David Weber - Old Soldiers

But whether he had been right or wrong, he still had to deal with the consequences of his decision.

And the consequences were that his original clear advantage in combat power had been wiped away.

The missile armament of his six Fenrises would probably allow him to land the first blows, inflict the first damage. But after they had emptied their single-shot missile pods, the Fenrises would be hopelessly outclassed by the Bolo, unless they could somehow get around to its more lightly armored flanks. That was scarcely likely in such constricted terrain, and even if it proved possible, a Bolo's side armor, though much thinner than its frontal armor, was still heavy enough to make it far from certain that a Fenris' main weapon could penetrate it. Which meant the main engagement would fall heavily upon his three Surturs.

The outcome would hang from a thread, whatever happened, and Na-Salth had been right. Holding the infantry to support the armor might well have tipped the balance in his favor. So why hadn't he done that? He'd already made one suspect decision this day; had he made a second? Had he allowed emotions, his own perhaps foolish hope that the People might still survive upon this planet, to dictate his decisions? Would Ka-Somal's infantry have made the difference between victory and defeat if he'd hung on to it, deployed Ka-Somal's two remaining battalions as a sacrificial screen?

There was no way to know, and, anyway, the decision had already been made. The pieces were in motion for the final confrontation, and the outcome would be whatever the Nameless Lord willed it to be.

Colonel Verank Ka-Somal swore venomously as his command vehicle lurched and bounced over the nightmare landscape the accursed Humans' landslide had left to mark the massacre of the Second Armored and his own Third Infantry Battalion. More death, more slaughter, he thought, and hatred for the species which had murdered his own world, and with it his wife, children, and family, swirled at his core like slow, thick lava.

The repeater plot tied into the far more capable tactical computers aboard General Ka-Frahkan's brigade command vehicle showed him the Bolo, moving rapidly away from his own position. He knew, in the intellectual, professional part of him which had graduated from the Emperor Yarthaaisun Army Academy so many years before, that his infantry and the supporting reconnaissance mechs would have stood no chance at all against the Bolo, had it chosen to pursue his column, instead. But the part of him which remembered the devastated landscape of Rasantha—of the planet upon which he had been born and upon which his children, his wife, his parents and siblings, had died under the devastating onslaught of other Bolos—clung to that receding icon with the hungry fingers of hate.

Others might still clutch at the hope Ka-Frahkan had offered—the hope that they might yet somehow, miraculously, capture sufficient of the Humans' industrial infrastructure, enough of their starships, to someday make their way home again. Or to the other hope, that they might survive here, instead. Build a new colony, keep the Empire alive, even if all of the rest of the People went down to death elsewhere.

Ka-Somal did not. There was no future. Not for him, not for Ka-Frahkan, not for the Empire, not even for the People. There was only vengeance. Only death returned for death. And so, even while his eyes clung to the Bolo's icon and he longed to blot that icon away with his own weapons—with his own naked, bloody fists and fangs—another part of him was glad to see it go. Perhaps Na-Lythan could destroy it, after all. Perhaps enough of his mechs to make a difference would actually survive. But whether that happened or not, the Bolo's decision to pursue Na-Lythan meant Ka-Somal would reach the militia position.

Major Na-Pahrthal's pilot banked around another bend in the river valley, and the major wondered if the pilot was as astonished as he himself was that they'd managed to escape the Bolo's onslaught alive.

The fact that they had was largely due to Flight Sergeant Sa-Horuk's skill, and Na-Pahrthal made a mental note to be sure Sa-Horuk knew he recognized that when this was all over.

The major's ears twitched in bitter amusement at the thought. Was he making that note to be sure Sa-Horuk got the credit he deserved? Or because making it implied that there was at least a slim chance that Na-Pahrthal would be alive to extend it?

He shook the thought aside. There was no time for it, and he returned his full attention to the valley's terrain.

The landslide-choked gorge, and the new lake rapidly forming behind it, lay far to the west as he and his surviving air cavalry scouted ahead of Colonel Ka-Somal's column. The Heimdalls Colonel Na-Lythan had detached to accompany the infantry were coming up quickly astern of Na-Pahrthal's aerial units, but the infantry, in its less capable APCs, lagged behind, still making up the distance it had lost after being delayed by the landslide.

Na-Pahrthal checked his own displays again. The repeater relaying the imagery from General Ka-Frahkan's vehicle showed him the Bolo, closing rapidly now with the rear of Na-Lythan's remaining battalion. After what that demonic machine had already done to the Brigade, Na-Pahrthal found it impossible, however hard he tried, to feel confident about what would happen when it caught up with First Armored. And in the end, if Colonel Na-Lythan couldn't stop it after all, anything the rest of them might accomplish wouldn't matter very much, he supposed.

He wondered if Ka-Somal would delay his own attack until he knew the outcome of the armored battle about to begin. If Na-Lythan won, then delaying until his surviving armored units could arrive to support Ka-Somal's attack would save hundreds of casualties, and possibly make the difference between being able to continue the attack against the Humans' other forces or simply bleeding themselves white in an ultimately meaningless battle of attrition against the blocking position. But if Na-Lythan lost, then delaying the attack would only give the Bolo time to come charging up to support the Human militia with its remaining weapons. In which case, they would be able to kill far fewer of the Humans before they died themselves.

In another war, against another enemy, there might have been other options to ponder. The possibility of honorable surrender might even have existed. But this was the war they had, and however desperately some inner part of him might have longed for it to be otherwise, Major Beryak Na-Pahrthal could no longer truly imagine any other sort.

"Uniform-Three-Seven, this is Alpha-Zero-One." he said into his microphone. "Watch those turns.

You're sliding too high, skylining yourself. Do that closer to the enemy, and he'll blow you right out of the air!"

"Alpha-Zero-One, Uniform-Three-Seven copies. Sorry about that, sir. I'll try not to let it happen again."

"You do that, Tharsal," Na-Pahrthal said. "I'd hate to have to break in a new horrible example to show the others how not to fly a mission."

"Yes, sir. Uniform-Three-Seven, out."

"Alpha-Zero-One, out," Na-Pahrthal acknowledged, and his ears twitched in another flicker of wryly bitter amusement. So they were all still playing the game, still pretending.

Odd how precious that threadbare pretense could be, even now.

"The Bolo is already inside our mediums' effective engagement range, sir," Colonel Na-Lythan said levelly. "It will overtake us completely in no more than another twenty minutes at our relative rates of advance, and this looks like as likely a place as we're going to find, especially if we can keep that ridge line between us and it until we launch. With your permission, I'd like to begin deploying my units."