If the Battalion succeeded in breaking that perimeter, the Ninth would come screaming in behind them, and Maneka had a very clear mental image of what the heavily armed Marine troopers in their individual powered combat armor would do to the Puppies if they could ever get to grips with their more lightly armored infantry adversaries. But unless the Battalion could open a breach for them, any attempt by the Marines to close with the enemy would be suicidal. So if the Battalion failed, instead of racing to exploit success, the Ninth’s troopers would use that same speed to fall back to the Chartres refugee centers where they might at least hope to kill a few more Melconians before the Puppies’ combat mechs ground them into the mud.
“All right, people,” Colonel Everard Tchaikovsky said as the final movement orders were acknowledged by all units. “Gregg estimates ninety-seven minutes to contact with the enemy. Let’s go.”
Green, rolling woodland spread out before Maneka in the panoramic view from Benjy’s forward optical head as the Battalion thundered towards the enemy. At least some of the Puppies’ recon drones had lasted long enough to spot them now, and she felt her hands sweating, the dryness in her mouth, as the first Melconian long-range fire screamed towards them.
She tried not to think about the odds. Sixty Surturs and twice that many Fenrises would have been heavy odds for a battalion of modern Bolos; for the Thirty-Ninth, they were impossible, and every human and Bolo in the Battalion, from the Colonel down, knew it.
“Melconian warships are entering range of the planet,” Benjy announced, and Maneka responded with a jerky nod.
Commodore Selkirk’s task force had paid the price of its gallantry. Not a single one of his ships had survived, but they’d ripped the guts out of the Melconian fleet before they died. None of the Puppy battleships or battlecruisers remained. Neither did any of their heavy cruisers, but nine light cruisers and eleven destroyers had been screaming towards Chartres at maximum for over twelve minutes now. She’d hoped the Battalion would win the race, get to grips with the Puppies’ ground forces before their surviving fleet units could intervene, but the numbers blinked on Benjy’s plot in grim confirmation that they would not.
The missile batteries the Melconians had dug in at the heart of their ground enclave vomited fire, and high-trajectory missiles rained down on the Battalion. More fell like cosmic flails, fired from the approaching warships to support the ground-based systems. Their flight profiles gave the Battalion easy intercept solutions, but they’d never actually been intended to get through in the first place. Their function was solely to saturate the Bolos’ defenses while the real killers broke through at lower altitudes.
“Remote platforms report cruise missiles launching all along the Enemy front,” Benjy’s resonant baritone told her. “Current estimate: approximately four thousand, plus or minus fifteen percent.”
“Understood,” Maneka rasped tautly.
“Colonel Tchaikovsky advises us that Enemy cruisers and destroyers are altering course. On the basis of their new heading and speed, I estimate a probability of 96.72 percent that they will endeavor to enter energy range of the Battalion simultaneous with the arrival of the low-altitude missile attack.”
“You’re just full of good news this afternoon, aren’t you?” she responded, baring her teeth in what might charitably have been called a smile.
“I would not call it ‘good,’” Benjy replied, with one of his electronic chuckles. “On the other hand, the Enemy’s obvious desire to mass all available firepower at the earliest possible moment does offer us some tactical advantages, Maneka.”
“Yeah, sure it does.”
She shook her head.
“I am serious,” the Bolo told her, and she stopped shaking her head and looked up at the internal visual pickup in disbelief.
“Just how does their piling even more firepower on top of us improve our chances of survival?” she demanded.
“I did not say it would enhance our survival probability. I merely observed that it offers us certain tactical advantages—or openings, at least—which we could not generate ourselves,” the Bolo replied, and there was more than simple electronic certitude in its voice. There was experience. The personal experience of his hundred and twenty-six years’ service against the enemies of mankind. “If their warships had opted to remain at extended missile ranges, rather than bringing their energy batteries into play, they would have remained beyond the range of our energy weapons. As it is, however, analysis of their new flight paths indicates they will enter their own energy weapon range of the Battalion 16.53 seconds before the arrival of their ground forces’ cruise missiles.”
Maneka Trevor’s blue eyes widened in understanding, and the Bolo produced another chuckle. This one was cold, without a trace of humor.
“They’re giving us a shot at them before the missiles reach us?” she asked.
“Indeed. They have clearly attempted to coordinate the maneuver carefully, but their timing appears inadequate to their needs. Unless they correct their flight profiles within the next thirty-eight seconds, the Battalion will be able to engage each warship at least once before their cruise missiles execute their terminal maneuvers. If they had been willing to wait until after the initial missile attack before closing, or even to remain permanently beyond Hellbore range, they would eventually have been able to destroy the entire Battalion with missiles alone.”
“Instead of giving us the opportunity to take out their orbital fire support completely!” she finished for him.
“Indeed,” Benjy repeated, and she heard the approval—and pride—in his deep voice. Pride in her she realized. In the student she had become when the Colonel gave her her first Bolo command… and, in so doing, committed her into that Bolo’s care for her true training. That was what put the pride into his voice: the fact that his student had grasped the enormity of the Melconians’ error so quickly.
The plunging thunder of the incoming high-trajectory missiles howled down out of the heavens like the lightning bolts of crazed deities, but the charging behemoths of the Thirty-Ninth Battalion didn’t even slow. Ancient they might be, but they were Bolos. Batteries of ion-bolt infinite repeaters and laser clusters raised their muzzles towards the skies and raved defiance, countermissile cells spat fire, and heaven blazed.
The Battalion raced forward at over eighty kilometers per hour through the thick, virgin forest. Not even their stupendous bulks could remain steady over such terrain at so high a speed, and the shock frame of Maneka’s command couch hammered at her as Benjy shuddered and rolled like some ancient windjammer of Old Earth rounding Cape Horn. But even as his mighty tracks ground sixty-meter tree trunks into crushed chlorophyll, his weapons tracked the incoming missiles with deadly precision. Missile after missile, dozens-scores-of them simultaneously, disappeared in eye-tearing fireballs that dimmed the light of Chartres’ primary into insignificance.
Despite her terror, despite the certainty that the Battalion could not win, Maneka Trevor stared at the imagery on her visual display with a sense of awe. The Melconian missile attack was a hemisphere of flame, a moving bowl above her where nothing existed but fire and destruction and the glaring corona of the wrath of an entire battalion of Bolos.
“Enemy cruise missiles entering our defensive envelope in 21.4 seconds,” Benjy announced calmly even as the display filled with blinding light. “Enemy warships entering engagement range in 4.61 seconds,” he added, and there was as much hunger as satisfaction in his tone.
“Stand by to engage,” Maneka said, although both of them knew it was purely a formality.