Donning knew, without a doubt, that those walls would not stop a fusion bomb set off close, and neither would the shelters just beyond the walls protect the colonists.
Right here, right now, this battle was either going to be won or lost.
“Keep firing everything we have at him!” shouted Donning.
As he watched, nothing seemed to work.
The alien kept moving, getting closer and closer.
The old Bolo still churned forward, its guns dead.
Perhaps, so were they all.
* * *
Whitestar forced himself toward the wall. Though the enemy’s weapons bounced away harmlessly, he felt sick, injured inside in a way he couldn’t describe or understand. No matter. He had only to survive a few more seconds under the miraculous protection of the Ones Above, and then it wouldn’t matter. The ramparts were just ahead of him now—
Then someone rolled a wall in his way, blotted out the sun.
He barely stopped himself from tumbling into the churning tracks and giant spinning wheels.
He looked around, stunned. He was under the ogre!
He was blocked from the walls. It would be so easy now, to lift the weapon over his head, trigger it against the belly of the beast—
But that was not his mission.
He saw sunlight at the rear of the thing, like the opening of a tunnel, and he sprinted for it.
He would complete his task. Not even the ogre would stop him.
* * *
“Where is he?” Tyrus demanded.
“He’s under our treads, Commander,” Dirk said. “In the galley between tread four and five. He’s trying to escape.”
“Run him down.”
“The bomb may be triggered.”
“Will be . . . anyway. Do it. That’s an order!”
Tyrus felt the passage turn around him as the Bolo spun in its own length.
* * *
Suddenly, the spot of light in front of Whitestar began to move, spinning away like a ghost.
He found himself in a hellish passage with moving walls of machinery, all ready to eat him alive. One misstep and he would have failed, smashed by the ogre.
He ran towards the light, was forced to double back, saw light the other way, but was forced back from there as well.
If he did not make it from under this beast, he would at least take the beast with him.
As he ran, he unstrapped the weapon from his back. The wall of the human nest was only a few meters away. If he only knew the direction, perhaps he could still trigger the weapon from here.
But he was confused after turning so many times, confused by the spinning ogre over his head. He hesitated, making sure the lights-of-function showed the correct color.
The weapon was ready.
His attention to the weapon cost him. He never saw the tread until it was on him like a set of giant metal teeth. It threw him down on the ground, crushing him up to the waist.
He ignored the pain, worked his free hand to find the firing stud.
* * *
“I have him pinned under my number five tread, Commander,” Dirk said.
“Good job, good . . . job.” Tyrus was very tired. Maybe he could finally sleep now. The colony had been saved.
“Good-bye, Commander,” Dirk said.
* * *
The explosion shook the walls like a groundquake, even in the C&C, mounted as it was on shock absorbers.
Donning was tossed to the floor, but he quickly scrambled back to his chair, watching the screens. A moment before, the old Bolo had run right over the top of the alien.
He had cheered, thinking the alien had been crushed and the bomb hadn’t exploded.
But he had been wrong. Now, on the screen, there was a sight that he would never forget: the blasted, 14,000-ton hull of the Bolo flipping high into the air, end over end, like a tossed coin.
Chapter Nine
Houchen could hardly believe the mess when he and Khan arrived back at the northern colony, but the walls were still intact, the colony survived, and that was all he could have asked for.
No, not quite true. He would have liked to know about the man who had fought on even when he knew it would cost him his life, and the crippled Bolo who had shielded an entire colony with his war hull. But they didn’t know, not even their names. They just knew there had been one survivor of the Odinberg Colony massacre, and now there were none.
The hull was still there, in the charred meadows outside the colony walls, and it would probably still be there centuries from now if the jungles didn’t reclaim it. Eventually the grass would regrow, the flowers would bloom, and animals would make their homes in its gutted hull.
Houchen wondered if humans would still be here then, or if they would have taken what they wanted from this world and left it behind. He wondered if any of the aliens would survive, and what stories they would tell of this day.
Surely some of them must have survived to tell the tale. Not many though. The Bolo’s hull had done more than shield the colony from the blast, it had redirected it, sending a crescent-shaped shock wave away from the walls of the colony that had flattened trees for two kilometers, and killed aliens by the thousands.
There were still a few attacks, an occasional missile or two, and around half a dozen other colonies around the continent the aliens were as much a threat as ever. But here and now, the enemy’s back seemed to be broken. Donning was repairing his fortifications, and they were busy modifying their mining machines to add armor and weapons. Here at least, things might soon be settling into a new routine, something akin to normal.
As Khan rolled past the dead Bolo one last time, he raised his guns in salute, and launched a volley of shots into the empty sky. Twenty-one times he fired.
And then he turned, and they rolled toward the distant horizon. There were other colonies to be defended.
* * *
Lord Blackspike pushed himself up painfully with his cane, and hissed in rage at the distant thunder of the human weapons. He had brought his people here, to the deep jungle, far from any of the human nests, so that they could recover and rebuild. But even here, there was no escape from the human devils.
He sat back down on a fallen log and looked around him. The camp was small and ragged. There were only a few warriors left, and most of them were injured or maimed. Some still died slowly from the invisible sickness. What was left were women, eggs, and hatchlings.
Even the oracles were gone, but before Blackspike had left, his sire had come to him and whispered where others could be found.
In time, the hatchlings would grow, there would be more eggs, and in three seasons’ time, new warriors to begin again. The Ones Above would show them new weapons. More powerful weapons. Then they would go back.
Then the human devils would pay.
But it was not too early to begin the fight.
Never too early.
“Hatchlings,” he shouted. “Your lord commands you, gather round and listen!”
He sat on his log, and the little ones gathered round. He reached into his pouch, his fingers sliding over the cool, smooth bone there. He pulled the skull out and held it up for the hatchlings to see.
“This,” he said, “is a human. This is a devil. What do we do to humans?”
At once they began to chant.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. . . .
Though Hell Should Bar the Way
Linda Evans
Chapter One
My first conscious thought upon activation is surprise. I do not remember possessing the psychotronic circuitry which has just been flooded with power. My surprise deepens as my awareness, triggered into a level approaching my old full Battle Reflex Alert, expands into a secondary brain system which is completely unknown to me. I am now far more fully self-aware than I have ever been outside of actual combat. It is an unsettling feeling. Not unpleasant, precisely, but quite unsettling. I am unused to such mental alertness off the battlefield.
My initial astonishment gives way to vast confusion. My last conscious memory is a communication from my commander that I was to be mothballed as obsolete. I am a Mark XXIII Bolo with forty-eight years of active service. Since I understood—albeit regretted—the necessity of taking older units off-line as improvements in psychotronics, weaponry, and armor were fielded, I said my good-byes and mourned only the loss of my usefulness to my creators. The order to shut down all but my survival center was the last command I expected ever to receive.
For an agonizing zero point twenty-two seconds, I attempt to understand the staggering internal changes to my psychotronic systems, while speculating uselessly upon possible reasons for them. Have I been captured by enemy forces and subverted in some fashion? I can sense newer installations which my upgraded spec manuals identify as molecular circuitry. These have been patched into my older, seriously antiquated systems in a hodgepodge I cannot follow, even with self-diagnostics. I almost suspect I have been put together by a work team suffering fatigue-induced hallucinations. I have just turned my awareness outward through my external sensor arrays, in an attempt to discover where I am, when I receive a communication from a source I recognize as a Bolo Sector Command frequency.