“I am the protector of Camelot,” Kenny said slowly. “I am a sentient in armor. There are records of such in the history of Camelot. There are currently none resident. It is the duty of the armored sentient, identification as knight-errant, to protect the weak and use strength in the service of justice. My name is not Kenny. That is not a name proper in Camelot. I am Sir Kendrick. It is my mission to protect Camelot.”
I must have blinked. In all my life, growing up and in the Service and here on Camelot, I have never been so surprised. It must have taken me minutes to recover my voice. “How did you think of this?” I asked Frederick shakily.
He just shook his head. “It was your idea, really. You told Kenny to access records of the historic Camelot. I never even thought of knights. Though it does make a kind of sense, you know.”
I had to agree. It did make sense. And it still made sense two weeks later, when we welded the latest and probably the last awards to Sir Kendrick’s fighting turret. A pair of golden spurs, far too small for the mammoth Mark XXIV, glinted in the sun. And Father Rhys inscribed a refugee who was now accepted as a resident in our Doomsday book just as all the other refugees had been recorded, one Sir Kendrick Evilslayer.
Take that, Command. No one can decommission him now. By the law of Camelot, this Bolo is not only our knight protector, but a citizen. But it is not merely a trick of the law. Sir Kendrick has become truly human.
THE LEGACY OF LEONIDAS
J. Andrew Keith
Go tell the Spartans, you who read:
We took their orders, and are dead.
I become aware of my surroundings.
In the first 0.572 seconds following my return to consciousness, a complete status check shows that all my on-board systems are performing within nominal limits. I note a slight variation, on the order of 0.0144, in the anticipated output of my fusion plant, but as this remains well within both safety and performance limits I merely file this datum away for future maintenance review. In all other respects my purely mechanical functions are exactly as they should be.
My sensors inform me of my environment. These readings are at significant variance with the most ~recent reports stored in my short-term memory banks, suggesting that I have experienced a prolonged period at minimum awareness level, during which time either my position or my environs have undergone a change. The gravity here has dropped from previous readings by a factor of 0.0151, atmospheric pressure is considerably lower than in my last sampling, and the star my visual receptors show just above a line of jagged mountains to magnetic east of my current position is a class K5V, smaller and less energetic, but much closer to this planet than the class F9V sun of Kullervo, my last recorded duty station. All indications are that I have been transported to another star system, another planet, during my extended down-time.
I probe my memory banks for further confirmation of this hypothesis and find a disturbing discontinuity. My memory circuits have been reconfigured! The sensation is most disturbing, and I spend a full .04 seconds contemplating the uncertainty this generates in my survival center.
A Bolo Mark XX Model B cannot undergo a complete memory erasure without destroying the basic identity of the unit, and that clearly has not happened in this case. I am still Unit JSN of the Line, with a full memory of 50.716 standard years of service, not counting down-time for transport or repairs, in the ~Dinochrome Brigade on one hundred three worlds. But parts of that identity have been overlaid with new programming, and it is this that causes me to spend such an inordinate amount of time in self-analysis. No longer do I belong to the Dinochrome Brigade, it seems, or to the Fourth Battalion of that unit. I know a feeling of genuine loss at this realization. The Fourth Battalion was a proud unit, tracing its ancestry ~directly back to the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards of pre-spaceflight Terra. The continuity of belonging to this ancient combat unit, which had contributed to the victories of Waterloo and Desert Storm and New Edinburgh and so many other hard-fought battles, had always been an important part of who and what I, Unit JSN of the Line, was. Now that was gone, ~replaced by allegiance to some new unit with no history, no battle credits, no past at all . . .
For .033 seconds I consider and discard the possibility that this is some trick of the Enemy, but this is clearly a low-ordered probability at best. All access codes and passwords have been properly entered in the course of the memory circuit alterations, and that means there is an overall 95.829 percent probability that this procedure was fully authorized by my Commander.
Still, the uneasiness remains, a nagging factor which has a detrimental effect to my overall performance. I find myself looking forward to a chance to confer with my Commander to learn more, perhaps, of the circumstances of these changes. . . .
“All I’m asking for is a little bit of cooperation, ~Coordinator,” Captain David Fife said, trying to keep the exasperation from showing in his voice. “We’ve ~already got Jason on line. With a little bit of support from your technical people the rest of the company will be up and running in a day or two . . .”
“Jason?” Major Elaine Durant, Citizens’ Army of New Sierra, interrupted gently.
Fife found himself blushing. “Sorry . . . Unit JSN. It’s pretty common in the Concordiat Army, to give a human name to the Bolos, and their letter codes usually suggest a nickname we can use.”
“Well, Captain, we’re not in the Concordiat Army here.” Coordinator Mark Wilson, the civilian Chief of Military Affairs for New Sierra, managed to convey his total disapproval of all things Terran in those simple words. He was a small man, short and slight, with prominent ears and a habitually severe expression, but Fife had learned not to underestimate the man because of his unmilitary appearance. Wilson was no military genius, but he was a canny politician with an iron will and little tolerance for opposition. “And I will not have anyone treating these machines of yours as if they were something more than what they are. It pleases your lords and masters to give us their obsolete gear, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to alter our whole military operation to accommodate these monstrosities.”
Fife cleared his throat uncertainly. His position on New Sierra was an uncomfortable one. The building hostilities between the world and its nearest neighbor, Deseret, had gone on for decades without attracting the notice of the Concordiat. Like other human-settled planets that still remained outside the Concordiat’s ~political orbit, New Sierra and Deseret had been considered no more than minor annoyances . . . until a diplomatic crisis with the nonhuman Legura had thrust this region of space into sudden strategic prominence. Terra needed a base in the region, and New Sierra was a lot more suitable than the fanatic theocracy that was Deseret.
So the Concordiat had been forced, reluctantly, to take an interest in the brewing conflict. Deseret’s Army of the New Messiah was in the process of expanding the theocracy’s sway in the region, and the almost equally fanatic Free Republic of New Sierra stood in the way of that expansion. The Sierrans had good reason to be wary of the Concordiat’s help. They had been rebuffed often enough in the past when they had asked for arms and equipment. Now, very much at the eleventh hour, help had arrived at last . . . Captain David Fife and ten Bolo Mark XX fighting machines.
Unfortunately, the ANM had arrived in force nearly a week ahead of the Concordiat assistance, gaining a solid foothold on the southern portion of New Sierra’s primary continent. The invasion considerably complicated Fife’s job, and it had been difficult enough from the outset.
“Please, Coordinator,” he said, trying to pick his way carefully through the minefield of the Sierran’s prejudices. “I’m not asking for anything beyond a few extra electronics technicians to help get the Bolos activated and prepped. They won’t do you any good as long as they’re sitting at the starport, powered down and ~unarmed. But believe me, those ten Bolos by themselves could turn the tide against Deseret. I’ve seen them in action, sir. The word awesome doesn’t even begin to describe a Bolo combat unit on the battlefield.”
“Nonsense!” Wilson snorted. “Do you really think, Captain, that I have the least intention of entrusting the safety of my people to these machines? We asked the Concordiat for weapons, maybe some space interdiction to keep those goddamned religious fanatics out of our system. Instead they give us robot tanks. Obsolete ones, at that! If they’re so damned good, how come they’ve been retired from the Concordiat Army, huh?”