Another Hellbore pops into view, firing from defilade in a stunningly fast double pulse before skipping behind a berm. The double blows strike my screens at a seventy-degree angle. The second blast slices through the screen and blows track linkages in a five-meter slash.
I am injured!
I rage. I pulse my forward Hellbore. The thirty-centimeter blast slams into the berm, which ceases to exist. I have a nanosecond view of a human female approximately fifteen years old as I fire again. The command cab vanishes, melted into slag and radioactive vapor. The forward two-thirds of her misappropriated Hellbore also melts. I lock onto another sudden power emission. I fire through the berm again, in a one-two punch that turns a second mobile Hellbore and its driver into a cloud of dissociated atoms.
Multiple power signatures erupt. I track and lock on. Then hesitate, momentarily confused. The emssions skip oddly. I lock on, then lose the lock as the emission vanishes. The engines appear to teleport from one spot to another. The rebel commander may be firing up then killing the engines in a shifting pattern, so that the guns only appear to be moving. He may be playing shuffleboard with the gun systems. It is a clever ploy. I know a momentary thrill of satisfaction at facing an enemy worthy of the designation.
I attack them all. Mortars arc over the tops of the berms, targeting every power emission on the bluff. A mobile Hellbore rushes into the open, firing in a hit-and-run slash across my prow. I return fire. A plasma fireball rises high into the night sky, incinerating the field gun and its driver. Other drivers dash for the western access road. I roar forward, euphoric. Battle Reflex Mode brings my full consciousness online. My reflexes hum. My synapses sing. I come alive, rushing toward the enemy in fulfillment of my purpose. I track, target, fire, vaporizing berms and buildings with Hellbore salvos to reach the mobile guns behind them. Smoke boils. Fireballs expand like supernovas. I exult in the destruction of a clever and deadly enemy.
Hypervelocity missiles streak towards my prow and forward turret in a coordinated barrage from multiple locations. Antitank octocellulose bombs bounce and roll into my path, fused and shoved out of trucks by desperate rebel soldiers. My infinite repeaters blaze, swatting down eighty-six percent of the inbound missiles and ninety-three percent of the octocellulose mines. The remaining missiles detonate against my prow and forward turret. I bleed ablative armor scales. The octocellulose mines explode virtually underfoot. More track linkages blow apart on all three tread systems.
I rage. I target every power emission for a radius of a thousand meters. Mortars, missiles, infinite repeaters, and chain guns bark and snarl. Death flies outward from my warhull. I destroy. Exultation sweeps through my personality gestalt center. I am alive. I have a purpose. I live that noble purpose. I defend this world from the threat of terrorist insurrection. I fulfill my destiny on the field of battle. I destroy all traces of the Enemy.
I come to a halt in the center of a zone of desolation. Barran Bluff arsenal no longer exists. Everything within a radius of one thousand meters is a blackened, smouldering ruin. Buildings are broken, radioactive shells. Ninety percent of the internal berms have been breached or destroyed in totality. I have destroyed seven mobile ten-centimeter Hellbore field guns, six trucks loaded with heavy munitions, three-hundred hyper-v missiles, and seventeen octocellulose bombs.
My track linkages are ragged, with gaping holes that will seriously compromise track integrity without Sector-grade repairs. Heat shimmers in a haze from my gun barrels and the smoking wreckage around me. Radioactive wind sweeps fallout toward civilian installations in Gersham and Haggertown.
Belatedly, I recall Sar Gremian’s advisement on the fiscal burden of replacing equipment destroyed in this engagement. My personality gestalt circuitry sputters, attempting to reconcile the programmed-in elation of a battlefield victory of this magnitude — over a surprisingly sophisticated insurrection team — with the knowledge that I have destroyed a concentration of expensive equipment and war-grade materiel, against explicit instructions. Surely it is better to destroy high-tech weaponry than it is to allow that weaponry to fall into enemy hands?
I contact the president.
“Unit SOL-0045, requesting permission to file VSR.”
Video shows me Avelaine La Roux, who has taken on the look of a stunned rabbit. “What?” she asks, vacuously.
“Request permission to file VSR.”
Sar Gremian’s voice, originating from a point out of camera range, says, “Say yes, dammit. Just say yes.”
“Yes. Permission granted. Whatever.”
“I have destroyed seven 10cm Hellbore field guns, six military trucks, and an estimated ninety-eight point three percent of the infrastructure at Barran Bluff Depot—”
“What?”
Sar Gremian steps into the picture, literally. His face is livid. “You did what?”
“Rebel forces used Hellbores to destroy a robot-tank, an airship with its entire crew, and seventy-three federal troopers. They then used Hellbores, hypervelocity missiles, and octocellulose bombs in antitank mines to inflict serious damage to me. There was no choice but to destroy this equipment and those operating it. This is the heaviest damage I have sustained in combat since the Deng invasion sixteen years ago.”
“Jeezus H — do you realize you just blew up half a billion credits’ worth of infrastructure?” He runs a distracted hand across his skin-covered head, as though intending to pull long-vanished hair up by the roots. “Jeezus, half a billion credits… At least you contained the bastards.”
“The insurrection has not been contained.”
Sar Gremian’s narrow face blanches white, transforming the deep facial scarring into a sea of blotches against a pale background. His question emerges as a whisper.
“What do you mean, ‘not contained’?”
“I was ordered not to fire until reaching visual range. In the time it took me to reach the depot, federal troops completely failed to halt the departure of heavily laden trucks carrying an estimated seventy percent of the depot’s arsenal. Nearly two hundred enemy soldiers loaded and carried away one hundred twelve hypervelocity missiles, sixteen cases of octocellulose mines totaling one thousand six hundred explosive munitions casings, two thousand rifle-launched antitank rockets, eight hundred heavy rifles, and seventeen thousand rounds of ammunition.”
I can hear the president in the background, making sounds I have come to associate with gibbering terror.
“And where,” Sar Gremian asks in a grating tone, “are they now?”
“The trucks have been driven into the canyons of the Southern Damisi. It may be possible to trail them based on power emissions and chemical residues, but the on-board map in my geological database confirms that I cannot easily pursue. The canyons are too narrow. My warhull will not fit. Not without serious rearrangement of the rockfaces, which will result in multiple tons of debris, which will block passageways too narrow already. The rebels could not have chosen a better location from which to stage raids.
“Of more serious concern, the inventory of artillery at Barran Bluff Depot lists ten mobile Hellbore field guns, with 10cm bores. I have destroyed seven. There is no evidence of the remaining three in the rubble. I infer that rebel leaders were successful in stealing three mobile weapons platforms capable of inflicting mobility kills on a Bolo. The octocellulose antitank mines also stolen are capable of mobility kills on a Bolo, as well, particularly if used with intelligent placement and in batches detonated in tandem. Their forces suffered heavy casualties, but inflicted serious casualties, as well, and were able to retreat successfully with the majority of what they meant to obtain. The damage inflicted on government forces and equipment, including myself, is serious. I have lost armor and sustained substantial tread damage which will require repairs for me to be field-worthy.”