I apply power to each of the access plate actuators in turn, cycling each several times. Finally I detect a small movement in a cover over an auxiliary optical head located atop my A turret. I cycle the actuator several hundred times, but the movement remains minute.
I apply 120 percent current to the cover. I feel a stinging in my already overloaded pain circuits. I increase to 200 percent power. 300 percent. There is an overheat warning, and I estimate that the actuator will burn out in 0.027 seconds.
But then there is a screech of rending metal that I detect through an induction sensor in my hull, and the cover pops open. I am startled by the sound, and suddenly realize that I have heard nothing but the vibration of my own systems since I became operational.
The silence disturbs me. Seeking some reassurance that the outside world still exists, I unshutter the now exposed optical sensors.
I see nothing.
Blackness.
Yet all indications are that the sensor is intact. I shift to infrared wavelengths and it is nearly as dark. Wherever I am, not only is devoid of light, it is cold as well.
But there are shapes close around me, perhaps retaining some slight residual heat of the explosion. Perhaps they are warmed slightly by their own radiation. I readjust.
Things are clear now, crumpled duralloy frame members, carbon-carbon composite panels, twisting conduits and light-guides. The materials and construction are of a light-weight nature. The wreckage of an aircraft of some sort? Whatever, I am entombed in wreckage. I must see what is beyond it. With some difficulty, I am successful in opening seven of the ports over my infinite repeaters. I cycle them through their entire range of lateral motion, and fire.
There is surprisingly little sound, but I am rewarded as their fire slices through the cocoon that surrounds me, allowing light in from the outside world. The flying wreckage requires me to shutter the optical sensor again, but at this range against a fixed target, it isn’t needed.
It takes 12.50 seconds for the secondary batteries to complete their task. I unshutter the optical head, and am rewarded with a view of the local sun as it sweeps overhead at nearly impossible speed.
At first I doubt my internal clocks. I would have to be on a planet with a rotational period of 59.00394 seconds. Then a distant planetary body moves through my field of view at the same rate. I screen out its glare, and see stars whirling by. Then I watch half of my former prison spinning away, and on a hatch cover I read “C.M.S. Cannon Beach.”
A search of my fragmented memories turns up reference to a freighter in the merchant service of the Concordiat.
Another memory, of emerging from a factory. Music plays. A banner snaps in the breeze.
A tunnel.
A spaceport ramp.
A ship. Cannon Beach.
My new Commander sitting on my a turret talking to another man. It distresses me greatly. I cannot remember my Commander’s face.
I struggle to clarify my thoughts. The sudden sensory input seems to have overwhelmed me, putting my logic processes into confusion.
Where am I?
I was on a civilian freighter, bound for a world called Delas. I was to join with the assembled Bolos of the 1198th Armored Regiment to resist an unprovoked alien incursion onto a Concordiat protectorate world. Clearly the enemy has struck before I could reach my destination. The likelihood that my Commander is dead now reaches near certainty.
The stars spin by, sky never ending.
I am adrift in space.
It is quite likely that the planet in my view is Delas, yet it might just as well be in the next galaxy. I have power and thought, but I am inert, impotent, as helpless as a Bolo can be and still survive.
Below, my brother Bolos wait for reinforcement. They will be waiting a very long time.
* * *
Bendra hated the monitor room. It had been hurriedly installed in the bowels of the Is-kaldai’s yacht when he had been put in charge of the war. It was in a narrow space, jammed in next to a conter-grav coil which constantly emitted a deep buzzing which rattled Bendra’s bones, and made his beak ache.
Bendra could have told them that it would have been much more effective for the Is-kaldai to use a naval cruiser as his command ship, rather than adapting a luxury yacht for that purpose. If they had asked him, which of course, they hadn’t.
Bendra was a low-blood, with only a low, technical, rank, and a bloodline that conveyed absolutely no power, and earned no respect. He was lucky even to have even this position, a promotion that had been awarded only after a superior had been removed for a spectacular bungle.
That was the way of the Kezdai.
That was the life Bendra lived. Each day he spent most of his waking time in this narrow space, jammed in with a dozen other unfortunates, each staring into a holotank that projected an abstract representation of a region of space. They were the eyes of the fleet, looking beyond the immediate necessities of navigation into deep space, watching for distant threats, or the first signs of an incoming fleet.
But there was no fleet.
Except for an occasional convoy of transports, the Humans had fielded no fleet against them. Of course there had been the armed transport that had surprised the fleet, contributing to the failed offensive. The monitor who had failed to spot the threat was gone now. Bendra did not know where, and did not want to. A former scrubber-of-surfaces now sat in his place in the line, struggling to learn his new job before he too, was replaced.
Bendra’s job was to monitor the growing clouds of debris that orbited the human planet and the rest of the system. There were millions of such pieces, from destroyed Kezdai ships, and ironically, from the incoming convoy that the humans themselves had foolishly destroyed. This amused Bendra, since the Kezdai themselves rarely went out of their way to destroy such ships.
He was told that the generals thought it foolish to try blockading a planet so rich in resources. Below them was enough metal to build a million fleets. Soon, he was told, it would belong to the Kezdai.
He could care less. Bendra’s world was much smaller than that. He lived from day to day, trying to avoid the wrath of his superiors, seeking what few comforts one of his station could expect, hoping for someone above him to screw up, hoping he wasn’t caught in an error himself.
Thus it was with great interest that he watched one of the random bits of convoy wreckage in his holotank flare for a moment. He blinked, replayed the sequence to be sure, zoomed in and played it again. One piece of wreckage had shown a momentary energy spike. Following that, large pieces of the object separated and drifted away. But the energy source was still in the largest part of the object. He watched as it cooled back to match the background cold of space.
His hood flared with anxiety and annoyance. Why did this have to happen on his watch? The object was now his responsibility, no matter what it did from now on, or when it did it.
Still, it was probably nothing, a smaller piece of wreckage or a meteor striking the large one at high speed, or perhaps an exploded power cell, or ammunition, or a reactor only now gone critical.
He watched and waited for another energy spike, but it did not come.
Finally he pulled out his surias, a cheap and inferior blade, given to him by his father, who had lost his great-grandfather’s blade in a botched duel. The blade glinted dully in the rooms dim light. He placed a thumb behind the blade and began to idly sharpen his beak. It was going to be another long shift.
Three
Veck waited in the makeshift spaceport waiting room. The original terminal was visible through the view-panel, but the building was in ruins. Most of the surrounding area was also in ruins. But this spaceport was in the main city in this region and the locals seemed to want to keep using it. This temporary waiting room was crowded and hot. It seemed a lot of people were wanting to get off and away from this planet and were willing to risk the dangers of leaving, rather than staying.
Veck didn’t much care one way or another anymore. He had resigned his commission. He was going somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was away from here. He knew for a fact he’d never get over the memories of what he’d done, though. His stupidity had killed his best friend. And he was going to have to live with that for the rest of his sorry life.