“And you who nearly had it shot from the sky?”
Rejad was silent for a moment, then made an amused cry. “My sister is ever eager to remind me of my own shortcomings. This is good. I should hear these things occasionally from someone I do not have to kill. But I have nothing to be ashamed of here.
“It matters not if I am here because the Blade of Kevv succeeded, or because it failed. I am here, and I will win. The Blade of Kevv survived and will return, and these clever monkeys will yet fall to it. Speaking of, you have a report on the repairs?”
“Yes, it came by courier pod not two units ago. The hull damage is repaired, and the two damaged turrets are being switched out with units from a conventional cruiser of similar design. The kaleidoscope device is undamaged and ready for use.”
She had been saving something. “And better news, the Council has approved the purchase of two more kaleidoscope-equipped cruisers from our shipyards.”
Rejad stood quickly. “Glory to the bloodline and our ancestors. That is excellent news.”
“Perhaps, but it will be many cycles before the new ships arrive, and the Blade of Kevv was never intended to act alone. It should operate in concert with at least five other ships of its kind. Alone, as we have seen, it is still vulnerable.”
Rejad paced the back of the room, stopping to finger a silver bowl worth enough to feed a family of low-bloods for a year. “A blade too precious to be drawn is no blade at all. You are clever, sister, but you do not understand the affairs of the Council. Support for this war grows weak. Too many reputations have been lost, too many bloodlines soured, too many resources wasted. We will have those ships, and more, in time, but we cannot wait. We cannot even wait for the two additional ships. Blade of Kevv must prove its usefulness, without doubt this time, and then the Council will give us that we need.”
His hood flared. “We will succeed, and then there will be a dozen ships, and a hundred, and a thousand, and our bloodline will stand six years for every ship.”
Two
The capsule glittered among a cluster of trees high among the rocks, just off of the trail. Jask couldn’t believe at first what he was seeing. Could it be the falling star? He had seen something streak across the morning sky, heard the shriek of its landing. Since then he and Bessy had been looking for it.
But was this thing it?
It looked weird, all blackened and metal-like, sitting wedged in the trees. Maybe it was more of the aliens that had killed his mom and dad. He called them the “bizzards” because they looked like a cross between a buzzard and a lizard he’d seen in pictures from Earth.
But this falling star didn’t look like any of the alien machines he’d seen pass through on their patrols. It wasn’t much bigger than a man. Sort of long, too. Still, as he started up to the falling star, he was glad to have Bessy close, his personal Bolo.
“You keep an eye on me now, Bessy,” Jask said as he got closer. “I might need your help if this is a bizzard box.”
Bessy climbed over the rocks beside him, its balloon tires moving it slowly and surely upward.
He inched his way closer to the box. Suddenly something dropped from one of the trees.
He jumped back behind Bessy as a crablike seyzarr about the size of a dog scurried toward the box. The seyzarr snapped at the box with its claws, acting as if somehow there was food inside.
“That’s my falling star,” Jask said to the seyzarr. “Not yours.”
Jask removed a powerful slingshot from a bin on Bessy’s side. He knew the seyzarr had a vulnerable spot right between its eyes, where the armor was thin and its brainlike nerve cluster was close to the surface. But hitting it was going to be tough, since the thing was moving all the time.
Jask took a salvaged steel nut from his pocket and loaded it into the sling. It felt heavy in his hand. A good weapon.
But to make the shot count, he had to get the seyzarr to face him.
“Bessy, you get back into hiding among the rocks. You’re too big. You might frighten it.”
Bessy stopped and then started slowly backward.
Jask shouted, letting his voice turn into a high-pitched scream. It was a noise that Jask figured even the seyzarr couldn’t ignore.
He was right. The seyzarr turned, hesitated, considering where the easier meal was to be found. The hard shell of the pod hadn’t yielded much to its terrible claws, and Jask figured he looked small and defenseless. So the creature did exactly what Jask had hoped it would do. It charged.
The seyzarr clattered down the rocks with startling speed.
Jask got the slingshot up and in position, his arm pulled back and waiting. His dad had taught him that anytime he had to shoot something like a gun, or a bow and arrow, or even a slingshot, the most important thing was controlling his breathing.
Jask forced himself to take a deep breath and ignore the seyzarr’s flailing legs, snapping claws, and biting jaws, and instead look only into its eyes. And the soft spot between them.
Just as the seyzarr was almost on him, Jask fired.
There was a crack like a walnut under a hammer. The creature’s legs buckled.
For a moment Jask thought he had only wounded it, but then it fell at Jask’s feet, twitched once, and died.
“Hey, Bessy, come take a look at this!”
Jask studied his prize for a moment, forgetting about the box above him. Then as Bessy reached him, he cut off the animal’s claws and legs, throwing them onto Bessy.
“Sorry you have to haul stuff like this,” Jask said. “I know Bolos have more important things to do, but there will be fresh meat tonight if we can get this back to camp.”
After he finished loading the remains of the animal onto Bessy, he turned his attention back to the box. When he finally got up to it, he realized it was more than just a box. The rocks underneath it were scorched, as if some fire came from the bottom of the thing at the last minute. There was also a big yellow handle on one side with a word on it.
RESCUE.
“Hey, Bessy,” Jask said, “If I pull on this handle, you think it will somehow call for rescue?”
Bessy said nothing. Jask really didn’t believe in the word rescue. He had seen too much over all this time living alone in these mountains. He believed in Bolos, Bessy, and doing things himself.
“Suppose it won’t matter none, will it?” Jask said. “We came this far looking for it, we might as well go all the way. Right, Bessy?”
Again the little truck said nothing.
Jask reached up and pulled the handle. Then stepped back.
There was a hiss, a slight release of vapor, and then the top of the thing opened like a seashell.
Jask slowly poked his head over the top to see a man inside, pale and covered with blood.
“Well, Bessy, looks like the bizzards got another one,” Jask said. He wasn’t surprised at all. He’d seen a lot of death since the day he saw his mom and dad’s bodies. None of it much bothered him anymore.
Then he noticed that the man’s lips were moving. The guy tried to sit up and then moaned.
“What do you know, Bessy,” Jask said. “He’s still alive.”
Then Jask noticed the man’s uniform.
And the service pin on the man’s chest, the golden silhouette of a great tank, its turrets rising up from the top, bristling with weapons.
It was a pin that Jask had only seen in picture books, the pin of a Bolo commander.
* * *
Painfully, slowly, I work to restore the most minimal of my systems. Even my self-repair systems are gravely damaged.
I focus my efforts on restoring communications, but this turns into a dead end. My secondary communications systems are fused solid, my primary is also fused, though a few circuits open at the time of the blast seem curiously to have survived. I can send and receive coded pulses over my command receiver link, though I am unable to alter the frequency or scramble code. I have attempted to signal my Commander using this circuit without any success. I must face the grim possibility that if he were nearby at the time of the explosion, he is likely dead.
This avenue abandoned, I set to restoring my external sensors. This seems more promising, as a patchwork of the primary and secondary support circuitry seems to be intact. The external sensor heads and antennas have been destroyed or rendered inoperative, but this is a common occurrence in battle, and I have hardened backups for many of them. Unfortunately, most of my hull access plates are jammed or welded shut.