Colonel Houchen watched as Donning climbed into the observer's seat on the far side of Khan's control compartment and strapped himself in. Houchen could tell he was impressed, that the power the Bolo represented was helping to strengthen the man's resolve, and his confidence that they hadn't been abandoned by the Concordiat.
This he knew was the third great mission of the Bolo. The first was to intimidate the enemy. The second was to strike the enemy with devastating power that could not be stopped. The third was to express the will of the Concordiat. Like the battleships, and later aircraft carriers of old Earth, a Bolo was a tangible, undeniable expression of its government's interest and concern in a situation.
It was the nature of Bolos that those who fought in more conventional forces often weren't comfortable with them, they could never forget them, ignore them, or deny them. The net result was that when a Bolo arrived, morale went up, because if the soldier was nervous about his own Bolo, how must the enemy feel?
The air conditioning in the cabin was finally starting to make some headway against the heat, humidity, and persistent jungle stench they'd brought with them from outside. Here, for a few minutes at least, they could feel comfortable, safe, and not completely helpless against their alien attackers.
"Khan, let's give our guest a little demonstration. But lay off full combat speed. I don't want to send him home in pieces." Houchen wasn't kidding about that. A Bolo's crash couch was a precision piece of equipment, vital if a human were ever to serve as an on-board commander during combat. A Mark XXV Bolo had a normal combat speed of 95 KPH over almost any kind of terrain, but when conditions allowed, it was capable of short sprints of 150 KPH. At that speed, a Bolo was a near unstoppable force. With its battle screens at full power, it could almost literally ram through small mountains.
The Bolo was capable of surviving the forces involved in such maneuvers, but a human commander was not, at least, not without a great deal of help. The crash couch acted as a vital three-dimensional shock absorber system for the more delicate human body. The observer seats had much more crude two-dimensional shock absorbers built in. Someone riding in one might survive full combat speed in rough terrain, but they wouldn't enjoy it, and they might not walk away under their own power.
"Aye, sir," replied Khan, and at once the growl of the drive system intensified around them and they were pushed back in their seats. The cabin was buffeted enough to give Donning an exciting ride. Nothing more.
"Let's clear back ten yards of jungle around the perimeter, just to keep the aliens awake out there."
Khan changed course, his multiple tread systems adjusting speed just enough to smoothly bring them in parallel to the jungle line, and then finally, overlapping two sets of treads into the trees like a giant lawn mower. The din was terrible as the treads knocked down trees by the hundreds, chewed them into splinters, then spit them out the back in a rooster tail of destruction. Houchen had intentionally detuned the active noise cancellation systems in the cabin for just that effect.
"Khan, let's pick the pace up. You're free to fire." There was an aggressive whir as the secondary gunports opened, and an almost machine-gunlike chatter as the ion-bolt infinite repeaters shot off short bursts in rapid succession. Suddenly, while mowing down trees on one side of the perimeter, Khan was simultaneously blasting them on two others. Houchen wished he could show off the Bolo's main armament, a 90mm super-Hellbore, but firing it at any visible target this close to the colony could do them more damage than the enemy already had done. If the aliens simply offered them a significant target worthy of that mighty weapon, this battle might already be over.
At last they finished their sweep around the perimeter. Khan slowed and resumed his patrol midway between the defenses and the tree line. "We could keep knocking down trees I suppose," said Houchen, "but it just keeps getting harder, and it takes Khan farther and farther away from the colony, giving them an opportunity to attack on another flank."
There was a loud thump as Khan fired off another secondary, a longer pulse, to take down an incoming missile.
"They're building for another attack, aren't they?"
Houchen nodded. Donning was green, but he was no fool. "We're pretty sure they're gathering out there. To be honest, our intelligence on this is limited. We occasionally pick up something from orbit that might be a cook-fire, but no concentrations of them, nothing that's consistent from night to night. Last night, while on their way to the New Marikana, Lieutenant Winter and his Bolo stumbled on an abandoned encampment. More of a nest really. Tunnels, seemingly dug with hand tools, aboveground huts and passages made from native plant materials."
"Any sign of technology?" Donning asked.
"Amazingly primitive," Houchen said, "not at all consistent with the weapons we've been seeing. I wish he'd had time to find and excavate one of their trash dumps. It might have told us something. The camp was stripped almost completely clean."
Donning only nodded, so Houchen went on. "But it explains why we can't find them from orbit. They don't clear land, they don't build roads, they don't seem to use reactors or power cells or anything we can pick up from orbit. To make things worse, they have a number of close relatives out there in the jungle, large, flightless, birdlike creatures, probably only a little farther from them than chimps and gorillas are from humans. Until one of them powers up his weapon, he could be just another part of the local wildlife as far as we're concerned."
"Then you don't know what they're going to do." Donning looked over at Houchen.
"I think my gut is telling me the same thing your gut is telling you," Houchen said. "The harassment attacks continue for a reason, to keep us off guard, to keep our people on alert until they're exhausted. When the aliens are ready, they'll try again."
There was an uncomfortable silence. Finally, Houchen said, "You know, there's something I've been meaning to ask you about. Khan swears that, just before his landing, he picked up sensor readings consistent with a Bolo hull in or near the Odinberg Colony. But that couldn't be. We show no record of a Bolo ever being dispatched to this planet. Do you know anything about it?"
Donning nodded. "That would be the Prescott machine."
Houchen shook his head. He had no idea what a Prescott machine was.
"An armored mining machine," Donning said, "built on a converted Bolo chassis? I heard they were bringing one in, but I don't think they had time to deploy it."
Now Houchen felt really puzzled. What had they done to the old Bolo brain, and all the firepower? "Your aircraft didn't report seeing it when they scouted the Odinberg Colony after the attack?"
"They saw the hangar where it would have been parked flattened by some kind of bomb," Donning said, "half a mountain dropped down on it. That's all I know. Like we told you, they didn't have much time to report back before they were shot down. But that thing is gone, like the rest of Odinberg. Write it off. It's no use to us now."
Houchen rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He wasn't going to believe that. Bolos did not die easily. "I don't know—"
Another thump as a missile was destroyed.
"You know," said Donning, "they've been hitting us with these harassment attacks, maybe we should do the same to them."
"Fire off random shots into the jungle?" Houchen asked, staring at the commander. "As long as the aliens remain dispersed we are unlikely to do them significant damage, and they don't seem in any way inclined to be discouraged by such tactics."
Donning nodded, thinking.
Houchen knew exactly what Donning was trying to do. He was trying to take a role in defending his colony, and it wasn't like the Bolo's energy weapons were going to run out of ammo. "I suppose we could try it for a day or two and see what happens."
"Maybe you should have the Bolos do preventative strikes against the moving groups," Donning said. "The aliens aren't staying anywhere close to out of range. We might be able to disrupt their gathering for attack."
Suddenly an alarm filled the room. It was the sound Houchen had been dreading.
"Too late," Donning said.
"Colonel," said Khan, "I have alien forces massing just beyond the tree line. Another attack appears imminent."
"Damn," said Donning, unbuckling his harness and grabbing for his rifle.
"Where are you going?" said Houchen, trying to keep one eye on the external view and tactical screens.
Donning pulled on his helmet and fastened the strap. "Back to my men. It's only about a hundred meters back to the wall. Comm my people to cover me, and you do the same. I used to be pretty good at the hundred meter in my day."
"You can send orders from here."
"I can send orders, but I can't give orders from here, Colonel." He slapped the hatch release.
"Khan, get him in as close as you can, stop just long enough for him to jump clear of the tracks, then turn to place us between him and the enemy lines."
Donning paused inside the hatch and looked back at Houchen as Khan came around. "You think that other Bolo machine might still be active out there somehow?"
"One thing I've learned, Commander. Never write a Bolo off."
Donning nodded. It was time. "Good luck, Colonel."
"To you too, Commander."
Then Donning was out, and the hatch slammed closed.
Houchen looked up at the screens, one showing thousands of alien warriors flooding out of the trees, another showing Donning sprinting for the wall. No matter what else, the man had guts.
Donning hit the ground running. The rifle slowed him down, but he was going to need it if things turned bad. Behind him he could hear the churning roar of the turning Bolo, and the shrill cries of countless charging alien warriors.
A plasma bolt shattered a divot out of the wall to his right, and he turned sharply, zigzagging to offer a poorer target. He felt the concussion as the Bolo's batteries opened fire on the aliens, followed by a different kind of thump as the Bolo mortars started lobbing rounds over the colony to disrupt the advance there.
A missile screamed past in the confusion, meters over his head, missing the wall entirely and heading back out over the jungle. Perhaps the Bolo had known it would miss, and simply chose not to waste a shot. Above him, the rapid crackling of pulse rifles was comforting. The aliens were gaining on him fast. They'd clocked some of the big monsters hitting 50 KPH in short sprints.
Just ahead, a line with a rescue loop dropped down the face of the wall. He grabbed the loop and hooked it under his armpits, then jerked the line to signal the hoist operators. The line immediately became taut and yanked his feet off the ground. He managed to get his feet between him and the wall, literally running up the duracrete surface.
Another plasma bolt struck a dozen yards away, and he was very aware of what a choice target he made. He started leaping from side to side as best he could. A smaller bolt, probably from a rifle, came from below him. He jumped, twisted his body, tried to keep his head forward, and slammed his back into the wall. Below him, a handful of aliens had somehow made it past the Bolo.
Gasping for breath, his ribs on fire, he sighted down his own rifle and opened fire, full auto. The dirt churned around the aliens, then one of them fell, another's head exploded. A blast from the Bolo, vast overkill, finished the rest of them.
As he reached the top of the wall, a dozen hands grabbed him and hauled him over. He shrugged off a woman wearing a medical armband and headed for his command post higher on the wall. Later, after the fighting was over, after he'd had a chance to think about it, his face would whiten, his knees would quake, his stomach would knot and threaten to send his breakfast into full retreat. But just that second, Donning had never felt more alive.
"What do you mean it isn't supposed to be this way?" Tyrus wasn't sure he was going to survive the trip. The mining machine called Dirk didn't seem to be designed for the comfort of the operator under the best of circumstances, but plowing as they were through the jungle at best possible speed, bowling over trees as it went, was a nightmare.
"My crash couch is designed to cushion the commander against momentary accelerations of up to thirty standard gravities in any axis."
"Ow!" Tyrus slapped his hand to his mouth. "Then why did I just bite my tongue for the third time?"
"I believe that most of my active shock absorbers have been replaced," Dirk said, "either with passive gas cylinders of some kind, or rigid struts, perhaps with the idea of making it easier to maintain. I do not believe that they intended me to travel more than a dozen kilometers per hour in my modified form."
"How fast are we going now?"
"Forty KPH, about half my old cruise speed."
"Good lord. You mean I could be hurting more?"
"Would you like me to reduce speed?"
"No. We've got to get to Rustenberg, warn them to be on the lookout for bombs, see if there's anything we can do to help. They could attack there at any time."
"The attack has already begun," Dirk said.
Tyrus blinked in surprise. "Excuse me? How would you know that?"
"While I am unable to transmit a signal that they can receive, I am detecting strategic communications between three Bolos, including one at the northern colony."
"Bolos? Bolos like you? I mean, like you before your conversion."
"Not exactly. I am Mark XXIV, they are Mark XXV. I am unfamiliar with the designation. It seems to have been introduced after I was put into mothballs and placed on standby."
So, the Concordiat had sent help, even if it was too late for the Odinberg Colony. "They should be okay there then, with a Bolo on station?"
"I believe there is still a danger, especially if they are unaware of the possibility of suicide bomb attacks such as destroyed our hangar. That weapon was one of the smallest such weapons that can be constructed. It is only logical that the enemy may possess bigger ones."
"Big enough to destroy an entire colony, Bolo or no Bolo?"
"Quite possibly."
"How long until we reach Rustenberg?"
"At this speed, five hours and fifty minutes."
Tyrus felt something wet on his chest. He looked down and saw that the left shoulder strap had opened a cut there, a raw stinging mess that slowly oozed blood into his shirt. "Go faster," he said to Dirk.
One of the "gifts" the drop pod had delivered was a full-fledged modular fire control system for the colony's defenses. The self-contained control center had stations for himself and two other officers, plus room for observers. No longer did Donning have to watch from the ramparts and shout his orders into a wristcom. He could watch any part of the defenses through multiple screens around his command chair, call up status displays on any of the fixed weapons systems, track the status of each and every mine, and even monitor the Bolo's sensory systems.
An integrated communication system allowed orders to be issued through headsets to his troops, either individually or en masse. A lot of the center's capabilities were either irrelevant to their situation (they were in no apparent danger of attack from space, or other than missiles, from the air), or simply beyond their limited technical skills to employ, but the equipment had immensely improved their ability to defend themselves.
During their first attack, Donning had barely felt in control, and unaware of what was happening outside his direct line of view. Now he was instantly aware of any trouble spot and able to issue detailed orders to hundreds of troops with a single voice command.
As Donning rushed into the command control center, he found Lieutenant Peak manning one of the stations. He was a young electronics expert who had served a three-year stint in combat training. The other seat was empty, probably for lack of a trained officer, but given their limited use of the equipment, the second station really wasn't needed anyway.
Donning sat down in the command chair and ordered up a strategic overview. The five main screens showed the different defense positions around the colony. The Bolo had moved a kilometer or so away from the colony to the north, to give it a clearer field of fire.
Since the last attack Donning had had his people plant new, reprogrammed mines. Now they were equipped with time delay fuses that kept all the mines in a given area from being triggered at once. A supposedly "clear" area of the field could now suddenly spring to life, killing masses of unsuspecting aliens. Already, hundreds of alien bodies were scattered throughout the minefield, and the edges of the jungle seemed to be moving, alive as the massive aliens ran into the opening, beaklike mouths open.
He checked to make sure that all families and noncombatants were headed into the new underground shelters that they had built. Building those shelters and the defensive fortifications had been top priority since the destruction of the Odinberg Colony. No matter what level weapon those ugly bastards threw at this colony, most of the civilians were going to survive if he had anything to say about it.
He tried to take it all in at once. Clearly this attack was much more fierce than the last, but the colony was better prepared, better armed, and had a Bolo guarding them. For the moment at least, things in the command center felt in control. But Donning knew that wouldn't last.
"Peak, keep an eye out for trouble spots. I'm going to take some time to study the enemy, see if I can learn anything we can use against them."
"Got it," Peak said.
The aliens had also modified their tactics since the last attack. Rather than just storming the walls, the aliens moved in smaller, more dispersed groups that were a less tempting target for the Bolo's big guns. Rather than directly attacking, groups would move out of the trees, transverse the perimeter to draw fire, then fade back into the jungle.
Small missiles swarmed in almost constantly, seemingly more to occupy the Bolo's guns than to do any real damage. Most of the missiles seemed to be coming from just within the jungle, but one nearby hilltop had been the source of several shots. As Donning watched, Khan's main gun transversed and locked on the hill. A blinding beam of energy lanced out, and the hilltop instantly vaporized into an expanding ball of flame and debris.
Donning heard the Bolo commander laugh through the comm link. "That may not have been strategically effective, but it sure felt good to unlimber the Hellbore for a change. This place is cramping Khan's style."
"Looked good from here as well," Donning said.
Another new development was that single aliens would break from groups, sprint towards the colony, and set satchel charges against the base of the fortifications. Each charge took a bite out of the big wall. While each one did little damage, if they could plant enough of these in one area, that might eventually create a breach. Donning instructed his subordinates on the wall to monitor this situation closely and position their best snipers to protect vulnerable areas.
Donning zoomed one of the cameras in on a particular alien and set it to automatically track the creature. The alien was huge, muscular, covered with white on black fir in patterns that reminded him of a panda or orca from Old Earth. Though they were generally humanoid, there were just enough avian characteristics to suggest that they really had evolved from predatory flightless birds. They had powerful, talon-equipped feet, hard ridges around their mouths that might have been beaks or bills, and large, round eyes mounted on the sides of their heads.
Donning started to notice a pattern in how it moved. They were fast sprinters, and strong, but their peak activity seemed to come in bursts, almost as though their metabolism had trouble sustaining their full energy output.
He noticed another significant thing. The weapons not only didn't seem to be designed by the aliens, they didn't seem to be designed for them. Sites and eyepieces seemed shaped for users with eyes on the front of their heads, not the sides, and the grips and controls poorly fit the natives' hands, which, perhaps because they were evolved from wings, not paws, were long and strangely jointed.
Peak waved at one of the big screens. "What kind of weapon is that?" he asked, indicating three aliens leading one attack wave.
"That's new," Donning said, looking closer. The metal cylinder was big enough that three of the aliens were required to carry it on their huge shoulders.
He hesitated. The safest thing to do would be to focus fire on the unknown weapon, but if he did, they wouldn't know its capabilities. One of the unknowns could get past them at a weaker moment and turn the battle, unless they learned to defend against it. In the end, he decided to let the battle run its course. If his people took the three out, so be it, but if they did get to fire, he'd be watching.
In fact, as Donning watched, a rifle shot took down one of the three. As he fell, a half dozen more aliens suddenly converged to take his place, actually getting into a shoving contest over who would take the honor. Then, a moment later, another alien appeared and took the dead one's place, not after a fight, but what seemed somehow like a servile surrender.
Donning nodded to himself. So, the enemy did have some sort of ranking or caste system. That meant that despite the seeming chaos out there, there might be officers that could be targeted, some kind of command and control structure that could be disrupted.
"There are more of them," said Peak. He pointed to where another trio was lugging their cylinder out of the jungle, and another one on the far side of the compound.
"Damn." Donning thumbed a communications toggle. "Houchen, there's a new weapon showing up out there, a cylinder, takes three aliens to carry it."
"We're on it," replied Houchen over the comm.
But it was too late. The cylinders were aimed at their target, not the colony, but the Bolo itself, and all of them fired in rapid succession. The rear of the device Donning was watching literally exploded, injuring several aliens unlucky enough to be standing within a yard or so behind it. And as it exploded a single, brief beam was emitted from the other end.
"We're hit!" shouted Houchen. "Never seen anything like those before. They're like pocket Hellbores. Actually put a dent in our battle screens and our armor. If they were lucky enough to find a vital spot at close range, they might actually be able to do us some significant damage."
Donning was about to order his men to open fire on the cylinders when he saw the three operators toss one aside and run to join their unarmed fellows. "I think it's only good for one shot, Colonel. Now that we know what we're dealing with, we can take them out before they can get close. Good thing too. Our fortifications wouldn't hold up long against those."
"Tell your people to break out their breathers and antirad pills," Houchen said. "The radiation levels just peaked down here. I wonder if the aliens know that they're slow-cooking themselves every time they fire off one of those things?"
Donning shifted his view to another attacker, firing one of the smaller plasma cannon that they'd seen before. As he watched, the alien went down. Two of the aliens behind him scrambled for the cannon he had been carrying. The one who ended up with it dropped his spear and seemed to growl or snarl at the other in celebration, then turn back to the attack.
Donning suddenly made the connection. Armed with spears and swords, the individual aliens weren't the threat. Knock down one, and a dozen would instantly replace him. It was the weapons themselves, obviously still in limited supply, that were the threat.
He opened a command channel. "All snipers and gunners, save your shots for aliens carrying high technology weapons. Do not target the operator. Repeat, do not target the operator. Go for the weapon itself."
Tyrus winced as a sudden bump slammed him against the roof of the narrow service passage. If the defective crash couch had been a problem, this was just a little slice of hell. Still, he observed, if he survived the experience, the results might be worth it. They had discovered that unlike his primary Hellbore, Dirk's secondary batteries were still intact.
Perhaps the Prescott folks had decided they were too difficult to remove. Instead, they had removed the power busses and data couplings, dogged the gunports from the inside, then welded them from outside. He couldn't do anything about the welds, but he could certainly unbolt the dogs, try to rig a power bypass, reconnect the data links, and hope for the best.
Dirk seemed hopeful that, if enough power were restored, he might be able to shatter the welds by overloading his port actuators. Of course, he might not be able to close the ports again, but that was a problem for another time.
"You reading me, Dirk?"
"Yes, Commander."
"I wish you wouldn't keep calling me that, Dirk. I just replaced your buss bar. I'm gonna move back beyond the safety gate, and then I want you to apply trickle power and see what happens."
Tyrus crawled back past all the "danger" and "high voltage" placards and latched the insulated gate that protected the power circuits. "Go for it, Dirk."
There was a pause. "I can feel my secondary mechanisms! Of course, I am as yet unable to apply enough power to the actuators to take up the slack in the port mechanicals."
"Well, let's take this slow. The bundle of superconducting rod I used in place of the original bar probably won't hold for long, and I don't have anything to replace it with. My luck, you'll get the ports open, only to find there's no power left for the weapons."
"I have a great deal of confidence in you, Tyrus."
He laughed grimly. "Based on what?"
"You've acquitted yourself well. I know enough about human psychology to know this situation must be very difficult for you to cope with."
"I'm not coping at all. That's the trick. You try to cope, you can fail. I'm saving that for later."
"Tyrus."
There was something in the Bolo's voice.
"We are being hailed. A Concordiat spacecraft in orbit has evidently spotted us."
"Can you respond?"
"I am trying, but I do not believe they will be able to receive me. Tyrus, I am receiving instructions that we are to proceed to the northern colony if possible and assist with the defense there."
"That's where we were headed anyway. I've done all I can here. I'm headed back up to the control compartment. Get your busted crash couch ready."
He packed up the emergency tool kit as best he could. Several of the tools had simply disappeared, probably bounced away by the Bolo's constant motion and vibration. Then he crawled back through the service passages towards the control room. He was halfway there when Dirk spoke again.
"Tyrus, the jungle ahead shows signs of a recent fire. I am detecting metallic traces that I believe to be wreckage."
Tyrus felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. "Is it human?"
"The alloys are consistent with human construction."
"Are there aliens in the area?"
"Given my scrambled sensors, impossible to say. I see no obvious signs."
"Slow down, and stop just short of the wreckage. I'm going to get out and investigate." He crawled back to the service hatch where he'd first entered the Bolo, picking up the rifle and side arm that he'd stashed there earlier.
He sat, his back against a cool bulkhead, his heart pounding as he contemplated the inside of the hatch. Finally the Bolo stopped. "Open the hatch, Dirk."
There was a hiss, followed by a whir, and a brilliant ring of morning sunlight appeared around the hatch, which then slid up into the body of the machine. The combination of heat, humidity, and smell hit him like a wave after so long in the beast's air-conditioned belly. Outside he could hear only the buzzing of insects, the rustling of foliage in the slight breeze, and the cries of jungle animals, hopefully none too big or too close.
He duck walked up to the hatch and climbed down a massive boogie wheel to the ground. Something he never saw buzzed down to take a bite out of his neck, didn't like the taste, and rapidly buzzed away.
The jungle wasn't as thick here as most he'd seen. There were large spaces between the higher trees, large patches of blue visible above the underbrush. Ten meters in front of the Bolo, the burn started.
As he crossed into the blackened area and stooped down to inspect, he could see that Dirk was right about the fire being recent. Not even a few green shoots had emerged from the blackened soil, though doubtlessly within a few days the forest would already be healing itself.
He stood. "Dirk, which way to the wreckage?"
"I read a large concentration of metal behind those trees to your right, about fifteen meters."
He stepped carefully, moving around the charred pillars that had once been stately trees. Something glinted in the sun ahead, and he picked up his pace.
He found nothing that he could have identified definitely as an air shuttle, only a four-meter-long, flattened, twisted hunk of alloy sheet, carbon composite, and superconducting cable.
"The total mass of metal that I am reading," said Dirk, "is only about eighty percent of what I would expect from the shuttle's wreckage. Possibly this is some other craft."
Tyrus didn't think so. "Or the rest of the wreckage was lost well before they hit the ground. I think a missile hit this thing, whatever it is."
Then he looked up. Somehow, an entire skin panel, at least four meters across and two meters long had somehow survived almost intact, cradled in the burned tree limbs almost like an intentionally placed signpost. On the left edge, half of the seal of the Concordiat could be seen, along with most of the mining company's logo. And below that, a number.
His stomach knotted. "Dirk, does the number 'TN-1045' mean anything to you?"
"That was the call sign used by the departing shuttle in its distress call, Tyrus. I am sorry."
He heard a small, mournful noise, and realized only a moment later that it had come from his own throat.
"It is possible your family was not on the shuttle, Tyrus."
It took him a minute to swallow, get his voice working again. "They were here, or back at the colony. It really doesn't matter if they died here or not. This is where hope died, Dirk. This is where they died in my heart."
"I am sorry, Tyrus."
He started scanning the ground, looking for he didn't know what, some scrap of clothing, some personal artifact, some scrap of bone, something to tell him about the people that died here.
"Tyrus."
He spotted a superconducting impeller coil, a porthole and its surrounding chunk of bulkhead, completely intact.
"Tyrus! Behind you!"
Old reflexes cut in and he was raising the rifle even as he turned. The dozen aliens that stood at the edge of the jungle had only knives and spears. He saw them with almost superhuman clarity, a flood of adrenaline pushing aside the grief for the moment. Their colors were different from the ones he'd seen: white, with mottled spots of yellow, brown, and black on gray stripes. They wore what looked like green togas, belted at the waist. They were different than the ones that destroyed the colony. Had they fired the missile that brought down the plane? He didn't know. Didn't care. They would do.
Ignoring his gun, two of them lowered their sword-tipped spears and charged at him, howling as they did so. He pulled the trigger to full auto, cutting one charging alien in half, his misses shooting into the others waiting behind.
He swept the gun back and forth, mowing them all down.
Suddenly there were more, seemingly charging from every side.
He fanned the gun back and forth, waist high, trying to take them down before they got too close.
More aliens fell, more aliens appeared.
He ducked aside as a thrown spear sailed past his head, so close that he could feel the wind on his hair.
The aliens screamed.
He screamed back.
He fired the gun until it overheated, and forced him to go back to choosing his targets and squeezing off shots one by one.
The aliens came closer and closer until he was forced to use his rifle barrel as a club to fend off a stabbing spear, forced to throw the gun aside, grab the pistol from his belt and fire into the charging alien's chest.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four times.
Then a knife sliced between his ribs and the dead weight of the alien's body fell on him like a side of beef.
He braced himself for the spear that would finish the job, the knife that would take his head like so many he'd seen back at the colony.
Then the world exploded. Over and over again.
Behind him, in front of him, to his left, to his right.
He heard the growl of the slowly advancing Bolo, the rain of dust and debris, the whir of the opening hatch.
Then it was very, very quiet.
After a few moments, he braced himself, and in a supreme effort, managed to roll the dead alien off the top of him. As the alien fell, he saw a splinter of shattered tree trunk as long as his forearm buried in its neck.
"That was some risk," Tyrus said, staggering to his feet and looking around, "firing your secondaries that close to me."
"I waited until there was no other choice," Dirk said, "and I hoped your attacker's body would shield you."
"It worked," he said, staggered slowly towards the hatch, clutching his bleeding chest. Something under his palm made a little sucking sound.
"You are injured," said Dirk, as Tyrus staggered and fell through the hatch.
"Very," he gasped. He lay on the compartment floor, the metal decking cool and smooth against his cheek.
"If you can get to the control cabin, my autodoc may be able to help."
"No can do."
"You must try."
"You just go on your way. I'll ride down here."
"You must try."
"Can't. Can't," Tyrus said, staring at the wall, wondering why he was even still talking to the machine that had just saved his life. "Got no hope left, big buddy. If you have some, it will have to be enough for both of us."
He felt the Bolo start to move.
"We will be at the Rustenberg Colony in a few hours. There will be medical help there."
"If you say so," Tyrus said, not really caring.
"I will try not to jostle you, but it may be a difficult journey."
"I can't stop you."
Tyrus figured he passed out for a moment, or an hour, the nightmare of the room jerking around him keeping him just barely aware.
"Tyrus."
"What?"
"There is a protected place in every Bolo's memory where we store remembrances of our past commanders. My service history goes back more than two hundred years, and though my memory has been damaged, that part is still intact. I can remember my first commander with complete clarity, and each officer I have served with since. I have been privileged with an excellent run of commanders. I have been most fortunate."
"That's good, Dirk."
"I have created a place for you there, Tyrus, not in anticipation of any given event, but in honor of what we're been through in our brief time together."
"I'm honored, Dirk."
"The honor is mine, Commander Tyrus."
It was getting very hard to stay awake.
"Dirk."
"Yes, Commander."
"Be sure to warn them about the bombs."
"Yes, Commander."
He felt himself sinking into a very dark place, and he didn't want to talk any more.