“All right.” Li-Chen Matucek leaned back at the head of the briefing room table and nursed a theatrically battered cup of coffee as he looked around his assembled staff officers and regimental and battalion commanders. “I take it you’ve all completed your inventories and inspections?” Heads nodded. “May I also take it you’re pleased with your new equipment?” More nods replied, much more enthusiastically, and he grinned. “Good! Because now it’s time to begin planning just how we’re going to use that equipment against our objective.”
One or two faces looked a little grim at the prospect of slaughtering unsuspecting Concordiat civilians, yet no one even considered protesting. Not only would second thoughts have been risky, but none of these men or women were the sort to suffer qualms of conscience. Matucek’s Marauders had once included officers who would have protested; by now, all of them were safely dead or long since departed to other, more principled outfits.
Osterwelt sat at Matucek’s right elbow, surveying the other officers, and was pleased by what he saw, though he was a bit disappointed that none of them seemed the least disturbed that he was present. He’d put together a lovely secondary cover to “let slip” that his present appearance was the result of a temporary biosculpt job if anyone asked, but no one had so much as questioned his “Scully” pseudonym. No doubt most of them suspected it was an assumed name, yet they didn’t seem to care. In fact, none of the idiots even seemed aware that he ought to conceal his true identity from them! It was just as well, since it also kept them from wondering if he’d decided to dispose of them all in order to protect himself, yet their total, casual acceptance of his presence was an unflattering indication of their intelligence. It was to be hoped they were better killers than plotters.
Of course, the real reason he had to be present today was the informational nuke he’d carefully avoided setting off to date. It was about time for the detonation sequence to begin, and he sat back in his chair for several minutes, listening as Matucek’s officers began discussing assault patterns and deployment plans, then cleared his throat.
“Yes, sir?” Matucek turned to him instantly, raising attentive eyebrows, and Osterwelt permitted himself an embarrassed smile.
“Forgive me, General, but, as you know, the same ship which delivered your Golems brought me fresh dispatches from my associates. As I promised, they’ve been continuing their efforts to secure complete information on Santa Cruz while I saw to your reequipment needs. That information has now been obtained, and, well, I’m afraid it isn’t as good as we’d hoped.”
“Meaning, Mister Scully?” Matucek prompted when he paused with an apologetic little shrug.
“Meaning, General, that it seems one of those eighty-year-old installations on Santa Cruz was a Bolo maintenance depot.” The abrupt silence in the briefing room was remarkably like what a microphone picked up in deep space. “In fact, it appears there’s a single operable Bolo on the planet.”
“A Bolo!” Colonel Granger, Matucek’s senior field commander, was a hard-bitten woman with eyes like duralloy, but her harsh features were slack with shock as she half-rose. “There’s a goddamned Bolo down there?”
A babble of voices broke out, and Matucek himself turned on Osterwelt with a snarl.
“You want us to go up against a frigging Bolo with a single manned mech brigade? Are you out of your mother-loving mind?”
“Now, now, General!” Osterwelt raised his voice to cut through the confusion, and for all its briskness, his tone was soothing as well. “I told you at the outset that we hadn’t yet been able to obtain full information on the planet. But I also told you we want you to succeed, and we do. That’s why we provided the Golems in the first place-as an insurance policy.”
“Manned vehicles against a Bolo?” Colonel Granger’s laugh was cold and ugly. “The only useful insurance for that scenario would be life insurance, Mister Scully-and even that would only help our dependents!”
“I understand your dismay, Colonel,” Osterwelt replied, still careful to keep just the right mixture of embarrassment, placation, and confidence in his tone. “Truly I do, and I apologize profoundly for our delay in obtaining this information. But we do have complete data on the planet now-I’ve already taken the liberty of loading it into your ship’s data base-and the Bolo’s presence is the only surprise.”
“It’s damned well the only surprise I bloody need!” someone else put in, and Matucek nodded.
“Sir, I’m sorry to say it,” he said in a harsh voice that sounded as if he were nothing of the sort, “but this changes everything. We can’t go up against a Bolo. Even if we won, our casualties would be enormous, and that’s no kind of business for a mercenary outfit.”
“I’m afraid canceling the operation is not an option, General.” Osterwelt’s tone was much colder than it had been, and his eyes were more frigid still. “You’ve taken the equipment we offered you as the first installment on your fee, and my associates would take it very much amiss if you tried to break our agreement.” The briefing room was silent once more, and Osterwelt went on calmly. “Nor can you pretend that this situation takes you totally by surprise. I informed you when you accepted the contract that our data was still partial. If you had a problem with that, you should have said so then.”
“You talk mighty big for a man who’s all alone on our ship,” a battalion commander muttered in an ugly voice, and Osterwelt nodded.
“I do, indeed. My associates know where I am, ladies and gentlemen. Should anything happen to me, they would be most displeased, and I believe the equipment we’ve secured for you is an ample indication of the resources with which they might choose to express that displeasure.”
He smiled, and a strange, wild delight filled him as other officers glared at him. Why, he was actually enjoying this! Odd-he’d never suspected he might be an adrenaline junkie. Still, it was probably time to apply the sugarcoating before someone allowed fear or anger to swamp his judgment… such as it was.
“Come now, ladies and gentlemen! As I just said, and as I’ve told you many times before, we want-need-for this operation to succeed, and it won’t if your force is battered to bits in a pitched battle before your search and destroy teams can even go after the locals! My associates haven’t been idle, I assure you. The moment they discovered the Bolo’s presence, they began formulating a plan to deal with it.”
“Deal with a Bolo?” Granger snorted. “That’d be a pretty neat trick, if you could do it. In case you haven’t noticed, Mister Scully, Bolos aren’t exactly noted for being easy to ‘deal’ with!”
“Ah, but their command personnel are another matter,” Osterwelt said softly, and Granger gave him a sudden sharp, coldly speculative glance.
“Explain,” Matucek said curtly, and Osterwelt folded his hands on the table top and settled himself comfortably in his chair.
“Certainly, General. First, allow me to point out that the Bolo in question is eighty years old. No doubt it remains a formidable fighting machine, yet it’s only a Mark XXIII, while your Golems are based on the Mark XXIV. Your vehicles may lack psychotronics, but the Bolo’s weapons, defensive systems, and circuitry are eighty years out of date. Even if your Golems were required to engage it head on, my associates assure me that you would have something like an eighty percent chance of victory.”
Someone snorted his derision, and Osterwelt smiled.
“I agree,” he told the snorter. “It’s much easier for people who aren’t risking their own hides to pontificate on the probable outcome of an engagement with a Bolo. I think if you run the data on the Mark XXIII/B you may find they’re closer to correct than first impressions might suggest, but the best outcome of all would be for you not to have to fight it at all.”