Chapter 8
Regina Salvatore and Allen Shattuck stood on the outskirts of Landing and watched the miracle approach behind a blaze of light. It was a sight Salvatore had never seen before . . . and one Shattuck had expected never to see again: a Mark XXXIII Bolo, coming out of the darkness under Ararat’s three moons in the deep, basso rumble of its tracks and a cloud of bone-dry dust.
The mammoth machine stopped short of the bridge over the Euphrates River on the west side of Landing and pivoted precisely on its tracks. Its surviving main battery turrets traversed with a soft whine, turning their massive Hellbores to cover all western approach vectors as the dust of its passage billowed onward across the bridge. The Mayor heard her chief marshal sneeze as it settled over them, but neither cared about that, and their boot heels clacked on the wooden bridge planks as they walked towards the Bolo without ever taking their eyes from it.
A light-spilling hatch clanged open on an armored flank high above them. The opening looked tiny against the Bolo’s titanic bulk, but it was wide enough for Jackson and Rorie Deveraux to climb out it side-by-side. Rorie stayed where he was, waving to the newcomers, but Jackson swung down the exterior handholds with monkey-like agility. He dropped the last meter to land facing the Mayor and dusted his hands with a huge grin.
“Evening, Your Honor,” he said with a bobbing nod. “Evening, Marshal.”
“Jackson.” Salvatore craned her neck, peering up the duralloy cliff at Rorie. Shattuck said nothing for a moment, then shook his head and shoved his battered hat well back.
“I will be damned if I ever expected to see anything like this again,” he told Jackson softly. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Jackson! D’you realize what this means?”
“It means Shiva—that’s his name, Marshal: Shiva—just kicked some major league ass. That’s what it means!”
Something in Jackson’s voice jerked Shattuck’s head around, and the younger man gave back a step, suddenly uneasy before the marshal’s expression. Shattuck’s nostrils flared for an instant, and then he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. It wasn’t Jackson’s fault, he told himself. For all his importance to Ararat’s small Human community, Jackson was only a kid, and he hadn’t seen the horrors of the voyage here . . . or the worse ones of the war.
“And how many people did Shiva kill ‘kicking ass,’ Jackson?” the ex-Marine asked after a cold still moment.
“None,” Jackson shot back. “He killed Melconians, Marshal . . . and kept them from killing the only people on this planet!”
Shattuck started to reply sharply, then locked his jaw. There was no point arguing, and he’d seen too much of the same attitude during the war not to know it. Jackson was a good kid. If he’d had to wade through the mangled remains of his unit—or heard the all too Human screams of wounded and dying Melconians or seen the bodies of civilians, Human and Melconian alike, heaped in the streets of burning cities—then perhaps he would have understood what Shattuck had meant. And perhaps he wouldn’t have, either. The marshal had known too many men and women who never did, who’d been so brutalized by the requirements of survival or so poisoned by hatred that they actually enjoyed slaughtering the enemy.
And, Shattuck reminded himself grimly, if the Bolo had selected Jackson as its commander, perhaps it would be better for him to retain the armor of his innocence. There was only one possible option for the Humans of Ararat . . . and as Unit 1097-SHV’s commander, it would be Jackson Deveraux who must give the order.
“I’d invite you up to the command deck, Your Honor,” Jackson was speaking to Salvatore now, and his voice pulled Shattuck up out of his own thoughts, “but we’re operating from Command Two. That’s his secondary command deck,” he explained with a glance at Shattuck. “As you can see, it’s quite a climb to the hatch, but the hit that killed Shiva’s last Commander wrecked Command One.”
“But it’s still operational, isn’t it?” Salvatore asked urgently. “I mean, your radio message said it saved your steading.”
“Oh, he’s operational, Ma’am,” Jackson assured her, and looked up at the looming machine. “Please give the Mayor a status report, Shiva.”
“Unit One-Zero-Niner-Seven-SHV of the Line is presently operational at seven-eight-point-six-one-one percent of base capability,” a calm, pleasant tenor voice responded. “Current Reserve Power level is sufficient for six-point-five-one hours at full combat readiness.”
The Mayor took an involuntary step back, head turning automatically to look at Shattuck, and the ex-Marine gave her a grim smile. “Don’t worry, Regina. Seventy-eight percent of a Mark XXXIII’s base capability ought to be able to deal with anything short of a full division of manned armor, and if they had that kind of firepower, we’d already be dead.”
“Good.” Salvatore drew a deep breath, then nodded sharply. “Good! In that case, I think we should consider just what to do about whatever they do have.”
“Shiva?” Jackson said again. “Could you give the Mayor and the Marshal your force estimate, please?”
Once again, Shattuck heard that dangerous, excited edge in Jackson’s voice—the delight of a kid with a magnificent new toy, eager to show off all it can do—and then the Bolo replied.
“Current Enemy forces on Ishark consist of one Star Stalker-class heavy cruiser, accompanied by two Vanguard-class Imperial Marine assault transports, and seven additional transport ships of various Imperial civil designs.” Shattuck had stiffened at the mention of a heavy cruiser, but he relaxed with an explosive release of breath as Shiva continued calmly. “All Enemy warships have been stripped of offensive weapons to maximize passenger and cargo capacity. Total Melconian presence on this planet is approximately nine hundred and forty-two Imperial military personnel and eight thousand one hundred and seven non-military personnel. Total combat capability, exclusive of the area defense weapons retained by the cruiser Starquest, consists of ten Kestrel-class assault shuttles, one Surt-class medium combat mech, twelve Eagle-class scout cars, eight Hawk-class light recon vehicles, and one understrength infantry battalion.”
“That sounds like a lot,” Salvatore said, looking at Shattuck once more, and her quiet voice was tinged with anxiety, but Shattuck only shook his head.
“In close terrain where they could sneak up on him, they could hurt him—maybe even take him out. But not if he knows they’re out there . . . and not if he’s the one attacking. Besides, those are all manned vehicles. They can’t have many vets with combat experience left to crew them, whereas Shiva here—” He gestured up at the war-scarred behemoth, and Salvatore nodded.
“Nope,” the marshal went on, “if these puppies have any sense, they’ll haul ass the instant they see Shiva coming at them.”
“They can’t, Marshal,” Jackson put in, and Shattuck and Salvatore cocked their heads at him almost in unison. “Their ships are too worn out. This is as far as they could come.”
“Are you sure about that?” Shattuck asked.
“Shiva is,” Jackson replied. “And he got the data from their own computers.”
“Damn,” Shattuck said very, very softly, and it was Jackson’s turn to cock his head. The marshal gazed up the moons for several, endless seconds, and then, finally, he sighed.
“That’s too bad, Jackson,” he said. “Because if they won’t—or can’t—run away, there’s only one thing we can do about them.”
My audio sensors carry the conversation between Chief Marshal Shattuck and my Commander to me, and with it yet another echo of the past. Once again I hear Colonel Mandrell, the Eighty-Second’s CO, announcing the order to begin Operation Ragnarok. I hear the pain in her voice, the awareness of where Ragnarok will lead, what it will cost. I did not understand her pain then, but I understand now . . . and even as I hear Colonel Mandrell in Chief Marshal Shattuck’s voice, so I hear a nineteen-year-old Diego Harigata in my new Commander’s. I hear the confidence of youthful ignorance, the sense of his own immortality. I hear the Diego who once believed—as I did—in the honor of the regiment and the nobility of our purpose as Humanity’s defenders. And I remember the hard, hating warrior who exulted with me as we massacred terrified civilians, and I am not the Shiva that I was at the end, but the one I was in the beginning, cursed with the memories of Diego’s end, and my own.
I listen, and the pain twists within me, for I know—oh, how well I know!—how this must end.
“You mean you want to just kill them all?” Rorie Deveraux asked uneasily. “Just like that? No negotiation—not even an offer to let them leave?”
“I didn’t say I liked it, Rorie,” Allen Shattuck said grimly. “I only said we don’t have a choice.”
“Of course we have a choice! We’ve got a Bolo, for God’s sake! They’d be crazy to go up against that kind of firepower—you said so yourself!”
“Sure they would,” Shattuck agreed, “but can we depend on their not being crazy? Look at it, Rorie. The very first thing they did was send nuke-armed shuttles after the nearest steading—yours, I might add—and Shiva says they’ve got at least ten Kestrels left. Well, he can only be in one place at a time. If they figure out where that place is and work it right, they can take out two-thirds of our settlements, maybe more, in a single strike. He can stop any of them that come within his range, but he can’t stop the ones that don’t, and for all we know, we’re all that’s left of the entire Human race!” The marshal glared at the elder Deveraux, furious less with Rorie than with the brutal logic of his own argument. “We can’t take a chance, Rorie, and Shiva says they couldn’t move on even if we ordered them to.” The older man looked away, mouth twisting. “It’s them or us, Rorie,” he said more quietly. “Them or us.”
“Your Honor?” Rorie appealed to Mayor Salvatore, but his own voice was softer, already resigned, and she shook her head.
“Allen’s right, Rorie. I wish he wasn’t, but he is.”
“Of course he is!” Jackson sounded surprised his brother could even consider hesitating. “If it hadn’t been for Shiva, they’d already have killed you, Ma, Pa—our entire family! Damn right it’s them or us, and I intend for it to be them!” Rorie looked into his face for one taut moment, then turned away, and Jackson bared his teeth at Shattuck.
“One squashed Melconian LZ coming up, Marshal!” he promised, and turned back to the exterior ladder rungs.
My new commander slides back into Command Two and I cycle the hatch shut behind him. I know what he is about to say, yet even while I know, I hope desperately that I am wrong.
He seats himself in the crash couch and leans back, and I feel what a Human might describe as a sinking sensation, for his expression is one I have seen before, on too many Humans. A compound of excitement, of fear of the unknown, of determination . . . and anticipation. I have never counted the faces I have seen wear that same expression over the years. No doubt I could search my memory and do so, but I have no desire to know their number, for even without counting, I already know one thing.
It is an expression I have never seen outlast its wearer’s first true taste of war.
“All right, Shiva.” Jackson heard the excitement crackle in his own voice and rubbed his palms up and down his thighs. The soft hum of power and the vision and fire control screens, the amber and red and green of telltales, and the flicker of readouts enveloped him in a new world. He understood little of it, but he grasped enough to feel his own unstoppable power. He was no longer a farmer, helpless on a lost world his race’s enemy might someday stumble over. Now he had the ability to do something about that, to strike back at the race which had all but destroyed his own and to protect Humanity’s survivors, and the need to do just that danced in his blood like a fever. “We’ve got a job to do,” he said. “You’ve got a good fix on the enemy’s position?”
“Affirmative, Commander,” the Bolo replied.
“Do we have the juice to reach them and attack?”
“Affirmative, Commander.”
“And you’ll still have enough reserve to remain operational till dawn?”
“Affirmative, Commander.”
Jackson paused and quirked an eyebrow. There was something different about the Bolo, he thought. Some subtle change in its tone. Or perhaps it was the way Shiva spoke, for his replies were short and terse. Not impolite or impatient, but . . . .
Jackson snorted and shook his head. It was probably nothing more than imagination coupled with a case of nerves. Shiva was a veteran, after all. He’d seen this all before. Besides, he was a machine, however Human he sounded.
“All right, then,” Jackson said crisply. “Let’s go pay them a visit.”
“Acknowledged, Commander,” the tenor voice said, and the stupendous war machine turned away from Landing. It rumbled off on a west-northwest heading, and the people of Landing stood on rooftops and hillsides, watching until even its brilliant running lights and vast bulk had vanished once more into the night.