I remain a half kilometer distant from the downed space craft. Portions of my outer hull have retained some radioactivity from the contaminated battle zones through which I've passed recently, and others are radiating thermal energy at levels that would be dangerous to unprotected humans at close quarters.
I have taken the liberty of vectoring the flight of WR-5 Warlocks back to this area. They are circling overhead now, helping to maintain a close watch for enemy ground or air forces. I have also deployed both my Wyverns and Dragons in a broader perimeter about the area, in order to maintain a careful guard, most especially against sallies by enemy armor. The current lull in the battle is suspicious. It is possible the Enemy is planning a counterstroke, and I need to remain flexible to deal with any potential threat to my mission, my Commander and other staff officers, or myself.
Sensors indicate life within the grounded spacecraft.
As the first light of daybreak gleams from the crescent of Dis on the eastern horizon, I await their emergence.
Streicher stooped to angle his tall frame through the open hatch, then dropped the half meter to the ground in an easy jump. The military-issue E-suit was a flexible black skin snugged tight to his body, with a fishbowl helmet that provided limited low-light resolution and magnification through smart transplas crystals embedded in the plastic. His backpack would continue purifying air pulled in through external filters indefinitely . . . or give him a good six hours if the outside air was so hot or poisonous his suit couldn't handle it.
The suns were a pair of dazzling points of light just above the silver bow of Dis. At this longitude, the gas giant was squarely bisected by the horizon, though librationthe slow rocking back and forth or nodding due to tidal effects as it swung around its primarywould cause the giant world to seem to rise and fall somewhat over the course of the four-day diurnal period. The sky was gorgeous, aglow with luminescent clouds, though the crystalline blue and gold were stained by red-black smoke rising to the south.
That blue . . . so much like the blue color of euph.
He'd taken a second tab before suiting up and tucked a third into an inner pouch. The rest, his last fifteen tabs, he'd left in his locker, where they'd be safe. He would have to make them last until they found a way off this rock.
And if they were stuck here, well . . . it didn't matter. He knew he could kick the euph-thirst any time he really wanted to. It was just that they helped him get through the rough times with the bad memories, the bad dreams. They took the edge off the depression, helped him see the world a little more clearly.
He could get along without them, anytime he wanted.
Such a glorious blue sky. The burning city reminded him of something . . . something he didn't want to think about right now. . . .
Then he turned as he emerged from beneath and behind the ECD craft, and his attention was snapped up almost at once by something much nearer, much more demanding on his senses than a burning city. The Bolo was squatting five hundred meters away, its crater-scarred glacis rising like a steeply slanted black cliff, its body so long and so high that it actually seemed to recede into the haze.
It was not the biggest man-made object Streicher had ever seen. Starships were considerably larger. However, you rarely saw them this way, up close and from the outside, with ground and a horizon and a sky to put things into perspective. Some buildings were larger, but they tended to be in the hearts of cities, with the skyward reach of other buildings competing with them for the viewer's eye.
He found himself looking up and gaping like a rubber-necked tourist on Primus. The monster machine was twenty-five meters high, its hull all angles and teardrop-blisters and elegant curves, but torn and gashed in places by heavy-caliber rounds, particle beams, and Hellbore fusion bolts. Some of the deeper gouges in its frontal armor were actually glowing a sullen, deep red.
And it was huge. The Bolo looked lots bigger even than the pod he'd examined in the cargo bay on board the Heritas.
"Uh . . . Victor?" He said. Then he remembered. "Sorry. Thunderstrike, this is Cloudtop."
Cloudtop was one of the more ironic radio handles he'd heard used in recent history.
"Cloudtop, Thunderstrike," Victor's deep, mellifluous voice replied instantly. "I read you."
It was difficult hearing the voice in his helmet phones and connecting it with that slab-sided mountain in front of him.
"I'm glad you made it down safely," the voice added.
"Um, thank you, Victor. We got jumped by an enemy fighter. We were lucky to get enough maneuvering control back that we could soft-land."
Not that the landing had been all that soft. The command craft lay behind him, one rim of the saucer angled thirty degrees into the sky, the opposite rim crumpled, torn, and jammed into the ground. A gouge in the earth like a plow track leading back toward the southeast showed the path they'd followed coming in. Streicher checked the entire surrounding horizon. Someone was likely to be coming to investigate the crash.
"I have taken the liberty," Victor said, "of securing the perimeter against enemy encroachments on the crash site. However, I recommend that we get all survivors away from this area as quickly as possible."
"Affirmative," Streicher replied. "We need to work up some long-range plans, too. The Invasion Fleet has been scattered by a surprise enemy space attack. The second wave won't be coming down."
"I had already assumed as much," Victor said. "Radar and lidar probes of circum-Caernan space indicate a number of friendly vessels destroyed and the rest in full retreat or already escaped into hyper. We are on our own now."
Streicher thought about this for a moment. "Do we have any alternative," he asked slowly, "other than surrender?"
"I have been discussing this with my Commander as we speak, Colonel," Victor said.
Streicher was surprised. He'd never thought of the Bolo being capable of talking to different people on different channels at the same time. The machine's AI, however, was partly the result of truly massive parallel processing through hyper-redundant molecular circuitry, and there was no reason why it shouldn't be able to pay full attention to numerous simultaneous conversations.
"There are several options besides the unpleasant one of surrender," Victor went on. "At this point, we are in an excellent position planet-wide in terms of having suppressed or destroyed Enemy activity, at least on the planet's surface. Our long-term prospects appear bleak, since with the fleet's dismemberment, we are now sharply limited in our available stores of various consumablesfood for you, expendable munitions for myself and the other Bolo combat units. Still, it may be possible to force a decision in our favor in the short-term, by identifying and seizing key enemy assets he is not willing or able to yield."
"What assets? His bases have been obliterated . . . all the ones I'm aware of, anyway."
"His surface bases have been obliterated. There is evidence of extensive underground complexes, however, which seem to be sheltering the majority both of the enemy's military presence on Caern and of the Caernan civilian population, both human and Aetryx."
"So . . . you're saying we go down there and hold Caern's civilian population as hostage?" The thought was a distasteful one, not one that Streicher was willing to countenance. What, though, were the ethics of a Mark XXXIII combat unit in such matters? Bolos had ethics, remarkably strong ones. But sometimes they were skewed a bit from the human point of view.
"A possible course of action, but unlikely to be fruitful from our perspective," Victor said. "According to intelligence downloaded prior to drop, the Aetryx are the complete masters of this world, with the human population existing as second-class citizens in many respects. The Aetryx might consider their human slaves expendable. In any case, our mission operational parameters call for rescuing the captive human population, not using it as a bargaining chip."
"Agreed."
"But there must be other possible subsurface targets of importance to the Aetryx, including staging and supply areas, power plants, manufacturing centers, and mines. The Aetryx appear singularly willing to sacrifice all or most of the surface of this world in its defense. It follows that certain underground facilities will be more highly valued."
"Can you find such targets? Can you even reach them?"
"We know empirically that Bolo Mark XXXIIs have been moving about below ground as they maneuver to attack surface targets. Though I am considerably larger than that mark, I should be able to gain access to most tunnels used by the Mark XXXII."
"We'll need to coordinate all Bolo operations," Streicher said. "Work out a plan they all can apply."
"Of course."
Streicher had the feeling he was lecturing a master on his own ground. Perhaps this would be a good place, he thought, to leave the fine points of the planning and strategy to those who best knew the topic. A high-mark Bolo knew more about strategy and tactics than a mere regimental commander ever would.
He continued to study the surrounding terrain, etched with long shadows just now appearing from the slow, bright sunrise in the east. The sun was bisected by the curve of Dis six degrees above the horizon. The light was bright enough now that the sweeping arch of the gas giant's rings were invisible, and Dis itself was a pale half-circle only slightly darker than the background sky.
A breeze was blowing from the sea, and Streicher wished he could remove his helmet to taste it. Except for the smoke in the south, the landscape was bucolically peaceful. A lot like Aristotle, in fact . . .
He squelched that line of thought at once. He needed to keep his edge and not slip away into depression again.
He didn't put much hope in the Bolo's notion of finding some way of ending the war other than surrender. After all, Bolos were programmed to maintain that blood-deadly optimism in their thoughts and planning. Still, it wouldn't do to just wait around for the Trixies to get organized and come pick them up. Better by far to do something.
"Victor?"
"Yes, Colonel."
"We need to come on board. We need access to your battle command center."
"I understand. One moment, please."
If the sight of the Mark XXXIII Bolo towering above the plain was awe-inspiring, the sight of that titanic monster delicately spinning in place was more so. There were three sets of tracks, each set itself doubled, on either side. The port-side tracks advanced while the starboard side went into reverse, and the entire 120-meter-long behemoth rotated to its right. The maneuver looked light-footed enough, but the gouge it tore into the field was over a meter deep, and soil, rock, and clods of grass were flying everywhere.
Then the rear portion of the Bolo was facing him, a vertical wall heavily encrusted by dried mud, plate armor, antenna housings, heat vents, and power field projection sponsons. An armored panel slid aside, exposing a man-sized hatch, almost invisibly tiny against that 38-meter-wide bulk. The hatch slid open, spilling a hot, bright inner illumination into the cooler light of early morning. A ramp extended to the ground.
"Carla?" He called. "That's our invitation. Let's get on board."
"Right, boss. C'mon, people! You heard the colonel. Let's get out of the open!"
Together, the four trudged into the Bolo's black shadow toward the waiting hatch. Coolant steam hissed from vents to either side of the hatch in billowing clouds. As they approached, Streicher was aware of several AP turrets pivoting on the hull to track themautomated antipersonnel defense pods designed to keep hostile infantry and tank-killer robots at a safe distance. At the same time, a pair of small camera eyes followed their every step. Unauthorized personnel, of course, were allowed nowhere near the access hatches to a functional Bolo; if a dozen different code responses from their suits and cranial implants weren't perfect, or if the cameras spotted anything amiss, they would be stopped and held at gunpointor killed outright.
Streicher stopped at the hatch as the other three clambered up the ramp and ducked inside. "Major Voll?"
"On channel, Colonel."
"We're going inside Victor. I suggest you go ahead and start rotating a couple of sentries outside the ship, two-hour stints. Conditions seem safe enough, and Victor can certainly handle any conceivable threat, but we need everyone to start getting acclimated to the great out-of-doors down here. Everybody is on rotation, senior officers and ship's personnel as well."
"I concur, Colonel. I was going to suggest it."
"Good. I'll stay in touch, thirty-minute intervals. Streicher out."
Inside, the main passageway was a narrow, squared-off tube leading in and up, twisting past the massive service access panels to the Bolo's twin fusion plants and primary accumulators, through layer after layer of armor, and through at last the buzzing-insect tingle and blue-static flashes of its internal disrupter field and into the very heart of the machine.
Inside the command center, the four pulled off helmets and gloves as Victor powered up the instrumentation, which was there solely for human benefit. At the center of the compartment was the only seat, the reclining, heavily padded command chair in the center of a ring of curving holographic viewscreens that gave the operator a 360-degree panorama all around the Bolo's exterior. Those screens had been switched off when Streicher had been here last, just before the Bolo landing pods had disembarked. They were on, now, showing a true-as-life image of the surroundings, including the sharply canted saucer to their rear, and the smoke from Ghendai ahead and to their right.
Kelly Tyler had already taken the command seat. Streicher suppressed an immediate urge to order her out of his seat. She, after all, was this Bolo's commander. It was her privilege and her responsibility.
"Give me a full status report, Vic," she was saying. "Implant and screen only. I don't need hardcopy or voice."
"As you wish, my Commander," the Bolo's voice responded, melodious and deep, emerging, somehow, from all around them.
Streicher stood next to Ramirez and Bucklin, feeling suddenly awkward and clumsy, like an out-of-place teenager. There was nothing for him to do here but be in the way, or to stand around with his thumb in his ear, wondering what to do next.
At least not until after Lieutenant Tyler had completed the preliminaries.
He could see the flicker of data as Victor began scrolling his status down one of the big holograph screens. Time to see just how bad things are, he thought.
"Just how bad are things up there?" Elken asked.
The situation is stable and relatively quiet in this sector. <cool confidence> The fighting continues elsewhere. We have suffered severe damage to the infrastructure on the surface, but the cities are easily rebuilt. The Sky Demon fleet has been utterly destroyed. Now we need only annihilate the last of the invaders actually on our soil.
"And you think we can do that ourselves?"
He was seated with twenty-three other warrior somas in a combat ready room deep underground. Technicians and assistants were finishing the last connections and hook-ups to the team's armor.
Even warrior somas, Elken knew, wouldn't survive long on the open battlefield, not against Bolos, hunter-killer robots, and high radiation. Prototype human forms, though, simply didn't have the muscle, the stamina, or the reflexes to carry the sheer mass of armor that would protect them up there. And that, he'd just learned, was why they'd downloaded him into a warrior soma. A human wouldn't even be able to stand under the weight of all this stuff.
Besides the protective suit encasing him head to toe, with its massive, high-tech helmet designed to fit closely over his horns, he wore a backpack that weighed as much as the entire rest of the suit and was carrying a gauss rifle that was plastic-toy light, with strap-on ammunition boxes that were heavier than lead.
Your mission is limited and relatively narrow in scope. <patience> You will lead a patrol onto the surface with the express purpose of securing prisonerspreferably Sky Demon officersfrom whom we can download necessary information.
One wall of the underground ready room consisted of a floor-to-ceiling viewscreen. On that screen were a crashed spacecraft of some sort, obviously too badly damaged ever to lift off again, a handful of human-looking soldiers in black space suits, and an enemy Bolo that dwarfed soldiers and ship alike.
"We're not going to be able to get past that Bolo."
That is being taken care of. <confidence> Our own Bolos are preparing an assault that will at least draw that machine away from your objective.
"Yes?" He looked up, and inward, wishing he could see his god, wishing he could sense what it was truly thinking. His memories of occupying two different Mark XXXII Bolos were still very clear. They'd learned a lot in those earlier attacks. But had they learned enough?
"You'd better tell our Bolos not to let the TSDS confuse them out there. They'll need it to coordinate their attack, but"
The Bolos know everything that you know, the god's voice told him. They share your experience. They will know what to do.
"I . . . uh . . . see. . . ."
But he didn't see, quite. How could the other Bolos know what he knew . . . unless the gods could somehow download copies of his mentation patterns instead of his entire brain.
Gods! Was he really LKN 8737938 . . . or a copy? . . .
It scarcely matters, does it? <aloof reserve, with mild concern for his mental well-being> You are you, LKN 8737938. Your memories are yours. You are you.
Perhaps. But he was beginning to wonder if that was enough.
Elken studied the download information as it flowed through his input ports. They would try once again. He and his assault team of three other Bolos would emerge from an underground tunnel and attempt to destroy the Sky Demon Bolo currently positioned just northwest of Ghendai.
"We can apply the lessons learned in the earlier assaults," he said. "And we may have damaged the enemy machine enough that a third attack will cripple it. I fail to see why the attack is so urgent, however."
Note the humans in environmental suits on the surface outside. <patience> The image, relayed from a microsensor near the enemy Bolo, showed a crashed spacecraft nearby, along with several humans dwarfed by the building-sized combat unit.
"I see them."
We have reason to believe that they are high-ranking officers in the invading army. As such, they will possess key information we must have.
"Like what?"
A list of targets and battle plans. A unit and organization table that might reveal strengths and weaknesses. Radio and IFF codes that would let us overhear or subvert their communications system. Perhaps even the codes we would need to disable their Bolos and put them into inactive status. Capture and successful interrogation of these demons might provide the key we need to win this battle and save our world.
"We are Bolo combat units. It would be easy to kill those Sky Demons." Strange. They looked completely human, though he couldn't see their features well at this range, with those helmets. "But how can we capture them?"
You and the other three Bolos will draw the enemy Bolo off. Present it with a clear threat. We believe it is guarding those humans and the downed spacecraft. If you threaten those, it may try to maneuver you away from them, in order to protect them.
"I . . . see."
It may even withhold its fire, since its primary weapons, if discharged too close to unprotected humans, could injure them. You will have an excellent chance to attack and disable it on your own terms. In the meantime, we have a team of warrior somas preparing to carry out a prisoner-capture operation.
Warrior somas, Trolls! Elken suppressed a grimace of disgust, before remembering that he was now a Bolo incapable of showing outward emotion or facial expression.
Like most of the other full-human protos of his acquaintance, he didn't care much for warrior-forms, hulking, horned and armor-plated brutes that seemed more animal than human. But he sensed now, in the flow of data passing into memory, that only warrior somas could wear the armor necessary to move and fight in the deadly environment of a surface battlefield.
Perhaps the brutish things had a reason for being after all.
He wished that he could talk with them, though, to warn them of what they would encounter Out There.
There is no need. <amusement> Your previous combat experiences have been downloaded into the warrior somas. They will emerge on the surface knowing all about conditions and necessary tactics there that you do.
"Indeed?" He accepted the statementthe gods could do anything, after alland yet he felt a vague disquiet about that statement. How could they share his memories, unless? . . .
Kelly Tyler watched the cascade of data scroll through her thoughts as Victor fed her cranial implant a complete readout on his physical condition. She relaxed and felt the familiar thrill of incoming data; the information was appearing on the screen as well, but she'd done that for Colonel Streicher and the others, not for herself. She felt a much closer, tighter connection to Vic this way, with the data flowing smoothly directly into her jellyware memory.
Thank God. Vic was still in fair shape . . . especially considering the fact that he'd engaged and destroyed eight Mark XXXII Bolos already during the course of just the past hour or so. Armor degradation overall . . . 12%, with most of the damage forward, on the glacis. Outer hull was badly pitted in places and contaminated with radiation over 35% of the surface, but integrity was good and there were no blow-through breaches yet. Fusion plants at optimum, capable of 115% power within .05 second of command. Drive train, suspension, and tracks all intact and fully operational. Weaponryfive out of fourteen secondary Hellbores were out of commission, but he still had full use of all three primaries. VLS loads down 21%. Mortar rounds down 18%. Other expendables . . .
She let out a quiet sigh of relief. Vic was okay, at least so far, despite some pretty rough handling. She cross-questioned him on some fine points, letting his diagnostic expand and fill her thoughts.
Even with her eyes closed, Kelly was unpleasantly aware of Colonel Streicher standing nearby and imagined he must be wishing he could order her out of center seat and take charge. Almost she'd looked up and offered him her place . . . but she'd gritted her teeth and refused to even notice his presence, unless and until he gave her the order to move.
She didn't think he was going to do that. Streicher seemed to be a good officer, one who believed in delegating authority and in letting his people do their work without micromanaging them.
Kelly, however, was uncomfortable around most men, had been ever since she'd run away from home and an abusive father, then somehow fallen into a dismal series of bad relationships with men as bad as her father. She didn't fear or hate all menshe couldn't have survived a week in the Confederation Army if she hadbut she still had considerable trouble extending her trust.
The exception was the Bolo. The Bolos she'd worked with so far during her military career were all definitely malethough she'd heard of a few somewhere with female personalities. For Kelly, Vic represented all that was right in a maleintelligence, humor, depth, and above all carefully controlled power. Sometimes she thought that if she could marry Vic, she would.
Reaching out, she laid one slim hand on the touch-panel console before her, feeling the faint, trembling vibration of suppressed and contained power. What was it like to be a Bolo, she wondered?
She wished she could find out, to truly know how they thought, what they felt.
"Lieutenant? . . . "
She started violently, nearly coming up out of her seat, as Streicher lightly touched her shoulder. "What? . . ." She'd not heard him duck beneath the circle of holoscreens and come up behind her seat.
"Sorry, Lieutenant," Streicher said. "How are you coming with those diagnostics?"
"Oh . . . ah, fine. Just done, Colonel." She gestured at the read-out. "Vic's worst problem is the damage he's taken to his frontal armor. If we could get him to a maintenance facility, we could patch that up quickly enough."
"Well, that's not likely to happen now. How is he otherwise?"
"In good shape, Colonel. No major problems. Some little ones, but we can cope."
"Excellent. Let Lieutenant Bucklin in there to set up a communications relay for us through to the rest of the regiment."
"I can do that, sir"
"I want Lieutenant Bucklin to do it."
"Yes, sir."
Reluctantly, she gave up the command chair. She felt an awful itch, like jealousybut that couldn't be what she was feeling, could it?as Bucklin took her place. Damn it, Victor spoke to her, and she was the only one who really understood him.
She was hurt when Vic gave Bucklin the channels he requested, without even acknowledging that it was Bucklin and not her in center seat.
Four of the regimental staff officers are now aboard, within my combat command center. My Commander has requested a full diagnostic report, and I have provided it.
Despite minor weaknesses in frontal armor and on-board expendables, however, I am in good shape, eager to continue the battle and complete my mission objectives.
I may have the battle I seek quite soon. Three BIST sensors detect and triangulate the position of a fast-moving vibration underground. The vibration's speed and harmonic characteristics lead me to suspect that two or more very heavy combat vehiclesprobably more Bolo Mark XXXIIsare moving through an underground tunnel. Their current location is beneath the city, moving toward me at a range of five kilometers, a depth of approximately one hundred meters.
It is possible they are traveling toward another sealed doorway masking a tunnel entrance. If so, my human companions are in extreme danger. Once the enemy Bolos emerge, I must engage them to survive. That engagement, with unprotected humans on the surface at close quarters to the combat, could easily kill them.
I alert my Commander to the threat, and also pass the word to the humans on guard outside the crashed spaceship. The hull of that wreck will afford scant protection against incident radiation from Hellbore blasts, but it is better than nothing.
The only other thing I can do is to attempt to engage the enemy Bolos at as great a remove as possible from the crash site. I will fight the attackers there, far enough from the downed command ship that 4th Regimental personnel are not threatened.
I shouldn't be absent for long. . . .
With this in mind, I suggest that only one of the 4th Regiment's staff personnel remain in my combat control center. In combat, I will be maneuvering swiftly, sometimes violently, and I have only one seat in place. It will not be safe for the other three to remain standing, not as I twist and turn at speeds of 100 kph or better.
There is considerable discussion raised by this suggestion. My Commander wants to be the one to stay, but Colonel Streicher overrules her, claiming the need to experience the combat first-hand.
"What can you do if you do go, sir?" my Commander says. I hear the strain in her voice. She doesn't often speak up like this and sometimes appears to have trouble talking to fellow humans. "A Bolo thinks too fast for you to direct its action!"
"Then I'll ask you the same," Colonel Streicher replies. "Why do you feel you must be on board?"
"Because it's my place. My job!"
"Your job is following orders."
"But I've been trained as a unit CO! I can advise"
"And I was a Bolo combat unit CO when you were a kid in school," Streicher replies. He sounds tired, and under considerable strain. "I've experienced combat. You have not. Who is the better qualified?"
In fact, the colonel will see nothing from my command center that he could not see through a data feed on board the downed spacecraft. There truly seems to be little point in any human accompanying me on this mission. My argument seems to carry little weight, however.
I may not fully understand human thought in emotionally charged areas such as this.
"That's all I'll say about it," Streicher said. "I'm staying on board Victor. You people go back to the ship." He glared at Kelly. This defiance wasn't like her at all. "That's an order!"
"This isn't fair! . . ."
"The army is not fair, Lieutenant. Life is not fair. Now get off this unit and get back to the ship! All of you! Move! If you argue any longer, the enemy's going to be here!"
Kelly Tyler's green eyes were darker, more furious than he'd ever seen them. He knew she felt that he was stepping on her prerogatives, that he was moving in on her territory, but that couldn't be helped.
Damn it, she didn't understand. None of them did. He had to be the one to ride Victor into this battle. He needed that close-up, first-hand experience. The Greatest Good.
Besides, his combat experience far outweighed Kelly's. Sure, according to strict military protocol, she should go because she was the unit commander, and he should stay because he needed to watch over all of the regiment's Bolos, not just this one.
But the sector was quiet, and this might be his one opportunity. He had to take it. He would apologize later, if necessary. Or make her understand.
Euph sang in his blood, his head. He felt great. Strong. Powerful . . .
They would meet the oncoming threat, then return to the ship.
They wouldn't be gone for long. . . .