My diagnostic subroutines are still cycling when my radar detects a low-orbit target. It is unidentified, but I compute a 95.987 percent probability that it is the mother ship of the Fafnir-class transports.

“My God!” Louise Granger’s voice was a whisper as her sensors showed her the terrible heat signature of the dead Golems, and the full, hideous truth registered. Only one thing could have stopped both Golems side-by-side in their tracks, and even as that thought flashed through her mind, her sensor section found the Bolo itself.

Her head whipped around, her eyes like daggers as they bit into Mister Scully’s suddenly terrified face.

“So much for your brilliant plan, you worthless bastard,” she said almost conversationally.

I track the mother ship. My single remaining Hellbore locks on, and I rock on my treads as I fire my fourth main battery war shot.

Huge as it was, Li-Chin Matucek’s mother ship was a freighter, not a ship of the line, and Nike’s Hellbore was equivalent to the main battery weapons of a dreadnought. Her plasma bolt impacted on its port bow and ripped effortlessly through bulkhead after bulkhead. It chewed its way over four hundred meters into the ship’s hull before it finally found something fatal, and Louise Granger, Li-Chen Matucek, Gerald Osterwelt, and four hundred other men and women vanished in the sun-bright boil of a breached fusion bottle.

Neither my own sensors nor the planetary surveillance system detect additional ships in Santa Cruz orbit. The destruction of his transports has marooned the Enemy’s forces on the planet, but the recon satellites report that the rough equivalent of a Concordiat Medium Mechanized Brigade (manned) has landed successfully. Much of Ciudad Bolivar’s eastern suburbs are in flames, the Fleet Base is completely occupied, and the Enemy is continuing to advance and secure his position as I watch.

I am not certain of the Enemy’s intentions in this changed tactical situation. His continued offensive action may simply indicate that he has not yet realized he is cut off. It may, however, reflect instead his knowledge that additional forces are en route to reinforce him. In the latter case, it is clearly imperative to deny him any spacehead to serve as a recovery LZ. Moreover, his motives matter less than the consequences of his actions, for Santa Cruzans are dying in enormous numbers as I watch.

Smoke pours from the ruins of my after turret, but I bring myself back to a heading of 029 degrees true and add Colonel Gonzalez’ Wolverine to the planetary surveillance net. For the moment, my own systems drive the display in her tank, but I reprogram her primary telemetry link to become a direct feed from the satellites in the event that I am destroyed.

“Colonel Gonzalez?”

Consuela Gonzalez twitched as the Bolo’s voice came over the link again. There was an indefinable change to it, almost as if it were shadowed with pain. She shook the fanciful thought aside with a savage shake of her head and keyed her mike.

“Gonzalez here.”

“I am now feeding your tactical display from the planetary surveillance system,” the Bolo told her. “Can you confirm reception?”

“Confirmed, Connie!” her sensor tech called.

“We have it, amiga,” Gonzalez confirmed in turn.

“Excellent. I have destroyed two heavy Enemy armored units which I believe to have been Golem-IIIs. I have sustained major damage but remain combat capable at eighty-two point three-one-seven percent base capability. I am advancing on a heading of zero-two-niner degrees true to secure the space field and relieve Ciudad Bolivar. I suggest you alter your own course to follow directly after me while I clear passage for your Wolverines.”

“Copy that, amiga.” Gonzalez punched a frequency change and spoke to the other thirteen tanks of her command. “Wolf Leader to Cubs. Form on me and guide right. We’ll follow the Bolo through.” Taut-voiced affirmatives echoed back, and she switched back to Nike’s frequency. “We’re on our way, amiga.”

“Excellent, Colonel.”

Gonzalez felt her tank buck and quiver as it swept around to follow the huge pathway Nike was battering through the jungle. Small as the Wolverines might be beside a Bolo’s huge bulk, each was still five hundred tons of armor and alloy, with all the inertia that implied. Even so, violent motion hammered Gonzalez against her crash couch’s shock frame as the big tanks edged up to a speed of over sixty kph.

Her sensor tech managed to feed the data from the satellite net to Gonzalez’ own display, and she swore in savage silence as she saw the huge pall of smoke rising from the capital. Yet even as she watched it, a question probed at the back of her brain, and she keyed her mike once more.

“Unit NKE, Gonzalez,” she said. “Are you in contact with Captain Merrit?”

“Negative, Colonel Gonzalez.” The Bolo’s reply came back instantly, and, for the first time, it was so flat it sounded like a computer’s voice. There was a brief moment of silence, and then it went on. “I have had no contact with him since the attack began. I do not know the reason for his silence. Absent any communication with him, I must consider you the senior officer present. Have you any instructions?”

My God, Gonzalez thought. NKE’s running Santa Cruz’s entire defense on its own! How in hell can a Bolo that old do something like this? Her eyes dropped to the white-hot carcasses of the dead Golems on her display, and she shrugged. However it-she’s-doing it, she’s doing a damned good job!

“Understood, NKE,” she said after a moment. “Negative instructions. You’re doing fine, amiga-just keep telling us what you need and go kill those bastards.”

“Thank you, Colonel. I shall attempt not to disappoint you.”

A crippled recon skimmer staggered through the air. Its barely conscious pilot had long since lost any clear idea of his course, but some instinct kept him wavering steadily towards the north.

A huge, raw furrow appeared in the jungle below him, a dark swatch of damp, black earth, gouged from the rich emerald as if by some impossibly huge plow, and Paul Merrit’s glazed eyes brightened. His mind was going fast as blood loss eroded his strength, but only one thing could have made that wound, and he altered course along it and rammed his dying drive to full power.

I continue to study the satellite reports on the fighting in and around Ciudad Bolivar, but a new energy source suddenly takes my attention. It is to the south of me, pursuing at a velocity of 425.63 kph, and its signature is very weak and fluctuating. I redirect one of the satellites to a close examination of it, and a sense of all too human horror stabs through me as I recognize it.

It is my Commander’s recon skimmer, and it has suffered severe damage. I attempt to contact it directly, but it does not respond to my transmissions. From the satellite data, it is probable its own com facilities have been destroyed.

I am faced by a cruel dilemma. The pilot of that skimmer is almost certainly my Commander-Paul. He may be injured, even dying, and instinct cries out for me to alter course to meet him, yet every moment I delay may cost scores of other human lives in Ciudad Bolivar. I attempt again and again to contact him, without success, and anguish twists me at his silence, yet I compute he will overtake me within 4.126 minutes-if his damaged drive lasts that long-and I know him well. He would not wish me to stop, even to save his life, at the cost of civilian lives, and so I continue on my chosen course, clearing a path for the Wolverines.