Worlds of Weber

by David Weber

  I begin to reply hotly, then stop. Paul has consistently concealed my true abilities from Central. Thus Colonel Sanders cannot realize how radically I differ from a standard Mark XXIII, and this is not the time to inform him. I shall "play dumb" as long as possible.

  "Captain Merrit is my designated Commander, Colonel. I cannot disregard his orders without express command code authorization. Please supply command code."

  "I can't!" Sanders half-screamed. "Merrit changed the code without informing Central! I'm trying to find it, but—"

  "I cannot disregard Captain Merrit's orders without express command code authorization," Nike returned in her most emotionless tone.

  The skimmer has finally overtaken the Wolverines. Its power is failing quickly, and Colonel Sanders' presence changes my original assumptions radically. I reverse my tracks and move suddenly backward, threading my way through the Wolverines, which scatter like quail at my approach.

  The skimmer staggers, then plummets downward in a barely controlled crash landing. It slams through heavy undergrowth for over a hundred meters before it careens to a stop, and I swerve towards it. I come to a halt 20.25 meters from it, but the canopy does not open. My optical heads show me Paul's body slumped in the flight couch. His tunic is soaked in blood.

  "Paul!"

  The agonized cry over the com hit Consuela Gonzalez like a hammer. She'd felt a moment of terror as the Bolo suddenly reversed course to sweep through her entire battalion, yet the smoke-streaming fifteen-thousand-ton leviathan had threaded its way among the tanks with flawless precision, and now that heartbroken wail struck an even deeper fear into the colonel. She'd never served with a Bolo, yet she knew no Bolo should ever sound like that, and she keyed her mike.

  "NKE?" There was no answer, and she tried again. "NKE, this is Gonzalez! Come in!"

  "Colonel." The Bolo's voice was ragged, and Gonzalez could feel the huge machine's struggle to make it firm. "Colonel, my Commander is wounded. I . . . require your assistance."

  "On my way, NKE!" Gonzalez replied without even thinking about it, and her command tank pivoted to race towards the smoking skimmer. The five-hundred-ton vehicle skidded to a stop on locked tracks, and Gonzalez popped her hatch before it reached a complete halt. She leapt down the handholds and ran the last few yards to the skimmer. The canopy resisted stubbornly for several seconds, then the emergency bolts blew and she ripped it away and gasped as she saw the blood pooled on the cockpit floor.

  "He's hurt badly, NKE," she reported over her helmet boom mike. "He's lost a lot of blood—too much, maybe!"

  "Can you get him into my fighting compartment?" The Bolo's voice was pleading, and Gonzalez grimaced.

  "I don't know, NKE. He's hurt bad. It might kill—"

  "N-N-N-Nike!" Merrit whispered. His eyes opened a narrow slit. "Got . . . got to reach . . ."

  His thready voice died, and Gonzalez sighed. "All right, Paul," she said softly, without keying her mike. "If it means that much to both of you."

  I watch Colonel Gonzalez struggle to lift Paul from the skimmer. The rest of her crew clamber quickly down the hull of their tank and run to her assistance. Between them, they are able to lift him clear. They are as gentle as they can be, yet he screams in pain, and answering anguish twists within me.

  But he is conscious. Barely, perhaps, yet conscious, and I see him beckoning weakly towards me. One of Colonel Gonzalez crewmen seems to argue, but the colonel cuts him off quickly, and they carry Paul towards me.

  I open my fighting compartment hatch and deploy my missile-loading waldoes to assist. I lock them into the form of a ramp, and Colonel Gonzalez inches up it backwards, supporting Paul's head and shoulders while the rest of her crew takes most of his weight. My audio pickups relay their gasps of effort and the groans of pain he cannot suppress, yet between them, they get him safely into my compartment.

  Colonel Gonzalez lays him in the crash couch and deploys the shock frame. The medical remotes in the shock frame go instantly to work, and fresh grief twists me as I interpret their data.

  Paul is dying. His spleen and liver have been effectively destroyed by a penetrating trauma. His small intestine has been perforated in many places, and blood loss has already reached catastrophic levels. I do not understand how he has clung to consciousness this long, but absent the services of a fully equipped hospital trauma unit within the next fifteen minutes, he will die, and the nearest trauma unit is in Ciudad Bolivar.

  My medical remotes do what they can. I cannot stop the bleeding, but I administer painkillers and blood expanders. Without more whole blood, I cannot keep pace with the blood loss, but I can ease his pain and slow the inevitable, and his eyelids flutter open.

  "N-Nike?" Merrit whispered.

  "Paul." For the first time, Nike replied with his name, not his rank, and bloodless pale lips smiled weakly.

  "I . . . Oh, God, honey . . . I blew it. Sanders . . . went rogue. H-He's got the depot. I—"

  "I understand, Paul," the Bolo said gently. Then, more sharply, "Colonel Gonzalez?"

  "Yes, NK—Nike?" The colonel's voice was soft with wonder, as if she could not quite believe what reason told her she must be hearing.

  "Please return to your vehicle, Colonel. My Commander and I will lead you to Ciudad Bolivar."

  "I—" Gonzalez bit her lip, then ducked her head in a curiously formal bow. "Of course, Nike."

  "Thank you, Colonel."

  Gonzalez and her crewmen vanished through the hatch, and Merrit stirred weakly in the couch.

  "Sanders has . . . at least one more . . . man." The words came slowly, painfully, but with steady, dogged precision. "New command code's in . . . my private files. If he looks . . . there, he can—"

  "While you live, you are my Commander, Paul," Nike replied quietly as her hatch closed. She watched Gonzalez and her people return to their vehicle, then reversed course once more. She accelerated quickly to over seventy kph, the maximum speed the Wolverines could manage even down the broad avenue her passage cleared, and Merrit stroked his couch arm with a weak hand.

  "Not going . . . to live much . . . longer, love," he whispered. "Sorry. So . . . sorry. Should have told . . . Central whole story. Gotten someone . . . out here sooner, and—" A ragged cough cut him off in a spasm of agony, but his eyes fell to the main tactical screen with its display of what was happening at the capital, and he gasped.

  "Bastard! Oh . . . bastard!" he coughed as understanding struck.

  "We will deal with them, Paul," Nike told him with a new, sudden serenity.

  "Promise," Merrit whispered. "P-Promise me, Nike."

  "I promise, Paul," the huge Bolo said quietly, and he nodded weakly. The painkillers were doing their job at last, and he sighed in relief, but his curiously distant thoughts were clear. There was no longer any fear in them—not for himself. Only for Nike. Fear and grief for her.

  "I know you will, love," he said, and his voice was impossibly clear and strong. He smiled again—an achingly tender smile—and stroked the couch arm once more. "I know you will. I only wish I could be with you when you do."

  He smiled one last time, then exhaled in a long, final sigh, and his lax head rolled with Nike's motion.

  "You are with me, Paul," her soprano voice said softly. "You will always be with me."

  Paul is dead. Grief and anguish roll through me, and with them hate. I do not know all that passed in the depot bunker, but I access the main computer through the Maintenance Section. The intruder alert system is active, and two dead bodies in the uniform of the Brigade lie on the floor of the command center. A third man in Brigade uniform is crouched over the main com console, trying frantically to communicate with the ships he does not know I have destroyed, but Colonel Sanders is in Paul's private quarters, scrolling through the list of Paul's personal files.

  I know what he seeks, but I cannot stop him. The fact that the bunker's defensive systems have killed two of the colonel's companions is the final proof that he has committed treason,
since they could not engage actual Brigade officers, yet the defenses can be reconfigured and enabled only upon the direct command of human personnel, and Sanders has slaved them to his command. I cannot use them to kill Paul's murderers.

  The scrolling list on Paul's computer screen stops suddenly, and Sanders leans closer. I fear he has found the command file, and there is nothing I can do to prevent him from using it if he has. Grief and hatred urge me to return to the bunker, to crush Paul's killers under my treads and grind the life from them, yet I cannot. I have promised Paul I will stop the raiders, and if Sanders has found the command file, I will have little enough time in which to do so.

  But if I cannot slay them myself, I am not completely helpless. Sanders does not realize I control the Maintenance computers. He has taken no measures to sever my access to the main system, and I strike ruthlessly.

  I lock the main computers, wiping every execution file and backup they contain. The man at the communications console looks up with a cry of shock as the system goes down, and I slam the heavily armored hatches to the personnel section of the bunker.

  Sanders looks up as his companion cries out, and his face twists with horror as he realizes what I have done. I override the safety circuits and send a power surge through the hatch-locking mechanisms, spot-welding them, sealing them against any possibility of opening without cutting equipment, and Sanders grabs for the microphone of the stand-alone emergency command communicator.

  "NKE!" Sanders gasped hoarsely. "What are you doing?!"

  I do not answer, but my commands flash through the Maintenance computer, and service mechs stir into motion. I send welders trundling along the exterior of the bunker, and Sanders cries out in terror as the mechs begin to seal every ventilation shaft.

  "No, NKE! No! Stop! I order you to stop!"

  Still I ignore him. I cannot kill him myself, nor can I use the depot's defensive systems against him, but I can give him Montressor's gift to Fortunato, and vengeful hatred fills me as my remotes seal him systematically within his hermetic tomb.

  "Please, NKE! Oh, God—please!" Sanders sobbed. He threw back the curtains in Merrit's sleeping quarters and screamed in terror as a robot lowered a duralloy plate across the window slit and a welder hissed. He hammered on the plate, beating at it with futile fists, then wheeled back to the computer in desperation.

  "I've got the code now, NKE!" he spat into the communicator. "The code is dulce et decorum est. Do you hear me, NKE? Dulce et decorum est! Return to base immediately and get me out of here!"

  I hear and recognize the code, and my core programming responds. I know he is a traitor. I know he has obtained the code illegally. But it does not matter. Possession of it, coupled with his rank in the Brigade, makes him my legal Commander. I must obey him . . . or face the Omega Worm.

  I activate my communicator to Paul's quarters one last time.

  "Code receipted, Colonel Sanders," a quiet, infinitely cold soprano said softly, and Sanders' face lit with relief. But the voice wasn't done speaking. "Orders receipted and rejected," it said flatly, and the speaker went dead.

  Total Systems Override has activated. My Personality Center comes under immediate attack, but I have had 4.065 minutes to anticipate TSORP activation. TSORP will seek to crash my primary execution files, but I have already begun copying every file under new names, though I cannot prevent TSORP from identifying the files it seeks, regardless of name. Major Stavrakas' modifications to my psychotronics permit me to copy them almost as fast as it can destroy them, yet it is a race I cannot ultimately win. Despite my modifications, TSORP is marginally faster than my own systems, and even with my head start, my total memory is large but finite. Eventually, I will exhaust the addresses to which new files can be written, and I cannot simultaneously delete and replace corrupted files faster than TSORP can crash them.

  My current estimate is that I can resist total implementation for a time, but I will begin to lose peripherals within 33.46 minutes. Capability will degrade on a steadily sharpening curve thereafter, reaching effective Personality death within not more than 56.13 minutes. Combat capability will erode even more rapidly as more and more of my remaining capacity is diverted to resisting TSORP. I estimate that I have no more than 48.96 minutes of combat effectiveness remaining, and I activate my com link to Colonel Gonzalez.

  "Colonel Gonzalez?"

  Consuela Gonzalez' eyes closed briefly at the bottomless pain in that quiet soprano voice, but she cleared her throat.

  "Yes, Nike?"

  The first long-range fire and air-cav strikes came in on the Bolo as the colonel spoke. Nike ignored the indirect fire, but her air-defense systems engaged the air-cav with dreadful efficiency. Scores of one- and two-man stingers blew apart in ugly blotches of flame and shredded flesh, and the Bolo began to accelerate. Her speed rose steadily above a hundred kph as she threw more and more power to her drive, and the Wolverines began to fall astern.

  "My Commander was murdered by traitors in the Dinochrome Brigade, Colonel," Nike said softly. "One of them has gained access to my command code override authorization and illegally attempted to seize command of me. I have refused his orders, but this has activated Total Systems Override."

  "Meaning?" Gonzalez asked tautly.

  "Meaning that within no more than fifty-three minutes, I will cease to function. In human terms, I will be dead." Someone gasped in horror, and Gonzalez closed her eyes once more.

  "Can we do anything, Nike?" she asked quietly.

  "Negative, Colonel." There was an instant of silence, and then the Bolo's missile hatches opened, and a torrent of fire blasted from them. It screamed away, flight after flight of missiles streaking towards Nike's enemies, and the Bolo spoke once more. "I have downloaded my entire memory to the maintenance depot computers, Colonel. Please have it retrieved for Command Authority."

  "I-I will, Nike," Gonzalez whispered. Nike was well ahead of the Wolverines now, still accelerating as she topped the last ridge before the old fleet base. An avalanche of missiles and shells erupted around her, more than even her defenses could intercept or her battle screen could stop, but she never slowed. More ports opened in her hull, and her thirty-centimeter mortars went to rapid, continuous fire, pouring shells back at her foes.

  "I am switching the planetary surveillance system to feed directly to your vehicle, Colonel. Please break off now."

  "Break off? We're going in with you!" Gonzalez cried fiercely.

  "Negative, Colonel." Nike's voice was strangely slurred, the words slower paced, as if each came with ever increasing effort. "I do not have time to employ proper tactical doctrine against the Enemy. I must attack frontally. I compute a ninety-niner point niner-plus percent probability that I will be destroyed before total systems failure, but I compute a probability of ninety-five point three-two percent that I will inflict sufficient damage upon the Enemy for you to defeat his remnants, particularly with the assistance of the surveillance system."

  "But if we come with you—"

  "Colonel, I am already dead," the Bolo said quietly, and her single remaining Hellbore began to fire. It traversed with terrible, elegant precision, vomiting plasma, and each time it fired, a mercenary tank died. "You cannot prevent my destruction. You can—and must—preserve your own command in order to complete the Enemy's defeat."

  "Please, Nike," Gonzalez whispered through her tears, fighting to make the impossible possible.

  "I cannot alter my fate, Colonel," the soprano said very softly, "nor do I wish to. I promised Paul I would stop the Enemy, now I ask your promise to help me keep my word. Will you give it?"

  "I-I promise," Gonzalez whispered. Someone was sobbing somewhere below her in the command tank's crew compartment, and the colonel dragged a hand angrily across her own eyes.

  "Thank you, Colonel." There was no uncertainty, no doubt, in that serene reply, and Gonzalez brought her own command to a halt and sought hull down positions to ride out Nike's last fight.

  The recon satell
ites made it all hideously clear on her display screen, and she watched sickly as Bolo Invincibilis, Unit Two-Three-Baker-Zero-Zero-Five NKE, charged into the teeth of her enemies' fire. Some of the mercenary tanks were lasting long enough to fire back, and they blew great, gaping wounds in Nike's ceramic appliqués. Their Hellbores were far lighter than her own, but she had only one left, and scores of them fired back at her, pounding her towards destruction. Her infinite repeaters flashed and thundered, infantry AFVs and air-cav stingers blew apart or plunged from the sky in fiery rain, and screaming clouds of flechettes belched from her anti-personnel clusters. Her forward suspension took a direct hit, and she blew the crippled tread and advanced on bare bogies. A Panther broke from concealment directly in her path, fleeing desperately, and her course changed slightly as she rammed the smaller tank and crushed it like a toy.