“Come on, Bessy,” Jask said as the truck got closer. “We need to get going. You know we have a job to do.”
“Hey, Jask!” A voice rang out over the valley.
Jask stopped and turned. Mr. Donavon, a nice old guy from Rockgate, was standing on the far hill, farther away than Jask could throw a rock. It was the third time this month that Jask had seen Mr. Donavon this far from Rockgate, hunting for food.
Mr. Donavan held up a dead seyzarr, a big crablike creature that Jask stayed away from at all costs. It was about the size of a small cat. Jask hated seyzarr. They were just too dangerous for his liking, but it looked as if Mr. Donavan had managed to kill one.
“Good soup tonight,” Mr. Donavan shouted. “You should come eat with us.”
“No, thanks,” Jask shouted back. “I need to keep looking for the falling star.”
Donavan shook his head and put the seyzarr back in his bag. “Jask,” he shouted, “you have to stop living in your dream world. You shouldn’t be out here by yourself. There are some kids your age in town that you could play with.”
“I don’t play no more,” Jask said. “Got to find that falling star.”
He turned and started over the ridge.
“I sure could use some help from that mule of yours,” Mr. Donavan yelled. “This thing is heavy!”
Jesk stopped and turned back to face Mr. Donavan. “Bessy isn’t a mule,” he shouted. “Bessy is a Bolo.”
Then following Bessy, he turned his back on Mr. Donavan and went over the hill, headed toward where he thought the falling star might be.
* * *
Sluggishly, my reasoning circuits come on-line.
I am blind, insensate, immobile.
I seem to have been deactivated a very long time. Seven of my on-board chronographs are either damaged or nonoperative, but on checking the eighth I am shocked to discover that I have been deactivated only a few hours. I search for background information in my memory cells, and find only a disorganized jumble. The first question logically is, who am I?
After a delay of 0.5980 seconds I locate an identification node. I am unit R-0012-ZGY of the Dinochrome Brigade, Mark XXXIV of a proud and ancient line. I am Bolo.
I am Bolo.
In this, I find comfort, knowing who and what I am. But there is more. I find that my Commander is Lieutenant David Rasha Orren, and that I am attached to the 1198th Armored Regiment. I arrived at my duty station—
The record trails off into nothing. Is this information missing, or did I truly never arrive at my assigned unit?
I reach out through my shattered circuitry, cataloging damage, routing around damaged modules. A scattering of emergency systems come on-line.
I am very badly damaged.
Both my Hellrails seem to have incurred massive damage. My forward turret is jammed, possibly fused. My missile launchers are not responding at all, and four of my twelve secondary batteries are inoperable. My number two cold-fusion reactor is down to thirty-percent efficiency. All my external sensors are badly damaged. All indications are that my drive systems are undamaged, but this cannot be the case. I have applied full forward and reverse power to all eight of my tread systems. While readings suggest that all systems are working, other than some vibration, there are no indications that I am moving at all.
Finally I find an external sensor that does not appear to be damaged, a radiation sensor normally only deployed from its armored canister when taking measurements.
Amazingly, I discover that my hull is extremely radioactive, the result of an intense neutron bombardment. This is consistent with the pattern and extent of damage. Somehow, during the lapse in my memory, I experienced a low-yield fusion explosion at point-blank range.
* * *
The sand on the corridor floor was warm under Vatsha’s unshod feet, and she dug her foot-thumbs in as she walked, enjoying the sensation. She stopped at a wall of armored viewing windows and stared out into space, at the sky-spanning nebula that her people called “Kevv’s Blood.” Stress seemed to flow from her, and her hood retracted into the sides of her head and neck.
According to the stories she was told as a child, Kevv went into the sky to save the homeworld from the Sun-eater, and he sacrificed himself so his wife could live to give birth to the original bloodlines of the Kezdai.
Vatsha remembered those simpler childhood days, and standing here, she could almost imagine she was back on the homeworld at night, looking up at the sky. Even the air was scented with tangy night-moss and sweet oil-vine. This is what power buys, comfort such as this, even in the cold of space. She could only hope that her brother did not lose this for both of them.
She made her way back along the spine of her brother’s yacht to his private apartments. The ship had been redecorated since she had last been here, another of her brother’s little extravagances. Rich tapestries hung on the walls, and abstract statues in rare nickel and silver sat in alcoves every few spans along the hallway.
Finally she reached the portal to his apartment. The mid-caste soldiers guarding the door lowered their beaks as a show of respect, but they kept their green eyes focused on her as a gesture that their respect had limits. Their metal tipped spears crossed in front of her, and their free hands hung close to the hilts of their suriases.
She lifted her head and clicked her beak. “I come to see the Is-Kaldai, brother-of-my-blood.”
“What business, my lady?”
Her hand strayed near her own blade, as a gesture of dominance, rather than out of any real possibility of a fight. “Business of the blood, underling, not to be spilled without a fight.”
The guard nodded, and the spears parted. “As you wish, my lady.”
She walked into the apartment, decorated to look like an opulent long-tent used by their nomadic ancestors. Her brother sat on a large pile of cushions at the far end of the room, a scarlet colored sandcrawler coiled around his neck. The pet took immediate notice of her, hissing and using the grip of its many legs to shift position, but her brother was staring into a holotank, lost in thought. He was large for a Kezdai, powerfully built, if a little past his prime of youth and somewhat soft from easy living.
She bowed her head. “Is-kaldai of the realm, brother of my blood, your sister has returned with news of far places.”
He looked up, surprised, his beak hanging open. “Vatsha, you are back from the Human world. I did not expect you so soon. What news from the battlefield?”
“Our forces have regrouped, our lines are solid, but we do not move. Many of the Human creatures have been trapped behind our lines, but they have fled to the mountains and badlands. They are not warriors, probably low caste, and not worth the effort to bloody our blades on right now. They are better suited to living on this foul, wet world than we are. Perhaps they can be employed as mine laborers once the planet is ours.”
Rejad hissed in disgust and the sandcrawler scuttled down the front of his blouse and disappeared into the pillows under his legs. “These Humans are disgusting creatures, soft, hairy and weak. They constantly leak water as though it were free. I find it impossible to believe that they have troubled us so, that they have built the great armored machines that keep our armies at bay. Perhaps those are only gifts from a more powerful race.”
“Perhaps, my brother, and if so, we do not want to meet them among the dunes.”
“Then we should be done with this war before they take notice of us. End it quickly.”
She bobbed her head in mock apology. “Pardon, lord, but that is what the last Is-kaldai said before he was called home in disgrace. I am shamed to point out that my lord may not have been assigned here as a sign of good favor with the Mor-verridai.”
“The Mor-verridai is a shadow, sister, with no power, and my rivals in the Council will be as well, once I win this war. My predecessors were brave, but not very smart.”
“And you are smart, but not very brave?”
His fingers brushed over the hilt of his blade. “Do not trifle with me, sister. Without my Blade of Kevv and its kaleidoscope sensor screen, the recent reversal might have gone much worse.”
“I remind my brother, that the kaleidoscope device is my design.”
“If I do not make the blade, does not my hand still make it cut? You are a clever female, sister, but it is I who put it into a ship and put it to use.”