The Earl’s bodyguards failed to accomplish their mission. There is no honor in failure.
“What did you wish to tell us, Major Bowen?” I asked.
The human coughed. He looked around the bay ~before he replied. His eyes had adapted to the glow of my running lights.
My comrades of the 3d Battalion listened silently to the conversation. To a creature of Bowen’s size, fifty-one motionless Bolos must have loomed like features of a landscape rather than objects constructed by tools in human hands.
“The accepted wisdom,” Bowen said, “is that the Anceti are scientifically backward. That the race has ~degenerated from an advanced level of scientific ability, and that the remnants of that science are no threat to human arms.”
He patted the flint-steel skirt protecting my track and roadwheels. “No serious threat to you and your friends, Maldon.”
“Yes,” I said, because I thought a human would have spoken . . . though there was no need to tell Bowen what he already knew was in the official briefing files.
“I don’t believe the Anceti are degenerate,” Bowen said. “And I sure don’t think they’re ignorant. Nobody who’s turning out lasers like theirs is ignorant. They’ve got a flux density of ten times our best—and there’s not even a hint of a power source.”
“The Enemy no longer has stardrive,” I said, as if I were stating a fact instead of retailing information from the briefing files. This is a technique humans use when they wish to elicit information from other humans.
“Balls!” Bowen said. He did not speak as a human and my superior. Instead, his voice had the sharpness of a cloud as it spills lightning to the ground, careless and certain of its path. “Do you believe that, Maldon? Is that the best the mind of a Bolo Mark XXX can do synthesizing data?”
I was stung. “So the briefing files stated,” I replied, “and I have no information to contradict—”
“Balls!” Bowen repeated.
I said nothing.
After a moment, the scientist continued, “There’s a better than 99% probability that the Anceti are reinforcing their outpost worlds under threat of our attack. How are they doing that if they don’t have stardrive, Maldon?”
I reviewed my data banks. “Reconnaissance shows the strengthened facilities,” I said. I already knew how Bowen was going to respond. “Reconnaissance does not show that the equipment and personnel were ~imported from outside the worlds on which they are now based.”
“We’re talking about barren rocks, some of these planets,” Bowen said. His tone dripped with disgust. I choose to believe that was a human rhetorical device rather than his real opinion of my intellect. “The Anceti and their hardware didn’t spring from rocks, Maldon; they were brought there. A better than 99% probability. We just don’t know how.”
“The briefing files are wrong,” I said. I spoke aloud to show the human that I understood.
They rule and we serve. We know one truth at a time, but colloid minds believe contradictory truths or no truth at all. So be it.
There was a question that I could not resolve, no matter how I attempted to view the information at my disposal. I needed more data. So—
“Why are you telling us this, Major Bowen?” I asked.
“Because I want you to understand,” the human said fiercely, “that the Anceti’s science isn’t inferior to ours, it’s just different. Like the stardrive. Did you know that every one of the star systems the Anceti have colonized at some point in galactic history crossed a track some other Anceti star system occupied? Or will occupy!”
I reviewed my data banks. The information was of course there, but I had not analyzed it for this purpose.
“There is no indication that the Enemy has time travel, Major Bowen,” I said. “Except the data you cite, which could be explained by an assumption of time travel.”
“I know that, I know that,” Bowen replied. His voice rose toward hysteria, but he caught himself in mid-syllable. “I don’t say they have time travel, I don’t believe they have time travel. But they’ve got something, Maldon. I know they’ve got something.”
“We will accomplish our mission, Major Bowen,” I said to soothe him.
Some humans hate us for our strength and our difference from them, even though they know we are the starkest bulwark against their Enemies. Most humans treat us as the tools of their wills, as is their right. But a very few humans are capable of concern for minds and personalities, though they are encased in flint-steel and ceramic rather than protoplasm.
All humans are to be protected. Some are to be cherished.
“Oh, I don’t doubt you’ll accomplish your mission, Maldon,” Bowen said, letting his fingers pause at the gouge in my bow slope where an arc knife struck me a glancing blow. “But I’ve failed in mine.”
He made the sound of laughter, but there was no ~humor in it. “That’s why I’m drunk, you see.” He cleared his throat. “Well, I was drunk. And I’ll be drunk again, real soon.”
“You have not failed, Major Bowen,” I said. “You have corrected the faulty analysis of others.”
“I haven’t corrected anything, Maldon,” the human said. “I can’t give them a mechanism for whatever the Anceti are doing, so nobody in the task force believes me. Nobody even listens. They’re too happy saying that the Anceti are a bunch of barbarians we’re going to mop up without difficulties.”
“We believe you, Major Bowen,” I said. I spoke for all my comrades in the 3d Battalion, though they ~remained silent on the audio frequencies. “We will be ready to react to new tricks and weapons of the ~Enemy.”
“That’s good, Maldon,” said the human. He squeezed my armor with more force than I had thought his pudgy fingers could achieve. “Because you’re the guys who’re going to pay the price if Colonel McDougal’s wisdom is wrong.”
He turned and walked back to the hatchway. “Now,” he added, “I’m going to get drunk.”
I wonder where Major Bowen is now. Somewhere in Command, some place as safe as any on a planet at war. Behind me, the main battle rages in a fury of shock waves and actinic radiation. It is hard fought, but the exchanges of fire are within expected parameters.
The mission to which I have been assigned, on the other hand . . .
The infantry company called in artillery support as soon as the Enemy outpost began strafing them with back-pack missiles.
I watch:
The first pair of artillery rockets streaks over the ~horizon.
The missiles’ sustainer motors have burned out, but the bands of maneuvering jets around each armor-piercing warhead flash as they course-correct. They are targeted by triangulation from fixed points, since the outpost itself remains perfectly absorbant throughout the electro-optical band. These are probing rounds, ~intended to test the Enemy’s anti-artillery defenses so that the main barrage can be protected by appropriate countermeasures.
The Enemy has no defenses. The shells plunge into the center of the anomaly and disappear, just as all earlier projectiles and energy beams have done. Neither these shells nor the barrage which follows has any discernible effect on the Enemy.
.03 seconds from the first warhead’s calculated ~moment of impact, the research facility begins to bombard our attacking infantry with artillery rockets.
The Enemy is firing armor-piercing rounds. They are already at terminal velocity when they appear from the anomaly. When the warheads explode deep underground, the soil spews up and flings dug-in infantrymen flailing into air. Sometimes the hard suits protect the infantry well enough that the victims are able to crawl away under their own power.
Back-pack missiles and small arms fire from the outpost continue to rake the infantry positions. The company commander orders his troops to withdraw. 5.4 seconds later, the acting company commander calls for a Bolo to be assigned in support.
The air over the battlefield is a pall of black dust, lighted fitfully by orange flashes at its heart.
I am now within the extreme range even of small arms fired from the research facility. The Enemy does not engage me. Shells launched from the anomaly ~continue to pound the infantry’s initial deployment area, smashing the remains of fighting suits into smaller fragments. The surviving infantry have withdrawn from the killing ground.
Friendly missiles continue to vanish into the anomaly without effect.
Thus far I have observed the outpost only through passive receptors. I take a turret-down position on the reverse slope of a hill and raise an active ranging ~device on a sacrificial mounting above my protective armor. Using this mast-mounted unit, I probe the anomaly with monopulse emissions on three spectra.
There is no echo from the anomaly. .03 seconds after the pulses should have ranged the target, the outpost directs small arms fire and a pair of artillery rockets at me.
The bullets and low-power laser beams are beneath my contempt. The sacrificial sensor pod is the only target I have exposed to direct fire. It is not expected to survive contact with an enemy, but the occasional hit the pod receives at this range barely scratches its surface.