The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  My proximity-alarm system is set to jerk me into full consciousness if any nonauthorized vehicle or pedestrian approaches my exclusion zone. This extends three hundred meters in all directions — including down. Commodore Oroton is more than capable of ordering sappers to enter the sewers near the massive subsidized-housing tenements — shoddy blocks of concrete twenty stories high and a thousand meters long, where subsistence recipients are packed in like rabbits in a giant warren — that surround my erstwhile depot. It would not be difficult for engineers to tunnel their way under the scorched earth of my former depot. Setting off another octocellulose bomb at point-blank range would doubtless end my career as a Unit of the Line. Not by catastrophic hull-breach, but by the simple expediency of destroying more critical systems than Jefferson’s bankrupt government can afford to repair.

  I therefore keep my electronic ears to the ground — literally.

  The P-Squad guards stationed in a tight defensive ring around me are diligent in doing their duty, rain or shine, which is to guard me from any further possible attack. Why they think this is necessary, I am not sure, since I still have functional antipersonnel guns along prow and stern and starboard side. I am capable, if need be, of taking out any vehicle that tries to approach me. If, of course, I could identify it as a threat in time to act.

  On further thought, the guards are not superfluous.

  Their diligence is understandable, since Commodore Oroton has, naturally enough, taken full advantage of my critical injuries. The rebel commander has launched a major offensive campaign, coordinating a series of rapier-sharp surgical strikes in every major city on Jefferson. P-Squad headquarters units — having grown complacent and arrogant during their long and uncontested rule over Jefferson’s city streets — have been shaken out of their complacency. The P-Squads are under literal bombardment with rockets, hyper-v missiles, and octocellulose bombs.

  Rebel strikes have reduced eight major stations to rubble, destroyed fifty-three vehicles, and killed three hundred twelve officers in garrison. Foot and groundcar patrols are shot by snipers two and three times a day. Aircars are only marginally safer from attack, since the rebellion is amply supplied with the means to knock them out of the sky. Mobile Hellbore attacks have demolished weapons storage bunkers, depriving federal and local police of weaponry and munitions.

  The broadcast media is calling for retaliatory strikes, without bothering to clarify where, exactly, the strikes should occur, since rebel strongholds have not yet been identified. The House of Law and Senate wrangle daily as members of the Assembly disagree on the best way to end the rebellion’s reign of terror. Most of their suggested solutions are completely ineffectual and several are downright disastrous. The measures with the greatest support — and therefore the most likely to be passed into law — are so draconian, humanity’s first codified law-giver, Hammurabi himself, would have protested the barbarity.

  Meanwhile, nothing actually gets done and the rebels continue attacking.

  P-Squad reprisals are turning savage as officers vent their anger, frustration, and fear on forcibly disarmed victims. The flow of convicted Grangers, sympathizers, dissidents, protestors, and angry, disillusioned subsistence recipients has risen from a steady river to a flood that has, by the end of one week, clogged the jails and tied up the courts. The speed with which Jefferson rockets its way toward planet-wide crisis surprises even me.

  And there is very little I can do about any of it.

  At the request of engineers from Shiva, Inc., Vishnu’s preeminent weapons lab, I have sent detailed diagnostics via SWIFT, listing system failures and the necessary parts required to repair or replace them. The ship is already in transit, leaving me with very little to do but await their arrival—

  A massive explosion rocks Madison. The flash creates a heat strobe that momentarily blots out every IR sensor still functioning. The shockwave rockets across my warhull with sufficient force to sing through my stern-mounted sensor arrays. The blast-point is less than three kilometers away from my position, originating in an enclave where Jefferson’s movie stars and POPPA’s upper echelon party members have built mansions behind heavily guarded gates and electrified perimeter fences.

  An eerie, chilling silence follows the blast. For a moment, it seems almost like the entire city has gone silent, listening for echoes of that explosion. Rain, pouring relentlessly from leaden skies, will at least help the fire department battle the blaze from whatever was just destroyed. This attack deviates sharply from previous rebel strikes, in that it has apparently targeted an entire neighborhood, rather than a surgically precise action against a specific individual. I am trying to consider the ramifications of this when a wildcat broadcast preempts the datanet.

  “Pigs of POPPA, be warned!” an angry, exultant voice shouts. “You ain’t seen nuthin’, you murderous bastards! You think Grangers are bad-ass? Hah! Oroton’s a goddamned pussy with gloves on. There ain’t never been gloves on our hands and there ain’t never gonna be, neither. We’re the Rat Guard Militia and we’re your worst fuckin’ nightmare!”

  The illegal broadcast ends.

  Vittori Santorini has a new enemy.

  Sirens have begun to scream as emergency vehicles rush toward the conflagration that is still burning, despite the heavy rain. By my conservative estimate, the bomb that went off was larger than the one Oroton’s crew detonated in my face. I wonder, abruptly, if Commodore Oroton really was the mastermind of the attack on me. Frank did not look or sound like a Granger. It would be nearly as difficult for a Granger to masquerade as an urban thug as it has been for an urban spy to pose as a Granger. Frank was one of a select crew that passed muster as politically trustworthy. Sar Gremian vetted the repair crew, himself, which suggests that Frank had no ties at all to anything or anyone remotely connected to Grangerism.

  In one sense, I am surprised that it has taken this long for an urban resistance movement to blossom. I mull variables and surmise that subsistence recipients, carefully indoctrinated with learned helplessness and systematically deprived of a genuine education, have never understood that thinking for one’s self is a desirable trait. It has taken both time and extreme discomfort with living conditions to rouse the urban population into a simple realization that something could be done and that they, themselves, can act on their own behalf.

  Clearly, it has occurred to someone, now.

  This does not bode well for the future of civil tranquility. The urban poor have been encouraged, for nearly twenty years, to turn their dissatisfaction into violent action, rioting and looting at command. POPPA’s favorite tactic for crushing Granger independence has now reached its ultimate and logical denouement: the mob has turned on its creator, as mobs have done throughout humanity’s gore-stained history.

  I pick up broadcasts as news crews rush to the scene of the explosion. I am able to “see” the damage via their electronic video footage, since it can be routed directly through my psychotronics, bypassing my malfunctioning sensors. That footage is spectacular. Breandan Shores, the most exclusive enclave of mansions anywhere on Jefferson, is a cratered ruin. The blast radius is nearly half a kilometer wide. It is impossible to tell how many homes have been destroyed, because there is very little left but mangled piles of smouldering rubble. Steam rises from it, meeting the rain that pours into the heart of the incinerated mass.

  The ring of secondary damage, beyond the actual crater, is a scene of carnage, with houses and retail stores caved in, windows shattered, and ground vehicles flipped end-for-end like jackstraws in a high wind. Emergency workers are searching the rubble, looking for survivors. There are not enough crews anywhere in Madison to deal with destruction of this magnitude. Madison’s civil emergency director issues a plea for rescue teams and medical professionals from other cities to help with the crisis.

  Pol Jankovitch, Jefferson’s preeminent news anchor, sits in his studio in downtown Madison, watching the footage from camera crews on the ground and in hovering aircars, and can
not find anything coherent to say. He mumbles in disjointed snatches. “Dear God,” he says over and over, “this is terrible. This is just terrible. Hundreds must be dead. Thousands, maybe. Dear God, how could they do it? Innocent people…”

  I doubt that Pol Jankovitch appreciates the irony of what he has just said.

  He has fostered, aided, and abetted a government that routinely and systematically scapegoated innocent people as a method of acquiring political power. He does not see, let alone understand, his own culpability, the personal responsibility he bears for having helped create the POPPA regime — and therefore, by logical extension, his responsibility for today’s bombing, in rebellion against POPPA’s preferred methods of governance.

  My personality gestalt circuitry, in a cross-protocol handshake of checks and balances, suppresses that line of thought. This is dangerous ground for a Bolo to tread. I am programmed for obedience to legitimate orders. I am not required to like or approve of those giving my orders. I am not designed to question the motives of those issuing orders, unless I am presented with clear evidence of treason to the Concordiat or am told to do something that violates my primary mission. I dare not enter the minefield of moral ambiguity that inevitably surrounds any questions of personal responsibility and duty.

  I concentrate, instead, on the unfolding news coverage as Jefferson’s media moguls attempt to come to grips with the reality of this newest attack. Speculation on who might have been killed runs rampant during the next thirty confused minutes. Pol Jankovitch, working from a hastily assembled map of the bombed area, runs down a laundry list of Jefferson’s glittering elite whose homes were inside the circle of destruction.

  Mirabelle Caresse, owned a mansion at what appears to have been the very center of the crater. Close neighbors included media tycoon Dexter Courtland; the mayor of Madison; and the Supreme Commandant of Jefferson’s P-Squads. Her closest neighbor, however, was Isanah Renke, who began her career as a POPPA party attorney advising the Santorinis as to what methods would prove most effective, from a legal standpoint, in their bid for power. Her reward for this fanatical support of POPPA’s credo of “universal fairness” and “the birthright of economic equity” was appointment to Jefferson’s High Court, where she has carried out a never-ending assault on various provisions in the constitution that the Santorinis found inconvenient, convincing other High Justices to uphold legislation that is at direct variance with constitutional provisions. She has also aided and abetted the destruction of the Granger population and culture by convincing the High Court to permit POPPA’s “work camps” to stand as legal, lawful entities.

  It would appear that Isanah Renke’s influence in the High Court has just come to an explosive end, since this is a Saturday and most government and corporate offices — including the High Court — are closed for the weekend.

  Witnesses from the edges of the blast zone describe in shaky detail the experience of being caught in the shockwave, which turned broken windows into flying knives and debris into shock-thrown shrapnel. Several of these surviving witnesses claim to have been inside the guarded enclave just before the blast, having delivered truckloads of supplies for a major social function at Mirabelle Caresse’s mansion. I theorize that at least one of those trucks was packed with something besides catering supplies.

  Thirty-eight minutes into the news broadcast, Vittori Santorini’s press secretary and chief propagandist, Gust Ordwyn, makes an appearance from the studio built inside the new president’s residence, the so-called “People’s Palace” commissioned by Vittori Santorini shortly after his landslide election. Mr. Ordwyn is visibly shaken as he steps up to the podium, where he faces a sea of reporters clamoring for details. There is fear in his eyes, but anger in his voice as he begins to speak.

  “The monstrous attack on Breandan Shores, today, has claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians and injured thousands more. This attack reveals with cold and graphic clarity how inhuman Granger cult fanatics really are. Their so-called rebellion is no longer a matter of attacks against hard-working police and dedicated public servants. These filthy terrorists will not rest until every decent, honest person on Jefferson is either dead or helpless under Granger guns and bombs. President Santorini is shocked and horrified by the carnage inflicted today. He understands only too bitterly the grief, the anguished outrage, suffered by the families of today’s victims. He, too, has lost a dearly loved family member. Vice President Nassiona…” Gust Ordwyn’s voice goes savagely unsteady.

  He wipes tears from his eyes as reporters watch in stunned silence. “Our beloved Nassiona, you see, was in Mirabelle Caresse’s mansion, today. Mirabelle had graciously opened her home to host a charity benefit, this afternoon, to raise money for medical care for poverty-stricken children. Nassiona had been in the mansion since early this morning, helping Mirabelle with preparations for the benefit. She was greeting guests when that foul, murderous bomb…”

  Vittori Santorini’s chief propagandist halts, choked into silence by the all-too-apparent rage and grief visible in his face. The reporters sit motionless, so stunned by this news that not one of them interrupts with questions. Despite the on-going attacks against police patrols and corrupt officials, Jefferson’s news media apparently believed that POPPA’s upper-echelon leadership was inviolate, safe from reprisals simply by virtue of their sanctified positions in the party. They are inviolate no longer. The reporters are confronting, for the first time in their professional careers, the brutal fact that no one, no matter how highly placed, is safe from the retribution of people who have had enough.

  Gust Ordwyn is preparing to speak again when a door to the left of the podium crashes open. Ordwyn turns sharply. The cameras swing around. Vittori Santorini bursts into the room with a thunderclap, eyes wild and full of lightning. Reporters surge to their feet, electrified by the appearance of Jefferson’s president. There is mad grief in Vittori Santorini’s gaze and hatred in the clawed fingers that shove Gust Ordwyn aside and latch onto the podium. He glares into the cameras, staring at something I suspect no one else can see, like a lunatic attacking shadows that do not exist. His mouth works soundlessly for seven point three-five seconds.

  When he finds his voice, the sound is harsh, like power saws biting into stone.

  “The people murdered today, helpless, innocent people in their own lovely homes, will be avenged. This savagery will not go unpunished! I will not rest until justice is served. I will not stop until we have spilled enough blood to appease our loved ones’ murdered souls. We must — we will — destroy these butchers, down to the last mad killer. Death, I say! Death to all of them, to all our enemies, everywhere. These terrorists must die. Must suffer terror and agony, as we have suffered. I swear before the gods of our ancestors, I will destroy these fiends!”

  The reporters sit in stunned silence.

  “Mark me well, for my patience is at an end. I have done with playing by civilized rules. The Granger scourge has forfeited any right to justice or compassion. They have nurtured their deadly cult of violence like a gardener tending rank weeds. They hate us blindly and absolutely. They have fed that hatred, fed it lovingly, like a madman flinging meat to wild lions. They have poisoned our soil, destroyed our world’s prosperity. We must heed the lessons taught by our holiest of books, lessons that give us this warning: ‘By their fruits shall ye know them.’

  “I ask you, my dearest friends, what are the fruits these Grangers have produced? Terrorism! Hatred! Murder! An army of sick monsters! They have fed their hatred with lies. They have smuggled in weapons from off-world gunrunners. They have ordered their butchers to kill us like rabid wolves. They have plunged a knife into the hearts and souls of POPPA’s finest and most generous…”

  His voice breaks apart like thin ice. He stands motionless behind the podium, staring wildly at nothing, not even the cameras. He swallows rapidly, blinks to clear wet eyes, then snarls with sudden rage.

  “It is not enough to arrest these fiends. The Grang
er scourge must be wiped out at the roots! And that is exactly what I pledge. I will use every means at my disposal to destroy that scourge. I will not be satisfied until every Granger on our lovely, wounded world has been rounded up and made to pay for their monstrous crimes against humanity! Death to Grangers!”

  Spittle flies. President Santorini is as out of control as the civil war raging through Jefferson’s canyons and city streets. It is, perhaps, impertinent of me, but no one appears to be interested in reminding the president that Grangers did not set off the bomb that killed his sister. I question his mental fitness to command, which sets up internal alarms and warnings that skitter and jump through my admittedly addled circuitry. Vittori Santorini’s personal grief — or rage — is not my affair.

  He is distraught, held fast in the grip of powerful emotions, but his orders regarding the Grangers are within the emergency powers granted the president by the constitution. Given a great-enough provocation, the total elimination of a deadly enemy is a viable response and is well within the parameters of my own battlefield programming. Today’s attack demonstrates more than sufficient provocation.

  The mastermind behind this raid is willing to destroy hundreds of innocent bystanders to assassinate a relative handful of prominent officials and party supporters. This action — and the concomitant threat of future atrocities — not only changes the playing field, it changes my role as one of the players. I am no longer merely an instrument by which POPPA maintains political control. I am a Bolo of the Dinochrome Brigade, a Unit of the Line charged with the defense of this world, which now hosts an enemy as deadly to the common good as any Deng Yavac I have faced.

  I revert to my true and primary function. There are only two questions remaining as barriers between this moment and one that lies inevitably ahead, when I will target the last enemy in my gunsights. How do I assign guilt where it belongs? Am I looking at two separate insurrections, one urban and one Granger? Or one all-encompassing alliance? And how long will it take the repair team on its way from Vishnu to restore me to battlefield status? I am still pondering these questions when Vittori Santorini — having reined in his wild emotions and regained his power of speech — addresses the shocked people in the studio and those listening to this broadcast.