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.
A Time to Kill
Prologue
It was called Case Ragnarok, and it was insane. Yet in a time when madness had a galaxy by the throat, it was also inevitable.
It began as a planning study over a century earlier, when no one really believed there would be a war at all, and perhaps the crowning irony of the Final War was that a study undertaken to demonstrate the lunatic consequences of an unthinkable strategy became the foundation for putting that strategy into effect. The admirals and generals who initially undertook it actually intended it to prove that the stakes were too high, that the Melconian Empire would never dare risk a fight to the finish with the Concordiat—or vice versa—for they knew it was madness even to consider. But the civilians saw it as an analysis of an “option” and demanded a full implementation study once open war began, and the warriors provided it. It was their job to do so, of course, and in fairness to them, they protested the order… at first. Yet they were no more proof against the madness than the civilians when the time came.
And perhaps that was fitting, for the entire war was a colossal mistake, a confluence of misjudgments on a cosmic scale. Perhaps if there had been more contact between the Concordiat and the Empire it wouldn’t have happened, but the Empire slammed down its non-intercourse edict within six standard months of first contact. From a Human viewpoint, that was a hostile act; for the Empire, it was standard operating procedure, no more than simple prudence to curtail contacts until this new interstellar power was evaluated. Some of the Concordiat’s xenologists understood that and tried to convince their superiors of it, but the diplomats insisted on pressing for “normalization of relations.” It was their job to open new markets, to negotiate military and political and economic treaties, and they resented the Melconian silence, the no-transit zones along the Melconian border… the Melconian refusal to take them as seriously as they took themselves. They grew more strident, not less, when the Empire resisted all efforts to overturn the non-intercourse edict, and the Emperor’s advisors misread that stridency as a fear response, the insistence of a weaker power on dialogue because it knew its own weakness.
Imperial Intelligence should have told them differently, but shaping analyses to suit the views of one’s superiors was not a purely Human trait. Even if it had been, Intelligence’s analysts found it difficult to believe how far Human technology outclassed Melconian. The evidence was there, especially in the Dinochrome Brigade’s combat record, but they refused to accept that evidence. Instead, it was reported as disinformation, a cunning attempt to deceive the Imperial General Staff into believing the Concordiat was more powerful than it truly was and hence yet more evidence that Humanity feared the Empire.
And Humanity should have feared Melcon. It was Human hubris, as much as Melconian, which led to disaster, for both the Concordiat and the Empire had traditions of victory. Both had lost battles, but neither had ever
