“NKE?” There was no answer, and she tried again. “NKE, this is Gonzalez! Come in!”
“Colonel.” The Bolo’s voice was ragged, and Gonzalez could feel the huge machine’s struggle to make it firm. “Colonel, my Commander is wounded. I . . . require your assistance.”
“On my way, NKE!” Gonzalez replied without even thinking about it, and her command tank pivoted to race towards the smoking skimmer. The five-hundred-ton vehicle skidded to a stop on locked tracks, and Gonzalez popped her hatch before it reached a complete halt. She leapt down the handholds and ran the last few yards to the skimmer. The canopy resisted stubbornly for several seconds, then the emergency bolts blew and she ripped it away and gasped as she saw the blood pooled on the cockpit floor.
“He’s hurt badly, NKE,” she reported over her helmet boom mike. “He’s lost a lot of blood—too much, maybe!”
“Can you get him into my fighting compartment?” The Bolo’s voice was pleading, and Gonzalez grimaced.
“I don’t know, NKE. He’s hurt bad. It might kill—”
“N-N-N-Nike!” Merrit whispered. His eyes opened a narrow slit. “Got . . . got to reach . . .”
His thready voice died, and Gonzalez sighed. “All right, Paul,” she said softly, without keying her mike. “If it means that much to both of you.”
* * *
I watch Colonel Gonzalez struggle to lift Paul from the skimmer. The rest of her crew clamber quickly down the hull of their tank and run to her assistance. Between them, they are able to lift him clear. They are as gentle as they can be, yet he screams in pain, and answering anguish twists within me.
But he is conscious. Barely, perhaps, yet conscious, and I see him beckoning weakly towards me. One of Colonel Gonzalez crewmen seems to argue, but the colonel cuts him off quickly, and they carry Paul towards me.
I open my fighting compartment hatch and deploy my missile-loading waldoes to assist. I lock them into the form of a ramp, and Colonel Gonzalez inches up it backwards, supporting Paul’s head and shoulders while the rest of her crew takes most of his weight. My audio pickups relay their gasps of effort and the groans of pain he cannot suppress, yet between them, they get him safely into my compartment.
Colonel Gonzalez lays him in the crash couch and deploys the shock frame. The medical remotes in the shock frame go instantly to work, and fresh grief twists me as I interpret their data.
Paul is dying. His spleen and liver have been effectively destroyed by a penetrating trauma. His small intestine has been perforated in many places, and blood loss has already reached catastrophic levels. I do not understand how he has clung to consciousness this long, but absent the services of a fully equipped hospital trauma unit within the next fifteen minutes, he will die, and the nearest trauma unit is in Ciudad Bolivar.
My medical remotes do what they can. I cannot stop the bleeding, but I administer painkillers and blood expanders. Without more whole blood, I cannot keep pace with the blood loss, but I can ease his pain and slow the inevitable, and his eyelids flutter open.
* * *
“N-Nike?” Merrit whispered.
“Paul.” For the first time, Nike replied with his name, not his rank, and bloodless pale lips smiled weakly.
“I . . . Oh, God, honey . . . I blew it. Sanders . . . went rogue. H-He’s got the depot. I—”
“I understand, Paul,” the Bolo said gently. Then, more sharply, “Colonel Gonzalez?”
“Yes, NK—Nike?” The colonel’s voice was soft with wonder, as if she could not quite believe what reason told her she must be hearing.
“Please return to your vehicle, Colonel. My Commander and I will lead you to Ciudad Bolivar.”
“I—” Gonzalez bit her lip, then ducked her head in a curiously formal bow. “Of course, Nike.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
Gonzalez and her crewmen vanished through the hatch, and Merrit stirred weakly in the couch.
“Sanders has . . . at least one more . . . man.” The words came slowly, painfully, but with steady, dogged precision. “New command code’s in . . . my private files. If he looks . . . there, he can—”
“While you live, you are my Commander, Paul,” Nike replied quietly as her hatch closed. She watched Gonzalez and her people return to their vehicle, then reversed course once more. She accelerated quickly to over seventy kph, the maximum speed the Wolverines could manage even down the broad avenue her passage cleared, and Merrit stroked his couch arm with a weak hand.
“Not going . . . to live much . . . longer, love,” he whispered. “Sorry. So . . . sorry. Should have told . . . Central whole story. Gotten someone . . . out here sooner, and—” A ragged cough cut him off in a spasm of agony, but his eyes fell to the main tactical screen with its display of what was happening at the capital, and he gasped.
“Bastard! Oh . . . bastard!” he coughed as understanding struck.
“We will deal with them, Paul,” Nike told him with a new, sudden serenity.
“Promise,” Merrit whispered. “P-Promise me, Nike.”
“I promise, Paul,” the huge Bolo said quietly, and he nodded weakly. The painkillers were doing their job at last, and he sighed in relief, but his curiously distant thoughts were clear. There was no longer any fear in them—not for himself. Only for Nike. Fear and grief for her.
“I know you will, love,” he said, and his voice was impossibly clear and strong. He smiled again—an achingly tender smile—and stroked the couch arm once more. “I know you will. I only wish I could be with you when you do.”
He smiled one last time, then exhaled in a long, final sigh, and his lax head rolled with Nike’s motion.
“You are with me, Paul,” her soprano voice said softly. “You will always be with me.”
Paul is dead. Grief and anguish roll through me, and with them hate. I do not know all that passed in the depot bunker, but I access the main computer through the Maintenance Section. The intruder alert system is active, and two dead bodies in the uniform of the Brigade lie on the floor of the command center. A third man in Brigade uniform is crouched over the main com console, trying frantically to communicate with the ships he does not know I have destroyed, but Colonel Sanders is in Paul’s private quarters, scrolling through the list of Paul’s personal files.
I know what he seeks, but I cannot stop him. The fact that the bunker’s defensive systems have killed two of the colonel’s companions is the final proof that he has committed treason, since they could not engage actual Brigade officers, yet the defenses can be reconfigured and enabled only upon the direct command of human personnel, and Sanders has slaved them to his command. I cannot use them to kill Paul’s murderers.
The scrolling list on Paul’s computer screen stops suddenly, and Sanders leans closer. I fear he has found the command file, and there is nothing I can do to prevent him from using it if he has. Grief and hatred urge me to return to the bunker, to crush Paul’s killers under my treads and grind the life from them, yet I cannot. I have promised Paul I will stop the raiders, and if Sanders has found the command file, I will have little enough time in which to do so.
But if I cannot slay them myself, I am not completely helpless. Sanders does not realize I control the Maintenance computers. He has taken no measures to sever my access to the main system, and I strike ruthlessly.
I lock the main computers, wiping every execution file and backup they contain. The man at the communications console looks up with a cry of shock as the system goes down, and I slam the heavily armored hatches to the personnel section of the bunker.
Sanders looks up as his companion cries out, and his face twists with horror as he realizes what I have done. I override the safety circuits and send a power surge through the hatch-locking mechanisms, spot-welding them, sealing them against any possibility of opening without cutting equipment, and Sanders grabs for the microphone of the stand-alone emergency command communicator.
“NKE!” Sanders gasped hoarsely. “What are you doing?!”
I do not answer, but my commands flash through the maintenance computer, and service mechs stir into motion. I send welders trundling along the exterior of the bunker, and Sanders cries out in terror as the mechs begin to seal every ventilation shaft.
“No, NKE! No! Stop! I order you to stop!”
Still I ignore him. I cannot kill him myself, nor can I use the depot’s defensive systems against him, but I can give him Montressor’s gift to Fortunato, and vengeful hatred fills me as my remotes seal him systematically within his hermetic tomb.