by David Weber
—11—
Li-Chen Matucek stood in the echoing vehicle bay of his "brigade's" mother ship and tried to look like a serious, sober-minded military man as the first tanks rumbled down the transfer tubes from the heavy-lift cargo shuttles nuzzled against its side. Despite his best efforts, however, he failed. The gleeful, greedy light in his eyes was that of an adolescent receiving his first grav-speeder, and Gerald Osterwelt hid his own amusement with considerably more skill as he saw it.
Brand new Panther-class medium tanks clanked and clanged across the heavily reinforced deck plates. They wore gleaming coats of tropical camouflage, their ten-centimeter Hellbores cast long, lethal shadows, and the mercenary crew chiefs standing in their hatches wore the expressions of men and women who never wanted to wake up as they muttered into com-links and guided their drivers towards their assigned parking spots.
This wasn't the first freighter with which Matucek's mother ship had made rendezvous. None of them had worn the livery of any known space line, and their transponder codes had borne no resemblance to whatever codes the Office of Registry might once have issued them, but all of them had been too big, too new and modern, for the anonymous tramps they pretended to be. All of Matucek's people knew that, and none cared. The first freighter had delivered a full complement of one- and two-man atmospheric stingers, complete with full-service maintenance shop module and at least a year of spares for everything from counter-grav lift fans to multibarrel autocannon. The next had delivered a full load of Ferret armored assault vehicles, the Concordiat's latest infantry light AFV, and the one after that had transferred a full set of rough-terrain assault pods to Matucek's two Fafnir-class assault ships. Now the Panthers had arrived, like the old, old song about the twelve days of Christmas, and the entire brigade was acting like children in a toy store.
But, of course, the really big item wouldn't arrive until next week, Osterwelt reminded himself, and his smile—if he'd permitted himself to wear one—would have been most unpleasant at the thought. Matucek could hardly stand the wait for the Golem-IIIs which would be the crown jewels of his new, rejuvenated brigade. But, then, he had no idea what else those Golems would be. Osterwelt and GalCorp's techs had gone to considerable lengths to make sure he never would know, either—right up to the moment the carefully hidden files buried in their backup maintenance computers activated and blew them and anyone aboard their transports with them into an expanding cloud of gas.
Osterwelt watched the last few Panthers grumble past him and allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation. The Golems would be carried aboard the Fafnirs, which would neatly dispose of that portion of Matucek's small fleet when GalCorp no longer needed it. The mother ship's demise would be seen to by the files hidden in the air-cav maintenance module. The stingers' small onboard fusion plants would lack the brute destructive power of the Golems' suicide charges, but when they all blew simultaneously they would more than suffice to destroy the big ship's structural integrity somewhere in the trackless depths of hyper-space. That would be enough to guarantee that there wouldn't even be any wreckage . . . much less annoying witnesses who might turn state's evidence if the Concordiat ever identified Matucek's Marauders as the "pirates" about to raid Santa Cruz.
The final Panther clanked by, and he and Matucek turned to follow along behind it. It was a pity, in some ways, that the Marauders had to go. No one would particularly miss the human flotsam which filled the brigade's ranks, but writing off this much perfectly good hardware would make a hole even in GalCorp's quarterly cash flow. Still, the Golems themselves had cost practically nothing, given the Freighnar government's desperate need for maintenance support, and the raid would probably depress real estate prices on Santa Cruz sufficiently to let GalCorp recoup most of its investment in the other equipment. Not to mention the fact that there would no longer be any need to pay Matucek the sizable fee upon which they'd agreed. And as a useful side benefit, GalCorp would have its hooks well into the Freighnars, as well. Once the Concordiat discovered the People's Government had disposed of Golems to a mercenary outfit of dubious reputation, it would become not merely largely but totally dependent upon GalCorp's technical support. It was inevitable, since the Concordiat would, as surely as hydrogen and oxygen combined to form water, cut off all foreign aid.
It was always so nice when loose ends could not only be tied up but made to yield still more advantage in the process. No one outside GalCorp's innermost circle of board members could ever be allowed even to suspect that this operation had taken place, but the men and women who mattered would know. Just as they would know it was Gerald Osterwelt who'd engineered it so smoothly. When the time finally came for his mother to step down, the board would remember who'd given it Santa Cruz on a platter, and his eyes gleamed at the endless vista of power opening wide before him.
"All right." Li-Chen Matucek leaned back at the head of the briefing room table and nursed a theatrically battered cup of coffee as he looked around his assembled staff officers and regimental and battalion commanders. "I take it you've all completed your inventories and inspections?" Heads nodded. "May I also take it you're pleased with your new equipment?" More nods replied, much more enthusiastically, and he grinned. "Good! Because now it's time to begin planning just how we're going to use that equipment against our objective."
One or two faces looked a little grim at the prospect of slaughtering unsuspecting Concordiat civilians, yet no one even considered protesting. Not only would second thoughts have been risky, but none of these men or women were the sort to suffer qualms of conscience. Matucek's Marauders had once included officers who would have protested; by now, all of them were safely dead or long since departed to other, more principled outfits.
Osterwelt sat at Matucek's right elbow, surveying the other officers, and was pleased by what he saw, though he was a bit disappointed that none of them seemed the least disturbed that he was present. He'd put together a lovely secondary cover to "let slip" that his present appearance was the result of a temporary biosculpt job if anyone asked, but no one had so much as questioned his "Scully" pseudonym. No doubt most of them suspected it was an assumed name, yet they didn't seem to care. In fact, none of the idiots even seemed aware that he ought to conceal his true identity from them! It was just as well, since it also kept them from wondering if he'd decided to dispose of them all in order to protect himself, yet their total, casual acceptance of his presence was an unflattering indication of their intelligence. It was to be hoped they were better killers than plotters.
Of course, the real reason he had to be present today was the informational nuke he'd carefully avoided setting off to date. It was about time for the detonation sequence to begin, and he sat back in his chair for several minutes, listening as Matucek's officers began discussing assault patterns and deployment plans, then cleared his throat.
"Yes, sir?" Matucek turned to him instantly, raising attentive eyebrows, and Osterwelt permitted himself an embarrassed smile.
"Forgive me, General, but, as you know, the same ship which delivered your Golems brought me fresh dispatches from my associates. As I promised, they've been continuing their efforts to secure complete information on Santa Cruz while I saw to your reequipment needs. That information has now been obtained, and, well, I'm afraid it isn't as good as we'd hoped."
"Meaning, Mister Scully?" Matucek prompted when he paused with an apologetic little shrug.
"Meaning, General, that it seems one of those eighty-year-old installations on Santa Cruz was a Bolo maintenance depot." The abrupt silence in the briefing room was remarkably like what a microphone picked up in deep space. "In fact, it appears there's a single operable Bolo on the planet."
"A Bolo!" Colonel Granger, Matucek's senior field commander, was a hard-bitten woman with eyes like duralloy, but her harsh features were slack with shock as she half-rose. "There's a goddamned Bolo down there?"
A babble of voices broke out, and Matucek himself turned on Osterwelt with a snarl.
"Now, now, General!" Osterwelt raised his voice to cut through the confusion, and for all its briskness, his tone was soothing as well. "I told you at the outset that we hadn't yet been able to obtain full information on the planet. But I also told you we want you to succeed, and we do. That's why we provided the Golems in the first place—as an insurance policy."
"Manned vehicles against a Bolo?" Colonel Granger's laugh was cold and ugly. "The only useful insurance for that scenario would be life insurance, Mister Scully—and even that would only help our dependents!"
"I understand your dismay, Colonel," Osterwelt replied, still careful to keep just the right mixture of embarrassment, placation, and confidence in his tone. "Truly I do, and I apologize profoundly for our delay in obtaining this information. But we do have complete data on the planet now—I've already taken the liberty of loading it into your ship's data base—and the Bolo's presence is the only surprise."
"It's damned well the only surprise I bloody need!" someone else put in, and Matucek nodded.
"Sir, I'm sorry to say it," he said in a harsh voice that sounded as if he were nothing of the sort, "but this changes everything. We can't go up against a Bolo. Even if we won, our casualties would be enormous, and that's no kind of business for a mercenary outfit."
"I'm afraid canceling the operation is not an option, General." Osterwelt's tone was much colder than it had been, and his eyes were more frigid still. "You've taken the equipment we offered you as the first installment on your fee, and my associates would take it very much amiss if you tried to break our agreement." The briefing room was silent once more, and Osterwelt went on calmly. "Nor can you pretend that this situation takes you totally by surprise. I informed you when you accepted the contract that our data was still partial. If you had a problem with that, you should have said so then."
"You talk mighty big for a man who's all alone on our ship," a battalion commander muttered in an ugly voice, and Osterwelt nodded.
"I do, indeed. My associates know where I am, ladies and gentlemen. Should anything happen to me, they would be most displeased, and I believe the equipment we've secured for you is an ample indication of the resources with which they might choose to express that displeasure."
He smiled, and a strange, wild delight filled him as other officers glared at him. Why, he was actually enjoying this! Odd—he'd never suspected he might be an adrenaline junkie. Still, it was probably time to apply the sugarcoating before someone allowed fear or anger to swamp his judgment . . . such as it was.
"Come now, ladies and gentlemen! As I just said, and as I've told you many times before, we want—need—for this operation to succeed, and it won't if your force is battered to bits in a pitched battle before your search and destroy teams can even go after the locals! My associates haven't been idle, I assure you. The moment they discovered the Bolo's presence, they began formulating a plan to deal with it."
"Deal with a Bolo?" Granger snorted. "That'd be a pretty neat trick, if you could do it. In case you haven't noticed, Mister Scully, Bolos aren't exactly noted for being easy to 'deal' with!"
"Ah, but their command personnel are another matter," Osterwelt said softly, and Granger gave him a sudden sharp, coldly speculative glance.
"Explain," Matucek said curtly, and Osterwelt folded his hands on the table top and settled himself comfortably in his chair.
"Certainly, General. First, allow me to point out that the Bolo in question is eighty years old. No doubt it remains a formidable fighting machine, yet it's only a Mark XXIII, while your Golems are based on the Mark XXIV. Your vehicles may lack psychotronics, but the Bolo's weapons, defensive systems, and circuitry are eighty years out of date. Even if your Golems were required to engage it head on, my associates assure me that you would have something like an eighty percent chance of victory."
Someone snorted his derision, and Osterwelt smiled.
"I agree," he told the snorter. "It's much easier for people who aren't risking their own hides to pontificate on the probable outcome of an engagement with a Bolo. I think if you run the data on the Mark XXIII/B you may find they're closer to correct than first impressions might suggest, but the best outcome of all would be for you not to have to fight it at all."
"Like I say, a neat trick if you can do it," Granger repeated, but her voice was more intent, and her eyes were narrow. Colonel Granger, Osterwelt reflected, was the only one of Matucek's officers who might have asked the wrong questions in the "general's" place. It was fortunate she was the sort of field commander who habitually left logistics and contract negotiations to her superiors.
"Indeed it would, Colonel Granger, and I believe my associates have come up with a very neat answer to the problem. You see, when you assault the planet, the Bolo will be inactive."
"Inactive?" Granger sat up straight in her chair. "And just how will you pull that off, Mister Scully?"
"The answer is in your download from my associates, Colonel. I confess, I was a bit surprised by it, but now that I've had a chance to study it, I have complete faith that it will succeed."
"Do you, now? I'm so happy for you. Unfortunately, we're the ones who're going to be sticking our necks out," Granger pointed out coldly.
"Not alone, Colonel. I anticipated a certain amount of shock on your part, and I don't blame you for it in the least. Obviously I can't absolutely guarantee that my associates' plan will work, but I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is when I say I believe it will."
"How?" Matucek asked.
"By accompanying you on the raid," Osterwelt said simply. Someone started to laugh, but Osterwelt's raised hand cut the sound off at birth. "In order for you to assault the planet, all three of your ships will have to enter Santa Cruz orbit. And, as I'm sure you all know, a Bolo—even one eighty years old—has an excellent chance of picking off a starship under those circumstances. True?" Heads nodded, and he shrugged. "Very well. I will accompany you aboard this very ship to demonstrate my faith in my associates and their plan. If the Bolo gets you, it will also get me. Now, unless you know of some more convincing demonstration of sincerity I might make, I suggest that we review the aforesaid plan and then get on with our own planning."
—12—
Nike's after Hellbore turret altered its angle of train with a soft hum, barely perceptible through the background thunder of the plunging waterfall. The shift in position was small, but sufficient to adjust for the sinking sun and preserve the shade in which Paul Merrit sat. A corner of the captain's mind noted the unasked-for courtesy, but most of his attention was on the dancing interplay of sunlight and shadowed water as he reeled in his lure. Ripples spread outward downstream from his float, like ranging bars on a fire control screen that pinpointed the big leopard-trout's location.
Merrit finished reeling in his line, then sat up straight in the folding chair and snapped the tip of the rod forward. The glittering lure—leopard-trout liked bright, shiny prey—arced hissingly through the air, then seemed to slow suddenly. It dropped within a half meter of where the trout had broken the surface to take the fly, and Merrit worked his rod gently, tweaking the lure into motion to tempt his quarry.
It didn't work. The meter-long trout (assuming it was still in the vicinity) treated his efforts with the disdain they deserved, and the captain chuckled softly as he began to reel the line in once more.
"This does not appear to represent an efficient method of food gathering," a soprano voice remarked over an external speaker, and Merrit's chuckle turned louder.
"It's not supposed to be, Nike. It's supposed to be fun."
"Fun," the Bolo repeated. "I see. You have now been occupied in this pursuit for three hours, nine minutes, and twelve seconds, Standard Reckoning, without the successful capture of a single fish. Clearly the total lack of success thus far attendant upon the operation constitutes 'fun.'"
&nbs
p; "Sarcasm is not a Bololike trait," Merrit replied. He finished winding in the line, checked his lure, and made another cast. "Do I cast aspersions on your hobbies?"
"I do not cast aspersions; I make observations." The Bolo's soft laugh rippled over the speaker.
"Sure you do." Merrit reached down for his iced drink and sipped gratefully. The weather—as always on Santa Cruz—was hot and humid, but a Mark XXIII Bolo made an excellent fishing perch. His folding chair was set up on the missile deck, twenty meters above the ground, and Nike had parked herself on the brink of the cliff over which the river poured in a glass-green sheet. She was far enough back to avoid any risk that the cliff might collapse—not a minor consideration for a vehicle whose battle weight topped fifteen thousand tons—but close enough to catch the soothing breeze that blew up out of the valley below. Spray from the sixty-meter waterfall rode the gentle wind, occasionally spattering Nike's ceramic appliqués with crystal-beaded rainbows and cooling the jungle's breath as it caressed Merrit's bare, bronzed torso.
"The true object of the exercise, Nike, is less to catch fish than to enjoy just being," he said as he set his glass back down.
