“Forget it, ‘Lima. Those machines are dangerous, even when they look harmless. We have work to do. Don’t you want to help with the new puppies?”
Her daughter cast one last look over her shoulder, toward the ruined fort, then trotted obediently at her heels. Indira was deeply thankful when ‘Lima began chattering excitedly about the litter of puppies that had arrived early, while they were still aboard ship. Indira still winced at the expense of transporting Sufi; but leaving her behind would not only have precipitated war in their little household, it would have meant at least a six-year setback in Indira’s research.
She had a feeling Sufi’s puppies were going to change the colonists’ lives forever. She smiled in anticipation and grabbed the handle of the servo-truck which held their luggage.
“Can you find our new house?” she asked it.
“Proceed three blocks east, turn left and proceed seven blocks. You have been assigned the last house in the cul-de-sac. It is painted green, with black roof and shutters.”
‘Lima giggled. Indira grinned. It was good to see her daughter smiling again. “Well, don’t just stand there. Let’s go home and see what it looks like!”
—3—
I do not know how much time has passed. I return to awareness and fade again, how many times I am unable to calculate. This inability disturbs me. I probe during consciousness for damage. I find it everywhere I investigate. My internal linkages are so battered I am unable to scan for damage in many sections. One of my forward sensors still functions. I am able to see the battlefield which I recall in shattered fragments. My crystal memory banks are clearly damaged beyond repair. Power reserves continue to drain in frightening increments from my fission reactor, wasting irreplaceable fuel, as intermittent shorts drain my power plant. I am forced to shut down all diagnostic and other non-essential activity and retreat again into my Survival Center. Perhaps with sufficient power, I could determine the extent of my injuries; but I am not certain even unlimited power reserves would allow me to run full diagnostics.
I do not understand why my new Commander did not transmit the coded order to engage my Command Override circuit, thus completely burning my Action/Command center. The passage of time and the hazy recollection of enemy forces around me suggests that no new Commander survived to transmit the code. Perhaps I am too badly damaged even for the Enemy to have made use of me. During recent periods of near-awareness, I recall only the sounds of empty wind. No Enemy activity has been detected during the last dozen times I have awakened into solitude.
Other sounds come to my sensors. My shattered data banks register them as falling conifer cones bouncing against my hull. There were no trees inside the compound. A very long time has passed, if mature conifers drop cones on me. Has the Enemy completely destroyed humanity? The shame I feel at my failure to carry out my mission skitters through broken wire-ends and jumps spark gaps into other memory cells. If humanity has survived, then I have been abandoned. I am irreparable. I am alone. A sizzle sputters somewhere in my vocal circuitry and my voice stutters into the silence, uncontrollably.
“Yavac. Yavac. Yavac. Yavac. Yavac . . . Hold. Hold. Hold . . .”
The sizzle fades.
Darkness returns, with the sound of cones falling against my scarred back.
—4—
“Double-dog dare you!”
“I’m not going!”
Bradley Dault laughed in that derisive way little boys manage when dealing with all lesser beings. Kalima Tennyson glared at him, hating Bradley for relegating her to that status.
“You’re skeered!” he taunted, fists planted on hips, legs akimbo in the faded autumn sunshine.
“Am not!”
” ‘Lima’s a ‘fraidy cat! ‘Lima’s a ‘fraidy cat!”
She took a threatening step forward. “I am not afraid! It’s just stupid! There’s nothing over there but a bunch of rusted, burned out old ruins.”
“Hah! That’s your mama talking, not you. Your daddy wouldn’t be skeered to go, Kah-Lima Tennyson!” He emphasized the first half of the name her father had given her—the half her mother wouldn’t use. Her mother had come to despise everything which remotely smacked of violence, including her ancient ancestors who had worshipped as Thuggees.
Bradley was dancing around her like a disjointed marionette, chanting, “Kalima’s a chicken! Kalima’s a chicken! I’ll bet your big famous daddy was really a chicken, too!”
Kalima was under express orders never to fight, no matter what the provocation.
Bradley’s face glowed with evil glee. He poked at her while shouting, “Chicken, chicken, chic—”
She put her whole seventy-one pounds of thirteen-year-old muscle behind the punch. The blow landed squarely on Bradley’s nose. He squealed and flipped backwards in the dirt. She stood over him, fists still clenched, jaw stiff.
“Don’t talk about my dad! Ever!”
Then she whirled, ignoring the sting and ache in her knuckles, and left Bradley sucking blood up his nose. Bradley Dault was a pig. The whole colony knew it. He deserved everything Kalima could think up to do to him. And she was not afraid to explore the old ruins! It was just plain stupid, was all. Just as she’d told Bradley. The ruins were dangerous and not only because of the old Bolo jammed into the gates. The ancient fighting machines had been known to short out, go berserk, and inflict terrific casualties against civilian populations before running out of power.
Their Bolo, however, the one lodged in the old fortification’s gates, had been inert for the entire three years she’d been on Donner’s World. Everyone said it had been dead for two centuries, killed in the last battle with the Deng before they overran the planet. No one in the whole colony believed their Bolo was any more dangerous than the pine cones falling on it. But the wall around the old colonists’ compound continued crumbling under its flintsteel sheath, which meant that occasionally whole sections came down with a thunderous crash where the war had cracked the black-violet alloy casing.
Kalima didn’t want to be under any of that wall when it came down.
Still, the Pig had issued a challenge. She would lose stature in the eyes of the other kids if she didn’t respond suitably. And the taunt about her father stung more than she cared to admit. It wasn’t easy, Kalima scowled as she jogged over the broken valley toward the distant ruins, being the only child of a genuine war hero.
She had been aware most of her life that her mother had never forgiven Major Donald Tennyson for getting himself killed. Kalima wasn’t sure what she thought about her father’s death. She remembered sitting on her father’s lap, listening for hours to the stories he told about combat duty and the Navy and the wonder of the newest Bolos. After school lessons, she’d spent hours reading everything she could about the Bolos, about the worlds her father’s unit had seen, about the Navy. For a long time, she’d wanted to grow up and follow him into service.
Then, shortly after her eighth birthday, the message that had changed her mother into another person and left a giant hole in her own life had arrived, along with the posthumous medal for valor. Her mother had thrown the medal away and immersed herself in her work. Kalima had secretly rescued it again and hidden it in her personal belongings; then she had spent a lonely couple of years trying to keep herself interested in schoolwork that was suddenly the dullest thing she had ever been forced to do.
But her mother’s work had paid off, handsomely. The result had been not only a new home on Donner’s World, where they could start fresh, but also a companion that took everyone’s mind off the past.
Behind her, faint in the distance but growing rapidly closer, Kalima heard an emphatic series of barks. She knew what that particular code meant. She kept going anyway. Sufi would track her without difficulty, but not even the dog was going to stop her this time. She’d prove to everyone, including her mother, that Major Tennyson’s daughter was no coward.
The Bolo really was jammed into the crumbling gates. The closer she jogged to the ruined walls, the larger the ancient fighting machine loomed. It was at least fifty feet from treads to turret. Gaping holes in its armor revealed the extent to which it had suffered damage doing its duty. The enormous Hellbore guns were silent, coated in a reddish scale of rust. Her father had told her eye-popping stories about Bolos, about how difficult they were to kill.
Was this one really dead? Just because everyone thought it was . . .
She paused well outside its anti-personnel-charge range and scooped up a rock. Kalima heaved with all her strength. The rock thudded into the dirt a few feet short of the Bolo’s right tread. No movement creaked anywhere on the machine. It sat staring blindly forward, a metallic corpse left to lie where it had fallen.