Bolos: Honor of the Regiment Part 10

"Is a computer hook-up possible?"

"Your new circuits are being constructed. They are not yet ready," Rheinhardt said. "I can give you the information verbally."

He perched himself on the cleaner part of a workbench and began, "Three hundred years ago colonists of French and German extraction seeded this planet with terraforming microbes and settled on the rich alluvial plains of this continent. Existence was peaceful, with the Noufrench living on the Western side of the great Neurhein and we Bayerische living on the Eastern side. The plan was that our two colonies would expand in opposite directions as the terraforming microbes spread across the continent and the world.

"You may not be aware that, barring completely barren planets, all planets suitable for human colonization will already have an ecosystem of their own. Terraforming microbes allow us to convert planets for human habitation. Our records indicate that we brought in several Bolos converted for earth-moving purposes."

"That section of my permanent memory is only mildly damaged," the Bolo said.

"However," the colonel continued with an understanding nod, "shortly after the first settlements were established, a virulent illness broke out amongst the settlers. We were convinced that it was the result of illegal gene-cloning by the Noufrench and they were convinced that it was a deliberate attack on our part."

Colonel Rheinhardt glanced consideringly at the Bolo and continued, "Whatever the reasons, all crops failed, our terraforming microbes nearly died out, and the colonists starved. This was the beginning of our conflicts. The ensuing depopulation through plague, famine, and military operations brought about the loss of large sectors of skilled personnel, particularly those skilled in genetic engineering, adaptive agriculture, and metal-working."

"You say that both sides blamed the other. Was there any reason to suspect a third party?"

"No. There are no humans within sixty pa.r.s.ecs," Rheinhardt said.

"What of the Bolos?"

"From what we can gather from the remaining records, there were only three or four. They must not have been in very good shape because we recovered one entry indicating that three were laid up for extensive maintenance," Rheinhardt said. "Probably for that reason, the maintenance depot and surrounding settlement was lost early in the conflict and no one remembered where it was. Rumor soon had it that Depot was only folklore."

"Do your records indicate if any Bolos survived?"

"No, we a.s.sumed that all Bolos were lost in Depot."

"That would not be logical," Das Afrika Korps replied. "All functioning Bolos would be on sentry duty."

"Good military sense," Rheinhardt agreed. "But you Bolos were not employed in a military action--you were brought here for civilian operations--and so any objections were probably overridden. I suspect that the Bolos were worked until they dropped."

"That is a possible but regrettable conclusion," the Bolo said. "Do you recall who commanded the original settlement? That part of my data was destroyed."

Rheinhardt shook his head. "I recall that one was a military man and that there'd been some war fought recently against an alien incursion--the Jyncji Dominance--but most of what we have from those days is hearsay. The central computing data library was destroyed in the first confrontation. All we have left is what we could recover from outlying computer modes and hardcopy-books."

"Of course," the Bolo said, "a resource of military importance too valuable to let any one side possess." The Bolo paused. "How is it you managed to hold on to Depot?"

Rheinhardt raised his left hand and absently examined his nails as he answered. "We discovered the Depot when we tried to set up a minefield in the area of the last offensive."

"Your offensive."

"Gott in Himmel!" Rheinhardt viewed the Bolo with wide eyes. "Why ever would your creators give you such abilities to a.n.a.lyze emotion?"

"I do not a.n.a.lyze emotion, per se," the Bolo said, "however I am trained in negotiation and have discriminatory circuits capable of a.n.a.lyzing the non-verbal parts of speech."

"I had not realized that was an ability of the Bolo series." Rheinhardt confided, his look guarded.

"It is not a well-known fact," the Bolo agreed. "Also, the C batch of Mark XVI Bolos has been known to be somewhat more adept in that matter than previous versions."

"Indeed." Rheinhardt uncrossed his legs and recrossed them to give himself time to collect his thoughts. "So you detected that I had some responsibility in planning the last campaign; how accurate is your a.s.sessment?"

"Until your last comment, I placed the possibility at 78%," the Bolo replied. "Now, however, I compute the possibility at 97%."

"Really? You learnt that much from this short exchange?"

"Mostly from your tone of speech and body movements," the Bolo said. "Could you describe the campaign to me?"

"Why would you want to know about it?"

"Merely a professional interest in how you conducted your operations," the Bolo said. "I am, as you must understand, an avid historian."

"Very well. The central part of this continent is the most fertile part of our planet," Rheinhardt began. "It extends from the moist coastal areas in the south, north to the permafrost line. East and west, our great mountain ranges are more inimical to the terraforming microbes and the land there less suited for human habitation. The two coasts, east and west, are just now being infested with the terraforming microbes."

The Colonel hopped off the table to pace in front of the Bolo. "So it is the central region, particularly that nearest the great river system which runs north to south from the permafrost to the southern coast, which is most suitable and prized for human habitation. The richest region in the south is the large area west of the Neurhein river and the richest region in the north is a large fertile area east of the river. The regions are known as Alasec and Renaloir."

Rheinhardt paused in his pacing, turning to face the Bolo directly. "The Noufrench had the greater army, organized in three corps totalling nearly twenty divisions. They also possessed the satellite surveillance network, having gained control of the one major dish antenna on our planet-"

"Where is that?"

"It is in Alasec, several hundred kilometers from the Depot. Of course, the satellites were originally intended for agricultural purposes but infrared photographs are equally good at spotting troop build-ups."

"Why did you not destroy them?"

Rheinhardt threw his hands in the air. "With what? Our technological base was destroyed in the early wars. Do you realize how difficult it is to produce the high quality parts required for rockets?"

He shook his head, clenched his fists in remembered irritation. "As it is, I've had to deal sharply with one engineer, von Grun, who persists in obtaining funding for the next ten years to develop a ballistic missile.

"Ballistic, only," Rheinhardt sighed, his temper cooling. "Those satellites are in geosynchronous...o...b..t. The energy and precision guidance for such a missile will be beyond us for many years."

With a frown, Rheinhardt noticed his clenched fists and forced them open. "Our priorities must be those technologies required for survival. When we have the time to build rockets, we shall do so."

"And the Noufrench?"

"Our Intelligence indicates that they may have toyed with missiles but gave up--it is just too expensive," Colonel Rheinhardt replied.

"But the satellites are still active?"

Rheinhardt nodded. "Although we do not understand how the satellites have remained active so long-"

"Military satellites are hardened," the Bolo suggested, "however I could see that satellites designed for exceedingly long lives would require more s.h.i.+elding and greater self-repair capabilities. Are the satellites autonomous?"

"I don't know," Rheinhardt admitted. "However, it would seem logical." He snorted. "Goodness knows they had little direction from us for over two hundred years."

"Then they are autonomous," the Bolo decided. "And quite capable." The huge machine paused. "They would have been built to survive numerous micrometeoroid impacts, maybe even larger impacts. Much of their ability is contained within the standard Bolo operational parameters."

All this was only of the remotest interest to Rheinhardt. He made a rueful grimace. "They certainly survived and it caused us a lot of trouble. However," he grinned, "I realized that perhaps we could turn it to our advantage."

"You said the satellites were designed to examine crops-"

"Exactly!" Rheinhardt brought his hands together in a chopping motion, one hand dropping onto the other like a hammer on an anvil.

"I realized that if they depended upon that source of information, I could use it against them."

"You could disguise troop locations by placing them in areas which produced matching infrared heat."

"Yes."

"That would provide surprise."

"How were the enemy disposed?"

Rheinhardt threw his hands up. "They outnumbered us two to one. They possessed no less than twelve infantry divisions and two armored formations."

"Were the infantry mounted?"

"Three divisions were lorry-borne," Rheinhardt said.

"I shall require a complete set of maps of military grade roadways."

"What? Of course," Rheinhardt replied irritably. "We arrayed our forces of four static infantry divisions and one armored division, with a small screening force placed in rough terrain."

"They attacked the screening force."

Rheinhardt nodded. "As planned. The screening force was made quite visible in the infrared bands. Our two other armored divisions were pre-positioned behind the screening force. We let the enemy establish a bridgehead, start a break out, and then counterattacked. Our infantry forces north and south squeezed down on the bridgehead while our armored divisions dealt with their spearhead-"

"Why did you not position infantry forces to handle the spearhead?"

"We did not have sufficient forces," Rheinhardt replied. "I would have liked to, we lost more armor than I would have wished. In the end, however, we cut off the supplies to their armored divisions and decimated them. On the rebound we encircled half of their infantry forces and cut them off. By this time our supplies were running low so we allowed the Noufrench to sue for peace."

"It appears that fortune has changed."

Rheinhardt snorted. "Indeed! Two years later, when we still had not replaced our armor losses, they attacked and forced us to give up the territory we'd acquired to the west of the Neurhein."

"And now you feel you have enough armor?"

"We have you."

"You may be overestimating my utility," the Bolo said.

Rheinhardt cut off his reply at the sight of a group of approaching technicians. "You have finished the communications gear?"

"Yes, sir. Where are we supposed to set this up?"

Rheinhardt glanced at the Bolo. "How should this gear be placed?"

A long, loud tearing noise shook the building, emanating from the Bolo.

"Are you all right?" Rheinhardt asked nervously, fearing that all his plans would come to naught. He stepped back from the Bolo, peered beyond the smart-armored carapace and spotted a small opening far back on the main deck of the reactive-armored hull. The thought of a c.h.i.n.k in such legendary armor sent a cold s.h.i.+ver down the Colonel's spine.

With the unsightly bulldozer blade removed, and Marius' careful attention to detail, the Bolo stood as a tribute to monumental war. It measured over ten meters in length, five meters in height and its armored carapace crested four meters from the bottom of its armored tracks. Its main weapon, an awesome h.e.l.lbore, jutted wickedly from the carapace while above and behind on the main deck rose a cl.u.s.ter of anti-aircraft guns. Mournful holes marked where once smart explosives had been festooned on the hull, where specialist electronic warfare portholes had stuck probes out inquisitively, where charge generators had stood ready for those foolish enough to approach too near--and where proud battle honors had once been welded.

Rheinhardt could see where Marius' men had tried in vain to restore some of the older battle medals but even that softer metal had proven too much for their arts.

"I was merely opening an access port to my carapace," the Bolo replied mildly. "The hinges are not as well maintained as I should like."

Hastened by Rheinhardt's arched brows, directed by the Bolo's grating voice, the technicians made quick, if nervous, work of connecting in the computer interlink.

"I am connected to a small computer network of twenty nodes," the Bolo announced when the technicians had completed the installation. It continued in a slightly puzzled tone, "I am having some difficulty in accessing information. There seems to be some multiplexing--multiple datalinks--in response to my queries."

The technicians looked confused and nervous, casting glances to their spokesman who looked no less distraught. Finally, he brightened. "It's non-Quirthian!"

"Quirthian?" the Bolo asked curiously.

Rheinhardt's eyes narrowed. "Are you aware of Quirthian logic?"

"No," the Bolo replied. "My computer functionality is based upon Von Neumann architecture using Boolean logic coupled with several adaptive neural networks."

"Non-Quirthian!" One of the technicians muttered to herself, shaking her head.

"We could put a special Von Neumann filter in the data link," the technicians' spokesman offered.

"How does Quirthian logic differ-" the Bolo began but cut itself short. "Oh, I see. Very interesting. I am not quite able to comprehend the full differences but clearly there are some aspects of this computer architecture which are inherently superior to mine."

"That could cause difficulties," Rheinhardt muttered to himself. He turned his gaze to the head technician. "How long before you can get a filter together?"

"Well," the spokesman shook himself, gazed off into the distance calculatingly, "I suppose we could get it done in a couple of days or so . . ."

Rheinhardt shook his head. "Too long. What are the dangers of leaving out the filter?"

"Well, the Bolo here'd be getting some extraneous data inputs which it might have difficulty sorting out. It could cause all sorts of problems."

"Bolo, what is your a.n.a.lysis?"

"Colonel, my understanding of Quirthian logic is that it is a high order logic based upon chaos theory and complex data a.n.a.lysis," the Bolo replied. "However, the core data is identical with my standard requirements. I believe that I can . . ."

"Bolo?" Rheinhardt's tone was apprehensive.

"Yes?" the Bolo responded.

"You were saying?"

"This unit is failing," the Bolo said abruptly. "I compute my failure will occur within the next one hundred and sixty-eight hours."

"I beg your pardon?" Rheinhardt was amazed.

"I said that the unit, Bolo Mark XVI Model C, Das Afrika Korps is failing," the Bolo repeated. "I compute that all five main processor units will suffer complete failure within the next one hundred and sixty-eight hours."

"Isn't there anything to be done?" Rheinhardt asked, spreading his glance between the apprehensive technicians and the huge war machine.

The technicians' spokesman waved aside responsibility. "My expertise is in Quirthian interfaces, sir. I know nothing about Von Neumann architecture."