The rest happened in slow motion, as the shock wave caught him and hurled him through the hatch.
He could see the bulkhead coming at him, every weld and bolt of it, in sickening detail, but he could do nothing to stop it.
There should have been an impact, but there was only nothing.
Chapter Two
It has been three minutes and sixteen seconds since I was ejected from the cargo bay of the Lexington. I will see combat sooner than I had ever expected. My commander and I, along with two other Bolos and their commanders were diverted from our original mission to the Tilla M outpost by a distress message from the recently established mining colonies on Thule. The settlements are under attack by a force or forces unknown. Due to the circumstances, we have been deployed from the Lexington in a non-optimal trajectory, while the ship hurriedly makes another jump with the rest of our unit to complete its original mission.
It is an exciting time. My first assignment was to a purely defensive post at the Depoe Shipyards, far from the lines of the Deng conflict, and while Tilla M has seen intermittent raids by well-armed pirates, any conflict would doubtless consisted of brief defense against space-based hit-and-run attacks. This is the kind of conflict for which I was designed and constructed, engaging a powerful enemy on a battlefield of planetary scope.
Our “hot” insertion and the limited intelligence available to us add to the challenge of the assignment, but I am unconcerned. I am unit VCK, a Bolo of the Line, Mark XXV, bearer of the proud tradition of the Dinochrome Brigade. I am proud be the first of our forces to land on Thule. I am confident that I will do my duty, and do it well.
It has been four minutes and three seconds since ejection. Broken transmissions indicate that any ship attempting to land may come under ground attack, therefore our individual assignment is to deploy and clear a landing zone. My commander will monitor the situation from my assault pod, which will wait in orbit, along with the other Bolos in their pods, and a trio of shuttles loaded with emergency gear. Instead of my usual deployment, I am strapped to a sandwiched pair of contra-grav cargo sleds and mats of ablative material forming a makeshift, but completely expendable, landing craft.
I fire the guidance thrusters on the cargo sleds, to roll my makeshift heat shield to face the atmosphere, and adjust the upper sleds contra-gravs to conserve power for the final braking. The contra-gravs on the lower sled are set to full output, as there will be no opportunity to utilize unused power later.
Five minutes and eighteen seconds since ejection. A faint vibration through my treads tells me that I am encountering the edge of Thule’s atmosphere. I take the opportunity to make a long-range scan of the planet below me. I immediately detect the various colony installations in the expected locations, but the central installation shows none of the energy output I would expect of a functioning colony. Instead, I detect only the heat of residual fires, plus a chemical signature consistent with large-scale combustion and the early decay stage of biological matter. The damage is even worse than we had been led to believe. I also detect flames and weapons signatures from the most northern colony. It too is under attack.
I adjust my trajectory to move my landing site as far north as possible. I maintain communications silence, but there are distress calls coming from the Rustenberg Colony on several bands, some live, some via automated beacon. I monitor, trying to get some sense of our enemy, but other than descriptions of large humanoids, there is little else of strategic value, intelligence about their mounted and airborne weapons platforms, descriptions of their armored and mechanized divisions.
I am entering the planet’s atmosphere now, and ionization is making my sensors unreliable. It must be, as I can detect none of the signatures I would associate with the enemy. I find no bases or roads, no radiation sources consistent with fusion power plants, no towns or bases, no armored columns or spaceports. The situation is most puzzling. It is almost as though the enemy does not exist.
The buffeting is quite heavy now. I am surrounded by an ionized curtain of superheated air, and flaming chunks of ablative mat are breaking off and flying past like fireworks. I must be putting on a spectacular show for anyone watching on the ground, but my signature will not be consistent with a Bolo assault pod. The enemy will doubtless hesitate before firing on me, consulting with their specialists to determine if I am an attack craft or a natural meteor. By the time they come to a decision, I should be safely near the ground.
Or not. I am emerging from the ionization blackout, and I detect, three—now five—now seven missile traces arching up from diverse points across the continent. They seem to be light nuclear interceptors, unlikely to do me serious damage, but they could destroy the contra-grav sled I need to make my landing. My first duty, however, is to secure the landing zone. I begin cycling my main Hellbores from launch point to launch point, targeting them with a multikiloton blast. Though I can detect no fixed installation at any of these points, someone there will pay the price for the folly of firing on a Bolo of the Dinochrome Brigade. I am hardly a defenseless drop ship.
There is a sudden lurch, and then I am in near freefall. The first sled has given out, either its power cells depleted, or damaged by a reentry burn-through. No matter. There is one last use I can make of it. I remotely fire the links holding the lower sled to the upper. My audio detectors pick up the rending of metal even in the thin air. Then the sled slides out from under me, a metal mattress the size of a schoolyard, its bottom charred and still glowing white hot in places. I transverse one of my secondary batteries, lock onto the sled, and fire a half-second pulse.
The sled explodes into flaming chunks just as the first missile closes on my position. I watch as the missile, and two of its companions, alter course to home in on the false target I have provided for them, their nuclear fireballs blossoming a safe kilometer above me. That still leaves four missiles closing on my position. I increase my battle screens to full power, and compute firing solutions for the remaining missiles. I begin to transverse my secondary batteries. I have four point three seven seconds until the first missile is in blast radius. Plenty of time.
Suddenly the missiles begin to take high-G evasive maneuvers. I detect a pattern to their movements, but this requires a critical one point-three seconds of observation and analysis. I am able to bring my batteries to bear on three of them. I begin a roll program, placing my own hull between the missile and the sled, selectively reinforce my battle screens, and shutter my more sensitive sensors against the blast.
The explosion rattles my structure, subjecting me to a momentary peak acceleration of 19 G’s. It is fortunate that my commander remained safely in orbit, but I am unharmed. The energy from the explosion sizzles against my battle screens, and in a moment I can feel the converted energy surging into my storage cells. There has been a one point two percent degradation of my upper turret armor, but I am otherwise unharmed. The critical question now is, did the explosion damage the second contra-grav sled?
My visual sensors unshutter, and I see the horizon growing less curved by the second. I have been in freefall too long. Even with full sled function, I am in danger.
I tentatively apply power to the sled, alert for any problem, but the contra-gravs engage smoothly. I am slowing, but not quickly enough. I increase power to one hundred percent, then into overload, one hundred and ten, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and thirty.
The cells are draining at an alarming rate, and I am detecting an overheat condition in the contra-grav accelerator coils. The situation is critical, but there is little I can do. I must trust that the contra-grav sled is flawless in its manufacture and maintenance, that it was not damaged by the missile, reentry, or by the separation of the first-stage sled.
I take one last opportunity to do aerial deep scans with my sensors, focusing on the dead central colony, looking for any sign of my elusive enemy. I detect the remains of many ground vehicles, several shuttles trapped on the ground, large mining and construction machinery, and one other trace, an armored durachrome war hull—
Two point three four seconds to impact. I am still falling too fast. Below me, I see a green carpet of jungle canopy, a silver thread of river slicing through the trees. I retune my battle screens. In theory, they can absorb some of the kinetic energy of my landing, acting as a last-resort shock absorber, but to the best of my knowledge this has never been tested.