John manages a shaky grin. “Best news I’ve heard in the last five minutes. Okay, let’s see if we can flip you right-side up.”
The lift platform’s engines are, of necessity, powerful, capable of lifting and maneuvering a 14,000-ton Bolo. I have come to rest mostly on my turret, but my portside is lower than my starboard, which will assist my task considerably. I apply thrust carefully to the portside lateral thrusters. The engines snarl and scream and my war hull shifts ponderously. I succeed in rolling completely onto my back. And there, I find myself stuck. The lateral thrusters, less powerful than the main lift engines, are unable to shift me any farther, without the rocky river bottom to push against. Chagrined, I am forced to admit the worsening of our predicament.
“I am sorry, John,” I apologize.
My commander chews his lower lip thoughtfully, wincing slightly and wiping blood again. “Can you rotate your turret? If we bring your Hellbore in line with the very bottom of the river and fire it, the recoil concussion might jar us loose enough for the lift engines to flip us all the way over.”
It is a good plan. I have landed with my Hellbore facing upstream, but angled so that it is pointed slightly downwards. The river is narrow enough that my prow—and therefore my Hellbore—lies within twelve meters of the far riverbank. I slid into the water prow foremost, somersaulted once, and came to rest in this position. If I can rotate my turret so that my Hellbore faces as far down as possible, the barrel will also swing farther towards the far bank. This will give me an extra boost, as the Hellbore discharges into more surface area of stone than water.
I attempt to rotate my turret, feeling the immense strain in my internal servos as they struggle to turn with the immense weight of my war hull plus lift platform resting against them, jamming my turret down into the rocky riverbed. The servos were not designed to function under these conditions. I run them dangerously into the red, but my turret groans and grinds its way slowly in a ponderous arc. I halt the attempt to allow overheating servomotors to cool, then begin again. “I have rotated my turret as much as I dare,” I report. “Brace for Hellbore fire.”
WHAM!
I rock against the blast and fire thrusters on the lift platform. My prow rises off the river bottom and I fire again. WHAM! The engines scream and I rotate my turret wildly, bringing the Hellbore around for optimal position as I rock onto the very edge of my treads. WHAM! I turn and fall with a ponderous crash and slosh. The instant my treads are lowermost, I fire all thrusters and the lift platform rises with an agonizing scream. We tip and tilt, then my damaged turret breaks through into snow-shrouded air.
Water surges and pours. Steam rises from the superheated river, which now boasts a radically altered shape. My treads clear the water and I fire rear thrusters, moving across the roiled and boiling surface of the Whiteclaw toward the blessedly solid rock of the far bank. I carefully avoid the deep bite where my guns have blasted that rock, melting it in spots. I angle, instead, toward a secure landing spot farther downstream. My weight crushes flat a heavy growth of dense shrubbery which lies between water’s edge and a thick stand of riverine forest. If I were human, I would cheer. My commander, collapsing white-faced into the depths of the command chair, does, in fact, manage a weak hurrah. He grins into my nearest video pickup.
“You did it!”
“We did it,” I correct gently. “It was your idea, John.”
“Occasionally,” he chuckles, “I do have good ones. Whooee, what a ride! All right, my battered friend, damage assessment, please.”
Water continues to pour out of my war hull. Within one point three minutes of exposure to the blizzard, ice forms a solid coating over my entire hull, including main sensor hatch covers, external backup sensors, and gun barrels. The ice blocking my main sensor hatches will require time to melt and the coating across visible-light sensors on the backup systems leaves me blind in the visible-light spectra, but I am right-side up and mostly intact. For the moment, it is a worthwhile trade.
I flash schematics onto my forward data screen, showing my commander the extent of damage. “Thirty-nine percent of my turret sensors have been damaged. I do not have sufficient spares on board to replace more than thirty-seven percent of them and I would advise against making any repairs while weather conditions remain this severe.” Ordinarily, of course, I would have been brought up to full depot readiness before being deployed in a new combat drop, but I have seen three months of nonstop combat, much of it rugged, and there was no time to bring my on-board stores up to specs. The CSS Darknight’s crew loaded as much replacement equipment as possible from ship’s stores, but even their large inventory was spread thin, attempting to reoutfit no fewer than five combat-depleted Bolos.
“What are the relative levels of damage in this schematic?”
I color-code the display. “Green sensors are fully functional. Orange warning lights indicate crash damage which limits functionality. Ninety-two percent of the orange-marked damage is attributable to sensors hatch covers that have been slightly warped, preventing the hatches from opening properly. This should be relatively easy to repair.”
My commander snorts. “You mean something about this mission might actually be easy?”
The wan smile accompanying this question marks a return to my commander’s usual droll sense of humor, pleasing me immensely. “Compared with the landing? Absolutely.”
The wan smile becomes a genuine grin.
“Sensor arrays marked in yellow are fully functional, or rather, will be once thawed out. My entire war hull is now coated with ice, which has sufficiently blocked the indicated sensor arrays, they are of limited use. The visual-light camera lenses in particular have been affected, as the ice has rendered them temporarily opaque. I have initiated antifrost heating systems, but it will take time to clear them. Navigation will be possible, of course, using radar and infrared systems, but I will not be able to move at optimal speed until the camera systems are clear of ice. My turret servomotors have suffered a twenty-three percent loss of function, due to the strain of breaking loose. I will not be able to turn my remaining turret-mounted weapons as quickly or reliably as usual.”
“Understood. We’ve been dealt a lousy hand, for sure, but any crash you can walk—or limp—away from isn’t all bad. All right, let’s see if we can limp into Seta Point, shall we?”
I attempt to disengage from my lift platform and discover yet another casualty of the crash. The platform has suffered warping throughout its structure. I cannot disengage the autolocks. “John? We still have a problem.”
“Oh, Lord, now what?”
I explain.
The last thing I expect is the rusty laugh my commander responds with. I stare at him, abruptly concerned for his health. He wipes tears with an awkward hand, then manages to wheeze, “What a pair we are, Rapier. All banged up and nowhere to go . . .”
“It will be very easy to pull loose, simply by engaging my drive engines, but getting back to the ship will be a problem, which is why I hesitated to act without consulting you.”
John continues to chuckle. “At the moment, that’s the least of our troubles. All right, Rapier. If we have to break it to get loose, then we have to break it. Somehow, I don’t think they’ll take it out of our pay.”
I refrain from pointing out that Bolos do not earn pay, then engage my drive engines. It takes zero point three seconds to rip loose from badly bent moorings. I leave behind a tangled, mangled hunk of metal, one that has given its life nobly in service of mine and my commander’s, and set out along the riverbank. I move parallel to the Whiteclaw, along which the Seta Point mines stretch, reflecting that the river is more than aptly named. It certainly has mauled me, as effectively as any clawed beast.
Perhaps the forcible jarring of our crash landing and subsequent escape from the river has knocked circuitry loose somewhere in my psychotronics, for I must work harder than usual to gather my scattered thoughts from the various remote system modules where they reside. Four point two minutes elapse before it occurs to me that I would pick up speed considerably if I were to move away from the river, where I am forced to plow through the edge of a dense riverine forest, grinding down trees and lower, dense undergrowth beneath my icy treads.
I consult on-board maps and aerial survey photos and alter course, breaking through the relatively narrow band of forest cover which hugs the route of the Whiteclaw. Beyond lies more open ground, where badlands have given way to alluvial plain, covered with tough grass which lies flattened, now, beneath a mantle of snow. The greatest obstacles here are deep snowdrifts and the frozen streambeds of small tributaries.