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In the Flesh

by Steve Perry and John DeCamp

 

1.

When he came on-line, Bolo Mark XXXIX, opnom Gray-One-Four-One, usually called "Gray," knew he was in a bad way: He had only partials on optical, aural and tactile sensors. Deep inside, a rhythmic thudding indicated a major mechanical malfunction and his ventilation system cycled at irregular intervals. If the gyroscopic lasers were accurate, he'd been knocked off his treads and was on his backside.

Internal Monitoring was down; there was no response to weapons' status queries, no self-repair activity report. Nothing in the IR or UV; radio, doppler and DS radar were gone, afferent and efferent conductors mostly shorted out. Memory scan was operable but incredibly slow.

What had happened?

He could recall the battle on Mnanawamke against the Draque—

"Gray, hose down that shelf!"

"Copy!" Gray fired and the attacker, a self-correcting and self-propelled dumb-gun, vaporized under the hard sleet of his weapons—

He remembered the fight against the Deetz and their Razor tanks—

"All units disperse! Incoming! Scatter!"

The stand on Millue against the Anish—

"Gray, sitrep?"

"Port engine down, treads fused and armor at ten percent, sir—"

He had sustained a lot of damage in that last battle but repairs had been effected and he had been brought back to full operations mode.

How had he come to this pitiful state?

He remembered powering down for transshipment to the Earth's Armor Plex where he was to have been decommissioned and put into inert-gas storage in the high-orbit Bolo Reserve yard—the mothball unit. Shouldn't have been there longer than ten years, max. There was always another war.

After that, he remembered nothing.

Chronometers were off-line, he couldn't begin to estimate how long he'd been powered down. Whatever had happened, it must have been bad. An EMP blast close to the orbital storage fleet, maybe. Or hard-rad from a dirty nuke. Whatever it was, it must have been overwhelmingly nasty to have left him so badly damaged as to be virtually inoperable.

He attempted to feed more power to the optics, straining to see. He determined that he was inside a natural cavern, and it must be huge. The stalactite-laden ceiling seemed to be quite some distance away. He couldn't even estimate the height of the cave, since optical grids and distance ping were both gone. The fuzzy view he did have was far too dim and hazy to be of much use. The dim green light, provided by what seemed to be a biolumenescent fungus, didn't help.

Could it be a repair facility? Where were the techs?

He checked olfactory. Molecular analysis determined that the input was an acrid, sour odor, something organic, but he did not recognize it. That could mean olfactory memories had been damaged or wiped, or it could mean the pattern was one he had not been exposed to before. Not much help.

Communications didn't respond on any opchan electromagnetics or squirtbeam lasers. If there were techs around, he couldn't com them.

He tried his external loudspeaker. "This is Bolo Mark XXXIX, opnom Gray-One-Four-One. Is anybody there?"

His aural sensors picked up the PA system's 'cast. Working—but so weak as to be barely audible. Any listener more than fifty meters away would miss it.

There was no response for what seemed a very long time. Apparently he was alone here, wherever here was.

Better see if any of the servos still work, see if I can get back on my treads and move. He might be down, but he wasn't out. He had his duty and he had to try.

But before he could initiate the power-up and shift, a monster appeared and leaned over him. It was a slick and shiny pink, had large, globular, black eyes and sketchy features: a hairline mouth, hollow dimples for what he assumed were nostrils. It stared at him. It must be huge to fill his optical field as it did.

Defensive reactive systems engaged and he felt a surge of juice in his circuits. His main starboard gun came up, swiveled and extended toward the threat—

Only what he saw move into his field of vision was not the Deering Recoilless 60mm Infinite Shelless Launcher, opspec nine hundred and seventy rounds depleted uranium per minute, capacity four hundred rounds per cassette, eight cassettes standard, effective delivery to ranges of six thousand meters; no, what he saw was—was—

A human hand on the end of a human arm!

Gray had logged most of his duty time in the Self-Propelled Armor Division. But the last three tours had been spent supporting a first strike team of human soldiers. He remembered what they looked like well enough, those files had not been disrupted.

What was an arm doing where his gun was supposed to be?

And the pink alien said, "Ah, you're awake. And probably a little confused. Not to worry, we'll explain your situation."

The alien reached out and caught his starboard gun—no, he caught the arm!—and pulled and Gray felt himself move, felt a major disorientation as the room shifted around him and his point-of-reference altered. He was upright, though he couldn't feel his treads. He shifted his optical scanner downward, and saw what he was—

—a human body sitting on a padded table, feet dangling a few centimeters above a polished black floor.

Uh oh.

The strange sensory input was overwhelming. Energy supplies to his central computer fluctuated and he felt himself about to go off-line as damaged circuits failed to deliver sufficient power. The gyros went down and he began to sway.

Gray fought for control, tried to reroute power so that the core systems would not fail. The internal thudding increased its rate and the malfunctioning exhaust system fought to exchange enough gas to . . . He didn't understand its full purpose immediately but he had embedded knowledge as to its function. It supplied essential fuel. What—?

Memory returned, but at a creep: Humans utilized such gases for basic metabolics, oxygen and nitrogen that provided necessary nutrients to their biologics.

Were he in full repair, he would have known that in a nanosecond. That it had taken so long to comprehend was another measure of how badly he was damaged.

He assumed manual control of the bellows, increased the flow of the gases into his system, and felt his core computer shift into a more efficient mode almost immediately. When his system had stabilized, he cycled it into an automatic mode and returned his attention to the alien.

"This must be disorienting," the alien said. "Hold your position for a moment and we shall explain."

Even before the alien began to deliver its briefing, Gray formed a working hypothesis based on his limited sensory input. It was inconceivable, a totally wild theory—

"We have transferred your essence, your mind, as it were, to this body," the alien said.

Not such a wild theory after all.

He remembered his last Commander's favorite exclamation in moments of extreme stress, thought it appropriate in the circumstances, and used it:

"Well—shit!"

"And we suppose you are wondering why we brought you here," it said.

Gray had some trouble getting his PA system operative but finally managed it. "Yes. I am," he said.

"We need," it said, "your help."

2.

"What is the situation?"

"We are under attack by a species with which we have had no previous contact. They are corporeal, such as yourself, and—"

"Wait," Gray broke in. "By that statement you seem to be implying that you are not corporeal."

"This is correct."

"My senses are not what they were; however, you seem solid to me."

"An illusion. My form, this structure, that table upon which you sit, all are force fields tuned to produce the effect for your benefit. We are . . ." it seemed to search for a word, "There is no term in your language, but . . . energy plasm comes the closest. This form is what we looked like just before we became what we are now."

"If you can control these fields to such an extent, what help could I possibly offer?"

The alien shifted. "This is a small area and it requires a great deal of concentration by a number of us to maintain it so. We can manipulate gases easily, some liquids slightly. Solids are very difficult. Our world has sufficient atmosphere to provide you with plenty to breathe, but outside this containment field, none of us could touch your form in a way you would be able to sense."

"I see. Please continue."

"This invader has the ability to . . . short out our essence. To . . . kill us. It is so doing."

"Why?"

"We do not know. They have been doing so for some units of your time. More than . . . fifty years. Thousands of us have become no more."

"How did I get here? And where is here?"

A stellar map appeared, a simple holoproj. He didn't recognize it.

"Your craft has been in orbit around this world for as long as our kind can remember. Eventually, the orbit decayed and you fell to ground."

"Eventually . . . Can you tell me how long it has been since—do you have any way of knowing how much time has passed since I was deactivated?"

"The records of our early years are sketchy, so we can only estimate," it said. "Based on the radioactive decay of certain substances in which you were encased, we can determine the age of the material—but only to within plus or minus two percent."

"Close enough. How long?"

"As we measure it, four million, nine hundred and sixty-six thousand orbits."

Four million years?

No wonder the stellar charts looked strange.

Shit! Didn't look as if he were going to be running into any members of his old unit.

"Unfortunately when your . . . craft landed, it was damaged. We could salvage very little, mostly just your biospiritual essence. When it came time to build a new container for you, we had insufficient resources to replace the original—our world is poor in heavy metals—so we delved into your essence and discovered this carbon-based biological . . . container in your memories. It was the best we could manage." The alien sounded apologetic.

They had built a human body from scratch and put his mind into it and felt bad they couldn't do more. Amazing.

Almost as amazing as how piss-poor the body worked. Could it be their reconstruction was flawed? Or was it really this limited, being human?

3.

The rest of the sitrep was not encouraging. The aliens—larger than human six-appendaged insectoids sheathed in exoskeletons—had landed a trio of ships on this planet fifty solar orbits past. They had built a colony, a hive-like affair, under a dome and began reproducing themselves. Eventually they had come into contact with the natives. The insectoids realized they could utilize them for energy, and had begun capturing them in magnetic bottles for that purpose.

"We are a telepathic species," his host told him."We felt what our . . . brothers and sisters felt as they were consumed in the aliens' generators. We have tried to contact the invaders, to stop them, but they cannot or will not respond."

"I see."

"The aliens may or may not realize what they are doing. But those of us who are taken and used by them perish in great distress. It is like being . . ." it searched for words, thoughts that would convey its meaning, ". . . it is like being burned alive."

"And you want me to stop them? By myself? In this form?"

"Yes."

Gray felt his "face" stretch in a grimace. A smile, he remembered. "Who are you? Why should I help you?"

"We believe we are the original inhabitants of this world," the creature said. "We cannot be sure. We have your command password, zero delta four, and have thus assumed the role of your Company Commander."

"You took that from my mind," Gray said.

"True," the alien said. "But you must decide whether to help us or not. We cannot force a sentient creature into a situation that might kill it."

Gray thought about it. If this apparition spoke the truth, then the insectoids were an aggressor species and that was, at the bottom, what the Bolos had been designed to stop. Initiation of force by one group against another was the cardinal sin. Invariably, the creatures who attacked a peaceful group first were in the wrong. Everything else was negotiable.

"All right," Gray said. "Subject to gathering data that conflicts with your story, I will help you. Can you supply me with weapons, maps, any kind of support?"

"We will speak of that after you have rested. Your new body requires a condition known as 'sleep' in order to maintain physical and mental stability. The process of awakening has taxed your body's resources to the point where it needs a rest period . . ."

"Yes, I understand. My chassis feels as if it has taken an eight meg blast."

He lay back down on the slab.

4.

Lieutenant Browning had set up a MA-179 recycling shower beside him using his bulk and a tarp for privacy. Many of the female soldiers did that if they took a shower after a battle. It was the thoughtful thing to do when male testosterone levels ran high, she had told him.

"You fought well today, Gray," she said as she stripped.

"Thanks, Browning, you did also." He watched the rest of the clothing drop away from a body he had once heard Private Nute describe as "The ultimate female shape." He had always been interested in the human form, with its soft vulnerability and its mysterious functions. But this time it was different. Within his weapons systems, servos hummed and . . .

 

Gray snapped awake. His forward lower rocket launcher was armed and fully extended, questing for a target—

He looked down at himself in wonder. That wasn't a rocket launcher, it was an odd tube of flesh and it stuck straight out from his human body.

Penis, that's what the tapes had called it, though his human buddies had dozens of other names for it. And that soft sack under it that ached like crazy must be the testicles.

But—why was it in operations mode?

5.

From what they had salvaged of Gray's former self, the creatures managed to construct some weaponry appropriate for his current form, though not much.

"Most of the metal was degraded beyond usefulness," his host said. "Radiation, temperature extremes . . ."

"Do you have a name?" Gray asked.

"If you address one, you address all."

"Maybe so, but I need the point of reference. Okay, then I'm going to call you 'Hal,' if that's okay."

" 'Hal'?"

"An old joke among Bolos."

"Whatever you wish."

"Fine. Look, Hal, what you've come up with—from my memory, apparently—is a simple explosive pellet carbine, a handgun using the same energy and a survival knife."

"Yes?"

"These might take out a bug—one of the aliens—but I doubt they'll scratch the paint on a ship or do much damage to the dome."

"Yes?"

"How many of the things did you say there were?"

"Nine hundred and sixteen."

Gray shook his head, something he was getting used to doing. "One Bolo in a . . . greatly reduced mode against nine hundred aliens."

"Nine hundred and sixteen," Hal said.

"Fine. Pour flitex on a dead roach."

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind. What I'm saying is, there isn't much chance I can defeat that many opponents given the tools at hand."

"We are sorry we cannot supply you with more," Hal said. "Our world is very poor in heavy metal elements. Finding, excavating and working such would be extremely difficult."

"Why is it you made these old-time pellet weapons? Why not use the metal for lasers?"

"Explosives are easy, electronic circuits are more difficult," Hal said.

"If explosives are easy, how about making me some D-9 and something to set it off with? Five or six kilos of it."

"We can do that," Hal said. "Barely."

Gray felt his breathing hitch. A sigh, it was called. "Well, I guess I'll just have to borrow a few things from the bugs."

6.

Gun in hand, Gray huddled behind a rock. There were plenty of rocks; he was in a deep glacial-cut valley full of boulders of varying size. In spite of its inhospitable look, the surface of the planet was still able to support human life, although it was on the cold side, particularly for a man without clothing.

Very cold. He wouldn't last more than a few hours unprotected out here. That was the first order of business, to remedy that; otherwise, he'd spend his time in Hal's cave—not a place conducive to conducting matters military.

It was just past twilight, a moon just rising. Gray saw spindly plants in infrequent pockets of soil. Three meters away, a small windowless structure of fused granite glistened in the remaining light. Beside it a copper-lined circular hole a meter across plunged deep into the crust of the planet.

Hal thought the hole might be some sort of tight beam communications device.

"We really do not think this advisable," Hal said. "Your coordination is normal but your body is still weak. You should have at least a lunar cycle of exercise to optimize your strength."

Gray turned to face the alien. In its normal mode, it looked like a heat wave, a vague wrinkle in the atmosphere. "This would save us all a lot of trouble," he said. "If it works."

"My siblings say the ship approaches."

A minute later a gray object that looked like a cross between an egg and a helicopter without blades, threaded through the rock spires in the lower end of the valley, flying low. Gray estimated its speed at better than two-fifty kph. He crouched deeper into the shadow of the rock, the handgun slick against the skin of his palm. His system shifted into the glandular equivalent of full alert, and he shivered at a feeling that was only half-familiar.

"Well, at least we will know if our implant of the invader's language is adequate . . ."

"Not now," Gray said. He peered around the edge of his cover.

The alien ship hovered over a flat spot ten meters from the structure. As he watched, a spindly tripod of metal extended from the side of the craft. The ship settled, landed. A moment later a hatch zipped open and one of the insectoids stepped out and clambered down the tripod.

It was a meter-and-a-half tall symmetrical biped with four arms. The head within a transparent spherical helmet resembled a praying mantis with an ape-like mouth. Other details were hidden under the heavy pressure suit.

Gray stepped away from the rock and pointed the handgun at the creature. "Don't move," he said in what he hoped was the insect's language.

The alien froze in mid stride, mouth open showing pointed black teeth.

"Disconnect your belt. Slowly and with great care."

The creature complied. A wide belt filled with pouches and what looked like some kind of hand weapon clanked against the rocky ground.

Gray felt a shiver run through him. Cold, that was all. An unaccustomed sensation, one of many. He couldn't be afraid.

"Who the <fuck> are you? What the <fuck> do you want?" The insect's voice came from a grill in the chest of its suit. Some of the translation was apparently approximated by Hal's implant. Gray got the gist of it well enough.

Gray said. "There are sentient beings on this planet being destroyed by your people . . ."

"There is no native <faunal> life here," the alien said. "Except for you. Where did you <originate>?"

"I have the weapon, I ask the questions. You're wrong about native life. They are the . . . vortices you collect."

"You are wrong, alien. Those are merely <plasma sources.>"

"Why are you here? This world is barren, it has few minerals."

"None of your <fucking> business, you two-armed <gimp>."

Gray pointed the handgun so it lined up on the bug's left eye.

"Something in the soil," the alien said hastily. "We can't breed well on most planets, but the food we grow in this place let's us <fuck> like <xorts>." It paused. "<Gimp>, my <superior> has been listening on the <suit radio>. He wants to talk to you."

"Go ahead."

The new voice was higher pitched. "Why have you approached this <drone>?"

"To stop the killing of the beings on this world."

"<Xortshit>," the second voice said.

"Excuse me, Gray," Hal said suddenly. "I think the word is . . . incoming?"

Gray dove for the shelter of his rock.

7.

Smoke still rose from the wreckage.

"You have no life threatening wounds, but your integument is abraded and somewhat damaged from your evasive tactics," Hal said.

"Oh, really?" Gray inspected the carbine and jacked in a clip of thirty hollow point cartridges. Sarcasm now had greater meaning than once it had to him.

"It is true," Hal said. "Further, if the last confrontation was unwise, the upcoming one is much less so. There are seven insectoids on the carrier, according to our siblings, and all are armed."

Gray waved at the shreds of metal and the moist fragments of the insectoid's shattered body. "I still need something to wear, and there isn't enough left out there to cover a rat." He shrugged. "Isn't this what you wanted me to do—fight the aliens?"

"We wished for you to be better prepared."

"This is how I get prepared." He inspected another clip and lay it within easy reach. "Clothing, arms—I can't even think about how I'm going to do this until I have those items." He examined a third clip and dropped it back in its pouch. "Where are they now?"

"Half a kilometer out, following the dry river bed."

"Got it."

As he watched, the cigar-shaped craft lifted out of the river channel and swooped low to land beside the wreckage of the first ship. A hatch in the middle swung open and three insectoids jumped to the ground. Moving quickly, they fanned out around the ship. A fourth joined them and began to walk toward the wreckage.

When they were well clear of the ship, Gray started shooting, aiming and firing four times as quickly as he could. Three of the aliens dropped, knocked over by the force of the bullets. The fourth dove for cover behind a rock, trailing steam from a hole in its suit.

A fifth one stepped into the open hatch, carrying what looked like a length of stovepipe on his shoulder. Without regard for the back-blast he pointed it at Gray.

Gray took careful aim and fired a shot right down the center of the stove pipe. These eyes were crappy compared to what he was used to and the gun wiggled all over the place, holding the sights dead on was impossible, but it was what he had to work with.

His luck was better than his skill.

There was a blinding explosion, and the ship tipped over on its side, spewed flame. An instant later, the entire thing blew up, sending a column of flame thirty meters skyward.

So much for trying to spare the ship.

Gray crouched behind his bolder as rock fragments and pieces of the ship dropped around him.

"Most impressive," Hal said.

8.

There was just enough material left from the pressure suits of the first three soldiers for Gray to lace together into a functional garment. The material was soft and insulated with hollow fiber and Gray learned what it felt like to be warm for the first time since he had awakened.

The fourth soldier lay in his shelter with his finger in the bullet hole in his suit. It was a futile gesture: he'd died of his wounds before Gray could get to him. Gray found a patch kit in one of the insect's pouches and fixed the suit. After washing the yellowish gore out of the thing, he tried it on. There was a lot of loose material, including the sleeves for the extra arms, but he could wear it.

Back at the cave, Hal managed to transfer normal air into the tank for him. The stuff the insectoids breathed was short on oxygen and long on sulphur dioxide.

There were no undamaged weapons. The exploding ship had wrecked them.

Gray made one last trip to the wreck a couple of days later to see if the insectoids had left anything behind when they salvaged the flyers. Other than some large chunks of charred foam plastic from the hulls, there was almost nothing left. A few scraps of metal and a wad of insulated wire the size of a softball was all he could find.

During his free time, he strengthened his body by running and by lifting rocks and heavy chunks of ice.

But strengthening just his body wasn't enough.

9.

His long-wave transmissions were full of the incoherent shouts of dying Bolos. The Anish ships were seeking them out one by one and focusing their huge solar driven lasers on them. Humans screamed and winked out by the thousands as the shields flashed their bunkers and fortresses.

With his tracks fused and his port-side engine burned out, Gray sat disabled on a hillside and watched as the enemy ships swept closer. The reserve fleet could still turn the tide, but they were days late and he feared they had been ambushed by the remains of the Anish fleet.

"Gray. You're asleep." It was Lieutenant Browning's voice on the com.

"You are in error, Lieutenant. Bolos do not sleep."

"Gray, you're asleep and you're dreaming," Browning said. "You must wake before . . ."

"Bolos have three states: off, on, and standby. I do not dream."

On a different frequency, his final scream cloaked in static, yet another human signaled his death.

Her voice grew urgent: "Listen to me Gray, you are no longer a Bolo—you are a man and you are sleeping. You must wake up before . . ."

The ship stopped overhead and the beam found him. "Before what?" he asked. "Before I die? All Bolos die eventually."

"No! No! You don't understand! You must wake before . . ."

 

Gray awoke drenched in sweat and sat bolt upright on his slab. His heart rate was at max and he gasped for air. The Navy had gotten them off. The fleet had arrived just before his armor completely burned through and gotten his whole outfit off . . .

He pushed the dream from his mind and rubbed his face hard. Slowly his body responded and began to return to normal again.

But hard as he tried, he couldn't go back to sleep. Hal had caused a stream of water to flow through the cave near his slab. He got up, voided his liquid waste in the downstream end, then walked upstream and drank. The knowledge seemed innate to do it thus.

When he pushed aside the brush and looked outside, it was still dark. It was too early to exercise. Hal had finally admitted his people had allowed themselves one physical improvement when they had built him. They had hard-coded his long-term memory into the redundant DNA sequences of a small number of brain cells. The results were a photo-vivid and totally complete record of his computer memory banks. They had given him a key phrase he could use to access them. Virtually everything that had ever happened to him as a Bolo tank was there. He had only to recall it. It was time he put this talent to use.

 

Integrating the data from tank memory to something useful for a human being was frustrating. He had to discard gigabytes of information as irrelevant to anything without armor and a Hellbore. Basically, his trainers expected him to take orders from humans and improvise any other course of action with brute strength and fire power. Still, he was one of the oldest XXXIX Bolos to survive and in the course of his many battles, he had learned a certain subtlety. The rule was simple: If you are outgunned or badly damaged, you must somehow be effective without the enemy knowing about you.

Basically, you have to hide.

Well, that's out. I've already killed more than one tenth of a percent of them so you can bet they know I'm here.

Unbidden, his thoughts drifted toward Lieutenant Browning . . .

"Good morning, Gray." Hal seldom bothered with his physical form any more, now that Gray was used to him. "If I may interrupt your introspection, I should like to show you something." A bowl of some sort of pale white gruel appeared on the slab beside him. "After you have eaten, of course."

Gray tackled the gruel with mouth and fingers. It was almost tasteless, but since he had never eaten anything else, there was nothing to compare it to. No question, his body was thriving on it.

Afterward, he washed the remainder out of his short beard and turned to face the shimmer of light that floated by the slab. "I'm ready."

A bright point of light appeared before him and a voice said "Follow me."

The creature led him though a confusing labyrinth of caverns. Sometimes the green algae provided soft illumination, and sometimes there was only Hal's light. After almost an hour of climbing over rocks and hitting his head on low ceilings, the way opened into a huge room. In the center, a meter from a smooth flat floor, something glowed; something that clutched at his inner being.

It was a tiny universe. Only by looking at it out of the corner of his eye, could he see it at all, but what he could see was beautiful on a level he had never conceived. Gas clouds and whirling galaxies in colors that tugged at the mind . . .

"What—How—?"

"You may find it easier to see if you close your eyes," Hal said.

He closed them and damned if he wasn't somehow . . . inside the thing.

—Galaxies, suns in seeming infinity, planets, tiny beings that scrabbled and raised intricate cities of blown glass and jewel—

"It took four hundred thousand planetary cycles for us to build this. It is only a model. Perhaps in another million cycles, we will be able to make a full-scale one."

Gray opened his eyes and reluctantly withdrew. He turned his back on the little universe and began to walk back down the cavern. "So beautiful," he whispered. There were even tiny beings on the planets . . . cities . . . civilizations . . .

He must have spoken aloud.

"A kind of . . . quantum bacteria," Hal said. "Still, we acknowledge our responsibility for them. Sentient forces are in place to watch over them and protect them. You might call them 'angels.' "

Gray felt something, a feathery touch inside his mind.

"If we die, this model will die with us and the real one we would someday build will never come to be. The thought we may never realize our goal disturbs us deeply. As a soldier, you must know what it is like never to be all that you can be. This is why we wish to survive, Gray. To create."

11.

The Anish ship drifted silently toward him, hovered and the deadly laser found him—

"You must wake up, Gray. You must wake before . . ."

With some enormous effort, he broke the dream's grip. Swam up from sleep.

He couldn't go on like this. The dream was eating him alive.

It was deep night, but he was unable to sleep again.

Slowly, reluctantly, he entered his memories and went in search of Lieutenant Browning.

* * *

"What would you do if there were no more wars?" She was using one of his reflective surfaces as a mirror and combing her short brown hair.

"I don't know," Gray said. "I'd be shut down and scrapped, I suppose. What would you do?"

"I'd go back to Earth—that's where I'm really from you know—and I'd get together with some nice man and start a real home. I'd sleep in a bed at night, not in some mud hole, and I'd have a man who loved me to share my life and make love with me." She paused and smiled, "I'd have babies and for the first time in my fucking life I'd have a chance at being happy."

"Then I hope this is the last war," Gray said. He meant it.

She threw the brush down and faced his forward optical sensor, her features sad. "They cheated you. You're the kindest most thoughtful creature I've ever met and I'd—I'd marry you if you were a man. But you can never be a man—never ever find any kind of peace or happiness. You should have better."

"I am happy when you speak with me," Gray said—and meant that too.

He broke off the memory and went deeper, exploring the relationship.

In the end, she had quit taking R&R. She had chosen instead to spend her free time with him, walking with him or just lying in his shadow, confiding her hopes and dreams in him. It had been . . . different than anything he had ever done.

Then the Anish had come.

He couldn't remember much of it. So many of his sensors had burned off and he was in so much pain that nothing was clear. He had one bright memory of a ground force approaching him and then he was switched off . . .

When he was repaired and online again, his company had been assigned another Bolo. When he asked about Lieutenant Browning, he was told she'd taken a discharge and gone home. He thought she might write him; sometimes human vets did that with Bolos. But he never heard from her again. Deep down, he hoped she found the happiness she sought.

But it didn't explain the dream.

 

The Anish laser found him and he felt the ceramic armor boiling into vapor, a centimeter at a time. "So I must die. What is it I don't understand?"

"Gray," her voice was desperate now, "Gray, my truest friend—you must wake before I die . . ."

Frantically, he tried to wrench himself awake, but this time the dream held him. He couldn't escape and it was worse than anything the Anish could do to him when the thing chasing him took him in its cold arms. It was on him, clear as a vision, clearer than any dream. The truth.

"My monitor says you're dying."

"Browning! You've broken radio silence. Shut down! They'll find you!"

"I know, But I couldn't let you die without telling you. I love you, you big dumb son-of-a-bitch! I love you—"

Her final words.

12.

Each stroke of the rock wore a tiny bit of metal away. Gray held up the little part and squinted at it. Almost enough. Carefully he resumed his work.

"You seem—unquiet—this morning," Hal said.

"No problem. I'm ready. Please get me a map of the dome." He looked at the metal part again, then replaced it in the mechanism of the field-stripped carbine.

"There's something . . . dark inside you. We would prefer if you waited until you are more calm."

"This is all the calm I am going to get. I need the map, now."

He finished reassembling the gun and snapped a clip in place.

"What did you do to the gun?"

"Something I remember from one of my weapons history tapes. If the sear in this thing gets too worn, its operation alters . . ."

Gray raised the gun and pressed the trigger, held it down.

Thirty metal pellets screamed down the cavern, ricocheting from wall to wall and left his ears ringing.

"It looks very . . . effective," Hal said.

Gray put the gun down and began working on the suit, connecting wires to its power supply and pushing them through a small hole he'd punched near the garment's waist. "The map?"

"We will bring it into being." Hal vanished.

 

It was garbled, but he could remember most of it now, the rest of what really happened. Browning's death had made him crazy, something that had seldom happened to a Bolo before. He had nearly killed the relief crew before they talked him back to a semblance of sanity. In an attempt to salvage him while he was in the repair depot, they had wiped the memory of his last moments in the Anish war and then lied to him. They stole his mind and lied to him so he couldn't even honor her by grieving! But there must have been some residual charge left on the wiped memory cells, because he had remembered.

He remembered . . .

Hal returned and a map appeared on the floor before him. "I'm sorry I took so long. Another of us has died, and it takes a while for us to recover."

"It's late for this, but I'm going to impose a condition on my trying to save you," Gray said.

"A condition?"

Gray told him the story. "So no one in my company ever survived to find happiness. Not Lieutenant Browning, not anyone.

"We thought the war was just—but so did the Anish. If I save you, you must make the universe you build be full of happiness. Its creatures should always find completion. There should be be no lies, no betrayal.

"And especially, no war."

"That would not work, Gray. Bad things must happen for good to be recognized. Happiness without cost is empty . . ."

"No. Love can be a far stronger mover than fear. Look in my mind and you'll see."

There was a moment of piercing headache, then silence.

"I . . . see." Hal's voice sounded distant. "You believe that love can be stronger even than the fear of death."

"Yes. You have the power to be gods. Get it right this time."

There was a long pause. Gray could not have said how long it lasted.

"We will consider what you have said."

That was the best he could hope for, Gray guessed. Better than nothing.

13.

Thousands of Hal's siblings gathered outside the dome, their essence making shambles of the insectoids, radar and UV doppler. Gray lay on the perimeter and waited while Hal and his siblings counted the guards. There were only four of them on this side of the dome. The enemy had to know something was going on, but clearly didn't think it was much of a problem.

The dome was located twenty clicks down the same glacial valley from his fire-fight with the aliens. It was only forty meters tall and half a kilometer across. Boulders were thickly strewn around the base, no doubt tossed aside when the thing was built. With plenty of cover and only a few guards, Gray had no trouble reaching its base.

Gray stuck the explosive to the smooth black plastic of the dome's wall, and shaped it with his fingers. According to the map, the power station was forty-five meters from his present position. Working as quickly as he could, he plugged in a fuse and connected it to the end of a spool of wire. There wasn't a hell of a lot on the spool, he was going to have to try salvaging what he could.

He backed away from the explosive, carefully unrolled the wire.

A huge rock provided shelter. He sat down behind it with his back to it and twisted one of the wires from the spool to one of the pair sticking through the patch compound on his suit. Then he switched his system to full alert and touched the other two together.

There was a satisfying whump! loud enough to hurt his ears even with the rock in the way. Debris flew past. A smell like rotten eggs came to him.

When things died down he risked a look.

The structure had apparently been made of a hypertensioned plastic material that was thin but strong. When over-stressed by the explosion it shattered like safety glass. About a third of the dome had come down.

But he had no time to admire his work. Three of the four guards were about forty meters out and closing fast.

A short burst each took out two of the guards and the third one dove for cover. Gray blew the rest of the clip at him and got him high in the chest, knocking him aside just short of the outcropping the creature was trying to reach.

While he was stuffing in another clip, a red spot struck the rock next to him and started to smoke. It whipped toward him.

There was no time to think. He dove head first into the open, rolled and sprinted toward the gap in the dome, the loose suit flapped around him, the tightly-gripped wire trailed behind him.

Just has he got to the opening, something stung the outside of his left thigh.

No time to worry about it; he slapped down his face plate and jumped through the hole.

Twenty or thirty insects lay scattered about in the shattered fragments of the dome and in the distance he heard cries of agony as the thicker outside oxygen worked its way in. Honeycomb-like structures extended in even rows toward the center and he saw young creatures writhing inside the yellow translucent material.

Sorry.

The power station stood directly in front of him. A steel cylinder five meters across extended nearly to the top of the dome, its base a six-meter-square box bristling with pipes, cable connections, meters and things he couldn't identify.

Gray looked at the station just long enough to verify what it was, then dropped behind a pile of rubble. A moment later, part of the fourth guard's helmet appeared in the hole.

Gray put a half a dozen rounds into the insect. The guard shattered.

He was in the clear. No visible opposition survived anywhere close to him. There were doubtless other soldiers on the other side of the dome, but he had the jump on them.

The inside of his suit stank and his leg wasn't working right. The enemy laser had taken a chunk out of his thigh muscle and left a corresponding double hole in his suit. Fortunately, the laser had pretty well cauterized the wound, but he didn't have enough patching stuff left to fix the suit. The airline led to the back of his helmet so he turned it up and let it clear his helmet. He was using air at an alarming rate, but what the hell, he thought.

I'm not going to need it much longer.

"I am reluctant to mention this," Hal's voice buzzed in his mind, "but a third of the aliens still live and a hundred and seventeen of those are attempting to get a starship ready to launch."

Gray picked his way through the rubble and limped to the base of the power plant. One plate was relatively clear of cables and other clutter and a rivet head every two inches spoke of great pressure contained. It was an odd blend of technology, electronic and mechanical. But then, so had his own technology been odd.

He reached for the pouch containing his explosives.

There was plenty of the stuff, so he packed it around the controls as well as on the riveted plate and stuffed what was left in a couple of places where the cables joined the box. Then he set the fuses and glanced at the spool of wire.

Only a single three meter strand hung from the spool, the rest had snagged on the rocks and broken off during his frantic run for the hole in the dome.

Three meters. Not nearly enough.

He twisted the wire in half and started connecting the fuses in parallel.

Hal realized what he was doing. "You must cease your activity and depart. We cannot ask a sentient creature to commit suicide."

"Not your choice, Hal." Gray took a final wrap on the last fuse and leaned against the plate. His leg throbbed like fury. Ten centimeters of wire to spare.

He was just getting used to being human, just beginning to bring forth the knowledge that was locked in his memory. There was so much left to explore . . .

But inside him somewhere, Browning was still screaming and all the sentient people in the universe were still buried under the burden of striving for something most of them would never find. If he ran, he might survive. But if he touched these two little wires together, Hal's people would surive and the next universe they had the power to create might be, could be, should be paradise . . .

"Browning?" he whispered. "I love you, too."

He smiled and touched the wires together.

 

 

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