nothing in the universe she wanted less than to view that imagery... and nothing that could possibly have stopped her. She tried to find some way to express that, but words were a clumsy, meaningless interface, and so she simply nodded.
Shallek's nostrils flared. Then he pressed the play button.
The holo came up instantly, crystal clear, its shapes a light sculpture solid enough to touch, and Maneka felt herself falling into its depths. She saw six brutally damaged Bolos hammering forward, led by one whose hull bore the remnants of the unit code '862-BNJ' in half-obliterated letters down one scorched and seared flank.
From the drone's perspective, she could see the glowing wound the Surtur Hellbore had blasted through Benjy's armor. The one which had come so close to killing both of them. She could actually see a gray-white scab spilling out of the hole and some fragment of her brain recognized it as overflow from the fire suppressant with which he must have packed the entire web of his internal access spaces.
Explosions and energy weapons ripped and tore at them. Missiles screamed in and disintegrated under the pounding of point defense clusters and auto cannon or exploded in savage fury against battle screens that glowed incandescent with the fury of the energies they fought to somehow turn aside. Light and medium Melconian combat mechs charged to meet them, like packs of jackals charging wounded grizzlies. Infinite repeaters tore the jackals apart, grinding tracks smashed over their blazing corpses, grinding them into the mud, but still they came, and there were scores of them.
A handful of Surturs reared among them, towering over them like titans, and thunderbolts slammed back and forth as main battery fire added itself to the seething holocaust. Two of the Bolos lurched to a halt, belching smoke and incandescent fury as multiple Hellbores blasted through their armor. Surturs exploded as the four survivors smashed back, but two more of the Melconian war machines loomed suddenly on the Bolos' flank. The exchange of fire lasted less than ten seconds; when it was done, every Surtur was dead... and only Benjy remained, still charging forward-all alone now-into the teeth of the desperate Melconian fire.
Maneka blinked her remaining eye hard. The film of tears defied her efforts, and she scrubbed at them furiously with her left hand. Uselessly. Her vision still blurred and ran, and yet she saw every hideous detail as Benjy advanced single-handedly into the very maw of Hell.
I should have been with him, she thought, and knew it was insane even as the thought hammered in her brain. She had been with him. Her own body was inside that staggering, smoking wreck of a Bolo as it clawed its way onward. But it wasn't the same thing. She hadn't been with him-hadn't been there for him in his march to Golgatha. He'd been alone, abandoned, left without the presence of even a single friend, and yet he never flinched. Never hesitated.
His entire starboard suspension system had been destroyed, but he blew the tracks and advanced on the bare bogeys. A Loki-class tank destroyer popped out of its hide behind him and lasted long enough to fire before a trio of ion bolts tore it apart. Its screaming plasma bolt smashed through the thinner armor at the rear of Benjy's main turret, and the turret shattered, vomiting heat and shattered duralloy as it was consumed from within.
Maneka's hand no longer scrubbed at her eye. It was pressed to her mouth, covering her trembling lips as she watched Benjy still advancing. She knew about Bolos' psychotronic pain sensors, knew about the agony which had to be shrieking through him, but his surviving weapons remained in action. His infinite repeaters went to continuous maximum-rate fire, a ruinous rate which must burn them out within a handful of minutes, unless they exploded first, and the lash of their ion bolts blasted a molten path through the enemies still swarming down upon him.
They were like locusts, sensing the weakening of his defenses, flinging themselves against him, frantic to stop him before he reached the critical command node which was the heart and brain of their own defense. The massively defended command post she had ordered him to attack. Air cavalry mounts raced in, firing rockets and cannon that ripped through his wavering battle screen. Light, manned Hellbores lacerated his flanks, gouged half- molten chasms through his armor. Missiles and artillery fire exploded around him, and still he advanced.
And then, somehow-impossibly-the staggering wreck which had been her friend reached his final objective. His Hellbore was gone and his infinite repeaters were too light to penetrate the ceramacrete facing the hastily constructed command post. But he still had one weapon, and he ground slowly, agonizingly forward, until his 15,000-ton hull crunched over the bunker, smashing and crushing.
He lurched to a halt then, unable-or unwilling-to move further, and his surviving infinite repeaters continued to blaze as the Melconians closed in on him from all sides with a fury that would not be denied. He had accomplished his mission. Sanity should have told the Melconians there was no point in continuing to waste combat power against him when they might soon need it desperately against other foes.
But he'd cost them too much, hurt them too badly, for them to realize that. And so they swarmed towards him, wasting their strength, and Maneka realized-knew, as if she heard his baritone voice once again-that that was the reason he'd stopped where he was. Why he wasn't even attempting to maneuver. Like the Invictuses of the 351st, he was deliberately drawing their remaining combat strength down upon himself... and away from the Marines advancing in the Battalion's wake.
It could not last long. That was the only mercy Maneka could think of, yet even as she did, she knew how eternal those brief screaming minutes of agony and destruction must have been to a person who thought at psychotronic speed.
They came from all directions. Lokis, a handful of Fenrises, Heimdall reconnaissance mechs, air cavalry mounts, even Melconian infantrymen, and every one of them poured fire into Benjy's dying hull. One by one his remaining weapons were silenced, blown into ruin, while breaches hammered deeper and deeper into him. Maneka knew she was sobbing aloud, and she couldn't stop-didn't want to stop-as his hull glowed brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter, with the transfer energy bleeding into it.
And still he fought, with all the incredible toughness of Bolo-kind and all the courage of his century-old psychotronic heart.
Yet any toughness, any courage, must eventually fail under that onslaught, and the Melconian pack swept over him at last. A Loki-one of the last half-dozen or less the Melconians still had-maneuvered into the kill position.
Benjy's last surviving secondary turret was still firing, still killing targets with flashing precision, when the plasma lance ripped into his survival center at last.
Maneka could never remember the exact words Shallek said after that. They were only sounds, only noise. She knew he was telling her the Ninth Marines had only been able to break through because of Benjy. That his final stand had drawn in the Melconian reserves, concentrated the majority of the Melconian mobile strength in one spot, where the Marines' light armored units had taken it from behind. That Benjy's death had saved almost two billion human lives.
She knew all of that. Understood all of it. And yet, the words remained only sounds, only echoes of something which had no significance against the loss and anguish twisting deep in her soul.
They left her then, after a time, and Shallek took the holo player with him. Perhaps, she thought, he wanted to prevent her from replaying the record, witnessing Benjy's death again and again. But if he did, it was wasted effort. She needed no holo player. Would never need one. The images were part of her now, burned into her, and she closed her eye as they washed over her once more.
'With your shield, or on it,' carrying it in triumph or carried upon it in death. That was the ancient admonition Benjy had once quoted to her on the day he explained the unspoken and unwritten compact between Bolos and their human commanders. To face death together. To share it when it came for them both.
But Maneka had come back neither with her shield nor on it. She hadn't met her part of the compact. She knew it was irrational, insane, to blame herself for that. And she knew, as if Benjy were parked beside her bed telling her, that just as she would have given anything for his survival, he had wanted her to survive. And because he had, she would. However much it hurt, she would.
She rolled her head on the pillow, blotting her tears, and touched the grief she knew would never leave her again.
Oh, Benjy, she whispered in the silence of her mind.
Oh, Benjy.
