Every surface was covered with displays, readouts, battle board lights that winked at standby or glowed with the steady illumination of full readiness. Aside from an old-fashioned joystick, there were no manual controls at all. No single human being could possibly have operated a Mark XXVIII Bolo without full computer support, so there was no point in using up precious internal volume with weapons control stations or EW consoles. Even the joystick was no more than a sop to convention. In theory, it was possible for a human commander to drive a Bolo home if its personality center was knocked out.
Given the fact that the personality center in question was located directly under the command deck, however, the chance that any commander would survive its destruction in any shape to drive anything anywhere was remote, to say the least.
A spasm of remembered grief and loss flickered through her at the thought. Once again, she remembered the blur of the closing armored shell around the equally comfortable couch which had once stood at the center of Benjy's command deck. That deck had been virtually identical to this one, and she sat for just a moment, reminding herself that Lazarus was not Benjy ... and Indrani was not Chartres.
She took long enough to be certain she had control of her emotions, then slipped into the headset and activated the neural net.
Once again I experience the instant of fusion with my Commander.
I sense her rueful amusement as her reflex effort to conceal the mental flashback to her time with Unit Eight-Six-Two fails. It cannot do otherwise when her thoughts and mine are so intimately melded, yet it is typical of her that she should attempt to "spare my feelings." Her amusement at her failure, however, is yet another sign of how far she has come in recovering from the mental wounds the Battle of Chartres inflicted upon her.
Her mind settles fully into place, nestled at the core of our joined personality as her physical body is nestled at the core of my own ponderous combat chassis, and she/we open our sensors fully to the universe about us.
Her/their passive and active sensors flooded her/their mind with data. It was no longer presented to the Maneka component of their joint personality via graphic display. The data simply was. She had discovered that there were no human words to express precisely what she perceived in these moments of union with Lazarus. It was as if she could literally see radar and lidar, as if she could taste cosmic radiation on her tongue. Ranges and firing bearings, signal intensities, frequencies, pulse repetition rates . .
. All of them were as fully, naturally, and instinctively part of her perceptions as the texture of her own palm seen with her merely human eyes.
She/they allowed themselves a brief moment—almost an eternity to one such as they had become—to savor the sensuality of their merger. In many respects, Maneka often thought, with the total honesty and openness which the link with Lazarus enforced, it was more satisfying, in a very different way, than any physical act of love she had ever experienced.
"I will not inform Lieutenant Hawthorne of that," the Lazarus component of her/their personality told her with gentle amusement, and she sent a silent ripple of mental laughter back to him.
But then it was time for work, and she/they sent the command to Thermopylae's AI to release the docking clamps. The pod's reaction thrusters flared briefly, wafting the massive parasite away from the transport's hull, then shut down. She/they waited patiently until the pod had cleared the safety perimeter for its normal-space drive, and then she/they went sliding gracefully towards the outermost atmosphere of Indrani.
"I trust you've been enjoying yourself down there, Captain," Adrian Agnelli said dryly.
"I always take a certain pleasure in the efficient performance of my duties, however arduous or onerous they may be," Maneka replied cheerfully, looking into the projected holographic display above the optical head Lazarus had extended and swivelled around to face her.
At the moment, she sat in a folding chair atop Lazarus' after missile deck, parked beside a broad river estuary and shaded by towering trees very like some huge, Old Earth conifer. She was also deplorably out of uniform, in an eye-stunningly red T-shirt (whose nano-printed front depicted the fully animated singing face of one of the Concordiat's better known shatter-rock vocalists) and a pair of very short white shorts. A floppy sun hat completed her extremely nonregulation ensemble, and Agnelli chuckled as he absorbed the impact.
"May I assume from your appearance that your survey activities have been successfully concluded?" he inquired.
"You may, sir," Maneka told him, and sipped iced tea from the tall, condensation-bedewed glass in her other hand. She looked back at the display with a smile, then straightened in her chair and became somewhat more serious.
"Officially, Governor," she told the man who had shifted from potential adversary to close friend over the past year and a half, "Lazarus and I have completed our survey of the proposed colony site. We're prepared to certify that the atmosphere is fully compatible with human environmental needs. We've been unable to detect any biohazards, and while there are several large local predators in the vicinity, none will pose a significant threat if routine out-world precautions are taken. Our samples of soil and local plant life have also confirmed the initial probe findings. Indrani's going to require more terraforming than some planets to support Terran food crops, but less than at least eighty percent of those we've successfully colonized elsewhere. All in all, sir, this looks like it's going to be a very nice place to live."
"Captain," Agnelli said with total sincerity, "I cannot begin to tell you how happy—and relieved—I am to hear that. May I conclude that, in your capacity as the colony's military commander, you're prepared to authorize the beginning of disembarkation?"
"Yes, Governor. I am," she said.
"Excellent!" Agnelli beamed hugely at her, then nodded to someone outside the visual range of his own communicator's visual pickup.
"So they've found their accursed home at last, have they?" General Ka-Frahkan snarled to Na-Tharla.
The two Melconians stood in Death Descending's Combat Information Center watching the icons of the Human convoy they had followed so far, and Ka-Frahkan's eyes were hot and hating in a face which had become noticeably gaunt.
"Yes, sir," Na-Tharla responded, although he knew the question had been purely rhetorical. "And, I hope you'll forgive me for saying, that it's not a moment too soon."
Ka-Frahkan looked up from the plot sharply. He opened his mouth, but Na-Tharla met his eyes levelly, and the general cut off what he'd started to say.
The transport's captain was even more gaunt and worn looking than the Army officer, and well he should be. Even with all the personnel of Ka-Frahkan's brigade in cryo sleep, the wakeful portion of Death Descending's complement had been on sharply reduced rations for the last several months, and Na-Tharla had worked himself harder than any other member of his crew. Ka-Frahkan was an Army officer, not a naval officer, yet he was only too well aware of the miracles of improvisation Na-Tharla had performed to keep the ship's critical systems running this long. And the brilliant fashion in which Na-Tharla had managed to track the Human ships, despite all their efforts at evasive routing and the Bolo transports' infernal, never-to-be-sufficiently-accursed sensor sweeps had been masterful. Death Descending was only a transport, yet the general felt confident that none of the Emperor's cruiser or even battlecruiser commanders could have done a better job under such impossible conditions. Under the circumstances, the captain was entitled to express himself openly.