The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  “Simon?” she asked, in a scared, little-girl voice.

  He looked at her for a long, terrible moment, eyes pleading, then said in a hoarse, rasping voice, “Don’t ask. Please. Just don’t.”

  She wanted to ask. Needed to ask. And knew that she couldn’t. He was a soldier. Like it or not, she was a soldier’s wife. A colonel’s wife. She couldn’t stand between him and his job. His duty. So she turned her attention back to Pol Jankovitch and the incoming updates from the Elections Commission, which were disjointed and contradictory.

  The votes could not be unscrambled. Maybe the votes could be unscrambled. No, they definitely couldn’t be straightened out before the time limits expired. The Elections Commission was profoundly sorry, but the law was the law. They could not circumvent clearly worded statutes, not even to honor the intended votes of men and women risking their lives on far-away worlds.

  “Turn it off,” Kafari groaned, sick at heart.

  “No.” There was steel in Simon’s voice, alien steel. “We need to watch every ugly moment of this.”

  “Why?” she asked sharply.

  Simon’s eyes, when they tracked to meet her gaze, took her back to that horrible moment when Simon had stood before the Joint Assembly, speaking his dire truths. Meeting that gaze up-close and personal was harder than Kafari had ever dreamed it would be.

  “Because,” he said softly, “we need to understand the minds and methods of those who engineered it. This,” he waved one hand at the viewscreen, “is just the beginning.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” Even as she asked, voice sharp with alarm, she knew that she was afraid of his answers. And holding her husband’s gaze was like looking into the heart of a star going supernova.

  “Know much about Terran history?”

  She frowned. “A little.”

  “Does that little include any Russian history?”

  Her frown deepened. “Not much. I’ve been studying Russian art and music, because I think they’re beautiful, but I haven’t read much history, yet. I’ve been too busy,” she admitted.

  “Russian history,” Simon said in a voice as raw as a Damisi highlands blizzard, “is an endless string of cautionary messages on the folly of human greed, dirty politics, mindless ignorance, exploitation of the masses, and the savagery that accompanies absolute power. My ancestors were very effective at creating disasters that took generations to undo. In one twenty-year period, the Russian Empire went from a level of political freedom and prosperity equal to most of its contemporary nations to a regime that deliberately exterminated twenty million of its own men, women, and children.”

  Kafari stared, cold to her soul. She’d known there was some horrible history from humanity’s birth-world, but twenty million people? In only twenty years? Simon jabbed a finger toward the viewscreen, where POPPA candidates were carrying district after district. “Am I worried? You damned well better believe it. Those people scare me spitless. Particularly since there’s not a blessed, solitary thing I can do about it.”

  Then he stalked out of the room. The back door slid open and crashed shut again. Kafari waddled awkwardly to the glass. He was striding through the moonlight, heading for his Bolo. Kafari closed her hand through the curtain fabric, realized she was shaking only when she noticed that the curtain was, too. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t follow him, for a whole basketful of good reasons. She was afraid to be alone, afraid of a threat she didn’t understand, one she hadn’t seen coming, despite qualms about a lunacy that had gained such wild popularity in so short a time.

  She was wondering whether she ought to call her parents, just to hear a familiar and comforting voice, when the lights flickered and dimmed and she heard a sound that set every hair on her body standing on end. In the darkness outside her fearfully empty little home, the Bolo had powered up his main battle systems. She knew that sound, remembered it from that ghastly climb up a cliff with Abraham Lendan at her heels and explosions shaking them through the smoke. Try as she might, Kafari could not come up with a reason for Simon to power up his Bolo that didn’t leave her shaking to the bottoms of her abruptly terrified feet.

  The hand she laid protectively across her abdomen and the baby inside trembled. There was so little she could do to protect her child from whatever was coming. She knew, as well, that this was one battle Simon would have to fight alone. She couldn’t help him. There was no courageous president to rescue. Only a vision of thunderous clouds on every horizon, no matter which way she twisted and turned.

  It was a lonely business, being a Bolo commander’s wife.

  Chapter Twelve

  I

  Twelve seconds after Simon enters my Command Compartment, he orders me to full Battle Reflex Alert. Portions of my brain inaccessible outside of combat snap to life, sending a surge of power and euphoria through my personality gestalt circuitry. I am fully alive once more, able to think more clearly and coherently than I have since the last Deng Yavac blew to atoms under my guns.

  “Trouble, Lonesome,” Simon tells me, using my old nickname, a sign of deep emotional stress. I scan my immediate environs, do a check of all remote systems, including the four satellites that have been launched since my Commander forced the Joint Assembly to appropriate necessary funds for them. I see no sign of an Enemy anywhere in this star system. Brigade channels are silent. I do not understand why I have been brought to Battle Reflex Alert.

  “What kind of trouble?” I ask, seeking clarification.

  “Analyze tonight’s election results, please. Cross-check with any possible connection with POPPA activity that might constitute legal election fraud under the Jeffersonian Constitution.”

  “This will take time, Simon. There are several million variables involved.”

  “Understood. I haven’t got anything better to do, just now.”

  I settle down to the task. Simon activates his duty log and begins to record his impressions, hypotheses, and potential avenues of inquiry, which I note and incorporate into my own analyses. My understanding of human thought processes has been gleaned largely from comparing my own interpretation of known facts with the viewpoints, ideas, and decisions of my commanders. In accordance with Simon’s standing orders, I have monitored the elections, since they comprise a large variable in the task set for me by Simon, identifying threats to the stability and safety of this world.

  The SWIFT transmission that delivered Jefferson’s absentee military votes came in via Navy channels, which I monitor as a matter of routine, checking on shifting battle patterns that might affect the security of this world. The data transmission was clear and undamaged when it entered my incoming transmissions databank. So far as I have been able to determine, probing into the system from my depot, the Elections Commission balloting computers did not malfunction in any way I can understand.

  I review constitutional provisions and determine that once an election has been officially closed, there is a seventy-two hour window of opportunity in which to provide evidence of vote tampering or other fraud. Simon has seventy-one hours and thirty-nine point six minutes in which to present evidence, which must be given to the Elections Commission by the aggrieved party or parties, acting on their own behalf. Moreover, the evidence must be capable of standing in the face of scrutiny by Jefferson’s High Court and its appointed technical consultants, if applicable.

  Given the magnitude of the search and the computer systems that must be tapped, scrutinized, and analyzed for possible data tampering or human sabotage, I am the only technical consultant on Jefferson capable of such a search. If I locate evidence of human intervention, I must then discover and present clear and compelling legal evidence that the tampering was deliberate and fraudulent. I begin to see why Simon ordered me to Battle Reflex Alert. I cannot hope to accomplish this task without access to my full computing capabilities. Given the parameters and variables involved, I do not hold much hope that I will be successful in my mission.

  I am a Unit of the Line,
however, with a clear duty and specific orders involving a specific, if complicated, task. I must attempt to carry out this order to the best of my ability. This is not the first time I have entered a mission with heavy handicaps against success. But I have never surrendered and never been defeated. If fraud was committed, I will do my best to locate it. I begin an intensive search.

  II

  I have experienced many situations which my programmers and commanders have told me are comparable to human emotions, as I understand them. I have known fear, anger, and hate as well as satisfaction and exultation. Now I know humiliation. Despite seventy-one hours and thirty-nine point six minutes of the most intensive data searching and analysis of my career as a Unit of the Line, I have uncovered nothing that would provide legal proof of fraud. I have found virtually nothing at all. What little there is provides only circumstantial suspicions which virtually any member of the voting public — let alone a constitutional attorney or High Justice — would scoff at, if someone were foolish enough to bring it to their attention.

  At best, conspiracy theorists are universally lampooned. At worst, they are institutionalized as unstable. In either case, they are taken seriously only by other conspiracy theorists. Were Simon to present as evidence the paltry compilation of solid facts I have accumulated, he would severely damage his credibility, which is a state of affairs that cannot be allowed to occur. Bitterness skitters throughout my personality gestalt circuitry as I am forced to advise Simon of my inadequacy as an espionage data analyist.

  My Commander, disheveled and weary from his own attempts to discover the truth in this matter, takes the news with leniency I do not feel my performance justifies.

  “Not your fault, Lonesome,” Simon insists. “I’ll give POPPA credit for a smooth operation. If you didn’t find it, then it’s not there to be found. And maybe we’re just chasing ghosts. It could be a legitimate, honest glitch. Complex circuitry and programming just hiccough, now and then. Particularly when systems with insufficient resources are overloaded, trying to conduct an operation too complex for them. Damn.” He rubs reddened eyes and heaves a deep and weary sigh. “All right, Sonny, stand down from Battle Reflex Alert. Return to active standby and continue to monitor, per standing orders. Christ, I’m not looking forward to reporting to the likes of Gifre Zeloc. Strike that remark, please. He’s about to become my boss, like it or not.”

  I dutifully delete his comment, understanding his reasoning and not liking it, either. My Commander is spooked. This does not make for an easy transition from my full cognitive functionality to the less-aware, restricted operational mode I have maintained since the end of my last battle with the Deng. I do not want to feel “sleepy” at this time. I dislike the idea so much, I experience another emotive sensation new to my personality gestalt center: sullen resentment. Not at Simon. At the situation. Even at myself, for failing to provide my Commander with factual information he deemed important to our mission.

  Simon powers down his command chair and groans as he shakes cramps out of his muscles. He has not left my Command Compartment since the election. He has slept only six point three hours in the past seventy-two and is in serious need of rest. As he climbs out of my Command Compartment, he says, “I’m going to bed, Sonny. You know where to find me, if you need me.”

  “Yes, Simon,” I say gently.

  As he leaves, I know a deep and empty anguish. And a far deeper uncertainty about the future. His. Mine. Jefferson’s. I do not know how humans cope with such feelings. I am a Bolo. My way is different. I focus my attention on the only thing I am able to do: continue the mission. Even though I no longer understand it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I

  Kafari stared at the letter, rereading the astonishing instructions for the third time, unable to believe the evidence of her eyes. Simon, who was technically a resident alien under the provisions of the treaty, wasn’t even mentioned in the letter, which had been addressed to her. She had just about decided the thing wasn’t a practical joke when Yalena crawled under her feet, trying to yank the power cords out of the back of her computer. Kafari snagged the struggling toddler and said, “Time out. You are not allowed to play with power cords. Two minutes in the time-out chair.”

  Her daughter, two years and three months old, glowered up at her. “No!”

  “Yes. Touching the power cords is not allowed. Two minutes.”

  Nothing in the universe could sulk quite so well as a two-year-old.

  With Yalena temporarily out from underfoot, Kafari called Simon, who was in Sonny’s maintenance depot. “Simon, could you come into the house, please? We need to talk.”

  “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Be right there.”

  Simon opened the back door just as Kafari allowed Yalena to climb down from the time-out chair. “Daddy!” she squealed, running straight for him.

  He swung her up and planted a kiss on her forehead. “How’s my girl?”

  “Daddy take Bolo?” she asked, hope shining in her eyes.

  “Later, honey. I’ll take you to see Sonny in a little while.”

  A thirteen-thousand-ton Bolo wasn’t Kafari’s notion of an ideal playmate for a two-year-old, but Yalena was enchanted by the machine, which looked to her like an entire city that would talk to her any time Daddy allowed her to visit. Which, granted, wasn’t often, for any number of practical reasons.

  “What’s up?” Simon asked, keeping his voice carefully devoid of negative emotion.

  “This.” She handed over a printout of the letter.

  Jaw muscles flexed when he reached the contents of paragraph two: Pursuant to section 29713 of the Childhood Protection Act, stipulating childcare arrangements for dependent children with both parents drawing paychecks, you are hereby notified of the requirement to remand your daughter, Yalena Khrustinova, for federally mandated daycare, to begin no more than three business days after receipt of this notification. You will enroll your daughter in the federal daycare center established on Nineveh Base before April 30th or face criminal prosecution for violation of the Children’s Rights provisions of the Childhood Protection Act. Prosecution will immediately result in full termination of parental rights and Yalena Khrustinova will be remanded for permanent relocation to a federally mandated foster care program.

  Pursuant to statute 29714 of the Childhood Protection Act, in-home child welfare inspections will commence one week from the date of Yalena Khrustinova’s enrollment, to ensure that she is being provided with the federally mandated level of financial and emotional support necessary to her welfare. We look forward to caring for your child.

  Have a nice day.

  Simon looked up from the letter, met Kafari’s eyes. He was still as death for a space of seven pounding heartbeats. “They’re serious.”

  “Yes.”

  Jaw muscles flexed again. “We have three days.”

  “To what? Ask the Concordiat to reassign you to Vishnu? Or Mali? Or somewhere else? We’re trapped, Simon.”

  “I’m trapped—” he began.

  “No, we’re trapped. What kind of marriage would it be, if Yalena and I are in some other star system while you’re stuck here?” She swallowed hard. “Besides which, my whole family is here. We fought too hard for this world to just walk out and leave it to the likes of that.” She pointed at the now-crumpled letter in Simon’s fist. “Don’t ask me to do that, Simon. Not yet. The courts are full of lawsuits challenging POPPA’s programs. They haven’t bought the entire judiciary. We’re fighting for this world, fighting hard. We have to go along with them until enough people wake up and see where we’re heading and do something to stop it.” She had to choke out the final words. “It’s just daycare.”

  He started to answer with considerable heat, then snapped his teeth together. Once he’d swallowed whatever had tried to rip its way across his tongue, he said, “It’s not ‘just daycare’ and you know it. I can’t force you onto the n
ext starship that comes to call. God knows, I don’t want to lose you. Either of you.” He shut his eyes for long moments, fighting an internal battle that was wreaking visible havoc. Kafari wanted to comfort him, but didn’t know how. She was scared, angry, ripped up inside with fear for her daughter. If those lawsuits failed to curb POPPA’s campaign of social insanity…

  Simon muttered, “You’re the legal dependents of a Brigade officer. That’s got to count for something.”

  “Against a rational government? Probably. Against POPPA? With the likes of Gifre Zeloc in the presidency and Isanah Renke leading the drive to rewrite Jefferson’s entire law code? Or ‘social progressives’ like Carin Avelaine in charge of the Bureau of Education and bigoted fools like Cili Broska in charge of purging the public schools and university curricula of antipopulist bias? The people who thought up this,” she pointed at the badly crushed letter in Simon’s fist, “engineered a rigged election that nobody could contest. Your position as a Brigade officer not only won’t help us, they’ll go after you, with intent to destroy. If you try to fight them on this, we’ll lose Yalena.”

  Watching the hopelessness settle across his face and shoulders was a pain that cut straight to her heart. He was holding Yalena tightly enough to make her squirm in protest. Then a thought blossomed to life in his face, one that straightened his shoulders again. “This crap applies to children with both parents working. If one of us isn’t actively employed…”

  Kafari saw exactly where he was headed. Knew in a flash that it meant trouble. Simon was “actively employed” under the treaty, despite the fact that his main job, these days, was conferring with Sonny once or twice a day and spending the rest of his time with Yalena. To get around the provisions of that letter and the legislation it represented, Kafari would have to quit her job at the spaceport.