"They"ve landed commandos again?" David suddenly sounded very serious indeed.
"I have detected no signs of landing craft," Miles admitted, "nor were any such signals picked up by the satellites. I cannot deduce how the commandos have been planted on Milagso, but all indications are that they are indeed here, and preparing for an attack."
"We"ll check into it," David said grimly, "and fast! Thanks, Miles. Thanks a lot!"
"You are welcome, David," the huge machine said.
David strode back to the car. "Hop in!" He slammed the door, started up, and turned the hover car back toward headquarters.
"He"s paranoid!" Arlan couldn"t hold it in any longer. "He has really flipped out! He"s developed delusions of conspiracy!"
"Maybe," David said, his words clipped out, "or maybe he"s right. Pick up the hand mike and call Dr. Roman, will you? And tell him everything you just heard."
Arlan stared. "You"re taking him seriously?"
David gave a tight nod. "Very seriously, Arlan. Very seriously indeed."
Serious indeed, but not soon enough. As they pulled in through the gate to headquarters, the soil exploded in the surrounding fields from a hundred tunnels, and the hammering and crackling of automatic weapons erupted.
"Down!" David yelled, and slumped below window level as he pulled the car off to the side of the road. Arlan slid down, too, but wrestled his laser rifle around to the ready. The car stopped, and he swung the door open, rolling out and swivelling about, p.r.o.ne, sighting along the barrel and trying to pick out a target.
It was easy. All the humans had hit the dirt, and moving dust-plumes marked the presence of Xiala. Arlan took aim at the base of one such plume, and was about to pull the trigger when a human rolled in between. He cursed and let up pressure on the trigger . . .
Then the man exploded.
Arlan lay stiff, staring in shock.
Then a serpentine body rose up above the body, a minor cannon with a huge clip clasped in the two slender arms that sprouted below the head. Its mouth opened, fangs springing down as it lunged toward a human fighter . . .
Arlan screamed and pulled the trigger.
The snake"s head exploded, and the whole length of its body whipped about, fountaining soil and tearing out plants.
Arlan couldn"t take the time to stare, or to feel sick. He swung his rifle about, seeking another target, while something inside him gibbered in terror and urged him to run for cover. It was the child who had grown up on romantic tales of war, aghast at the bloodshed and the hammering of the guns.
Behind and above him, David"s laser rifle crackled. Then, suddenly, he howled, and his gun went silent.
Arlan went cold inside, picking out a dust column and firing, then seeking another and firing, deliberately, unhurried. Part of him waited in iron resignation for the laser bolt that would burn through him, but part of him was determined to kill as many snakes as he could before it came. Traverse, fire, traverse, fire . . .
Cannon roared, and a Bolo loomed over the battle, its guns depressed, firing over the humans" heads, enfilading the field. Surely it couldn"t be Miles. . . .
Suddenly, its huge cannon elevated, higher and higher, till it seemed the Bolo would throw itself over if it fired. Arlan glanced up, and saw a shimmering shape swelling out of the sky. . . .
Then he looked down, and saw fangs and red maw arrowing toward him, a huge-bore rifle-muzzle coming up to center on him. . . .
He shouted and pressed the trigger. A bolt of pure energy crashed into the gaping jaws. The snake screamed, thrashing, and its cannon bellowed again and again, firing widely in its death throes. Arlan slapped his rifle down and shoved his head flat against the dirt.
A roar filled his head. He dared a look and saw only dust, where the Xiala had been. He glanced back over his shoulder, and saw the barrel of one of the Bolo"s port guns aimed in his direction. Even as he watched, though, he saw the gout of energy explode out of the main cannon"s muzzle, tearing into the sky, but he couldn"t hear the report, because the whole world was roaring.
The looming shimmering shape turned into flame at one edge. It spun about, and another bolt struck it from the opposite side of the field. It whirled around and slammed spinning into the dirt, sticking up at a crazy angle--a huge landing craft, its ports popping open, snakes pouring out regardless of their dead, slithering onto the ground . . .
The Bolo"s secondary guns roared, and the Xiala turned into a boiling cloud of dust, streaked crimson, with tails lashing out of it here and there. Again and again the Bolo fired, and the whole line of the ship turned into a dust storm. Runnels of blood watered the field.
Here and there, a human gun chattered--but rarely, very rarely, for there were very few Xiala escaping the wrecked ship, and the commandos were all dead.
"Of course, we don"t know for sure how many of them got away." David sat with a steaming cup at his elbow, his arm in a sling and a bandage around his head. "We can only guess how many snakes were aboard each ship, and it"s hard counting dead bodies; you can"t be sure how many of them were completely blown apart. Some of the ships landed half-buried, and Xiala could have tunnelled out of the below-ground hatches."
"So we may have more Xiala hiding out and busily making new little commandos?" Rita asked.
David nodded. "There may even be some of the current generation still alive to teach them the ropes."
"It"s so hard to imagine!" Arlan shook his head. "Intelligent, thinking beings, spending their whole lives in exile, and dooming their offspring and their grandchildren to the same waste of their days--all so that their species can have some commandos to prepare the way for them, if they ever decide to try another invasion!"
"Unthinkable to us," Michael agreed. "To a Xiala, it"s worth it."
Arlan shuddered. "At least we know Miles hadn"t really gone paranoid."
"No," David said slowly. "He seemed to treat the whole problem as a chess game--but he"d had fifty years of fighting Xiala, to use as data for his deductions."
"Anyway," Arlan said, "I guess that"s why the Bolos thought they had to become tractors for a while."
Michael looked up, surprized, and David said slowly, "Of course--now that you mention it. Camoflage."
"Lulling the Xiala into a false sense of security," Michael agreed. "Why should they be afraid of these huge war machines, if they"d been converted into farmers?"
"Does that mean you lose your tractors?" Arlan asked.
"They haven"t shown any sign of it," David said. "Seem to be more than ready to get back to work, in fact."
"And they haven"t deactivated themselves?"
"No, so they can"t be given new commanders," Michael confirmed. "I guess their mission isn"t over, as far as they"re concerned."
"Of course not--we don"t know when the snake-commandos may strike again," Rita inferred.
"No," David agreed. "But the next time Miles says they"re coming, I think I"ll take him at his word."
Arlan shoved his chair back and levered himself up on his crutches.
"Going someplace?" Michael asked.
"To see Miles," Arlan said. "I think I owe him an apology."
His friends exchanged glances; then David pushed himself to his feet. "Wait up; I"ll give you a ride. I"ve got a few words to say to Miles, too."
They came up to the huge Bolo. Its armor was blackened and dented in places, but otherwise it stood as serenely as ever-already back on station at the field it had been plowing.
"h.e.l.lo, Miles," Arlan said as he came up.
"h.e.l.lo, Arlan," the Bolo returned. "I am glad to see you have survived the battle. I trust your foot is not too badly injured?"
"This?" Arlan glanced down. "Nothing that won"t heal itself. How are you, Miles?"
"Nothing that cannot be mended," the Bolo returned, "and not much of that. This generation of Xiala have weakened sorely; their great-grandsires did far more damage."
"Let"s hear it for decadence," David said fervently.
"Uh, Miles . . ." Arlan said. "I"m, uh, sorry I didn"t heed your warning right away. . . ."
David nodded emphatically. "Me, too. I should have just taken you at your word, and sent out the alarm. We should have known Resartus wouldn"t make a logical mistake."
"Resartus is gone," Miles informed them.
Both men stood very still.
Then David said, very carefully, "Are you fully operational again, Miles?"
"I am," Miles a.s.sured them. "As soon as I woke to full function, I ran my recent memories through a diagnostic program. They confirmed that I had run so many invasion scenarios that I had created a loop that became so ingrained, I could not view any data without a bias toward interpreting it as an invasion."
"So when the Xiala actually did invade," David said slowly, "the loop had fulfilled its function, and closed itself off."
"Essentially, David, yes."
"Will you be able to avoid the urge to run invasion scenarios again?" David asked.
"My companion Bolos are agreed on a means that should prove efficacious."
"What kind of means?" Arlan asked.
"A variety of gaming. In addition to our bouts of chess, we will take turns creating invasion scenarios."
"And you"ll all know it"s a game! Great!" Arlan"s eyes lit with enthusiasm. "Can I join?"
David eyed him with a sigh, then smiled. Arlan was fitting in, after all.
The larger moon was up, and Arlan went strolling away from the campfire, hand in hand with Jodie. "You were right," he said. "Traditions do have reasons behind them."
She looked up at him, amused. "Was it worth it, lugging that laser rifle around every day? After all, you only really needed it for half an hour."
"It was worth it," Arlan affirmed. "I"m converted."
"Still nervous about the Bolos?"
Arlan shook his head. "That"s another tradition that somehow makes an awful lot of sense now. Mind you, I still think their minds can malfunction and go out of order, though maybe not as easily as ours can. . . ."
"At least they won"t be saddled by poor upbringing," Jodie said.
"That is the advantage to de-bugged programming," Arlan admitted. "But brooding seems to do just as much damage for artificial intelligences as it does for the real thing."
Jodie shrugged. "So what if Miles went paranoid for a little while? He was curable."
"Yes," Arlan agreed. "All it took was a conspiracy and an invasion."
"Well," Jodie said, "that did bring his delusions into line with reality. So you think the Bolos are worth the labor to maintain them?"
"Oh, you bet I do! In fact, I just might go back to Terra to study artificial intelligence, so I can be of some real worth here."
Jodie stopped and turned to face him, looking up at him in the moonlight. "You are already," she said. "And anything you really need to know, you can learn right here."
Suddenly, Arlan understood why Chono had decided to stay.
OPERATION DESERT FOX.
Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon
Siegfried O"Harrigan"s name had sometimes caused confusion, although the Service tended to be color-blind. He was black, slight of build and descended from a woman whose African tribal name had been long since lost to her descendants.
He wore both Caucasian names--Siegfried and O"Harrigan--as badges of high honor, however, as had all of that lady"s descendants. Many times, although it might have been politically correct to do so, Siegfried"s ancestors had resisted changing their name to something more ethnic. Their name was a gift--and not a badge of servitude to anyone. One did not return a gift, especially not one steeped in the love of ancestors. . . .
Siegfried had heard the story many times as a child, and had never tired of it. The tale was the modern equivalent of a fairy tale, it had been so very unlikely. O"Harrigan had been the name of an Irish-born engineer, fresh off the boat himself, who had seen Siegfried"s many-times-great grandmother and her infant son being herded down the gangplank and straight to the Richmond, Virginia, slave market. She had been, perhaps, thirteen years old when the Arab slave-traders had stolen her. That she had survived the journey at all was a miracle. And she was the very first thing that O"Harrigan set eyes on as he stepped onto the dock in this new land of freedom.
The irony had not been lost on him. Sick and frightened, the woman had locked eyes with Sean O"Harrigan for a single instant, but that instant had been enough.
They had shared neither language nor race, but perhaps Sean had seen in her eyes the ant.i.thesis of everything he had come to America to find. His people had suffered virtual slavery at the hands of the English landlords; he knew what slavery felt like. He was outraged, and felt that he had to do something. He could not save all the slaves offloaded this day-but he could help these two.
He had followed the traders to the market and bought the woman and her child "off the coffle," paying for them before they could be put up on the auction-block, before they could even be warehoused. He fed them, cared for them until they were strong, and then put them on another boat, this time as pa.s.sengers, before the woman could learn much more than his name. The rest the O"Harrigans learned later, from Sean"s letters, long after.
The boat was headed back to Africa, to the newly founded nation of Liberia, a place of hope for freed slaves, whose very name meant "land of liberty." Life there would not be easy for them, but it would not be a life spent in chains, suffering at the whims of men who called themselves "Master."
Thereafter, the woman and her children wore the name of O"Harrigan proudly, in memory of the stranger"s kindness--as many other citizens of the newly-formed nation would wear the names of those who had freed them.
No, the O"Harrigans would not change their name for any turn of politics. Respect earned was infinitely more powerful than any messages beaten into someone by whips or media.
And as for the name "Siegfried"--that was also in memory of a stranger"s kindness; this time a member of Rommel"s Afrika Korps. Another random act of kindness, this time from a first lieutenant who had seen to it that a captured black man with the name O"Harrigan was correctly identified as Liberian and not as American. He had then seen to it that John O"Harrigan was treated well and released.
John had named his first-born son for that German, because the young lieutenant had no children of his own. The tradition and the story that went with it had continued down the generations, joining that of Sean O"Harrigan. Siegfried"s people remembered their debts of honor.