Except for a corner where a rumpled sleepmat lay spread, the room was full of the sacred modules of the Ones Above. On each module, a light glowed to show that it was functional, and color-coded connections showed how it was to be connected to its fellows to make a weapon.
All of the highborn were taught to repair and maintain the sacred weapons, but only old Scarbeak was their master. He was their weapons master, repairing weapons, and assembling new ones from salvaged parts. It was said that Scarbeak had even assembled modules against their sacred color coding, and made them do things that the Ones Above had not intended.
But Whitestar liked and trusted the oldster and would not listen to such lies. Scarbeak was of the faithful, a Speaker to the Oracle, and would never do such things. He was very old, and might not last more than another season or two. Whitestar would miss him.
For the moment, Scarbeak crouched on the floor, piecing together one plasma cannon from the parts of several damaged ones. He looked up. “My lord, I did not hear you coming. What brings you here this night?”
“You have to talk to the oracle, Scarbeak. We need a weapon, more powerful than any we’ve had so far, one that can kill the ogres.”
“Ah,” said Scarbeak, “yes. I’ve heard of the metal beast that killed so many of our warriors.”
“Tell the oracle that we must kill it. Show us how.”
“I cannot tell the oracles what to do, my lord.”
“Of course not, but you can ask. You can plead. The ogres must die.”
Scarbeak looked thoughtful for a moment. “A missile would not work. The ogre destroys our missiles in flight. Perhaps a mine.”
“It would have to be a thousand and twenty-four mines, or a hundred and twenty-eight times that many. We cannot wait a lifetime for the ogre to be lured across a single mine.”
“Then the weapon would have to be carried, my lord. Perhaps placed right under the ogre’s belly. Who will do that?”
“I have no shortage of highborn willing to take that honor, Scarbeak.”
Scarbeak clucked his disapproval. “A waste of a good highborn, my lord. Perhaps it is time you considered training the fodder to—”
“I will take the weapon to the ogre.” They both turned to the new voice in the room. It was Sharpwing, his second eldest.
Whitestar hissed in anger. “How long have you been there?”
“Listening, my sire? Eavesdropping? Long enough. I claim the honor as mine.”
“No,” said Whitestar firmly. “It would be a waste of a young warrior.”
“It was not a request, sire, it was a challenge. You heard me, Scarbeak. You are my witness. I challenge you on tomorrow’s moon for the right to take the new weapon to the ogre.”
“You have no right.”
“I have every right! I wish to die as my blood commands me. I tire of being called a coward, the hatchling of a coward.” Sharpwing studied his father’s face. “Oh, yes, that is what the young warriors say of you, that you fight from your burrow, that you hide from battle like an old woman.”
Scarbeak looked first at one, then the other, seemingly trying to find some way out of the situation. Finally he spoke. “There will be no weapon for a time, young lord-son. Even if the oracles answer my request, it will be a span of nights.”
Sharpwing looked at the old man. “Time enough till we die then. I challenge you in a span of nights for the right to carry the weapon.”
He pulled his curved knife from his belt and brandished it at Whitestar. “And I promise you, sire, that I will strike you with my brother’s blade, and that I will strike to free my mother of your unworthy hold on her. Our ways are ever parted.”
Then he stepped back through the curtains and was gone.
Whitestar looked down at Scarbeak, who looked back.
Finally Whitestar said, “I have too many wars to fight, and too many ogres to face. I hunger for an ending.”
Chapter Five
Colonel Houchen watched as Donning climbed into the observer’s seat on the far side of Khan’s control compartment and strapped himself in. Houchen could tell he was impressed, that the power the Bolo represented was helping to strengthen the man’s resolve, and his confidence that they hadn’t been abandoned by the Concordiat.
This he knew was the third great mission of the Bolo. The first was to intimidate the enemy. The second was to strike the enemy with devastating power that could not be stopped. The third was to express the will of the Concordiat. Like the battleships, and later aircraft carriers of old Earth, a Bolo was a tangible, undeniable expression of its government’s interest and concern in a situation.
It was the nature of Bolos that those who fought in more conventional forces often weren’t comfortable with them, they could never forget them, ignore them, or deny them. The net result was that when a Bolo arrived, morale went up, because if the soldier was nervous about his own Bolo, how must the enemy feel?
The air conditioning in the cabin was finally starting to make some headway against the heat, humidity, and persistent jungle stench they’d brought with them from outside. Here, for a few minutes at least, they could feel comfortable, safe, and not completely helpless against their alien attackers.
“Khan, let’s give our guest a little demonstration. But lay off full combat speed. I don’t want to send him home in pieces.” Houchen wasn’t kidding about that. A Bolo’s crash couch was a precision piece of equipment, vital if a human were ever to serve as an on-board commander during combat. A Mark XXV Bolo had a normal combat speed of 95 KPH over almost any kind of terrain, but when conditions allowed, it was capable of short sprints of 150 KPH. At that speed, a Bolo was a near unstoppable force. With its battle screens at full power, it could almost literally ram through small mountains.
The Bolo was capable of surviving the forces involved in such maneuvers, but a human commander was not, at least, not without a great deal of help. The crash couch acted as a vital three-dimensional shock absorber system for the more delicate human body. The observer seats had much more crude two-dimensional shock absorbers built in. Someone riding in one might survive full combat speed in rough terrain, but they wouldn’t enjoy it, and they might not walk away under their own power.
“Aye, sir,” replied Khan, and at once the growl of the drive system intensified around them and they were pushed back in their seats. The cabin was buffeted enough to give Donning an exciting ride. Nothing more.
“Let’s clear back ten yards of jungle around the perimeter, just to keep the aliens awake out there.”
Khan changed course, his multiple tread systems adjusting speed just enough to smoothly bring them in parallel to the jungle line, and then finally, overlapping two sets of treads into the trees like a giant lawn mower. The din was terrible as the treads knocked down trees by the hundreds, chewed them into splinters, then spit them out the back in a rooster tail of destruction. Houchen had intentionally detuned the active noise cancellation systems in the cabin for just that effect.
“Khan, let’s pick the pace up. You’re free to fire.” There was an aggressive whir as the secondary gunports opened, and an almost machine-gunlike chatter as the ion-bolt infinite repeaters shot off short bursts in rapid succession. Suddenly, while mowing down trees on one side of the perimeter, Khan was simultaneously blasting them on two others. Houchen wished he could show off the Bolo’s main armament, a 90mm super-Hellbore, but firing it at any visible target this close to the colony could do them more damage than the enemy already had done. If the aliens simply offered them a significant target worthy of that mighty weapon, this battle might already be over.
At last they finished their sweep around the perimeter. Khan slowed and resumed his patrol midway between the defenses and the tree line. “We could keep knocking down trees I suppose,” said Houchen, “but it just keeps getting harder, and it takes Khan farther and farther away from the colony, giving them an opportunity to attack on another flank.”
There was a loud thump as Khan fired off another secondary, a longer pulse, to take down an incoming missile.
“They’re building for another attack, aren’t they?”
Houchen nodded. Donning was green, but he was no fool. “We’re pretty sure they’re gathering out there. To be honest, our intelligence on this is limited. We occasionally pick up something from orbit that might be a cook-fire, but no concentrations of them, nothing that’s consistent from night to night. Last night, while on their way to the New Marikana, Lieutenant Winter and his Bolo stumbled on an abandoned encampment. More of a nest really. Tunnels, seemingly dug with hand tools, aboveground huts and passages made from native plant materials.”