Alessandra DiMario leaned against the wall of the cargo lift and shook.
I've got no business going back into combat, she told herself bitterly, unsure whether to rage more at herself or at the officers who'd decided to jerk her out of a hospital ship and send her back into the trenches against the Deng. She'd already lost one Bolo, literally destroyed around her ears, a death she blamed squarely on herself. It had nearly destroyed her, just listening to Danny die, knowing it was her fault, her decision, her responsibility. She'd lain trapped in the smoking ruins for nearly two days, while the tide of battle raged back and forth across ground Unit DNY had died trying to take.
Even after the battle ended in a resounding human victory, it had taken combat engineers hours to extract her from the shattered war hull. They'd shipped her off-world to a mobile combat treatment center, where surgeons had repaired the physical damage and combat psychiatrists had gone to work on the emotional wreckage. But the damned, hairy horrors they were fighting wouldn't wait for time or tide or one battered officer's mental state. So here she was, on her way back to combat, with a Bolo so old, the psychotronic engineers refurbishing him had been forced to fabricate parts just to splice in the new systems.
And dammit, her new unit had been right to call her onto the carpet. She'd been unforgivably rude and she knew it.
But the crawling sickness in her gut wouldn't go away and the realization that she'd be facing the guns of Yavac Heavies again with a Bolo so ancient, he still had flintsteel in his war hull, instead of duralloy, left her with a desperate case of the shakes. Oh, God, she groaned, trembling against the wall of the cargo lift, I'm in trouble, we're all in trouble. . . .
She ought to march straight into her commander's quarters and lay it on the table: "I'm not fit for command, sir. And you and I both know it."
The trouble was, with the Deng hammering human worlds along the incredibly long front they'd hit this time, she was pretty much all that was available. And they both knew that, too. Somehow, she had to pull it together. The lift was slowing for the level her quarters occupied when the alert sounded, a signal piped shipwide that meant, "Bolo commanders, assemble in the wardroom, stat." Alessandra gulped and slapped controls that would send the lift another three decks higher. What's happened now? she wondered grimly.
Three minutes later, she strode into the CSS Cheslav's wardroom, the last on-board Bolo commander to arrive. "Sorry," she said, slightly out of breath from the run down the corridor, "I was in the cargo bay lift when the alert sounded. Took me seventeen decks and a midships bounce to get here."
Colonel Tischler nodded and she slid into the nearest seat.
"Sixty-three minutes from now," Tischler said quietly, "this transport will be dropping out of hyper-L to rendezvous with a combat courier ship. We've received an urgent request from Sector Command to divert a portion of this command to a place called Thule." He turned and activated a viewscreen which flashed up a star chart of the sector. "Three months ago, ten colonies of miners were dispatched to secure rich saganium deposits critical to military navigation systems. Thule was declared devoid of sentient life by the planetary scouts who first discovered the saganium. They were wrong. The colonists have been hit hard by a sentient, native life-form and the mines—and several thousand miners and their families—are now at risk of total destruction."
Alessandra frowned. "How in the world could planetary scouts miss a sentient species?"
"That's one of many questions we want answered," the colonel said grimly. "One of the others is where a species that apparently exists on a stone-age cultural level got its claws on energy rifles and fusion bombs. Unless the stuff was left lying around where these birds could find it—which isn't very likely—then something has to be supplying and training them. I'd like to know what."
Alessandra's eyes widened. Several officers muttered under their breaths.
"All of you know how important this mission against the Deng is," Colonel Tischler said, "but that saganium is critical. I can spare only two of you. I'd like to ask for volunteers."
Alessandra didn't even hesitate. "I'll go, sir."
Tischler met her gaze levelly—and the understanding in his eyes cut at her. "Thank you, DiMario. I was hoping you would volunteer. SPQ/R may not look like much, but he's as solid as they come and, frankly, we need your people skills on Thule. He'll be a big help to you, that way. He likes people."
She flushed. He didn't like her, that much was certain even if nothing else was. Before Danny's destruction, she had been good with people. Since waking up on the hospital ship . . . she wasn't so sure, any longer. But it was good to hear her commander's faith in her. Whatever else happened before they dropped out of hyper-L, she swore a solemn oath to look up SPQ/R-561's military record.
She'd better go over those technical specs again, too, since they were about as decipherable as hieroglyphics. God help them both if she had to jury-rig anything herself, due to battle damage. Still and all, it was far better than fighting spodders. Anything was better than facing the Deng again. Even apologizing to her Bolo.
The second volunteer was a young captain she hadn't met yet, a red-haired officer by the name of Roth. They exchanged glances and nods across the wardroom table, then Colonel Tischler reshuffled the remaining officers to cover the revised mission parameters before dismissing the rest of his command. When the others had gone, Tischler looked from Roth to Alessandra and back again.
"I would suggest you prep yourselves and your Bolos for immediate departure. I'll leave orders and mission debriefings with you. I have every confidence in your ability to carry out your new missions successfully. You'll debark at portside lock seventeen. Good luck."
They exchanged salutes and Alessandra headed for her temporary quarters, holding onto the hope that without the Deng to face, she might yet survive this crisis of nerves and come out whole and sane on the other side. Don't blow it, DiMario, for God's sake, just don't blow it, okay?
She reached her quarters, downloaded the mission-briefing files, checked to be sure they had come through without corruption, then queried the ship's computers for the full mission history of her Bolo, loaded into the records filed with Colonel Tischler upon the Bolo's assignment to his command. She found it without difficulty and took a precious eight minutes to scan through it. And felt the sting of shame as she skimmed through a battle record dotted with high praise from Central Command, as well as Sector.
Unit SPQ/R-561 had earned no fewer than seven major battle honors and a whole host of starclusters, all carefully welded to his turret by a former commander's loving hand. In good, bright sunlight, those honors would shine like glitter against the blue-black iodine hue of his ancient flintsteel war hull. In the gloom of the cargo hold, she hadn't seen them at all. She'd noticed only the old battle scars gouged across his aging war hull. Even if there had been enough light to see, Alessandra had been far too wrapped up in her own troubles to notice them.
I have really screwed this up, she realized bleakly.
And wondered if it was possible to start over with a machine that literally could not forget an insult.