Bolo Brigade (28 page)

13: bolos operating in inhabited areas will make every effort not to frighten children who may be playing in the region.

14: bolos will not interfere with the activities of legitimate government employees, including regular army forces or militia engaged on maneuvers or in active combat against an enemy.

15: bolos will make every effort not to approach, damage, or destroy such necessary public service infrastructures as power transmission grids, microwave broadcast towers, or emergency vehicles and equipment.

16: bolos will refer questions of alien intent and hostility to their human commander and, if necessary, to the co, 15th gladius brigade, for human input and judgment. Just because a life form does not look human does not mean it is not essentially peaceful or that it does not mean well.

The list went on, getting sillier and sillier after that last. There were forty-two rules in all, listed in no particular order or hierarchy. Alexie had little experience with the programming end of computers, but she did know that they tended to be both literal and precise. Throwing a list of rules at them like this was begging for a programming conflict that would freeze the poor things in their tracks. How would a Bolo handle a conflict between two rules? Take the first one listed? The last? Weigh each according to some complicated formula and obey the one that came up as most important?

Some of the rules—Number 16, for instance—even drifted into editorializing, something no computer could be expected to understand . . . even a self-aware one like a Bolo. They sounded as though they'd been drafted by one of the pro-peace factions in the Kinkaid government. There were several of those, she knew, men and women who felt it their duty to protect the rights of alien spacefarers who might find themselves friendless and alone on a potentially hostile world. . . .

"My God," Alexie said after reading through the list. "Some of these are awfully complicated."

"Some of them contradict one another," he said. "Number One and Number Five, for example.

"On the other hand, I can see why some people would be nervous about some of this stuff," she said, handing the pages back. "Sometimes, I guess there's nothing for it but to shut up and follow orders."

"Yeah," he said, glum. "Even when it means those orders are going to get you killed."

"Is it that bad?"

He dropped the printout sheets into a tray on the console. "It's bad. Bolos, even self-aware Bolos like our friend Freddy here are still machines, and they follow a machine's logic. Take ROEs One and Five. You can't fire first, and if you're ordered to fire first, you have to get permission to check the legitimacy of the order. Now they don't
directly
contradict one another, but the wording is fuzzy. A Bolo that normally would react in, say two thousandths of a second, might spend a whole eight or ten hundredths of a second extra thinking about all of the ramifications. And that could mean the difference between getting a kill on the bad guy, or taking crippling fire before he's even able to respond."

"They think that fast?"

"A lot faster than we do, yup. Part of the trouble is that with this many fuzzy-headed conditional orders, a Bolo could easily slide into a logic loop. He'd end up sitting there saying 'yes I can, no I can't, yes I can' endlessly, unable to do a damned thing."

"I thought Bolos were smarter than that!"

He hesitated, as though trying to decide how best to answer. "Well, they are. What we're talking about here is pretty deep-down programming. It doesn't have much to do with what a Bolo is actually thinking. You see?"

"Sure. I understand. If we were talking about a human, we'd be discussing which set of neurons is going to fire first in her brain, not what thoughts she's actually having while it happens."

"Exactly! Good analogy. Okay. There's another set of rules built into a Bolo's programming. It's called the Emergency Conflict Resolution Logic, and it's designed to handle any conflict that comes up. Basically, it weighs each option and acts on it, either through a set of assigned values—this is more important than that in this situation, say—or, sometimes, the way a human deals with it, by flipping a coin . . . or, in this case, by generating a random number."

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem is that these damned ROEs haven't been weighted, and they depend on a rather tortuous set of if-this-happens-don't-do-that-except-when instructions. Freddy would have gotten so tangled up in ROEs, he wouldn't have been able to fight."

Alexie looked at Donal sharply. She'd heard something in his voice . . . and in the way he'd worded that last statement.

"Um . . . you said 'would have.' I gather you've done something about the problem?"

He looked genuinely stunned. "Uh . . ."

She laughed. "Oh, don't worry. I'm not going to run off and tell Governor Chard. What did you do? Yank the ROEs?"

"Well, I couldn't do that, actually. Not without disabling a major chunk of the higher logic functions. Besides, each time Freddy here is hooked up to the diagnostic computer here at the depot, they run a quick check of his ROEs to make sure they're intact. If someone deleted them, well . . . that someone could only be me, frankly, and people wouldn't like it."

"So what did you do, then?"

He sighed. "You won't tell anybody?"

"Hey, I'm a stranger in these parts too, Donal. Just like you. We have to stick together!"

He smiled. "When you put it that way . . ." He hesitated, then shrugged. "Okay. I replaced the Emergency Conflict Resolution Logic."

"What?"

"It was the only way. I couldn't just add a new set of rules, or Freddy would still be in there juggling numbers. So what I did was write a patch, a new set of instructions that's inserted where the conflict resolution rules were. If I give him a specific code phrase—and I don't want to say what it is, because he's listening, and I don't want to trigger it—then instead of engaging the ECRL, a new order pops up telling him to delete all ROEs. That way, no one sees anything different with him here in the shop. But if we get into a fight, if things are looking bad, I give him the phrase and he goes to no-holds-barred combat."

"Very slick," she said. "You've done this for both Bolos?"

"I wrote it for Freddy. He uploaded the changes to Ferdy."

"You could get in a lot of trouble, you know."

"Tell me about it." He grinned. "Still, I'm not exactly known as a by-the-book officer."

"This isn't the first time you've gotten around orders you didn't like."

The grin faded a notch or two. "No. No, it isn't."

She studied Donal closely for a moment. He seemed like a fairly private person, someone who would probably prefer not to talk about himself, but there were questions she felt she had to ask.

"Donal—"

"Mmm?"

"I, I took the liberty of looking up your personnel file yesterday." She caught her lower lip between her teeth and looked down, suddenly embarrassed at the admission. The records were easily available to anyone with an authorization code as high as hers, but she was wondering now if he would consider it a breach of privacy. "It said you faced a court martial back on Gaspar."

He didn't seem shocked. Or angry. "That's right." If anything, he looked resigned, as though, having admitted this much, he was willing to admit it all.

"Look, I know it's none of my business, but—"

"Oh, I don't mind talking about it. As you could probably tell from all of the letters and special entries, I've had a somewhat, well, checkered career. Thirty-six standard years old, and I'm never going to make captain now."

"Thirty-six isn't old!"

"It is for an army lieutenant. But I've been passed over on the promotion list so many times now, well, it just isn't going to happen. Anyway, this last time, I was commander for a Bolo in a company deployed to Dahlgren. You know it?"

She shook her head. There are so many worlds in the Galaxy, even just counting those trodden by Humankind. "We don't get much news out here on the Rim."

"Well, there was a rebellion on Dahlgren, homesteaders allying with the native Drozan against the system government. The government, well, it was a nasty little dictatorship, but it was a member of the Concordiat. They called to the Concordiat for help, and my company was sent in. Four Bolos and a support group."

"Four Bolos? That seems like a lot of firepower."

"It was ludicrous! Hell, one Bolo would've been more than enough in a stand-up fight, but the government just figured that if one was good, four would be great. The real problem was that the natives were pretty good at guerrilla warfare, hit-and-run strikes, ambushes, that sort of thing. The Dahlgrenese generals in command had this idea that if we flattened the villages supporting the rebels, the rebels would come out and lay down their weapons. Bloody minded idiots. The man in charge was a Grand General Nolan Brainard. We called him 'No-Brains,' which might give you an idea.

"Anyway, the short story is that I disobeyed a direct order. I was told to order Kevin—that was my command, Bolo Mark XXVI/E-1104-KVN of the Line, a real sharp machine—to take out a human town called Rostover. And I couldn't do it."

"I'm glad to hear it! Why not?"

"Well, besides the obvious fact that turning a Bolo on a defenseless civilian village would have violated both my personal ethics and my oath to the Concordiat military, destroying that village wouldn't have brought the rebels in from the jungle. It probably would've made sure the rebels
never
came in, that they would have stayed out there hating the government and hating us for the next century or two. The town had a population of about twenty thousand. Since most of the young men were out playing war, the bulk of that population was women, children, and old men.

"Anyway, I parked Kevin at the edge of the town, climbed out, and walked in alone. Unarmed. I guess it was a pretty stupid thing to do, but I managed to get a meeting with the mayor. I thought, I don't know. If I talked to her. Maybe reasoned with her. Maybe I could get a lead on the guerrillas, maybe get them to come over to our side. I'm not sure what was going through my mind at the time, except that I couldn't do what I'd been told to do. I also thought Kevin might be able to pick something up. Hell, it beat just going in and slaughtering those people, you know?

"Well, I didn't get any information, of course. I hadn't really been expecting to. But Kevin, he was listening to the local commo channels.

"Mark XXVIs, you know, are really something. They incorporate hyper-heuristic psychotronics, based on the work of, well, never mind that. The point is, they're flexible, they're smart, and they learn fast. Very fast. They can anticipate things in a way earlier marks can't. Among other things, they're very good at penetrating hostile commo security. They can tap into lines of communication, listen in on the enemy's plans, even plant false messages, sometimes. In this case, old Kevin was listening when the mayor radioed the rebels, while I was still walking back to his position. By the time I was back in the fighting compartment, Kevin had pinpointed the rebel base, a complex of caves about twenty kilometers west of the town." He spread his hands. "So, that's where I went. Bypassed the town, and broke my orders in the process. Found the rebel camp and blasted it apart."

"But then . . . you won! You were a hero! And they court martialed you anyway? God, why?"

He gave a wry grin. "Because when I destroyed the base, there wasn't anybody there. Just a commo repeater, relaying messages to the rebels . . . who at that moment were slipping around my position to hit the government's main command center just outside Dahlgren's capital. Brainard was killed. So were a lot of other people. Since I was the one who'd disobeyed a direct order just before the attack, I was court martialed. The Dahlgrenese prosecutors were trying to prove treason, that I was conspiring with the enemy. They also threw in a charge of incompetence, just to be sure they had it all covered.

"Actually, now that I think about it, that's probably what saved me. I had three judges, only one of them a Dahlgrenese. They didn't buy the idea that I could be a crafty traitor and incompetent at the same time, so most of the charges were thrown out."

"I should think so!"

"But I'd still disobeyed orders, and I'd acted without proper authorization. You can't have loose cannons running around in anybody's army. Bad example, you know? Besides, I had a pretty spotty record. I'd mouthed off to people who were no less idiots for all that they wore more gold on their shoulders than me. So, I was given that lovely letter of reprimand you read if you went through my file, and I was transferred here with a warning couched in no uncertain terms that
this
is my last chance. If I screw up here, well, that's it. There's nowhere to go but out."

"Become a civilian?"

He nodded.

"Well, civilian life's not so bad, you know.
I'm
a civilian. You should resign your commission and come work for me. I could use someone with your talents—"

"Nice idea. Only you don't have a planet anymore."

The words bit, hard and deep.

"I'm sorry," he said, reading the pain in her face. "That was stupid of me."

"No. It's okay. And you're right."

"I still shouldn't have said that." He sighed. "Anyway, don't think I haven't thought about getting out. Lots. But, well, the army is my life. Bolos are my life. I'm not sure I'd be good for much of anything as a civilian. Sort of like trying to imagine Bolos doing farming work, or digging ditches . . ." His voice trailed off, as he stared unfocused at a spot on the wall of the compartment.

"Donal? What is it?"

"Umm. Excuse me. I just had an idea."

"What?"

"No promises, Alexie," he told her. "But there just might be a way to give our friends here some exercise . . . and maybe take care of some of your problems out at the refugee camp, too."

"Really? How?"

"Well, let me tell you what I have in mind."

He began describing his plan.

For the past several standard days, my Commander and I have been at the location recently designated Simmstown, the Wide Sky refugee camp located 112.4 kilometers north of Kinkaid. Our Commander could only get permission to deploy one of us to Simmstown, and after conducting a random generation of probabilities known as a "coin toss," it was determined that I would go while Bolo 96875 remained at Kinkaid.