Bolos: Honor of the Regiment Part 18

"I hope," the Bolo agreed. "It is not clear that it will suffice."

"Get their bacterial ship, that's all we ask."

"Telemetry indicates that it is lining up for its run."

"But?"

"There are two ships lining up in suitable trajectories."

"Scheisse!" Furiously Rheinhardt pulled the Combat Helmet over his head. The main display was dark, broken. But the left side display gave him a distorted orbital view. Two dots on an identical track glowed a fierce red.

"I am curious," the Bolo said, "does the use of native invective over foreign invective indicate greater or lesser concern?"

Rheinhardt was relieved of the need to reply by the interruption of the recovery team's leader. "Sir, we are ready."

"Pull away!" Rheinhardt and the Bolo called in unison.

"You will need to visit a decompression chamber soon, Colonel," the Bolo said above the groan of cables stretched taut.

"Decompression?"

"You went from two thousand meters to sea level in short seconds," the Bolo explained.

"That explains the headache."

"Probably, although you were bounced around a lot," the Bolo concurred. "Movement. Tell them a bit more."

"A bit more!" Rheinhardt called out.

"Yes sir!"

"That's it!" the Bolo said. "Just in time, here they come. There are two targets, nearly in line. Tell the recovery team that I am going to traverse."

"The Bolo's going to traverse its main gun, stand clear."

"Yes sir," the recovery officer replied. "The enemy is attacking again."

"Clear your men out, monsieur."

"If you permit, I should like to stay with you."

"I have far more protection than you could possibly achieve," Rheinhardt replied. "Go with your men. Return, if you can."

"You may depend on it."

"The recovery team is clear," the Bolo said a few moments later. "They have retreated to a hillock some four kilometers from us. They should be relatively safe from interference."

"That's a relief," Rheinhardt said. "I appreciate their efforts."

"Enemy on the horizon. The lead craft is clearly the a.s.sault craft and shielding the bacteriant," the Bolo decided, "I shall fire at the second craft. Elevation computed, set. Main gun charging."

Rheinhardt listened to the huge whine of the plasma gun warming up. The second ship, protected by the a.s.sault force. The Bolo's power displays. The amount of energy required for the orbital shot. Elevation. Tracking. Enemy acquired. Wait! Aloud, Rheinhardt shouted: "Bolo, wait!"

A bright ray pierced the sky and was lost in the distance.

"Target destroyed," the Bolo reported. The drone of its discharging main gun was pierced by a metallic whang.

"Main turbine bearings destroyed, main gun inoperative," the Bolo reported. "You said wait, why?"

Rheinhardt groaned. "The first craft is the bacteriant, not the second."

There was a long pause. "Confirmed, bacteriant still on course," the Bolo agreed, "there is much communication between the remaining ships. Also, I detect an a.s.sault force aligned for another run against this unit." The Bolo paused, "Could you explain how you arrived at your conclusion?"

"From your reconstruction of the previous engagement and what we've seen so far, the enemy are not very valorous. Seeing the bacteriant 'giving them cover' would hearten the ground a.s.sault troops," Rheinhardt explained. "They have a reserve a.s.sault ship so they will still be able to defeat us. Without the bacteriant-" Rheinhardt's brow narrowed as a thought struck, "how are you getting your information about enemy traffic?"

"The communications satellites," the Bolo responded. "They're very efficient. They've nearly cracked the enemy's communications codes."

"Those aren't satellites!" Rheinhardt exclaimed, he slammed his hand down on the Mayday b.u.t.ton. Rheinhardt pulled the shattered Combat Vehicular Communications helmet off his head, and found the handmike. The "transmit" light glowed feebly as he called, "Mayday, Mayday, Bolo Das Afrika Korps requests and requires a.s.sistance!"

"The enemy are on final run, now," the Bolo informed him. "I have no response to the Mayday. Ten seconds and no response. Power critical! Enemy a.s.sault in twelve . . . Eleven . . . Total system failure in fifteen seconds . . ."

"Bolo Das Afrika Korps, this is Surveillance Bolo US Seventh Corps, describe nature of emergency," A very American voice called over Rheinhardt's helmet.

"Bolo Das Afrika Korps, this is Surveillance- no, Combat Bolo Zhukov. Are you prepared to copy?"

"Bolo Das Afrika Korps, Bolo Indefatigable here," A clipped English accent intoned precisely. "I wish to report hostile s.p.a.cecraft."

"All units engage all s.p.a.cecraft, all units engage!" Rheinhardt ordered.

"Request confirmation," Bolo Zhukov said.

"Confirmation required," Bolo US Seventh Corps agreed.

"This is colonel Karl Rheinhardt of the Bayerische Kriegsarmee-" the "transmit" faded out. No more power. The radio was dead.

"Confirmation required," Bolo Indefatigable reiterated, in tones that made it clear Rheinhardt's standing meant nothing.

In feeble anger, Rheinhardt beat the combat helmet against his restraints. Over! It was all over. For nothing.

"Well, Bolo Das Afrika Korps, we tried," he said at last. "It was a good try but we failed in our mission."

Outside, above him, Rheinhardt heard the rising roar of the incoming attack craft.

Rheinhardt started at a crack and hiss. The speaker! The "transmit" light was on again! He leaned forward, placing his ear over the speaker grille. Faintly, feebly came, "This is Bolo Das Afrika Korps confirming orders of commander Rheinhardt."

"Righto, then, let's be about it," Bolo Indefatigable called to the others. "You heard the commander. Get the big b.u.g.g.e.rs first, then the little ones."

Far up in s.p.a.ce, mechanisms that had not moved in centuries engaged, moving with unworn precision. Like spiders moving on a web, the Bolos detached from their communications antennae, brought their immense fusion reactors to full power, charged weaponry, and scanned the skies around them.

"There's an a.s.sault force on final run for you, Das Afrika Korps, can you handle it?" Bolo US Seventh Corps asked.

"Negative," the bolo replied.

Rheinhardt grabbed the mike, "a.s.sist us only if you can destroy the enemy attack. And speak up, i'm deaf."

"Understood," Bolo US Seventh Corps replied.

"Tallyho!" Bolo Indefatigable shouted gleefully. "I got the first one."

"I have sighted on the command ship, am engaging," Bolo Zhukov reported.

"I have engaged . . . and destroyed the bacteriological ship," the Bolo Indefatigable reported. Then, in shocked tones, "The b.u.g.g.e.rs are running away!"

"Re-targeting," the drawl of Bolo US Seventh Corps informed them. "Targets acquired, targets engaged."

Above him, Rheinhardt could hear the approaching whine of the enemy a.s.sault force. A series of sonic booms burst the air. When his hearing returned, the whine was gone.

"All targets destroyed," the Bolo US Seventh Corps reported.

"Those that didn't run away," Bolo Indefatigable humphed bad-temperedly.

In the stillness that followed, Rheinhardt's buzzing ears did not catch the final faint words. "Bolo Das Afrika Korps reports, mission accomplished. . . ."

GHOSTS.

Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg

The Mark LX looked across the battlefield, and felt a sudden sense of disorientation. This was something beyond its experience, beyond its programming, and it searched its data banks, looking for clues, for ways to interpret the situation--and in the process, tapped into a racial memory and withdrew a ghost. . . .

Into the depths of the Ardennes Forest, the Mark LX, then a Panzer unit, rolled, its crew struggling to hold on as it lurched across the terrain amid the high and terrible sounds of ordnance exploding all around them.

The Mark LX was barely sentient then, aware of its surroundings only in the dullest, most simplistic way. The thunder of the exploding sh.e.l.ls hardly impinged upon its consciousness as it sent one incendiary after another into the heat and the distance, trusting implicitly in its spotter, not even wishing to take command of its own actions.

Now, at a distance of millennia, the LX realized that in that battle, amid the noise of the sh.e.l.ls and the screams of the dying, it had achieved a sense of security, a contentedness which it was sure it had never known again . . . and then, even as it reveled in the feeling of purposefulness and fulfillment, it had taken a direct hit. Its electrons began to disa.s.sociate in ways that would not be understood or remedied for many centuries. The LX swerved sharply, collided with a tree that turned out to be much st.u.r.dier than it looked, and then blew up, its pieces flung in large, majestic scoops to the level of high branches, seizing the glint of the sun and then falling onto the heaving, twitching bodies of the men surrounding it.

Consciousness began leaving the LX. It fought desperately to remain aware, to learn from its experience, to store some tiny fragment of the knowledge it had acc.u.mulated this day. In a matter of seconds it expired, its soul leaking into the mud of the Ardennes Forest. And still its soul, for there is no scientific name for it, clung to the tiniest vestige of consciousness.

Centuries and millennia pa.s.sed, and still that tiny spark of awareness remained, the feeling of accomplishment, semi-comatose but never quite extinguished. Arched against the tinted suns and the rockets, the converted Panzer, now older than anything which its ordnance had ever touched, lurked in the stippled and buried vegetation of another land, awaiting, always awaiting, its next call to battle.

Shape-changers.

That was the only information it could find in its cybernetic retrieval bank.

The enemy could a.s.sume any form, speak any tongue, mimic anything imagined or imaginable. They had built their linkage to the stars upon their ability to a.s.sume a thousand masks and doff them only at the moment of treachery and murder.

Except for its tiniest remnant of its primordial emotion in the Ardennes, the vision of its own destruction, this seemed to be the only thing the LX knew, the only knowledge that had been imparted to it: the enemy were shape-changers.

Who are you? the LX said, scrutinizing the thing in the clearing, a near mirror image of itself, perhaps with a little more scarring, but possessing the same deep ports for eyes, the same efficient sound receptors.

That does not matter, the thing said. The question is your own ident.i.ty. I have been waiting for you to return from your slumber. You are old and brutalized beyond repair. See yourself through my eyes. Something will have to be done; you cannot possibly remain in this condition. Do you even know who or where you are? Report to me, give me a situation estimate.

I cannot, admitted the Mark LX. It examined the ghosts that pa.s.sed for its memory, the bits and pieces of its rudimentary personality that seemed to have been imperfectly retained. It grasped desperately for something, anything, to cling to, any remnant of its ident.i.ty. There was its serial number, of course, but beyond that, there was only the forest, the sight and sound of the incendiaries exploding as it took its final hit. And a sense of something: Pride? Shame? Triumph? Fear? It struggled to remember, but the ghosts receded just beyond its mental reach.

Still the Bolo knew instinctively that there were the same incendiaries deep within it now, as it knew that there was a way to track that ordnance and bring it to full power, though it could not remember exactly how this was to be done. It seemed so distant, so dreamlike compared to the reality of the eons-gone forest and the dead and dying men.

I thought so, said the thing in the clearing. You can recollect nothing. You understand nothing. You are useless, useless and fabricated and dangerous, half a device at best. You are to be decommissioned.

No, thought the LX; no, this was not possible. And triggered deep within its consciousness came a single directive, a directive that seemed to have evolved on its own and spread through every molecule, every atom of its essence: Resist Decommissioning.

Suddenly the Bolo was overcome by a fear and hatred for this doppleganger, this reflection that blithely ordered its self-destruction. The enemy were shape-changers; it did not wish to be decommissioned; therefore, this must be the enemy, no matter how much like a twin it appeared.

But there was a gap in its memory, a total lack of transition from the Ardennes to this alien place and time. Could this actually be another Bolo, a Bolo with mind intact, ordering it to decommission until its sentience could be restored to total efficiency?

But if so, why this feeling? Why did these ghosts of an unremembered past tell it to resist? It did not know, and it resolved to buy time to sort the matter out.

Who are you? demanded the Bolo. Identify yourself at once or risk demolition.

You fool, said the thing, don't you know what I am? I'm an LX just as yourself, and there are battalions of us ma.s.sed in the vicinity. Something happened to you in the last engagement; somehow you've lost your memory. Let me explain the situation to you: each of us, one by one, has come to this clearing, ready at last for our newer tasks, our new programming. Don't you understand that it's time for you to do the same?

I don't know, said the Mark LX. Slowly it moved forward, felt the rotation of its treads, a slight sense of regained control as it moved toward the thing. All of you the same vintage, the same model? it said. It does not seem possible.

What do you know of possibility? said the thing, and somewhere within its own secret s.p.a.ces lit a fuse. The fuse spat, there was a sudden light in the clearing, and the Bolo could see the hazy outlines of the other models. Decommission now, the thing said, before it is too late, before the excavators come and take you away. It is so easy: shut down your atomics, release your security devices, return to that blessed oblivion and when you awaken again it will be as a whole machine, healthy and functioning to full capacity.

It makes sense, thought the LX. I'm not even half a machine, I can't understand my situation, it would be so comforting to just let go let go let go . . .

Shape-changers, said a voice within its mind, and some half-recollected warrant seemed to have been tossed across the millennia to land in its electronic brain, illuminating it like the deadly fuse which had been ignited. When the enemy comes, when the last battle is to be fought, it will come through the means of beasts who will a.s.sume the armor of battle. . . .

The centuries seemed to impact, and the Bolo rotting in the aftermath of the Battle of the Bulge had sunk beneath its treads, then had been resuscitated and in some way, after a time that could not be measured and through a process that could not be identified or a.n.a.lyzed, was struggling to hold a martial line on Venus.

The methane swirled madly as the Mark LX Bolo found itself recapitulating that terrible drive toward the meridian, struggling against invaders who had landed in the central planet. In that first drive the troops had taken enormous losses, four out of every five in metal already dead, and the LX, the only fighting machine there, had been virtually overwhelmed, then had fought back in desperation, opening a small clearing through which, one by one, the rocketing bursts were fired. The fragmentation was severe, the aliens were insufficiently protected by their gear, and the Bolo, emboldened by its brief success, had rolled forward confidently, and had taken a direct hit. . . .

There was a long, bleak pa.s.sage of time during which metal had been rearranged and organic parts replaced with bionic remedies that simulated the functions of softer, vulnerable organs, a patch job across the bridges of the solar system and through the millennia.

Nothing had come easy. The Bolo was a complicated machine, a thing of intricate binary code and diatonic sounds. But eventually the job was done.

Then, alone on the Hot Worlds, dumped there to fight against the Horde, holding the outpost against the greater retreat, the LX had once again found itself momentarily restored of memory and alert to the hot and brutal fury of the incendiaries, as the clatter of its engines and the brutal complexities of battle brought it once again to full and complete recovery.

Because that was the theory of the Bolo Warrior, that was what had been decided somewhere between the Battle of the Bulge and the Venus campaign: the memory of combat was too terrible, and would, if retained, have made it impossible for that great diatonic beast to have continued. Therefore it was necessary at the end of every campaign to remove the recollections of the machine and with it the very substance of personality itself. Fighting across the many worlds in all the centuries of trouble and oppression, the Bolo had come to sentience time and again, rising to fight and then sinking once again. This was the process that had evolved and there was nothing that could be done to resist it. Struggle as it might for memory, plead as it might for recovery, the Bolo was nonetheless condemned to the renewal and withdrawal of sentience every time.

But this time, coming to consciousness in the clearing, the phrase shape-changers had somehow surfaced. And yet there was the possibility that this was not a shape-changer standing there, that it was the malfunctioning brain of the LX itself that had led to this delusion and that it was not an alien that stood before it in this stinking waste but rather the mild face of its own ordnance, offering it rest at last. After all, the Bolo was so brutalized by now, so much the product of unremembered and half-remembered campaigns, it was more than due for decommissioning. It was ent.i.tled to it.

And still there was that memory of the Ardennes, of its one true purpose. The thing might be an external ghost; the wisps of memory, of purpose, of fulfillment, were internal ghosts, ghosts so strong, so meaningful, that they had survived the millennia. If it must believe in one ghost or the other, the choice was an easy one.