“Damn.” Donning thumbed a communications toggle. “Houchen, there’s a new weapon showing up out there, a cylinder, takes three aliens to carry it.”
“We’re on it,” replied Houchen over the comm.
But it was too late. The cylinders were aimed at their target, not the colony, but the Bolo itself, and all of them fired in rapid succession. The rear of the device Donning was watching literally exploded, injuring several aliens unlucky enough to be standing within a yard or so behind it. And as it exploded a single, brief beam was emitted from the other end.
“We’re hit!” shouted Houchen. “Never seen anything like those before. They’re like pocket Hellbores. Actually put a dent in our battle screens and our armor. If they were lucky enough to find a vital spot at close range, they might actually be able to do us some significant damage.”
Donning was about to order his men to open fire on the cylinders when he saw the three operators toss one aside and run to join their unarmed fellows. “I think it’s only good for one shot, Colonel. Now that we know what we’re dealing with, we can take them out before they can get close. Good thing too. Our fortifications wouldn’t hold up long against those.”
“Tell your people to break out their breathers and antirad pills,” Houchen said. “The radiation levels just peaked down here. I wonder if the aliens know that they’re slow-cooking themselves every time they fire off one of those things?”
Donning shifted his view to another attacker, firing one of the smaller plasma cannon that they’d seen before. As he watched, the alien went down. Two of the aliens behind him scrambled for the cannon he had been carrying. The one who ended up with it dropped his spear and seemed to growl or snarl at the other in celebration, then turn back to the attack.
Donning suddenly made the connection. Armed with spears and swords, the individual aliens weren’t the threat. Knock down one, and a dozen would instantly replace him. It was the weapons themselves, obviously still in limited supply, that were the threat.
He opened a command channel. “All snipers and gunners, save your shots for aliens carrying high technology weapons. Do not target the operator. Repeat, do not target the operator. Go for the weapon itself.”
* * *
Tyrus winced as a sudden bump slammed him against the roof of the narrow service passage. If the defective crash couch had been a problem, this was just a little slice of hell. Still, he observed, if he survived the experience, the results might be worth it. They had discovered that unlike his primary Hellbore, Dirk’s secondary batteries were still intact.
Perhaps the Prescott folks had decided they were too difficult to remove. Instead, they had removed the power busses and data couplings, dogged the gunports from the inside, then welded them from outside. He couldn’t do anything about the welds, but he could certainly unbolt the dogs, try to rig a power bypass, reconnect the data links, and hope for the best.
Dirk seemed hopeful that, if enough power were restored, he might be able to shatter the welds by overloading his port actuators. Of course, he might not be able to close the ports again, but that was a problem for another time.
“You reading me, Dirk?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep calling me that, Dirk. I just replaced your buss bar. I’m gonna move back beyond the safety gate, and then I want you to apply trickle power and see what happens.”
Tyrus crawled back past all the “danger” and “high voltage” placards and latched the insulated gate that protected the power circuits. “Go for it, Dirk.”
There was a pause. “I can feel my secondary mechanisms! Of course, I am as yet unable to apply enough power to the actuators to take up the slack in the port mechanicals.”
“Well, let’s take this slow. The bundle of superconducting rod I used in place of the original bar probably won’t hold for long, and I don’t have anything to replace it with. My luck, you’ll get the ports open, only to find there’s no power left for the weapons.”
“I have a great deal of confidence in you, Tyrus.”
He laughed grimly. “Based on what?”
“You’ve acquitted yourself well. I know enough about human psychology to know this situation must be very difficult for you to cope with.”
“I’m not coping at all. That’s the trick. You try to cope, you can fail. I’m saving that for later.”
“Tyrus.”
There was something in the Bolo’s voice.
“We are being hailed. A Concordiat spacecraft in orbit has evidently spotted us.”
“Can you respond?”
“I am trying, but I do not believe they will be able to receive me. Tyrus, I am receiving instructions that we are to proceed to the northern colony if possible and assist with the defense there.”
“That’s where we were headed anyway. I’ve done all I can here. I’m headed back up to the control compartment. Get your busted crash couch ready.”
He packed up the emergency tool kit as best he could. Several of the tools had simply disappeared, probably bounced away by the Bolo’s constant motion and vibration. Then he crawled back through the service passages towards the control room. He was halfway there when Dirk spoke again.
“Tyrus, the jungle ahead shows signs of a recent fire. I am detecting metallic traces that I believe to be wreckage.”
Tyrus felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. “Is it human?”
“The alloys are consistent with human construction.”
“Are there aliens in the area?”
“Given my scrambled sensors, impossible to say. I see no obvious signs.”
“Slow down, and stop just short of the wreckage. I’m going to get out and investigate.” He crawled back to the service hatch where he’d first entered the Bolo, picking up the rifle and side arm that he’d stashed there earlier.
He sat, his back against a cool bulkhead, his heart pounding as he contemplated the inside of the hatch. Finally the Bolo stopped. “Open the hatch, Dirk.”
There was a hiss, followed by a whir, and a brilliant ring of morning sunlight appeared around the hatch, which then slid up into the body of the machine. The combination of heat, humidity, and smell hit him like a wave after so long in the beast’s air-conditioned belly. Outside he could hear only the buzzing of insects, the rustling of foliage in the slight breeze, and the cries of jungle animals, hopefully none too big or too close.
He duck walked up to the hatch and climbed down a massive boogie wheel to the ground. Something he never saw buzzed down to take a bite out of his neck, didn’t like the taste, and rapidly buzzed away.
The jungle wasn’t as thick here as most he’d seen. There were large spaces between the higher trees, large patches of blue visible above the underbrush. Ten meters in front of the Bolo, the burn started.
As he crossed into the blackened area and stooped down to inspect, he could see that Dirk was right about the fire being recent. Not even a few green shoots had emerged from the blackened soil, though doubtlessly within a few days the forest would already be healing itself.
He stood. “Dirk, which way to the wreckage?”
“I read a large concentration of metal behind those trees to your right, about fifteen meters.”
He stepped carefully, moving around the charred pillars that had once been stately trees. Something glinted in the sun ahead, and he picked up his pace.
He found nothing that he could have identified definitely as an air shuttle, only a four-meter-long, flattened, twisted hunk of alloy sheet, carbon composite, and superconducting cable.
“The total mass of metal that I am reading,” said Dirk, “is only about eighty percent of what I would expect from the shuttle’s wreckage. Possibly this is some other craft.”
Tyrus didn’t think so. “Or the rest of the wreckage was lost well before they hit the ground. I think a missile hit this thing, whatever it is.”
Then he looked up. Somehow, an entire skin panel, at least four meters across and two meters long had somehow survived almost intact, cradled in the burned tree limbs almost like an intentionally placed signpost. On the left edge, half of the seal of the Concordiat could be seen, along with most of the mining company’s logo. And below that, a number.
His stomach knotted. “Dirk, does the number ‘TN-1045’ mean anything to you?”
“That was the call sign used by the departing shuttle in its distress call, Tyrus. I am sorry.”
He heard a small, mournful noise, and realized only a moment later that it had come from his own throat.
“It is possible your family was not on the shuttle, Tyrus.”
It took him a minute to swallow, get his voice working again. “They were here, or back at the colony. It really doesn’t matter if they died here or not. This is where hope died, Dirk. This is where they died in my heart.”