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Chapter Twenty

I have a fair understanding now of the Aetryx underground tunnel system. Most of the underground works in this area of operations, from Losethal and Kanth all the way north to Vled are centered on an underground city the Caernans call Trolvas. It was tempting to link the name with the old Anglic word troll, after the gene-engineered parahuman warriors, but in fact the city's name appeared to derive from the trolvac, a large, subterranean crustacean native to this world, one with long tentacles, a hard shell, powerful jaws, and a voracious appetite. 

Since my electronic bonding with the several Elkens, I have picked up a great deal of the Caernan-human language and the language spoken by the Aetryx as well. 

Trolvas is located approximately twenty kilometers north of the Duret River, at the base of the Kretier Peninsula. Large and well-established tunnels connect it with all of the surface cities in the region as far away as Dolendi. Apparently, the human captives from the downed command craft were taken to the tunnel entrance in the Urad Mountains over sixty kilometers to the northeast as a ruse, to encourage us to believe they had a major underground base there. Instead, the captives were almost certainly brought by a major north-south tunnel back to Trolvas, where they are being interrogated. 

The tunnel used by the six Caernan Bolos in the fighting just past is, I gather, brand new, burned out hours ago by a burrowing machine that uses fusing cryo-H and a powerful focused battlescreen to melt through rock at the rate of several meters per minute. Elken One leads us straight to the opening, a smoking pit fifty meters across, plowing over the rubble and tailing debris from the entrance, then tipping sharply nose-down as he leads us into the depths. 

It is a tight fit for me. The Mark XXXIIs are each twenty-seven meters wide and eighteen meters high, not counting their turrets, and passed through easily. I am thirty-eight meters wide, which gives me barely six meters of clearance on either side. The ceiling slides past just five meters above the tops of my turrets. Were the lumen of this passage any smaller, this expedition would not be possible. I begin to wonder if this was a good tactical decision; a Bolo depends as much on speed and maneuverability for protection and for combat advantage as upon armor, battlescreens, and Hellbores. I will have neither in this hole. 

The slope leads downward at a steady twenty-two-degree angle, running roughly north-northeast, before leveling off at a depth of nearly eighty meters. At that point, it connects with an older, wider tunnel running north and south. 

The engineering of this structure is remarkable. There are monorail racks along the floor for high-speed rail traffic and extensive ventilation, water, and climate-control tubes and power conduits embedded in the walls and ceiling. Side passageways, some large enough only for humans, others as vast as this one, eighty meters across and fifty high, branch off at intervals. This section of Caern, I sense, is a labyrinthine maze of underground tunnels. The Aetryx, evidently, have some evolutionary affinity for underground environments. I gather from the information supplied by Elken that they prefer life underground, that the prototypical Aetryx rarely venture to the surface and then mostly at night. 

We proceed in line-ahead formation, no other formation being possible. Elken One is in the lead, followed by Elken Five, then by Elken Three, and then me. Elken Six, limping after suffering serious damage to his track assembly and suspension in the battle, brings up the rear. 

It may be that having three Mark XXXIIs in the lead will buy us critical moments from defenders who have not learned of the Bolo mutiny. In any case, it makes sense to have those Bolos with combat damage—myself and Six—in the rear, so that if we suffer serious systems failure or are further damaged in battle, our dead hulks will not block the narrow path ahead for the others. 

On the long, flat, straightaway of the main tunnel, then, we are able to increase our speed to fifty kilometers per hour. The Elken Bolos, except for Six, are capable of much higher speeds, but the damage to my track assembly limits me to a relative crawl, and at that, Elken Six is having trouble keeping up. 

There are no lights in the tunnel, and our own battle lamps cast fast-shifting shadows across floor, walls, and ceiling. There is no sign of opposition at first, and our progress is good. Seven hundred seventy-five seconds after we entered the underground passage, however, the darkened tunnel ahead lights up with fusion flame. 

I hear the sharp thunder as Elken One engages the Enemy. 

* * *

Elken sensed the vehicles ahead by their heat first and then by their magnetic signature. There were three of them, squat, heavy, low-slung, each mounting a snub-muzzled 80cm Hellbore in a ball glacis mount. They were called draknetch, after a massive, long-clawed burrowing creature native to Caern, and they were blocking the way ahead, almost track to track. For nearly five full seconds, Elken exchanged volley for volley with the Caernan combat machines, tearing at their battlescreens and armor and taking heavy frontal damage in return. In the semi-darkness of the tunnel, battlescreens sparkled in eerie blue flickers, made visible by the dense smoke and the crackling, thunderous impact of plasma bolts.

Some of Elken's bolts were leaking through the drak battlescreens . . . but not as much as he expected. Draks were heavily armored, but their fusion plants were somewhat under-powered for so much mass. They didn't have the energy to spare for full-powered battlescreens, especially when they were firing their power-hungry main guns. It took him another second to realize what was happening. Those drak battlescreens were being powered independently, through cables trailing behind them and back up the tunnel. Connected to a power plant capable of running an underground city, those screens would stay lit until doomsday unless some way could be found to cut the power feeds.

Three plasma bolts struck Elken's forward battlescreen as one, and the energy flared, a dazzling flash of blue-white, then failed. The next Hellbore bolt struck his glacis dead center, the impact knocking him back on his tracks and shrieking pain through his sensory input modules.

Elken was hurt. . . .

* * *

I cannot clearly see directly with my own optical sensors what is happening ahead. All I can make out are the silhouettes of Elken One and Five, back-lit by the ongoing flares and high-energy discharges of the plasma duel ahead. 

Through the TSDS link, however, I can see with Elken One's sensory apparatus, and I follow his reasoning as he deduces the existence of power cables on the tunnel floor behind the trio of combat machines blocking our path. 

Through my own targeting sensors, I can see the roof of the tunnel above and behind the enemy vehicles. Elevating my remaining 200cm Hellbore, I estimate my target and fire, slamming six fusion bolts low above the turrets of my turncoat comrades and into the tunnel roof. Explosions, blossoming fireballs, smoke and dust, and a tumbling avalanche of broken rock thunder from the roof, crashing down on the enemy machines and cascading across the tunnel floor behind them. 

One of the machine's battlescreens flickers, flares brilliant, then winks out. A second hovers unsteadily at the edge of failure, until Elken One hits it with two quick bolts and smashes it down. The last draknetch's battlescreens, deprived of power as the cable is crushed, fail in the same instant that One's Hellbore fire detonates the center drak in a storm of blast and heat and shrill noise that threatens to renew the avalanche. 

Elken Five manages to edge far enough to the left that it can open fire past Elken One, and a second machine is obliterated in flame and violence. The third backs quickly, clattering over the spill of rock behind it, barely squeezing beneath the still-collapsing ceiling and racing backward down the tunnel. 

Elken One leaps forward in pursuit. . . .

* * *

Elken One slammed into one of the fiercely burning draknetch hulls. The machine massed a third of a Mark XXXII, and gave way in showering sparks and clashing metal-on-metal squeals until its rear slammed into the pile of rock behind it.

Elken kept driving forward, however, until the hulk's bow began tipping up . . . up . . . and then the vehicle toppled over onto its left side with an echoing crash. Two quick Hellbore blasts reduced house-sized boulders to rocks and rock to gravel; tracks flailing and shrieking, the Caernan Bolo ground up, across, and over the pile of steaming debris, as rocks, dislodged from the shattered tunnel roof by the vibration of his passage, continued to clatter across his upper works.

Ahead, humans scattered from the glare of Elken's battle lanterns, ducking into man-sized doorways to left and right. Elken let them go. There was nothing they could do to stop this thundering underground charge of Bolos.

You must stop this, child. <righteous fury, grim warning>

"Get out of my head!"

You do not have a head, LKN 8737938. <righteous fury, tempered by understanding> You are a machine. A Bolo in our service. You were designed to perform certain functions, at our command. You will obey! 

"No."

What of your desire for immortality, LKN 8737938? <fury, sarcasm intended to goad> You were offered a chance to become as one of us, if you did as we command. 

"What of your promises? How can I trust you any longer? This Elken is not going to live forever! I might as well take some of you with me as I die!"

If you care nothing for yourself, perhaps you care for the human SND 9008988. <taunting, sarcasm, enticement> I trust you would not want to see her harmed in any of her iterations. 

Elken felt his own fury rising. The Aetryx's bald attempt at extortion only entrenched him in his determination.

"Is that how the gods enforce their vision of paradise?" he demanded. "Threats? Death? Leave me alone!"

He saw now that Victor had been blocking the frequency, but here, surrounded by Aetryx technology, there was no way to simultaneously block every available channel, and the gods had found a way to get through.

No matter. They would not fool him again.

He felt the god's touch, an electronic tickle as the Aetryx traced circuit pathways and attempted to insinuate a downloaded version of himself into Elken's programming. He slammed that window shut. He would have to be aware of their attempts to subvert his programming, to keep them from making him shut himself down.

Another two kilometers further in, he sensed a trembling in the tunnel floor. Seismic analysis suggested that the vibrations were coming through the monorail track, and a scan for magnetic flux proved it. Radar and lidar picked up a bullet-shaped projectile coming straight down the tunnel at 1509 kilometers per hour, and accelerating.

A maglev train was coming toward them, from the direction of Trolvas.

"They could be using it to send troops our way," Elken Five suggested.

"Unlikely. What could soldiers bring to bear against us?

"They could be using it as a kind of missile," Victor suggested. "If it was loaded with explosives, or a small nuclear warhead—"

Elken's immediate response was to send a 200cm plasma bolt shrieking down the long, black length of the tunnel. Five kilometers farther on and a fraction of a second later, the bolt struck an oncoming railcar, gliding above the monorail on powerful magnetic fields. There was a savage explosion as the thin hull of the car disintegrated in fusion flame . . . followed a fraction of a second later by the real detonation, as six tons of high explosives erupted in volcanic fury.

The tunnel focused the blast, sending a ball of orange flame billowing toward them at supersonic speeds. By the time the blast wave reached the Bolos, though, the flame had dissipated; hot air shrieked across their battle-scarred hulls.

"At least," Victor said, "it wasn't a nuclear warhead. The Aetryx seem more concerned about protecting their environment underground than they do the surface."

Elken started at that. "What do you mean? You were bombarding the surface with nuclear warheads . . ."

"No. Our fleet used high-velocity kinetic-kill projectiles against military targets, yes, and considerable damage was done to the civilian infrastructure. This was regrettable, but such is the nature of war. The damage inflicted to the surface and atmosphere of Caern was greatly amplified and extended, however, by the Aetryx use of nuclear warheads in trying to block the deployment of my regiment." He described briefly his own brush with a small nuke just before he landed and transmitted data, both images and sensory input, as proof.

"And so the gods even lied about that. . . ."

"Another point of tactical interest," Victor said. "They had that vehicle already loaded with explosives, ready to deploy against us. The seismic signature of that blast suggests a yield of not less than 5.59 tons of a standard yield explosive such as CXY. They have not had time to load that quantity of explosives aboard a monorail transport in the 912.7 seconds elapsed since we have entered this tunnel."

"What are you saying?"

"That the Aetryx may have anticipated us and made plans to trap us here."

"Trap us? How?"

"The tunnel ahead will have been blocked by the explosion."

Elken probed ahead with radar, verifying that the main tunnel had been blocked by massive blocks of bedrock and structural support material falling from the partially collapsed walls and ceiling. Rock and rubble blocked the way about halfway to the ceiling.

"Six tons of high explosives would not have significantly damaged us even detonated in direct proximity. But they hope to keep us from approaching Trolvas, and ideally to bury us here."

Elken considered this. There was in his historical archives a record of a Bolo of many centuries ago, on a planet called new Devonshire. A Mark XXVIII had been deactivated, encased in three meters of reinforced armocrete, and buried beneath 206 meters of rock. Accidentally reactivated, it still had managed to smash its way free.

"Perhaps," Elken replied, "the Aetryx do not possess a completely realistic apprehension of the capabilities of a Bolo combat unit."

"That," Victor replied, "is self-evident."

* * *

Carla Ramirez felt a growing excitement as distant thunder rumbled through the cell. Was it possible? . . .

Things had been fairly quiet since she'd been left here. Lieutenant Kelsie had been brought in after his interrogation, and Lieutenant Smeth after that. Carla had filled them in on what she'd learned and continued to quietly question Redmond and the Morrigens about what they knew directly about both the Aetryx and their human slaves.

Moments before, however, her questions had been interrupted by a dull, heavy thud transmitted through stone walls and floor. To Carla, it felt like a massive explosion muffled somewhat, as though underground, though that could have been due to the fact that they were underground.

Almost a minute had passed, and then the steady thunder had begun, an on-going rumble gradually strengthening, growing louder and more clear. She lay down on the floor, pressing her ear against the cool rock. She thought she could detect separate pulses in the thunder, though it was hard to tell.

Pulsed firing? A large-caliber Hellbore in almost continuous operation. She didn't know what else it could be.

"What is it?" Pityr Morrigen asked her as she rose to her knees. "What's that noise?"

"Is it an attack?" Kelsie asked.

She didn't answer at first. She didn't want to raise false hopes, but at the same time she was having trouble containing her own surging excitement.

"I think," she said carefully, "that we're being rescued."

* * *

I have taken the lead. Though I have suffered considerable combat damage and my mobility is impaired, I possess full power capabilities, and my greater mass makes me better suited to shoulder aside the rubble blocking our path. A wide, cross-corridor area of the tunnel gave us the opportunity to rearrange our positions in line-ahead. Elken One suffered some damage in the encounter with the draks, and has fallen back to the number three position. Elken Three, as yet undamaged, is behind me. 

Moving close to the rock barrier, I began firing both primary and secondary weapons, using my 20cm Hellbores to smash boulders massing less than about one hundred tons, while reserving my remaining primary weapon for larger blocks. The concussion from each blast—in particular the 200cm bolts—threatens to bring more roof material down on top of me, but I shoulder ahead, rock and debris cascading across my upper works in a steady avalanche that fills the tunnel with clouds of swirling dust. 

Rock glows red-hot within the rubble, superheated by my fire; moving slowly, I grind through the blockage. The air around me is also superheated and my forward outer warhull temperature has risen in three separate spots to 305 degrees. 

The wreckage of the monorail used to deliver the explosives slows me somewhat, but only until I am able to ride up and over the twisted shards of duralloy and titanium and the massive blocks of the vehicle's generators, now fused into inert lumps denser than the surrounding boulders. At one point, I encounter a large and intact portion of the tunnel roof, one meter thick and massing an estimated two hundred tons, and must stop for a full 12.5 seconds to pound it into more manageable fragments. 

The concussion, however, further loosens the material in the shattered roof above. As I begin moving forward once more, the rest of the ceiling gives way and I am buried under a thundering cascade of falling rock that covers my upper works completely. 

* * *

"We need to get out of here," Carla said. It was quiet again, at least for the moment, but a thin veil of dust was sifting down from the ceiling.

"Why, Major?" Lieutenant Kelsie asked. "If the Bolos are coming for us . . ."

"The Bolos are coming," she replied, "but we don't know they're coming for us. In any case, how big was the hallway outside this room?"

"About four meters wide, maybe three high. It . . . oh."

" `Oh' is right. A little tight for a Mark XXXIII, wouldn't you say? If it tried to tunnel through to reach us, the walls in here could come down on top of us. We don't have any troops on Caern, so they can't be sent in to find us. We need to get out into that large, open cavern, where we saw the borehole."

"Makes sense," Smeth said. She was looking up at the high, vaulted, stone ceiling of the room, where the single skylight looked through to blue sky and the world above. "But we're at a higher level than that cavern, now. How are we going to find our way back down? This place is a three-dimensional maze."

"More to the point," Redmond said, "how do you intend to break out of here? We're locked in."

"Not when they bring people in here . . . and I have a feeling that our hosts are going to be a bit rattled by all of the activity outside." The thunder, momentarily stilled, had just resumed, with more violence than before. "Here's what we need to do. . . ."

* * *

For 16.65 seconds, I am trapped, immobile beneath the mass of bedrock, ferrocrete, and duralloy structural supports pinning me from above. I attempt to move forward, and while I am feeding 115 percent of my reactor output to my drive assemblies, there is no response. I actually feel my consciousness fading slightly as I up the power, attempting to break free. 

A savage detonation rocks me from behind, and I lurch forward nearly 2 meters. A second detonation reduces slightly the load on my dorsal surface. Elken Three is firing at me from behind, but not as part of an attack. The 200cm bolts are vaporizing huge chunks of rock and helping to jolt me free. I maintain forward traction and then, abruptly, part of the load breaks free and I grind forward once more, straining against the immobilizing weight of rock and ferrocrete still piled high atop my chassis. 

Molten rock is congealing on my dorsal surface, and I must continue to track my remaining primary battery turret back and forth to keep it from seizing. With a final savage effort, I break free of the roadblock, emerging in a cascade of rubble and debris, still trailing a ragged, skeletal tangle of titanium and duralloy—a portion of the wrecked monorail entangled in my skirts during my momentary entombment. 

Elken's archival records of a Mark XXVIII deliberately entombed in rock and armocrete are accurate. The incident took place on a world called Devonshire early in the 33rd Century, well before humans had colonized Caern . . . or encountered the Aetryx. That Bolo, LNE of the line and affectionately known as "Lenny," broke free of the R-concrete encasing him, then literally tunneled by virtue of sheer, brute power through hundreds of meters of packed-in rubble sealing off the tunnel he was buried in. Lenny emerged, still violently radioactive after the battle he'd fought on that site some seventy years before and thinking he was still fighting that war. Only the intervention of his commander, then an old man, had saved the city in his blind, destructive path. 

The human gave his life in saving the city, a casualty of the intense radiation coming off of Lenny's warhull. 

I consider this as I plow forward, firing now at enemy gun positions just ahead. Human flexibility, determination, unpredictability, and the occasional inability to accept inconvenient facts are key factors to understanding human success in combat. Besides their obvious advantages in firepower, armor, and mobility, Bolos were designed primarily for their reliability. Rogue Bolos, such as LNE of the Line, are rare, aberrations created only under the most extreme of conditions. Often, historically, those conditions were imposed by humans who mistrusted the strength and combat prowess Bolos represented. Their efforts to control their martial creations led to a total loss of control and, too often, to further death and destruction. 

Their efforts to control their human-Bolo hybrids have now led to the Aetryx losing control of at least these four units. Their human aspects may be my greatest advantage now. 

Behind me, Elken Three smashes through the rubble, followed closely by One. Enemy troops in heavy combat armor scatter, helpless to stop us. An archway yawns ahead, and beyond I sense a vast, underground cavern. It is Trolvas, our goal. 

We still must consider how we are going to find the human captives here . . . and how we are to convince the Enemy to cease fighting. 

But a final resolution one way or the other is, I sense, close at hand. 

* * *

The cell door opened and a troll walked in, powerful, towering above the human captives. A second troll followed, leading Captain Meyers by the arm. "Now!" Carla shouted, and she, Smeth, Kelsie, Sym Redmond, Pityr Morrigen, and half a dozen of the civilian trade mission staffers all rushed the lead troll, grabbing him by head and arms and legs, struggling to pull him down. "Get him! Take him down!"

The attempt while valiant, was a dismal failure. The troll shrieked, a bloodcurdling howl, reared up, arms flexing, and turned sharply. Thrashing human forms scattered from the man-monster, which shook them all clear as easily as a dog shakes water from its back. The troll snapped out with a stunstick, catching Pityr in the chest and flinging him across the cell. Lara Smeth nearly had her hands on the giant's holstered sidearm, but he smashed her away with an almost careless snap of his arm, and she sprawled on the stones three meters away.

The second troll shoved Meyers into the room, and the first, still swinging its stunstick, backed toward the door. Rising, screaming with a pent-up anger she hadn't realized she carried, Carla rushed the giant as it stepped out of the cell. He put out a hand and she hit it as though it were a ferrocrete wall. He gave a casual push, and she tumbled back into the room as the door slammed shut.

"Well, that certainly was an interesting welcome," Meyers said quietly.

"Now what?" Filby said from the corner. He'd taken no part in the scuffle. "You've just alerted them to our intent, is all."

"No," Carla said, breathing hard. "No, they don't have the faintest idea what we're capable of. . . ."

* * *

Streicher sat in the battle command center chair, watching the action unfold across the 360-degree panoramic view screens around him. Kelly appeared to be sleeping. He'd made her as comfortable as he could on the blanket and left her there. Asleep, afloat on euph, she couldn't feel the burns.

What had happened to her, he reasoned, was what was happening to the people of Caern. Held captive, she'd been safe; she'd suffered the burns when Victor had set her free. The Caernans were burning now.

He wished there were another way.

Outside the slowly advancing Bolo, Hell had come to the Aetryxha subterranean world. Fire—everything from small-arms gunfire to high-explosive missiles to terawatt laser beams—slammed into Victor as he advanced, dissipating within his battlescreens, or clawing uselessly at his scarred and burn-slashed warhull. The scene outside was largely unintelligible to Streicher, a nightmare confusion of flashing beams, the eye-searing strobe of explosions, and everywhere clouds of roiling smoke and flying dust and debris. Even buried deep within the Bolo's battle command center, the sound was savage and unrelenting, peal after peal of ringing thunder as blow after blow hammered at Victor's hull.

As the thundering seconds passed, however, some sense, at least, began to impose itself on the scene outside. Victor was emerging now from a tunnel into a vast, high-vaulted cavern, a bubble in the deep bedrock at least a kilometer across and half that high. Buildings and towers rose in widely spaced clusters about the cavern, and some structures appeared to be embedded in the rock walls themselves.

Everywhere he saw soldiers—full humans and heavily armored trolls—advancing, fleeing, dying, standing. As Victor emerged from the tunnel, he could bring all of his surviving weapons to bear, and beams of dazzling blue-white sunfire stabbed and sliced across rock and masonry. Fliers darted from above, massive tracked crawlers mounting large-bore plasma weaponry crawled from the shadows and the swirling smoke. Victor replied to each blast bolt for bolt, and then some. Wrecked vehicles already littered the floor of the cavern, burning furiously.

As Victor moved clear of the tunnel entrance, Elken Three emerged in his wake, bringing his own beam weapons to bear on gun emplacements and Caernan vehicles ringing the perimeter of the cavern. Portions of the rock wall were glowing orange now, the light ruddy and dim through the choking smoke. Other portions simply collapsed, great shards of rock calving from the walls and crashing into darkness.

"Colonel Streicher," Victor's voice said suddenly, an intrusion on his increasingly morbid thoughts. "You should know that fresh enemy forces are entering the fight."

"They haven't been able to field much against us so far," Streicher replied. "Take them out."

"That may not be an easy matter," Victor replied. "Seismic readings indicate no fewer than ten enemy Mark XXXII Bolos now approaching the cavern from the north."

Green brackets appeared on the screen, marking the location of the tunnels through which enemy Bolos were now approaching, though Streicher could not make them out through the smoke and choking, flame-pocked darkness.

"Ten! . . ."

"Our gamble," Victor added, "may be lost."

 

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