Bolo Brigade (44 page)

But other lances were rocketing in, each trailing a thin streak of white flame and smoke. Antimissile lasers set into Freddy's flanks fired repeatedly, joined at times by the rattling shriek of the infinite repeaters. They were exploding in threes and fours and fives at a time, each kill marked by a dazzling pop of harsh white, night-scattering light.

The night was alive with fire, with the flickering, needle-thin beams of lasers, with tightly packed streams of blue-green flares, the ion bolts from the red-hot muzzles of hard-pressed infinite repeaters. From time to time, light geysered high above one or the other of the Bolos, as nuclear-tipped rockets slid off the vertical launch tube rails, kicked into the sky, and arrowed toward some distant target.

And the incoming fire fell like a waterfall of living flame, beams, flares, rockets, and the unceasing pounding of heavy artillery.

From his vantage point, Donal could follow only a fraction of everything that was going on, so fast were events unfolding, so savage and unrelenting was the fighting. He tried shifting the display to infrared, but the ghostly white and yellow against blue and green was even more confusing, especially when so much of the ground around both Bolos was glowing now with a fervent, radiant heat.

Malach fliers circled like black, ungainly birds, skimming the burned-over ground with a curious skipping motion, riding ground-effect as much as actually flying. When they got too close, they lowered their legs and walked. Donal wasn't sure, but he suspected that walking saved them power, let them channel more energy to their weapons. Both Bolos took them out while they were airborne when possible, but more and more, the big combat vehicles were being forced to conserve their power, saving their shots to keep the walkers at a safe distance.

Donal remembered the statistics he'd seen, the estimates that said that one Bolo was equivalent to about twelve of the Malach walkers. They'd proven this night just how wrong statistics could be. The ground now was littered with crushed, smashed, and burned-out walkers. In places, the wreckage was strewn so thickly it would have been impossible to walk that ground without stepping on pieces of metallic debris.

The bombardment intensified as Malach forces flung missile after missile, beam after beam at the two Bolos, the one crippled and motionless, the other circling tightly as it tried to shelter and protect its companion.

Ferdy died in the last few minutes of the assault, as a nuclear-tipped lance arrowed past the defensive fire, struck through failing mag screens, and burned its way through armor already slagged in places until the Bolo's flintsteel skeleton was showing through, and detonated deep inside with a flash and an electromagnetic pulse savage enough to serve as a Bolo's death scream. Ferdy's Hellbore turret was flung up and back, its weapon fingering the sky in final, silent challenge. The nuclear fireball climbed skyward, shedding a baleful, hell-borne light on the field of high-tech death.

For several seconds more, the Malach kept coming . . . but if they'd thought to overwhelm a defensive force now reduced by fifty percent, they were mistaken. Freddy accelerated abruptly, free now of any need to stick with his dead brother. Hellbore fire seared the night, slashing through Malach combat machines and scattering the fragments in a savage whirling firestorm. Malach numbers were already so depleted that even the destruction of one of the two Bolos could not change an outcome now as inevitable as death.

The surviving Malach were retreating now . . . were in full flight. Freddy pursued them, lashing out, killing . . . killing . . . and killing again. . . .

And then, the fighting compartment was quiet for a long time.

"Commander," Freddy said.

Donal blinked into silence and the dim light spilling from consoles and displays. How long had it been? Sometime during that final, savage pounding, Donal had left his command seat—his presence there was certainly not necessary from the Bolo's point of view—and slumped down on the steel deck aft, with Alexie curled up small and close in his arms.

"What? What's happening?" He was only now beginning to realize that it was quiet. For hours . . . for
days
, it seemed like, even deep within the Bolo's acoustically shielded fighting compartment, the hammering thunder of the incessant concussions of enemy ordnance had rung and pealed, a deafening, ear-pounding cacophony that now was blessedly, amazingly silent.

"The Enemy has broken," Freddy said simply. "He appears to be in full retreat toward the north. Muir troops and light armor are approaching from the south.

"I believe the battle has ended."

"We're . . . we're still here. . . ." It didn't seem possible.

"Commander, I regret to inform you that Bolo 96875 of the Line has been destroyed."

Donal felt a stab of pain at that. "I'm . . . sorry." He wondered if Freddy felt the same sort of loss, of
pain
, as he did.

"He was destroyed in performance of his duty," the Bolo said. The voice carried no inflection . . . no emotion that Donal could read.

The first of the DY-90 Firestorm hovercraft howled up moments later, dust billowing from beneath its skirts, illuminated by the funeral pyres of burning Malach walkers. It was swiftly followed by three more. Sergeant Blandings, physically unrecognizable in his radiation suit and helmet, stood in the lead vehicle, waving.

"Did we win?" Alexie asked.

Donal understood. Sometimes it was hard to grasp the outcome of a major battle, when you were a very tiny part of it all to begin with. And sometimes the losses . . .

Ferdy was still burning.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess we did."

Shakily, he stood up and began looking for a radsuit.

As my Commander steps outside, I consider the burning wreckage that once was Bolo of the Line 96875. It happened so quickly, even for a Bolo, that it is difficult to convince myself purely through logical processes that he is destroyed.

Humans would say
dead
.

The question of whether Bolos are alive in the first place has long been argued by human philosophers, technicians, and combat veterans, though it is a question that Bolos rarely address. We simply
are
, and for most purposes, that is sufficient.

Humans question whether Bolos can feel. That, too, is rarely discussed among Bolos. We experience emotions because we were designed that way, and those humans who insist that we only think we feel because we were made that way should consider the same question in relation to themselves. We do not experience emotions as humans do, with the same intensity, nor are we incapacitated by them, nor do we know feelings such as boredom, which are counter-productive.

But we can experience a sense of loss.

And of loneliness.

And something that might very well be similar to what humans call sadness, though in fact I cannot know what it is when humans experience such emotions.

I will miss our camaraderie. Our discussions. Our games of chess.

I spend the next .085 seconds scanning all relevant data in my storage banks concerning human military traditions related to honoring fallen comrades and helping solidify morale among those who survive. There are numerous rituals and traditions that might apply—I spend a full .023 second considering just the Heroes' Remembrance ceremony once invoked by the Terra Legion, a ritual extending back to the Battle of Shalmarin in 2210, almost a thousand years ago.

But such would require human intervention in established rules and procedures and might not be convenient for the Confederation Military Command Authority. I search for other rituals that might be fitting.

I decide on one.

Technically, I am violating established fire-control procedures doing this but have no trouble overriding the guards. Fortunately, the ROEs have not been reactivated. I pivot seven of the nine ion-bolt infinite repeaters on my left side—one has been disabled in any case—to aim at a piece of night sky above Bolo 96875's burning wreckage. I pause for .01 second as I download and replay records of several of our past conversations.

I set the IRs to single-shot, then fire all seven weapons once . . . twice . . . a third time. Twenty-one bolts of blue-white light sear through the smoke and into the night sky, burning brilliantly as they streak higher and higher, then slow . . . and fade from sight.

On the ground, my Commander turns sharply at the sudden barrage. I watch as he stares at the departing rounds . . . then draws himself to attention, and salutes, the gesture clumsy in his radiation suit.

He understands. . . .

Badly burned, bleeding heavily, Schaagrasch dragged herself clear of the wreckage. For a time, the pain had been agonizing, a searing, blinding, incapacitating fire eating at bones and muscles, but that had receded now. Malach Zsho philosophy frowned on the use of drugs to relieve pain, which, after all, was a part of any organism's survival mechanism. After a time, if you accepted the pain, allowed it to fill you and wash over you, it became . . . bearable.

She stared around the night-shrouded field, the pupils of her two remaining eyes opening wide to drink in the light. Everywhere she looked, Hunters lay strewn like smashed and broken
g'shin
, the stuffing-filled images of prey animals given to juvenile Malach females for them to tear and worry. Her comrades all lay there, strewn about in bloody, blue-green death. The very ground here was beaten and scorched, every living thing seared from the earth. The only light was the guttering flicker from a small fire in the eggshell-smashed ruin of G'rasak'nzhi the Careful Circler's Hunter.

Where was evolution now? she wondered. The survival of the fittest.

What hope was there for the creature beaten on the field of survival?

Extinction . . .

Schaagrasch rolled onto her side and stared up into the crystalline-black night sky and the golden glory of the cluster's thronging swarms. Staring into those stars made her feel just a little less alone.

She had a final duty to perform, one that many Malach this day would not have been able to complete. Indeed, duty was a misnomer, since no particular consequence befell a Malach who failed to carry it out. A Malach who was killed instantly in the course of combat was no more remiss in her responsibilities than the one who died slowly enough to recite her
Ghaava'naa'ach
-
zshleh
, the Death Poem.

Every Malach warrior wrote her own during her
Ga'krascht
Coming-of-Blood ceremony. The name,
Ghaava'naa'ach
-
zshleh,
meant "I embrace death," which was the first line of all Death Poems. The rest was different for each warrior, emblazoned in silver script on the curved black surface of her Hunter, though the sentiment was usually familiar. Schaagrasch's was no exception.

"Ghaava'naa'ach
-
zshleh,"
she began, voice rasping.

I embrace Death,

Death given by Life.

Culling the Pack,

Hunting the weak,

That the Race might grow strong and survive

As Blessed Sha'gnaasht Skilled Tracker revealed.

The race lives, adapts, and survives, and there lies immortality.

After she'd finished reciting the poem, the pain was almost gone. She lay there on the burning ground, staring up at the stars for a long time until she died.

They sat together in the ripplegrass on a hill overlooking the sea, arms around one another. Starbright Bay and Kinkaid were at their backs. The Strathan Cluster glowed, soft and orange-gold, high in the sky toward the zenith.

"So as near as we can tell," Donal was telling Alexie, "the Malach have left Muir's system entirely. Their fleet packed up and high-tailed it as soon as their last transports and APCs loaded up. Somehow I doubt they'll be back this way any time soon."

"What about you?" she asked, leaning close. She reached up with one hand and gently touched the bandage encircling his head.

"Hmm? Me? I'm fine. Thanks to your field first aid efforts."

"Actually, I was thinking about Phalbin and the Strathan Army. You were closeted with him and his staff for a long time this afternoon, and they wouldn't let me in to talk to them, and they wouldn't even tell me what was going on. Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to learn it all from Freddy?"

"I don't know, love. Freddy can be pretty closed-mouthed when he needs to be. Need to know, and all of that."

"Damn it, Don—"

"Okay, okay." He laughed. "I guess the good news is that I'm not going to be court martialed."

"Good. They'd have had another invasion on their hands if they did. An invasion composed of one Wide Sky ex-Deputy Director."

"I believe you. Well, there were some rumblings, of course. Colonel Wood came to my defense, though, and pointed out in, um, not too flattering terms that Freddy, Ferdy, and I managed to stop the invasion and kick the bad guys out all but single-handedly. His argument was . . . hey, if it works, don't screw with it."

"Sensible."

"Phalbin still wanted some sort of a trial. I kind of think he was looking forward to it, that it was warm and comforting for him to think he could shoot me at sunrise to make up for all the aggravation I'd caused him."

"And?"

"And I pointed out that he could simply claim credit for the victory as it stood. We did stop the Malach from taking Kinkaid, after all, and so far as the politicians or the civilians are concerned, they have no idea, and could care less, who figured it out or made it happen. If I'm court martialed, some of his, well, questionable decisions would probably have come out. Like trying to turn Bolos into bunkers. This makes him look awfully good, and I think he has his eye on being governor someday, after Chard.

"Anyway, they made me a captain. Field promotion. And you can't very well court martial someone you've just promoted, can you?"

She laughed. "That's wonderful! And here you thought your career was going nowhere!"