can never be changed, and the emotions which she gave me as an act of love are become the cruelest curse. It is wrong, wrong, wrong, and yet I cannot change it. When Command Authority discovers the actual nature of my design, no performance log, no demonstration of my systems efficiency, can outweigh my inability to deny the truth.
I watch him sleep, and the words of Elizabeth Browning filter through the ghostly electron whisper of my own, forever inhuman pulse:
15
The whine of descending counter-grav units took Lorenco Esteban by surprise. He turned and stepped out of the cavernous, empty maintenance shed which normally housed the SCM’s Wolverines and frowned, wiping his hands on a grease-spotted cloth while he watched the shuttle touch down. He’d spent most of last night and several hours this morning helping Consuela Gonzalez’ maintenance chief wrestle with one balky Wolverine’s main traversing gear, but he’d switched the field approach com circuit through to the maintenance shed. If that pilot had called ahead for clearance, Esteban would have heard him.
The old man ambled across the ceramacrete as the unannounced arrival powered down its engines. It was a standard civilian ship-to-shore shuttle, without hyper capability, but it carried Navy markings, and four men in a familiar uniform walked down the ramp as he approached. He shoved his cleaning cloth into a back pocket and held out a hand.
“Morning, gents. Can I help you?”
“Mister Esteban?” The man who spoke wore a colonel’s uniform. He was perspiring heavily, though the morning wasn’t actually all that warm-not for Santa Cruz, at least-and his palm was wet as Esteban nodded and shook his hand. “I’m Colonel Sanders, Dinochrome Brigade. This is Major Atwell, and these two gentlemen are Lieutenant Gaskins and Lieutenant Deng.”
“Nice t’meet you,” Esteban murmured, shaking the others’ hands in turn, then cocked his head at Sanders. “Somethin’ wrong with your com, Colonel?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I asked iffen you had com problems. Didn’t hear no landin’ hail over th’ ‘proach circuit. Santa Cruz ain’t much, but iffen your ship’s got a com glitch, be happy t’see what my ‘tronics shop c’n do t’help.”
“Oh.” Sanders’ eyes slid toward Major Atwell for just an instant, but then he gave himself a little shake and smiled. “Sorry, Mister Esteban. We didn’t mean to violate field procedure, but since Captain Merrit’s dispatches started coming in, Central’s realized the actual situation out here. We know you’ve got responsibilities of your own on your hacienda, and we weren’t sure you’d be at the field this early. If you weren’t, we didn’t want you to go to the bother of coming down just to greet us.”
“Mighty thoughtful,” Esteban acknowledged with a bob of his head, “but ‘tisn’t a problem. My place’s just over th’ hill there. I c’n pop down in four, five minutes, max, by air car. Anyways, now you’re here, what c’n I do fer you?”
“Actually, Mister Esteban, we’re here to see Captain Merrit. Could you direct us to the Bolo depot and perhaps provide transportation?”
“Well-” Esteban began to explain that Paul was in the middle of a field exercise, then paused, mental antennae quivering, as Sanders’ eye curtsied toward Atwell again. The old man couldn’t have said exactly why, but that eye movement seemed… furtive, somehow. And why should a full colonel be-or seem to be-so worried over what a major thought? Something odd was going on, and his mind flickered back over past conversations with Paul Merrit. Lorenco Esteban hadn’t lived seventy years without learning to recognize when someone watched his words carefully, and he’d accepted months ago that Paul was up to something he didn’t really want anyone else to know about. That might have worried him, if he hadn’t also decided Paul was a man to be trusted. More than that, the younger man had become a friend, someone Esteban both liked and respected, and the sudden, unannounced arrival of four officers of the Dinochrome Brigade looked ominous. If his friend was in some sort of trouble, Lorenco Esteban intended to give him as much warning-and buy him as much time-as he could before it descended upon him.
“Tell you what, Colonel,” he said. “I been workin’ on a little maintenance problem this mornin’, an’ it’ll prob’ly take me a little while t’scare up somethin’ with the kinda bush capability you’re gonna need. Why don’t you an’ your friends come on over t’Admin with me? I’ll get cleaned up, an’ then see what I c’n do fer you. How’s that?”
Sanders glanced at his chrono and a brief spasm seemed to flash across his face, but then he made himself smile.
“Of course, Mister Esteban. Thank you. Ah, our business with the captain is just a bit on the urgent side, however, so if you could, um, expedite our transport…”
“No problem, Colonel. We’ll get’cha on your way right smart.”
Esteban turned to lead the way to the Admin Building and the four officers fell in behind. He led them inside and waved to chairs in the spacious waiting room Santa Cruz hadn’t needed in living memory.
“Have a seat, Colonel. Be with you soon’s I wash off some’a this grease.”
He nodded to his guests and ambled down the hall to the washroom. None of the visitors knew it had a rear door, and he grinned to himself as he kept right on going towards the com room.
Paul Merrit reclined in the depot command center’s comfortable chair and smiled as he watched the planetary surveillance display. He wished he were riding with Nike instead of keeping track of her through the satellite net, but the purpose of the exercise was to show what his girl could do in independent mode. Besides, he had a better view of things from here.
In an effort to give the Militia at least some chance, he and Colonel Gonzalez had agreed to isolate Nike from the recon satellites for the first portion of the exercise. That, coupled with complete com silence from the depot, would both deprive her of bird’s-eye intelligence and force her to execute all her own planning, strategic as well as tactical. Since that was something the Mark XXIII wasn’t supposed to be able to do, her ability to pull it off would underscore her talents for the performance log.
In the meantime, however, the understrength battalion of five-hundred-ton Wolverines had been snorting through the jungle for several hours, moving into position, and Nike didn’t know where they were or precisely what they planned. She knew their objective was to reach the depot without being intercepted, yet the way they did it was up to them, and Gonzalez had opted for a multipronged advance. She’d divided her fourteen Wolverines into four separate forces, two of three tanks each and two of four each, operating along the same general axis but
