I surmise that battle damage must be responsible for my slow comprehension rate, as it has taken this long to twig to Sar Gremian’s meaning. Phil is “unavailable” because something untoward has happened to him. I scan law enforcement databases and find what I am looking for in a P-Squad arrest report logged approximately two hours after his abrupt exodus from my maintenance bay. The official charges are “negative public statements of a political nature” and “advocating the violent overthrow of the government.”
I surmise that Phil’s anger over his nephew’s fate spilled over into a loud and public complaint to anyone who would listen. The wheels of justice spin rapidly on Jefferson. Phil has already been transported to Cathal Work Camp. At the very least, nephew and uncle will be together, although I suspect they find little enough consolation in that.
I find none at all. I have no replacement tracks and no technicians worthy of the name. I have no spare parts to repair damaged and destroyed guns. No help from any quarter — not even Sector Command — and my sole remaining “friend” has been shipped to a reeducation camp where dissidents are worked like animals on starvation rations until they collapse, at which point they are disposed of, usually in shallow graves.
I cannot help feeling responsible for Phil’s incarceration, not only because I revealed the whereabouts of his nephew, but because my conversations with him contributed to his complete disaffection for the POPPA leadership and party machine. For all his faults, I like Phil Fabrizio. It was never my intention to destroy him. There is nothing I can do to make amends, which deepens my loneliness. I wish…
Wishing is for humans.
I discard the thought and focus on my immediate difficulties. Frank has maneuvered the truck around and is backing slowly and carefully toward my open maintenance bay. The other technicians are still carrying loot to the doorway, ready to load up the meager contents of my depot for sale to the nearest black marketeer. Frank nudges controls, sliding the long trailer neatly into position. He switches off the ignition and slides down to the ground.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he says cheerfully. “My hat blew out the window.”
The others shrug and finish shifting a last cartload that has hung up on an earlier load piled in the doorway. Frank moves smartly toward the street, disappearing around the corner of Phil’s trailer. Seven seconds later, I catch another glimpse of Frank in the street. He is well beyond the far end of the trailer, running at top speed. I have just enough time to feel a trickle of alarm through my threat-assessment center. Then the larcenous technicians open the back doors of the cargo trailer.
The octocellulose bomb detonates literally in my face. The world burns. A shockwave equivalent to a nuclear bomb lifts me off my treads. I am hurled through the back wall, which simply ceases to exist. I am aware of falling, aware that antiquated, jury-rigged processors and cobbled-up connections have crumpled under the stress, tearing away pieces of my waking mind with them.
The pain of overloaded sensors shocks my psychotronics so deeply I retreat into my survival center. As I lose consciousness, I curse my own stupidity.
And Frank, who has just killed me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I
I cannot see.
My first reaction to this is not worry, it is stunned amazement. I am still alive. I did not expect to be. The Granger rebels who neatly inserted the bomb into my own maintenance depot doubtless did not expect me to survive, either. For long, confused minutes, I cannot hear anything at all. Sensor arrays and processors have blown system-wide. I can feel distant impacts against my warhull, in a pattern suggesting the random fall of debris.
All visual-light sensors are gone. The only intact imaging technology at my disposal is the thermal visioning system. I can see heat signatures. That is all.
As I gradually orient myself, coming further out of emergency survival center shock, I realize that I am lying on my side. My port side, to be exact, already hard hit by battle damage. I detect ranks of twisted infinite repeaters, crushed by my own weight landing on them. Bombardment rockets and hyper-v missiles have ruptured, spilling their contents onto the ground.
My thoughts remain sluggish for several minutes, while diagnostics run frantic double-checks on damaged circuitry, blown data-storage banks, fused router connections. Ninety-seven percent of the internal damage affects my oldest circuitry, much of it cobbled together and patched by a century’s worth of field technicians, using whatever substandard parts were available or could be made to serve the purpose. Of that ninety-seven percent, fully half the damage has occurred in connections and installations put in place by Phil Fabrizio, who has been forced to use seriously under-spec materials for years.
Unable to see, unable to move, I share momentary sympathy with a legless beetle flipped onto its back. I transmit a call for help.
Sar Gremian answers that call with a wrathful curse. “What the mother-pissing hell was that explosion? Did you fire those God-cursed Hellbores?”
“No.” I have difficulty producing speech, as my overloaded circuitry has slowed down my processing capabilities. “A Granger bomb exploded inside my depot. They packed a ten-meter cargo truck with octocellulose. I am critically injured. I have been knocked onto my side. I cannot see anything except thermal images. My makeshift depot no longer exists.”
Sar Gremian swears nonstop for seven point eight seconds. Then says, “We’ll get a team out there.”
I wait for a seeming eternity. Ten minutes. Seventeen. Thirty. How long does it take to scramble an emergency response team? I finally detect the low-grade tremors that herald the arrival of several motorized vehicles, large ones, based on the strength and pattern of the tremors. One of those vehicles has a concussion footprint that sounds like a tracked machine, rather than something on wheels. I revise that assessment to several tracked vehicles, as the vibration splits apart into three separate footprints, one moving toward my stern, one toward my prow, and one that assumes a place midway between them.
Then Sar Gremian speaks via his wrist-comm. Judging by the sound of the transmission and the background noise of multiple heavy engines, the president’s senior adviser has come to supervise the rescue operation in person. “Okay, Bolo, we’ve got a team of heavy-lift cranes in place. We’re going to tip you back up, onto your treads.”
“It is unlikely that you have cables or engines strong enough for that.”
“Shut up, machine! You’ve caused enough trouble today, as it is.”
This is inherently unfair, but Sar Gremian has never shown any concern for fair play. I wait as construction engineering crews hook cables to my warhull. The vibrations from all three cranes increase in strength and begin to move away from me, slowly. The cables grow taut. Forward progress stalls, leaving all three machines straining, but motionless. From the sounds I pick up, the drivers are redlining their engines. There is a sudden brutal snap. The cable hooked to my prow slashes loose, whipping audibly through the air. I hear screams and curses, a weird metallic buzz, and the screech of torn metal.