Bolos: The Triumphant Part 24

"Go," she said flatly.

"I have engaged and destroyed one Fafnir-" Nike said.

"Christ!" someone muttered.

"-but not before it detached two Dragon Tooth-cla.s.s a.s.sault pods. I estimate their LZs lie approximately forty-five point three and fifty-one point niner kilometers respectively from my present position. I am currently en route to locate and destroy any hostile forces at those locations."

"How can we help?" Gonzalez demanded.

"Thank you for the offer," the soprano voice said, and Gonzalez' eyebrows rose as, even through her shock, she heard its genuine grat.i.tude. "If you will s.h.i.+ft to Condition Delta-Two, I will download my own tactical data to your onboard computers, but a Dragon Tooth pod is capable of landing up to a Mark XXV Bolo. It is therefore probable that the Enemy has deployed a force too heavy for your own units to engage successfully. I request that your battalion rendezvous at map coordinates Echo-Seven-Niner X-Ray-One-Three and stand by to a.s.sist my own operations."

"You've got it, Bolo. Watch yourself."

"Thank you, Colonel. If I may make another suggestion, it might be wise for you to broadcast a planet-wide alert of hostile action."

"We will." Gonzalez nudged her com tech's shoulder with a toe and jutted her chin at the panel while her own fingers darted over the master computer console. "Delta-Two on-line," she told Nike, and looked at her driver. "You heard the lady! Take us to the rendezvous coordinates--fast!"

Esteban was still staring at the explosion when a flicker of movement caught his eye. He snapped around, staring further south, and shock gave way to the fury of understanding as he saw the huge s.p.a.cecraft sweeping towards the field. It went into low-alt.i.tude hover almost directly above the old fleet base and began shedding AFV a.s.sault pods. Huge hatches gaped in its flanks, and a cloud of air-cavalry mounts erupted from them, followed within seconds by the first infantry a.s.sault vehicles on counter-grav drop rings.

That sight jerked him into motion. He thundered back down the stairs and into his communications center, and his lips drew back to bare his teeth as he flung himself into the chair before the console. He might never have seen Navy duty, but he'd always taken his responsibilities for the field more seriously than he chose to pretend to others. That was why he'd installed a certain landline link he'd never bothered to mention to anyone else.

He flipped up a plastic safety s.h.i.+eld, punched in a three-digit code, then rammed his finger down on the big red b.u.t.ton.

Fafnir One's CO pounded on his command chair arm and spouted a steady, monotonous stream of profanity. The attack which had begun so perfectly had gone to h.e.l.l in a handcart, and he was frantic to get back out into s.p.a.ce before something else went wrong.

The communications arrays were down--that much, at least, had gone according to plan--but nothing else had. The two Fafnirs had docked with Matucek's mother s.h.i.+p to take on the maximum personnel loads their life support would permit them to handle for an a.s.sault run, then made their approach from the planet's southern pole. It was the long way to reach their main objective, but it had let them come in over largely uninhabited terrain and, as a bonus, deploy the two Golems to cover their southern flank if the plan to deal with the Bolo had failed.

As, judging by the evidence, it had.

The transport commander swore again, harder. His tactical readouts confirmed it; the single shot that killed Fafnir Two had come from at least an eighty-centimeter h.e.l.lbore. That meant it could only have come from the Bolo, and he didn't even want to think about what else that might mean! His sensor section reported the Golems had separated before the attack, so they, at least, might have gotten down intact, but a quarter of the Marauders' infantry, half their air-cav, and ten percent of their Panthers had gone up with Fafnir Two.

He darted another look at the status board and felt a stab of relief. Ninety percent of their pa.s.sengers had launched. Another few seconds, and- "Last man out!" someone announced.

"Go! Get us the f.u.c.k out of here!" the CO shouted. The Fafnir's nose rose as it swung further north towards safety, and he glared at his com officer. "Tell Granger that G.o.dd.a.m.ned Bolo's still alive!"

Far below the hovering transport, a dozen slabs of duralloy armor slid sideways to uncover an equal number of dark, circular bores. Deep within the wells they had covered, long-quiescent circuitry roused as it received the activation command from Lorenco Esteban's distant communications console. Targeting criteria were pa.s.sed, receipted, evaluated, and matched against the huge energy source in the sky above.

My sensors detect a fresh burst of gravitic energy from the bearing of the Fleet Base. It is too heavy to emanate from any planetary vehicle and must, therefore, be the first Fafnir. It is accelerating away from the Base, but its commander appears to be no fool. Although I can detect his emissions, he remains too low for my fire control to acquire him. I compute a probability of 99.971 percent that his current maneuvers indicate the successful deployment of his a.s.sault force, but I cannot intervene.

"Missile acquisition! We've been locked up!" someone screamed. Fafnir One's commander started to twist towards the technician who'd shouted, but he never completed the motion.

Twelve surface-to-s.p.a.ce missiles launched on pillars of fire. Their target raced for safety as rapidly as its internal grav compensators permitted, so fast its bow glowed cherry red, but it never had a chance. The SSMs' conventional boosters blew them free of their silos, and they tilted, holding lock, and then went suddenly to full power on their own counter-grav. They overtook their victim just over three hundred kilometers downrange at an alt.i.tude of thirty-three thousand meters, and twelve twenty-kiloton warheads detonated as one.

There was no wreckage.

The warheads' glare was bright enough to bleach the brilliant sun of Santa Cruz even at three hundred kilometers' range, and Esteban snarled in triumph. He didn't know why anyone would want to attack his world, but he knew at least one bunch of the murderous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would never attack anyone else's.

Not bad fer an old crock with no formal trainin', he thought venomously, and then. Thank G.o.d Enrique an' 'Milla aren't back yet!

He shook himself and climbed back out of the chair. Whoever those people were, they weren't going to be very happy with him for wrecking their transport. On the other hand, he'd spent seventy years on this very hacienda. He knew places where an army of raiders couldn't find him.

He paused only long enough to grab the emergency supply pack he kept handy for search and rescue operations, slung a four-millimeter military power rifle over one shoulder, and vanished out the back door at a run.

My sensors detect the EMP of multiple nuclear detonations at a range of approximately 392.25 kilometers, bearing 030 degrees relative. This coincides with the estimated locus of the second Fafnir, and the previously detected heavy gravitic emissions have ceased. I compute a probability of 98.511 percent that the Fafnir has been destroyed by defensive fire, indicating that my Commander's friend Lorenco Esteban has managed to activate the Fleet Base defenses. I hope that he has not paid with his life for this success.

I detect two new emission sources. Their locations correspond to the projected landing loci of the previously observed a.s.sault pods. They match my files for SC-191(b) fusion plants, and are accompanied by narrow-band, encrypted communications transmissions. I attempt to penetrate the com link, but without immediate success. a.n.a.lysis indicates a sophisticated, multilevel security system.

I devote 1.0091 seconds to consideration of available data and reach a disturbing conclusion. The energy signatures are consistent with the power plants of a Mark XXIV or XXV Bolo; no other mobile unit mounts the SC-191(b). I do not know how the Enemy could have obtained current-generation Bolos, but if these are indeed Mark XXIVs or XXVs, I am grossly overmatched. Despite the superiority of the systems Major Stavrakas devised for me, I compute a probability of 87.46 percent, plus or minus 03.191 percent, that I will be destroyed by two Mark XXIVs, rising to 93.621 percent that I will be destroyed by two Mark XXVs. Yet my duty is clear. However the Enemy may have obtained access to such war machines, I must engage them.

"Colonel Gonzalez, I have detected what may be two hostile Bolos," the soprano voice said calmly, and Consuela Gonzalez' olive complexion went sickly gray.

Bolos? In the hands of planet-raiders? It wasn't possible! Yet she was receiving confirmation of nuclear air-bursts from outlying melon growers over the planetary com net, and the transmissions from Ciudad Bolivar were a babble of hysteria. Her com tech reported the sounds of explosions and heavy weapons fire in the background of the Bolivar transmissions. There could be no doubt that the capital--including her husband and children--was under heavy, ruthless attack, and no one had had even a hint of what was coming, not even a second to organize any sort of defense. Nausea twisted her stomach as she thought of all the civilians who must be dying even as her tank bucketed through the jungle a hundred kilometers to the south, and if the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds had Bolos- "What do you want us to do?" she rasped over the com.

"I will engage them, Colonel. Your own vehicles lack the capability to survive against them. Continue to the specified rendezvous, then advance at your best speed on a heading of two-six-three true for forty-two kilometers before changing to a heading of zero-three-niner. That course will pa.s.s to the west of the Enemy's current location and take you to Ciudad Bolivar in the shortest possible time."

"You can't take two other Bolos on your own!"

"Your a.s.sistance will not appreciably enhance my own combat capability, Colonel, and your units will be of far more utility to Santa Cruz in Ciudad Bolivar than they will if they are destroyed here. Please proceed as I have advised."

"All right," Gonzalez whispered, and then, even knowing it was a machine to whom she spoke- "Vaya con Dios, amiga."

Colonel Louise Granger stared at her display in shock. She didn't know what had happened to Fafnir Two--her transport command s.h.i.+p was on the wrong side of the planet, where it had just finished off the last communications array--but the sudden cessation of all transmissions from Fafnir One was chilling proof her careful battle plan had just been blown to h.e.l.l. One hadn't managed to report a d.a.m.ned thing about what was shooting back before whatever it was destroyed her, but she'd gotten off her full load of a.s.sault troops and armor to take out the field and the planetary capital before she died. That put her point of destruction well to the north of the Bolo depot, so whatever had killed her, it hadn't been the Bolo. Granger didn't know what else on the planet could have done the job, but whatever it was could only have come from the old fleet base, though how anyone could have had time to activate its defenses was beyond her. What she didn't know was whether or not Fafnir Two had gotten her Golems off before her destruction, and, unlike a Fafnir-cla.s.s transport--or a full-capability Bolo--a Golem had no subs.p.a.ce com capability. She couldn't find out what had happened to the huge tanks until her s.h.i.+p swung back over their radio horizon.

She felt the shock and dismay rippling through her operations staff, and she didn't blame them. But she also knew she had at least three quarters of her brigade's fighting power down on its primary objective and, presumably, intact. Whatever ground-to-air system had nailed Fafnir One wouldn't be much use against a ground a.s.sault, and she snarled at her shaken officers.

"How the f.u.c.k do I know what happened to her?! But whatever it was, it must've come from the Fleet Base, and we'll clear its horizon in fifteen minutes! Get on those command circuits and keep our people moving! Primary objective is now the complete--I repeat, complete--neutralization of that base!"

I continue my efforts to penetrate the Enemy's communications without success, yet a.n.a.lysis of their patterns convinces me that they are not the Total Systems Data-Sharing net of the Dinochrome Brigade. While they include what can only be interlinked tactical telemetry, they also include what are clearly voice transmissions. This indicates that my opponents are not, in fact, Bolos, and I compute a probability of 56.113 percent that they are actually Golem-IIIs or Golem-IVs. Possession of such vehicles by any Enemy, while still extremely improbable, is more likely than the possibility that the Enemy might somehow have acquired full-capability units of the Line. While the odds against my survival against properly coordinated Golems remain unfavorable, the probability of my destruction against Golem-IIIs drops from 87.46 percent to no more than 56.371 percent, although it remains on the close order of 78.25 percent against Golem-IVs. The probability that I can successfully destroy or at least incapacitate the enemy, on the other hand, has risen to 82.11 percent, regardless of the mark of Golem I may face.

My Battle Center cautions me to a.s.sume nothing, yet the intuitive function Major Stavrakas incorporated into my Personality Center argues otherwise. If I a.s.sume that these are, indeed, Golems and plan my tactics accordingly, my chance of victory--and survival--will be considerably enhanced. If I act on that a.s.sumption and it proves incorrect, my destruction will be a.s.sured. I consider for 0.90112 seconds and reach conclusion. I will a.s.sume my opponents are Golems.

Two huge war machines, each crewed by three very anxious humans, forged through the jungle like impatient t.i.tans, bulldozing their way through hundred meter trees while their commanders shouted at one another.

"It had to be the frigging Bolo!" Golem-Two's commander bellowed finally, stunning his counterpart in Golem-One into silence with sheer volume. "And if it was, it's coming after our a.s.ses next! So shut the h.e.l.l up and listen to me, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!"

"If there's a live Bolo out there, then let's get the f.u.c.k out of here!"

"No, d.a.m.n it! If we run, the d.a.m.ned thing'll come right up our a.s.ses, and we've already lost both Fafnirs. If it gets to the field, there's no way in h.e.l.l Granger or Matucek will risk trying to pick us up--it'd swat 'em like flies, if they did. If we want off this planet, we've gotta kill the f.u.c.king thing, and it's only a Mark XXIII!"

"Only!" the other commander spat.

"Shut up and activate Gamma-One!"

There was a long, frightened moment of silence, and then Golem-One rasped, "Activating."

a.n.a.lysis of enemy com patterns indicates that voice transmissions have ceased. I must a.s.sume the Enemy has concerted his plans, which suggests a strong probability (72.631 percent) that he intends to engage using a pre-packaged computer battle plan similar to those employed by Mark XV-Mark XIX Bolos.

I switch to hyper-heuristic mode. Since my Commander has never reported my actual capabilities, the Enemy will a.s.sume he is opposed by a standard Mark XXIII. Therein may lie my best opportunity for victory, for the basic Mark XXIII had a predilection for direct attacks. In this instance, however, I face two opponents. Each is armed with a marginally more powerful h.e.l.lbore than my own, but I possess two turrets. Unfortunately, to employ both of them will require me to turn broadside to my opponents, exposing my thinner flank armor to their fire. I must therefore entice them into committing to the attack. This would be difficult against full-capability Bolos, but a Golem will be able to respond only within the parameters of its pre-loaded tactical programs. It may, therefore, be possible to manipulate them into approaching in a manner of my choosing.

Ports pop open on my hull as I launch ground sensor remotes. Their motion detectors pick up the ground shocks of Bolo-range vehicles moving at high speed. Triangulation produces locations on two distinct motion sources, and I compute their general headings and consult my terrain maps yet again.

Their courses indicate they have not yet localized my own position, but they are operating in close company. I cannot ambush and engage one without being engaged by the other. On our present courses, I will encounter them from the flank in relatively flat terrain, but if they alter course towards me, I will encounter them in terrain much more favorable to my plans. I must therefore reveal my position and entice them into closing.

I compute a fire plan and enable my VLS cells.

The armored hatches of Nike's missile deck sprang open, and a cloud of missiles arced upward. In twelve seconds, each of her forty vertical launch system cells sent four heavy missiles shrieking downrange; then the hatches snapped shut once more, and the charging Bolo s.h.i.+fted course. She directed full power to her drive train, smas.h.i.+ng through the jungle at a reckless speed of over a hundred kilometers per hour. Not even her ma.s.sive weight could hold her steady, and she rocked and bucked like a drunken galleon while splintered jungle spat from her spinning treads.

Ten seconds after launch, the first missiles roared down on the two Golems. The launch range was too short for effective counter-missiles, but computer-commanded, direct fire anti-missile defenses swiveled and spat. There was too little engagement time to stop them all, but the Golem's computers concentrated on the ones which might have landed close enough to be a threat.

Half the incoming missiles vanished in midair fireb.a.l.l.s; the others impacted, and a hurricane of flame and fury lashed the jungle. The Golems' crewmen cringed at the carnage erupting beyond their vehicles' armored hulls, yet their computers had stopped the truly dangerous ones. More, their radar had back-plotted the fire to its point of origin. The mercenaries knew where it had come from now, and the Golems changed course towards it, exactly as their pre-packaged battle plan required.

The depot computers have now reconfigured the planetary surveillance system. I download data directly from it and quickly localize both Enemy vehicles. Optical examination confirms that they are Mark XXIV hulls, and both are now headed directly towards my launch point. I brake to a halt. The outcrop I have chosen for cover cuts off all radar, but I continue to track via the reconnaissance satellites. I am now certain my opponents are not Bolos, for they have closed up on one another to advance side by side down the valley which breaks the ridge line. My track s.h.i.+elds drop into place, and I divert power to strengthen my starboard battle screen while I compute ranges carefully. I wait, then throw full power to my drive train.

Rooster tails of pulped tree and soil flew from Nike's treads as she exploded from cover. Her course took her directly across the oncoming Golems' path at a suicidally short range of less than a thousand meters.

The humans crewing those Golems had no time to react, and if their computers were just as fast as Nike's, they lacked the cybernetic initiative of a self-aware Bolo. Golem-Two's computers had deflected its h.e.l.lbore to cover the eastern side of the valley as they advanced while Golem-One's took responsibility for the west.

Nike appeared suddenly directly ahead of Golem-One. Golem-Two had no time to relay its main battery, and, unlike either Golem, Nike had known exactly where to look for her enemies. Golem-One's turret swiveled with snakelike speed, but Nike had a fraction of a second more to aim, and a fraction of a second was a long, long time for a Bolo.

The westernmost Golem and I fire within 0.000003 seconds of one another, but my opponent's shot is rushed. It is unable to acquire a fatal aim point, while my own shots are direct hits on center of ma.s.s.

Lightning bolts of plasma crossed one another, and none of the humans aboard the mercenary tanks had time to realize they were dead. At such short range, Nike's plasma bolts ripped through their battle screen, thick ablative armor, and ma.s.sive glacis plates as if they were tissue. The bottles of their forward fusion plants ruptured, and a thousand-meter circle of thick, damp jungle blazed like Thermite as the intolerable thermal bloom flashed outward. Every organic compound aboard both Golems flared into flaky ash, and then there was only the hungry sound of fires raging deeper into the jungle and the indescribable crackle of duralloy dying in the heart of an artificial sun.

Yet Golem-One's single shot was not completely in vain.

Agony explodes through my pain sensors. My battle screen has only limited effect against h.e.l.lbore fire, and the nearer Golem's plasma bolt rips deep into me. My ceramic armor appliques dissipate much of its power, yet they were not designed to defeat such ma.s.sive energy loads. The bolt strikes the face of my after h.e.l.lbore turret, whose duralloy armor is 300 percent thicker than that which protects my flank, but even that is far too thin to stop the Enemy fire.

My after turret explodes. The ma.s.sive barrel of h.e.l.lbore Number Two snaps like a twig, and overloaded circuits scream as energy bleeds through them, yet my turret is designed to contain and localize damage. Internal disrupter s.h.i.+elds seal its central access trunk, and the force of the explosion vents upward. The turret roof is peeled back in jagged tangles of duralloy, destroying my main after sensor array, and Disrupter s.h.i.+eld Fourteen fails. Back blast destroys Infinite Repeaters Eight and Nine, cripples my starboard quarter anti-personnel cl.u.s.ters, and severely damages Point Defense Stations Thirty through Thirty-six, but secondary s.h.i.+elds prevent more serious damage.

I am badly hurt, but my opponents have been destroyed. I initiate a full diagnostic and enable my damage control systems. Current capability has been reduced to 81.963 percent of base capability and my gutted turret represents a dangerous c.h.i.n.k in my armor, but damage control will restore an additional 06.703 percent of base capability within 43.44 minutes, plus or minus 8.053 seconds. I remain combat capable.

My diagnostic subroutines are still cycling when my radar detects a low-orbit target. It is unidentified, but I compute a 95.987 percent probability that it is the mother s.h.i.+p of the Fafnir-cla.s.s transports.

"My G.o.d!" Louise Granger's voice was a whisper as her sensors showed her the terrible heat signature of the dead Golems, and the full, hideous truth registered. Only one thing could have stopped both Golems side-by-side in their tracks, and even as that thought flashed through her mind, her sensor section found the Bolo itself.

Her head whipped around, her eyes like daggers as they bit into Mister Scully's suddenly terrified face.

"So much for your brilliant plan, you worthless b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said almost conversationally.

I track the mother s.h.i.+p. My single remaining h.e.l.lbore locks on, and I rock on my treads as I fire my fourth main battery war shot.

Huge as it was, Li-Chin Matucek's mother s.h.i.+p was a freighter, not a s.h.i.+p of the line, and Nike's h.e.l.lbore was equivalent to the main battery weapons of a dreadnought. Her plasma bolt impacted on its port bow and ripped effortlessly through bulkhead after bulkhead. It chewed its way over four hundred meters into the s.h.i.+p's hull before it finally found something fatal, and Louise Granger, Li-Chen Matucek, Gerald Osterwelt, and four hundred other men and women vanished in the sun-bright boil of a breached fusion bottle.

-18 -.

Neither my own sensors nor the planetary surveillance system detect additional s.h.i.+ps in Santa Cruz orbit. The destruction of his transports has marooned the Enemy's forces on the planet, but the recon satellites report that the rough equivalent of a Concordiat Medium Mechanized Brigade (manned) has landed successfully. Much of Ciudad Bolivar's eastern suburbs are in flames, the Fleet Base is completely occupied, and the Enemy is continuing to advance and secure his position as I watch.

I am not certain of the Enemy's intentions in this changed tactical situation. His continued offensive action may simply indicate that he has not yet realized he is cut off. It may, however, reflect instead his knowledge that additional forces are en route to reinforce him. In the latter case, it is clearly imperative to deny him any s.p.a.cehead to serve as a recovery LZ. Moreover, his motives matter less than the consequences of his actions, for Santa Cruzans are dying in enormous numbers as I watch.

Smoke pours from the ruins of my after turret, but I bring myself back to a heading of 029 degrees true and add Colonel Gonzalez' Wolverine to the planetary surveillance net. For the moment, my own systems drive the display in her tank, but I reprogram her primary telemetry link to become a direct feed from the satellites in the event that I am destroyed.

"Colonel Gonzalez?"