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Chapter Nine

My battlescreens are barely functioning at 26 percent, though my internal disrupter screens are still holding. Power management has become a serious issue, requiring me to shepherd the output of both my primary and secondary weaponry. Secondary armament has been reduced to 72 percent of optimal, and hits to my suspension and track assemblies have reduced my mobility as well. 

The Enemy is hull-down behind an artificial ridge 3.1 kilometers in front of me. Once, this entire area was built-over with duralloy, flintsteel, and ferrocrete casements, deck, and defensive towers. "The ridge" at my front, I believe, was originally a wall with a road along the top or possibly a protective ferrocrete banking for pipelines or a surface maglev tube, with a back-slanted face at an angle of forty-eight degrees from the vertical. All four enemy Bolos have taken up hull-down positions behind this barrier, which has been reduced to rubble and bare earth by the torrent of Hellbore fire smashing into it or skimming just above it. 

The passage of a Hellbore bolt creates a shock wave that can crumble any substance less densely integrated than duralloy. The blank, smooth, almost polished surface has, in the past three minutes, been reduced to something more like loose earth and crumbled rock than ferrocrete. Indeed, it is clear now that the barrier's interior is mostly loose earth. 

Ceasing fire at the Enemy, I use my mortars at an elevation of 89.4 degrees, dropping a rain of heavy rounds squarely along the ridge in front of me. The slope explodes in flying earth and debris, creating a wall of dust and falling rock impenetrable to radar, lidar, and optical wavelengths. I then advance, rushing ahead over tortured terrain, employing contra-gravs to lift me above the deeper, more troublesome blast craters and mud sinks. 

It takes just under a full minute to traverse the three kilometers of battlefield, all the while maintaining the wall of exploding, tumbling earth to cover my advance, and I slam into the ridge the Enemy has been sheltered behind at better than two hundred kilometers per hour. 

I must end this engagement within the next few seconds, both to enable me to assist in the defense of the fleet, and also as a matter of sheer personal survival. 

* * *

Streicher came out of the blackness of the simulation feed power-down to a darkness nearly as complete. The main lighting and the viewscreen power were both out, and the only illumination within the ECD command craft's sim compartment came from emergency lighting strips on deck and overhead.

The rest of the command staff was coming around as well, pulling off headgear, unplugging cables, and unbuckling their harnesses.

"Stay put, everybody," he snapped. "I'll check with the skipper."

He unbuckled his safety harness and pushed himself into the air, aiming his kick-off for the sliding door that led to the vehicle's bridge. It had been a while since he'd tried his hand at zero-G ballet, however, and he missed the door by a couple of meters.

No matter. He snagged a grab-on attached to the bulkhead, and as he turned, the door opened and a navy crewman floated through. "Colonel? Your people okay?"

The rest of the command staff, sixteen people in all, were waiting in their seats as he'd ordered. "Everybody seems okay," he said. "What's our situation?"

"Our drive module took a light Hellbore hit. Main drive and maneuver is off-line. The skipper thinks we can get maneuver back, though. We won't be able to stop the fall, but at least we can control our landing."

"I see. And if we can't get the maneuver drive repaired?"

"Then we burn, sir. Like a goddamn shooting star."

"I . . . see. How long do we have?"

"Starting a free fall from six hundred kilometers, at .74 G? Call it . . . six minutes from drive failure to when we hit atmosphere."

Six minutes. A minute had passed already. Five minutes.

The viewscreens encircling the sim deck flickered, then winked on, bathing the compartment in the yellow-rust light of Caern, the pearly glow of crescent Dis, and the harsher, more actinic glare of the twin suns of Sallos. The entire panorama of stars and planets was rotating slowly, indicating that the command vessel was tumbling, albeit so slowly he couldn't feel much, if any, of the tug of centrifugal force.

"Good," the crewman said. "At least now we can see where we're falling." He ducked back through the door.

Streicher lined himself up, brought his feet together on the bulkhead, and gently pushed off, drifting across the compartment and snagging hold of the back of his couch. Swinging himself over and into his seat once more, he snugged the harness tight.

Not that a tight harness was going to be of much help.

Flashes and pulses of light continued to spark against the galactic night as the space battle continued. Without AI enhancement, the individual ships were too far and thinly scattered to be seen with the naked eye.

He wondered who was winning.

"So . . . what's the word, Colonel?" Major King wanted to know.

"Drives are out," Streicher replied. "They might get the maneuvering drives back online. If they do, we can make a controlled landing."

"Yeah?" Beswin said. "Where?"

"I'd suggest as close to one of the 4th Regiment Bolos as we can manage," Ramirez put in. "That way we could use the Bolo's combat command center as a makeshift C3 center and keep the fight going."

"Sounds good to me," Streicher said. "Comments on that, anyone?"

There were none, though the apprehension stood out plainly on more than a few of the faces staring at him from around the circular couch. The thought of actually running a battle from the battlefield must be both strange and terrifying to those officers who'd never been in combat before.

Major Filby, especially, looked scared. His hands were trembling.

"Don't worry, people," Streicher said lightly, trying to make a joke of it. "We have a long way to go before worrying about being in the middle of a battlefield. First we have to survive the landing! . . ."

* * *

The timing of my assault has been well executed. As I clamber up the blast-shattered face of the artificial ridge, three of my Dragons are just making it into position among the ruins west of the Enemy's position. They begin their attack just as I enter the curtain of tumbling rock and dirt, pinning the Enemy in place before he can pull back from his hull-down position behind the ridge. The Dragons, staying low to enjoy the full protection of the duralloy walls and fallen towers of the base, slam volley after volley of 20cm Hellbore fire into the defending Bolos, causing heavy damage and diverting their attention from their dust-shrouded eastern field of fire to their west. 

As I emerge from the dust screen a second later, grinding over the crest of the ridge with all of my remaining secondaries engaged, I find three of the four enemy vehicles have slued their turrets around to face the threat presented by the Dragons. The fourth Mark XXXII, Charlie Three, appears to be disabled, though its primary turret is tracking me as I breast the ridge and go nose-down on the far side. 

I am too close to Charlie Three to engage with any of my primary turrets, but I rake the machine in passing with accurate point-blank 20cm fire from my starboard turrets, as well as AP lasers and railgun rounds. The enemy Bolo's turret, already heavily cratered in places, is torn to bits as it takes the full brunt of my volley. 

* * *

Elken screamed as Veber, his chassis disabled moments before by the hellish fury of the Sky Demon's Hellbore barrage, had his turret scraped from its deck mounting and reduced to half-molten shards and twisted, burning wreckage, felt the wrenching fury of the assault through the TSDS net. He realized his mistake; the enemy Bolo had been more or less immobile for the better part of a full minute, moving back and forth to make itself a more difficult target, but not advancing in the face of the four Caernan machines' well-sheltered, hull-down position behind the ridge.

The appearance of four more enemy machines at their rear was a complete surprise. The TSDS gestalt of Elken and the others had been aware that they were out there but had not expected them to work in close concert with the enemy Bolo. They were tiny machines after all, inconsequential tactically . . . massing only something like two tenths of a percent of a Bolo Mark XXXII. They couldn't possibly be a threat. . . .

When they attacked from the rear, their first Hellbore volley, perfectly coordinated, demonstrated that very nasty surprises can be mounted in small force packages. Elken took one bolt in his rear left track assembly, shattering three wheels and twisting four more out of alignment. He slued his turret about and fired, expending the bolt uselessly on the skeleton of a tumbled-down heavy-lift crane as his target skittered sideways on humming contra-gravs. Its second shot overloaded Elken's already hard-pressed battlescreens, burning out projector relays and reducing them to a bare flicker of their full potential.

And then the real foe emerged from the dust screen in an explosion of rubble and earth. Elken, Palet, and Sendee together, a single overlapping complex of minds, began traversing back to face the Sky Demon's deadly onslaught. . . .

* * *

The other three Charlies lose a precious second in traversing their turrets back to face me as I cross the ridge crest. Charlie Two is directly in front of me and less than fifty meters away, far too close to allow me to depress my main weapon to engage him. As I go nose-down over the crest of the ridge, I accelerate, lurching forward and colliding with the enemy Bolo in full frontal impact. 

Driving down and forward, my glacis wedges beneath the prow and left front tracks of Charlie Two, lifting the machine up . . . up . . . then back. The enemy Bolo tries to spin aside, but I have the advantage of leverage and mass. As I hammer at the enemy's exposed ventral surface with 20cm Hellbore bolts, I slue to my left, taking advantage of the enemy's momentum to topple the heavy combat unit over onto its left side. Charlie Four, a kilometer to the south, fires its main gun, and a 200cm Hellbore bolt sears into the upper deck of Charlie Two, which is now serving as an impromptu shield. Charlie Two's aft deck explodes in flame and white heat, as the machine continues to topple onto its back. Returning fire at Charlie Four with my Number Two and Three primary turrets, I thunder over the overturned wreckage of Charlie Two. . . . 

* * *

Elken watched in horror as the Sky Demon slammed into Sendee, lifting her chassis up, twisting it over to the side . . . just as Palet opened fire from the south. The TSDS linkage was confusing; at the same time he saw the enemy Bolo collide with Sendee, he felt the collision himself, felt himself toppling, felt himself as Palet tracking the enemy and firing a fraction of a second too late. . . .

"Hold fire! Hold fire!" he shouted over the command link, forgetting in the rush of events crowded into a single fraction of a second that he could cease fire himself rather than giving orders which took too long to process.

Then Palet's main gun slammed a 200cm Hellbore round into Sendee's upper deck just as she overbalanced and rolled. He felt her dying, and then the TSDS link was abruptly snapped. . . .

* * *

I hit Charlie Four with both rounds, one hitting his turret, the second, .07 second later, striking the upper deck just below the main turret housing. The enemy Bolo's battlescreens and internal disrupters fail simultaneously, and follow-up rounds from my port secondaries lance through the upper deck, ripping off the turret and setting off rippling internal explosions. 

At the same moment, I hit Charlie One with a 200cm bolt from my Number One turret at a range of 516 meters, targeting the machine's already badly damaged upper works. 

I appear to have achieved complete surprise. . . . 

* * *

The enemy Bolo crashed down over Sendee's inverted hull, sending a double-punch Hellbore volley into Palet's upper deck and turret. Elken was numbed by the rapid-fire barrage, by feeling for himself the deaths, first of Veber, then in rapid succession of Sendee and Palet. As the TSDS linkage evaporated, he was left for a moment feeling very small, exposed and vulnerable . . . as though he'd in one swift step moved from giant stature to the size of an ordinary man.

He sent a situational update through the command net.

He scarcely felt it as a 200cm Hellbore bolt smashed into the damaged hull fairings and reactive cladding behind his cratered glacis, dropping his battlescreens, his internal disrupter screen, and blasted several tons of hull armor into vapor.

The Sky Demon's follow-up Hellbore round an instant later speared through his inner shielding to puncture his deep-buried processor pod, and for the second time that morning, Elken died in flame and wrenching, nightmare horror. . . .

* * *

For the moment, my portion of the battlefield is completely quiet. There are no signs of life save the movement of my remotes among the ruins, the lick of crackling flames, and the gentle, skyward drift of black smoke. 

I open the communications channel with my Commander, but hear now only the hiss of battlefield static—the magnetic pulse of distant Hellbore fire, the Enemy's attempts at jamming. I consider scanning the sky with high-band radar in order to ascertain the situation but feel it necessary to maintain a low electromagnetic profile here on the surface. To emit radar is to become a very bright target. I will remain in passive mode until the situation is clarified or becomes more urgent. 

I do wish I could speak with my Commander, however. I am justifiably proud of my handling of the tactical deployment thus far. Within a few minutes of my arrival at the LZ, I have survived the detonation of three kiloton-range nukes, being entombed in silt, and have then managed to engage and kill eight Mark XXXII Bolos in close combat . . . some of it very close combat indeed. The Mark XXXII is a good combat unit, tough and well-designed, a true predator of the battlefield. The fact that the Enemy seems to be experimenting with anti-Bolo tactics, and learning from his mistakes, is cause for some disquiet. I will have to adapt my own tactics swiftly and remain flexible in order to meet any conceivable change or escalation of the Enemy's tactics if I hope to stay in the war. 

Using purely passive means, I scan the sky at all wavelengths and note the flash of explosions at wavelengths consistent with nuclear detonations, relativistic projectiles, and particle beams. 

The fight appears to be a desperate one. I wonder who is winning. 

* * *

Streicher had been taking stock of the people on board the command vessel with him. Ramirez, fellow Aristotelian, he trusted completely. Major King, too, had a fair amount of experience. His personnel file mentioned that he'd at least experienced combat as a very junior lieutenant during the Garreth Insurrection, fifteen years ago or so.

The others though. . . .

None of the unit commanders, the lieutenants and single captain, had ever been in a real war before. None of the three batt commanders had been in combat either, though Major Voll had commanded a platoon in the street fighting on Wolveret ten years ago and had a grim sort of almost bitter confidence about her. Captain Meyers had never been anywhere but Supply. Lieutenants Kelsie, Dana, Smeth, and Crowley were all battalion or regimental adjutants and had perhaps twelve years of military experience among them. They would be of no help at all.

In fact, things were looking pretty damned grim. If they were to incorporate Carla's idea of commanding the fight from a Bolo, they'd need to reach one of the combat units and get aboard . . . and large areas of the landscape down there had been contaminated by fallout from the Trixies' rather lavish use of nukes in their planetary defense. There might be some environmental suits on board—there had to be, in fact—but he doubted that they could outfit all seventeen of them in protective surface gear. And there was the vessel's crew to think about as well. How many were on board? He thought the flight crew consisted of six—a pilot/captain, a co-pilot/comm specialist, an engineer/systems officer, and three enlisted ratings, but he wasn't sure.

Twenty-three men and women on the surface of a world turned deadly by NB2C warfare, and once they were down their safety would be his responsibility. He would need to decide how many would go with him to the new command center—a Bolo's battle center wasn't all that big and would have limited commlink facilities available—and how many would stay behind inside the thin-skinned hull of the grounded command craft. That wouldn't be an easy choice to make. The command craft would be an easy and highly visible target; Streicher knew he'd rather take his chances inside the belly of a Mark XXXIII any day, even if it was going into combat.

"I just wish we could do something!" Major Filby said, his voice nearly a wail. "I can't stand this sitting around and waiting!"

"That's the military for you," Major Voll said. "Hurry up and wait. Even for your own execution."

"We're going to die," Lieutenant Kelsie said with grim finality.

Streicher looked at his regimental aide. Danel Kelsie had been in the army for three years, and a student at Greythell Academy on Primus for four years before that. That made him . . . what? Twenty-three standard? He looked painfully young.

And maybe, he thought, that's why war ended up in the metaphorical hands of Bolos. Until they came along, it was kids like Kelsie who did the fighting and the dying. 

"We might," Streicher admitted. "But you accepted that possibility when you swore your military oath."

"I joined the army to get an education," Kelsie said. "Not this. . . ."

"Pull yourself together, son." He had an idea. "I want you for a special assignment, but I can't use you if you're just going to sit there and shiver."

"A-assignment, sir?"

He gathered in the other aides with his eyes. "All four of you. We need an inventory of what we have on hand for when we land. Weapons. Environmental suits. Rad counters. Portable commo gear. Go through the boat's supply lockers and make a list of what we have. Are you people up to it?"

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Lara Smeth, the Second Batt aide, said. "We can do that."

"Grab one of the enlisted ratings on the flight deck and get him to show you where the lockers are. Move it, now. We don't have much time." Two minutes . . .

"Yes, sir."

"And watch your movements. Microgravity can be tricky."

"Make-work, Colonel?" Major Voll said after the four had swum clear of the couch with ungainly thrashings and made their clumsy way to the bridge entrance.

He shrugged. "If it keeps them from stewing in their own juice until they explode, why not? In any case, we do need that inventory."

"Maybe there's stuff we could do, too," Beswin said. "Something other than just sitting here waiting to burn."

Streicher frowned at that. He'd hustled the kids off so their impatient fear didn't infect the rest . . . but they'd been handling the stress better than some of his battalion commanders.

"Back on Aristotle, I used to do maintenance on K-74 pulsers and heavy vehicle contra-gravs," Ramirez said. "I might be able to lend a hand with the maneuver drive repairs."

"Do it," Streicher said, nodding. She kicked off for the doorway to the bridge, missing almost as badly as Streicher had. "Tell 'em I volunteered you," he called after her as she swung over to the door and palmed herself through. "Anyone else here have experience in repairing drive systems?"

There were no takers. The next few moments passed in silence, as Streicher watched the slow tumble of the astronomical vista outside. The vehicle was turning just fast enough that he could imagine he felt the gentle tug of simulated gravity, now, but they were close enough to the center of rotation that they were still for all intents and purposes weightless. He thought now that maybe his embarrassing miss when he'd aimed for the doorway earlier had been due to the craft's tumble. Maybe he wasn't so rusty at zero-G maneuvers after all. . . .

"How much longer, you think?" Filby asked.

"Keep it to yourself, Major," Streicher told him. "Or I will find make-work for you, just to keep you out of my hair." He rubbed his face with his hand, surprised at the perspiration beading there. He wiped it off and watched the droplets of sweat jitter and gleam as they drifted away across the compartment. "Sometimes," he added, almost to himself, "all duty requires of you is that you wait. . . ."

* * *

He awoke, stretching . . . and then the fear hit him in deep, shuddering waves, like the icy surf at Gods' Beach. The last thing he remembered . . . no . . . what was the last thing he remembered? Memory eluded him, like fragments of a dream.

He opened his eyes, then wondered why he couldn't see. He reached out with a trembling, sweat-slicked hand, then realized he couldn't feel anything, that the tremors, the sweat, the cold were all imagined, anchors for the mind adrift within a vast and lightless void.

Concentrating, he summoned memories from deep, deep within. He'd been in a battle . . . he'd been . . . he'd been a Bolo combat unit, his brain housed in a huge mobile armored vehicle. Vaguely, he was aware of not one, but two desperate battles. Before that . . . the memories were still dim, still fragmentary, but there was something about going in for elective surgery . . . a chance at immortality. . . .

What had gone wrong? . . .

Nothing is wrong, a voice, deep and quiet, spoke within the terror-haunted depths of his thoughts. All is as it should be. <calm reassurance>

"I can't see," he said, shouting into darkness. "I'm blind!"

You are not blind. Your optical processors are not yet online. <calm reassurance>

The voice of his god! He was not alone after all.

And yet, there was a haunting, fear-rattled undercurrent to the thought, a sense of déjà vu. He was certain he'd had this conversation, this experience before.

The memories continued to surface, growing stronger, clearer, more focused. He had been a Bolo, deployed against an invading, enemy Bolo far larger and more powerful than himself. It had been part of an agreement. If he fought the invaders in this new body, helped save Caern from the beings the gods called Sky Demons, he would get the new and immortal body he'd originally longed for.

He'd fought. He'd been . . . terribly hurt. He'd been resurrected . . . and then he'd gone out to fight again.

The last thing he remembered was crossing a ridge . . . no! No, that had been the time before. The last thing he remembered was the gut-wrenching horror as Sendee was levered up and back by the charge of the behemoth Sky Demon Bolo, of her chassis taking the accidental fire from Palet, then toppling over onto its side, then rolling over completely.

Of the enemy Bolo thundering down the slope across her inverted, helpless body.

He could remember the loss of the TSDS network, of the inner shrinking from godlike gestalt of four intermingled minds to . . . himself, dwindled and shrunken back to mere mortal proportions.

He remembered feeling cut off, remembered expecting his death at any moment, remembered sending a situational update.

And after that . . . nothing. Struggle as he could, he could not remember the moment of his latest death.

As a student monk, following the Way of the Gods, he'd read in the Histories at Paimos of many ways of human belief—of religions and philosophies and ways of life going far back to the Dawn Time, the mythical era when all humans had lived on a single world, now long-lost in the vast reaches of star-mottled space.

There'd been beliefs innumerable about the Afterlife, and what happened to a man's r'ye when he died. There was the idea of endless sleep, or that the r'ye simply ceased to be . . . or perhaps that it had never been in the first place. There were ideas of eternal reward for good behavior or proper belief in a place of happiness . . . or punishment everlasting for evil works or wrong belief in a place of pain, endless torture, and separation from the gods, a place the Ancients called Hell. For many more, there was a concept of spiritual evolution, of passing from plane to plane in search of growth and betterment of self, with the life in this plane merely one step along the way.

And there was a very old idea, one, according to the Histories, that may have arisen during the very earliest mists of human existence, that said that the true self, the r'ye, passed from life to life, existence to existence, in a cycle the ancients called reincarnation. Each time you died, you were reborn . . . forgetting at the moment of birth all that had happened to you in previous lives.

Elken felt as though he'd discovered the answer to the question that had tugged at men's wonderings for millennia. He was trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of birth and rebirth, condemned to come back again and again and again until he got it right.

Or was this, in fact, one of those Hells of the Ancients, a place where he was doomed to fight the same monstrous Bolo in nightmarish rematches throughout the long expanse of all of his tomorrows, fighting, and always losing?

There had to be a way out of this Hell. . . .

Do you understand what went wrong in this past engagement? <concern and keen interest>

"I'm not sure, Lord." He pulled at the scattered memories, teasing them into line. "I feel that we very nearly had it this time. The four of us attacked in close concert, and we were able to use the local terrain to keep all but our turrets concealed from the enemy's return fire. We did not anticipate his use of small, remote combat machines. When they attacked from our rear, we were distracted. Also . . . the TSDS linkage was confusing. In some ways, it slowed our reflexes, I think because we were each having to process four times the information. We were working together all right, but we were also feeling together." He remembered again the sensation of Sendee falling onto her back and suppressed an inner shudder. "It was distracting."

So, should we eliminate the TSDS linkage? <thoughtfulness>

"We at least need to find some way to condition ourselves to the odd mingling of data input. We need the close unity of thought and action, but we can't let it slow us down." He thought a moment more. "Lord, there's more. I just get the feeling that we may be up against something we can't match. It feels . . . it feels like my thoughts are faster, more organized—I can't really describe it better than that—but I also get the feeling that we're up against a machine of literally inhuman intelligence, speed, and . . . and coldness. Maybe we're overmatched. Maybe we can never win."

Is our world, our civilization, then, doomed? <sadness for what might have been>

"I didn't say that, Lord. But we have to find another way to do this.

"We have to find a way out of Hell. . . ."

 

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