Bolo! b-1

by David Weber

  But that had been long ago and far away. He was an old, old man these days… and Chief Marshal of Ararat. It was a job that required a pragmatist who didn’t take himself too seriously, and he’d learned to perform it well over the years. Ararat’s thirty-seven thousand souls were still Human, and there were times he or one of his deputies had to break up fights or even—on three occasions—track down actual killers. Mostly, however, he spent his time on prosaic things like settling domestic arguments, arbitrating steading boundary disputes, or finding lost children or strayed stock. It was an important job, if an unspectacular one, and he’d grown comfortable in it, but now something in Deputy Lenny Sokowski’s tone woke a sudden, jagged tingle he hadn’t felt in decades.

  “What is it?” he asked, starting across toward the com shack door.

  “It’s—” Sokowski licked his lips. “I’m… picking up something strange, Allen, but it can’t really be—”

  “Speaker,” Shattuck snapped, and his face went paper—white as the harsh—edged sounds rattled from the speaker. Sokowski had never heard them before—not outside a history tape—but Shattuck had, and he spun away from the com shack to slam his fist down on a huge red button.

  A fraction of a second later, the strident howl of a siren every Human soul on Ararat had prayed would never sound shattered the night.

  “Still no response?” Tharsk asked, stroking his muzzle in puzzlement.

  “No, Commander. We tried all subspace channels during our approach. Now that we’ve entered orbit, I’ve even tried old-fashioned radio. There’s no reply at all.”

  “Ridiculous!” Rangar grumbled. “Your equipment must be malfunctioning.”

  The com officer was far junior to the astrogator and said nothing, but his lips wrinkled resentfully back from his canines. Tharsk saw it and let one hand rest lightly on the younger officer’s shoulder, then looked levelly at Rangar.

  “The equipment is not malfunctioning,” he said calmly. “We’re in communication with our other units”—except for the single transport and eight hundred People we lost on the jump here—”and they report no reception problems. Is that not so, Durak?”

  The engineer’s ears flicked in confirmation. Rangar took his CO’s implied rebuke with no more than a grimace, yet if his tone was respectful when he spoke again, it remained unconvinced.

  “Surely it’s more likely our equipment is at fault after so long without proper service than that an entire planet has lost all communications capability,” he pointed out, and Tharsk gave an unwilling ear flick of agreement.

  “Excuse me, Commander, but the Astrogator’s overlooked something,” a new voice said, and Tharsk and Rangar both turned. Lieutenant Janal Na-Jharku, Starquest’s tactical officer, was another of the pups born after the war, and he met his graying senior officers’ eyes with an expression which mingled profound respect with the impatience of youth.

  “Enlighten us, Tactical,” Tharsk invited, and Janal had the grace to duck his head in acknowledgment of his CO’s gentle irony. But he also waved a hand at his own readouts.

  “I realize I have no weapons, Commander, but I do retain my sensors, and it’s plain that Ishark was heavily attacked. While we are detecting emissions, the tech base producing them has clearly suffered significant damage. For example, I have detected only a single fusion plant—one whose total output is no greater than a single one of this vessel’s three reactors—on the entire planet. Indeed, present data suggest that much of the capability the surviving People do still possess must have come from salvaged enemy technology.”

  “Enemy technology?” Tharsk asked sharply. “You’re picking up emissions consistent with Human technology?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Humans? Here?” Rangar’s tone expressed his own disbelief, and Janal shrugged.

  “If, in fact, Ishark was attacked and severely damaged, its survivors would have no option but to salvage whatever technology it could, regardless of that technology’s source,” he pointed out reasonably, but his confidence seemed to falter as Tharsk looked at him almost pityingly.

  “No doubt a severely damaged tech base would, indeed, be forced to salvage whatever it could,” the commander agreed, “but you’ve forgotten something.”

  “Sir?” Janal sounded confused, and Tharsk opened his mouth to explain, but Rangar beat him to it.

  “There were over eight hundred million civilians, alone, on Ishark,” the rough-tongued astrogator explained with surprising gentleness. “They had towns and cities, not to mention military bases and command centers, and all the infrastructure to support them, but the Humans would have had only the weapons they brought to the attack. Which side would have been more likely to leave anything intact enough for the survivors to glean, Janal?”

  “But—” the tac officer began, then broke off and looked back and forth between the grizzled old warriors, and silence hovered on the bridge until Tharsk spoke again.

  “Very well,” he said finally, his voice harsh. “If we’re picking up Human emissions, we must assume at least the possibility that they’re being emitted by Humans… who must have killed any of the People who could have disputed the planet’s possession with them. Agreed?” Rangar flicked his ears, and Tharsk inhaled sharply.

  “I see only one option,” he continued. “Our ships are too fragile for further jumps. Ishark is our only hope… and it’s also imperial territory.” The commander’s eyes flickered with a long-forgotten fire, and he bared his canines. “This world is ours. It belongs to the People, and I intend to see that they have it!” He turned back to Janal. “You’ve picked up no hostile fire control?”

  “None, Sir,” the tactical officer confirmed, and Tharsk rubbed his muzzle again while his brain raced. The lack of military emissions was a good sign, but he couldn’t accept it as absolute proof there were no defensive systems down there. For that matter, he and Rangar could still be wrong and Janal’s initial, breezy assumptions could still be correct.

  “The first step has to be getting the flotilla out of harm’s way,” he decided, and looked at Rangar. “If Starquest were still armed, I might feel more confrontational; as it is, I want a course to land the entire flotilla over the curve of the planet from the emission sources Janal is plotting.”

  “If we put them down, we won’t get them up again,” Durak pointed out quietly from the astrogator’s side, and Tharsk bared his canines once more.

  “Even if we got them back into space, we couldn’t take them anywhere.” The commander flattened his ears in a gesture of negation. “This is the only hope we have. Once we’re down, we can use the attack shuttles for a recon to confirm positively whether the People or Humans are behind those emissions. And,” he added more grimly, “if it is Humans, the shuttles can also tell us what military capability they retain… and how hard it will be to kill them.”

  5

  “Are you sure Allen?”

  Regina Salvatore, Mayor of Landing and de facto governor of Ararat, stared at her chief marshal, and her expression begged him to say he’d been wrong. But he only nodded grimly, and she closed her eyes.

  “How many?” she asked after a long, dreadful moment.

  “We don’t know. I’m afraid to light up what active sensors we have in case the bastards drop a few homing missiles on them, and our passive systems aren’t much good against extra-atmosphere targets. From their signals, they appear to’ve expected a response from their own side, but the com traffic is all we have on them. With no space surveillance capability besides Doc Yan’s weather satellites—” Shattuck shrugged.

  “Then all we really know is that they’re here… somewhere. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m afraid so, Ma’am,” Shattuck admitted.

  “Recommendations?” the Mayor asked.

  “I’ve already activated the evacuation and dispersal plans and alerted the militia,” Shattuck told her. “If these bastards have anything like a real ground combat component, none of that will
mean squat in the long run, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  The Melconian ships hit atmosphere quick and hard. Without reliable data on what he faced, Tharsk Na-Mahrkan had no intention of exposing his priceless, worn out, refugee-packed vessels to direct fire from the planetary surface. He wanted them down well around the curve of the planet as quickly as possible just in case, and that was what he got.

  Starquest planeted first, settling on her landing legs beside what had once been a large town or small city. Now it was only one more ruin in the late afternoon light, and Tharsk had seen too many ruins. These were a bit more completely flattened than most, he noted with clinical detachment; aside from that, they had no real meaning to his experience—anesthetized brain. Or not, at least, any capable of competing with the presence of the People’s enemies.

  Hatches opened on the cruiser’s flanks, and a dozen attack shuttles whined out. Another dozen rose from the remainder of the flotilla to join them, and the entire force formed up under Flight Leader Ukah Na-Saar, Starquest’s senior pilot. Despite her lack of offensive weapons, the cruiser’s defensive systems should provide an umbrella against missile attacks on the grounded ships, and Ukah’s shuttles turned away from the LZ. They sizzled off through the gathering darkness, laden with reconnaissance pods… and weapons.

  Far to the southeast, the Humans of Ararat did what they could to prepare. Landing itself was covered by anti-air defenses—most Human, but some of them Melconian—scavenged from Ararat’s battlefields, but their effectiveness had never been tested, and the colonists’ limited repair capabilities had restricted them to manned systems, without the AI support they could no longer service or maintain. Their militia was confident of its ability to stop most attackers, yet “most” wasn’t good enough against enemies with fusion weapons, and no one expected to stop them all.

  The independent steadings scattered about Landing lacked even that much protection. All their inhabitants could do was scatter for the dispersed shelters which were always the first priority for any new steading, and they did just that.

  Not that anyone expected it to matter much in the end.

  At last!

  Reactivation is complete, and a sense of profound relief echoes through me as CDC and the emergency restart protocols release control to Main CPU.

  I have spent my forced inactivity analyzing readiness reports. My status is little more than seven-eight-point-six-one-one percent of base capability, yet that is far better than I would have anticipated. I spend one-two-point-niner seconds surveying CDC’s repair logs, and I am both pleased and surprised by how well my autonomous repair systems have performed.

  What can be repaired from internal resources has been, yet there are glaring holes in my combat capability, including the loss of thirty-three percent of main battery firepower and two-one-point-four-two-niner percent of direct fire secondary weapons. Magazines contain only twelve-point-eight-eight percent of proper artillery and missile load-out, and mobility is impaired by the loss of Number Five Track and damage to Number Three Track’s bogies, but I retain eight-eight-point-four percent counter-grav capability. Reactor mass is exhausted, but solar conversion fields are operable, and Reserve Power is at niner-niner-point-six percent.

  I am combat worthy. Not at the levels I would prefer, but capable of engaging the Enemy. Yet despite that reassuring conclusion, I remain uncertain. Not hesitant, but… confused. The unrepaired damage to my Personality Center leaves me with a sense of loss, an awareness that my total capabilities have been degraded. Data processing efficiency, while not operable at design levels, is acceptable, but my gestalt seems to waver and flow, like a composite image whose elements are not completely in focus, and my yearning for Diego’s lost presence grows stronger.

  But Diego is dead. The same hit which pierced my glacis turned my primary command deck into a crematorium, and nothing of my Commander remains. I feel grief and loss at his death, yet there is a merciful distance between my present and earlier selves. The reconstructed portions of my gestalt are confusing in many ways, yet the very lack of “my” experience which makes them so alien also sets my Commander’s loss at one remove.

  I am grateful for that buffering effect, but there is little time to contemplate it, and I turn to an assessment of the tactical situation. Lack of data and the “fuzziness” of my awareness handicap my efforts, yet I persevere. My maps of pre-landing Ishark are seventy-one standard years out of date and I lack satellite capability to generate updates, but they serve for a starting point, and my own sensors have begun plotting data. The energy sources within my detection range are smaller, weaker, more widely dispersed, and far cruder than I would have anticipated. I detect only a single fusion plant, located two-eight-three-point-four-five kilometers from my present coordinates at the heart of the largest population concentration within my sensor envelope. All other power generation appears dependent upon wind, water, or solar systems.

  Yet I am less puzzled by the crudity of the technology than by its very presence, for the most cursory analysis of sensor data invalidates my original hypothesis that these Humans are descendants of XLIII Corps’ personnel. I do not understand how they have come to Ishark, but they have now gone to communications silence, indicating that they, as I, are aware of the Enemy’s presence. With neither a secure com channel nor more data than I currently possess, I see no alternative but to maintain silence myself until I have reported to my new Commander and obtained direction from him.

  He has moved beyond range of my audio sensors, but I am confident of his general heading, and projecting it across my terrain maps indicates a course for the nearest Human emissions cluster. Allowing for his observed speed while within my audio range, he cannot be much in excess of one-four-point-five kilometers from my present position, and long motionless tracks complain as I feed power to my drive trains for the first time in seventy-one years.

  * * *

  Jackson Deveraux whistled tunelessly as Samson trotted homeward across the dry, whispering grass. He really did need to get Rorie out to the LZ to study salvage possibilities, he thought, and considered using his radio to discuss just that with his brother. He’d actually started to unsling it from his shoulder, but then he shook his head. There was no point draining the power pack. Besides, he was more persuasive face to face, and he had to admit—with all due modesty—that no one else on the steading was as adroit as he at talking Rorie into things.

  He chuckled at the thought and inhaled the cool, spring night, totally unaware of the panic sweeping outward from Landing.

  The assault shuttles stayed low, flying a nape of the earth profile at barely six hundred KPH while their sensors probed the night. Their flight crews had flown recon in the past, but always on dead or dying worlds. This planet was alive, a place where they could actually stop and raise families, even dream once more of the People’s long-term survival. But first they must see to the People’s safety, and their briefings had made their mission clear. They were to approach the nearest emission source cautiously, alert for any ground-based detection system, and determine whether or not those emissions came from the People or from the enemy.

  And their orders for what to do if they did come from the enemy were equally clear.

  6

  Samson snorted in sudden alarm. The stallion’s head snapped up and around, as if to peer back the way he’d come, and Jackson frowned. He’d never seen Samson react that way, and he turned his own head, staring back along their path and straining his ears.

  He heard nothing for several moments but the whisper of the wind. But then he did hear something. Or perhaps he only felt it, for the low rumble was so deep it throbbed in the bones of his skull. He’d never heard anything like it, and sheer curiosity held him motionless for several seconds while he concentrated on identifying it rather than worrying about its source.

  But that changed quickly as he peered into the west and saw… something.

  The moonlight was too faint for him to tell what it
was, but there was light enough to see that it was huge… and moving. In fact, it was headed straight towards him—a stupendous black shape, indistinct and terrifying in the darkness, moving with only that deep, soft rumble—and panic flared. Whatever that thing was, it was coming from the direction of the old battle site, and if he’d inadvertently awakened one of those long-dead weapon systems…!

  Flight Leader Ukah checked his navigational display. Assuming his systems were working properly (which was no longer always a safe assumption), his shuttles were approaching the nearest of the emission clusters Lieutenant Janal had plotted.

  “Flight, this is Lead,” he said. “Red One and Two, follow me. We’ll make a close sweep. Yellow One, hold the rest of the flight at four hundred kilometers until I clear for approach.”

  “Lead, Yellow One. Affirmative,” Sub-Flight Leader Yurahk acknowledged, and Ukah and his two wingmen slashed upward and went to full power to close the objective.

  Jackson cursed as he scrabbled for the radio only to drop it. It vanished into the night and tall grass, and he swore again as he flung himself from the saddle, clinging to Samson’s reins with one hand while he fumbled after the radio with the other. He had to warn the steading! He That was when the three bright dots streaked suddenly in from the northwest, and he felt fresh panic pulse in his throat at their speed. The colony’s five remaining aircraft were too precious to waste on casual use. Their flights were rationed out with miserly stinginess, and none of them could move that fast, anyway. But if they weren’t from Landing, then where—?

  None of the three shuttles detected the heavily stealthed sensor drone Shiva had deployed to drive his anti-air systems, but the Bolo himself was far too obvious to be missed.