Bolo Brigade (31 page)

Donal had been running across open ground toward the Bolo when the firefight at the edge of the trees started. It had been over almost before it had begun—a brief set of flashes as Freddy's ion cannons had discharged, followed an instant later by a ground-shuddering concussion that tripped him as he ran and sent him sprawling on hands and knees.

The detonation sent a mushrooming, roiling pillar of smoke and dust thundering into the sky, washing across Freddy like a wave, the blast effect skittering out across the waters of the lake in a fast-expanding circle.

Robot probe,
Donal thought, squinting into the sudden gust of dust-laden wind.
With a self-destruct command.
Had it damaged Freddy?

Rising unsteadily to his feet, he was about to try to raise Freddy on his communicator when something caught his attention, a flicker of light, a movement, something from almost directly overhead. He glanced up . . . and in the next instant he was flying through the air, smacked over by a titanic shock wave.

Blue fire, like the unchained heart of an exploding star, flicked down out of the sky, a radiant pencil of intolerable brilliance. . . .

To Donal, it was as though the sky had just cracked open, disgorging the light of a sun. The bolt—he was pretty sure it was a plasma discharge of some kind, something like a Hellbore, in fact—burned down from the zenith and struck the waters of the lake a few meters to the right of Freddy's position.

Thunder exploded, a deafening roar, as the beam slowly tracked toward the shore. At its touch, water exploded in steam, a geyser a hundred meters tall of spray and superheated vapor that cascaded across the surface of the lake in lazy slow-motion. When the beam swept onto the shore of the lake, it furrowed the ground, mud and topsoil dissolving in temperatures normally found on the surface of a star, converting into white-hot plasma in a flash. Within the space of a second or so, though it seemed much longer, the beam flicked toward Freddy. . . .

But Freddy was no longer in the same spot. At the first stab of blinding light, Freddy had engaged his drive and was now hurtling across the landscape at speeds in excess of 130 kilometers per hour. He plunged ahead into the forest, sending trees toppling left and right.

Donal was mildly surprised to find himself flat on his belly, hugging the loam as if trying to become a small and insignificant part of the ground. He didn't remember diving for cover or getting knocked down a second time, didn't even remember hitting the ground, but so long as he was here, it seemed like a good place to be. He could feel the earth shudder beneath his body, feel the palpable shocks in the air as the beam continued to dump gigajoules of energy into the planet's atmosphere.

The beam winked off after approximately two seconds, leaving a zigzag scar in the earth a meter deep and a meter wide, its bottom and sides still glowing a mottled orange, like the crusty surface of molten lava. Where the trench emerged from the lake, water continued to pour in and vanish in boiling, churning clouds of swirling white steam. In the sky overhead, clear a moment ago, clouds were forming and breaking up with a time-lapse camera's sense of hurried unreality. Some dazed portion of his mind provided explanation: water vapor jolted out of suspension in the atmosphere by the passage of that beam was being made briefly visible as a ragged whirlpool of rapidly condensing cloud.

The Bolo emerged from the forest, still moving at high speed, his upper works festooned with shredded vegetation. Rock and great, smoking clods of earth sprayed back from his fast-spinning tracks, and when he slewed suddenly, changing course in a seemingly random manner, he scraped up a divot that would have covered most of the playing surface of a football field, sending most of the loose earth and pulped vegetation out in a soaring, rooster's-tail of debris. Freddy's strategy was obvious—and sound. The nearest enemy ship must be a sizable fraction of a light second away; if they were targeting Freddy specifically, their view of his current location would lag that much of a second behind reality. If he moved, and especially if he moved randomly, they were going to have one hell of a time nailing him from space.

Donal pulled his legs under him, got to his feet, and started running. His knees felt weak, almost trembling, but he kept going, pulling out his communicator and clicking the transmit switch. "Freddy! This is Donal! Do you copy?"

"I copy, Commander," Freddy's voice came back calm, quiet, and collected as always. It was difficult, in fact, to associate that civilized, conversational voice with the enormous machine that was currently slewing about in a cloud of dust two hundred meters away, reducing a field to bare rock and steel-scraped raw earth in the process.

"I need to get aboard, Freddy. Can you pick me up?"

"I have you in sight, Commander. Maintain your current heading and speed. I will pass in front of you in twenty-three seconds, affording you an opportunity to come aboard."

"Right!"

He kept running. Freddy veered suddenly into a straight-line run toward the mountains, holding course for so long that Donal thought something was wrong, that he was deliberately tempting one of the Malach ships to pick him off, or that he'd forgotten his human companion and was running for the cover of the trees. Suddenly, though, Freddy threw both port-side tracks into full reverse, spinning like a grotesquely outsized top, and hurtling almost directly toward Donal. An instant later, the heavens opened again, a blue-white lance of sun-fire howling out of the zenith and striking a point behind the oncoming Bolo, at just about the point where Freddy would have been had he maintained that straight-line vector for much longer.

Thunder rolled again, the shock wave staggering Donal like a blow to the gut. He nearly stumbled and fell, but this time he kept his feet and kept moving. The Bolo moved toward him, a hurtling juggernaut, its broad, cleated tracks blurred by motion and by the cascade of dirt and dust flying from their whirling surfaces. At the last possible moment, it swung sharply to Donal's left, spraying him with hard-flung dirt and gravel.

Half blinded, he kept running, turning now to follow the big machine as it freight-trained past him. The belly cleared the ground by a good meter and a half, too high for him to simply step up and scramble aboard while the Bolo was moving. In the rear, however, between the massive sets of rear tracks, the outer hatch swung down, a ramp trailing behind in the dirt, while the inner access hatch dilated open.

For a moment, Donal thought the Bolo had miscalculated and was pulling away from him again, but as he began running harder, the Bolo slowed, ever so slightly, and he was able to leap onto the dragging ramp, grab the handholds to either side, and haul himself into the big machine's central access corridor.

The outer ramp whined as it closed up, and the inner hatch twisted shut. Donal slumped on the passageway deck for a moment, panting heavily. He'd not done this much exercise in a long time, he reflected, and it might be time to start thinking about some sort of regular work-out routine.

Otherwise, the next time this happened, he was going to be left panting in the dust.

"You'll find a better view of the battle if you come forward to the fighting compartment, Commander," Freddy's voice said from an overhead speaker.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," he replied. "Just had to catch my breath."

"Are you injured, Commander?"

"Just my pride, Freddy. I'm getting too old for this sort of thing."

Pulling himself upright, he began making his way forward, bracing himself against the buck and sway of the vehicle as it kept moving.

With my Commander aboard, I feel new confidence. Together, we will be able to stop this threat to the planet, breaking the Malach attack before they can even get their troops down to the planet. I continue to study the developing tactical situation in space near the planet.

Eight of the Enemy ships, I note, are far larger than the others, and one of those is truly enormous, well over a kilometer long from prow to tail and possessing the mass of a small planetoid. I deduce that the largest vessel is the command vessel attacked by Commander Ross. Unfortunately, it is taking up an extremely distant orbit, nearly a million kilometers out from Muir, and it is well out of range. One of the other large vessels, however, almost certainly a supply ship and troop carrier of some kind, has ventured to within a quarter million kilometers. I engage my targeting radar and feel the thrill of a solid lock. My main turret pivots, the 90cm Hellbore elevating. Computing the target's velocity, I lead slightly with my aim in order to compensate for the time lag to target, and fire.

The searing, blue-white lightning bolt of the Hellbore fire stabs upward into the sky, ionizing the air as it passes, blasting a vacuum along its trail that fills instantly with a sensor-deadening peal of thunder. The target is point eight three three light seconds away. The Hellbore bolt travels at seventy percent of the speed of light. One point one nine seconds after firing, the bolt strikes the Enemy vessel amidships . . . though it is, of course, another point eight second before I can confirm the fact visually, through an extreme magnification that shows the hit in exquisite detail. The beam slashes through armor plating, carving deep into the ship's vitals and releasing a silent explosion of atmosphere, the cloud made visible as water droplets freeze instantly into particles of ice.

The Enemy vessel is yawing heavily to port, propelled by the gush of atmosphere from its starboard side. I recompute the firing angle and trigger a second burst. It has been noted that Hellbores are the equivalent in power, range, and accuracy of any naval-mounted gun, and the effect of the second shot bears that assessment out. Striking just behind and below the jagged, molten, orange-white line drawn by the first bolt, the second hits the ship's primary power plant, which explodes with a satisfying coruscation of strobing flashes and internal detonations, visible through the fragmenting hull. Every light on the ship winks out, and the huge Malach vessel is now illuminated only by the glow of partly melted hull metal, and by the fires raging inside as air escapes through rents with hurricane force.

The first target clearly crippled and adrift in space, I shift aim to a second, smaller vessel, a lean, dagger of a ship roughly equivalent in length and mass to a Concordiat light destroyer. I note the loosing of another Hellbore from a point one hundred twenty-eight point two kilometers to my south-southwest and know that Bolo 96875 has just joined the unequal fight. His shot strikes a Malach frigate and nearly cuts the hapless vessel in two. My shot hits the destroyer close by the bridge tower, shearing off a sponson-mounted laser turret and gouging a deep, molten crater in the vessel's spine. Frozen atmosphere and boiling metal, mingled with fragments of hull plating, internal structure, and kicking, six-limbed bodies, seethe into space.

So far, the battle is going remarkably well.

Aghrracht the Swift-Slayer, Supreme Deathgiver of the Fleet, raised one wickedly curved foreclaw in warning. "Destroy that vehicle!"

Cha'Zhanaach
's command center, large, circular, and comfortably unenclosed, was filled with Malach packmembers, their mingled scents reassuring in their closeness, warmth, and numbers. She looked down into a large screen, on which the scaly green and red visage of the Deathgiver of the bombardment vessel
A'chk'cha
was displayed.

A'chk'cha
's captain raised her head, exposing her throat in proper submissive form, though that throat was in fact a half-million kilometers away from Aghrracht's claw. "Deathgiver! The target is too fast to target from this range! The speed-of-light time delay means that we're shooting where the target
was
, not where it is
now
."

Aghrracht suppressed an instinctive, rising shriek of bloodlust rage at the underling's noncompliance. The Malach warrior was correct. She could order all ships to move in closer, of course, but losses—already higher than expected with the surprisingly effective and deadly plasma gun fire from the surface—were certain to be serious.

There was another way.

"Forget the combat machine," she said. "All packs! Fire at targets of opportunity, anywhere on the planet! Fire on the cities!"

"Yes, Deathgiver!" chorused the commanders of each of her ships. What could not be brought down by precise gunfire might well be toppled by simple, sheer terror.

"Use cloud cloaking to shield the approach of our assault boats!" she continued. "
Now
! Quickly, before the prey escapes!"

A world lay just within the grasp of her claws. . . .

Flame erupted from the refugee camp, a pillar of white light and roiling black smoke. "Oh, God, no . . ." Donal said, not believing what he was seeing. The Malach were firing randomly into the tent city.

"Starwasps are launching from Kinkaid Spaceport," Freddy announced. "Three squadrons, a total of thirty-six craft."

"Not enough, Freddy. Not enough by a factor of ten."

"Agreed, Commander. This world does not possess sufficient firepower to stop the Malach invasion fleet."

"Not even you and Ferdy?"

"Negative. We have destroyed three enemy ships so far, with four more kills probable. The enemy fire incoming now is probably intended to suppress surface batteries, and defensive units such as my brother and me. We are detecting large areas of intense radar interference, localized but spreading, positioned between Muir and the Enemy fleet. This suggests that they are launching assault boats and are attempting to screen them from our fire."

"Assault boats, huh?"

"We will, of course, attempt to destroy all Malach craft either before they reach atmosphere or while they are transiting the atmosphere. I should warn you, however, that it is exceedingly unlikely that we will be able to stop more than a small percentage of them. Malach tactics at Wide Sky were to launch large numbers of individual fliers. We will not have time to target all of them before the majority have made it safely to the ground."