Bolo Brigade (45 page)

"Well, I'm still not sure how much future I have with the Strathan forces. I'd hate to leave the Dinochrome Brigade, but, well, there still may not be a lot of future for me here."

They snuggled quietly for a time. "Don? Which one is Wide Sky?"

He looked up at the stars. A few scattered, isolated silver or golden points glowed apart from the body of the cluster proper, tiny, far-off lamps at the edge of the Great Void. He pointed. "That one."

She clung to him for a long time. "Do you think the Malach will pull out of human space?"

"Not voluntarily. I don't think they're made that way."

"Um. Yes. Females don't submit. Unless they're made to." She thought a moment. "There are millions of people back there, Don. Under the Malach claw. We've got to go back and help them."

"I doubt that Chard is going to be interested in an offensive any time soon," Donal said. "But we might be able to convince him that the best defense is to give the bad guy a good swift kick in the tail."

"Could we do it? Could we take back Wide Sky from the Malach? With Freddy to help?"

"It has been my experience," Donal told her, "that there are very few problems in this universe that can't be solved with the deft application of a Bolo Mark XXIV. I'd say we're going to have to take that question up with Freddy."

They embraced then, clinging tightly in the rosy light of the cluster.

I have been studying the stars. I note the sun of Wide Sky, and wonder.

The Malach threat has abated for now, but there is no question in my mind that I will face them again, and soon. Their attempt at subjugating Muir failed, but their forces still hold Wide Sky, Endatheline, and probably Starhold as well. With those worlds as logistical advance bases, the Enemy will almost certainly try again. Humans would, given similar circumstances, and the Malach have demonstrated that if their motivations and reasoning are alien to those of humans, their determination, adaptibility, and cunning are not. They will be back, whatever the news reporters might have to say about it in the wake of, as one put it, "Man's greatest victory over alien invaders since the Deng War."

Obviously, the best way to circumvent further Malach expansion is to carry the war to worlds he now controls, ultimately to find his homeworld, wherever it might be. I do not know how long it will take human authorities to come to the same conclusion, but I feel confident that they will.

And I will be ready. My duty to my Commander, to my regiment, to the Dinochrome Brigade demands it.

As do my memories of Ferdy.