Nor was that all they did. As Rommel pointed out, the presumptive “battalion” would have been available in emergencies—there was no reason why they shouldn’t respond when local emergencies came up.
So—when a flash-flood trapped a young woman and three children on the roof of her vehicle, it was Rommel and Siegfried who not only rescued them, but towed the vehicle to safety as well. When a snowfall in the mountains stranded a dozen truckers, Siegfried and Rommel got them out. When a small child was lost while playing in the hills, Rommel found her by having all searchers clear out as soon as the sun went down, and using his heat-sensors to locate every source of approximately her size. They put out runaway brushfires by rolling over them; they responded to Maydays from remote locations when they were nearer than any other agency. They even joined in a manhunt for an escaped rapist—who turned himself in, practically soiling himself with fear, when he learned that Rommel was part of the search-party.
It didn’t hurt. They were of no help for men trapped in a mine collapse; or rather, of no more help than Siegfried’s two hands could make them. They couldn’t rebuild bridges that were washed away, nor construct roads. But what they could do, they did, often before anyone thought to ask them for help.
By the end of their second year on Bachman’s World, they were at least no longer the target of ~resentment. Those few citizens they had aided actually looked on them with gratitude. The local politicians whose careers had suffered because of their presence had found other causes to espouse, other schemes to pursue. Siegfried and Rommel were a dead issue.
But by then, the two of them had established a routine of monitoring emergency channels, running their private war-games, updating their maps, and adding changes in the colony to their defense and offense plans. There was no reason to go back to simply sitting beside the spaceport. Neither of them cared for sitting idle, and what they were doing was the nearest either of them would ever get to actually refighting the battles their idol had lost and won.
When High Command got their reports and sent recommendations for further “readiness” preparations, and commendations for their “community service”—Siegfried, now wiser in the ways of manipulating public opinion, issued a statement to the press about both.
After that, there were no more rumblings of discontent, and things might have gone on as they were until Siegfried was too old to climb Rommel’s ladder.
But the fates had another plan in store for them.
Alarms woke Siegfried out of a sound and dreamless sleep. Not the synthesized pseudo-alarms Rommel used when surprising him for a drill, either, but the real thing—
He launched himself out of his bunk before his eyes were focused, grabbing the back of the com-chair to steady himself before he flung himself into it and strapped himself down. As soon as he moved, Rommel turned off all the alarms but one; the proximity alert from the single defense-satellite in orbit above them.
Interior lighting had gone to full-emergency red. He scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, impatiently; finally they focused on the screens of his console, and he could read what was there. And he swore, fervently and creatively.
One unknown ship sat in geosynch orbit about Port City; a big one, answering no hails from the port, and seeding the skies with what appeared to his sleep-fogged eyes as hundreds of smaller drop-ships.
“The mother-ship has already neutralized the port air-to-ground defenses, Siegfried,” Rommel reported grimly. “I don’t know what kind of stealthing devices they have, or if they’ve got some new kind of drive, but they don’t match anything in my records. They just appeared out of nowhere and started dumping drop-ships. I think we can assume they’re hostiles.”
They had a match for just this in their hundreds of plans; unknown ship, unknown attackers, dropping a pattern of offensive troops of some kind—
“What are they landing?” he asked, playing the console board. “You’re stealthed, right?”
“To the max,” Rommel told him. “I don’t detect anything like life-forms on those incoming vessels, but my sensors aren’t as sophisticated as they could be. The vessels themselves aren’t all that big. My guess is that they’re dropping either live troops or clusters of very small mechs, mobile armor, maybe the size of a Panzer.”
“Landing pattern?” he asked. He brought up all of Rommel’s weaponry; AIs weren’t allowed to activate their own weapons. And they weren’t allowed to fire on living troops without permission from a human, either. That was the only real reason for a Bolo needing an operator.
“Surrounding Port City, but starting from about where the first farms are.” Rommel ran swift readiness-tests on the systems as Siegfried brought them up; the screens scrolled too fast for Siegfried to read them.
They had a name for that particular scenario. It was one of the first possibilities they had run when they began plotting invasion and counter-invasion plans.
“Operation Cattle Drive. Right.” If the invaders followed the same scheme he and Rommel had anticipated, they planned to drive the populace into Port City, and either capture the civilians, or destroy them at leisure. He checked their current location; it was out beyond the drop-zone. “Is there anything landing close to us?”
“Not yet—but the odds are that something will soon.” Rommel sounded confident, as well he should be—his ability to project landing-patterns was far better than any human’s. “I’d say within the next fifteen minutes.”
Siegfried suddenly shivered in a breath of cool air from the ventilators, and was painfully aware suddenly that he was dressed in nothing more than a pair of ~fatigue-shorts. Oh well; some of the Desert Fox’s battles had taken place with the men wearing little else. What they could put up with, he could. There certainly wasn’t anyone here to complain.
“As soon as you think we can move without detection, close on the nearest craft,” he ordered. “I want to see what we’re up against. And start scanning the local freqs; if there’s anything in the way of organized defense from the civvies, I want to know about it.”
A pause, while the ventilators hummed softly, and glowing dots descended on several screens. “They don’t seem to have anything, Siegfried,” Rommel reported quietly. “Once the ground-to-space defenses were fried, they just collapsed. Right now, they seem to be in a complete state of panic. They don’t even seem to ~remember that we’re out here—no one’s tried to hail us on any of our regular channels.”
“Either that—or they think we’re out of commission,” he muttered absently, “Or just maybe they are giving us credit for knowing what we’re doing and are trying not to give us away. I hope so. The longer we can go without detection, the better chance we have to pull something out of a hat.”
An increase in vibration warned him that Rommel was about to move. A new screen lit up, this one tracking a single vessel. “Got one,” the Bolo said shortly. “I’m coming in behind his sensor sweep.”
Four more screens lit up; enhanced front, back, top, and side views of the terrain. Only the changing views on the screens showed that Rommel was moving; other than that, there was no way to tell from inside the cabin what was happening. It would be different if Rommel had to execute evasive maneuvers of course, but right now, he might have still been parked. The control cabin and living quarters were heavily shielded and cushioned against the shocks of ordinary movement. Only if Rommel took a direct hit by something impressive would Siegfried feel it. . . .
And if he takes a direct hit by something more than impressive—we’re slag. Bolos are the best, but they can’t take everything.
“The craft is down.”
He pushed the thought away from his mind. This was what Rommel had been built to do—this moment justified Rommel’s very existence. And he had known from the very beginning that the possibility, however remote, had existed that he too would be in combat one day. That was what being in the military was all about. There was no use in pretending otherwise.
Get on with the job. That’s what they’ve sent me here to do. Wasn’t there an ancient royal family whose motto was “God, and my Duty?” Then let that be his.
“Have you detected any sensor scans from the mother-ship?” he asked, his voice a harsh whisper. “Or anything other than a forward scan from the landing craft?” He didn’t know why he was whispering—
“Not as yet, Siegfried,” Rommel replied, sounding a little surprised. “Apparently, these invaders are confident that there is no one out here at all. Even that forward scan seemed mainly to be a landing-aid.”
“Nobody here but us chickens,” Siegfried muttered. “Are they offloading yet?”