Bolo

"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 make sure he never would know, either-right up to the moment the carefully hidden files buried in their backup maintenance computers activated and blew them and anyone aboard their transports with them into an expanding cloud of gas.

Osterwelt watched the last few Panthers grumble past him and allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation. The Golems would be carried aboard the Fafnirs, which would neatly dispose of that portion of Matucek's small fleet when GalCorp no longer needed it. The mother ship's demise would be seen to by the files hidden in the air-cav maintenance module. The stingers' small onboard fusion plants would lack the brute destructive power of the Golems' suicide charges, but when they all blew simultaneously they would more than suffice to destroy the big ship's structural integrity somewhere in the trackless depths of hyper-space. That would be enough to guarantee that there wouldn't even be any wreckage... much less annoying witnesses who might turn state's evidence if the Concordiat ever identified Matucek's Marauders as the "pirates" about to raid Santa Cruz.

The final Panther clanked by, and he and Matucek turned to follow along behind it. It was a pity, in some ways, that the Marauders had to go. No one would particularly miss the human flotsam which filled the brigade's ranks, but writing off this much perfectly good hardware would make a hole even in GalCorp's quarterly cash flow. Still, the Golems themselves had cost practically nothing, given the Freighnar government's desperate need for maintenance support, and the raid would probably depress real estate prices on Santa Cruz sufficiently to let GalCorp recoup most of its investment in the other equipment. Not to mention the fact that there would no longer be any need to pay Matucek the sizable fee upon which they'd agreed. And as a useful side benefit, GalCorp would have its hooks well into the Freighnars, as well. Once the Concordiat discovered the People's Government had disposed of Golems to a mercenary outfit of dubious reputation, it would become not merely largely but totally dependent upon GalCorp's technical support. It was inevitable, since the Concordiat would, as surely as hydrogen and oxygen combined to form water, cut off all foreign aid.

It was always so nice when loose ends could not only be tied up but made to yield still more advantage in the process. No one outside GalCorp's innermost circle of board members could ever be allowed even to suspect that this operation had taken place, but the men and women who mattered would know. Just as they would know it was Gerald Osterwelt who'd engineered it so smoothly. When the time finally came for his mother to step down, the board would remember who'd given it Santa Cruz on a platter, and his eyes gleamed at the endless vista of power opening wide before him.

"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.