Bolo Brigade (11 page)

>optical and ir sensors inoperable

>firefight elapsed time: 28.5 seconds w 8 kills

>chance of successful engagement null

load escape/evasion subroutine 329

system failure/abort, retry, cancel

load escape/evasion subroutine 329

system failure/abort, retry, cancel

load escape/evasion subroutine 329

system failure/abort, retry, cancel

load escape/evasion subroutine 329

system failure/abort, re—

Conditions have indeed improved considerably over the past five standard days, and this improvement is clearly due to the intervention of our new Commander. My port-aft track has been replaced, and the maintenance work on my port-forward suspension was completed in only 42.4 standard hours. While I have detected a certain amount of grumbling among the maintenance crew personnel, they have resumed a regular work schedule, and I can at last anticipate being returned to full combat status within two more weeks.

Messages intercepted through base communications continue to worry us, however. Unconfirmed reports of hostile or unknown spacecraft in three systems—Starhold, Endatheline, and Wide Sky—have increased dramatically in both number and frequency. Endatheline has been out of communication for the past 15.72 standard days, and 2.74 hours ago, Unit 96875 reported that all communications—including SWIFT relays—between Muir and Wide Sky had also been interrupted. We reported the matter to our Commander and continue to await developments.

He, meanwhile, has been invited to one of those incomprehensible social engagements occasionally held at the Governor's Residence.

* * *

Donal arrived precisely at the beginning of Third Watch, as specified in the invitation, but it was clear that the party had been going on for some time already. The Governor's Residence was ablaze with light, so brightly illuminated in fact that the stars of the cluster overhead were washed out, and the emptiness of the Gulf kept at bay. Richly dressed guests stood about on the covered patio or strolled along the tree-lined drive leading up to the house. From a low bluff the house overlooked the bay, sparkling with the reflected hues of lights both from the mansion and from the city of Kinkaid, which sprawled along the horizon on the opposite shore.

Stepping off the public flier and onto the broad, plascrete landing pad, Donal was immediately greeted by a gray-and-gold-uniformed servant, who discreetly checked his invitation, then smiled, bowed, and gestured with a pleasant and professional "
This
way, if you please, sir."

The title "Governor" was clearly a holdover from an earlier era, when the Strathan Cluster was first being colonized by human explorers moving out along the Eastern Arm toward the Galaxy's outer rim. The Cluster had been independent for two centuries, now, but the Confederation retained most of the ranks, titles, and formalities of the original thirty-six colonies. The changeover from dependent to independent status had been entirely peaceful; if anything, most citizens of the Confederation had
resisted
the idea of self-government, favoring a central government that was remote and unconcerned with the affairs of their day-to-day lives.

It was interesting, Donal thought as the servant led him through a tall and richly paneled door, how the people of Muir, at least, clung to the illusions of the past. Governor Reginald Chard was as powerful an autocrat as any human ruler in history, ruling a world of half a billion people while answering solely to a small and largely docile advisory council and to a legislative body that did little but rubber-stamp his proclamations and wrangle with the popular representatives and local district managers. Besides this, he was the senior member of the Strathan Confederation Council, a benign and relaxed dictatorship embracing thirty-six worlds. Despite the Confederation's independence, however, there was still the pretense that Muir and the Strathan Cluster were merely extensions of the whole of human-ruled space.

It was, he realized, a kind of game, a way of fooling themselves into believing that they were part of something larger . . . and more secure.

The grand reception hall of the Governor's Residence was alive with glittering light and color, as each movement, each gesture of each elaborately bejeweled woman, of each elegantly dressed and bemedaled man, reflected the blaze of lights overhead in kaleidoscopic radiance. The floor itself had been set to display an immense portrait of the Galaxy, a simulation of the broad spiral viewed face-on, as though seen from a vantage point ten thousand light years above the core.

Perhaps, Donal thought wryly, it wasn't a game after all. It was as though the people here on this lonely outpost of humanity were unconsciously trying to hold the Ultimate Night at bay, to fill their small, enclosed bubble of a universe with light and forget the emptiness of the Void. By standing, walking, or dancing across the image of the Galaxy, they seemed to be trying to lay symbolic claim to its three hundred billion stars, as though one could own an ocean and all of its treasures and secrets simply by taking its photograph.

"Drink, sir?" Another servant, this one in white, offered him a glass on a silver tray with a precisely measured bow. Donal accepted the drink with a nod. He was greeted in friendly fashion by several men and women just inside the hall. A whirl of introductions left him a little lost, trying to fit names with faces as he fielded the usual pleasantries. When did you arrive in Muir? What do you think of Kinkaid? Where were you stationed in the Concordiat?

One of the women in the group was memorable, even if he lost her name almost as soon as it was given to him. She was blond and intense and quite pretty in a clinging and somewhat insubstantial fluff of iridescent blue and starpearls, and she'd seemed determined at the time to give him every opportunity to steal glances down her low-cut décolletage. Something about the way she kept folding her arms beneath her generous breasts and leaning forward as she looked up into his face with those alluring blue eyes seemed to be body language enough to constitute a full-blown proposition.

Donal knew that he would have to tread carefully, though. Customs varied from world to world throughout human space, and a display of near-naked female breasts might not be the invitation here that it was on other worlds.

Within a few moments, though, the conversation had turned to other things—the weather on Muir and the advent of thorsh-hunting season—and he'd politely taken his leave, wandering away from the group to a spot off to one side of the reception hall, where he could watch the glittering assembly with a measure of anonymity.

Donal had been on Muir for almost a week now and still knew very few of the local people. Most of his time, during both on-duty hours and off, had been spent working with the two Bolos in Vehicle Bay Four, trying to ascertain just how far their test responses and psychotronic measurements might have drifted from the baselines listed in the manuals as normal. The problem was far from solved. Both Bolos showed a high degree of stability, and most of their answers to his test questions were dead on . . . but every once in a while one or the other would come back with an answer that couldn't even be charted, and that worried him. It was like the old story about the behavioral scientists who put a chimpanzee in a room with a locked box of food and various tools to see how the animal would handle elementary problem-solving. When they squinted through the peephole to watch, however, what they encountered was the large, brown eye of the chimp, peering through the peephole from the other side in an effort to study
them
. It was eerie, and more than a little disturbing.

"So tell me, Lieutenant," a woman said, stepping close to him from his right. "How do our social functions here in the Cluster compare to those back in the Concordiat?"

He took a sip of his drink, working on an answer. The woman . . . Lina? Tina? Something like that . . . was one of the people who'd greeted him on his arrival . . . the memorable one, with the generous and nearly naked breasts. From the wry and somewhat calculating expression on her face, she seemed to have set her sights on him for some reason and claimed him for herself.

"Actually, ma'am," he said at last, smiling, "I never attended assemblies like this all that much, so I'm not really much of an authority. Still, the people here are the nicest I've run into in a long time."

"I'm not
ma'am
," she said, laughing. "
Lina
!"

"Lina." He took another sip of his drink and tried to keep his eyes from straying down the front of her gown. "Anyway, I like what I've seen so far."

"My, and aren't
we
the diplomat, now!" she exclaimed, twinkling as she lightly slapped his chest with an "oh, go on" gesture. "I declare, we must have a refugee from the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne here!"

"No, no," he said. "Not at all. In fact, my big mouth usually manages to get me into trouble. Not very diplomatic at all."

"Well, that
does
sound intriguing!" She laughed, a rather scratchy squeak and cackle that was not nearly as attractive as her face. "It makes you a man of mystery! You know, the word around Kinkaid is that you fled some sort of trouble back in the Concordiat."

"Really?"

"I've
heard
that a woman was involved."

"How interesting."

"But then, I also heard that you tried to warn some people about the Drozan, but they didn't listen."

"I can't imagine where you got your information."

"There was some sort of a cover-up, and a court martial. Something about you saying your commanding officer had a fat head."

He sighed. "If that were true, it wouldn't be the first time. Like I said, I have a big mouth."

"Mmm." Those blue eyes regarded him steadily for a moment, as though searching out chinks in his armor. ". . . and . . . are you married?"

"I was. That was a while ago, though."

"Oh, I'm
so
sorry." But he could tell from her eyes that she wasn't sorry at all.

He shrugged. The memories weren't so painful now. Not as much, anyway.

Donal felt a light touch at his elbow. Turning, he found himself face to face with Lieutenant Colonel Wood.

"Miss Brodly," the colonel said gravely. "Lieutenant. Please excuse the interruption."

"Yes, sir," Donal said, drawing himself up a bit straighter.

"Why, Colonel Wood!" Lina said. "I haven't seen you in weeks! When are you coming over to my place again? You promised to tell me all about your—"

"Um, yes. If I may borrow your companion, Miss Brodly? Lieutenant? The governor would like to see you now."

"Ah!" Donal exclaimed, delighted at the interruption. He set his glass on the empty tray of a passing waiter, then bowed to the woman with formal gallantry. "If you would excuse me, Tina?"

"It's
Lina
!"

"Sorry to take you away from the young lady," Wood said as they crossed the soft-glowing, milky curdle of one of the Galaxy's spiral arms. "But Governor Chard likes to meet all newly arrived officers. And he
is
your host."

"Oh, by all means, sir. Duty, and all like that, of course." He suppressed a shudder. The woman had such a predatory, such a
hungry
look. Not that he minded the attentions of a pretty young woman, necessarily, but he still hadn't gotten his bearings on this world, and he didn't want to take a misstep on unfamiliar ground.

He wondered if the local social life here was somewhat stunted by the rarity of new faces. It was the only reason he could imagine that explained such interest in a low-ranking newcomer like him.

Governor Reginald Chard was a thin, sharp-faced man with white-blond hair and the expression of someone who has just tasted something unpleasant. He was talking with General Phalbin, but he turned and gave Donal a thorough once-over as he approached with Wood. "Ah," he said, extending his hand with a deliberate air of condescension. "You must be our newest expatriate from the civilized worlds. Welcome to the Cluster, Lieutenant."

"Harrrumph," Phalbin added. The general momentarily buried his nose in the wine glass he was holding. When he emerged again, he shook his head. "Not as though we need these puppies from the Concordiat, eh, Governor? Coming out here like lords of creation to tell us what to do. Ha?"

"Now, now, General," the governor said, smiling. "Be gracious. This gentleman can't help his orders, and he certainly can't be held responsible for the, ah, perceptions of his superiors."

Donal was stung. "I assure you, General," he said, voice sharp, "that my only interest here is in the Bolos. I wouldn't dream of telling you what to do."

"You seem to be making a fair start over in the Maintenance Depot, young man. I hear you've been shaking things up over there. Rocking the boat, as they say." He took another long and thirsty swallow from his rosé. "It is generally expected that a junior officer newly posted to an unfamiliar command will take his time to settle in, to, ah, get the lay of the land, as it were. . . ."

Obviously, someone had been complaining about the way he'd been running things. It was, he supposed, to be expected, though he would have thought the complaints would have gone to Lieutenant Colonel Wood, not all the way up the line to the commanding general.

This was not the time or the place to discuss brigade politics, however, or the problems inherent in going outside the chain of command. "Perhaps, sir," he said carefully, "we should discuss this at another time."

"Absolutely!" the governor said, face creasing in a broad smile. "Come, come, General! I throw these affairs so we can get away from the stress of the daily grind, you know. Can't keep your nose in your work all the time. Got to come up for air once in a while and see what the world has to offer, eh?" He sipped his drink, then gestured with the glass, taking in the glittering room. "So. Lieutenant. What do you think of our little corner of the Galaxy?"

"I'm afraid I haven't had the chance to get out and see much of Kinkaid as yet, Governor," he said. "Your night skies are certainly spectacular."