A series of loud clangs and thumps marks the completion of my heavy lift platform's lockdown against the cargo deck of the CSS Darknight. I dislike naval transport ships, although I would be hard pressed for answers if asked why. Perhaps I simply prefer open sky and the feel of wind across my war hull. Even combat drops are better than confinement in a naval transport. I signal my all-clear to the cargo officer, who relays it to the Darknight's command deck. The Darknight breaks orbit from Sherman's World and moves ponderously toward this star system's optimal hyper-L jump point, escorted by the destroyer CSS Vengeance. My commander sends his respects to the captain.
"Lieutenant Colonel John Weyman, reporting in, ma'am."
"Welcome aboard, Colonel," Captain Harrelson responds. "We'll be under way in a moment. Once we've made hyper-L, I'll meet you and the other Bolo commanders in the wardroom."
"Very good, Captain. Weyman, out."
The Darknight's ops officer downloads to my Action/Command Center the complete mission briefing files for our new assignment. The fact that we have been pulled away from Sherman's World, along with four of my brothers and sisters of the Third Dinochrome Brigade, reveals how urgently we are needed on Thule. John whistles tunelessly under his breath as he reviews the files from his customary place in my command chair.
I find the entry seventeen seconds before he does.
Even as dismay races through my psychotronic neural nets, John punches pause, halting the scan of Thule's personnel rosters. His face runs dreadfully pale, with a deep emotion I have seen there only twice before. Both times, the woman whose name glows like a beacon on the Eisenbrucke Station roster has been at the eye of a disastrous emotional storm. One which has shaken my commander a third time, now.
I am appalled—and have not the slightest idea what to say, to break the dreadful silence. I want desperately to help him, to offer some bit of verbal support, and find myself unable to think of anything, other than a helpless, "John—?"
My commander slaps the releases on his harness without a word. I watch in growing agitation as he leaves my command compartment, climbs down my war hull, and vanishes from the cargo hold, still without speaking. There is literally nothing I can do, other than watch him go. Whatever he intends, he will tell me once he has done it. Or not, as the case may be. When it comes to Bessany Weyman, the pattern to date has been a stiff and unbroken silence. Deeply disturbed, I turn my attention with reluctance back to the mission briefing files.
It is not, perhaps, so strange that Bessany Weyman has joined the Thule Research Expedition. Thule is doubtless one of the few places in human space where she is able to work in peace, beyond the reach of reporters and news cameras. Given what I know of human psychology—admittedly limited, since I am not human and will never fully understand my creators—she has probably needed to bury herself in work. My commander's exact feelings towards his sister-in-law have never been clear, for this is one area of his life he has never revealed to me.
My commander is not given to chatty conversation, in any case, but anything to do with his older brother's marriage and death sends him into stony silence. Over the five years, three months, and twenty-nine days since Alexander Weyman's shattering suicide, I have come to believe that John Weyman does not, in fact, blame his sister-in-law, regardless of the stories fielded by the press.
But even now, I cannot be sure. John has shared only one conversation with me concerning Bessany Weyman. The invitation to attend his politically prominent brother's wedding induced a pale, shaken look of horror. John immediately requested leave, which his commanding officer granted readily. Shortly after his return, John sought the privacy of my command compartment for the uncharacteristic action of emptying an entire bottle of whiskey. There, in the alcohol-filled silence, he whispered out the thing which was preying upon him.
"She wouldn't listen to me, Rapier. Dammed innocent fool of a girl blew up in my face, when I tried to warn her. God, what Alex is capable to doing to that sweet child . . . I should never have gone back for the wedding. Big mistake. One unholy hell of a mistake. And he knew. Alex knew exactly why I came and he laughed the whole time I was there. All the way to the altar and probably all the way through the honeymoon. But I had to try, Rapier. God knows, I couldn't just let her marry him, blind, not knowing anything."
That painful, post-wedding conversation, brief as it was, is the only revelation John Weyman has ever made, regarding his feelings for his brother's wife. The sick, shaken look returned for the second time when the news media descended, demanding his "reaction" to his brother's self-inflicted death.
He refused to answer any of their questions, earning my deep respect, but he said nothing to me, either, triggering a deep worry which has been with me ever since. He has not spoken Alexander Weyman's name even once in the ensuing five years, three months, and twenty-nine days. I do know that my commander sent three separate SWIFT messages to the shocked widow, but if she replied to them, he did not share her answers with me.
I have watched anxiously over John, doing my limited best to help, but I am only a Bolo. Help is difficult to render when I do not possess a human soul, leaving me incapable even of understanding the full scope of the problem. But John Weyman, even in his silence, is a fine commander, brilliant and courageous. Whatever I have been capable of doing, I have done, gladly.
And now, as we ride to battle with an enemy of unknown strength and capability, the one person John Weyman tried so hard—and failed so wretchedly—to help tops a list of people most likely to become fatalities. Bessany Weyman's research station sits dead last on Sector Command's list of priority defense sites. There is no Bolo available to defend a facility with only fifty-three people in residence, nor is there any military reason to send a Bolo there, since the mines are the critical facilities on Thule.
Without military help, Bessany Weyman will certainly die under enemy guns. The more I brood on it, the more I wonder, anxiously, where my commander has gone.
I learn the answer when the CSS Darknight's communications officer attempts to raise Eisenbrucke Station via SWIFT. I am plugged into the Darknight's data net, which allows me to overhear the transmission. When there is no response, not even the autoresponder code that should have acknowledged the incoming signal, the communications officer tries to raise the closest human habitation to the research facility. This second SWIFT message races across vast interstellar distances and is answered within one point three minutes.
"CSS Darknight, this is Seta Point Colony, responding. Do you copy?"
"Seta Point, we copy. Communications Officer Tabbert here. We're trying to hail Eisenbrucke Station. Their SWIFT unit appears to be down. Have they sustained an enemy assault?"
"We can't raise them either, but I can't believe it's due to any Tersae attack. A blizzard howled across the whole eastern half of the Chak Upthrust almost a week ago, well before the attacks came. Hurricane-force winds and snow more than a meter deep. Nothing's moving across open ground out here. When the station dropped off-line, we figured it must be storm damage to their communications equipment."
It is a plausible explanation. Not entirely reassuring, but plausible enough to restore hope. If the blizzard continues to hold off Tersae attacks long enough for us to arrive, we may be able to secure Seta Point and send an armed force to evacuate the research station. Still, I continue to worry, uncertain whether or not anything listens to soldiers' prayers—or if that something would bother listening to a machine. This does not stop me from hoping, deep in the privacy of my own thoughts, that something watches over both John Weyman and his sister-in-law. For now, it is the best I can do.
I fear it is not nearly enough.