The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  “What do I do?” the fledgling president asks, voice rising to a near-hysterical screech.

  The guards at the beseiged outpost are asking the same question in virtually the same tone. “What do we do? There’s too many of ’em! What do we do?”

  A voice I recognize at once slices through the confusion, transmitting from the president’s office. Sar Gremian, sounding irritated in the extreme, says, “Shoot them, you idiot! That’s what we gave you rifles for. If you can remember how to load them and pull the triggers. We’re sending down an emergency tactical team by airlift. Try not to shoot them when they get there.”

  I signal Sar Gremian through the president’s datacomm. “Unit SOL-0045, standing by. I would advise sending me to Barran Bluff at once.”

  “No. Out of the question.”

  “This garrison is armed with heavy artillery that—”

  “I said no. The last thing we need is for some camera crew to shoot news footage of a Bolo having to step in to contain a few disgruntled assholes with guns.”

  I understand, with abrupt clarity. This order is entirely political in nature. I am the first choice to destroy unarmed rioters, sending a specific political message beneficial to POPPA’s campaign of rule by intimidation. But sending in a Bolo to quash armed rebellion would be a tacit admission that the situation is out of control. Sar Gremian and his superiors in the POPPA upper echelons cannot afford to publicize the fact that “a few assholes with guns” have overrun a military compound in an act of open warfare.

  I am, however, required by directive from Sector Command to conduct threat assessments in defense of this world. I therefore flash my attention to a roster of Barran Bluff’s military assets. I do not like what I discover. Barran’s heavy-weapons bunker houses ten artillery field guns, lightly armored but fitted with 10cm mobile Hellbores, the heaviest weaponry on Jefferson, excluding myself. These guns represent the only nuclear technology on site, but the potential for devastation is ominous, including a mobility kill on me. Given my role in recent events, Granger dissidents certainly have cause to attempt such a kill. They cannot hope to prevail as long as I am functional.

  Also listed are hypervelocity missiles and antitank mines that use octocellulose explosives capable of killing a Deng Heavy if placement of the charge is done properly. They are more than capable of inflicting serious damage to me, particularly to my treads. Given the government’s lack of willingness to fund anything beyond politically necessary subsidy payments, this is of concern.

  I monitor the departure of the emergency tactical team from Nineveh Base. Fifty federal troops swarm aboard a heavy airlift transport, armed with weaponry suitable for infantry combat. The sole exception is a robot-tank designed to penetrate hostile terrain, which is maneuvered into the cargo bay prior to lift-off. The transport lumbers into the air and picks up speed, streaking south through the darkness. Even at maximum velocity, they may be too late. The deployment of rebel troops indicates a level of military training superior to that displayed by the federal troops. Granted, this would not be difficult to achieve…

  As I watch through the surveillance cameras, unable to intervene, the invaders storm every building in the compound, methodically killing every government trooper they encounter. They shoot men down, execution style, whether they try to surrender or flee. Within eight point three minutes the rebel contingent has completely overrun the outpost and has destroyed every federal trooper unlucky enough to be assigned there.

  Once the killing is done, there is no sign of celebration amongst the victors. They move smoothly from attack-mode to organized looting, firing up military trucks in the vehicle park. The compound, situated at the top of a steep, northward-facing bluff, holds a commanding view of the valley where government-owned farms have been installed. There are two main access roads, one which snakes upward from the valley floor in a series of switchbacks along the bluff’s western face and one which loops a longer way around, approaching from the south along a gentler gradient.

  Fast-working rebel crews take down the fences along both roads, allowing trucks loaded with spoils to escape into the darkness without slowing down to exit single file through the gates. These trucks are piled high with ammunition crates, small arms, missiles, antitank mines, and rocket launchers.

  They clearly have a lengthy campaign in mind. This is an enemy worth studying closely. Most are young, under the age of twenty. The older men and women have the gaunt, angry look of farmers stripped of their holdings in the government’s land-snatch program and forced to work on meagre rations in government-owned fields. I recognize their leader immediately. Anish Balin is an intelligent, disgruntled firebrand who has graduated from talking the talk to walking the walk. His widely disseminated notion of justice is Biblical: an eye for an eye and slavery for the enslavers.

  I do not see how exchanging one form of coercion for another will materially improve conditions. This is the tragedy of bitter conflicts within a divided society: one side’s hatred leads to atrocities that fuel the other side’s hatred, sparking angry reprisals which fuel new hatred, ad infinitum. I have never fought in a civil war. I know how to crush an enemy or die trying, but I do not know how to end a conflict between diametrically opposed philosophies in a struggle to decide how a human society will conduct itself.

  My processors cannot resolve this problem. Safety algorithms shut down the attempt. I cannot intervene without orders and I cannot decide what the proper course would be, even if I could; not without human guidance and specific orders within the parameters of my overall mission. I can only sit and watch and wait for someone to tell me what to do. I am unhappy to be caught in the same mental state as the troopers just slaughtered.

  The emergency tactical team arrives, providing a distraction from my psychotronic distress. The air transport sets down half a kilometer south of the compound, along the easier access gradient, blocking the way for three trucks. These trucks back and turn, making a successful escape while the federal airship is still off-loading troops. Evidently, none of the crew or troopers on board understand the concept of air-to-truck missiles. Or know how to use them. The munitions in the escaping trucks are of concern, but the far greater worry I harbor involves the heavy-artillery field guns listed on the equipment rosters. I have seen no sign of these guns in the loads of contraband driven out, which I find puzzling. Surely ten mobile Hellbores would constitute a greater prize than a few truckloads of ordnance?

  So far as I can determine though my datatap on the security cameras, the truck drivers are heading for the twisting, turning canyons that riddle the Damisi Mountains. The southern ranges surrounding Barran Bluff are wild, neither mined nor farmed. This region constitutes perfect country for hiding a rebel army. If I were a human, my heart would sink at the prospect of trying to come to grips with an enemy scattered through the long, deeply fissured Damisi Mountains. I fear that this will eventually become my task, if this raid is not speedily and successfully squelched. Given the lax training of federal troops in general — what few troops remain, other than the ubiquitous P-Squads and other urban law-enforcement units — I am less than optimistic that this raid will be successfully countered.

  The troops aboard the airship finally off-load, fanning out in a formation that makes little sense to me, since it is neither an effective attack formation nor a sensible defensive one. They simply string themselves out in a line to either side of their air transport and watch while the robot-tank lumbers toward the main gate of the Barran Bluff compound. They make no effort to prepare their rifles for combat readiness nor do they bother to switch on their headsets, which are designed to relay tactically important data and command-grade orders in an organized, centrally directed fashion.

  The overriding attitude seems to be one of complacent arrogance.

  The robot-tank is thirty meters from the main gate when the rebels holding Barran fling open the doors on a field-artillery depot. A mobile Hellbore drives out into the open, swinging around the tank
-traps in the road to gain a vantage point that covers the main, south-facing gate. The 10cm barrel swings around, locks on, and fires. The night vanishes. Actinic light burns shadows into the painted walls of the bunkers and storage depots. Recoil sends the Hellbore’s mobile platform backwards five meters. The blast slices the robot-tank open like a tin can. Smoke billows up from the mortally wounded vehicle, pieces of which are blown in several directions.

  Federal troops break and run for their air transport.

  Before any of them can reach it, that transport vanishes in another blinding flash. Pieces of semimolten metal go careening off into the darkness, blazing like meteors. Fragments scythe down the low-growing native shrubbery. The overpressure and expanding fireball engulf the remaining federal troops. Granger ground forces rush forward, sighting with laser range-finders and shooting what few bodies are still twitching.

  They fall back, then, and continue loading trucks.

  Sar Gremian, watching the debacle courtesy of my datafeed to the president’s console, stares in wide-eyed shock. He then snarls several obscenities and contacts Nineveh Base. “Scramble another team. And this time, goddamn it, go in with aerial fighters and missiles!”

  The commander of Nineveh Base clears his throat. “We can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t have any trained fighter pilots. And there hasn’t been funding to fuel the fighters. The team they just fried was the best we had.”

  Sar Gremian’s obscenities outdo his previous outburst. The president, visible in the background, is staring in stunned disbelief. “We have to do something,” she says. “We have to do something!”

  Sar Gremian turns on her with a snarl. “I know that, you stupid bitch! Shut up and let me think. Better yet, go file your fingernails somewhere. It’s what you do best.”

  Her mouth drops open. Color floods her face. Then she screams at him. “How dare you speak to me like that! I’m the fucking president!”

  “Not for long,” he says coldly.

  While she sputters, Sar Gremian turns back to the datascreen and addresses me directly. “Bolo. Go to Barran Bluff and handle the situation.”

  “I require authorization from the president.”

  Sar Gremian glances around at Avelaine La Roux, who flashes him a look of hateful defiance.

  “It would not be good for your health,” Sar Gremian says softly, “to refuse. Those bastards have Hellbores. In case you don’t understand what those are, they’re portable nuclear weapons. And the people who have them aren’t particularly fond of you, just now. Order the goddamned Bolo to destroy them before they drive those things up to your front door and open fire.”

  Her polished fingernails bite into the upholstery of her chair. Then she spits out the order like someone with a mouth full of arsenic. “Do what he says! You hear me, machine? Wipe those bastards off the face of the planet!”

  For once, my directives are perfectly clear. As I fire up my drive engines, Sar Gremian adds, “Try not to damage too much of the equipment. We can’t afford to replace it.”

  “Understood.”

  “And don’t start shooting until you get there. I don’t want to advertise the fact that you’re on a war mission. Christ, there are reporters in Gersham; they’re going to want to know what all the explosions were about. I’ve got to get damage control crews out there, confiscate the cameras…”

  He ends transmission.

  Phil Fabrizio, looking much the worse for an evening of solitary drinking, reels through the rear doorway of his apartment, watching openmouthed as I leave my maintenance bay. “Where ya goin’?” he asks, slurring the words unsteadily.

  “Barran Bluff Military Compound.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “To destroy Anish Balin and two hundred of his followers. They have seized the arsenal, including ten mobile Hellbores. I may sustain damage. It would be helpful if you were sober enough to effect repairs when I return.” I consider his conversational skills and current state of sobriety and clarify. “You are too drunk to fix me if I am damaged.”

  He drags one unsteady hand across his mouth, muttering, “Aw, shit, man, I don’t fuckin’ know enough t’fix you.”

  I find myself in full agreement with that assessment.

  As I reengage engines, he mutters to himself, “They can’t have nuthin’ that’d hurt a machine that big. Not bad enough t’ need fixin’ or nuthin’. It’s biggern’ the apartment building I was raised in. And it’s got alla that armor an’ stuff… leas’ways, what I could figgur from them manuals they tol’ me t’ read, they all said it’s gotta lotta armor’n stuff won’t nuthin’ penetrate but a plasma lance, whatevern’ hell that’s s’posed t’ be…”

  He is still muttering when he reels back into the apartment and closes the door.

  His optimism in this regard does not inspire a concomitant feeling in my personality gestalt center. Phil Fabrizio quite literally has no idea what he is talking about. I could almost get to like him, if I could get past his appalling lack of critical need-to-know data. A Bolo tech who doesn’t understand the difference between riot work against unarmed civilians and combat against mobile 10cm Hellbores in the hands of insurrectionists displays an ignorance frightening in its implications.

  I console myself with what I can: at least I finally have a concrete objective and a mission for which I am suited.

  II

  Kafari lay prone in her vantage point up in the Damisi foothills, watching the target through powerful night-vision goggles. Kafari’s little band of freedom fighters — recruited and deployed within two short hours of her first conversation with Anish Balin — had already fought and won two critical skirmishes, neither of which Kafari had been able to participate in.

  The first raid, twelve kilometers to the south, wouldn’t be discovered until someone — an officer from another post or an early-morning cleaning crew — entered Haggertown’s police headquarters, where they would find several embarrassed P-Squad corpses and six seriously empty weapons lockers. The spoils had provided the weapons needed by Anish and his team to carry out the night’s second objective: Barran Bluff Depot. Anish’s team had taken the depot in less than ten minutes, a stunning success that left even Kafari amazed. The P-Squad guards had grown lazy, fat, and careless, too busy terrorizing Gersham’s helpless, disarmed residents to bother with any real security. It was always easy, Kafari reflected bitterly, to brutalize people who had been forcibly disarmed.

  Tonight’s raids would reacquaint Jefferson’s rulers with an enduring and universal truth: true equality — the power to make a successful stand against tyranny — inevitably flows from the barrel of a gun. A cold, pleased little smile played across her lips. Gun barrels by the hundreds were flowing out into the sea of Jefferson’s people, tonight. So were heavy field-grade weapons, ammunition, biochem gear, communications equipment, explosives and primers, missiles, and mortars.

  These were the tools of the warrior’s trade, tools that would force Jefferson’s rulers to restore the equality Jefferson’s founding settlers had worked so hard to ensure. Despite the total lack of experience working together, Anish’s team was loading the bounty smoothly and rapidly. The instant trucks were packed to capacity, drivers headed for the valley floor, scattering to widely separated field caches that she and Anish had worked out using geological survey maps. The Damisi Mountains were delightfully fissured with endless labyrinths where wind and water had scooped out canyons, gorges, and caverns. Kafari could have hidden an entire army in this stretch of the Damisi, alone.

  Which was, of course, exactly what she intended to do.

  One of the trucks raced toward Kafari’s position, bringing supplies to implement what Anish had dubbed Operation Payback. She waited just long enough to assure herself that three of the ten mobile Hellbore field guns they’d seized had, in fact, made it safely out through the gates and were well on their way toward hiding places. Poor Anish had protested — vehemently — her decision t
o abscond with only three mobile Hellbores.

  “We’ll need that firepower!”

  “Yes, we will. But the place we’ll need that firepower most is inside Barran Bluff’s compound.”

  “Kafari, you don’t need seven mobile Hellbores to knock out the kind of air response team Nineveh Base will scramble against us.”

  “No,” she agreed, “we won’t. But if we take that team out with enough force to rattle even Vittori Santorini, they’ll send Sonny against us. And that, my dear Lieutenant, is exactly what we must goad them into doing. We don’t stand a prayer of getting into Nineveh Base, let alone grabbing the Hancock family and getting out alive, again, if Sonny is still in depot.”

  “But—” Anish turned white to the roots of his hair. “He’ll slaughter every soldier we leave behind!”

  “Yes,” she said softly, “he will. But if we’re clever enough and if the soldiers who volunteer to stay are brave enough under fire, we can inflict telling injuries. Serious enough to make it really expensive to repair him.”

  “Kafari, we can’t kill a Bolo.”

  “Want to bet? I’m a Bolo commander’s wife, Anish. I did my psychotronic engineering practicum on Sonny’s systems. I’ve watched Simon pull maintenance on that Bolo dozens of times. I’ve been inside the Command Compartment. And I’ve listened to them talk about damage sustained in other wars. I know exactly how Deng Yavacs killed sixteen Bolos on Etaine — and why it was almost seventeen.”

  “My God,” Anish whispered. “I never correlated that. That you’d talked to the Bolo about combat, I mean.”

  “With any luck, the bastards in Madison have forgotten it, too. It’s our job to remind them. I intend to make it a very expensive lesson,” Kafari added, voice full of cold and lethal promise.