Bolo Brigade (43 page)

"We'll hold them, General," Donal replied.
But not by turning ourselves into static fortresses!
He said nothing about that, however. He would worry about violating yet more orders later, when he had to. Alexie smiled at him, and that was all the reassurance he needed at the moment. "Hang on, the cavalry's on the way!"

Bolo 96876 of the Line, Dinochrome Brigade, thundered down off the ridge and onto the broad Monad Plain, sprinting south at maximum speed.

The new patch from Colonel Wood has inactivated all of my ROEs, and I feel a curious sense of freedom and alertness now, as though a steady and unresolved power drain has suddenly been corrected. I feel a surge of renewed confidence. The Enemy is close and battle is imminent.

I will not let my companions or the Brigade down.

Criton Pass was a symbol as much as anything. The mountains here are not high, little more than forest-covered hills. Malach fliers, especially the larger craft the human defenders have christened APCs, could cross them at any point without difficulty.

But the land forces—the unarmored Malach soldiers, in particular—must cross the ridge here, as would any Malach walkers. The fliers, too, are vulnerable when they rise above NOE—the terrain-hugging nape of the earth—and might be expected to come through the pass as well. I disagree with the order to remain in a static defensive position but judge there is enough leeway in my orders to at least allow me freedom to maneuver in close-combat. I do not intend to press the matter; if I ask how much maneuvering room I have, I may be ordered to remain unmoving, and I do not want to risk that.

Sometimes, combat judgment must be exercised even when dealing with one's own chain of command.

The lead Malach units are fliers, streaking in along the valley floor at an altitude of only a few meters, hugging the ground to avoid targeting radar. I snap a warning to Tech Master Sergeant Blandings and the other humans, who scatter wildly in the night. I lock onto the fliers at a range of ten kilometers and open fire with everything I have. I manage to down three before being forced to divert my attention to the incoming nuclear penetrators, and for several full seconds I am very busy indeed, dealing with this attempt to overwhelm my defenses.

More fliers appear, dropping down from left and right off the mountains. Phalbin's troops are up there, with shoulder-launched missiles and portable plasma and laser weapons, but they can do no more than scratch the paint of these Malach machines, which are heavily armored and very fast. At the same time, I detect the first Malach ground forces, advancing now at a run.

Within another second, I am fighting for my survival.

I am monitoring the course of the battle over the Muir Command Intelligence Web, and I estimate that Bolo 96875 of the Line will not be able to survive this fight for more than another 4.5 minutes. I have increased my velocity to full sprint speed and am traveling now at 150 kilometers per hour, an improvement of 1.3 percent over my original estimated maximum-speed performance.

The northern mouth of the Criton Valley is just ahead, clearly visible on radar and infrared. This is the point at which my orders from Kinkaid direct me to take up a static position in order to block retreating enemy forces or to serve as a reserve in case Unit 96875's position is overrun.

My Commander's directive in response to headquarters' orders is succinct, vulgar, and graphic, a word of, I believe, ancient Anglo-Saxon origins. I do not employ such language myself, but the feeling behind it is something that even Bolos can appreciate.

At least self-aware Mark XXIV Bolos under full Battle Reflex Mode.

At my Commander's order then, I race past the blocking position and enter the valley. In another moment, I am closing with the tail end of the Malach column, smashing into ground-effect APCs and troop carriers with deadly effect.

It is fully dark now, under overcast skies, and the Malach soldiers, those not inside their walkers, are nearly blind. As their vehicles flame under each burst from my infinite repeaters, they scatter in a wild and unseeing panic, blundering into one another, or even running wildly into the path of my oncoming tracks.

I have noted a distinct confusion in the Enemy tactics during the past hour. His attacks are poorly coordinated and poorly executed. It is possible that by destroying his command and control center at Glenntor, we have contributed to the battle more than we could have expected.

I detect a large concentration of Malach war machines ahead and inform my Commander. There is no longer time for finesse, for careful maneuvers designed to break up Enemy formations before they can grow too strong. The Enemy has assembled his entire strength in one massive formation, and we will either annihilate it now or be overwhelmed ourselves.

It won't be much longer now before we know which.

Donal clung to the armrests of his command chair as the Bolo raced south through the valley, its tracks slashing into the ferrocrete of Route 1 and reducing it to scattered rubble and eroded roadbed. Malach walkers tried to block the way, firing massed beam and missile weapons as they stood their ground, but Freddy either burned them down or, once, smashed into the alien machine at full speed, the massive, fast-spinning left-forward track grinding over and shredding the Malach walker, flattening the wreckage beneath the incredible ground pressure of ten tons per square meter. There were lots of Malach troops skittering about in their skins as well, and they stood no chance at all as the Bolo thundered down on them with violently spinning tracks. Freddy smashed south at a thundering sprint, leaving a trail of twisted, splintered wreckage and smeared bodies in his path. His Hellbore hurled fusion bolts at relativistic velocities through unresisting metal and flesh; his infinite repeaters slashed down incoming missiles in dazzling flicks of green lightning.

Neither Donal nor Alexie said anything. The battle now was far beyond their control, even their comprehension, as Freddy thought, acted, and reacted with superhuman speed and concentration. The Bolo had released its last recon flier some minutes before, and the drone was transmitting infrared imagery now of close-packed Malach walkers, moving south in the valley ahead.

"I am detecting a major concentration of the Enemy at a range of 11.5 kilometers," Freddy told Donal. "I have five tactical nuclear missiles remaining in my inventory."

"Use 'em as you think best, Freddy."

"This is an excellent opportunity, save for one potential problem. General Phalbin has deployed a large number of lightly armored troops along the tops of the hills to east and west just ahead. If I detonate nuclear weapons in the valley—"

"Gotcha. Gimme a channel . . . uh, make it combat tactical five." That would let him talk to all field officers and NCOs, and possibly any of the soldiers themselves who possessed helmet radios. Chain of command and standard Rules of Engagement demanded he call headquarters first and clear a nukes release with them.

Screw that. He was in trouble already. He'd ditched the Bolo's ROEs. He could ditch the human ones as well.

"Channel open. Mike hot."

"Attention, all personnel in the Criton Valley area! This is Lieutenant Ragnor, aboard Bolo 96876 of the Line. We are about to release tactical nuclear weapons inside the valley, with individual yields of between one fiftieth and one twentieth of a kiloton. You have about forty-five seconds until launch. I suggest you move back up the hill and over the top of the ridge. If you can't manage that, get behind a boulder, a tree, anything that will give you cover, and for God's sake, don't look! Now move! Move! Move! Fast as you can!" He released the transmit key. "Okay, Freddy. Give 'em one minute."

"One minute, Commander. That will require that we slow first, to avoid closing with the target."

"Go ahead and slow down, then. We have to give our people a chance to find cover."

"Affirmative."

The Bolo slewed suddenly to the left, turret pivoting as it tracked a group of eight Malach walkers that had just abruptly changed course and were moving north. Penetrator lances flashed through the night, detonating in savage flashes as Freddy's laser antimissile fire sliced the weapons to pieces. For thirty seconds or so, the Bolo was at the focus of a devastating play of laser fire and electron beams, a concentration of high-energy fury that exploded reactive armor, clawed at flickering mag screens, and in places left soft, bubbling craters of half-molten metal, glowing cherry-red with yellow, black-crusted centers in the darkness.

Freddy returned fire, each Hellbore blast finding its target. The Mark XXIV was designed to learn from combat experience. Its earliest encounters with Malach walkers had been fumbling, sometimes uncertain affairs, but the Bolo now had a much better working database on how walkers and fliers moved, how they jinked, what attack patterns they were likely to run. As the surviving walkers attempted to break right and circle behind the Bolo, the armored behemoth suddenly reversed its turn, coming hard right, pivoting so sharply that the last walker in line was caught by surprise and plowed under, the ten-meter-tall machine crumbling beneath the onslaught of tracks reaching over five meters high.

For a few more seconds, Malach walkers and Bolo slugged it out at point-blank range, with the Malach trying to work their way close enough to get
inside
the reach of those awesomely powerful energy weapons.

They failed. Scattering before the Bolo's wild charge, many kicked off and went airborne, skimming above the ground on flaring ventral jets, but the Bolo's IR ion cannons speared them in one-two-three succession, ripping them apart in mid-air. When the Hellbore spoke, the night dissolved in white hell's-fury, and Malach hunters, in the air or on foot, simply evaporated.

"One minute has elapsed, Commander. Request permission to fire nuclear weapons."

"Granted." If the human troops hadn't made it to cover by now, there was nothing that could be done for them. "Fire!"

A sleek, Mark LXII Sunfire missile climbed out of Freddy's Number Three vertical launch tube, balanced on a shaft of flickering white flame. An instant later, a second missile followed . . . and then a third. The missiles, each three meters long and massing nearly nine hundred kilograms, rocketed high into the night sky, trailing glowing white contrails that arced rapidly toward the south. Moments passed . . . and then the night turned day-brilliant, a false sunrise to the south that grew rapidly brighter . . . then brighter still with the triple detonation. More seconds passed, and then the shock and blast waves passed, a gentle rolling of the ground, accompanied by a hurricane of wind clawing at the outer hull.

Ferdy had coordinated his nuclear attack as well. The central reaches of the Criton Valley had been transformed into a hell's cauldron, the ground still partly molten in places or covered with liquid pools of molten glass from the sand and metal from the hundreds of wrecked alien vehicles. Freddy slowed down somewhat, picking his way past the deadliest hotspots, then accelerated once more.

"Did . . . did that get them all?" Alexie wanted to know.

"Negative, Deputy Director Turner," Freddy told her. "A large number of Malach walkers are still mobile, many of them in the hills to either side. It is unlikely that they will assemble in large groups again, in light of the lesson we just taught them. They will no doubt seek to concentrate quickly at close range in an effort to trap and overwhelm either Unit 96875 or me."

"Smash on through," Donal told him. "I want to link up with Ferdy."

"That was my thought as well, Commander."

Past the radioactive slag and glowing pools of the nuclear killing ground, they began encountering enemy troops and vehicles once more. Ten kilometers from Ferdy's position, Freddy sent a microsecond-burst ID transmission, and Ferdy picked it up, returning a curt acknowledgment. He was under short-range attack and had suffered numerous hits. In another millisecond, the two Bolos were in line-of-sight electronic Battle Coordination Mode, the two fighting, thinking as one, their thoughts joined by a tight-beamed maser link.

Five kilometers north of Ferdy's position, a Malach walker leaped, belly jets flaring, drifting through a hail of wildly slashing infinite repeater fire and coming to rest safely on Freddy's upper deck, just behind the turret. Diacarb claws on mechanical arms slashed out, embedding themselves in ordinary carbon-steel outer skin. Lasers and electron guns flared, burning down into Freddy's dorsal armor at point-blank range.

Ferdy, sighting in on the hitchhiker with pinpoint accuracy, triggered a plasma bolt from his Hellbore, the blue core of hellfire passing centimeters above Freddy's turret, smashing into and through the unwanted rider, scattering its body in a million flaming, molten fragments.

Alexie let out a small gasp when she got her first look at Ferdy, and Donal groaned. The Bolo had been almost entirely stripped of its heaviest armor in places, and all four track systems had been wrecked. Ferdy was truly in a static defense mode now, immobilized by the horde of leaping, racing, legged manta shapes around him. Several had mounted his top deck, and Freddy swept them away with a sustained burst from several infinite repeaters. As Freddy spun around his brother Bolo in a tight, dust-spewing circle, the Malach walkers scattered, most taking to the air like great, flapping carrion birds.

"Hit 'em!" Donal cried. "You got 'em on the run!"

"Negative, Commander," Freddy replied. "I am detecting at least forty-seven more enemy walkers, supported by at least five fliers, inbound at this time. Exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, due to chaff and radioactive interference in the atmosphere." He paused, as though considering the problem. "I fear they may have just assembled one final thrust in an effort to overrun this position."

Nuclear penetrators were flashing in toward the Bolos. Donal flinched as one detonated less than a meter from Freddy's side, the white-hot jet of plasma searing into the Bolo's side. Reactive armor exploded outward, disrupting the jet; the Bolo's mag screens flared, scattering it.