For the moment it wasn't pouring rain. Jennifer Harom dropped off the last rung of the ladder onto the damp sand and stretched, glad to be out of the massive pulverizer that towered fifty meters into the air above her. Her overalls were damp from the sweat and the light breeze felt good against her skin, cooling her and clearing her head. The jungle greenery pulped by the big machine had a chlorophyll and vinegar smell, like a Caesar salad.
The ground under her feet shook as the grinder tore into the earth, ultrasonic cannon aimed downward, tearing sand and gravel apart at a molecular level, turning it into the uniform, black ore-sand that crunched under her boots. Despite the violence and power of the pulverizer, active noise dampeners shielded the machine from its own power, reducing the sound to a low rumble, and incidentally keeping the crew from going deaf. She could have even heard the noises from the jungle around her, if the machine hadn't frightened away every animal within five kilometers.
Confident that she was safe from the local predators, she scrambled up a nearby bank and looked back at the big machine, floating on its contra-gravs a few meters above the ground, a duralloy thundercloud lost down from heaven and pretty damned pissed about it. Behind it a two-hundred-meter swath of freshly created ore-sand stretched back up the valley, waiting for the processing machines that followed a kilometer behind. Keeping the beast running, keeping it from ripping itself apart, was a big job, but her three co-workers were more than capable of covering for her while she got a little fresh air. Getting out of the control cabin in the middle of a shift was against the rules, especially while the grinder was in operation, but they all did it. Staying cramped into that small control cabin for ten hours straight would drive anyone nuts. Besides, who cared as long as the pulverizer kept tearing up the ground on this godforsaken planet.
She stepped toward the edge of the jungle. The wide-leafed plants and tall trees towered over her like a wall. At the moment the grinder was tearing a wide path up a sandbar beside a small river. When they reached the end of the valley they would turn around and come back down, cutting another swath beside the one they were working on now, passing the processing machines somewhere along the way. The pulverizer's downward-pointing sound cannon dug the ground to a depth of twenty meters and could chew up rocks as if they were cotton candy.
Eventually all the jungle would be gone from this valley as they mined the saganium, but that would take at least a year and she planned on being gone, headed back into civilized space, long before then. Ten years from now this valley would be twice as deep and wide as it was now, a scar big enough to see from orbit. There were ten colonies and more than double that number of mining sites spread around the planet. This planet, with its smells and heat was barely worth inhabiting now. She had no doubt that in ten years the place would be nothing more than a large pile of rock orbiting a weak sun.
She dropped down onto the ground and rested her back against a boulder. As the machine slowly moved away from her, the Caesar salad smell was already fading, replaced by a stench like mildew, old socks and rotting garbage. Now, after two weeks, she was starting to get used to the smells of this ugly planet. Not all the way yet, but enough that they didn't make her choke anymore. It was ironic that the only way to get a good smell out of the jungle was to blast it to hell, and even that didn't last.
She took a deep breath and let the solidness of the ground ease the tension of a long morning inside the pulverizer. She would take a few minutes, then get back to work. They were pushing the grinder as fast as it would go, and she had every intention of getting the bonus promised them if they made the cliff at the head of the valley in two weeks. The more money she made, the quicker she could head out of here, get back to school, finish the degree in architecture. Then all this labor would just become a bad memory, laughed at over drinks and a good meal.
Suddenly the smell of rot engulfed her even more strongly, and a branch cracked just behind her.
"What—?"
She sprang to her feet and spun around.
For a moment her mind didn't register what she was seeing. Along the edge of the jungle were at least twenty massive alien creatures. For a moment she thought that they were predators of some kind, that she'd been wrong about the sound scaring them away. The things were vaguely humanoid, small heads mounted on massive, fur-covered bodies. The fur was black and scattered with bold, irregular white spots. The things hunched slightly as they spotted her, their heads shifting nervously as they looked at her, first with one side-mounted eye, then the other, like massive birds. The lips on their wide mouths looked hard, beaklike, adding to the impression that these things were somehow in the bird family.
At first, she didn't realize they wore clothes, their black loincloths and harnesses blended so well with their fur. It was only when she saw the primitive hand weapons, curved knives, long blades mounted on shafts to create something like a cross between a spear and a broadsword, that she was sure she was dealing with intelligent creatures. The biggest of them also carried a long, heavy-looking, leather bag over his shoulder, though he lacked the spear/sword that the others carried.
Natives? The damned survey hadn't said anything about natives. She tried to remember something, anything that she'd been taught about first contact in school, but it was all gone, vanished down the same mental sinkhole as hyperspatial geometry and most of her Earth history. She held up her hands, trying to indicate she was unarmed. "Where did you come from?" she asked, managing to choke down the fear. That was stupid. Like they could understand her. Why had she left her side arm back in the pulverizer? It was regulation that she always carry it, just as it was regulation that they stay inside their machine for the entire shift. But there weren't supposed to be any aliens on this planet, especially aliens as big as these beasts.
The creature closest to her just turned its head from side to side, its birdlike black eyes staring down at her with great intensity, even if she couldn't read the emotion behind it. The creature showed no sign that it understood her. Of course, it wouldn't.
She eased a step back, trying not to move too suddenly. The smallest of the creatures, still a good three heads taller than she was, stepped forward, lowered his spear-weapon, and casually jabbed it at her. She cursed and jumped back, feeling the dull impact of the weapon against her side, just below the rib cage.
She cursed again, more angry than afraid. Her side hurt, and without thinking she touched herself, feeling something hot and wet on her fingers. She looked at her bloody fingers in shock. "You cut me, you bastards!"
The alien watched her intently, still utterly unreadable to her. Then it made a noise, a hissy, rasping noise, punctuated by clicks of those hard lips. It was talking.
The others joined in, all chattering at once.
She knew without a doubt she was going to have to make a break for it, and while they were talking seemed as good a time as any. She just hoped the others up in the grinder control cabin could see what was happening out here and have the door open when she came up the ladder.
She bolted, skittering back down the slope toward the waiting ladder. After twenty steps, she dared to glance back, and was surprised to see that the aliens weren't following. Instead, the big one had lowered his bag to the ground, and the others gathered around as he opened it and pulled out a large, cylindrical object made of metal. She had no idea what the object was, only that it clearly hadn't been made by a bunch of savages in loincloths. She stopped and clutched her injured side, trying to figure out what they were doing.
The big creature hoisted the cylinder up onto his shoulder, one eye pressing awkwardly against a rearward-facing eyepiece that seemed totally out of position for its anatomy. Then he turned toward the pulverizer. The other natives chattered excitedly.
If she didn't know any better, she'd think it was some kind of energy weapon. But that couldn't be. The rest of these creatures looked primitive, and none of them were carrying anything but swords and knives. Maybe they'd just found the weapon somehow, didn't even know what it did. Maybe they just wanted to see the pretty colors in the sighting system.
"Hey!" she shouted, stepping back slowly. "Don't be aiming that thing at my machine!"
The small alien barked something. From the tone, it might have been an expletive, then started moving towards her, stafflike sword raised. The big one snapped something else at the little one, but was ignored.
The large alien again lifted the energy weapon. For a moment she hesitated between running and trying to watch. Then it was decided for her. The flash nearly blinded her.
She felt the shock wave in her rib cage and staggered back. It was a plasma cannon.
The small alien paused, looking, as she was, at the pulverizer.
The cannon had been powerful, but the big mining machine was built to take punishment— Then she saw the smoke coming from the emitters over the sonic cannon. They'd taken out the active noise cancellation. She felt it first through her feet, like a pipe organ hitting a low note, building in intensity. Instinctively she covered her ears, knowing how little good it would do. The pulverizer was shaking now, ripples running through its metal sides. Shut down, shut down! What was wrong with her crew?
Then she saw someone on one of the catwalks near the control room. She squinted against the sky. Not one of her people. Another alien, and it carried something in one hand. It tossed the object down to the others. It was round. It bounced in the sand and rolled to a stop at the big one's taloned feet.
It was a head. She caught a glimpse of Vanderhaven's blonde hair, and felt her last meal fighting to come back up.
Then the sound came, full blown, like needles in her eardrums, distracting her even from the horror of what she had just seen. She fell to her knees in pain.
The pulverizer was tearing itself apart from the inside, shedding hull plating and external fittings in a gentle rain as it continued its blind way down the valley. The aliens watched, seemingly unbothered by the sound. The big one raised the weapon again, aiming at the midsection where the power core now stood revealed by peeling hull. She couldn't believe they knew what they were doing, but they clearly did.
He fired again. The power core exploded, not in a single blast, but like a string of huge firecrackers angling down through the hull toward the sonic cannon. She watched the machine, her friends, and every hope she had of earning her way off this rock, plow into the riverbank, sending up a shower of sand, smaller explosions sending shudders through its flame-engulfed hull.
Her friends were dead, and if she didn't run, she was going to be as well. While the aliens were still occupied watching the machine burn, she bolted, staggering as she slipped in the loose sand.
She never saw how the small one noticed her, never heard him as he made pursuit. She didn't even know the alien was there until the talons closed around the back of her neck, smashing her face down into the ore-sand.
She struggled weakly, called out, barely able to hear her own voice. The creature rolled her over effortlessly, the point of the alien's blade centimeters from her face.
She fought, but the talons on the creature's feet held her while it reached down to grab her hair and yank it back hard.
Her hearing started to come back, just in time as the alien screamed and flashed toward her neck. And this time—this time she understood the alien's meaning completely.
Victory.
Tyrus Ogden stood on a catwalk that crossed the roof of the vast vehicle hangar. On the floor below, a space big enough to park a Concordiat cruiser of the line with room to spare, a half dozen huge mining machines were being assembled or repaired. Voices echoed through the vast space, sometimes shouted instructions, sometimes, eerily, a whisper relayed, as though by some acoustic wormhole, from a hundred meters away. Power tools chattered, buzzed, and roared. Brilliant flashes from a dozen different exotic welding methods cast colorful shadows on the walls. The place smelled of ozone, hot metal, machine lubricant, and just a little of sweat.
For Tyrus it should have been just another job. It could have been any world, literally. Big as the building was, it was a standard prefab that he'd seen on a dozen planets. But he hadn't asked to come here, hadn't planned to drag his family to this jungle hellhole of a mining colony. And most of all, he hadn't planned on the machine whose superstructure towered up from the floor, ending only a few meters below the catwalk. It was the machine beneath his feet that made the job different. He looked down at the gleaming durachrome hull, the ranks of two-meter-wide treads, the main turrets, each bigger than any house he'd ever lived in.
"Mr. Ogden," a man's voice, high and nasal, called from behind him.
Tyrus turned at the sound of dress shoes clattering on metal grate. The man walking towards him was thin, dark, average height, dressed in an executive suit wholly inappropriate to the environment. Tyrus recognized him from previous holo conversations. "Dyson, isn't it?"
Dyson shoved out his hand, and Tyrus shook it without enthusiasm. Company man.
"I see you're settling right in." He made a sweeping gesture to the machine below. "Like our new mining machine?"
"It's a Bolo, Dyson." He looked down, but not at the machine. "You shouldn't be wearing shoes like that up here. You slip, it's a long way down."
Dyson looked nervously down at his own feet. "I didn't know."
"I'm sure."
Dyson stepped cautiously up to the railing and looked over. "I do know about that, though. I signed the purchase order. It's a Prescott 4800 surface excavator, the first of its kind."
"It's a Bolo, Dyson."
Dyson looked uncomfortable. "Well—it's that too. A converted Bolo actually, an old Mark XX . . . I think, maybe a XXI. I don't know about those things. I hear Prescott found a whole regiment of them rusting in a scrap yard on some moon somewhere."
Tyrus looked at the shining sweep of the hull and felt his mind slipping back to another place and time, a place of fire, a time of war. "Bolos don't rust. After a few centuries on a planet like this, they might develop a surface patina. But they don't rust, and they don't bleed, and they don't ever, ever die."
"Excuse me?"
He looked at Dyson. "That's why they diverted me here, isn't it? Why they dragged me and my family into what amounts to a combat zone. I've had combat experience."
Dyson nodded. "This situation has developed very quickly and unexpectedly. The 4800's were already ordered as part of a trial program. You were already in the sector. You have the skills we needed. And you—know about Bolos."
"I've fought on the same side as Bolos, Dyson. That's a whole different thing. Maybe Bolo commanders are comfortable with those things, but I was infantry, and I never served with a man who wasn't rattled by them, who didn't spend as much time looking over his shoulder at his own Bolos as he did looking at the enemy line. What in heaven's name made you want to convert one into a blasted tractor?"
Dyson was starting to look annoyed. "I told you, we bought it, we didn't think it up. You've heard the losses we've experienced here. Three machines just last month. Out away from the colonies and the fixed defenses, they're essentially vulnerable against even light weapons. We've taken to issuing pulse rifles to all our crews, welded some makeshift armor to the control cabs, but the losses continue. These aliens—natives—whatever they are, somehow didn't show up on our surveys, so we never imagined it would be an issue. But this," he waved at the Bolo again, "was marketed as a solution for mining on 'hostile worlds.' They simply don't get much more hostile than this. The rest of our machines are vulnerable, but the Prescott 4800—"
"The Bolo."
"Whatever . . . It can take the kind of attacks we've been experiencing. We can send it into the most isolated and dangerous areas with impunity. They won't be able to hurt it, and maybe we can learn something. Learn how to protect the rest of our equipment."
Tyrus cursed under his breath. "You have no idea of the trouble you've caused me personally, bringing me here. I suppose you want me to work this beast into the maintenance rotation here?"
Dyson looked away. "Actually, we already have a pretty good maintenance chief at the colony. We were hoping that you'd run the 4800 for us."
Tyrus blinked his eyes in disbelief. "You want me to command a Bolo?"
Whitestar shifted the hand-forged blade in his hand, feeling the comfortable way his clawlike fingers held the grip, the natural way that the handle cradled against the long bones of his hand. It was a good blade, good balance, a weapon he understood, one that became an extension of his arm. The knife pleased him, made him glad to be alive. The weapons provided by the Ones Above were powerful, but clumsy and unnatural. Only with a blade in his hand did he feel like a fresh-hatched warrior again.
The afternoon breeze ruffled his fur and carried the smell of wood smoke from a nearby burrow. He was dimly aware of his fellow clansmen gathering around the circle, clicking their jaws in rhythm, the ancient ceremony of challenge. Some part of his mind dimly registered all this, cataloged it, filtered it for any undetected threat, but his focus, his combat-eye, was entirely on the smaller Tersae across the circle. His name was Warrior Twostone, and he was trying with all his might to kill Whitestar, his clan-lord.
Twostone lunged, his long, curved blade flashing in the dappled sunlight that filtered through the trees.
Agile for his greater size, Whitestar turned away from the thrust, hooked Twostone's blade with his own and pulled, throwing the warrior off balance. He brought his foot around and kicked Twostone in the back, his talons drawing blood.
Twostone staggered for a moment, but quickly caught himself, turning, knife held high in a gesture of defiance. He turned his head at right angles to Whitestar, focusing one eye on the lord, and a sound came from his throat, a low chattering that in the Tersae was an expression of amusement. In context it was a sign of continued calm and reason, despite his wounds. The Tersae blood ran hot. A warrior could too easily lose themselves in that heat, forget the mission, forget their clan-brothers, and waste their lives on the battlefield. A good warrior knew how to maintain the balance, even when their own blood painted the enemy's blade.
You are truly a fine warrior, Twostone. It will be a shame to lose you.
The two circled, each looking for some weakness in their opponent. Finally, Whitestar simply grew tired of looking. He feinted an attack causing Twostone to step backwards, then again, and again, never letting the warrior find balance, focusing his attention on Whitestar's blade. Then Whitestar struck, not with his blade, but with a flying kick, his talons digging into Twostone's blade-arm, pushing it aside. He squeezed, feeling skin tear beneath his claws, until the blade clattered to the forest floor, then released, twisted in midair to strike with his blade, bringing it against Twostone's throat. He held the blade there and he grabbed Twostone's arm and spun him around.
Twostone ended up with his back against Whitestar's left shoulder, the knife tight against his skin. "My life is my lord's," he gasped, "my blood is my lord's. Take them, in the name of the Ones Above."
"I take your life," responded Whitestar, "I take your blood. I give you back your blood. I give you back your life, Sacred Warrior Twostone, to serve the Ones Above." He lowered the knife, stepped in front of Twostone, and held it across his own chest in salute.
Twostone bowed, folding his arms behind his back like a new hatchling, a gesture of extreme supplication and humility. "How may my unworthy life serve the Ones Above?"
"Rise, Twostone. You have been bested by your lord, but you fought honorably, and well. You are worthy. Tonight we strike the devils in their nests. Tonight you will carry the Fist of the Ones Above. We will barter your life for a thousand and twenty-four of the enemy's lives."
Twostone nodded his head sharply in gratitude.
"Go to your fire, and we will speak later." He turned to the circle of observers. "Make way for the Sacred Warrior!" The circle parted and Twostone stepped through, and with that, the ceremony was ended. The crowd immediately began to disperse. A few looked disappointed that no more blood had been spilled, a few others paused to compliment Whitestar's skill and prowess.
Only old Scarbeak lingered at his side as Whitestar headed back to the Lord's Burrow. "You should take a new name, my lord. 'Bloodtalon' would suit you well."
"Such a name would only fire the young warriors, old one. I fight too many challenges as it is. Tonight our Great War begins. I should be reviewing our plans, not holding a knife to my own warrior's throat."
"So speaks the lord. I forgot for a moment the recent challenge of your eldest hatchling. It was thoughtless of me. It pains one to take blood from one's own brood, or one's own clan."
Whitestar dismissed him with a click of his jaw. "You meant only to compliment me, old one. I did what had to be done, and with luck, Blackspike will yet recover and take my place as lord of the clan."
They walked past the stream, where young females soaked weaver-vines and beat them between rocks to extract the useful fibers. A few young males crouched, watching them cautiously from a distance.
"You don't know these young ones, elder. The fire burns strong in them. They have no wisdom at the fight." He was not speaking of his son, but he could have been.
"Wisdom comes with age."
"Then it is not a lord's destiny to be wise, elder. One day I will be too slow at a challenge, and—" he hissed and made the motion of a slicing blade with his hand— "that will be the end of me."
"Wisdom is relative, lord. You are wise enough for what you do."
"And you, elder? Is the Fist of the Ones Above ready?"
"The sacred connections are made, the sacred modules all show the light-of-function. The Ones Above promise that it will cut deep into the belly of the human devils. The explosion should be spectacular."
"Let's hope so, Scarbeak. Twostone is a fine warrior. I wouldn't like to waste his life on a fool's mission."
The first sign of real trouble came when the hangar lights flickered, followed by the sound of a distant boom. Tyrus looked up from where he was crouched, inspecting one of the Bolo's two-meter-wide treads, and wondered if the area was prone to thunderstorms. At the same moment, a quiver seemed to go through the huge machine, as though all of its secondary systems were being cycled through their test cycles at once.
Tyrus shook his head and went back to his inspection, knowing as he did that it was pointless make-work. It was late. He should be home, helping the boys unpack. Fact was, he didn't want to see Lee, and he strongly suspected that she didn't want to see him. They'd had a fight that afternoon. She'd never wanted him to take the transfer to the Taft Colonies, even though it was the only way to keep his job with the company. When they were diverted to mining colonies on Thule, she'd blamed him. Taft at least had alien ruins for her to explore, some chance for her to continue her often-interrupted career as an archeologist. Taft had an established family environment for the kids. Thule was one step up from a shanty camp, a sprawling, walled, cluster of prefabs, brothels and miner bars. A cold feeling of dread knotted in his gut. He was going to lose them. He knew it.
The lights flickered again. More thunder. Or something.
"Unit DRK moving to status two alert mode. Awaiting instructions."
Tyrus looked up and blinked. A hundred meters away, a small crew was overhauling a sonic pulverizer cannon. Nobody else was close. Another one of those acoustic tricks the hangar was famous for?
"Unit DRK awaiting instructions."
The sound seemed almost to be coming from inside his head. Beamed sonics? He looked at the gleaming curve of the Bolo's hull, and spotted an emitter rod aimed straight at him. He shivered, somehow suddenly feeling like a rabbit in the hunter's crosshairs. "You can talk?" Of course it could talk. All Bolos could. But the book said this one had been lobotomized or something, placed into a standby mode that made it as passive and stupid as a ground-car. There were recorded voice responses, but it certainly shouldn't have been initiating speech.
"You are Tyrus Ogden. I am keyed to respond to your biometric profile. Awaiting orders, commander."
He frowned. "I'm not your commander, I'm your operator. You're a mining machine, a tractor."
"I am Bolo, Mark XXIV of the line, activated 2970 at the Fifield Armorworks, New Prescott Colony. My hull designation is DRK. I am commonly addressed by my commanding officers as 'Dirk.'"
More thunder. The overhaul crew stopped their work and began to talk rapidly among themselves. "Go back to sleep, Dirk."
"I cannot. Threat level is increasing. Moving to status one alert mode. Full Combat Reflex Mode is now on standby."
He dropped his tools and stood. "What threat? The thunder?" This was just the sort of thing he was afraid of. You can't make a house pet out of a trained attack dog, and you can't turn a Bolo into a mining machine. This thing could go on a rampage if he didn't get it calmed down. "It's just thunder. Natural, atmospheric, electrical discharges. It's no threat to us."
On the hull behind him the pilot's hatch, as thick and heavy as a vault door, swung smoothly open with a whir. "Commander, I suggest you enter the control room and prepare for combat."
"It's thunder, I tell you. Power down now! That's an order!"
"Negative."
Tyrus cursed. He had to talk to Dyson. Maybe he had an override code or something that would shut this beast down. He could use his wristcom, but the Bolo would be listening, and somehow, that didn't seem like a good idea. He was suddenly aware that he was standing on the tracks. If the machine decided to move, he could be pulped before he had time to scream.
He scrambled down from the side of the mining machine and headed toward the side door of the maintenance area, wiping grease off his hands as he ran. He reached the shops at the edge of the hangar just as an explosion rocked the far end of the hangar. Mechanics and operators were suddenly shouting, running everywhere.
"Full Combat Reflex Mode activat—" the Bolo's beamed voice was suddenly cut off. His first instinct was that the Bolo had gone rogue and fired off one of its weapons. But the big machine seemed inert, and he couldn't imagine that they'd left it with functional weapons. He realized he could still hear distant gunfire and explosions. They were under attack! The aliens he'd been told about must have somehow taken out the colony defenses without a shot, without setting off the general alarm. But how could a bunch of jungle savages know how to sabotage screen generators and autoturrets?
He spotted a rack of pulse rifles on an office wall and grabbed one of them. Just in time, as a furry, goggle-eyed humanoid giant rounded the corner and swung some kind of sword at him. Instinctively he swung the barrel around, his finger squeezing on the trigger into full auto mode. The first shot took the sword weapon off at the handle. The second tore a hunk out of the side of the alien's neck, the third ripped a hole in its right shoulder, sending a spray of something dark, wet, and hot across his face.
It fell, but two more appeared behind it shouting and clicking loudly. He took them down almost as easily as the first.
Another one. This one had something small and metal held awkwardly in its hand. A violet laser flash sent him scrambling behind a desk. A hole appeared in the plastic kick panel a few inches from his head, as the alien fired blindly.
Tyrus tightened his grip on the rifle, tried to imagine where the alien might have gone since he last saw it, and sprang from behind the desk already firing. The alien was standing no more than a meter from him. They were both caught by surprise, but the alien was dead, his chest exploding like a ripe melon.
Tyrus retched at the smell of burned hair and sweet smell of roasted alien flesh. He spotted the hand weapon on the floor where the alien had dropped it. Hoping he didn't accidentally activate it, he shoved the weapon in his pocket.
He put his back against the office wall, watching the door, and tried his wristcom. It didn't work. Maybe they were jamming, or had disabled the relay towers. He had to figure some way to get home, defend the kids. His own ground-car was parked at the far end of the hangar, but he spotted a man-door in the office wall behind him that probably led outside. There might be company vehicles there that would respond to his employee unikey. He scooted to the door, opened it a crack to make sure things were clear, and stepped outside. What he saw nearly tore him apart.
The colony was located in a small valley, with the hangar on high ground at the south end. He could look down on at least half the structures there. Everywhere he looked there were flames, explosions, and laser flashes.
He could see the defense turrets along the ridgelines surrounding the valley, all pointed outwards, intact, and inert. At the far end of the valley hundreds of white-on-black aliens boiled out of the jungle like ants. The family apartments were to his left, near the shuttle port. For a moment, he held out some hope. The buildings were still intact, away from the main thrust of the aliens' charge. Then a plasma cannon began firing from a rooftop to the west, blasting the buildings one by one. Behind them, an atmospheric shuttle lifted off, slowly, as though it were heavily loaded. At least somebody was getting away. The shuttle might be able to make it to one of the other colonies. Maybe his kids were on it. Please.
He hoped they had gotten away, but he couldn't take the chance. He had to find out for himself. He looked frantically around. A line of company utility vans were parked a dozen yards down the building. He could take one of them.
The missile streaked across his vision so quickly that he almost didn't see it, and ripped into the side of the hanger next to the vans. The force of the explosion ripped outwards throwing the vans around like a child's blocks, while leaving him relatively unscathed. He could see a line of aliens running up the hill towards him. He ducked back into the office.
"You need to return to my command compartment," said the voice in his head. The Bolo was back. "My exact status is unknown, but I am unable to actively protect you at this time. You must return to me."
The Bolo! If he could get the damned thing working, the small arms he'd seen wouldn't touch it. He could make his way across the colony, rescue his wife and kids. If they were still alive. He ran back into the hanger, only to see dozens of aliens running through the hangar.
He lifted the rifle and started squeezing off shots, taking an extra instant each time to line up an alien and make the shot count. It felt more like murder than a battle. He'd fire and one alien would drop. He'd fire again and another alien would drop. Most of them had swords. He didn't see any other advanced weapons, but they had to be out there somewhere.
"Quickly," said the Bolo.
The aliens just kept coming as fast as Tyrus could shoot them, wave after wave. He moved slowly towards the Bolo, careful not to let the aliens sneak behind him. Then, abruptly, his rhythm was broken. There were no targets. He could hear them moving away.
Something was very wrong.
He stepped out from behind a welding machine onto the hangar floor. Twenty meters away, a metal cylinder sat on the floor, gleaming in the hangar's still functional emergency lights. He'd never seen anything like it before, but he had a pretty good guess. Bomb.
He sprinted towards the Bolo. Halfway there he tossed down the rifle. He could see the Bolo ahead, an emergency hatch opening in its flank, down between two of the giant boogie wheels. He gave it his last burst of speed and dived for the opening.
The rest happened in slow motion, as the shock wave caught him and hurled him through the hatch.
He could see the bulkhead coming at him, every weld and bolt of it, in sickening detail, but he could do nothing to stop it.
There should have been an impact, but there was only nothing.