Bolo Brigade (23 page)

"
Ghaavat'ghavagh
,
shch'kaa uroch!
" the seven other Council members declared, raising their heads and exposing their throats in tribute to Aghrracht Swift-Slayer. "
Ghaavat'ghavagh
,
shch'kaa uroch!
Kill and eat, Deathgiver!"

It was, Aghrracht thought, opening her mouth wide to accept the praise, as sweet and hot as the taste of freshly gutted
gna'shadath
.

My Commander has seemed distant and somewhat preoccupied since his return from Wide Sky two days ago. This preoccupation is understandable, certainly, in light of what we now know he saw there, though the human tendency to be distracted by fear, worry, or other concerns is difficult to reconcile with the need for clarity of thought and purpose in military crisis situations.

Nevertheless, Bolo 96875 and I are both pleased at his safe return, not least because he has brought information vital to the defense of Muir.

In the time since our Commander left for Wide Sky, Tech Master Sergeant Blandings has adequately carried out his duties regarding maintenance on both Unit 96875 and me, and I am pleased to log the fact that we are now both at one hundred percent operational capacity. One hundred fifteen point one seven hours ago, Sergeant Blandings submitted a request for permission to allow both of us out of the maintenance depot for field testing and evaluation, but that request was immediately and summarily denied. The Strathan Military Command Authority still seems to regard Bolos with distrust and even fear.

It has been a difficult time, these past several days. With our inhibitory safeguards set at maximum, we are literally incapable of any action save thought, but—due possibly to human oversight or a simple lack of understanding of the systems—our psychotronic parasentience processing centers have been left engaged at point seven five of full self-awareness. Human psychotronicists have long debated whether sentient Bolos truly feel or merely mimic human emotions and, since I do not know what sensations humans experience in this regard, I am in no position to speculate. Still, the restlessness, the anticipation of action, the inward, driving need to get out and exercise my maneuver subroutines have all of the earmarks of what humans refer to as boredom. My brother and I have passed the last 91.4 hours engaging in 2051 games of chess, interspersing each game with a detailed analysis of strategy and tactics and comparing each with various historical human grandmaster engagements. I have been particularly interested in such classics as Waitzkin's defeat of Marakov in
a.e.
62, or the 354 Holmes-Kalugin match and the Queen-Bishop Stand, and the entire question of sacrificing a major piece to win decisive advantage of position.

Now that our Commander has returned, we anticipate a break in the routine, though he has not yet done more than show up at the maintenance depot once for a cursory discussion with Tech Master Sergeant Blandings. We gather from intercepted base communications that he has, indeed, returned with substantive intelligence on enemy activity at the fringes of the Strathan Cluster, and we eagerly anticipate a chance to review this data.

Since our Commander has not yet shared this information with us, however, we must assume that the intelligence is of so sensitive a nature that it has not been disseminated thus far beyond the highest command ranks.

We must assume that the Military Command Authority knows what it is doing.

* * *

cluster governor reginald chard and lord john delacroix request the pleasure of your company at a formal reception in honor of the return of lieutenant donal ragnor of the 15th gladius brigade, to be held on starday, agnis 4, at glenntor castle. rsvp.

Donal looked once again at the engraved invitation and groaned. Of all the bubble-headed, program-crashing, artificial stupidity-oriented idiocies . . .

"You say somethin' t' me, sir?" the civilian driver called back from the front seat of the aircar. It was twilight, with the brightest stars of the cluster just beginning to gleam in a green-ultramarine sky overhead, as if in challenge to the scattering of man-made lights on the darkening landscape a thousand meters below.

"No. Sorry. Just thinking."

"Yeah, well, you go ahead then. Say! You think these Malek things're gonna come out Muir way?"

"I really can't say," Donal replied. "It's possible."

"Ah, let 'em come. We'll be ready for 'em! No damned four-eyed lizards're gonna push us off
my
world!"

"That's the spirit." He wished, though, that it was that easy. The Wide Skyers had possessed the same you-can't-do-that-to-us spirit, and it hadn't helped them a bit.

There were forces in this universe that paid very little heed to the desires or needs of human beings.

And one of those forces was the ruling class and their social galas. This was not the time to be attending formal parties. The Malach were not stupid. They would have noted the exodus of the refugee fleet from Wide Sky, and they would assume that other human worlds in the cluster would have been alerted by now. Militarily, they had essentially two options. They could consolidate their hold on the worlds they'd already conquered, a conservative strategy that would force the humans to attack them on their ground, or they could attack, seeking to cripple the human defenses before they could be properly assembled and deployed.

In the long and bloody annals of human warfare, those two options, defense and offense, had represented diametrically opposed philosophies of combat. Do you make the enemy come to you, where he must attack with a three-to-one or five-to-one numerical advantage in order to breach your lines? Or do you go after him, seeking to disrupt his lines of supply, command, and communication, to break up his attack before it can be launched?

Donal knew which philosophy he preferred, and alien as they were, he was pretty sure the Malach thought the same way. That prisoner snatch at Fortrose had been daring, even foolhardy . . . but it had demonstrated the limits of the human defenses, had probably told the Malach everything they needed to know about Fitzsimmons' military strength.

The Malach were coming to Muir. Of that, Donal was positive. And the result of his announcement had been the decision to throw another party. . . .

Still, it was inevitable, he supposed. Muir society seemed to revolve around these social gatherings, though he was still damned if he knew how a man was supposed to get any work done if he spent all of his time attending parties.

"There's the castle up ahead," the aircar driver called back to him. "Some digs, huh?"

Leaning forward in his seat, Donal could see Glenntor Castle, a large and rambling stone edifice raised some centuries before by Eugene Delacroix, one of the founders of the Muir colony, back when it answered directly to distant Terra. Glenntor was still in the possession of the Delacroix family, he understood. Old Eugene, he gathered, had been a bit of an old-fashioned eccentric, believing that Humanity stood at the brink of a new dark age of warfare and technological collapse. Fancying himself as a kind of warlord, he'd designed Glenntor along the lines of the mythic castles and medieval fortresses of old Earth.

Well, Eugene's vision hadn't come to pass . . . at least, it hadn't yet, though the final verdict wasn't in. Glenntor was now more a fantasy land than a fortress, with spires and stone turrets rising against the play of colored spotlights, the whole reflected in the broad, sparkling, mountain-bound waters of Loch Haven. The place was isolated, hemmed in by rock crags and sheer cliffs, with a glacier sparkling in the evening light to the northeast. A pier and boat ramp jutted into the quiet waters of the loch; several yachts and recreational submarines were moored at the waterfront. The only other way into the castle, it appeared, was by way of the landing pad atop one of the turrets.

"Which way's the refugee camp from?" Donal called up to the driver.

"Oh, that's over t'other side of the Windypeaks, there. Can't see it from this side. Y'wanna take a swing-by and look?"

"No," Donal decided. "I'm late enough to this thing as it is. Maybe later, though."

"Just give the word, sir."

Loch Haven was a glacier-carved fjord running southwest into Muir's Western Ocean. Glenntor was built into the flank of the sawtoothed Windypeak Mountains on the loch's southern coast. Some fifty kilometers to the east, the weathered slopes of the Windypeaks gave way to the Monad Plain, and there, next to the forests along Lake Simms, the Wide Sky evacuation fleet had grounded, disgorging its tens of thousands of mostly young refugees. Donal had been to the camp once since his return, hoping to find Alexie, but she'd been busy and unable to see him.

At least, that was the story her chief aide gave him. Donal's real reason for coming to the Glenntor affair was the hope of seeing her here, tonight.

He couldn't deny that he was attracted to Alexie. More than that, however, he felt that she'd been cold, even angry at him ever since he and Fitzsimmons had maneuvered her into leaving Wide Sky. She'd refused to see him during the voyage to Muir, and it looked like she was determined to maintain that distance now that they were here. He wanted to see her, to set the record straight.

He hoped she was here tonight.

The aircar touched down on the castle's landing pad. As the passenger compartment's bubble raised up and out of the way, Donal was greeted by a liveried servant who led him into the Great Hall, where the other guests were gathering.

It was an impressive place, in an austere and stone-bound way. Holoportraits of various ancestors glowered from the walls of the corridors leading in, while a trophy room off to one side displayed the heads and hides of various native Muiran beasts slaughtered in the name of sport. There were few serious predators on Muir, but the granderthatch made an impressive display with its tusks and wrinkled skin, while the smaller, arboreal springslasher bared nasty incisors in a perpetual glass-eyed grimace. The Great Hall itself was a place of vaulted ceilings, piers, and ornately capitaled pillars that would not have looked out of place in the nave of some medieval cathedral. Tapestries hung from the walls, interspersed with more modern holos of landscapes, battles, mythologies, and abstracts. Donal recognized a fifth-century a.e. Ludendorf, from his aquamarine period, and what was almost certainly a holoreproduction of a pre-Atomic Kandinsky. Grimaldi's
Five Men and a Nude in a Crowded Restaurant
hung in a prominent place above the enormous, baronial fireplace.

The room was crowded with a colorful and glittering throng. This gathering was predictably much like the last party Donal had attended, the same scintillating galaxy of expensively attired men and women. Some of the men were in uniform, though most wore formal attire which, on Muir, ran to kilts, shoulder cloaks, and colorful sashes to show clan affiliation, philosophical allegiance, or status. The women were more diverse, with some clad in little more than jewelry and holoprojected color, while others wore elaborate gowns or animated holos that transformed their bodies into display screens for computer-generated colors, shapes, and movement.

Donal paused a moment at the threshold, taking in the spectacle. What, he wondered, would the Malach make of this bunch? Those he'd seen in the flesh wore nothing but straps and harnesses for carrying their gear. Did they have a complex set of social rules and interactions off the battlefield? Or was battle all they lived for? Could they even understand human psychology?

He decided he needed a drink and headed for the bar, set up to one side of the hall between a pair of two-meter-thick, gray-stone pillars. He ordered a scotch, neat, and downed it hard, letting the liquor start off soft on his tongue, then harder as it seared its way down his throat to his stomach.

He ordered another drink, but before he could down it a familiar voice made him turn.

Alexie Turner was there, looking rather out of place in the same conservative, gray suit she'd been wearing when he met her. She was talking with a number of men, most in the formal dress cloaks and aiguillettes of the Cluster Colonial Authority. Holding his drink, he made his way across the floor, zeroing in on her.

"It's true," she was saying, her voice raised enough to carry above the background babble of conversation in the hall. "They came out of nowhere. We didn't even know they were there until their machines started wrecking our cities."

"That simply doesn't make sense," one of the men said, shaking his head. He wore an unusual silver and blue sash that Donal didn't recognize. A small silver pin on his collar spelled out the letters "PGPH."

"Len's right," a second man with the same sash and pin said, nodding. "You must have done
something
to antagonize them. Intelligent beings don't act without rational purpose."

"I don't know about that," Donal said, walking up to the group. "If you measure intelligence solely by the criteria of what's rational, you're going to exclude a fair percentage of the human race."

"Lieutenant Ragnor!" Alexie said, turning. "I was hoping to run into you tonight."

"Good evening, Director. Excuse the intrusion."

"Not at all, Lieutenant," Len, the first man, said. "We find Miss Turner's account somewhat astonishing. Surely, these Mellik people aren't as bloodthirsty as she is describing them."

"I doubt that you'll find support with a lieutenant in the Confederation military," the second man said with an oily smile. "He'll be as eager to inflate these claims as our friend Miss Turner, here."

"Now wait just a damned minute!" Alexie said, furious.

"Are you doubting the director's truthfulness, sir?" Donal asked mildly.

"Well, she
is
a politician," the man said. He gave Donal a quick up-and-down glance. "She as much as admitted that she was here to get support for her government back on Wide Sky."

"Which is not the same as being a liar," Donal said. "You know, I'm a relative newcomer to Muir, I admit, so maybe I don't understand your customs here. But where I come from, it's usual to be polite to visitors and give them the benefit of the doubt, and not go calling them liars the moment they open their mouths."