropping all seekers before they closed. Sherman lofted a stealth tracer, which popped up to ten thousand meters, broke free of its casing, and then deployed out on mylar wings, its ceramic body all but invisible to radar. It locked in on the enemy vehicle, would lose it, then regain acquisition, tracking on the sound it made as it crashed through the forest.
Having already expanded 14% of his indirect fire munitions, Sherman decided to close for the kill. And as he accelerated up he realized as well what the enemy was attempting to do.
Drak leaned forward, intent, looking over the shoulders of his driver and munitions operator. It was not quite like the bridge of a ship; armor was something he had never fought in. Jamak, who had started there before rising to be his adjutant, was obviously enjoying himself, weaving the vehicle between trees, leaping ditches, splashing through streams and without warning throwing the vehicle into full reverse, backing up and then swinging off in another direction, while all the time dragging the human machine further and further away from the village.
Except for an occasional seeker the enemy had not tried any more area bombardments.
It's a single mech, Drak realized. It's out here alone and can't squander its munitions to kill a lone vehicle.
So the war has come down to this, he thought with a sad chuckle, a lone human bolo chasing a lone Melconian recon. What epics will be written and sung of this, and again he cursed the Nameless Ones.
He knew that time had passed, the second sun was now far above the horizon, their village far over the distant hills. If the machine had not hit the bunkers Regar would have had more than enough time to lead the people deep into the woods. He knew, of course, that unless luck was extremely kind, they would soon be finished, and he was surprised they had eluded the machine as long as they had. Once they were finished the machine would turn back and remorselessly hunt down the survivors it could find. Such machines had destroyed entire worlds. What were two hundred and eight Melconians more or less to the final bill of annihilation? Again, with luck however, the delay would give his people time to scatter and perhaps some would live after all. And then, a millennium or more from now, again they might go forth to the stars.
And even as he dreamed the dream of survival the hillside before him erupted into light as a Hellbore round swept away the entire side of the hill before him in a glowing burst of plasma.
Jamak spun the vehicle around so that the blast hit the forward sloping armor. The machine lifted off the ground and then slammed back down.
Stunned, Drak saw Dulth slumped forward in his seat, his head lolling to one side—dead, his skull split open, the old fool had not strapped himself in properly.
"Target, forward portside!" Jamak screamed.
Drak unstrapped himself from his command chair, pushed Dulth out of his seat and climbed in behind the gunnery console.
He almost suffered the same fate as his friend when Jamak slammed the vehicle into reverse and roared back down the slope of the hill as a spray of depleted uranium bolts churned the crestline into a geysering inferno.
Drak punched up the ion plasma bolt to full active status, unmasking the tube which ran down the length of the vehicle.
"We have only one shot," Jamak hissed, "so make it count."
"Would you care to take the gun?" Drak retorted, an ironic bemusement in his voice.
"I was a driver," Jarak replied as if insulted. "I drove my gunner for three Mils on their Bolos. I'd rather drive and you do the shooting, sir."
Sherman paused, scanning through the firestorm to where his gatling mount had torn the far hillside apart. The drone overhead bucked and churned from the hot thermal that rose up from the explosion which had ripped apart a square kilometer of forest in order to give him a clear field of fire. The drone suddenly went off the air, its mylar wings melting in the heat blast and again he was blind.
Sherman turned and slashed the opposite hill with another Hellbore, vaporizing the forest and denying the enemy concealment and then tore apart the hills to either flank.
If the enemy tried to come up out of the narrow defile it would be in a cleared firezone.
The hunt is almost over, he thought and he was surprised to feel a twinge of regret. His foe had played a masterful game of hounds and hare, leading him far away from the point of initial contact before finally being cornered. This might be the final shot of the war, and then, after that, silence.
He threw in a suppressive barrage of indirect fire down into the valley and then closed for the kill.
The world outside the recon vehicle was an inferno of explosions.
"Now I know why I never went into armor!" Drak roared. "Everything gets thrown at you. At least with the infantry I could dig in!"
Jamak looked back at him and grimaced.
"This is nothing, nothing at all!" and Drak could see the fear in his friend's eyes.
"He'll come in from the flank," Jamak announced, "either left or right and direct fire down on us for the kill. You'll have only an instant to acquire, train your gun which can pivot ten degrees to one side or the other, and fire before he lets loose," and as he spoke Jamak swung the recon vehicle around to port and came to a stop.
Drak wanted to ask why port rather than starboard but knew it was simply an even guess, either they'd have him in their sights or a round would come in on their back. Chances were that either way it would turn out the same.
Drak sat hunched over his screen, monitoring the condition of the ion plasma penetrator round. He sent a burst of air through the gun bore to clear out the dust and debris from the bombardment and waited.
He thought yet again of his brother Jamu, his lady fair, the children lost. And he thought as well of those who had laughed at him as he grew old, fearing the coming of this day.
He closed his eyes for an instant.
"Let them live, let at least some of them live," he prayed.
"Target front, five degrees to starboard!" Jarak shouted.
Startled, Drak opened his eyes and pivoted the gun.
The plot board marked the target, crosshairs lining up. He saw a flash and knew what was coming in. He pulled the trigger, the vehicle around him leaping back as the round burst down the tube, accelerating up to over forty thousand feet per second and then the world went to blinding light and darkness.
Sherman crested the hill, the valley floor below him swathed in a fireball of explosions as the last of the volley of missiles churned the land into an inferno.
As he crossed over the top of the hill Sherman suddenly knew what fear was, it was part of his programming for survival. Within an instant he calculated the timing and odds. The vehicle before him had an ion plasma bolt on board, sensors picking up the charge spinning in its chamber and at full power, opticals revealing the open gun port. It was starting to pivot, lining up for a shot. He was presenting a target that was on the oblique by eleven degrees. Sherman knew a skilled gunner could put the shot in on his exposed side between tread and side armor skirt, and the round could, at this range, penetrate all the way in for a critical hit, perhaps even a kill.
In his world of microseconds all seemed to be moving in a frightening slow motion, enemy barrel moving a millimeter, his own moving a millimeter as well. He calculated and recalculated and knew at last that he had to fire.
The round went down range and he saw the burst of light from the enemy vehicle leap forward just milliseconds before his shot made a deflecting hit against the enemy vehicle.
The gunner had fired early. Sherman braced himself, unable to bring his point defense gatling to bear in time, rerouting energy to his internal disrupter shields in an attempt to divert the strike away from any critical area.
The bolt hit on the forward armor, half a meter from his exposed flank. The charge burned through layers of armor, peeling it back, striking with such force that his eighteen thousand tons of bulk recoiled from the strike. He felt pain, pain as real as if his circuits were made of flesh and blood. The energy of the bolt burned down, flickered, and died, stopping less than ten centimeters from bursting into his core reactor.
The terror subsided as he did the human equivalent of feeling his body to make sure he was not mortally hurt. It was a wound, a bad one, but a good team of techs could repair it.
What techs?
I'll survive somehow, he thought, for now there's still the mission. He pivoted back, presenting his forward armor towards the target, even though he knew the enemy had fired his one and only bolt. He activated his railgun mount, checked its calibration to make sure it had not been bent, and then moved forward for the coup de grace.
"Jamak, Jamak!"
Gasping for breath, Drak fumbled through the burning wreckage of the vehicle. This was another reason he had never wanted to be in a mech unit, the usual method of death was burning.
He found Jamak and pulled him out of his seat, feeling that his friend's heart was still beating beneath his torn tunic. Scrambling backwards he pulled Jamak after him, crawling out of the top hatch, which was now resting against the ground so close that he feared for a second that they might not get out.
He kicked his way out, pulled his friend after him and rolled clear of the vehicle, aware for the first time that the fur on his arm was smoldering. He patted the burning embers off of Jamak, ignoring his own pain, before rolling on the ground to stop the burning.
"Drak?"
"Here, Jamak."
He crawled back to his friend's side.
"Did you get him?"
"Don't know."
"Lost five vehicles this way," Jamak whispered, "now six. Got the Medal of Stars in the last one."
"I'll see you get another."
Jamak smiled and struggled to sit up.
"Be still, be still," Drak said softly.
He looked up, around him for a kilometer or more in every direction the forest was flaming ruin, the acrid smoke coiling up to the uncaring heavens.
And then he heard the creaking of the treads and out of the smoke a Mark XXXIII Bolo named Sherman emerged.
"Did we get him, Drak?"
"Yes, we got him," Drak said softly.
"Then I guess we finally won the war."
Drak cradled his friend's head in his lap and covered his eyes so that he would die believing in victory.
Sherman ground to a stop. The Hawk recon vehicle was dead. A good kill of an adroit foe. And then he saw the two. A gatling mount swung around and took aim.
General Order 39 was still in effect, the two were Melconian soldiers in a war where the taking of prisoners was a formality long since forgotten.
He scanned them closely and within milliseconds a memory bank shot back a reply, recognizing one of them in spite of the missing arm and scarred features . . . General Drak na-Drak, the destroyer of worlds, final commander of the Melconian Imperial Fleet.
Sherman watched him closely, already resolved to shoot if Drak moved. But he did not.
And Sherman finally realized he would not move, that the General would not abandon a wounded comrade, that he was covering his friend's eyes, so that he would not see the end.
How many thousands of my human comrades have I seen dying thus, Sherman pondered. Dying with defiance, but also with love, love of the regiment, their comrades, dying with all that was the worst, and best in men.
If there was still a headquarters, here would be a prisoner worth turning in. But Sherman knew there would never again be a headquarters, at least not for a thousand years to come.
"General Drak na-Drak," he finally said.
Drak looked up at him, showing no surprise that a Bolo could speak, let alone speak Melconian.
Drak looked at him, his features drawn and then, in what was a universal gesture, nodded in acknowledgement.
"My orders are to destroy all Melconian equipment, facilities, and personnel," Sherman said.
"Orders I would have given, such orders I indeed did give, so go ahead and finish it."
Sherman looked at him, still cradling his comrade.
"You've got us, all that is left of the Empire, two old veterans, so do it and be damned."
"What about the others, there were others," Sherman replied and he saw the old warrior stiffen.
Drak gently lowered his friend's head to the ground and stood up.
"Isn't it enough?" Drak asked.
"What?"
"Isn't it enough? Let something, at least something, survive from our mutual suicide."
Sherman pondered his words, remembering the last faint whispers on the comm links and then silence.
Drak lowered his head for a moment and then finally looked back up at Sherman.
"You said Melconians, didn't you?"
"Those were my orders."
"Then consider this. Twenty standard years ago I returned to Melcon after the final destruction. I should have died with my ship but my friend here," and he nodded down to Jamak, "dragged me into a lifeboat when my carrier was destroyed! We returned to my world, found a few survivors, nearly all of them young ones, and fled."
Drak paused and shook his head. Dead, my comrades, my lady fair, my children, all of them. He looked back up again fighting back the tears.
"The rest were born here. They're no longer Melconian, that race is dead, as is that who made you, except for some few who found refuge as we did. Let it end. Call those here something else, anything else. They're no longer Melconian, you and I destroyed that and the Republic long ago. The war is over.
Sherman pondered what he said, remembering the terrified woman in his sights and sighed, feeling suddenly very old, and very alone.
Yet there was still an order to be fulfilled.
"General Drak na-Drak, I am Sherman, 4th of the 9th Dinochrome Regiment and I demand your surrender."
Drak smiled and finally shook his head.
"Go to hell."
Sherman, taken aback, said nothing for a long moment.
War is hell, it had once been said, and we were the demons who created it.
"We're already in hell," Sherman finally replied.
Drak na-Drak sat alone on the hill, watching the sky overhead. There was a pulse of light and then a brilliant flare as the ship rode heavenward upon the throne of flame.
He watched his old enemy depart until finally it was but a pinpoint of light, and then there was nothing but the darkness.
He wondered what his brother would have said about praying for something that was not of flesh and blood, out perhaps had a soul of compassion after all. How did one pray for an enemy who had given life back to an entire race?
For the first time in more than twenty years Drak na-Drak lowered his head and prayed.
With a contented sigh he finally rose back up, and turning, walked back down the hill to where his people and old comrades were waiting.
Tonight he could finally sleep and not be afraid of what he might dream.