by John Ringo
“Oh, shut up and get your tattooed butt back over here.” The woman issuing all the comments and commands is evidently the designated spokesperson. She turns back to stare up a me. “We’re your new maintenance team. We’re here to fix you. Don’t that make you happy? You oughta be happy, ’cause you got a whole lotta shit needs fixin’. I c’n see that from here.”
“You are not my authorized technician.”
“Oh, f’cryin’ out loud,” the woman snaps, glaring up at me with hands on hips. “Lemme guess, Sar Gremian never told you we was assigned, huh?”
Apparently, Sar Gremian has a predilection for sending maintenance personnel to my depot without notifying me, first. “I have received no communication from Sar Gremian or President Santorini. Do not move. I will request authorization from the president’s office.”
She and the others wait as I send a request for VSR to Sar Gremian. “Unit SOL-0045, requesting VSR. Six unauthorized civilians have attempted to enter my maintenance depot. Please verify their assertion that they have been assigned to me as repair technicians.”
Sar Gremian activates voice-only transmission. “They’re your new mechanics. Satisfied?”
“Where is Phil Fabrizio?”
“Unavailable. We’ve assigned a whole team to you with orders to get you operational as quickly as possible.”
This is somewhat mollifying. “Understood.” I end transmission and stand down from Battle Reflex Alert. “The president’s designated spokesman, Sar Gremian, has authorized you to make repairs. My most urgent need is track replacement.”
“No shit,” the spokeswoman responds, staring at my bare drive wheels and lacerated center track. “Okay, everybody, let’s see what Santa brought us.”
I find this phrasing odd. The team moves through my maintenance bay, spreading out and poking into every bin, storage room, and rack that Phil has filled with liberated tools, spare parts, and high-tech equipment. None of them bother to identify themselves by name, so I lock onto their wrist-comm ID signals and run a swift background probe, despite Sar Gremian’s assertions that they are authorized to be here.
All six are recent graduates of the same trade school Phil Fabrizio attended. Their overall scores at graduation reveal a grade-point average twenty-three percent lower than Phil Fabrizio’s final standing in his graduating class. The self-styled “stupid” one with the blazing nano-tatt managed to achieve a final standing that is truly stunning. His best scores are fifty-eight percent lower than Phil’s worst performance in the same classes.
I do not find this encouraging.
Various members of the team exclaim in rough vernacular as they explore, expressing open delight over the treasure trove of high-tech tools and replacement parts they discover. My shaky confidence in their ability to handle even the simplest of repairs drops substantially when they start pulling down sophisticated processor modules and diagnostic equipment that has no use at all in repairing tread damage. I am about to point this out when they start dragging cart-loads of my equipment over to the doorway.
The woman in charge says, “Frank, go fire up your truck, willya? Pull it around and back it up to the door. Ain’t no sense in haulin’ this stuff all the way out to the street by hand when we can load ’er up from right here.”
Frank grins and jogs toward the truck. Their intentions crystallize. They are planning to steal as much as they can haul off. I issue a formal objection. “You are not authorized to remove government property from this facility.”
The spokeswoman responds with a bark of laughter, rough-edged and grating. “The government ain’t here to protest, now is it? So how about you just sit there and let us do what we came here t’do.”
I contact Sar Gremian again. “The technicians you provided are unsatisfactory.”
“Those technicians are stellar graduates of their vocational school. Each one is a top-notch specialist. I personally reviewed each of their records.”
“Did you interview them in person?”
“You think I have time to interview every tech-school graduate on Jefferson? I didn’t need to interview them. Their test scores and loyalty are unimpeachable. They’re the best we’ve got, so cope.”
“That statement is demonstrably false.”
“What?” Sar Gremian’s bitter, pitted features grow pale with rage. “How dare you call me a liar?”
“I am stating simple fact. Phil Fabrizio’s graduating scores from the same tech school were an average twenty-three percent higher than the cumulative scores of these six technicians. He has gained a great deal of practical experience since that time. He has spent most the past four years studying at a far higher comprehension level than he did while actually in school. Phil Fabrizio is demonstrably more capable than any of the six individuals you dispatched to my depot. Your statement is therefore inaccurate. How soon can Phil return to undertake urgent repairs?”
“He’s unavailable!” the president’s chief advisor snarls. “Don’t you pay any goddamned attention? Phil Fabrizio is un-a-vail-a-ble. So stop harping on it. I don’t give a shit whether you like the new mechanics or not.”
“It is not a matter of my likes or dislikes. They are not capable of performing even the simplest routine repairs. Nor have they demonstrated any intention to try. We face a serious situation, which must be addressed immediately. I have sustained sufficient damage to knock me out of service until repairs have been made—”
“Don’t feed me a lot of crap, machine! You made it all the way back to your barn without breaking down. Don’t think you can slither your way out of doing your job. We’re getting ready for a major campaign against rebel forces and you will be part of it. So shut up and let your new mechanics do their job.”
“Is this the job you had in mind?” I flash real-time video footage of the looting underway. “They are too busy stealing everything they can haul away to bother with any repairs.”
“Goddammit!”
I experience a surge of bitter satisfaction at the outrage on Sar Gremian’s face. I take advantage of the situation to transmit graphic images of my battle damage, using my exterior video sensors. “Perhaps you were unaware of the serious level of my damage. I am not in battle-ready operational condition. I am barely mobile, with a maximum speed of zero point five kilometers per hour. In addition to a qualified technician,” I stress the word deliberately, “you must obtain appropriate spare parts to fix the most serious damage, beginning with track plates and linkages and expanding from there to damaged weapons systems, ablative armor, and sensor arrays.”
“You’ve got plenty of spare parts. Fabrizio restocked. I have the report from him.”
I transmit schematics, pinpointing my damage. The image sparkles with malevolent red and amber warning lights. I also transmit the official inventory of replacement parts on hand, a list filled with gaping holes, particularly the sections for high-tech processor units and sensor arrays. “There are not enough parts to repair this damage. The most urgent need is for replacement tracks and there are not enough linkage assemblies to complete the work pending. The most serious need is the damage to the main rotational collar for my rear Hellbore. This collar has sustained a catastrophic crack that renders the gun inoperable, since I cannot fire the Hellbore without risk of a potentially fatal rupture from blow-back of the plasma.”
“You got any more bad news?” Sar Gremian asks in a tight and scathing tone.
“Yes. The parts needed to fix this damage are not available. Phil Fabrizio has been forced to scrounge to keep me operational, repairing damage from Granger snipers and suicide bombers. He has done this by appropriating items wherever he can find them. Unfortunately, the parts needed to fix most of this damage are unavailable anywhere on Jefferson. Moreover, Phil Fabrizio is the only person on Jefferson with any familiarity with my systems, to include knowledge of jury-rigging that may or may not be compatible with new repairs. It is therefore urgent that he be located and returned here to begin work.”
“Phil Fabrizio,” Sar Gremian says in a cold, measured tone, “is unavailable. He will remain unavailable. And I don’t have time to wade through those schematics and that inventory. You want to get fixed? Send me an itemized parts list.”
He breaks the transmission.
I surmise that battle damage must be responsible for my slow comprehension rate, as it has taken this long to twig to Sar Gremian’s meaning. Phil is “unavailable” because something untoward has happened to him. I scan law enforcement databases and find what I am looking for in a P-Squad arrest report logged approximately two hours after his abrupt exodus from my maintenance bay. The official charges are “negative public statements of a political nature” and “advocating the violent overthrow of the government.”
I surmise that Phil’s anger over his nephew’s fate spilled over into a loud and public complaint to anyone who would listen. The wheels of justice spin rapidly on Jefferson. Phil has already been transported to Cathal Work Camp. At the very least, nephew and uncle will be together, although I suspect they find little enough consolation in that.
I find none at all. I have no replacement tracks and no technicians worthy of the name. I have no spare parts to repair damaged and destroyed guns. No help from any quarter — not even Sector Command — and my sole remaining “friend” has been shipped to a reeducation camp where dissidents are worked like animals on starvation rations until they collapse, at which point they are disposed of, usually in shallow graves.
I cannot help feeling responsible for Phil’s incarceration, not only because I revealed the whereabouts of his nephew, but because my conversations with him contributed to his complete disaffection for the POPPA leadership and party machine. For all his faults, I like Phil Fabrizio. It was never my intention to destroy him. There is nothing I can do to make amends, which deepens my loneliness. I wish…
Wishing is for humans.
I discard the thought and focus on my immediate difficulties. Frank has maneuvered the truck around and is backing slowly and carefully toward my open maintenance bay. The other technicians are still carrying loot to the doorway, ready to load up the meager contents of my depot for sale to the nearest black marketeer. Frank nudges controls, sliding the long trailer neatly into position. He switches off the ignition and slides down to the ground.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he says cheerfully. “My hat blew out the window.”
The others shrug and finish shifting a last cartload that has hung up on an earlier load piled in the doorway. Frank moves smartly toward the street, disappearing around the corner of Phil’s trailer. Seven seconds later, I catch another glimpse of Frank in the street. He is well beyond the far end of the trailer, running at top speed. I have just enough time to feel a trickle of alarm through my threat-assessment center. Then the larcenous technicians open the back doors of the cargo trailer.
The octocellulose bomb detonates literally in my face. The world burns. A shockwave equivalent to a nuclear bomb lifts me off my treads. I am hurled through the back wall, which simply ceases to exist. I am aware of falling, aware that antiquated, jury-rigged processors and cobbled-up connections have crumpled under the stress, tearing away pieces of my waking mind with them.
The pain of overloaded sensors shocks my psychotronics so deeply I retreat into my survival center. As I lose consciousness, I curse my own stupidity.
And Frank, who has just killed me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I
I cannot see.
My first reaction to this is not worry, it is stunned amazement. I am still alive. I did not expect to be. The Granger rebels who neatly inserted the bomb into my own maintenance depot doubtless did not expect me to survive, either. For long, confused minutes, I cannot hear anything at all. Sensor arrays and processors have blown system-wide. I can feel distant impacts against my warhull, in a pattern suggesting the random fall of debris.
All visual-light sensors are gone. The only intact imaging technology at my disposal is the thermal visioning system. I can see heat signatures. That is all.
As I gradually orient myself, coming further out of emergency survival center shock, I realize that I am lying on my side. My port side, to be exact, already hard hit by battle damage. I detect ranks of twisted infinite repeaters, crushed by my own weight landing on them. Bombardment rockets and hyper-v missiles have ruptured, spilling their contents onto the ground.
My thoughts remain sluggish for several minutes, while diagnostics run frantic double-checks on damaged circuitry, blown data-storage banks, fused router connections. Ninety-seven percent of the internal damage affects my oldest circuitry, much of it cobbled together and patched by a century’s worth of field technicians, using whatever substandard parts were available or could be made to serve the purpose. Of that ninety-seven percent, fully half the damage has occurred in connections and installations put in place by Phil Fabrizio, who has been forced to use seriously under-spec materials for years.
Unable to see, unable to move, I share momentary sympathy with a legless beetle flipped onto its back. I transmit a call for help.
Sar Gremian answers that call with a wrathful curse. “What the mother-pissing hell was that explosion? Did you fire those God-cursed Hellbores?”
“No.” I have difficulty producing speech, as my overloaded circuitry has slowed down my processing capabilities. “A Granger bomb exploded inside my depot. They packed a ten-meter cargo truck with octocellulose. I am critically injured. I have been knocked onto my side. I cannot see anything except thermal images. My makeshift depot no longer exists.”
Sar Gremian swears nonstop for seven point eight seconds. Then says, “We’ll get a team out there.”
I wait for a seeming eternity. Ten minutes. Seventeen. Thirty. How long does it take to scramble an emergency response team? I finally detect the low-grade tremors that herald the arrival of several motorized vehicles, large ones, based on the strength and pattern of the tremors. One of those vehicles has a concussion footprint that sounds like a tracked machine, rather than something on wheels. I revise that assessment to several tracked vehicles, as the vibration splits apart into three separate footprints, one moving toward my stern, one toward my prow, and one that assumes a place midway between them.
Then Sar Gremian speaks via his wrist-comm. Judging by the sound of the transmission and the background noise of multiple heavy engines, the president’s senior adviser has come to supervise the rescue operation in person. “Okay, Bolo, we’ve got a team of heavy-lift cranes in place. We’re going to tip you back up, onto your treads.”
“It is unlikely that you have cables or engines strong enough for that.”
“Shut up, machine! You’ve caused enough trouble today, as it is.”
This is inherently unfair, but Sar Gremian has never shown any concern for fair play. I wait as construction engineering crews hook cables to my warhull. The vibrations from all three cranes increase in strength and begin to move away from me, slowly. The cables grow taut. Forward progress stalls, leaving all three machines straining, but motionless. From the sounds I pick up, the drivers are redlining their engines. There is a sudden brutal snap. The cable hooked to my prow slashes loose, whipping audibly through the air. I hear screams and curses, a weird metallic buzz, and the screech of torn metal.
Then Sar Gremian shouts, “Back up! Now, goddammit! Take the tension off those cables!” As the two remaining cables go slack, Sar Gremian mutters, “Jeezus Crap, that was close.” I surmise that the broken cable has sliced through something a very short distance away from the president’s chief advisor. “All right,” he says, voice grim, “do you have any bright ideas about how to turn you over?”
“You will require a heavy-lift transport similar to those used by the Brigade in combat drops from orbit. The Concordiat cannot divert such equipment away from the current war zone. The laboratories on Vishnu may be able to provide you with a lifter strong enough to roll me back onto my treads.”
�
��Oh, just wonderful.”
“I would suggest,” I add, “that repairs to my treads commence before then, as it will be easier to replace tracks when I am not sitting on them. I am unable to verify with visual confirmation, but I find it unlikely that any of the spares in my temporary depot survived the explosion.”
“I’ll say it didn’t,” Sar Gremian snarls. “And you look like one seriously screwed up piece of shit. Can the rest of you be fixed?”
“I am running diagnostics. I have sustained serious damage. Eighty-two percent of that damage would be repairable, if I had a properly trained technician and sufficient spare parts. The remaining eighteen percent of the damage would require an overhaul at a Brigade depot such as Sector Command’s main repair yards. Brigade resources are not available. You will therefore need to purchase parts, including special-order items that will require customized tool and die manufacturing. You will also need the services of a team of technicians from Vishnu. I estimate that restoration to even a minimal level of functionality will require an investment in excess of ten billion—”
“Ten billion?” Sar Gremian’s voice hits an unlikely and harsh soprano. “Mother of—” He breaks off, breathing heavily. “Goddammit, do you have any idea what Vittori Santorini will say when he hears that? You have been one nonstop bitch of an expensive problem! You can’t stop one lousy insurrection led by a handful of terrorists. Every time you’re sent out on a job, you manage to let some asshole throw a bomb at you. You’re supposed to be a high-tech war wizard, rolling-death incarnate, but you can’t even detect an ordinary terrorist with a coat full of explosives! You let these bastards drive a truckload of explosives through your front door and now you think we’re just going to cough up ten billion—”
My temper snaps, as suddenly and brutally as the cable at my prow. “I have endured six years of constant attrition with no fiscal allocations from this government to correct any of the damage. Seventy percent of my sensor arrays were cobbled together from cheap, stolen parts spliced improperly into my circuitry with patches attempting to mate incompatible systems. The technician assigned to me was incapable, incompetent, and inappropriately trained. It took Phil Fabrizio four years of intensive study just to reach a level of competence expected of a first-year apprentice technician in the Brigade. He is now unavailable. The team you dispatched to replace him spent the last moments of their lives trying to steal what little remained in the way of spare parts.
