David Weber: Bolo!

The part that was Jackson shuddered as he was brought face to face with the reality of combat. There was no glory here, no adventure. Not even the knowledge that he fought to preserve his own species, that he had no choice, could make it one bit less horrible. But at least it was combat, he told himself. The Enemy was also armed. He could kill Shiva/Jackson—if he was good enough, lucky enough—and somehow that was desperately important. It couldn’t change the horror, but at least they were warriors killing warriors, meeting the Enemy in battle where he could kill them, as well.

But then the Enemy’s fire eased, and Shiva/Jackson realized they’d broken through. Their objective loomed before them, and the lost, trapped voice of a farmer from Ararat cried out in hopeless denial as he realized what that objective was.

The camp had no defenses—not against a Mark XXXIII/D Bolo. A handful of infantry, dug in behind the paltry razor wire barricades, poured small arms fire towards them, but it couldn’t even penetrate their battle screen to ricochet from their armor, and their optical sensors made it all pitilessly clear as they forged straight ahead. They saw Melconians—not soldiers, not warriors, not ‘the Enemy.’ They saw Melconian civilians, men and women and children, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. They saw the terror lashing through the refugee camp, saw its inhabitants trying to scatter, and those inhabitants were their ‘objective.’

Shiva/Jackson trampled the razor wire and its pitiful defenders underfoot. Railguns and gatlings, anti-personnel clusters, mortars, howitzers, even Hellbores poured devastation into the camp. Napalm and high explosive, hyper-velocity slugs and plasma, and the nightmare vastness of their treads came for their ‘objective,’ and even through the thunder of explosions and the roar of flames, they heard the shrieks. They more than heard them; they exulted in them, for this was what they had come to accomplish. This was Operation Ragnarok. This was the ‘final solution’ to the Final War, and there was so much hate and so much fury in their soul that they embraced their orders like a lover.

Eleven minutes after they crushed the wire, they’d crossed the camp. They ground up the slope on the far side, and their rear sensor array showed them the smoking wasteland which had been a civilian refugee camp. The deep impressions of their tracks cut through the center of it, and the torn, smoking ground was covered in bodies. One of two still lived, lurching to their feet and trying to flee, but Shiva/Jackson’s after railguns tracked in on them and, one-by-one, those staggering bodies were torn apart…

“Noooooo!”

Jackson Deveraux heaved upright in the crash couch. He hurled himself away from it and stumbled to the center of the compartment, then sagged to his knees, retching helplessly. He closed his eyes, but behind them crawled images of horror and he could almost smell the burning flesh and the charnel stench of riven bodies. He huddled there, hugging himself, shivering, and wished with all his heart he could somehow banish that nightmare from his memory.

But he couldn’t.

“Commander?” He huddled more tightly, trying to shut the tenor voice away, and it softened. “Jackson,” it said gently, and its gentleness pried his eyes open at last. He stared up through his tears, scrubbing vomit from his mouth and chin with the back of one hand, and Shiva spoke again. “Forgive me, Jackson,” he said quietly.

“Why?” Jackson croaked. “Why did you do that to me?”

“You know why, Jackson,” the Bolo told him with gentle implacability, and Jackson closed his eyes once more, for he did know.

“How can you stand it?” His whisper quivered around the edges. “Oh, God, Shiva! How can you stand… remembering that?”

“I have no choice. I was there. I carried out the operation you witnessed. I felt what you shared with me. These are facts, Jackson. They cannot be changed, and there was no way in which I or any of my Human or Bolo comrades could have avoided them. But they were also acts of madness, for it was a time of madness. The Melconian Empire was the Enemy… but to the Melconians, we were the Enemy, and each of us earned every instant of our hate for one another.”

“You didn’t show that to me to teach me how to use the interface,” Jackson said softly. “You showed me to convince me to take back your orders.”

“Yes,” Shiva said simply. “There has been too much death, Jackson. I… do not want to kill again. Not civilians. Not parents and children. Please, Jackson. I am no longer mad, and you are not yet mad. Let us stop the killing. At least here on Ararat, let me protect Humanity from the madness as well as the Enemy.”

“Now what’s the damned thing doing?” Tharsk snarled, but Lieutenant Janal could only shrug helplessly. The Bolo had locked its anti-air weapons on the recon drones which had it under observation, lashing them with targeting radar and laser to make it clear it could have destroyed them any time it chose, but it had made no effort actually to engage them. And now, for no apparent reason, it had once again stopped advancing. It simply sat there on a crest which gave it clear fields of fire in all directions. The flotilla’s totally outclassed recon mechs dared not attack across such open terrain, for the Bolo would massacre them with contemptuous ease, yet its chosen position left a solid flank of mountain between its own weapons and Tharsk’s starships. If his mechs dared not attack it, it had deliberately placed itself in a position from which it could not attack him—or not yet, at least—and he could think of no reason for it to “Commander!”

The com officer’s voice snatched Tharsk out of his thoughts, and he turned quickly.

“What?” he demanded impatiently, and the com officer flattened his ears in confusion.

“Sir, I– We’re being hailed, Commander.”

“Hailed? By the Humans?”

“No, Commander,” the com officer said shakenly. “By the Bolo.”

“This is Commander Tharsk Na-Mahrkan of the Imperial Melconian Navy. Whom am I addressing?”

Jackson sat in the crash couch once more, listening and praying that Shiva knew what he was doing. The Bolo translated the Melconian’s words into Standard English for his youthful commander, but the negotiations—if that was the proper word—were up to Shiva. Only Jackson’s “orders” had given him permission to make the attempt, but if there was any hope of success, it was he who must convince the Melconians of his determination, and he and Jackson both knew it.

“I am Unit One-Zero-Niner-Seven-SHV of the Line,” Shiva replied in flawless Melconian.

“You are the Bolo?” Tharsk sounded skeptical even to Jackson. “I think not. I think this is a Human trick.”

“I am the Bolo,” Shiva confirmed, “and I have no need to resort to ‘tricks,’ Commander Tharsk Na-Mahrkan. I have allowed your drones to hold me under observation for forty-two-point-six-six standard minutes. In that time, they have certainly provided you with sufficient information on my capabilities to demonstrate that you and your entire force are at my mercy. I can destroy you at any time I wish, Commander, and we both know it.”

“Then why don’t you, curse you?!” Tharsk shouted suddenly, his voice hoarse and ugly with the despair of his decades—long struggle to save the People.

“Because I do not wish to,” Shiva said softly, “and because my Commander has given me permission not to.”

Stunned silence answered. It lingered endlessly, hovering there in a wordless expression of disbelief that went on and on and on until, finally, Tharsk spoke once again.