“I am sorry, Tyrus.”
He started scanning the ground, looking for he didn’t know what, some scrap of clothing, some personal artifact, some scrap of bone, something to tell him about the people that died here.
“Tyrus.”
He spotted a superconducting impeller coil, a porthole and its surrounding chunk of bulkhead, completely intact.
“Tyrus! Behind you!”
Old reflexes cut in and he was raising the rifle even as he turned. The dozen aliens that stood at the edge of the jungle had only knives and spears. He saw them with almost superhuman clarity, a flood of adrenaline pushing aside the grief for the moment. Their colors were different from the ones he’d seen: white, with mottled spots of yellow, brown, and black on gray stripes. They wore what looked like green togas, belted at the waist. They were different than the ones that destroyed the colony. Had they fired the missile that brought down the plane? He didn’t know. Didn’t care. They would do.
Ignoring his gun, two of them lowered their sword-tipped spears and charged at him, howling as they did so. He pulled the trigger to full auto, cutting one charging alien in half, his misses shooting into the others waiting behind.
He swept the gun back and forth, mowing them all down.
Suddenly there were more, seemingly charging from every side.
He fanned the gun back and forth, waist high, trying to take them down before they got too close.
More aliens fell, more aliens appeared.
He ducked aside as a thrown spear sailed past his head, so close that he could feel the wind on his hair.
The aliens screamed.
He screamed back.
He fired the gun until it overheated, and forced him to go back to choosing his targets and squeezing off shots one by one.
The aliens came closer and closer until he was forced to use his rifle barrel as a club to fend off a stabbing spear, forced to throw the gun aside, grab the pistol from his belt and fire into the charging alien’s chest.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four times.
Then a knife sliced between his ribs and the dead weight of the alien’s body fell on him like a side of beef.
He braced himself for the spear that would finish the job, the knife that would take his head like so many he’d seen back at the colony.
Then the world exploded. Over and over again.
Behind him, in front of him, to his left, to his right.
He heard the growl of the slowly advancing Bolo, the rain of dust and debris, the whir of the opening hatch.
Then it was very, very quiet.
After a few moments, he braced himself, and in a supreme effort, managed to roll the dead alien off the top of him. As the alien fell, he saw a splinter of shattered tree trunk as long as his forearm buried in its neck.
“That was some risk,” Tyrus said, staggering to his feet and looking around, “firing your secondaries that close to me.”
“I waited until there was no other choice,” Dirk said, “and I hoped your attacker’s body would shield you.”
“It worked,” he said, staggered slowly towards the hatch, clutching his bleeding chest. Something under his palm made a little sucking sound.
“You are injured,” said Dirk, as Tyrus staggered and fell through the hatch.
“Very,” he gasped. He lay on the compartment floor, the metal decking cool and smooth against his cheek.
“If you can get to the control cabin, my autodoc may be able to help.”
“No can do.”
“You must try.”
“You just go on your way. I’ll ride down here.”
“You must try.”
“Can’t. Can’t,” Tyrus said, staring at the wall, wondering why he was even still talking to the machine that had just saved his life. “Got no hope left, big buddy. If you have some, it will have to be enough for both of us.”
He felt the Bolo start to move.
“We will be at the Rustenberg Colony in a few hours. There will be medical help there.”
“If you say so,” Tyrus said, not really caring.
“I will try not to jostle you, but it may be a difficult journey.”
“I can’t stop you.”
Tyrus figured he passed out for a moment, or an hour, the nightmare of the room jerking around him keeping him just barely aware.
“Tyrus.”
“What?”
“There is a protected place in every Bolo’s memory where we store remembrances of our past commanders. My service history goes back more than two hundred years, and though my memory has been damaged, that part is still intact. I can remember my first commander with complete clarity, and each officer I have served with since. I have been privileged with an excellent run of commanders. I have been most fortunate.”
“That’s good, Dirk.”
“I have created a place for you there, Tyrus, not in anticipation of any given event, but in honor of what we’re been through in our brief time together.”
“I’m honored, Dirk.”
“The honor is mine, Commander Tyrus.”
It was getting very hard to stay awake.
“Dirk.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Be sure to warn them about the bombs.”
“Yes, Commander.”
He felt himself sinking into a very dark place, and he didn’t want to talk any more.
Chapter Six
Donning reclined in his command chair, which fortunately had been designed with the possibility of sleep in mind. The alien attack had lost its intensity after they’d expended their one-shot weapons against the Bolo, then finally ended without incident about dusk. Casualties were minimal. Donning felt that next time he’d know even better how to fight the aliens.
He could have gone back to his bed when the fighting ended, but surprisingly, he felt more comfortable here. He watched the sun come up on the big screen, ordered his breakfast brought up, then dozed for a while. It was midmorning when the call came from Houchen, the call he’d been anticipating, and dreading.
“Commander, I just got word that New Marikana is under intense attack. They’ve got their own brand of aliens, orange stripes and cruise missiles, and they’re just not ready. They haven’t had a bit of trouble until now. In fact, they were still running mining missions until yesterday.”
“You need to go.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Then go.” He racked his chair upright, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and checked his status screens.
“We both knew this was coming.”
“I think we’ve got a handle on it, Colonel. We can hold out until reinforcements come. The auto-turrets are finally completely integrated with the new command and control system, so we should be able to handle our own antimissile defense. Go.”
“Thanks for taking this so well, Donning. You’re a fine officer.”
“I’m a man doing what he has to do,” Donning said. “I think that describes all of us here.” He watched the Bolo on his screen. Already it was making maximum speed and headed away.
“With luck, Khan and I or one of the other Bolos will be back here in a couple days. Signal if you get trouble.”
“Will do.”
“One more thing, Donning,” Houchen said, “you might have some help here sooner than you think. Our ships are picking up that Bolo mining machine from Odinberg, and it’s on the move.”
“You’re kidding?” Donning asked.
“Nope,” Houchen said. “It stopped for a while, but now it’s moving again, toward you. We haven’t been able to contact it though, so we don’t know what sort of fighting shape it’s in, or who’s on board. It could be something to help with your defense, or just more survivors to take care of.”
“We’ll take care of it.”
“Good luck, Commander.”
“I just hope we won’t need it,” Donning said. But he knew better. They were going to need all the luck they could get very, very shortly.
A blip sailed across one of his screens, an incoming harassment missile. As he watched, the west auto-turret snapped around and blew it out of the sky.
Donning chuckled. “Open for business.”
* * *
Lord Whitestar paced from one end of Scarbeak’s chamber to another. “What do you mean, the ogre has gone?”
Scarbeak looked up from the new weapon he had been studying so intently. “Just that, lord. A runner returned from the meadow’s edge just moments ago with the news. The ogre has left the area of the human nest and is moving northwest. Perhaps the new weapons we used hurt it more than we believed, or perhaps one of the other clans is attacking a nest in that direction, and the ogre is responding to their calls of distress.”
Whitestar kicked over a stack of modules in anger, before he realized the sacrilege of what he had done. He quickly inspected the modules to be sure their lights-of-function were still lit, and stacked them neatly. “Forgive me, Scarbeak. My blood runs as hot as a new chick’s. I have spent these days preparing myself to kill the ogre, and now it is snatched from me.”