The destruction of Elken Two fills me with a horror which I find difficult at first to understand. Survival in combat demands harsh choices, and as one military tactician recorded in my archives noted, "chivalry gets you dead."
Still, the cold-blooded murder of a fellow Bolomurder of a comrade, as opposed to open combat with an acknowledged foeis utterly beyond my comprehension as a Bolo. Humans are capable of treachery; Bolos are not, though they can fall into patterns of aberrant behavior due to damage or age. I wonder, briefly, whether these two Mark XXXIIs have suffered damage and if that has affected the way they think.
I ready my weapons for a resumption of the conflict, as the surviving enemy Bolos begin maneuvering toward my position. I find myself somewhat out of my depth, a disconcerting feeling for an entity designed to master the arts of both tactical and strategic warfare in all their intricacies. The human element of these enemy Bolos, I find, is essentially chaotic and not susceptible to rational processes.
It is not at all a pleasant sensation.
Elken sensed the enemy Bolo charging its remaining weapons and knew it was preparing for a final fight to the death. He retained the communications link with the other machine, however, and opened the channel using the standard Caernan IFF and recognition codes.
"Victor!" He'd sensed the other's human name during their brief contact earlier. "Don't fire!"
"Do you surrender?" was the Sky Demon machine's response.
"Surrender? No." The thought was unthinkable for a Bolo. "But we can help you penetrate the Aetryx subsurface complex. That was your plan, was it not?"
"You are changing sides? You're fighting against the Aetryx now?"
Elken hesitated. The Bolo part of him seemed to resist the very idea of . . . treason. Of betrayal. Ofthink it softlyblasphemy.
The human part of him was still in control. "Yes."
He felt a wave, like an incoming surge, of emotion. For Caernans, the gods were their whole world, their universe, their means and their reason for existence. To betray them this way . . .
And yet Elken now possessed incontrovertible proof that the gods had consistently and deliberately lied to him, shaded the meanings of what they said to manipulate him, used him and his people for their purposes on this world. He hated that thought, hated the slimy feeling it gave him. He'd been brought up with the gods as a part of the very fabric of his life, yes, but he'd also been brought up to value certain conceptsfreedom, self-reliance, integrity, honesty. Such concepts allowed him to realize that he had been lied to and manipulated . . . and to know that he didn't like it.
As he exchanged TSDS thoughts with the other versions of himself, he realized that all four of them were struggling with the same paradox and arriving at slightly different ways of dealing with it. Elken Three continued to waver, uncertain whether or not the enemy Bolo could be trusted any more than the Aetryx masters. Elken Five was with him, though his fear of the gods and what they could do was slowing his response time. Elken Six, having helped destroy Two, was solidly on One's side now but maintained a deep mistrust of the Enemy.
For himself, he knew simply that he couldn't live in slavery any more, no matter how sweetly sugar-coated that slavery might be.
Not knowing what they'd done to him . . . and to Sendee. . . .
Kelly lay in the tunnel within the wrecked Bolo, trying to extend her senses somehow beyond the narrow confines of her metallic prison. She'd managed at last to activate her E-suit's first-aid subroutine. It had given her an injection which had taken some of the edge off the pain and helped keep her from going into shock and also slowly inflated that part of the suit around her lower left leg. As the fabric became rigid, it served as a splint, and also as a cushion against any further bumps or blows.
The thunder, the constant shaking had ceased, and for long minutes now, she'd waited and listened, reaching for some information.
"Colonel?" she called. "Colonel? Are you still there?"
"Still here."
"What's happening?"
"I honestly don't know. It's been quiet for a long time."
The not knowing was gnawing at her. If the Caernan Bolos were going to come in and kill them both, why didn't they just do it? It took considerable strength of will to remind herself that the Caernan Bolos probably didn't even know they were here . . . two mice hiding in the wreckage.
And if Victor had been defeated in the battle just past, this mouse would die when her meager E-suit consumables gave out.
Damn it, what was going on out there?
Streicher could see a lot farther than Kelly, but his comprehension of what was happening wasn't much better than hers. He'd emerged from the tunnel once again when the fighting moved off toward the southeast. The horizon in that direction swiftly grew as black and as cloud-locked as though a storm were coming, and the Hellbore bolts added a more-than-credible simulation of lightning and accompanying peals of thunder.
It had been several minutes now since the thunder and lightning had ceased, and the clouds were slowly dispersing. Streicher stood in the tunnel opening high up on the ruined front end of the Mark XXXII, staring toward the southeast, and sending out periodic calls to Victor.
"Victor, this is Cloudtop." Nothing but static was the response. "Victor, Cloudtop. Please copy."
An agony of minutes later, Victor's resonant tones came through his headset again. "I am here, Colonel, and returning to your position."
"Thank Joy! You beat them, then?" How in the Galaxy had Victor managed that? "By Joy, you beat them!"
"Joy had nothing to do with it, Colonel. The enemy Bolos have joined us."
"What? What do you mean . . . they surrendered?" That seemed even more unlikely than the possibility that Victor had destroyed all six of the machines chasing him just now.
"Negative, Colonel Streicher. Four have elected to join us against the Aetryx. They can show us an entrance to the Enemy's subsurface works near here."
For Streicher, it was as though the sun had just come out.
I approach the wrecked Mark XXXII. Colonel Streicher stands in the opening of the tunnel I cut earlier, to reach the machine's AI core.
He has explained to me the situation. My Commander is trapped inside by a section of the inner war hull which has shifted and fallen, blocking her path.
Deep-penetrator radar is useless in this situation, where duralloy armor will completely absorb or reflect the radiation. Sound waves, however, are something else. I probe the hulk with both ultra- and infra-sound pulses, building up over a space of 1.42 second a three-dimensional image of the enemy Bolo's hull and interior spaces, rendered translucent by the metal's sonic conductivity.
I consult briefly with Elken One, satisfying myself that information I possess on the heat transference dynamics of a Mark XXXII's inner workings is reasonably accurate and verifying that no major alterations or engineering design changes have been incorporated into these machines.
Elken One shares all requested information completely and openly and even volunteers data about a bank of recently inserted chemokinetic battlescreen storage batteries beneath the target area that might rupture with extreme heat and explode. This helps confirm that Elken One, at least, has overcome any suspicions he may yet have of me and my motives. I will continue, however, to reserve final judgment and treat his input with cautious consideration.
"Tell my Commander to take shelter," I tell Colonel Streicher. "I will use a 20cm Hellbore to cut through to her. There will be considerable thermal radiation, however, and a danger from splatters of liquid metal. Tell her to move back to the AI core hull, if she can. You should take cover as well. I recommend leaving the wreck."
"That's a negative, Victor. If she can survive it, I can. And I need to be here for her."
"Very well. Shield your eyes and exposed portions of your skin. I will begin."
"Stay down, Kelly," Streicher's voice called out, so muffled and faint with distance that she could barely hear his suit-amplified voice. "Try to cover up your face and neck. Victor's here. He's going to cut you out."
Kelly scrunched lower, trying to burrow into the unyielding floor of armor and electronic parts beneath her despite the throbbing pain in her leg. She'd already edged back down the tunnel, gasping with each movement as the pain shot up her leg and hip, but forcing herself to keep moving. She'd also managed to pull some exposed power conduit modules, ruptured coolant tubing, and some foam packing out of the tunnel walls and pile it up between her and the armor barrier, the best, the only shelter she could contrive. Now she was curled up against the massive black cliff of the exposed AI hull. She pressed her face against cool metal, eyes squeezed shut, and waited.
The waiting went on for a long time. Then she felt the vibration, a deep, rumbling buzz transmitted through the tunnel walls and floor which grew rapidly to a new, higher-pitched thunder assaulting her ears and being.
She also felt the temperature rising. Her suit insulated her against extremes of temperature, but she could feel the heat radiating from the tunnel roof, growing hotter and hotter and still hotter, as though she was inside an oven.
As the vibration increased, she became aware of the distinct pulses of fusion energy being directed against the wrecked machine's hull. Hellbores fired slivers of fusing cryo-hydrogen, but the magnetic fields within the weapon's massive, super-cooled barrel could smear successive plasma bolts into an almost continuous stream of energy. A 20cm Hellboreshe guessed that Victor was using one of his secondary weapons, his side-mounted infinite repeaterspossessed an output of approximately 400 kilotons per second of firepower.
She tried to remind herself that a thin piece of wood could protect her from a nuclear weapon's flash of thermal energy, and there was very little ionizing radiation associated with Hellbore pulses . . . mostly secondary radiation due to neutron absorption. Victor knew the physical nature of his target and the physiological limitations of a human body better than she.
She trusted him. She trusted him.
But she still screamed when the thunder erupted around her, louder than ever, and the metal floor began burning her skin.
This is a delicate procedure, one demanding absolutely perfect control.
In the past, I have tended to think of my secondary armament as "only" 20 centimeter Hellbores, weapons useful for antipersonnel or antivehicular work, but far inferior to the 5 megaton/second firepower of my main batteries. I must remind myself that the very first Hellbore put into the field was a 25cm weapon of half-megaton/second output mounted on the Bolo Mark XIV during the early 24th Century, a weapon that until then had served as the main battery for the then-Concordiat Navy's Magyar-class battlecruisers. A weapon's relative obsolescence does not make it any the less deadly in absolute terms. Even knives and arrows can still kill.
And the energies I am playing against the wrecked Bolo hull are far greater than those of any primitive hand weapon. I direct a steady stream of plasma bolts, magnetically stretched to a near constant output against a precisely calculated portion of the hull. I am cutting in from the right side, creating a tunnel designed to intersect with the original penetration of this machine's hull just at the point where it is blocked by a section of duralloy plate.
I have calculated the changes of energy requirements and distribution as precisely as I can. I must employ maximum energy output from Secondary Turret 4 to drill through the outer two meters-plus of duralloy warhull, then cut back as I extend the tunnel through a relatively loosely packed volume of internal components, conduits, wiring, and machinery, then increase to full power once more as I cut through the inner hull, including the barrier plug of duralloy. That final high-output blast must be precisely balanced, tapering off at the end to avoid frying Lieutenant Tyler, who is within twenty meters of the opening I intend to cut.
My Commander's life depends on the accuracy of these calculations.
By reducing the size of the cryo-H slivers I am feeding into the infinite repeater's firing block, I can reduce the power output as needed, down to approximately 1 kiloton per second. Even so, Lieutenant Tyler possesses no protection against even that much thermal radiation save her E-suit, and she is in grave dangernot least from flying spatters of molten metal, the poisonous and oven-hot fumes of vaporized plastic, ceramic, and ceramplast mechanical and electrical components, and both radiant and convected thermal energy.
I must cut through as quickly as possible to minimize damage to her, yet with an absolute precision not normally required in targeting a Hellbore.
The barrel to Secondary Turret 4 begins to overheat after 4.72 seconds of continuous operation. I maintain fire for another .28 second, then cut power and delicately edge forward, calculating with care the necessary angle for Turret 6 to take up the work. The muzzle of my Hellbore is only 4.9 meters from the opening to this new shaft I am cutting, and both thermal and radar imagery give me a good target lock when I resume firing.
Smoke boils from the white-hot opening, and a thin, steaming stream of liquid metal trickles down the outer hull. I penetrate the outer armor in another 1.03 seconds, then cut through nearly eight meters of interior mechanism in the next .57 second.
I then begin slamming a steady stream of rounds into the inner hull, and all of my skill and precision are necessary now to preserve my Commander's life.
Kelly screamed again as the heat soared. Her E-suit was handling most of the thermal radiation beating in around her, but her face, sheltered only by her arms, felt like it was burning under the touch of white-hot iron. Oily smoke churned through the narrow space, pouring off of the walls and ceiling, stifling, choking, burning her nose and throat with acrid fumes. She would suffocate in moments if this kept up . . . or worse be poisoned by the deadly hot fumes.
An instant later, the tunnel was engulfed in white fire so brilliant it burned through her tight-shut eyelids. The fumes seemed to be sucked from the tunnel, but with it the air as well. She looked up, gasping for breath, and saw dimly a spill of sunlight at the far end of the tunnel.
Light . . . which meant air, and freedom!
She began crawling forward, but the tunnel floor was so hot even through her suit's gloves and thermal padding that she pulled back, shaking. She couldn't breathe. . . .
Airblessedly cold, clean airwhooshed back through the tunnel, striking her burned skin painfully . . . but she accepted the blow like a healing balm. For several moments, all she could do was lie there and gulp at the offered air, oblivious to the pain, the discomfort, the promise of rescue, and everything else in the world.
Again, she began trying to crawl up the passage toward the promise of open sky and freedom, clenching her gloved fists and dragging herself along on her elbows and one good leg, the broken leg dragging behind.
She'd made it perhaps five meters before the pain overwhelmed her and she passed out.
Colonel Streicher had left the tunnel entrance, clinging to the ruined face of the Mark XXXII with both hands, eyes shut tight, as Victor drilled his way into the wreckage. Waves of heat washed across him, barely managed by his protesting E-suit temperature controls, but he hung on until the thunderous roar and trembling vibrations ceased.
"I have cut through to her portion of the tunnel," Victor announced over his helmet phones. "I suggest that you remove the lieutenant from the interior quickly. Be careful, however. The walls are somewhat hot."
Somewhat hot? As he crouched atop the Bolo, looking down into a vertical slit carved through duralloy plate a meter thick, he realized that it was going to take days for the half-molten surfaces to cool.
And they didn't have days. They would be lucky if they had a few minutes more, before the enemy again came boiling up out of those subsurface tunnels.
Victor's superstructure was nearly seven meters higher than that of the Mark XXXII, which was also canted at a slight angle where it rested on uneven ground. The Mark XXXIII had directed its beam in a slashing, downward swipe across the target's upper works, opening a deep trench that extended downward into the depths of the Caernan machine's interior. On inspection, the edges of that raw wound proved impassable, even for an E-suit. The duralloy armor, a meter thick on the dorsal surface, was still softactually bubbling in some places, and farther in, the sides of the tunnel lined with plastic and ceramics and wiring had first exploded into chemical steam, then flowed like water, and finally cooleda relative termto the consistency of soft clay. Trying to climb down that cliff would mean deathby slow roasting if the inevitable fall as the sides gave way beneath his weight didn't break his neck.
The only way in, then, was through the original tunnel. The blocking slab of duralloy had been partly melted, and what was left had shifted and fallen during the drilling. The way was partly blocked now by a clutter of heat-softened conduits, tangles of smoking wiring, ruptured coolant feeds and internal sensors, and by a portion of the half-melted armor plate itself, but he was able to use his power gun to burn through most of the wreckage, and pull the rest away.
Beyond, Victor's beam had sliced deeply into the floor, and the area still glowed orange-hot in places, as thick, black fumes boiled upward through the newly opened vent. Through the smoke, with the aid of his handflash, he could just make out Kelly's still form in the dark tunnel beyond. She looked unconscious, or . . .
"I can't reach her, Victor," he called. "There's a hole in the floor and it's partly molten."
"Wait a moment," Victor replied. "Wait a moment. . . ."
Seconds later, a clattering skitter of spidery legs against tunnel walls and floor sounded at Streicher's back. Turning, he saw Victor's techspider partially blocking the way out.
"Move to the side, please," Victor told him. He did so, and the spider squeezed past, telescoping its legs in until they were little more than stumps pulling the spherical machine along. The spider reached the edge of the pit and peered in with emotionless, crystalline eyes. Streicher caught the flicker of laser beams made visible by the wafting smoke.
After a few seconds of examination, the spider pulled back. "Wait a moment," Victor said once again. Soon, another spider arrived, squeezing past Streicher and moving up alongside the first.
Then both dropped together into the slashed trench in the floor, settling down into molten ooze seconds before their circuits failed with eerie wails and pops.
"That should block the trench for a few moments, at least," Victor told him. "Hurry, before the shells of the techspiders grow so hot they can't support your weight."
The rounded bodies of the two lay side by side in the steaming pit. He placed one gloved hand on one and pressed down with all of his weight. It gave slightly, then supported him.
Quickly, he scuttled forward on them across the pit as heat radiating from the walls clawed at his sides and back. Reaching ahead, he grabbed Kelly's shoulders, rolled her onto her back, then began dragging her out, sliding her across the two dead spiders and on out into the clear, sunlit glare of the tunnel opening.
He checked her quickly, pulling off a glove and touching two fingers to her throat. He felt her pulse, weak but steady; her face was flushed bright red, as if from a severe sunburn.
A third spider was waiting at the tunnel mouth with a length of soft rope. Working swiftly, he secured the line to support eyes on the back of Kelly's E-suit, secured the other end of the line to the wreckage, and began to lower her gently down the long, rugged face of the ruined Bolo. More spiders appeared, clinging to the cliff face with spindly legs and extended claws, guiding Kelly all the way down that treacherous slope to the ground far below. It looked to Streicher as though they were actually being tender as they guided her body past the jagged edges of the hulk's blasted glacis. Once she was down, Streicher scrambled down the wreckage, dropping the last three meters to the ground and scooping her up in exhaustion-trembling arms.
Turning, he started carrying her toward Victor's rear door, open now, with the ramp extended. Only then did Streicher notice the other Bolos, four of them, waiting in a hulking semicircle a hundred meters away. Waiting, watching . . .
"Can you trust them, Victor?" he asked, not sure whether the Caernan machines could hear him or not.
"I believe so," Victor replied. "We have shared considerable amounts of data in the past few moments, and I believe their offer of help to be genuine."
"We wish to help you," a different, new voice added. "And we need your help, to free ourselves, and our kind. Please . . . show us what to do."
"I'm not sure what I can do myself," Streicher replied.
"Please," the Caernan Bolo added. "Help us . . . my Commander. . . ."
My Commander and Colonel Streicher are inside my battle center, safe, at least for the moment. They may not remain so if I choose now to penetrate the Caernan underworld, and I consider my options.
Simplest would be to remain here on the surface, deploying the Elken Bolos from here. However, they seem to be operating not according to set orders or programming, but according to the dictates of their human consciousnesses. Even if I trusted their motives completely, I would not delegate such combat responsibilities to machines directed by human mentalities.
I could also wait. Ferox has utilized his contra-gravity projectors to close the range between us faster than anticipated, despite the threat from Aetryx nuclear warheads. He will arrive in this AO within eleven minutes, thirty seconds. I could request that he accompany the Caernan Bolos underground, while I wait here. I do not have command responsibilities over Ferox and cannot give direct orders, but the operation offers such clear-cut opportunities for winning an advantage in this conflict that I do not believe he will refuse.
What I want most, illogical as it seems at first glance, is to enter the underworld myself. I decide to defer the question to higher authority.
"Colonel Streicher. I need your recommendation."
"What is it?" he says. I can see him through my battle center cameras, kneeling at the side of my Commander. His face looks drawn and worried. He has placed a blanket from the emergency stores locker on the deck beneath her and is administering burn medications to her face.
I explain to him my dilemma. An immediate penetration of the Caernan tunnel network might give us an advantage of surprise that would be lost if we awaited Ferox's arrival. But my battle damage is serious, and I might not survive the battle. And I have two human charges sheltering within my inner hull.
"How do you feel about going into that hornet's nest, Victor?" he asks me.
I do not know what a hornet's nest is but can extrapolate its meaning from context and from occurrences within my battle archives. "I am eager to make contact with the Enemy, sir," I reply. "I believe that this may be the critical turning point of the battle, and I do not wish to yield the advantage to the Enemy by losing time. However, I have a responsibility to protect the two of you."
"Never mind us, Vic," the colonel replies. "We almost didn't get out of that last one . . . and Kelly here made it only because of you. Your new friends out there are here because of you. They might not cooperate with Roxie."
This was a possible factor I'd not considered. Again, the unpredictability of human reasoning. . . .
"Then you concur that we should proceed with the plan?"
"Concur? Hell, I'm ordering you! Let's go down there and kick Trixie ass!"
"Very well, Colonel." I am relieved at the decision. It feels right.
I open a command channel with Invictus, Ferox, and the four Elken Bolos, and we begin to coordinate our plans.
Streicher bent closer as Kelly moaned. She was coming around.
"How are you feeling, Lieutenant?"
"Not . . . not as bad as I thought I would." Her eyes opened, blinking. "We . . . made it?"
"We're back on board Victor." The floor was gently vibrating as the Bolo rumbled forward. "We're on our way to break into the Aetryx underground complex."
"Do you think it will do any good?"
Streicher shrugged. "It's our only chance, really. If we sit on the surface waiting for them to come to us, they'll wear us down sooner or later, and we won't do anything but knock off units they don't mind expending. And . . . Victor picked up some allies." He told her about the four Mark XXXIIs, and their religious revolt against their old gods.
"Jesus!" she said. "Five Bolos is quite an army!"
"I just hope it's enough. It'll be tough, taking on the Trixies on their home territory. But Victor says he's working on something special."
"What?"
"Inside . . . down there . . . he might be able to jack into the Trixie computer net. He could hook up with other Caernan Bolos . . . and maybe pick up some recruits."
"At least he'll stir things up." She grimaced.
"Are you okay?"
"It's . . . hurting," she said, gritting her teeth. "E-suit pain meds aren't that good. They cut the edge, a bit, but . . ."
Streicher could guess what she must be suffering. Her face was badly burned, her leg still splinted by the suit. The constant rumbling of the Bolo as it carried them along over uneven ground must be a drawn-out agony.
Reaching up, he unsealed his E-suit jacket, reaching inside to pluck his last remaining sky-blue euph from his tunic pocket.
He held the pill in his palm a moment, thinking. Mixing meds wasn't usually a good idea, but euph acted directly on the brain's tech implants to subtly alter the incoming signals. Pleasant sensations or thoughts were ignored; unpleasant sensations, bad memories, pain, all were gently swaddled and pushed back toward oblivion, unfelt.
There was little enough else he could do for her.
"Here," he said, raising her head slightly and holding the pill toward her cracked and broken lips. "Take this."
"What . . . is it?"
"Euph. A kind of pain killer." True enough. It killed physical pain as well as the emotional variety. "Don't worry," he added. "it's not addictive." Not unless you keep on taking it, trying to kill a pain that just won't go away.
She accepted it, swallowing. Within seconds, her eyes, glazed by pain, began to clear. She looked at him and managed a faint smile. "Thank you. That does feel better."
"I only have the one," he told her. "But it should last you about ten or twelve hours, maybe more. After that . . ."
"What?"
"After that, we'll either be dead, or we can get medical treatment for you from the Trixies. One way or the other . . ."
The deck tilted sharply beneath them, angling nose-down.
"Here we go," he told her. "Into the Pit . . ."
"Won't be the first time," she said.
And he knew exactly what she meant.