“Any sign of technology?” Donning asked.
“Amazingly primitive,” Houchen said, “not at all consistent with the weapons we’ve been seeing. I wish he’d had time to find and excavate one of their trash dumps. It might have told us something. The camp was stripped almost completely clean.”
Donning only nodded, so Houchen went on. “But it explains why we can’t find them from orbit. They don’t clear land, they don’t build roads, they don’t seem to use reactors or power cells or anything we can pick up from orbit. To make things worse, they have a number of close relatives out there in the jungle, large, flightless, birdlike creatures, probably only a little farther from them than chimps and gorillas are from humans. Until one of them powers up his weapon, he could be just another part of the local wildlife as far as we’re concerned.”
“Then you don’t know what they’re going to do.” Donning looked over at Houchen.
“I think my gut is telling me the same thing your gut is telling you,” Houchen said. “The harassment attacks continue for a reason, to keep us off guard, to keep our people on alert until they’re exhausted. When the aliens are ready, they’ll try again.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Finally, Houchen said, “You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about. Khan swears that, just before his landing, he picked up sensor readings consistent with a Bolo hull in or near the Odinberg Colony. But that couldn’t be. We show no record of a Bolo ever being dispatched to this planet. Do you know anything about it?”
Donning nodded. “That would be the Prescott machine.”
Houchen shook his head. He had no idea what a Prescott machine was.
“An armored mining machine,” Donning said, “built on a converted Bolo chassis? I heard they were bringing one in, but I don’t think they had time to deploy it.”
Now Houchen felt really puzzled. What had they done to the old Bolo brain, and all the firepower? “Your aircraft didn’t report seeing it when they scouted the Odinberg Colony after the attack?”
“They saw the hangar where it would have been parked flattened by some kind of bomb,” Donning said, “half a mountain dropped down on it. That’s all I know. Like we told you, they didn’t have much time to report back before they were shot down. But that thing is gone, like the rest of Odinberg. Write it off. It’s no use to us now.”
Houchen rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He wasn’t going to believe that. Bolos did not die easily. “I don’t know—”
Another thump as a missile was destroyed.
“You know,” said Donning, “they’ve been hitting us with these harassment attacks, maybe we should do the same to them.”
“Fire off random shots into the jungle?” Houchen asked, staring at the commander. “As long as the aliens remain dispersed we are unlikely to do them significant damage, and they don’t seem in any way inclined to be discouraged by such tactics.”
Donning nodded, thinking.
Houchen knew exactly what Donning was trying to do. He was trying to take a role in defending his colony, and it wasn’t like the Bolo’s energy weapons were going to run out of ammo. “I suppose we could try it for a day or two and see what happens.”
“Maybe you should have the Bolos do preventative strikes against the moving groups,” Donning said. “The aliens aren’t staying anywhere close to out of range. We might be able to disrupt their gathering for attack.”
Suddenly an alarm filled the room. It was the sound Houchen had been dreading.
“Too late,” Donning said.
“Colonel,” said Khan, “I have alien forces massing just beyond the tree line. Another attack appears imminent.”
“Damn,” said Donning, unbuckling his harness and grabbing for his rifle.
“Where are you going?” said Houchen, trying to keep one eye on the external view and tactical screens.
Donning pulled on his helmet and fastened the strap. “Back to my men. It’s only about a hundred meters back to the wall. Comm my people to cover me, and you do the same. I used to be pretty good at the hundred meter in my day.”
“You can send orders from here.”
“I can send orders, but I can’t give orders from here, Colonel.” He slapped the hatch release.
“Khan, get him in as close as you can, stop just long enough for him to jump clear of the tracks, then turn to place us between him and the enemy lines.”
Donning paused inside the hatch and looked back at Houchen as Khan came around. “You think that other Bolo machine might still be active out there somehow?”
“One thing I’ve learned, Commander. Never write a Bolo off.”
Donning nodded. It was time. “Good luck, Colonel.”
“To you too, Commander.”
Then Donning was out, and the hatch slammed closed.
Houchen looked up at the screens, one showing thousands of alien warriors flooding out of the trees, another showing Donning sprinting for the wall. No matter what else, the man had guts.
* * *
Donning hit the ground running. The rifle slowed him down, but he was going to need it if things turned bad. Behind him he could hear the churning roar of the turning Bolo, and the shrill cries of countless charging alien warriors.
A plasma bolt shattered a divot out of the wall to his right, and he turned sharply, zigzagging to offer a poorer target. He felt the concussion as the Bolo’s batteries opened fire on the aliens, followed by a different kind of thump as the Bolo mortars started lobbing rounds over the colony to disrupt the advance there.
A missile screamed past in the confusion, meters over his head, missing the wall entirely and heading back out over the jungle. Perhaps the Bolo had known it would miss, and simply chose not to waste a shot. Above him, the rapid crackling of pulse rifles was comforting. The aliens were gaining on him fast. They’d clocked some of the big monsters hitting 50 KPH in short sprints.
Just ahead, a line with a rescue loop dropped down the face of the wall. He grabbed the loop and hooked it under his armpits, then jerked the line to signal the hoist operators. The line immediately became taut and yanked his feet off the ground. He managed to get his feet between him and the wall, literally running up the duracrete surface.
Another plasma bolt struck a dozen yards away, and he was very aware of what a choice target he made. He started leaping from side to side as best he could. A smaller bolt, probably from a rifle, came from below him. He jumped, twisted his body, tried to keep his head forward, and slammed his back into the wall. Below him, a handful of aliens had somehow made it past the Bolo.
Gasping for breath, his ribs on fire, he sighted down his own rifle and opened fire, full auto. The dirt churned around the aliens, then one of them fell, another’s head exploded. A blast from the Bolo, vast overkill, finished the rest of them.
As he reached the top of the wall, a dozen hands grabbed him and hauled him over. He shrugged off a woman wearing a medical armband and headed for his command post higher on the wall. Later, after the fighting was over, after he’d had a chance to think about it, his face would whiten, his knees would quake, his stomach would knot and threaten to send his breakfast into full retreat. But just that second, Donning had never felt more alive.
* * *
“What do you mean it isn’t supposed to be this way?” Tyrus wasn’t sure he was going to survive the trip. The mining machine called Dirk didn’t seem to be designed for the comfort of the operator under the best of circumstances, but plowing as they were through the jungle at best possible speed, bowling over trees as it went, was a nightmare.
“My crash couch is designed to cushion the commander against momentary accelerations of up to thirty standard gravities in any axis.”
“Ow!” Tyrus slapped his hand to his mouth. “Then why did I just bite my tongue for the third time?”
“I believe that most of my active shock absorbers have been replaced,” Dirk said, “either with passive gas cylinders of some kind, or rigid struts, perhaps with the idea of making it easier to maintain. I do not believe that they intended me to travel more than a dozen kilometers per hour in my modified form.”
“How fast are we going now?”
“Forty KPH, about half my old cruise speed.”
“Good lord. You mean I could be hurting more?”
“Would you like me to reduce speed?”
“No. We’ve got to get to Rustenberg, warn them to be on the lookout for bombs, see if there’s anything we can do to help. They could attack there at any time.”