Quickly the white light faded.

Then the shock wave ripped across the open plain, sending everything that wasn't a Bolo scampering for cover.

It was the moment the Bolos had been told to wait for. All of them elevated their weapons and began firing at the Kezdai fleet, h.e.l.lbores and h.e.l.lrails alike.

Vatsha was dead. She had not made a sound, but at some moment when Rejad had not been looking, she had performed the ritual of Duca.s.s, shutting off the flow of blood to her heart. It was a traditional method of avoiding torture. Or shame.

Rejad leapt to the deck to better see out the forward ports. Even as the fleet scattered, they were being hit, one by one. Rejad shielded his eyes as a reactor blew. "Do we have the main drive working?"

There was panic in the captain's eyes. "We are on thrusters only, my commander. The damage is severe." Then his eyes went wide as the ship shuddered.

Rejad glanced at a master systems display showing a profile of the ship, and watched it go black from the back end to the front, each new section of blackness timed to a louder and closer explosion.

As a child, Rejad had witnessed a favorite uncle beheaded. He had, in his more morbid moments, wondered what it would be like, to see your own body as your head fell toward the sand, knowing you were already dead.

Now he knew.

"Does anyone have any idea exactly what has happened?" Veck asked, clearly frustrated.

General Kiel laughed. "Well, from the looks of it, the entire Kezdai reserve force has been destroyed by some sort of s.p.a.ce bombardment. The fleet has been crippled and is on the run, and the ground forces are in full retreat with no sign of stopping."

"But what happened?" Veck demanded.

Keil shrugged. "I have no idea. But as I said, Lieutenant, trust the Bolos. I don't know how they pulled this one off, but always trust the Bolos."

"Well," Veck said, "we still have a lot of work to do if we're going to chase the Kezdai forces all the way back to the s.p.a.ceport at Reims. We had better get to it."

"Of that I have no doubt," Kiel said.

For a moment he listened to the news coming over his headset from Kal, then smiled.

"Lieutenant, you can take a minute, can't you?"

Veck looked at him with a puzzled frown.

"Kal has picked up a injured pa.s.senger and has been administering emergency treatment. The pa.s.senger is now awake, and would like to speak to you."

"To me?" Veck asked. "Why me?"

"Just talk to him and quit asking so many questions," Kiel said, laughing.

Veck opened the channel.

To Kiel, the look of shock and joy and relief mixed on the young lieutenant's face was something he would remember for a very long time.

On the planet Delas, the first day of nighwinter was a time of both celebration and mourning. It was a time of celebration that the Kezdai were gone, their last ship having disappeared into subs.p.a.ce, their equipment abandoned and rusting all over the southern continent.

It was a time of mourning for the one-point-two million civilian casualties, and the many cities and towns reduced to rubble and ash.

It was a time of celebration for the heroes of the conflict.

And it was a time of mourning for those fallen in defense of humanity.

Of those who lived to see it, few would ever forget the parade of Bolos into Reims, banners flying over their blackened and scarred hulls, the anthem of the Concordiat sounding from their loudspeakers.

They streamed onto the s.p.a.ceport ap.r.o.ns, pa.s.sing in review before the planetary governor and the commanding generals, finally to form ranks and stand at wait.

It was there, as the entire planet watched, that the brave were honored.

Among the curious events of that day included a Concordiat Medal of Honor given to a small boy, and a decoration for extraordinary valor, given to a Bolo that, according to the official record never arrived on Delas at all. According to that record, Bolo R-0012-ZGY of the Dinochrome Brigade was merely listed as missing in action.

It was later that same day, as the sun was setting over the ruins of Chancellorton, three-hundred and twenty kilometers to the north of Reims, that a platoon of soldiers from the Dela.s.sian Defense Force's 19th Volunteer Regiment spotted a robo-mule, of the type often used by miners. The robo-mule had various pots and pans affixed to its upper deck, and crudely lettered on its side, using some sort of marker, were the words: BOLO BESSY 1198TH REG. DINOKROM BRIGADE.

The little vehicle pa.s.sed them on the dusty road, headed south, and they did not see it again.

Brothers William H. Keith, Jr.

[Click]

Input . . . boot-up procedure initiated. Resident operating system routines loaded.

Building in-memory directories. Initiating psychotronic array cascade.

Boot process and initiation sequencing complete. It has been 0.524 seconds since I was brought on-line, and situational data is flooding into my primary combat processing center at approximately 29.16 gigabytes per second. Alert status Yellow, Code Delta-two. An alert, then, rather than a combat situation. I expand my awareness, switching on external cameras and sensory data feeds.

I am where I was when I was powered down and deactivated, which is to say Bolo Storage Bay One of the Izra'il Field Armored Support Unit, 514th Regiment, Dinochrome Brigade. Camera feeds from remote emplaced scanners show typical Izra'ilian conditions outside the bay's flintsteel bunker walls-ice and snow broken by straggling growths of freezegorse and thermophilia, with the sawtooth loftiness of the crags and glaciers of the Frozen h.e.l.l Mountains on the horizon. It is local night, and The Prophet looms huge, swollen in star-rich blackness beneath the golden arch of the Bridge to Paradise.

The human names for these things, I sense, are rich with evocative imagery, but, as usual, their import is lost on me, save in the lingering awareness of something much greater than the words alone, forever beyond my grasp. My history archives long ago informed me that many of the names a.s.sociated with this world are linked with certain systems of human religious belief. Religion, either as spiritual solace or as epistemological investigation, is meaningless within my own worldview and existential context. I am a Bolo, Mark XXIV Model HNK of the Line. While I have no data either to support or discredit the objective reality of religious statements, they are for me null input.

I am far more concerned with the unfolding tactical situation that has initiated my retrieval from deep shutdown and storage; my internal clock, I am surprised to note, indicates the pa.s.sage of 95 years, 115 days, 6 hours, 27 minutes, 5.22 seconds since my last deactivation from full-alert status.

The situation must be desperate to compel Headquarters to reactivate me after so long a downtime period.

2.073 seconds have now elapsed since reactivation sequencing, and all processors are on-line, power flow is optimal at 34 percent, weapons systems read on-line and fully charged or loaded, battlescreens check out as activation ready and on standby, and all autodiagnostics indicate optimal combat readiness. QDC channels are activated, and I sense my counterpart, NDR of the Line, stirring as he wakes from his ninety-five-year sleep. This is unusual. Normally, under a Code Yellow Alert, only a single Bolo Combat Unit would be activated in order to a.s.sess the situation and initiate a coherent defense.

I pa.s.s the coded signal indicating status, then extend the range and sensitivity of my long-range sensors. I also recheck all communications channels, both encrypted and open. Logically, the local Combat Command Center will brief me on the situation, given time, but I admit to both curiosity and impatience.

What, I wonder, is the tactical situation I have awakened to after so long a sleep?

"What," Mustafa Khalid asked, angrily, "can you tell me about the tactical situation?"

Lieutenant Roger Martin looked up from the scanner display, startled. Consortium Facility governors did not talk to junior Concordiat officers, whatever the provocation. The fact that Colonel Lang was strictly a supply maven whose combat experience was limited to exchanges of pyrotechnic verbal force packages with his wife meant nothing. Chain-of-command protocol restricted discussions both of strategy and diplomacy to the upper echelons of command, which in a base as small as Iceh.e.l.l meant Thomas Lang.

Martin also knew, though, that Khalid required an answer. He was responsible for almost seventy thousand colonial civilians on Izra'il, and that was a responsibility he took d.a.m.ned seriously.

More seriously, Martin thought, than the responsibility Lang took for the three hundred Concordiat troops, technicians, and base support personnel within the Consortium Defense Command.

"They're Kezdai, sir," Martin said. "There are a h.e.l.l of a lot of them and they're not friendly. Don't know what I can tell you other than that."

"You could be wrong with that ID, Lieutenant," Colonel Lang said, his pinched face lengthening with his frown. "In fact, you'd better be wrong. The last time the Kezdai came through here, we almost lost Delas."

"ID is positive, sir. The ship configurations, their drive signatures, match the archived Kezdai data perfectly. We've counted thirty incoming ships already, and all on approach vectors to Izra'il." He looked up at the colonel. "My guess is that we're going to be neck deep in the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the next couple of hours."

"I'm not interested in guesses, Lieutenant. I want facts, and I want them now."

"Can your Bolos do anything, my friend?" Khalid asked.

The way he inflected the word your spoke volumes. The Consortium governor didn't like Lang; that much was common knowledge, the centerpiece of much gossip at the Allah-forsaken Prophet outpost. He knew he needed the military's help, but it sounded as though he was despairing of ever getting that help from Lang.

Perhaps he was grasping at straws, desperate for any positive news at all.

"I suppose," Martin said carefully, "that that depends on how much the Kezdai learned last time around. They know what they're up against now. They're tough and they're smart. I don't think they'd launch an a.s.sault of this size unless they were confident they could take on at least what they found themselves up against last time."

"Well, suppose you wake those dinosaurs of yours up," Lang said, "and put them out where they can do some good."

"Initialization and start-up sequencing for both units are complete, sir," he said, stung by Lang's sarcasm. "Hank reports full combat readiness. They're studying the tacsit now."

"Well, tell them to hurry the h.e.l.l up," Lang snapped. "If those are Kezdai, we are in deep trouble!"

You're telling me? Martin thought, face expressionless. At the moment he wasn't sure what worried him more-the incoming Kezdai invasion fleet, or the incompetence of his own CO.

It has been 23.93 seconds since we became fully operational, and we are still waiting for definitive input from the command center. Data feeds indicate that numerous incoming s.p.a.ce vessels appear to be vectoring for landings on Izra'il; indeed, the first landings have already taken place, on the ice plains east of the Frozen h.e.l.l Mountains.

I access the combat record archives within HQ's data libraries. A span of 95.31 years is long for a human; in Bolo terms, it is an eternity. What wars have been waged, what battles fought, in the intervening near-century?

The Prophet and its coterie of moons is relatively remote from major centers of Concordiat civilization. Closest are Angelrath, Korvan, and Delas, worlds on the rim of humankind's realm, hence distant from the political and governmental storms that most often lead to war. Beyond the Concordiat frontier in this sector, there is only the unexplored vastness of far-flung suns scattering in toward the Galactic center, and the cold, pale-smeared glow of the Firecracker Nebula.

Interesting. There is a reference in the library to an incursion some months ago by a formerly unknown alien species occupying at least several star systems in the general region of the nebula. They are called "Kezdai," a militant humanoid species possessed of a warrior ethic and philosophy. According to library records, their recent landing on Delas was repulsed by elements of the 491st Armored Regiment out of Angelrath, including two uprated Mark XXVIII Bolos of the old 39th Terran Lancers.

I note that the drive signatures of the starships vectoring toward Izra'il match those recorded for Kezdai vessels in the last incursion and a.s.sume, with 95+ percent certainty, that they are hostiles. I request permission to deploy orbit denial munitions.

"Sir," Lieutenant Martin said, "Bolo Hank is requesting weapons free on ODM. He's confirming those incoming boats as Kezdai."

"That's a negative!" Lang snapped. "We could have friendlies coming in on a landing approach vector."

"Sir, Andrew requests deployment orders."

"Tell those junk-heap mountains-" Lang stopped himself. "Negative," he said. "All units hold position."

Lieutenant Martin turned to face the colonel. "Sir, the inbound targets have been IDed with high probability as hostile. With respect, sir, we should deploy the Bolos before enemy air or s.p.a.ce strikes find them in their storage bunkers."

"Use 'em or lose 'em, eh?" Lang said, grinning. He shook his head. "Obsolete or not, those two clunkers are our only heavy artillery on this rock. I'm not going to deploy them until I'm certain I know what the enemy has in mind. Put them out there too soon and . . . phht!" He snapped his fingers. "They get zapped from s.p.a.ce, and we lose our only mobile artillery. No, thank you!"

"If those are troop transports inbound," Martin reminded him, "then the time and the place to stop them is now, in s.p.a.ce, before they hit dirt. They'll be a h.e.l.l of a lot harder to run down once they're loose on the surface."

"Thank you. Mr. Martin, but I do know something about strategy and tactics. We need to see what the Kedzees are up to. I mean to draw them out."

Martin and Khalid exchanged glances. Martin couldn't help but feel sorry for the governor. Izra'il was a hardship posting for Concordiat troops . . . but it was home to Khalid and over seven thousand Izra'ilian colonists. Lang's experiments in tactics would be conducted in the backyards of Khalid and his neighbors.

What was Lang playing at?

His communication board chirped, a call from Bolo Hank. He inserted an earpiece and opened the channel. "Bolo tactical, Code seven-seven-three," he said. "Lieutenant Martin."

"My Commander," a voice said in his ear. "This is Bolo of the Line HNK 0808-50 and Bolo of the Line NDR 0831-57." The voice was deep and rich, with a trace of an accent Martin couldn't place, flat vowels and a hint of old-fashioned formality. The language had shifted somewhat in the three centuries since Hank and Andrew had been programmed. "We are fully charged, powered-up, and ready in all respects for combat. Our expendable munitions lockers are full. h.e.l.lbores charged and ready. Sensors operational, and tracking probable hostiles. Request permission to engage the enemy."

"Not just yet, Hank." He hesitated, studying Colonel Lang who was talking quietly with Khalid. "We've got . . . we've got a situation here in the command center. My CO wants to . . . draw out the enemy, get him to commit himself."

"I see. May I suggest, my Commander, that the two of us be positioned in a more central location, from which we can be speedily deployed to any threatened quarter? It seems needlessly wasteful to leave Bolo a.s.sets in lightly armored storage bunkers."

"I agree. Hold tight, and I'll see what I can do. But . . . no promises."

"I understand, my Commander."

The Bolo might understand, but Martin was d.a.m.ned if he did.

I wonder when the order to engage will come.

I feel Andrew's presence within my thoughts as our QDC link firms up. The test series for the new Bolo comm system was completed nearly three centuries ago, and though the tests were deemed inconclusive, the equipment was never deactivated or removed. This has proven to be an excellent stroke of good fortune to both Andrew and myself, allowing us an open and completely secure communications channel at a much deeper level than that provided by more traditional systems.

"Kezdai forces," Andrew says, sorting through the incoming flood of tactical information. "Do we have a primary tacop deployment option?"

"Negative. According to the combat archives, the Kezdai were formidable opponents, if somewhat rigid and inflexible. The a.s.sumption is that they will have noted the presence of two uprated Mark XXVIIIs on Delas and evolved both weapons and tactics necessary for countering a Bolo defense."

"Perhaps doctrinal rigidity prevents them from making major changes in their tactical deployment."

"We cannot count on that. If they have experienced success enough to maintain an essentially warrior-oriented culture, they must have flexibility enough to meet new threats and technologies."

"Perhaps we should game scenarios of historical interest," Andrew suggests.

"We have little information on Kezdai potential," I reply, "but it would be a reasonable use of time." Seconds were dragging past, ponderous as human days, without immediate response from HQ.