For the past several standard days, my Commander and I have been at the location recently designated Simmstown, the Wide Sky refugee camp located 112.4 kilometers north of Kinkaid. Our Commander could only get permission to deploy one of us to Simmstown, and after conducting a random generation of probabilities known as a "coin toss," it was determined that I would go while Bolo 96875 remained at Kinkaid.
Permission for this deployment was won on two levels. My Commander was able to convince Governor Chard that with the addition of a plow blade welded to my glacis, I could be employed in the construction of permanent facilities for the refugees, including underground barracks and a sewage treatment facility. This we have been doing, in cooperation with the Confederation Military Authority's Engineer Brigade.
A second piece of reasoning won permission from General Phalbin. My Commander convinced him that if Malach scouts were loose in the Lake Simms region, we would be in a better position to track them if at least one Bolo was present in that region and, in addition, that Bolo would be in a better position to locate that threat and counter it.
I am pleased and somewhat relieved to note that my Commander has written the additional code and uploaded it to my main memory. The code, in effect, deletes the entire list of ROEs when my Commander gives the verbal order "can that crap." I admit some uneasiness at this; my Commander shows a tendency to disregard inconvenient orders, a tendency that could well get him into serious trouble. Even so, the ROEs as originally implemented would have caused considerable difficulty had I tried to execute them as written. Integration testing with the ROEs in place was never performed, but I am certain the ROEs would have markedly degraded my performance in battle.
Since arriving at Simmstown, I have been converted to heavy digging, excavating a plot 320 meters long by 110 meters wide, which the engineers are now lining with cast plasfoam preparatory to constructing multi-story barracks, supply, and dining facilities, all of which will subsequently be buried, save for tunnel entrances and ventilator shafts. I have also excavated a circular pit which will handle the primary treatment of raw sewage once the facility is equipped with running water and sewer lines.
My separation from my brother has not interfered with our communications in the slightest. We have continued our chess games, concentrating especially on the strategies of Alekhine and Morosov in high-value exchanges for position.
And, of course, we continue to review all available data on Malach tactics and on the combat abilities displayed by their war machines. on Wide Sky. The recordings returned to Muir by our Commander have given us a singular advantage to help offset our lack of information on the Malach themselves; in particular, visual recordings of the last stand by Bolo Unit of the Line 76235 ALG at the Camp Olson military base can be compared on the millisecond level with telemetry received from Unit 76235, providing Bolo 96875 and me with an excellent means of estimating enemy capabilities. "Know the enemy and know yourself," the human military philosopher Sun Tzu noted some 3600 years ago, "and in a hundred battles you will never be in peril." That statement, while tending to hyperbole in its absolutism, is accurate enough in its sentiment. A decent understanding both of enemy capabilities and of our own strengths and weaknesses, while not guaranteeing victory, is the only route through which victory may be obtained.
So far, we have gleaned a great deal of useful information. In general, it must be admitted that the Malach walker-fliers are at least equivalent, on a one-to-one basis, with Deng-built Yavac A-4 heavy combat units in terms of mobility, firepower, and armor, which makes them formidable opponents indeed. While an initial assessment of their capabilities and weaknesses suggested that the legs would be key weak points in their design, it is now clear from the capabilities demonstrated at Fortrose that they can, at need, dispense with legs entirely and operate as low-performance attack aircraft. This duality suggests a dangerous flexibility in Malach tactical thinking.
One-to-one, of course, a single Yavac heavy unit is no match for a Mark XXIV Bolo of the Line. During the Deng Wars, combat analysis assumed a 3.75-to-1 superiority in the then-current Bolo Mark XX over Yavac heavies, and this superiority is, of course, substantially improved in later marks through the Mark XXIV. Though no specific studies have been made on the subject, estimates suggest a margin of at least 11.72-to-1. Meaning, of course, that the Malach would need a 12-to-1 numerical advantage in order to have an even chance of destroying a Mark XXIV. The speed with which 16 Malach walkers destroyed a Mark XVIII—28.5 seconds according to the combat telemetry I have accessed—suggests that this analysis is of at least passable accuracy, with a probable range of error of plus or minus fifteen percent. We will have to observe the Malach combat units in a variety of conflict situations to develop our estimates of their individual capabilities more fully.
Key to Malach tactics appears to be their propensity for operating in packs, with typical small-unit deployments of eight machines. In fact, the number eight recurs constantly in Malach operations and deployments, so much so that Unit 96875 has suggested that Malach mathematics utilize a base-eight counting system. Since their four hands possess four fingers apiece, paired eight and eight, either octal or hexadecimal might be expected to be a logical starting point for an understanding of Malach mathematics. At this point, I fail to see a practical use for this datum, but it is undeniably a part of the larger image, a part of learning to know the Enemy and how he thinks.
Malach pack tactics, however, will be extremely difficult to counter. Assuming, provisionally, a 1-to-12 force ratio between a single Malach war machine and a Mark XXIV Bolo of the Line, it is clear that my brother unit and I could eventually be overwhelmed by as small a force as four Malach combat groups. If they manage to concentrate any sizable force in our area and keep us pinned or immobile, we will fare no better against them than did Mark XVIII Bolo of the Line 76235. Since we are certain to face much larger force ratios than 12-to-1, obviously we must consider various mobile strategies and means by which we can hope to divide the Enemy's forces and engage fewer than twelve of them apiece at a time.
As yet, neither Unit 96875 nor I has thought of a way of reliably doing this, given the rigor with which the Malach seem to cling to their eight-unit pack structure.
And it may well be that we are running out of time. Twenty-seven point three five minutes ago, I detected a burst of FTL communications from an unknown extraplanetary source and at an unusual frequency. The signal was extremely powerful and probably transmitted from relatively nearby. Though coded with a key algorithm impossible to crack without a knowledge of the key, I suspect that it may be from a Malach warship, intended as a coordination signal with scouts or probes already on Muir.
After consulting with my Commander, I have launched four MilTek J-40 Mark VII early warning satellites into low-Muir orbit, programmed to maintain a close watch on local magnetic fields and neutrino flux.
It is probable—with a specific probability of 82.3 percent—that the Enemy is nearly upon us. I can only hope that we are ready for this new challenge.
Donal stood on a hillside overlooking Lake Simms, watching as Freddy continued the laborious process of digging out the enormous pit that would soon serve as the refugees' new and temporary home. Current estimates called for completion of the barracks facility within two and a half weeks, and the sewage plant in perhaps half that time. That was good news to everyone concerned. Two nights ago, it had rained, and many of the flimsier shelters in the vast and sprawling tent city had all but dissolved, increasing the crowding in the horde of brightly colored tents and portable shelters that happened to be waterproof. Word of the kids' plight had started to spread in Kinkaid, Glasmore, and some of the other communities on Muir, and more volunteers were starting to come in, doctors and medics to help care for the sick, workers to help with the meals and the construction. A number of huge surface transporters had been gathered for the relief effort; most of them were parked by the lake now, a long line of rust-brown boxes on tracks, each almost as big as a Bolo, with more, filled with food, shelter, and medicine, due each day.
But things were progressing so slowly!
From his hilltop perspective, Donal could see all of the refugee camp, rainbow bits of pastel color extending for kilometers to north and west. Southward, the blue, clear waters of Lake Simms sparkled in the afternoon sunlight all the way to the horizon. Simms was a large lake, virtually a landlocked sea, with an area of some forty thousand square kilometers. The three largest of the refugee ships, the Conestogas, had landed in the water and were moored now to deep-water piers extending well out into the lake. They were visible as squat domes on the water, about a kilometer out. The other ships, smaller and more maneuverable, had touched down on land and were gathered at an impromptu spaceport on the shores of the lake southwest of the tent city.
To the east, just beyond the perimeter of the camp, Freddy was working at his assigned task scraping away at the hole to the precise specs given him by the site engineers.
It was interesting to watch Freddy in the role of construction worker. His four massive sets of tracks gave him a surprising mobility, and the way he maneuvered the blade welded to his glacis suggested a delicacy improbable in a machine of his bulk. What was not obvious was the fact that he was still on duty, monitoring the local airwaves for any sign of the mysterious, here-again-gone-again intruder.
Since their arrival at Simmstown, there'd been no further indication of enemy activity in the area . . . not until Freddy's receipt of that disturbing FTL transmission just half an hour ago. Donal had immediately authorized the EWS launch without clearance from Kinkaid. Freddy had moved to a position about two kilometers away from the tent city and provided the kids with an unexpected display as, one by one, the powerful MilTek J-40 rockets had lanced into the sky from his vertical launch tubes, scrawling bright, unraveling trails of cotton-white smoke in their wakes. The rockets launched, he returned to his digging, continuing the work as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
A slim figure in white slacks and a long, black leather jacket was coming up the hill from the west. Shading his eyes against the afternoon sun, Donal recognized Alexie. "Hey!" he called. "Good to see you!"
"Good to see you. You look in a little better shape than the last time I saw you."
"Well, a shower and a little sleep go a long way."
"I just wanted to tell you, this is a wonderful thing you're doing out here."
"Delighted to be able to help." He grinned at her. "Anyway, I had ulterior motives."
"Well, it let you get one of your Bolos out in the fresh air and sunshine."
"And we've been nosing about for that elusive Malach scout."
"Any luck?"
"No, but I suspect that any scout vehicle they came up with would be small and pretty stealthy. It'll only give away its location when it transmits the data it's accumulated, and it won't do that except infrequently, when no one else is around, or in a last-ditch emergency."
"Maybe we could organize search parties. You know, lots of the older Skyans here could—"
He shook his head. "Thanks, Alexie, but I don't think so. I still don't know what it is we're dealing with. Even if it's just smugglers, I'd hate to see kids caught in the crossfire. And if it is the Malach . . ."
She nodded. "Yeah. I see what you mean."
"So. What've you been up to?"
"More of the same. Conferences yesterday with the Muir Committee of Public Safety. And another party last night." She wrinkled her nose. "God. Don't you people ever do anything but throw parties?"
"They're not my people. I'm a stranger around here, remember."
"My mistake." Alexie laughed, a delightful sound. "They don't get much stranger, either."
Donal's personal comm unit gave a shrill chirp. He plucked the palm-sized unit from his belt. "Ragnor."
"Commander, this is Bolo 96876. I may have something. There are indications of a sizable fleet exiting hyper-L close to the planet."
"Red alert, Freddy. And pass the word to Ferdy and the Command Authority."
"Affirmative. Do I have weapons free, Commander?"
"If you can ID those vessels as Malach when they come out of hyper-L," Donal told the Bolo, "then hell, yes! You can have all the weapons free you want!"
"Affirmative. Weapons free with positive ID. Unit 96876 out."
"A fleet?" Alexie asked. "The Malach?"
"We'll find out soon enough, Alexie. C'mon. Let's get down to the camp."
"I've got an airspeeder parked at the bottom of the hill. I can take you to your Bolo."
"Let's go!"
The speeder was an aging Correl Lightspeed, a rental vehicle provided for Alexie's use while she was on Muir. As they climbed into the front seats and buckled in, Alexie gave him a measuring look. "Donal? You didn't give Freddy that code word you mentioned the other day, did you?"
"Oh, for the ROEs? No. I'll wait on that until we're sure of what we're dealing with."
She touched the starter controls and the airspeeder lifted from the ground on a wind-whipped cushion of dust. Alexie shouted to make herself heard above the engine's whine.
"When you gave Freddy permission to fire just now . . . you meant he could fire at the Malach ships up in space?"
"That's right."
"Can they do that?"
"A Bolo's Hellbore is essentially a weapon designed for navy capital ships," he called back to her. "Ever since . . . I guess it was the Mark XVIII, Bolos could engage ships out to medium orbit."
"The Mark XVIII was what we had on Wide Sky, wasn't it?"
"That's right."
"Then we might have been able to stop them before they even touched down on our world."
"I doubt it. One Bolo could do a lot of damage to incoming ships, but the size of the Malach fleet at Wide Sky . . . well, no one Bolo could have handled them all. Besides, they could have come in on the opposite side of the planet, maybe touched down so far from the Bolo's position that they were below its targeting horizon."
"Even so, we could have done a lot better than we did."
"Maybe," he replied, nearly shouting. "I've been reviewing the recordings of the battle. It's been my experience that Bolos have one specific and serious weakness."
"What's that?"
"The fact that they're controlled by humans, who usually are either afraid of what the Bolo can do, or who just don't know what the hell they're doing. They're vulnerable to human stupidity!"
Alexie rammed the throttle full forward, and the airspeeder whipped down the road, trailing dust.
The satellites I launched earlier have detected the telltale magnetic and neutrino surges of ships coming out of hyper-L. I note the formation of magnetic vortices and the materialization in normal space of large number of vessels, thirty-two within the first five seconds, with more appearing all the time, their exit point located less than 1.7 million kilometers from Muir. They are decelerating rapidly on a vector that will bring them into planetary orbit within the next forty minutes.
Though they are still at extreme range, drive characteristics, magnetic and IR signatures, and neutrino emissions are all within the general parameters established by my Commander's observations at Wide Sky. At this point, probability that these are Malach ships and hostile stands at 93.65 percent.
I continue to observe their approach.
The Sh'whiss probe crouched in the shadows at the forest's edge, watching the scene in the disordered habitat area below with a machine's implacable and unruffled calm.
After several local days of lurking in the nearby forest, it had been drawn to this site by the presence of the large machine excavating a rectangular pit in the soft ground above the lake.
The probe could draw no distinction whatever between civilian and military activity. In fact, the idea of a specific military would have struck any Malach female as strange, since that would assume there could be such a thing as a civilian. There were noncombatants in Malach society, certainly—warriors who'd grown too old to serve, or who'd been crippled by wounds, or who'd dishonored themselves by some breach of regulation or custom and been forbidden to enjoy the honors and joys of either combat or procreation—but the main division in Malach society was between the warriors who ran with the hunter packs and the ordinary foot soldiers.
Such matters were beyond the probe's limited awareness and reasoning power, but there was no question, so far as its processors were concerned, that the huge vehicle laboring in the pit just over one t'charucht distant was a weapon of war.
The probe had not been given information about the powerful enemy combat vehicle on Lach'br'zghis, but it knew that this machine in front of it represented a significant threat to the incoming Malach fleet.
A hatch opened and an antennae unfolding, pivoting to bear on the incoming Malach fleet.
Pulse transmission of all available data required nearly .24 quesh.
I detect a pulse of modulated EM radiation of .0864 second's duration, originating on a bearing of 047 degrees at a range of approximately four kilometers. Though the burst is key-encoded and tightly beamed, radio frequency leakage gives me the position with a general accuracy of plus or minus 150 meters. Signal strength suggests a military unit; details of phasing, harmonics, and code structure all are unfamiliar to me, though they show a distinct family similarity to signals recorded during the fighting on Wide Sky.
I accept this as confirmation that the scout on the planet's surface is of Malach origins, and the probability that the incoming fleet is also Malach rises to 98.87 percent.
This is not, unfortunately, enough to allow me to drop my current set of ROEs regarding hostile contact.
My immediate course of action, however, is clear. I must investigate the source of RF interference and, if possible, confirm that it is a Malach scout. Backing out of the foundation I am digging for the refugee barracks, I pivot sharply to the northeast and engage my track drives. If I move swiftly enough, I may be able to surprise the scout and force it to initiate hostilities.
And this, of course, would allow me to kill or disable the scout, as provided for by Rule of Engagement One.
* * *
"Where the hell is he going?" Alexie cried. They'd been within a kilometer or so of the Bolo when the huge machine had suddenly backed out of the hole, turned abruptly, and raced toward the northeast, leaving a high-flung cloud of dust behind it.
Donal already had his communicator out and was questioning the Bolo. "Bolo 96876 of the Line! Freddy! What are you doing?"
"I am investigating presumed hostile forces, Commander," the Bolo's voice came back. Alexie had to strain to hear the words above the speeder's whine. "The source of the RF interference is confirmed within four kilometers of my position."
"Okay, Freddy," Donal replied. "Go get 'em!" He turned to Alexie. "Let me off here."
She braked the vehicle to a halt, lowering it on dwindling repulsors until it crunched gently into the gravel below. "What do you want me to do?"
Donal glanced skyward, then looked her in the eyes. "Alexie, if that recon unit is that close, it could mean the Malach are targeting this area for a landing, and that means things are going to get pretty hot around here. When Freddy opens up with his Hellbore . . . well, I think you'd better try getting the children away from here before he does. Fast!"
"Donal! There're fifty thousand people here! Most of them kids!"
"Damn, it Alexie, I don't know what else to tell you!" His eyes looked haunted, and a little wild. "Get your group leaders and adults organized, and have them start leading the kids out. You have complete authority to requisition those transports over there by the lake, and I'll call Kinkaid and see if they can send some more out here. If you have to, start moving them out by foot."
"Which way?"
He clambered out of the speedster, then turned, leaning against the vehicle's body. "Southwest. Around the curve of the lake, and then south. Quickly, now!"
"Any particular destination? Or are we just supposed to wander about in the wilderness for forty years?"
He didn't seem to catch the joke. "Just get away! Now!"
She realized then that Donal was feeling a deep and genuine horror . . . and suddenly she felt that horror herself, as she followed his chain of thoughts. "The Malach! You think they're going to attack us here?"
"It's possible."
"But the camp . . . They're just kids!"
"We already know the Malach don't make distinctions like that. Not for humans, anyway. You've got to get the kids out, Alexie. Before the Malach show up in force!"
"Okay!" she said. She took a deep breath. "Be careful!"
"You too!"
She nodded and powered up her repulsors again, spinning the little speedster in a quick one-eighty, and hitting the accelerator.
Joni, Magda, and Clem ought to be at the ramshackle shelter they'd jokingly named City Hall now. She would start with them.
Only now was the realization sinking in: that wild look in Donal's eye had been fear . . . fear for the children, fear for her.
The fact that Donal could be afraid of anything made her afraid as well.
A sharp, staccato cracking sounded in the distance behind her. She didn't slow to have a look but pressed the accelerator pedal even harder.
She just hoped she would be in time.
I am closing with the probable Enemy scout and am detecting magnetic, infrared, motion, and seismic anomalies now, all consistent with a sizable machine of approximately five metric tons' mass moving behind the treeline of the forest ahead at a range of approximately thirty-two meters. I intend to immobilize and capture the machine if possible but am aware that this may prove difficult. A robotic probe will most likely possess a self-destruct mechanism for just that possibility, while a manned scout will probably attempt to fight or flee, necessitating its destruction to prevent its escape.
But I need to obtain a visual lock on the object in order to procure a full and informative ID.
Movement flickers in the trees ahead, moving down an embankment in the general direction of the lake. The shoreline of the lake comes up to the edge of the forest here, and it is possible that the scout hopes to use the water as cover for its escape.
I elect to broadcast a warning message to the target. Normally, I would consider this foolish, but ROE 17 states explicitly that unknown targets are to be challenged verbally before engaging them. I experience a .132-second delay as I attempt to resolve a potential conflict in the ROE overrides: ROE 1 specifically states that I may not engage the enemy unless I am fired upon first, while ROE 17 specifically states that I must challenge the target before engaging it.
As Alexie and the speeder raced back toward the camp, Donal trotted forward, topping a low rise. Ahead and to his right, Lake Simms sparkled in the sunlight. Ahead and to the left, hills rolled away toward the north, each ridgeline higher than the last, each thickly clad with the yellow-green to emerald-green vegetation that grew on Muir . . . jeweltrees and sucklewort, for the most part, with a scattering of native species that Donal didn't recognize. Freddy was squatting right at the point where woods met lake, two hundred meters away.
"Attention, intruder!" Freddy's voder-voice boomed, and the echo floated back from the more distant hillsides. "Advance and identify yourself!"
Donal groaned. Those damned ROEs were making the big machine vulnerable. He grabbed his communicator, switching it to the Bolo command frequency. "Freddy! This is Ragnor! Do you copy?"
"I copy, Commander."
"Freddy, can that crap! I say again, Freddy, can that crap!"
There was a brief pause. "ROE instructions deleted, Commander."
Was it Donal's imagination, or did he sense a new fire, a joy in the huge fighting machine's electronic voice?
The hampering, entangling Rules of Engagement fall away, and at the same instant, with the threat of Enemy action imminent, my awareness shifts to full Battle Reflex Mode. Within .024 second, I am suffused with a surging hyperawareness of my surroundings, a sensation that is new each time I engage it, since I am programmed to forget the sensation each time I drop to a lower awareness level.
For now, however, I feel as though I am a different being, filled with knowledge of myself, of my surroundings, and with a sense of purpose and duty that makes my half-aware state a bare, waking shadow of the reality.
The promise of combat, of grappling with the enemy, sings in my circuits. This is why I am here, why I was assembled, to protect the people of Muir from the Malach threat, to blunt the Enemy assault with every means at my disposal.
I hope I am worthy of this trust.
The Malach probe did not understand the commands broadcast on audio frequencies and would not have obeyed them if it had. It recognized the fact, however, that it was trapped.
In a sense, the probe had its own set of ROEs. When trapped, with no way out and faced with the certainty of capture or destruction, there was only one action it could take.
It attacked.
The target is changing direction suddenly, moving toward my position and emerging from the trees. It is a robotic machine of unfamiliar design, a complex but compact body suspended on a universal swivel mount from six slender legs. A laser mounted on the side of its body fires—I estimate the weapon to be in the three-megajoule range—but the energy is easily dissipated by the ablative layer of my glacis armor.
I sense, however, that the laser is intended more to distract me or to lull me into a sense of complacency regarding the machine's abilities. A powerful magnetic field is building within the body of the device, as though enormous powers are gathering. . . .
I return fire .003 second after its initial shot, seeking to cripple the Enemy mechanism by targeting the joint to which the legs are affixed. Ion bolts rip through the lightly armored motivaters and power couplings, shattering the delicate mechanism in a shower of sparks and flashing bursts of energy.
The body of the device drops to the ground, then explodes in a searing blast in the fractional kiloton range, toppling several trees and flinging bits of metal that ping off my forward armor.
At a range of less than twenty meters, the blast sends a shock wave smashing across my outer hull like a brief, furious hurricane.