“Your offensive.”
“Gott in Himmel!” Rheinhardt viewed the Bolo with wide eyes. “Why ever would your creators give you such abilities to analyze emotion?”
“I do not analyze emotion, per se,” the Bolo said, “however I am trained in negotiation and have discriminatory circuits capable of analyzing the non-verbal parts of speech.”
“I had not realized that was an ability of the Bolo series.” Rheinhardt confided, his look guarded.
“It is not a well-known fact,” the Bolo agreed. “Also, the C batch of Mark XVI Bolos has been known to be somewhat more adept in that matter than previous versions.”
“Indeed.” Rheinhardt uncrossed his legs and recrossed them to give himself time to collect his thoughts. “So you detected that I had some responsibility in planning the last campaign; how accurate is your assessment?”
“Until your last comment, I placed the possibility at 78%,” the Bolo replied. “Now, however, I compute the possibility at 97%.”
“Really? You learnt that much from this short exchange?”
“Mostly from your tone of speech and body movements,” the Bolo said. “Could you describe the campaign to me?”
“Why would you want to know about it?”
“Merely a professional interest in how you conducted your operations,” the Bolo said. “I am, as you must understand, an avid historian.”
“Very well. The central part of this continent is the most fertile part of our planet,” Rheinhardt began. “It extends from the moist coastal areas in the south, north to the permafrost line. East and west, our great mountain ranges are more inimical to the terraforming microbes and the land there less suited for human habitation. The two coasts, east and west, are just now being infested with the terraforming microbes.”
The Colonel hopped off the table to pace in front of the Bolo. “So it is the central region, particularly that nearest the great river system which runs north to south from the permafrost to the southern coast, which is most suitable and prized for human habitation. The richest region in the south is the large area west of the Neurhein river and the richest region in the north is a large fertile area east of the river. The regions are known as Alasec and Renaloir.”
Rheinhardt paused in his pacing, turning to face the Bolo directly. “The Noufrench had the greater army, organized in three corps totalling nearly twenty divisions. They also possessed the satellite surveillance network, having gained control of the one major dish antenna on our planet-”
“Where is that?”
“It is in Alasec, several hundred kilometers from the Depot. Of course, the satellites were originally intended for agricultural purposes but infrared photographs are equally good at spotting troop build-ups.”
“Why did you not destroy them?”
Rheinhardt threw his hands in the air. “With what? Our technological base was destroyed in the early wars. Do you realize how difficult it is to produce the high quality parts required for rockets?”
He shook his head, clenched his fists in remembered irritation. “As it is, I’ve had to deal sharply with one engineer, von Grün, who persists in obtaining funding for the next ten years to develop a ballistic missile.
“Ballistic, only,” Rheinhardt sighed, his temper cooling. “Those satellites are in geosynchronous orbit. The energy and precision guidance for such a missile will be beyond us for many years.”
With a frown, Rheinhardt noticed his clenched fists and forced them open. “Our priorities must be those technologies required for survival. When we have the time to build rockets, we shall do so.”
“And the Noufrench?”
“Our Intelligence indicates that they may have toyed with missiles but gave up-it is just too expensive,” Colonel Rheinhardt replied.
“But the satellites are still active?”
Rheinhardt nodded. “Although we do not understand how the satellites have remained active so long-”
“Military satellites are hardened,” the Bolo suggested, “however I could see that satellites designed for exceedingly long lives would require more shielding and greater self-repair capabilities. Are the satellites autonomous?”
“I don’t know,” Rheinhardt admitted. “However, it would seem logical.” He snorted. “Goodness knows they had little direction from us for over two hundred years.”
“Then they are autonomous,” the Bolo decided. “And quite capable.” The huge machine paused. “They would have been built to survive numerous micrometeoroid impacts, maybe even larger impacts. Much of their ability is contained within the standard Bolo operational parameters.”
All this was only of the remotest interest to Rheinhardt. He made a rueful grimace. “They certainly survived and it caused us a lot of trouble. However,” he grinned, “I realized that perhaps we could turn it to our advantage.”
“You said the satellites were designed to examine crops-”
“Exactly!” Rheinhardt brought his hands together in a chopping motion, one hand dropping onto the other like a hammer on an anvil.
“I realized that if they depended upon that source of information, I could use it against them.”
“You could disguise troop locations by placing them in areas which produced matching infrared heat.”
“Yes.”
“That would provide surprise. How were the enemy disposed?”
Rheinhardt threw his hands up. “They outnumbered us two to one. They possessed no less than twelve infantry divisions and two armored formations.”
“Were the infantry mounted?”
“Three divisions were lorry-borne,” Rheinhardt said.
“I shall require a complete set of maps of military grade roadways.”
“What? Of course,” Rheinhardt replied irritably. “We arrayed our forces of four static infantry divisions and one armored division, with a small screening force placed in rough terrain.”
“They attacked the screening force.”
Rheinhardt nodded. “As planned. The screening force was made quite visible in the infrared bands. Our two other armored divisions were pre-positioned behind the screening force. We let the enemy establish a bridgehead, start a break out, and then counterattacked. Our infantry forces north and south squeezed down on the bridgehead while our armored divisions dealt with their spearhead-”
“Why did you not position infantry forces to handle the spearhead?”
“We did not have sufficient forces,” Rheinhardt replied. “I would have liked to, we lost more armor than I would have wished. In the end, however, we cut off the supplies to their armored divisions and decimated them. On the rebound we encircled half of their infantry forces and cut them off. By this time our supplies were running low so we allowed the Noufrench to sue for peace.”
“It appears that fortune has changed.”
Rheinhardt snorted. “Indeed! Two years later, when we still had not replaced our armor losses, they attacked and forced us to give up the territory we’d acquired to the west of the Neurhein.”
“And now you feel you have enough armor?”
“We have you.”
“You may be overestimating my utility,” the Bolo said.
Rheinhardt cut off his reply at the sight of a group of approaching technicians. “You have finished the communications gear?”
“Yes, sir. Where are we supposed to set this up?”
Rheinhardt glanced at the Bolo. “How should this gear be placed?”
A long, loud tearing noise shook the building, emanating from the Bolo.
“Are you all right?” Rheinhardt asked nervously, fearing that all his plans would come to naught. He stepped back from the Bolo, peered beyond the smart-armored carapace and spotted a small opening far back on the main deck of the reactive-armored hull. The thought of a chink in such legendary armor sent a cold shiver down the Colonel’s spine.
With the unsightly bulldozer blade removed, and Marius’ careful attention to detail, the Bolo stood as a tribute to monumental war. It measured over ten meters in length, five meters in height and its armored carapace crested four meters from the bottom of its armored tracks. Its main weapon, an awesome Hellbore, jutted wickedly from the carapace while above and behind on the main deck rose a cluster of anti-aircraft guns. Mournful holes marked where once smart explosives had been festooned on the hull, where specialist electronic warfare portholes had stuck probes out inquisitively, where charge generators had stood ready for those foolish enough to approach too near-and where proud battle honors had once been welded.
Rheinhardt could see where Marius’ men had tried in vain to restore some of the older battle medals but even that softer metal had proven too much for their arts.
“I was merely opening an access port to my carapace,” the Bolo replied mildly. “The hinges are not as well maintained as I should like.”
Hastened by Rheinhardt’s arched brows, directed by the Bolo’s grating voice, the technicians made quick, if nervous, work of connecting in the computer interlink.
“I am connected to a small computer network of twenty nodes,” the Bolo announced when the technicians had completed the installation. It continued in a slightly puzzled tone, “I am having some difficulty in accessing information. There seems to be some multiplexing-multiple datalinks-in response to my queries.”
The technicians looked confused and nervous, casting glances to their spokesman who looked no less distraught. Finally, he brightened. “It’s non-Quirthian!”
“Quirthian?” the Bolo asked curiously.
Rheinhardt’s eyes narrowed. “Are you aware of Quirthian logic?”