Bolo!

“True.” There was an undeniable note of smugness in Nike’s voice, and Merrit laughed out loud. Then he leaned forward to kill the sim.

“No need for you to drive your icon clear home,” he decided. “We’ll just park it in the VR garage for all those virtual repairs it needs. In the meantime, how close I came to getting you at Craggy Head encourages me to try a somewhat different challenge.”

“Indeed?” The Bolo sounded amused. “Very well, Commander

“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red.”

“Ummm.” Merrit rocked his chair gently and rubbed his chin. “It’s one of the Elizabethans,” he said finally. “I’m tempted to say Shakespeare, but I’m always tempted to guess him. Can I have another couplet?”

“Of course:

“If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.”

“That’s definitely Will in one of his deflating moods,” Merrit said with a grin. “What was that one you gave me last week?” He snapped his fingers to help himself think. “The awful one about the voice that ‘tunes all the spheres’?”

“‘Daphne,’ by John Lyly.”

“That’s the one!” He nodded. “All right, Nike. My official guess is that today’s selection was from Shakespeare and that it’s a satiric piece to comment on people like Lyly.”

“It certainly was Shakespeare,” the Bolo agreed, “and you have probably assessed his motivation accurately. Very well, Commander, you have successfully identified the author. Shall I give you the rest of ‘My Mistress’ Eyes,’ or would you prefer another forfeit?”

“Frost,” Merrit said. “Give me something by Frost, please.”

“Certainly.” Once again, Nike sounded pleased. Of all the many Old Earth poets to whom she had introduced him over the past four months, Robert Frost was, perhaps, her favorite, and Merrit had come to love Frost’s clean, deceptively simple language himself. It spoke of the half-remembered, half-imagined world of his own boyhood on Helicon-of snowfields and mountain glaciers, deep evergreen woods and cold, crystal streams. Nike had sensed his deep response from the moment she first recited ‘Mending Wall’ to him, and now she paused just a moment, then began in a soft, clear voice:

“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

Paul Merrit leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, savoring the clean, quiet elegance of words, and smiled.

11

Li-Chen Matucek stood in the echoing vehicle bay of his “brigade’s” mother ship and tried to look like a serious, sober-minded military man as the first tanks rumbled down the transfer tubes from the heavy-lift cargo shuttles nuzzled against its side. Despite his best efforts, however, he failed. The gleeful, greedy light in his eyes was that of an adolescent receiving his first grav-speeder, and Gerald Osterwelt hid his own amusement with considerably more skill as he saw it.

Brand new Panther-class medium tanks clanked and clanged across the heavily reinforced deck plates. They wore gleaming coats of tropical camouflage, their ten-centimeter Hellbores cast long, lethal shadows, and the mercenary crew chiefs standing in their hatches wore the expressions of men and women who never wanted to wake up as they muttered into com-links and guided their drivers towards their assigned parking spots.

This wasn’t the first freighter with which Matucek’s mother ship had made rendezvous. None of them had worn the livery of any known space line, and their transponder codes had borne no resemblance to whatever codes the Office of Registry might once have issued them, but all of them had been too big, too new and modern, for the anonymous tramps they pretended to be. All of Matucek’s people knew that, and none cared. The first freighter had delivered a full complement of one– and two-man atmospheric stingers, complete with full-service maintenance shop module and at least a year of spares for everything from counter-grav lift fans to multibarrel autocannon. The next had delivered a full load of Ferret armored assault vehicles, the Concordiat’s latest infantry light AFV, and the one after that had transferred a full set of rough-terrain assault pods to Matucek’s two Fafnir-class assault ships. Now the Panthers had arrived, like the old, old song about the twelve days of Christmas, and the entire brigade was acting like children in a toy store.

But, of course, the really big item wouldn’t arrive until next week, Osterwelt reminded himself, and his smile-if he’d permitted himself to wear one-would have been most unpleasant at the thought. Matucek could hardly stand the wait for the Golem-IIIs which would be the crown jewels of his new, rejuvenated brigade. But, then, he had no idea what else those Golems would be. Osterwelt and GalCorp’s techs had gone to considerable lengths to