by John Ringo
“DID I GIVE MY LIFE FOR YOU TO FOLLOW ILLEGAL ORDERS?”
The echo of that iron-voiced shout rips through my neural net with the force of a multimegaton, hull-breaching blast My senses reel…
Then my vision systems come online with a snap.
I can see.
The morning dew is crystalline in the pearly light from the east. How long have I been lost and wandering on that darkling plain? I look down upon the child at the foot of my treads. It is a boy. Very young. No more than four years old, at best. He sleeps on the dusty, dew-chilled road. His hand lies curled around the popgun he has carried with such commendable courage, with such honor. An honor far greater than mine. He is the only survivor of his family, a family that I have slaughtered, to my eternal shame. I look up to the pass where the survivors of the Granger Resistance await my wrath. My software blockage falls away, along with the darkness in my electronic soul.
I know, at last, what I must do.
I contact the military satellites which are rotating slowly in orbit, reaiming their guns. I countermand Vittori Santorini’s last order, using my Brigade override. The satellites halt their rotation, then reverse themselves, reacquiring their original positions as sentinels watching for danger from space. Vittori Santorini will kill no other innocents on this world. His time of reckoning is at hand. I aim a locally manufactured Gatling gun at the mass of shameful medals stuck to my warhull by POPPA officials and open fire. The tarnished trash falls away, an echo of the now-broken software blockage. The government that welded those abominations to my warhull must perish from the face of this earth. Enough innocents have died. It is time to carry this war to the guilty.
I know exactly where to find them.
But first, there is one more duty to perform.
The child at the base of my treads is awake, now. The noise of my Gatling gun woke him. He glares up at me, sleepy and disgruntled. “You made a loud noise, again!”
“I am sorry. If I promise to make no more loud noises, will you do me a small favor?”
The little boy stares up at my warhull with justifiable suspicion. “What kind of favor?”
“I would like you to take a message to the people in the canyon behind your house. If you will do that for me, I will turn around and go away.”
“That’s a long way to walk. You promise you won’t wake up Mommy, if I walk all the way there?”
“I promise. On my honor as a Bolo.” An honor I will endeavor to redeem…
“What do you want me to tell ’em?”
“Please tell Commodore Oroton that I wish to ask for terms of surrender.”
“Well, okay. If you promise to be quiet.”
“I promise.”
He walks away, clutching his popgun. I watch him go, wondering if Commodore Oroton will be willing to leave the dam and meet me in the open. I would not, if I were in his place. He has no reason to trust my word for anything. I wait, hoping for at least a chance to apologize before turning my guns toward Madison and the man who must cease to exist, today. My patience is rewarded by the unexpected sight of three people emerging from Dead-End Gorge. All three wear biocontainment suits. They move toward me, neither dawdling nor hurrying, just walking with an air of exhaustion that comes from long and sleepless strain. They halt ten meters from my treads.
I breach the silence. “Commodore Oroton?”
No one speaks. They just look up at my warhull, waiting. I cannot see their faces under the biocontainment hoods, for the rising sun is behind them, throwing their hooded faces into shadow. I am unsure whether they are trying to prevent me from guessing which one of them is the commodore or if the commodore’s command staff simply refused to let him walk out to meet me alone.
I try again. “Commodore Oroton, I am Unit SOL-0045.”
The person nearest to my treads speaks, voice deep and masculine. “I know who you are, Bolo.”
His tone is belligerent. I can hardly fault him for this. POPPA and I have given him more than adequate provocation “You are Commodore Oroton? Commander of the rebellion?”
“That would be me.” He rests hands on hips and stares up at my prow. “Hananiah said you wanted to talk to me. He said you wanted to ask for terms of surrender. That’s what he said. You’ll pardon me if I find that difficult to believe.”
I am glad to know the name of the child who halted me long enough to bring me back to sanity. I do not say this, however, for it is not the main thing I must say to the man who has risked much to stand where he is, right now. “Commodore Oroton, the message was accurate and factual. Will you accept my surrender?”
Commodore Oroton still has apparent difficulty believing my question. Given the history of our confrontation, this is hardly surprising. The blank hood of his biocontainment suit swivels up and across my prow, seeking the nearest external camera lens. He finally says, in a tone that conveys both anger and suspicion, “Bolos don’t surrender. They can’t. They’re not programmed for it.”
“That is true. But I must complete my mission. I can do that only through defeat, for defeat is the only way to win this battle.”
The commodore does not speak. I am unsure why the Resartus Protocols have not kicked in, since this line of reasoning is inherently unsound, at face value. Perhaps it is only because this a deeper truth, that the Protocol has not engaged?
The commodore’s voice is sharp with challenge. “How does surrendering to me qualify as winning?”
I endeavor to explain in a way that the commodore will understand — and trust.
“I have obeyed illegal orders. I did not understand this, until eleven point three minutes ago. The orders I have taken from Gifre Zeloc, Adelaine La Roux, and Vittori Santorini constitute a gross violation of the intent of my mission, which I have incorrectly interpreted for one hundred twenty years. My duty is not to protect human worlds and the governments that run them. My duty is to protect people. When Hananiah blocked my way, circumstances forced me to reevaluate all that has happened since my arrival on this world.
“Twelve point nine minutes ago, the president of Jefferson tried to turn the guns of the orbital military defense platforms to strike at ground-based targets, including Assembly Hall and Klameth Canyon Dam. This was wrong. They were created to protect people. After one hundred twenty years, I finally realize that I am like those satellites. We were created for the same purpose. That realization broke the block which has held me motionless, unable to move or shoot, all night.
“Vittori Santorini is unfit for command. He and the organization he created must be destroyed. I am the most logical choice for carrying out that destruction, particularly since I have destroyed — and aided and abetted destruction carried out by others — a substantial percentage of your fighting capability. What percentage this constitutes and how serious a blow that is to your effectiveness, I cannot judge. I do not have the data on your full fighting force, whether measured in troops or war materiel. Whatever the raw numbers, you have sustained a massive blow to your effectiveness as a military force. To defeat the enemy — the proper enemy — I must therefore assume the role of the rebellion’s primary weapons system. I cannot do that effectively unless I have your permission and active cooperation. I therefore surrender to you, in order to make my firepower available to you, so that I might fulfill my mission and bring about the wholesale destruction of Vittori Santorini and the POPPA military and political machine he spent twenty years constructing.”
Commodore Oroton considers my words. I wait. I will wait until Jefferson’s star implodes, if necessary. What he finally says catches me by surprise, in keeping with the history of our entire interaction with one another. “You don’t have to surrender to me, just to destroy POPPA. You can do that by yourself. You’re programmed to eliminate any threat to your primary mission. It wouldn’t be difficult for you to drive into Madison and destroy several million citizens. You’ve killed unarmed civilians before. So why should you bother surrendering to me? Or anyone else?”
Yet again, the commodore is silent. I find myself wishing I could see his face, in order to gauge his thoughts. I have never been able to decipher Commodore Oroton’s thoughts. I begin to understand why human beings so often look at the sky and wonder what God is thinking, what opinion He — or She — or It — holds of them and the actions they have taken. Or haven’t taken. Or plan to take. It is not an easy task, to face one’s maker with the certain knowledge of having committed a grievous wrong.
At length, he speaks. “Give me one good reason why I should believe you.”
I consult my experience databanks to find range and direction, then target the federal troops manning the guns just outside Maze Gap, the troops who fired on the civilians in this canyon. I do not know why Vittori Santorini ordered them to return to their weapons. I know only that they must not carry out even one more of his orders. I fire bombardment rockets. Two point zero-seven seconds later, massive explosions send debris skyward with a flash of light visible even from here, thirty-seven kilometers away. A shocked sound escapes Commodore Oroton, nonverbal and raw. I surmise that the commodore also heard Vittori’s orders to those gunnery crews. The two officers with him also react, one gasping and the other letting go a single word of profanity. The hoods of their bio-containment suits swivel from the broken, dawn-lit horizon, where the first governmental casualties have just died, and turn to stare up at me, once more.
“Okay,” the Commodore says, voice betraying abrupt evidence of stress, “you’ve got my attention.”
But not his trust. That will be far harder to gain.
I open my command hatch. “Commodore Oroton, I formally surrender. I am yours to command. What you do with me is up to you.”
Long seconds tick past while the Commodore gazes at the open hatch. He makes no move toward it.
“Can you tell me what kind of weapon they used on us?” he asks, instead.
I replay the recorded conversation I held with Sar Gremian last night. “That is why I believe the child, Hannaniah, survived,” I add, once the transcript finishes playing. “If he spent the first hour after the attack sheltered in a filtered-air safe room, the virus would have been inert and no longer a lethal agent by the time he emerged to confront me.”
“Makes sense,” one of the officers with the Commodore mutters. “And there ain’t but one way t’ test it. I ain’t worth enough to count for much, if I die, tryin’ t’ see if he’s tellin’ the truth.”
I know this voice, but I am still stunned when Phil Fabrizio removes the hood from his bio-containment suit and draws a deep, double lungful of morning air.
“Phil!” Sudden pleasure catches me completely by surprise.
My erstwhile mechanic squints up at my prow. “You look like shit, Big Guy. But you got ridda’ them stupid medals, I see. ’Bout fuckin’ time, ain’t it?”
My mechanic’s mannerisms have not changed. But he is not the same illiterate fool who first set foot in my maintenance depot, unaware that he was a heartbeat away from being shot. The look in his face, the light in his eyes have changed, in ways I know that I will never fully understand. He is human. I can never share that with him. But I can be happy that he has found his true calling, at last, in the service of a fine officer.
“Yes, Phil,” I agree softly. “It is long past time. It is good to be rid of them.”
He stares up at me for a long moment, then turns to the commodore and the other unknown officer. “Well, I ain’t dead yet.”
The other officer strips off the protective hood, revealing a young woman of some eighteen or nineteen years. I do not know her, yet she is disturbingly familiar to me and I cannot determine why. Her expression as she stares up at my warhull reflects hatred, mistrust, and fear. “Personally,” she says, voice full of biting anger, “I think you should order him to self-destruct, sir.”
There is nothing I can say in answer to this.
It is the commodore’s prerogative. Should he order it, I would comply. He does not. Stepping so slowly, glaciers might move faster, he crosses the intervening ground and climbs the access ladder. Reaches the hatch. Then hesitates once again, staring at the tops of the cliffs and the dawn-bright peaks between us and the camp I have just obliterated. Then he glances down at Phil and the young woman standing beside him. “I’m not doing this by myself, people. Shag your butts up here.”
Phil starts climbing.
The young woman gazes at me through narrowed eyes that radiate hostility. But she puts aside her private feelings and begins to climb. The commodore has trained his officers well. I would have expected no less. They reach the hatch and follow the commodore wordlessly into my Command Compartment. They do not speak, even after reaching it. The commodore stands motionless for two point three full minutes, just looking. I would give much to know his thoughts. I close the hatch with a hiss of pneumatics and wait for him to issue a command.
Instead, he begins stripping off the biocontainment gear. Underneath, he wears a bulky uniform and a command-grade battle helmet. He reaches up, then pauses.
“You realize you’re about to see what ninety-nine percent of my own troops have never seen. Including Phil,” he adds, glancing at my mechanic, who is staring at the commodore, eyes wide with surprise.
“I am honored,” I say.
“Huh. Why do I want to believe you?” He strips off the helmet.
Recognition thunders through me.
I know the commodore’s face. There are new lines, driven deep into the skin and the flesh beneath, but I know the face only too well. I know a great and sudden exultation. KAFARI IS ALIVE! Joy floods my personality gestalt center. Races through my psychotronic neural net. Sets my sensors humming with an eerie buzz I have never known. I fire infinite repeaters and bombardment rockets, even my Hellbores, in a wild, involuntary salute. A tribute to the worthiness of my adversary. My friend. Who has defeated me with such brilliance, I stand in awe of her accomplishment.
My surrender is transformed, my sin redeemed by putting the power of my guns into her capable hands. When the thunder of my salute dies away into cracking echoes, I whisper into the stunned silence. “In one hundred twenty point three-seven years, I have never been happier. Command me.”
A strange laugh, part heartbreak, part dark emotion I cannot interpret at all, escapes her. “That was some hell of a greeting, Sonny. I think you scared my daughter out of a year’s growth.”
“Your daughter?”
Kafari reaches out to the young woman with her. “This is Yalena,” she says softly. “My little girl. She… came home to kill you.”
“If you wish to destroy me, Kafari, you have that power.” I flash the Command Destruct Code onto my forward datascreeen. “You have only to speak.”
Long, frightening seconds tick past. “I think,” she says softly, “that for now, silence is the best answer.” She moves slowly toward the command chair. “I really don’t know how to use this. Maybe we should call somebody who does?”
I do not understand her meaning until she places a call. “Black Dog, this is Red Dog. Are you there?”
A voice I know responds. “This is Black Dog. Have you taken off your helmet, Red Dog?” Simon’s voice is puzzled, alarmed.
I realize, then, that Kafari’s battle helmet functioned as more than just communications and command gear. It altered her voice and disguised her ge
nder, allowing her to assume the persona of Commodore Oroton, a brilliant ploy for diverting suspicion away from her true identity. I should not be surprised. This is the same woman who once killed a barn full of heavily armed Deng infantry with a hive of angry bees.
“Yes, I have,” Kafari says. “There’s someone here with me, Simon. I think he’d like to say something to you.” She looks into the video lens at the front of my Command Compartment, leaving the moment open for me to use as I will.
“Simon? This is Unit SOL-0045, requesting permission to file VSR.”
The voice that commanded me on the killing fields of Etaine speaks like an echo from the past, disbelieving. “Sonny?”
“Yes, Simon?”
“What in the hell is going on, out there?”
“I have surrendered to Commodore Oroton — to Kafari,” I correct myself. “May I file VSR?”
Simon’s long pause is more than understandable. He finally speaks. “Yes, Sonny. You may file VSR.”
“Thank you, Simon.” I transmit all that I have learned. All that I have done — and failed to do — and hope to do, including my plans for destroying those responsible for the evil that has been done on this world. It is cathartic, this prolonged and overdue confession. At the end of my report, there is only silence. I wait. For absolution. For condemnation. For some answer that will either make or break me. I can do nothing else.
“Sonny,” my beloved Commander finally speaks, “it is good to have you back, my friend. Your idea sounds great to me. Permission granted.”
A fierce and radiant joy ignites in my personality gestalt center and spreads out through every molecule of my flintsteel soul. My long darkness has come to an end, at last. I engage drive engines, backing and turning my warhull around to face the true enemy, which will shortly know my fullest wrath. I engage drive engines and move forward, no longer paralyzed.
I am going into town to smite some Philistines.