The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  “I gave you an order, machine. Shut up and carry it out! If that’s not too much for an antique rust bucket to understand.”

  The transmission ends.

  The sensations skittering through my personality gestalt center resolve themselves into bitter, affronted anger. I have never been treated with such blatant contempt in the entire one hundred fifteen point nine-seven years of my active service. I am programmed to take pride in my accomplishments and my devoted service to my creators. Humans have often shown fear of me. This is logical, given what I am capable of doing. But not one human has ever shown me contempt.

  I have no referents for dealing with the conflicts this arouses in my personality gestalt center. The blow to pride and prestige literally stuns me for six point nine-three seconds, an eternity of shock. Even as antiques, we are immensely capable machines, commanding the respect of those giving our orders. Is Gifre Zeloc the exception or the rule amongst Jefferson’s new ruling class?

  Ultimately, the answer is immaterial, as applied to the current mission. I speed up, although this results in an increased level of carnage as I crush cars abandoned by screaming passengers and turn corners too quickly for the terrain, taking off entire corners of buildings in the process and spilling rubble from ruptured walls in my wake.

  I encounter the edge of the riot zone just as Gifre Zeloc starts screaming at me again through his commlink. “They’re battering down the gates! I don’t care how many of them you have to crush to get here, just stop them!”

  Hundreds of people dressed as Grangers are spilling against the ornate scrollwork fencing. Those not carrying rifles and handguns are ripping iron stanchions out of the fence. They are shooting at anything and anyone that appears to be a threat. Gifre Zeloc is the legally elected head of Jefferson’s government. Jefferson is a Concordiat-allied world, for which President Zeloc speaks as the official voice of the Concordiat. He acts as the Concordiat’s officially designated commander. His life is in immediate and clear danger. The mob attempting to enter the grounds of the Presidential Residence can offer no harm to me, so I do not go to Battle Reflex Mode and do not engage my own weapons systems. But there is sufficient danger to the president that collateral damage to civilians is acceptable. I therefore broadcast a warning to the crowd, engage drive engines, and move forward, plowing through the jam-packed crowd blocking Darconi Street. I do not count the number of people who die beneath my treads. I have no wish to count them. My mission has been narrowly and explicitly defined. I turn off external audio sensors, unwilling to listen to the screams of those I have been ordered to crush on my way to the gates of the Presidential Residence.

  I am fifty-three meters away from the gates when the entire scrollwork fence sways and goes down, pushed over by the panic-stricken crowd trying to escape. A massive wave of people spills across the Presidential Residence’s lawn. Within two point zero-three seconds, the crowd engulfs the Residence. A substantial portion of the mob simply spills around it, intent on running as far and as fast as possible now that they have gained a space in which to run. Others, however, enter the Residence, intent on retribution. I cannot penetrate the walls deeply enough, even using ground-penetrating radar, to track their progress inside the Residency walls. I can, however, monitor the windows and do so, focusing on the massive round window of the president’s office and smaller windows to either side, that reveal the interiors of adjacent rooms and the corridors beyond.

  Gifre Zeloc has barricaded himself in his office, which overlooks the war-torn gardens. I do not know the location of the vice president. A mob of battle-enraged Grangers, clearly visible through adjacent windows, storms the corridor outside the president’s office. I take immediate action. Snapping to full Battle Reflex Alert, I target through the Residency’s outer stone shell, allowing for proper lead-time on a moving target, and fire 30cm cannons. The rounds punch through the walls and windows with satisfactory ease. I rake the mob inside the Residence with short bursts, taking down those in the leading edge first. This serves to create a barricade that others must either jump across or retreat from — or join, should they continue to exhibit hostile action.

  The Grangers near the back of the mob inside the Residence hit the floor. Most of them drop their weapons as I send more live rounds through their ranks. They attempt to crawl back the way they came, leaving their weapons behind. I allow this, as their retreat does not endanger the president. I judge him to be safe from further assault—

  Gifre Zeloc picks up a heavy chair and throws it through the window behind his desk. Glass shatters and falls to the garden below, where the mob from Darconi Street is still pouring across the downed fence and surging into the lawn ahead of my treads. Evidently panicked by the gunfire seven meters south of his office, he commits the most breathtakingly stupid act I have ever witnessed. Gifre Zeloc actually jumps out the window. He lands in the midst of a tight-packed mob of Grangers. I cannot fire without hitting him.

  Seven point two seconds later, there is no longer a reason to fire. Gifre Zeloc has been reduced to a pulpy red mass under the clubs and feet of people pushed past break-point. A fire begins to blaze inside the Residence. The streets are too choked with debris and fleeing rioters for fire and rescue squads to reach the Residence, which begins to burn fiercely. I halt in stunned disbelief, with my treads zero point eight meters from the downed gates of the Presidential Residence.

  He jumped.

  He actually jumped into the middle of a blood-crazed mob of people with excellent reason to hate him. I see no further point in shooting into the crowd, which is a hopelessly tangled mixture of Grangers and urban counterprotestors, all of them intent on one goal: escape. Without a lawfully elected president to issue directives, I am left to make my own decisions, rendering me temporarily immobilized. I have, for the moment, full access to my Battle Reflex Alert logic processors, but even fully awake, I do not know what to do.

  If this were a battle against Deng Yavacs or even the Quern, my duty would be clear. I would fight the enemy with every weapon I carry until the enemy was destroyed or I was. But I do not know what action to take in the aftermath of a riot that has claimed the life of the only civilian authorized to issue instructions to me. Perhaps, if I were human, my task would be clearer? I might mobilize the remnants of Jefferson’s military forces. I might seek to impose a martial-law curfew after clearing the streets. I might order the Senate and House of Law cleared and the Assembly members escorted to a safe shelter.

  I am a Bolo. I do not have the authority to do any of these things. I cannot even instruct the city’s psychotronic system to turn off the power grid. A scan of the city behind my stern shows rising columns of smoke where fires have broken out in the wake of my passage. This is a dreadful situation. I have no idea what to do. I consider contacting the Brigade for help, but am unsure Sector Command would be able to offer any useful — let alone timely — advice on how to resolve a volatile situation on a world that is no longer of concern to most of the Brigade’s command structure.

  I am on my own.

  And I do not like the choices facing me.

  It finally occurs to me to review Jefferson’s constitution to discover the chain of command regarding who is in line for the presidency. I must at least discover who is constitutionally authorized to make decisions in the event of a president’s untimely departure from office. I do not know the whereabouts of Vice President Culver. She normally maintains an office in the Residence, but I do not know if she was in that office, which is now fiercely ablaze despite internal fire-suppression systems, which seem to have malfunctioned.

  I put through a call to the vice presidential residence, attempting to ascertain her location, but no one responds to my signal. I theorize that they are too busy watching the fire consuming the Presidential Residence to answer something as relatively trivial as a transmission from a fthirteen-thousand-ton Bolo parked across the street. The next official in line for command is the Speaker of the House of Law, the most seni
or position in the Assembly, with the President of the Senate coming next in the list. I check security-camera feed from the Joint Chamber, where the Assembly watches a five-meter-tall datascreen in stunned silence. The images on that datascreen show the burning Residence and my own warhull, parked atop an unknown number of dead rioters.

  I tap the datafeed and address the Assembly, much of which jumps in shock at the sound of my voice issuing from the speakers. “President Zeloc has been killed. I do not know the whereabouts of Vice President Culver. There are fires burning at the Presidential Residence and in the city, where downed power cables have sparked electrical fires consuming damaged buildings. It would be advisable for the Speaker of the House of Law to assume temporary command until the whereabouts of the vice president can be established. Madame Speaker, I require instructions.”

  The shaken woman who has held the post of speaker for eleven years — a span of time she has enjoyed thanks to the revocation of term limits, enacted by POPPA jurists appointed to the High Court — stares at the datascreen for twelve point three seconds, speechless and pale to the roots of her carefully colored hair. She finally regains the use of her wits and her voice.

  “What am I supposed to do? Who is this? Who’s talking?”

  “I am Unit SOL-0045 of the Jeffersonian Defense Forces. I require instructions.”

  “About what?”

  “I am a machine of war. This situation is not the type of combat I was designed to conduct. I do not know what to do. I require instructions.”

  Avelaine La Roux apparently has no idea what to do, either. She stares at the gavel in her hand, stares at the stunned faces of her colleagues, swallows convulsively several times. She finally finds something to say.

  “We have to find Madeline. That’s the important thing, we have to find Madeline. She’s the president, now. You’re sure Gifre is dead?”

  “He jumped into a crowd of rioters and was bludgeoned to death before I could fire on those attacking him.”

  A collective shudder rushes through the room, followed by a rising snarl of anger. I foresee an impending planet-wide explosion of rage that will make all prior-existing anti-Granger sentiment look like attenuated smoke on the wind, by comparison. I do not foresee a likelihood that the Grangers will accept this without a fight. I offer a suggestion. “I would advise immediate mobilization of what military forces remain in operational condition. Public sentiment will doubtless express itself violently.”

  “Yes,” Avelaine La Roux says, running a distracted hand through her hair, which disarranges its careful coiffeur. “Yes, I think you’re right. Uh… How do I do that?”

  It has been sufficiently long since Jefferson had a truly operational military structure, the person third in line for the presidency does not even know how to scramble the military for a world alert. She is, in large measure, responsible for the dismantling of that military structure, insisting that tax money was more productively spent protecting the rights of the urban poor and providing a “decent living wage” for those unable or unwilling to find gainful employment.

  As a result, there are insufficient military resources to step in and act as peacekeepers until tempers have cooled and public hysteria has been calmed. I am not a policeman, but I fear that I may be forced into that role, by default. This does not send joy of any kind through my personality gestalt center. Darconi Street is covered with blood and spilled chemicals from ruptured vehicles. Flame and smoke blacken the skies from structural fires and spilled fuel and solvents which burn with a characteristic, dirty smoke. Once again, the heart of Madison resembles a war zone. This is not a war in which I am proud to have fought.

  For the first time in my career, I know shame for having done my duty.

  II

  Kafari was halfway to Madison, flying at the Airdart’s minimum speed in an effort to compose herself, when her wrist-comm beeped. It was an emergency signal, from Yalena. “Mom? Oh, God — Mommy — we’re in trouble—”

  The transmission was patchy, fading in and out. Kafari could hear a snarling roar in the background, the roar of thousands of voices locked in combat.

  “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know — somewhere on Darconi Street. Ami-Lynn and I came down here to find out what’s really going on. I went on the datachat boards, Mom, like you told me to, and it was just awful. So I called Ami-Lynn and Charmaine and we came downtown. We got caught in the mob and now we can’t get out. There’s barricades up everywhere and P-Squads blocking all the streets — we can’t get out!”

  Kafari hit the throttle. The Airdart roared forward, kicking her back into her seat. “Keep your wrist-comm on send. I’ll home in on your signal. Can you get into a building somewhere?”

  “No — we can’t get near a doorway — too many people—”

  The transmission broke up again. It sounded like Yalena was coughing. Or throwing up. Kafari was almost to Nineveh Base when she saw it. An immense, dark shape in the twilight. A moving shape, bristling with guns and speckled with running lights. Sonny. The Bolo was out of his maintenance depot, moving toward Madison. Fast. Something that big shouldn’t move that fast. A mountain of steel and death, outsprinting her aircar…

  “Oh, God.” She jammed the controls to maximum acceleration and shot forward, flying nap-of-the-earth and hoping desperately that Sonny wouldn’t decide her aircar was an enemy ship to be blasted from the sky. She homed in on Yalena’s signal and tried to raise her daughter.

  “Yalena? Can you hear me? C’mon, baby, can you hear me?”

  A choked, garbled sound came back. “Urghh — y-yeah — hear you, Mommm—”

  More horrible sounds left Kafari ice cold. “Yalena?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Baby, the Bolo’s coming! Get off the street — I don’t care how, just get off the street!”

  “Trying—” More ghastly sounds came through.

  Did those bastards use retch gas?

  Better gas than nerve agent. Kafari raced Sonny neck-and-neck, pulled ahead, reached Madison’s outlying suburbs before he did. The streets would slow him down. She might make it. There might be time to get in, to get Yalena and her friends out. She roared into Madison at lamp-post height, whipping around corners between office towers, car-sales lots, restaurants. Kafari was no fighter pilot, but Uncle Jasper would’ve been proud of her. She zipped under traffic-signal cables or whipped her nose up and shot over them, where trucks took up necessary airspace.

  The signal from her daughter’s wrist-comm was getting closer. Peripheral vision showed her a dense throng of people dead ahead, blocked by barricades and P-Squads. Madison’s infamous enforcers stood shoulder-to-shoulder with shields locked, doing nothing to stop the riot, but preventing anyone from getting out of the riot zone. They were funneling people straight down Darconi Street, toward the Presidential Residence. Right into the path Sonny would follow.

  It’s murder, she realized in a split-second moment of horror. They mean to kill the protestors! And somewhere ahead, lost in a heaving, surging mass of trapped humanity and riot gas, Kafari’s little girl was fighting to stay alive. Anger blazed to life. He’s not killing my child!

  Kafari slapped controls, killing her air-intake system, then her aircar slashed through trailing tendrils of gas, an arm’s length above the helmeted, armored line of the P-Squad’s dragoons. Somebody shot at her. She heard the impact against the undercarriage. A warning light flashed urgently on her boards. She swore viciously, unable to tear her attention away from navigating the riot gas and packed streets.

  Uncle Jasper must’ve wrapped ghostly hands around hers more than once, as she whipped through the heart of the riot, on a virtual collision course with the Presidential Residence. Kafari was one block away from Yalena’s wrist-comm signal when her aircar started losing power. “Damn!”

  There was nowhere to set it down. Just a vast river of struggling, running, fighting people, punctuated by outcroppings of parked cars, toppled delivery vans, and wreck
ed signposts jutting up like spears where their signs had been ripped down. Then she spotted it. The long, low rooftop of a trendy dance club. Kafari gunned the engines, yanked on the controls, brought the nose up by sheer willpower. She gained precious elevation while the engines screamed, bleeding noise and God-alone knew what kind of parts across the packed streets. She was going to hit the upper windows. She wasn’t going to make it—

  The belly of her fuselage scraped the edge of the roof. They skidded across, leaving a metoric trail of sparks. Kafari cut the forward thrust, shunted all remaining power into the side-thrusters, and sent the air-frame into a wild spin. The world reeled out of control… Then firmed up again as the combination of friction and counterthrust brought her careening to a halt. She hung against the crash webbing for several ghastly seconds, just shaking.

  I’m too old for this. Last time I did this kind of thing, I was still in college…

  Then the world swam into focus and showed her a sight that dumped more adrenaline into her jangled system. An upper turret, studded with guns bigger than any trees Kafari had ever seen, was crawling its way down Darconi Street. Toward the Presidential Residence. Toward her. And Yalena…

  Kafari slapped the restraints loose, tumbled out onto the roof. She dug into the bin under her seat and came up with the gun she had been carrying illegally for years. Kafari dragged on her belly-band holster, which tucked the gun snugly between her abdomen and the elasmer band, then hunted frantically for a way down from the roof.

  There was a fire door. Locked from the inside. Kafari snatched a tool kit out of her car and jimmied the whole door off its frame. Terror lent her strength as Sonny’s massive guns crawled inexorably closer. She could hear the sound of his treads chewing up pavement and cars and smaller things, the kind of things that screamed in mortal terror as they died. When she realized what she was seeing and hearing, Kafari ran cold to the bottom of her soul. They hadn’t just ordered Sonny to break up the riot. The Bolo was running over people. Lots of people.