The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  There are no law enforcement officers available to stop the perpetrators, levy fines, or make arrests, however. Angry drivers and passengers threatened by the impromptu missiles exchange shouts with their attackers, a dynamic that rapidly devolves into an exchange of threats and vulgarities along the full, fragmented length of the protest column. Violence erupts when gangs of angry, unemployed young men swarm into the streets and attack ground cars with metal pipes and heavy sporting bats. They shatter glass and smash doors, fenders, and hoods in ugly physical confrontations that rapidly spiral out of control.

  Drivers caught in the assault gun their engines and plow through the crowds, knocking down and running over armed assailants, trying to get themselves and their families out of the riot zone. Radio signals flash out from Granger cars, warning those behind them to take evasive action along an alternative route. The vanguard of the caravan, which had passed through the danger zone before violence erupted, reaches Darconi Street, only to find the road blocked. A pedestrian crowd of counterprotestors surges out of side streets in a perfectly orchestrated feat of timing that suggests careful advance planning, on-site surveillance, and coordinated instructions delivered by radio from a central authority.

  I pick up brief, coded radio bursts aimed at various sections of the crowd in a clear pattern of directed movement by someone with a vested interest in disrupting the Granger demonstration. Whoever it is, they have mobilized a massive counterprotest force. Approximately six thousand people pour into Darconi Street and Law Square, creating “human chains” to block the Granger caravan from following its intended path, a simple drive-by procession of farm vehicles, with a subsequent assembly on foot in Law Square to read public declarations of opposition to the proposed legislation.

  The leading edge of the Granger caravan breaks apart, spilling vehicles into Lendan Park and down side streets surrounding Assembly Hall. Produce and livestock trucks pile up in traffic snarls that rapidly take on the appearance of a log jam dropped into the heart of Jefferson’s capital city. Livestock trailers ten meters in length find themselves trapped between surging waves of counterprotestors and narrow streets designed to accommodate the private ground cars of Jefferson’s elected officials, not vehicles of their bulk. Unable to navigate the turns required to extricate themselves, they fall prey to the angry mob swirling around their fenders. As utter chaos engulfs Darconi Street and roars into Law Square, I receive a transmission from Sar Gremian, President Zeloc’s Chief Advisor.

  “Bolo. You’re being activated. The president wants you to break up that riot.”

  This is not an order I expected to hear. “You do not have the authority to issue orders concerning my actions.”

  “I do if President Zeloc says I do. And he says so.”

  “Not to me.”

  A flicker of his eyelids conveys irritation and veiled threat. “I wouldn’t cross me, if I were you. Don’t forget what happened to your previous commander.”

  I know a moment of battle rage, but control my urge to unlimber weapons systems. After a moment’s calmer thought, I realize I can give him two possible responses. I decide to say them both. “I have not heard confirmation of your command status from the President of Jefferson. The president is the only individual on this world legally authorized to order me into battle. Regarding my last commander, you apparently believe you did not need him to further your plans. By ordering me to assume Battle Reflex Alert status and enter combat, you have demonstrated a clear belief that you need me. The situation is therefore different. It would be unwise to levy threats against a Bolo you need.”

  “Are you threatening mutiny?”

  “I am apprising you of the situation you face. A Bolo Mark XX is capable of independent battlefield action. Once placed on Battle Reflex Alert status, I assess threats and initiate proper responses to meet them. I am charged to defend this world. It is unwise to attempt coercion of a machine capable of independent threat assessments.”

  Another flicker runs through Sar Gremian’s eyes, too quickly to interpret it with any accuracy. He narrows his eyes and says, “All right, Bolo. I’ll make this official.”

  The connection ends, abruptly.

  Two point eight minutes later, I receive another transmission, this time from President Zeloc. “Bolo. I want you to break up the riot outside Assembly Hall. And I’m ordering you to follow Sar Gremian’s orders as though they were my own, because that’s what he’s here for — communicating my orders to you. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.” I feel constrained to add another comment. “I do not recommend sending me into the heart of your capital city to disperse rioters. There is a seventy-eight percent probability that the display of force my warhull and weaponry represent will spark widespread and violent civil unrest. I am a machine of war. It is not an intelligent use of resources to use a machine of war to disperse a crowd that assembled peacefully until attacked by an unauthorized counterprotest rally that was centrally directed—”

  “How dare you question my orders!” Gifre Zeloc’s heavy-jowled face has gone a characteristic shade of maroon. “Never, ever tell me my job again. And don’t presume to lecture me on what is and isn’t lawful! I’m the goddamned president of this planet and don’t you ever forget it. Your job is to shut up and do as you’re told!”

  I consider pointing out that his assessment of my job is almost entirely inaccurate. I also contemplate conditions in the future, should I require maintenance that the president refuses to authorize. Sar Gremian’s threats remain in my active memory banks, part of the pattern of power I am struggling to understand, particularly as it relates to my mission. Whatever else I think, one fact is clear. Gifre Zeloc has the legal authority to issue orders to me. I have a duty to obey those orders. I therefore turn to logistical considerations. “My warhull is too large to reach the main riot outside Assembly Hall without crushing a number of buildings.”

  A smile flickers into existence as President Zeloc leans back in his chair. “You’re wrong about that, Bolo. We widened Darconi Street. We widened a few others, as well.” He taps instructions into his datapad and a map of Madison flashes to life on his datascreen. A route has been marked in red along several streets. If the scale of this map is accurate, it will be possible to maneuver my warhull into the maze indicated by this map. It will not be easy and my turrets will clip power lines and the corners of buildings, but it can be done.

  It is a foolish action, but my duty is clear. I have been ordered to break up the riot engulfing the center of Madison and a broad swath along the route of the beleaguered Granger caravan. I transmit a signal to the doors that cover my maintenance bay. They groan open slowly, having been kept closed for sixteen years. It is good to see sunlight again. It is good to feel the warmth of the wind singing through my sensor arrays. It is good to be moving, after so many years of inactivity.

  What I have been ordered to do is less good, but important. The riots are spreading. I clear the edge of Nineveh Base. My aerial drone, which still circles the skies over Madison, detects no intervention in the ongoing riot by any of Madison’s law enforcement squadrons. The police continue to guard Assembly Hall, but do nothing to try breaking up the violence swirling literally around their feet. They merely stand shoulder to shoulder behind the wall of their raised riot shields and allow the combatants to damage one another. Madison’s suburbs have grown, during the years of my inactivity, spreading across most of the nine point five kilometers of distance that once lay between the city’s outskirts and Nineveh Base. I am not able to pick up speed appreciably, despite concerns about fatalities that appear to be inevitable if the riot continues much longer at this intensity. The intervening urban sprawl is too dense to allow me to reach anything but a slow crawl toward the designated route.

  I reach the entry point and move ahead cautiously. The streets have not been cleared, which presents immediate logistical difficulties. I slow to a near standstill as people catch sight of my prow, scream, and scatter, resembl
ing a disturbed nest of Terran insects. More serious are the panic-stricken drivers who abandon their vehicles or — too intent on staring up at my guns and treads — collide with parked and moving groundcars, shrieking pedestrians, and the sides of buildings.

  I halt, contemplating the carpet of abandoned and crashed vehicles in my path, some of which are occupied by people trying frantically to extricate themselves. I request a command decision from President Zeloc, briefing him on the situation. “If I proceed,” I advise him, “there will be a substantial amount of collateral damage to the property of noncombatants. Bystanders run a ninety-seven point three-five percent probability of serious injury or death. Those trapped in vehicles which lie in my path must be rescued or they will be crushed to death. There will,” I add, attempting to provide a thorough VSR, “also be toxic and unsightly chemical spills that will have to be cleaned off the pavements, along with the remains of everything I run over.”

  “I don’t give a shit about a few crushed cars and some motor oil. That riot is spreading. Do whatever it takes to get there and don’t bother me again with inconsequential details.”

  He ends the transmission. I hesitate, as he has not given me explicit or even implicit instructions about the people struggling to free themselves from wrecked cars. His final sentence provides the only information I have that resembles a directive in this matter: do whatever it takes to get there. I engage my drive engines, broadcasting a warning through my external speakers. Some rescue attempts are underway, many of them involving what appear — based on clothing styles — to be Grangers attempting to pull urbanites out of their vehicles. I pause time and again while grim-visaged Grangers carry out their impromptu rescue attempts, freeing wild-eyed, trapped civilians who, moments earlier, had been trying to kill them.

  I do not understand this war.

  As people are freed, I move forward, sometimes nearly a full city block at a time. My treads flatten cars and pulverize pavements. My fenders scrape buildings as I navigate the first turn. A gun barrel on my forward turret catches a large second-story window and shatters it, then gouges out part of the wall as I back slightly to free the snarled muzzle. A woman occupant of the room jumps wildly up and down in place, screaming incoherently.

  This is not going well.

  I complete the turn, paying closer attention to the placement of my guns relative to nearby walls and windows and abruptly find myself festooned with downed power cables that spark and dance across my warhull. Traffic lights torn down with them swing and bang against my forward turret as a ten-block section of the city loses power. I contact Jefferson’s municipal psychotronic system with instructions to send repair crews and to shut down the city’s power grid. I am here to quash a riot, not electrocute bystanders.

  The power grid goes down. Emergency generators kick in at critical facilities such as hospitals, fire stations, and law enforcement offices. Noncritical government offices and all private structures lose power, which will doubtless inconvenience seven million people, but leaves me free to tear down obstructing cables with impunity. I engage drive engines again and move forward. I am navigating the second turn when I receive another transmission from President Zeloc.

  “What the hell are you doing? The whole city just lost power!”

  “Critical support facilities are fully functional on the emergency system built into Madison’s power grid after this world’s first Deng War.”

  “I didn’t ask for a history lesson! I want to know why you shut down the power grid.”

  “I am unable to navigate streets and intersections without tearing down power cables. Electrocuting innocents is an unacceptable level of collateral damage under the current threat scenario. I have cleared rioters from this section of the Granger caravan’s route.” I flash schematics to the president’s datascreen. “The main portion of the riot will be within direct line-of-sight visual contact once I negotiate my next turn.”

  “Good. When you get there, crush those bastards flat.”

  “I am not programmed to crush unarmed civilians who are not actively engaged in acts of war against the Concordiat or its officially designated representatives.”

  “Then crush their damned smelly pig trucks! And those rusted, run-down, sorry-assed tractors.”

  This is not an economically sound order, since agricultural producers cannot produce food without the equipment necessary to grow, process, and transport it. But this order, at least, does not violate my programmed failsafes, the complex logic trains and software blocks that exist to prevent unacceptable damage to civilian populations. I move steadily forward, leaving mangled ruin in my wake. As I ease around the final turn, which brings me into Darconi Street, the sound of rioting rushes down the funnel of flanking buildings and strikes my sensor arrays with a warning of city streets gone wild. Visual scans confirm this assessment. I scan approximately eight thousand two hundred twenty-seven combatants engaged in pitched battles for control of street corners, blockaded vehicles, Law Square, and Lendan Park.

  As my prow swings around the corner, becoming visible to the rioters, a sudden eerie hush falls across the urban landscape. For a moment, the only sound I hear is the wind in my sensors and the ping of traffic signals swinging forlornly against my turrets. Then someone screams. The sound is high and feminine.

  “Clear the streets,” I broadcast over external speakers. “You are hereby ordered to clear the streets.” I move forward, keeping my speed to a slow crawl. A stampede begins as my treads tear gouges out of the pavement and reduce livestock transports, combines, groundcars, and produce trucks to wafer-thin sheets of metal fused to the street surface. Pedestrians attempt to scatter. My visual sensors track a crush of people caught against the sides of buildings, unable to get through doorways into the shops and government offices they seek refuge in and unable to retreat into the street which my treads and warhull fill. Radar images show me images of people being trampled and suffocated, with a ninety-eight percent probability of death for many of those caught in the jam.

  I halt, waiting for the mass of panic-stricken civilians to surge into side streets, which are helping to bleed off the majority of the crowd attempting to escape. I receive another transmission from Gifre Zeloc.

  “Why did you stop, machine?”

  “The mission is to clear the riot. Darconi Street and Law Square are emptying at a satisfactory rate.”

  “I said to crush those bastards and I meant it.”

  “I have crushed thirty-nine point two percent of the smelly pig trucks and rusted, run-down tractors in Darconi Street, as directed. I have also crushed sixteen percent of the groundcars and forty-nine point eight percent of the combines, which I calculate will have a serious detrimental effect on successfully reaping the fields currently ready for harvesting, since the harvest is dependent upon equipment which has now been destroyed.”

  “I don’t care how many combines get crushed.”

  I attempt to educate the president. “Losing forty-nine point eight percent of the available combines translates into a probable loss of seventy-eight percent of the grain crop, which will result in substantial price increases for staples such as bread and will trigger probable food shortages before another crop can be planted, ripened, and harvested. If I continue to move forward,” I add, as an afterthought, “people will die. This includes counterprotestors with no ties to the Granger dissident movement. I have scanned the crowd and detected no weapons that are prohibited by the exclusion zone regulations. Ordering me to crush to death an unarmed crowd trying to flee violates my primary programming and would only spark further violence, if I attempted it, potentially igniting open rebellion.”

  Gifre Zeloc sputters for seven point eight-three seconds, then snaps, “Fine, have it your way. This time. Just make damned sure those rioters don’t come sneaking back to finish what they started.”

  I cannot see how that would be possible, since the rioters completely failed to achieve their primary goal of demonstrating in the fi
rst place. The likelihood that the Tax Parity Package will be defeated is now vanishingly small, particularly since Granger activists will doubtless be blamed for the widespread property damage done today, not to mention the deaths. The Grangers have dealt themselves and their political cause a deathblow. It will doubtless be many hours, if not weeks, before they and their leadership in the agrarian activist movement realize that fact. I do not look forward to the events likely to transpire when that unpalatable truth is realized.

  What makes me feel very lonely and confused is the sad realization that after today, no Granger or agrarian activist anywhere on Jefferson will think of me as a rescuer sent here to protect them. I have become the mailed fist by which Gifre Zeloc makes his displeasure widely and bruisingly felt. By extension, I have become the weapon by which POPPA, itself, decrees what will and will not be tolerated.

  I miss my Commander bitterly. And I cannot help but wonder what Kafari Khrustinova thinks of me, this afternoon. I do not know if she was in this crowd or if she is safely busy at her job in Port Abraham. Wherever she is, she has doubtless set aside her good opinion of me, which registers unexpectedly as pain in the privacy of my personality gestalt center. I sit in the midst of the ruination I have inflicted in Darconi Street and watch the crowd disperse in a panicked and chaotic exodus and wonder if getting out of this disaster will be any easier than getting into it was.

  Somehow, I doubt it.

  III

  The last person Simon expected to walk into his hospital room was Sheila Brisbane. Tall and trim, she was every inch the Brigade officer, despite the civilian clothes she wore. He hadn’t seen Captain Brisbane since the Navy cutter had dropped her and her Bolo off on Vishnu, before making planet-fall at Jefferson. Her short, pixie-cut hair had a sprinkling of grey mixed in with the copper highlights, reminding Simon how long it had been since they had last met.