"Precisely," the general said, flicking his ears in emphatic agreement. "Any Bolo is always a formidable opponent, but I rather suspect that any Bolos assigned to these colony efforts will be older, less capable models. The demands of the main fronts have been pressing both sides too hard for me to believe the Concordiat is willing to divert first-line Bolos to something like this. After all," he showed his canines in a mirthless grin, "even an 'obsolete' Bolo should be equal to almost any threat—short of, say, an Imperial Heavy Assault Brigade—which might be encountered out here in the depths of unexplored space.
"My combat mechs, on the other hand, while not Bolos, are first-line units. I anticipate heavy losses, but I confidently expect to succeed in destroying the Bolo or at least crippling it sufficiently to prevent it from interfering with our destruction of the Human colony."
"I'm glad, General," Na-Tharla said after a moment. "I would hate to believe we've come so far without a significant chance of victory." He snorted softly. "I take no more pleasure in contemplating the probability of my own death than anyone, but I find I can accept the fact that even if we win, we can never get home, as long as we accomplish what we came for."
"Agreed," Ka-Frahkan said. "On the other hand, Captain, I have no intention of destroying the Humans and then simply sitting down and waiting to die ourselves!"
"Indeed?" Both of Na-Tharla's ears cocked interrogatively.
"But that, as I say, is a worst-case outcome. I believe we stand an excellent chance of capturing the Humans' industrial infrastructure intact, as well. That's one of the reasons I wanted to know how long we can wait before we launch our attack. The longer the Humans have to settle into a sense of security, the lower their guard is likely to become. And our drones have already indicated that their industrial ships are designed on a modular basis."
Na-Tharla's ears flicked agreement. The heavily stealthed platform had shown them that at least three of the Human ships were already being dismantled into three large, independent modules each. From the data they'd been able to gather so far—limited, admittedly; even with the People's stealth technology, getting a platform close enough for detailed looks was out of the question—it appeared that each of those nine modules was intended to serve as the core of its own, separate industrial platform. Given the impressive automation of Human manufacturing capacity, he doubted it would take long for those industrial nodes to come on-line and begin expanding exponentially.
"I want them to have sufficient time to get as much as possible of their base infrastructure in place,"
General Ka-Frahkan said with bleak satisfaction. "By dispersing it, they deprive it of strategic mobility. It won't be able to drop into hyper and run away from us, and I would prefer to see that true of as many of their ships as possible. I want all of those ships taken or destroyed, Captain, but I especially want to gain possession of their manufacturing capacity.
"I realize it will be designed to produce additional Human technology, not immediately suited to our needs, but their mission planners will have provided sufficient capability to sustain and nurture the population they intended to place on this planet. It would be surprising indeed if we couldn't sufficiently adapt that capacity to provide the repairs and overhauls your vessel requires. So once we destroy the enemy, we will have many possible futures open to us.
"Which," his voice was suddenly hard and cold, like iron grating across the stone floor of a dungeon,
"is more than they will."
4
"God, what a beautiful evening," Adrian Agnelli said softly.
He sat with his guests under a sky which was rapidly settling into the deep, cobalt blue vault of oncoming night. The distant mutter of waves came from behind him, rolling up over the lip of the bluff overlooking the ocean they hadn't yet gotten around to naming. In front of him, on the western horizon, the last fragments of day blazed in a crimson conflagration beyond the peaks of the inland mountains which fenced in the coastal plateau they'd chosen for the site of the City of Landing. Agnelli had hoped for a name with a bit more imagination, but tradition had carried the day. And it didn't really matter to him as he watched the sun-struck clouds fuming up about the sharp-edged peaks like the smoke of some stupendous bonfire. The brightest stars of unfamiliar constellations were already dimly visible overhead, and the larger of Indrani's two sizable moons was also visible, high in the eastern sky.
There weren't very many guests. The Governor himself, his daughter Allison, Lieutenant Governor Berthier, Brigadier Jeffords, Maneka, and Edmund Hawthorne. Over the often seemingly endless months of the voyage here, the six of them had become a tight-knit, efficiently functioning command team for the colony effort. The last two months, as the colony began to become an actual living, breathing entity, had been exhausting for all of them, yet Maneka often thought that there were no words in any human language to express the satisfaction all of them took from their demanding duties.
Even me. Maybe especially me. She glanced sideways at Hawthorne's profile and felt a warm glow deep inside her. I joined the Brigade because I believed in what it stands for, and I still do. But I've seen enough death and destruction to last me for two or three lifetimes. It's so ... unspeakably wonderful to see my efforts contributing to life for a change.
She looked around. The table sat on a terrace behind the rapidly rising shell of what would become Landing's combined town hall and Governor's residence. At the moment, it didn't look particularly prepossessing, but Maneka had seen the plans. It would be a gracious structure when it was completed, and the people who'd designed it had been careful to provide for the inevitable growth it would suffer as the colony's population grew and government and its service organizations grew with it.
The rest of Landing's first-flight structures were going up with equal speed. Despite all the industrial and economic strains under which the Concordiat labored in its desperate battle with the Melconians, it had spared no expense when it came to equipping the colony fleet. Unlike many privately funded colonizing expeditions, this one was lavishly provided with highly capable automated construction and earthmoving equipment, including no less than seven ceramacrete fusers. One of those fusers was still rolling quietly along under the control of its rudimentary AI, running lights lit and proximity sensors alert for any human inept enough to get in its way, as it moved back and forth, laying down the almost indestructible ceramacrete paving of what would become Landing's central square. Other self-directed machines continued to work on the other buildings currently under construction, and piles of building materials marked where still more structures would shortly rise.
The colony's originally targeted population of approximately twenty-two thousand had been reduced to barely fifteen thousand by the Melconian attack. At the moment, almost all of them were down on the surface, housed in the prefab, temporary housing military units (called "Quonset huts," for some reason Maneka had never been able to track down, even searching Lazarus' files). The Quonsets weren't particularly palatial, but they were infinitely preferable to the cramped accommodations aboard the transports. And, unlike the transports' quarters, their inhabitants could open the front door, step outside, and suck in a huge lungful of fresh, pollen- and dust-laden, unrecycled air.
Unlike some military bases Maneka had seen, the Quonsets on Indrani really would be "temporary," too. At the current rate of construction, Berthier, who was in charge of that particular endeavor, estimated that permanent housing for the entire population would be completed within seven months. Not all of that housing would have all of the amenities Core World citizens were accustomed to, but those could always be added once the orbital industrial platforms could begin devoting capacity to something besides self-expansion and the production of basic necessities.