by David Weber
“And just how the hell did you sneak a ground-based decoy into position without us spotting you?” Takahashi demanded.
“We cheated,” Maneka confessed cheerfully. “You two didn’t know that Major Fredericks told us about the simulation yesterday.”
“She did what?”
“She told us yesterday,” Maneka repeated, smiling at the surprise in Takahashi’s tone. “She said Major Hendrixson said you and Lazy have been getting just a little bit too smug about your simulation scores. And, I’m pretty sure that if you go back and check your mission briefing, you’ll discover that no one ever told you the opposition force hadn’t had time to prepare.”
“They did so-” Takahashi began, then broke off abruptly. Maneka reached up and clasped her hands behind her head as she reclined luxuriantly in Benjy’s command couch and waited. It took several seconds, but then Takahashi’s chagrined voice came back over the com.
“All right,” he said resignedly. “Lazy’s gone back and analyzed the briefing, and you’re right. Although, in my own humble opinion, Major Hendrixson deliberately implied that it would be a meeting engagement, with both sides arriving simultaneously.”
“That’s because your part of the simulation included dealing with faulty intelligence,” Maneka told him. She chuckled, then grew slightly more serious.
“Actually, sir,” she said more formally, “I think she picked Benjy and me for this partly because I’m still so much of the new kid on the block that she figured we’d probably need the edge. Or that we could certainly use it, anyway.”
“Don’t sell yourself too short, Lieutenant,” Takahashi replied. “You and Benjy are coming along a lot faster than Lazy managed to bring me up to speed. And the major didn’t tell you how to set up your little trap, did she?”
“No,” Maneka admitted, “Benjy and I came up with that on our own.”
“And executed perfectly,” Takahashi pointed out. “Don’t forget that. It’s not easy for even another Bolo to surprise a Bolo. Even when one of the Bolos in question comes in fat, dumb, and happy.”
“Thank you, sir.” Maneka raised her right hand to Benjy’s visual pickup with the thumb extended in the ancient gesture of triumph, and the red light above the lens winked in reply.
Joseph Takahashi was only about three Standard Years older than she herself was, but he’d been assigned to the Thirty-Ninth for almost two of those three years. Unlike her, he’d reported for duty with the Battalion early enough in the war to get in after the war had entered its new, uglier phase but before Brigade HQ had begun raiding the second-line battalions so ruthlessly for experienced commanders. He’d served the traditional six-month apprenticeship being mentored by one of those same experienced commanders, and he was very, very good.
He and his Bolo-28/G-179-LAZ—were assigned to Major Carlos Hendrixson’s First Company, where they had established an enviable reputation for consistently outscoring everyone else in the regular simulations and field exercises. Of course, Takahashi did have a certain advantage over his fellow commanders, over and above the fact that he was one of the sneakiest tacticians Maneka had yet encountered. Lazy, whose cognomen clearly had been selected because of how poorly it described him, was the Battalion’s senior Bolo. Although his personality center was currently mounted in a Model G war hull like Benjy’s, he had begun his existence as a Model B the better part of one hundred and seventy years ago. His current hull bore the battle honors he’d won in his original configuration, as well as those he’d received after his personality center was transferred to his present hull, and they were headed by one Maneka had never before seen outside the Brigade’s standard reference works: the Platinum Galactic Cluster… with star.
The Battle of Chesterfield, in which Lazy had won that award, was the stuff of the Brigade’s legends. It was also a classic tactical study at the Academy, where not a single student had ever managed to win the engagement in a simulation.
A single company of Mark XXVIIIs had gone up against an entire battalion of Kai-Sabres during the Fringe Rebellion which had followed the Xalontese War. The Kai-Sabres had been clones of the Mark XXVIII itself, built using stolen technology after decades of espionage, and they had been based upon the Model G, not the Model B. Although their weaponry fits had been very similar, the Kai-Sabres’ armor, battle screen, disrupter shields, and targeting systems had all been superior to those of Lazy and his three consorts, but Chesterfield had been a planet whose critical strategic importance meant it could not be yielded without a fight.
So Second Company, Twelfth Battalion, Ninth Regiment, of the Dinochrome Brigade had fought at three-to-one odds. And when the relief force arrived, Lazy had been the only surviving Bolo—or Kai-Sabre—on the planet. They’d found his immobilized wreck where he’d made his final stand in a rugged mountain pass just short of Chesterfield’s capital city, his commander dead on his breached command deck… and the last four Kai-Sabres stacked up dead in front of them.
His damage had been far too severe to merely “repair.” Fixing it would have cost more and taken longer than building an entire, newer Bolo from scratch. But by that time, the Brigade had adopted the practice of upgrading Bolo AIs, and a reserve Model G hull had been activated to receive his undamaged personality center. After which, he’d soldiered on for another full Standard Century.
Although she wasn’t about to admit it to anyone, Maneka was more than a little uncomfortable around Lazy. Benjy was almost six times as old as she was, with a distinguished record any Bolo might have envied, but Lazy was older still. And it was difficult, she’d discovered, to know precisely how to react when one found oneself in the presence of what was literally a living legend. Indeed, she often wondered how Takahashi had reacted when they told him who he was getting as his first Bolo command.
Probably tempted to cut his own throat, she thought with a grin, although she really didn’t know the captain or Lazy very well.
On the other hand, she reflected as Benjy rolled back towards the Company depot area, I don’t really know anyone outside the Third “very well” yet, now do I?
The past two and half months had flown past at breakneck speed for Lieutenant Maneka Trevor. In that time, she’d become even closer to Benjy—close enough, indeed, that she was guiltily aware that, as everyone had warned her she would, she had completely succumbed to Operator Identification Syndrome. When she considered it, any other outcome had probably been impossible. Benjy was, quite simply, the most wonderful person—organic or psychotronic—she’d ever known. In less than ninety local days, he’d become her closest friend, her most trusted confidant, and the mentor the Battalion had been unable to provide her in human form. She’d learned more from him in that short period than she had in all eight previous years of her training, and she knew it.
That intense concentration on her Bolo had pretty much eliminated any possibility of a social life, and although Major Fredericks had seen to it that she’d been smoothly slotted into Third Company, she didn’t even know some of the other companies’ Bolo commanders by sight. That was something she was going to have to start doing something about, and she knew it. In fact, the major had begun dropping gentle hints that now that she’d settled in with her Bolo, it was probably time she began getting to know some of the Battalion’s flesh-and-blood members, as well.
“Well,” Takahashi said, as Lazy altered course, heading for First Company’s depot area, “I guess this is where we part company, Lieutenant. Good work. Lazy and I will be glad to have you on our flank anytime.”
“Thank you, sir.” Maneka knew her face had turned pink with pleasure, but she managed to keep her voice conversational. “Benjy and I feel the same.”
“See you around, Lieutenant,” Takahashi said.
The two Bolos continued towards their separate destinations and Maneka Trevor allowed herself to bask—briefly—in the knowledge that she was earning the acceptance of her vastly more experienced peers.
“Listen up, people!”
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Maneka shook her head groggily as Major Fredericks’ sharp, hard voice echoed in her mastoid transceiver. Her entire skull still seemed to be ringing like a gigantic bell from the emergency signal which had just snatched her up out of the depths of sleep.
“We have an Alpha One Zulu alert,” Fredericks’ voice continued, and Maneka sat bolt upright in bed, such minor considerations as her vibrating cranium totally forgotten. Alpha One Zulu?
“Get your butts up and awake,” Fredericks went on grimly. “The Depot’s already beginning final maintenance checks. Colonel Tchaikovsky and Major Dumfries will be briefing all personnel at zero-two-thirty. So let’s move it!”
The voice in Maneka’s mastoid went silent, but the youthful lieutenant sat frozen for several seconds. Alpha One Zulu. Impossible!
Alpha One Zulu meant a full-fledged invasion of a major planet, and in the sort of war this one had become, with the madness of Plan Ragnarok and its Melconian equivalent, “invasion” was another word for the murder of an entire planetary population. That sort of operation wasn’t something the Puppies were going to undertake with secondary forces. No. It was the sort of operation where they committed entire armored divisions of the latest, most modern combat equipment they had, and the Thirty-Ninth Battalion was, for all intents and purposes, a training command. Its obsolescent Bolos had no business going up against front-line Melconian combat mechs with the sort of support which would be assigned to the invasion of a major Concordiat planet.
An icy wind seemed to blow through the marrow of her bones, and she was surprised when she looked down at her hands to realize they weren’t actually trembling the way they felt they were.
“Benjy?” she said over her private link.
“Yes, Maneka,” he replied instantly, with all his normal calm assurance.
“This is real? It’s not some sort of drill?”
“No, Maneka, I am afraid it is not a drill,” he told her gently.
“Where are they hitting us?”
“The target is Chartres.”
Maneka’s belly seemed to fold in on itself. Chartres was in the neighboring Esterhazy Sector, one sector further away from the frontier with the Melconian Empire, beyond Santa Cruz’s Ursula Sector. Esterhazy was a wealthier sector than Ursula, with the sort of heavily industrialized star systems which obviously made it a priority target. But it was also the better part of a month’s hyper-travel from the Line, even assuming the invasion fleet was able to use the intervening jump points without being engaged. Without that, the trip would take at least six weeks.
“How—?”
“Unknown,” Benjy answered. “The Enemy has been pressing harder on the Line in the vicinity of the Camperdown Sector for several months now.” The Camperdown Sector lay on the far side of the Ursula Sector from Esterhazy, directly in the path of the Melconians. “I would surmise that this was a deliberate stratagem intended to draw our naval forces and all available Brigade units towards that sector in order to uncover Esterhazy. If so, it has succeeded.”
“We can’t be all the Brigade has available!” Maneka protested.
“I fear we are all that can reach Chartres in time to respond,” Benjy said. “The Santa Cruz jump point connects to Chartres via Haskell. We can be there within thirty-six Standard Hours of departure from Santa Cruz. That strategic position between Camperdown and Esterhazy,” he pointed out gently, “is why Santa Cruz was developed as a major base in the first place, Maneka.”
Maneka nodded numbly, although she knew he couldn’t see her. But still…
“How soon can someone else get there to support us?” she asked quietly.
“Unknown. I do not have sufficient data on current deployments to answer that question.”
Maneka swallowed hard, then shook herself violently. Sitting here dithering was doing absolutely no one any good, she told herself sternly, and climbed out of bed.
“All right, Benjy. I’m up. I’ll see you after the briefing.”
Colonel Tchaikovsky and Major Dumfries, the Battalion XO, looked grim as they walked into the briefing room where the Battalion’s unit commanders had been assembled. They could just as easily have conducted this briefing electronically, Maneka knew. In fact, if they’d used the Bolos’ tactical plots to display the information for the unit commanders, they probably could have imparted the information more efficiently. But there was something ritualistic about gathering them all together in the flesh, as it were. Some almost atavistic compulsion to meet and gather strength from one another one last time before some of the people in this room died.
The commanders came to their feet as Tchaikovsky and Dumfries strode briskly to the traditional briefing lectern.
“Be seated,” Tchaikovsky said in a clipped tone, and boots rustled on the floor as they obeyed.
He let them settle back into their chairs for a moment, gazing out over their faces. Then he cleared his throat.
“I’m sure by this time all of you have checked with your Bolos,” he began, “which means you’re all aware that the Dog Boys’ target is Chartres. For those of you who may not have the latest figures at your fingertips, that means a planetary population of two-point-four billion.”
Maneka shivered as the colonel’s simple sentence told them all they needed to know about the cost of failure.
“The good news for Chartres’ population is that the Dog Boys apparently want permanent possession of the system, probably because of the way it flanks the Haskell jump point. If they keep it, they can pincer Ursula and Camperdown, which would require the Navy to at least double its strength in those two sectors, weakening it elsewhere along the Line. But it also means they aren’t likely to use biologicals or radioactives against the planet. Since they’ll want to use it themselves, they’re going to put in a ground force and take it the old fashioned way, meter-by-meter. Which means it will take them a while—hopefully long enough for us to kick their ass up between their little puppy dog ears.
“Commodore Selkirk’s received a subspace situation report from Camperdown Fleet HQ. It would appear the enemy has succeeded in drawing us badly out of position. According to the Commodore’s sitrep, it will be at least two full Standard Weeks before any substantial forces can be diverted to Chartres. Commodore Selkirk has his own system—defense task force here in Santa Cruz, but it’s going to be very heavily outnumbered by the Melconian fleet units escorting their attack force.
“Nonetheless, his is the closest naval force which can respond, and we are the closest ground force. We will be reinforced by the Three-Fifty-First Recon Company and the Ninth Marines, in addition to whatever Commodore Selkirk can spare from his Fleet units, but that’s all we can count on. So it’s going to be up to us to stop the Dog Boys before they kill every single human being on the planet.”
He paused, letting his eyes travel across the grim faces looking back at him, then smiled with absolutely no humor at all.
“It’s not what we expected, and I won’t try to sugarcoat the situation for anyone. We’re going to be substantially outgunned and outnumbered. And, although the hyper surveillance grid picked them up well short of the system perimeter, they’re going to have been on the ground for at least eighteen hours by the time we can get there. Hopefully, the Chartres orbital defenses are going to have taken a chunk out of them, but we can’t rely on that. And even if they have, those defenses aren’t strong enough to fend off this big a force without the supporting Fleet units they don’t have.
“Commodore Selkirk is confident he can get us within assault range of the planet, but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to cover us all the way in. It will have to be an assault landing, because the Dog Boys are almost certain to have control of near-orbit space by the time we get there. Which means at least some of the major cities are already going to be fireballs by the time we hit dirt.
“The Exec will give you the boarding schedule and what details we have about the situation in Chartres in just a moment, but first I have one more thin
g to say.”
He paused for a moment, then went on quietly.
“We’re going to take losses, people,” he told them. “Probably heavy ones. But we’re the only chance the people on Chartres have. And we’re the Dinochrome Brigade. Remember that.”
He held their eyes, then nodded and stepped back as the major took his place at the lectern and brought up the huge holo display behind him.
“As you can see, the situation in the Chartres System is…”
Maneka lay back once again in the command couch at Benjy’s heart. She was aware that her pulse was hammering harder than it ought to have been, and although her mouth seemed unaccountably dry, she found herself swallowing again and again.
Jitters, she told herself. And no wonder! I guess I’d have to be a Bolo myself not to feel them. But, God, I’m scared!
“Benjy?”
“Yes, Maneka?”
“Benjy, I’m terrified out of my wits,” she confessed miserably.
“No, you are not,” he told her calmly.
The visual display showed the blurry, featureless gray of hyper-space, all his optical heads could pick up as he rode the assault pod locked to the exterior of the Sleipner-class transport Tannenberg. Over half his entire hull protruded beyond the pod’s skin, exposing his onboard sensors and his weapons, and Captain Anton Harris and Unit 28/D-431-ALN rode the pod hardpoint on the far side of Tannenberg’s hull. Between them, Benjy and Allen provided the otherwise unarmed transport with the equivalent of a battlecruiser’s energy-weapon firepower, and an antimissile capability at least as good as a light cruiser’s. What they could not provide was the stand-off attack range of a standard ship-to-ship missile; their weapons simply weren’t designed for that sort of environment.
Maneka and Benjy shared their pod with Company C, Third Battalion, Second Regiment, Ninth Marine Division. Captain Belostenec, Charlie Company’s CO, had introduced herself to them when her company embarked, and she and Maneka had spent several hours discussing possible scenarios once they hit the surface of Chartres.
