The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  “During those one hundred fifteen years of active service, I have received seventeen campaign medals, three rhodium stars, and four galaxy-level clusters, including a gold cluster for heroism on the killing fields of Etaine. During the battle for Etaine, I was part of a Brigade battle group of seventeen Bolos with a mission to halt the Deng incursion at any cost, since possession of Etaine would have opened the way into the heart of humanity’s home space.

  “We faced fifty Yavac Heavy-class fighting machines, eighty-seven Yavac medium-class, and two-hundred and ten Scout-class Yavacs. The deep gouge melted across my prow was inflicted by the concentrated fire of fourteen Yavac Heavies using a synchronized-fire tactic which punched through my defensive energy screens. Yavac fire melted ninety-eight percent of my armor and blew all of my treads to rubble. They then concentrated their plasma lances across my prow in an attempt to melt through my flintsteel warhull to inflict a fatal hull breach.

  “I destroyed all fourteen Yavac Heavies and ground my way across the field of battle on bare drive wheels, killing every Yavac I could bring into range of my Hellbores. I destroyed seven troop transports attempting to land and took down a Deng heavy cruiser entering low orbit. By the end of the battle, all sixteen other Bolos in my battle group had been destroyed. Seventeen million human civilians had been killed, but the Deng advance was halted and turned into a retreat. The Deng High Command rightly concluded it would be far too expensive to continue mounting full-scale assaults at humanity’s heartland. They therefore turned their attention to the border worlds just beyond the Silurian Void in an effort to gain a toe-hold for their own refugees. They had been forced to do this, as the Melconians have destroyed a third of the Deng’s colony worlds in this sector and have threatened the Deng homeworlds.

  “Given the extent of the war along the Deng/Melconian border, I was deemed essential to the continued defense of human worlds. Rather than being scrapped, I was fitted with new armor and treads and my damaged gun systems were repaired or replaced. I came to Jefferson, where I defeated a Deng battle group consisting of two armored cruisers, six Deng troop transports, eight Yavac Heavies, ten Medium-class Yavacs, twenty-eight Scout-class Yavacs, and large numbers of infantry I did not bother to count, but which ran to the thousands, at a minimum.

  “Today, I was ordered to drive through city streets jammed with civilians who had been exercising their lawful right to free speech and assembly and did so in a peaceful manner until federal police forces began lobbing retch gas and breaking their bones with heavy truncheons. When they attempted to run for safety, they were met by a mob of urban vigilantes who hammered them into the pavement with a clear intent to kill. Their sole escape route was through the grounds of the Presidential Residence. This caused Gifre Zeloc to order me to crush anything in my path in order to prevent the panic-stricken crowd from climbing his fence. Despite my protests, he repeated the order to drive over everyone in my path, including the urban rioters entangled with the crowd of Grangers.

  “I do not know how many people I crushed on Darconi Street tonight. I do not want to know. My purpose is defending humanity’s worlds, not running over protestors. When Grangers stormed the Presidential Residence, I fired through the walls. I did so to protect a man who ordered the slaughter of his own supporters in the interests of saving his own neck. He then stupidly jumped through a window and landed in the middle of a group of people with intense cause to hate him. He died messily. Unfortunately, so did nearly a thousand innocents.”

  Phil gets quiet. Very quiet. I have never seen him so quiet. Even the nano-tatt on his face has gone motionless. He swallows several times without speaking. He stares at the ground beside my treads for one point three-seven minutes. He glances up and sees something embedded in my track linkages that causes him to blanch. He looks down again. “I didn’t know any a’that,” he finally says in a low voice. “Nobody on the news said none a’that. Not at all.”

  “That does not surprise me.”

  He looks up again, puzzlement clearly visible in his tattooed face. “You ain’t surprised? What’cha mean by that?”

  “The broadcast and print news media routinely exercise skillful, extensive, and selective editing in what they report.”

  “Huh? What’s that mean?”

  “They don’t tell the whole story and what they do tell, they lie about. Frequently.”

  Phil’s eyes widen, then narrow. “How d’you know that? You ain’t everywhere. You just sit in this here building and do nuthin’ all day except sleep or whatever it is a machine does.”

  “I do not sleep. Due to the circumstances of my last commander’s recall, I remain awake twenty-five hours a day, every day. I have now been conscious without interruption for five years. I monitor all broadcasts originating from commercial and government sources. I scan the planetary datanet on a daily basis. I am able to access security cameras in virtually every governmental or private office on Jefferson and frequently do. I can communicate directly with most computer systems on this world. Ninety-nine point two percent of the time I do so on a read-only status, which allows me to access information entered by virtually anyone using a computer hooked to the datanet. When the situation warrants it, I can instruct computers to perform specific tasks, in the interest of successfully completing my mission.”

  “You can do all a’that?” Phil asks faintly. “Peek at what’s on guy’s computer screen? Or tell it t’do somethin’? You are kiddin’, ain’t’cha?”

  “A Bolo Mark XX is not noted for a sense of humor. I do not ‘kid’ on matters of planetary security. I have noted,” I add, “your preference for datachat sites with well-endowed and scantily clad women.”

  Phil and his nano-tatt turn an interesting shade of crimson. “You — I — but—” He halts, clearly struggling with some concept new to him. Thinking of any kind would qualify as a new concept for him. Given the visual cues I perceive, it is apparent that Phil is thinking, or trying to. I consider this a step in the right direction. He finally finds something to say. “If you can listen and read alla that stuff, how come you ain’t told nobody about nuthin’?”

  Phil is evidently making a valiant attempt, but not even I can decipher that statement. “Which things am I not telling to whom?”

  He screws his brow into an improbable contortion of skin and writhing purple tendrils as the nano-tatt responds to some strong emotion. “All the stuff the news ain’t tellin’ folks. Like they never mentioned the president got killed, tonight. How come they never told us the president got killed, tonight?”

  “I do not know the answer to that.”

  “But how come you ain’t tellin’ anybody about it? Anybody but me, I mean.”

  “Whom should I tell?”

  He blinks for a long moment. “You coulda told the reporters an’ such. You coulda told ’em they oughta be tellin’ folks important stuff like that.”

  “What good would it do to tell someone who is lying and knows they are lying that they ought to tell the truth?”

  He scratches the tattooed side of his face, looking deeply uncomfortable. It is clear that Phil finds thinking for himself difficult. “I dunno, I guess it wouldn’t a’ done much good, would it? But… You shoulda’ oughta’ told somebody.”

  “Do you have a suggestion as to who might listen?”

  This is not entirely a rhetorical question. I would welcome — gladly — any genuine insight into how I should resolve the situation I face. Phil, however, just shakes his head. “I dunno. I gotta think about that, a little.” He peers up at me again. “You gotta mess a’crap needs to be pulled off, again, up there. And you got stuff…” he pauses, swallows convulsively again. “You got stuff I gotta wash out of them treads.”

  He makes a semifurtive gesture with the fingers of his right hand, sketching a rough cruciform shape in the air in front of his face and chest. I surmise that he is, as are many individuals of Italian descent, Catholic. I surmise, as well, that he had — until recently — forgotten tha
t fact. There may still be a human soul hidden beneath the indoctrination he has been fed since beginning grammar school, judging by the age listed in his work dossier. Or perhaps it is his martyred urban brethren who have nudged his conscience out of its coma?

  He peers uncertainly around the maintenance bay. “Got any idea how t’do that? Wash you off, I mean?”

  I suggest use of the high-pressured hose system installed for this purpose and guide him through the procedure of powering up the system and using the equipment without injuring himself. It is a long afternoon. By the time my treads and warhull are clean again, Phil Fabrizio is reeling with exhaustion. He stumbles out of the maintenance bay and staggers toward the quarters Simon occupied for so many years. He does not, however, go to sleep. He opens a bottle of something alcoholic and sits down in the darkness, drinking and thinking alone.

  He is, at least, thinking.

  After the day I have endured, any hopeful thought at all is something to cling to, as an antidote to rising despair. I did not think it was possible to miss Simon Khrustinov as bitterly as I do tonight, with bloody water coursing down the drains in my maintenance bay’s floor and a blood-red moon rising above the Damisi highlands fifty kilometers to the east.

  My day’s battle has ended, but judging from the reports I monitor over news feed, government emergency channels, and frantic radio calls for help originating from virtually all parts of Madison and the Adero floodplain farms near it, the night’s battle is just beginning. What is happening there and in every major urban center on Jefferson qualifies as murder.

  It will, I fear, be a long and exceedingly dark night.

  II

  Kafari watched Yalena crawl into the sewer from her perch on the rooftop. The moment her daughter was underground, she used the aircar’s comm-unit to tap into the datachat site most frequently used by Grangers in this part of Jefferson. She posted warnings on the main Granger sites and set the aircar’s comm-unit to record a verbal warning that would start broadcasting on every civilian frequency she could access. She put the recordings on a count-down clock that would start ten minutes after she left. Then she rushed down the rooftop access stairs, climbed through a window, and lowered herself by her hands. She kicked out slightly to drop into the alleyway, jarring her feet with the impact, but taking no injury. It took only seconds to slither through the manhole and pull the cover on top of them.

  Yalena was waiting below, holding a flashlight.

  “I found extra batteries,” she said.

  “Good. We may need them. We’ll try to reach the apartment.”

  Yalena just nodded. They set out, slogging through thigh-deep water. It was hard work and the water was cold, but she kept them moving steadily. They rested once every half-hour, heading north. When they finally reached the area near their building, Kafari found a ladder that led up to another manhole cover. The sun had long-since set, so they should be able to scuttle across the street and into their building under cover of darkness. Someone might spot them, but she was hopeful that the crisis underway downtown would keep the P-Squads too busy elsewhere to take note of their emergence from the sewers.

  She was nearly to the top of the ladder when she smelled smoke. Kafari hesitated, trying to hear through the slots in the grate. The night was far too noisy, but she couldn’t tell what it was, making that noise. So she put her shoulder against the cover and pushed up one edge, lifting it no more than the width of her hand. A tidal wave of noise assaulted her ears and the smell of smoke touched the back of her throat with acrid fingers. She peered out cautiously. The instant she saw what was happening, Kafari dragged the cover back down again, careful not to let it drop with a bang. Then she slithered back down into the muck and stood huddled over for long moments, fighting the need to vomit and shivering so hard her bones clacked against one other.

  “What’s wrong, Mom? What’s up there?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak just yet, and gestured farther north. Wordlessly, Yalena took the flashlight and the lead. An hour later, reeling with exhaustion and the chill of the sewage sludge, Kafari called a halt. She didn’t want to eat anything, but they couldn’t keep moving all night without fuel. It was a long and hellish walk to the spaceport from here. They pulled supplies from their impromptu carry sacks, chewing and swallowing while leaning against the sewer-pipe’s walls. When they were ready to set out again, Yalena broke the long silence.

  “What was up there, Mom? The last time we stopped?” Her voice took one a vicious edge Kafari had never heard, before. “Was it the Bolo, again?”

  Kafari shook her head. “No.” She didn’t want to remember that glimpse into the lower circles of Dante’s hell.

  “What, then?”

  She met Yalena’s gaze. The glow of her daughter’s flashlight caught the fear in Yalena’s eyes, touched her skin with an eerie, red-tinged glow.

  “Mom? What was it?”

  Kafari swallowed heavily. “Lynch mobs.” She managed to hold down the nausea surging up with those two bitten-off words.

  “Lynch mobs? But—” Yalena’s eyelashes flickered in puzzlement. “Who was there to lynch? Everybody in Madison supports POPPA.”

  Kafari shook her head. “They went out to the collectives. My warning…” She stopped, swallowed the nausea back down. “Maybe my warning didn’t go out in time. Or maybe some people just didn’t believe it. Or they didn’t get out fast enough.” It hadn’t been the people hanging from light poles that had shaken her so desperately. It was the pieces of people…

  “Where are we going?” Yalena asked in a whisper.

  Her question dragged Kafari’s attention from the horrors in town to their immediate needs. “The spaceport.”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t comment on it or ask another question. Yalena’s silence both relieved and distressed Kafari. Relieved, because she didn’t want to think too closely about the charnel house, back there, let alone what she intended to do about it, once Yalena was safe. Distressed, because it illustrated in painful terms Yalena’s sudden shift from trusting child to determined adult.

  The next two hours were brutal, but they kept going, spurred on by the twin desires to remain whole and not end up as decorations for a light pole. By the time the sewer pipe narrowed enough to block their way, out near the edge of town where there wasn’t enough infrastructure to need a larger effluent pipe, Kafari was more than ready to give in, as well. Shaking with fatigue and chill, they stopped at the next manhole cover they reached. It was nearly midnight, by Kafari’s chrono. She whispered, “I’m going up top, to look.”

  Yalena leaned against the sewer-pipe wall, gasping for breath while Kafari climbed slowly up to the cover. She listened hard, hearing nothing but silence. Deciding the risk was worthwhile, she pushed against the heavy metal cover, wincing as it scraped and shattered the silence. She held it up a few inches and peered out. The city behind them was an eerie sight. Great swaths of it were dark, where the power was off. A ruddy, baleful glow flickered in the heart of downtown, where multiple buildings were burning. There was no motor traffic anywhere.

  She peered in every direction, finding only silence and darkness. They were, as she had hoped, near the edge of town, out past suburbia. Even navigating blind, she’d come within a few blocks of where she’d hoped to be. The slums of Port Town were off to their left, a disorderly sprawl of tenaments, bars, sleazy dance halls, nano-tatt parlors, brothels, and gambling dives, all of it ominously dark, tonight, but far from silent. Kafari didn’t want to know what was causing that particular combination of sounds. What she’d glimpsed back toward their apartment had been enough to give her nightmares for the next year.

  To their right stood warehouses and abandoned factories with weeds growing in cracks in the parking lots. More or less dead ahead lay the spaceport, half a kilometer away. The power was on, courtesy of the emergency generators, which left the port buildings shining like stars in the stygian darkness. Kafari saw no police or federal troops, but that
didn’t mean there weren’t patrols out. Given the total lack of traffic, Kafari was betting a martial-law curfew had been imposed. They couldn’t afford to be caught, now. But they had to get out of the sewer and into the spaceport. They had to risk it.

  “We’ve got about half a kilometer to go.” They crawled up, shivering hard, and pulled themselves out onto the road. Kafari levered the manhole cover back into place, then they trudged toward Port Abraham. They didn’t go in by the road. Kafari took them across country, the long way around, in the opposite direction from Port Town, toward the engineering complex and her office. If there were guards anywhere, they’d be around the cargo warehouses near Port Town. As they approached the main terminal complex, Kafari’s puzzlement grew. The whole place was deserted. Not a cop, not a guard, nothing.

  An uneasy glance over her shoulder revealed the baleful glow from fires that still smouldered. They were upwind of the smoke, but the magnitude of the disaster gave Kafari the clue she needed to understand the complete lack of port security. Every guard, cop, and P-Squad officer was needed elsewhere. Urgently so. They reached the engineering hub without incident. Kafari fished her ID out of a dripping pocket and headed toward the door she’d used five days a week for years. The reader scanned the card and they slipped through. Once inside, with the door clicked safely shut behind them, Kafari breathed a little easier.