Bolo Brigade (4 page)

"Oh, great," Donal said under his breath. A scattered brigade, and uncertain communications. That was just
wonderful
. . . .

"We could do more, of course, with more help from the Concordiat," Wood continued, with a sour look that suggested he took Donal's presence on Muir as far too little, too late. "But I gather that the Concordiat is having troubles of its own. We'll get no help from
that
quarter."

There could be no answer to that statement. Since the Terran Concordiat had first encountered the out-reaching probes of the Melconian Empire several years ago, relations had been steadily deteriorating. War was coming to the Concordiat, a paroxysm that some were already referring to somewhat apocalytically as "the Last War." The Concordiat's full attention was fixed, not on the Galaxy's remote outer rim, but inward, toward the teeming suns of the galactic core, and the Melconian threat.

"Have you heard anything about the rumors, sir?" he asked, probing. "About a new and hostile race from outside?"

"Shoot, Lieutenant. Hang out at the bars in the Kinkaid Strip long enough and you'll hear every wild kind of story there is." The slur that Donal had noted earlier was growing more pronounced now, and the colonel seemed to be having some trouble focusing on his visitor. "I've heard all kinds of rumors. You can pretty much take your pick."

"General Phalbin thought the whole idea could be discounted. He thinks there's no place out in the Gulf where hostiles could come from."

"There isn't."

"Sir, you must know as well as I do that the space between galaxies isn't completely empty. There are planet-bearing suns in the halo. There
must
be. They're just scattered too thinly to be worth our sending a survey to check them out."

"Sure. But they're
so
thinly scattered that it'd be impossible for any race that'd evolved intelligence out there to be able to develop FTL. If the next nearest star's a thousand light years off, you're not gonna be anxious to go calling on your neighbors. You'll stay at home and contemplate your navel instead." He shrugged heavily. "Besides, most stars out there are poor in heavy elements. Not that many solid planets to begin with, y'know? And even terrestrial planets out there are probably pretty poor in easily extracted iron or copper or any of the other metals you need to develop a technic civilization. So any intelligent species out there is gonna be stuck in the Stone Age, right?"

Donal didn't argue the point, but he was far from convinced. He'd learned long ago that it was risky trying to rationalize the psychologies—or the likely attitudes and actions—of non-humans. If nothing else, they didn't think like humans, which made them unpredictable.

"In any case," Colonel Wood concluded with another shrug, "it's not up to us to worry about it, right? We sit here, we follow orders, and we wait for our twenty years to be up so we can get the hell out of this stinkin' outfit and back to a civilian job that makes some kind of sense."

The colonel swung his chair away, appearing to lose himself in a glum and somewhat bleary contemplation of the slow-rotating map of the cluster still displayed on his wallvid. The interview clearly at an end, Donal turned to leave.

As he touched the door switch, however, he glanced back once more in time to see Wood pulling a bottle out of one of his desk drawers, unscrewing the lid, and knocking back a hefty chug of the dark amber liquid inside.

It was, Donal thought, a less than auspicious start to his new posting.

The maintenance team tasked with completing the checks on my port-side suspension have evidently decided to take an extended break. Six of them are seated in a circle beneath the overhang by my aft port-side drive wheel and are engaged in a strangely ritualized series of social behaviors centered on the element of chance as applied to fifty-two small cardboard rectangles printed with various numerals, symbols, and icons. The rest are standing around the six, watching and exchanging pointed comments among themselves.

Bolo 96875 has explained at length to me the nature of "games," as enjoyed by humans, but I confess that I do not as yet understand the interest humans have in the subject. The concept is similar in some respects to various simulations—"war games," in fact—designed to test battle plans, tactics, and strategies on various levels. Indeed, the ancient human game "chess" is a useful tool in sharpening strategic understanding, and I have enjoyed playing it with several humans and with Unit 96875 in the past. What this wild shuffling and collecting of pasteboard cards can have to do with combat tactics or strategy, however, I have not yet discerned, despite many seconds of thought dedicated to the problem.

In any case, the game carried out beside my stripped-down wheel train seems to have been enjoined purely for the recreational diversion of Tech Master Sergeant Blandings and his men, not in preparation for any military endeavor. I cannot ignore the fact, however, that the completion of my repairs and my return to full combat capability must have an extremely low priority among the humans charged with maintaining my efficiency at peak levels. This affects me in a manner that humans might think of as emotional, though it does not and cannot reduce my efficiency as would almost certainly be the case with humans.

I wonder why they bother to maintain me at full awareness levels. Sometimes, I believe that the fact that I have not been set to autonomous standby reserve power levels has left me with too much time to think. . . .

A door at the end of the vehicle bay opens; through Security Camera 16, I can see that it is Lieutenant Ragnor, arrived, no doubt, to inspect his new command.

I doubt very much that he will be pleased with what he finds here.

Donal was not at all pleased with what he found inside the vast and cavernous vault of the Bolo Depot Vehicle Bay. There were no guards posted by the door through which he entered, and no Bolo security check point, though a small security camera mounted on an arm extended from the ceiling swiveled to track him as he walked across the ferrocrete floor toward the nearer of the behemoth war machines parked inside. At least someone was aware he'd just entered what ought to be the most secure installation on this entire base. Trash was littered about the floor, including crumpled beverage cans and wads of paper, discarded rags and shavings from a metal lathe, bits of candy bar wrapper and a jumble of discarded computer printout.

He saw a small group of people far off across the floor, huddled in the shadow of the near Bolo. Disgusted, he strode toward them.

The Bolo dominated the huge room, filled it like some immense idol of cast iron and chromalloy in a cavern shrine. A second Bolo rested close by, mostly obscured by the first, but Donal's eyes were held captive by the closer machine as the humans gathered in its lee threw its size and bulk into sharp perspective.

It was enormous, a building . . . no, a small, wheeled
mountain
of metal eighty meters long and towering a full twenty meters above the floor. Mark XXIII Bolos possessed two main armament turrets, fore and aft; the Mark XXIVs had been pegged back to a single MA turret, but that one low, flatly angled structure mounted a 90cm "super" Hellbore, a two-megaton-per-second beam weapon easily the equal of anything carried by the Space Arm's largest and most powerfully equipped dreadnoughts. Despite the modifications in hull and armament, the Mark XXIV was only a thousand tons lighter than its evolutionary predecessor; each of the Bolos in the depot's main vehicle chamber massed a full fourteen thousand metric tons.

Only as he drew closer did smaller details separate themselves from the larger bulk of armor. Staggered, bulbous swellings in the hull both above and below the side overhangs housed batteries of antipersonnel weapons. Nine secondary turrets, each sporting the stubby snout of an ion-bolt infinite repeater, were arrayed along each flank like the broadside turrets of a battleship. Hexagonal blocks of antiplasma reactive armor appliqués were everywhere, scattered around sensor ports, antenna arrays, field coils for disrupter shielding and battle screens, and secondary flintsteel armor block. The entire machine had been painted in subdued patterns of splotchy green and brown, a somewhat traditional and no doubt unsuccessful attempt to provide a measure of camouflage for a vehicle that was far too large to hide anywhere, even in the thickest forest. Skirts and tracks had been removed from both the fore and aft wheel train assemblies. The entire unit had been lifted just clear of the floor on massive hydraulic jacks rising out of the floor; each of the interleaved wheels in the Christie-mount chassis was over five meters tall, a vertical cliff of smooth metal very nearly three times the height of a man.

Work lights had been strung from the left hull overhang, illuminating a group of soldiers and technicians who seemed totally absorbed in a six-handed poker game.

"Call," one of the men challenged.

"Ah!" another, with the insignia of a tech master sergeant on his sleeve, said with mock disgust. "All I got is two pair."

"Read 'em an' weep, boys!" the first man said, laying out his cards. "Full house!"

"Beats me," another player said, slapping her cards down.

"Me too."

"Shoot. Busts mine."

"Y'got me."

"Ha! Love it!" The man with the full house began raking piles of Confederation scrip toward his side of the circle. "Come t' poppa, baby!"

"Hold it right there, Willard," the master sergeant said, grinning evilly. "I said I got two pair."

"Hell, Sarge," Willard replied, looking up. "A full house beats a crummy two pair any day of the week!"

"Not when what I got is one pair of jacks, along with
another
pair of jacks!"

Willard groaned and relinquished the pile. The sergeant cackled wickedly as he began scooping up his winnings.

"I do hope I'm not disturbing anything important," Donal said casually, walking closer to the edge of the light.

"Who the hell are—" Willard started to say, but then his eyes fastened on the rank insignia on Donal's collar and widened. "Comp'ny!" he snapped. "Atten-
hut
!"

The group scrambled to attention, some remaining on the floor just long enough to scoop up fistfuls of Confederation cash before making it to their feet. A sudden hush descended over the vehicle bay, heightened by the soft rasp of breathing men. Donal stepped into the light; the men, though standing at attention, were facing in several directions, rigid, eyes fixed ahead, as though terrified of betraying the slightest movement.

"I am Lieutenant Donal Ragnor," he said quietly, looking from face to face, reading the emotions he saw there—fear, surprise . . . and a lot of resentment.

The group numbered sixteen—eleven men, five women—some in greasy dungarees, some in military-issue shorts and T-shirts, three of them in civilian clothing. As he noted facial expressions, he noted, too, details of hair too long, of jewelry, of personal adornment. Willard, he saw, wore a neck chain with a large ankh hanging from it outside his partly unbuttoned dungaree shirt. One of the women wore a faded olive-drab T-shirt with a collar so torn and stretched out it exposed rather more of her substantial upper chest than was strictly permitted by military regs. One of the men wore dangling earrings in the fashion currently popular with the Kinkaid party-hard set.

"I have been assigned as Tactical Officer to this pair of Mark XXIVs," he continued after a moment. "I gather this is my maintenance company."

"Fifteenth Gladius Bolo Maintenance and Transport Company, Muir Detachment, Tech Master Sergeant Blandings reporting," the sergeant said. "
Sir!
"

"Is this everyone?"

"We have four on the sick list," Blandings rasped out, "seven more back in the barracks or somewhere, and, uh, three who, uh, well, I guess they're AWOL. Sir."

"You
guess
you have three men absent without leave?"

"Three men have not reported for duty since last week," he said stiffly. "Sir."

"Mmm. How about the rest of you. Is
anyone
doing any work around here?"

"Sir, this is our down period. Recreational, you know?"

Donal nodded, as though considering this. With one toe, he nudged one of the piles of cards scattered on the floor, sliding a queen off of the three of hearts. "I wouldn't want to think," he said quietly, "that any of you men were actually
gambling
. As I understand it, that's strictly contra-regs. Am I right?"

There was no immediate reply, though several sets of eyes exchanged worried glances. Donal stepped in front of Sergeant Blandings, staring for a moment into a seamed and experienced face. He looked down at Blandings' hands, both of which were clenched into white-knuckled fists clutching bundles of money. Slowly, he removed his service hat and held it out. "In here."

"Sir—"

"In here!"

Reluctantly, Blandings dropped both fistfuls of bills into the hat. Turning, in place, Donal extended the hat to each of the other men holding the games' stakes. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "if I don't see you with any money in your hands, I can't bring charges against you for gambling. Right?"

One by one, the men dropped handfuls of bills into the hat, until it was nearly overflowing. "This," Donal said when the last man had made his contribution, "will make for a nice enlisted men's fund, don't you think?"

"It was just a friendly little game, sir," Blandings said, resentment in his voice.

"Uh-huh." Donal glanced up at the huge, trackless road wheels rising at his side. "What's the word on this Unit? Why is it down by two tracks?"

"Suspension train maintenance, sir. Routine."

"But why
two
tracks? The drill is to pull 'em one at a time."

"Shoot, sir," Blandings said. "It's more efficient this way, y'know? We do one whole side, then we do the other. Get the job done in half the time."

"Mmm. And how long has this Bolo been up on the jacks?" Blandings started to reply, and Donal spoke again, cutting him off. "I
will
be checking your maintenance logs, Sergeant, so give it to me straight."