The Bolo paused. Siegfried’s hands clenched on the arms of his chair.
“—it may not return. There is a possibility that the records and algorithms which make up my personality will be written over by comparison files during strategic control calculations.” Again Rommel paused. “Siegfried, this is our duty. I am willing to take that chance.”
Siegfried swallowed, only to find a lump in his throat and his guts in knots. “Are you sure?” he asked gently. “Are you very sure? What you’re talking about is—is a kind of deactivation.”
“I am sure,” Rommel replied firmly. “The Field Marshal would have made the same choice.”
Rommel’s manuals were all on a handheld reader. He had studied them from front to back—wasn’t there something in there? “Hold on a minute—”
He ran through the index, frantically keyword searching. This was a memory function, right? Or at least it was software. The designers didn’t encourage operators to go mucking around in the AI functions . . . what would a computer jock call what he was looking for?
Finally he found it; a tiny section in programmerese, not even listed in the index. He scanned it, quickly, and found the warning that had been the thing that had caught his eye in the first place.
This system has been simulation proven in expected scenarios, but has never been fully field-tested.
What the hell did that mean? He had a guess; this was essentially a full-copy backup of the AI’s processor. He suspected that they had never tested the backup function on an AI with a full personality. There was no way of knowing if the restoration function would actually “restore” a lost personality.
But the backup memory-module in question had its own power-supply, and was protected in the most hardened areas of Rommel’s interior. Nothing was ~going to destroy it that didn’t slag him and Rommel together, and if “personality” was largely a matter of memory—
It might work. It might not. It was worth trying, even if the backup procedure was fiendishly hard to initiate. They really didn’t want operators mucking around with the AIs.
Twenty command-strings later, a single memory-mod began its simple task; Rommel was back in charge of the fourth group of mechs, and Siegfried had taken over the driving.
He was not as good as Rommel was, but he was better than he had thought.
They took groups five, and six, and it was horrible—listening to Rommel fade away, lose the vitality behind the synthesized voice. If Siegfried hadn’t had his hands full already, literally, it would have been worse.
But with group seven—
That was when he just about lost it, because in ~reply to one of his voice-commands, instead of a “Got it, Siegfried,” what came over the speakers was the metallic “Affirmative” of a simple voice-activated computer.
All of Rommel’s resources were now devoted to self-defense and control of the armored mechs.
God and my Duty. Siegfried took a deep breath, and began keying in the commands for mass armor deployment.
The ancient commanders were right; from the ground, there was no way of knowing when the moment of truth came. Siegfried only realized they had won when the mother-ship suddenly vanished from orbit, and the remaining AIs went dead. Cutting their losses; there was nothing in any of the equipment that would betray where it came from. Whoever was in charge of the invasion force must have decided that there was no way they would finish the mission before someone, a regularly scheduled freighter or a surprise patrol, discovered what was going on and reported it.
By that time, he had been awake for fifty hours straight; he had put squeeze-bulbs of electrolytic drink near at hand, but he was starving and still thirsty. With the air-conditioning cut out, he must have sweated out every ounce of fluid he drank. His hands were shaking and every muscle in his neck and shoulders were cramped from hunching over the boards.
Rommel was battered and had lost several external sensors and one of his guns. But the moment that the mother-ship vanished, he had only one thought.
He manually dropped control of every mech from Rommel’s systems, and waited, praying, for his old friend to “come back.”
But nothing happened—other than the obvious things that any AI would do, restoring all the comfort-support and life-support functions, and beginning damage checks and some self-repair.
Rommel was gone.
His throat closed; his stomach knotted. But—
It wasn’t tested. That doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Once more, his hands moved over the keyboard, with another twenty command-strings, telling that little memory-module in the heart of his Bolo to initiate full restoration. He hadn’t thought he had water to spare for tears—yet there they were, burning their way down his cheeks. Two of them.
He ignored them, fiercely, shaking his head to clear his eyes, and continuing the command-sequence.
Damage checks and self-repair aborted. Life-support went on automatic.
And Siegfried put his head down on the console to rest his burning eyes for a moment. Just for a moment—
Just—
* * *
“Ahem.”
Siegfried jolted out of sleep, cracking his elbow on the console, staring around the cabin with his heart racing wildly.
“I believe we have visitors, Siegfried,” said that wonderful, familiar voice. “They seem most impatient.”
Screens lit up, showing a small army of civilians ~approaching, riding in everything from outmoded sandrails to tractors, all of them cheering, all of them heading straight for the Bolo.
“We seem to have their approval at least,” Rommel continued.
His heart had stopped racing, but he still trembled. And once again, he seemed to have come up with the moisture for tears. He nodded, knowing Rommel would see it, unable for the moment to get any words out.
“Siegfried—before we become immersed in grateful civilians—how did you bring me back?” Rommel asked. “I’m rather curious—I actually seem to remember fading out. An unpleasant experience.”
“How did I get you back?” he managed to choke out—and then began laughing.
He held up the manual, laughing, and cried out the famous quote—
“Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!”
AS OUR STRENGTH LESSENS
David Drake
Dawn is three hours away, but the sky to the east burns orange and sulphur and deep, sullen red. The rest of my battalion fights there, forcing the Enemy’s main line of resistance.
That is not my concern. I have been taken out of ~reserve and tasked to eliminate an Enemy outpost. The mission appears to me to be one which could have waited until our spearhead had successfully breached the enemy line, but strategic decisions are made by the colloid minds of my human superiors. So be it.
When ion discharges make the night fluoresce, they also tear holes of static in the radio communications spectrum. ” . . . roadwh . . . and suspe . . .” reports one of my comrades.
Even my enhancement program is unable to decode more of the transmission than that, but I recognize the fist of the sender: Saratoga, part of the lead element of our main attack. His running gear has been damaged. He will have to drop out of line.
My forty-seven pairs of flint-steel roadwheels are in depot condition. Their tires of spun beryllium monocrystal, woven to deform rather than compress, all have 97% or better of their fabric unbroken. The immediate terrain is semi-arid. The briefing files ~inform me this is typical of the planet. My track links purr among themselves as they grind through scrub vegetation and the friable soil, carrying me to my ~assigned mission.
There is a cataclysmic fuel-air explosion to the east behind me. The glare is visible for 5.3 seconds, and the ground will shake for many minutes as shock waves echo through the planetary mantle.
Had my human superiors so chosen, I could be ~replacing Saratoga at the spearhead of the attack.
The rear elements of the infantry are in sight now. They look like dung beetles in their hard suits, crawling backward beneath a rain of shrapnel. I am within range of their low-power communications net. “Hold what you got, troops,” orders the unit’s acting commander. “Big Brother’s come to help!”
I am not Big Brother. I am Maldon, a Mark XXX Bolo of the 3d Battalion, Dinochrome Brigade. The lineage of our unit goes back to the 2nd South Wessex Dragoons. In 1944, we broke the last German resistance on the path to Falaise—though we traded our flimsy Cromwells against the Tigers at a ratio of six to one to do it.
The citizens do not need to know what the cost is. They need only to know that the mission has been ~accomplished. The battle honors welded to my turret prove that I have always accomplished my mission.
Though this task should not have been a difficult one, even for the company of infantry to whom it was originally assigned. An Enemy research facility became, because of its location, an outpost on the flank of our line as we began to drive out of the landing zone. In a breakthrough battle, infantry can do little but die in their fighting suits. A company of them was sent to mop up the outpost in relative safety.