"But what could he possibly want us to do, sir?"
"I don't know. That's what worries me," Ka-Frahkan admitted.
Maneka/Lazarus watched through the reconnaissance net as the Melconian advance slowed, then came—temporarily, at least—to a complete halt. She/they waited, while several minutes passed. Then the Enemy began to move once more, and her/their human component frowned in her command couch without ever opening her eyes.
The Enemy commander, she/they thought, was clearly more capable than she/they would have preferred. Which didn't exactly come as a surprise—an incompetent would never have managed to follow the colony fleet this far so tracelessly and then execute such a devastating initial surprise attack.
Still, he was doing a part of what she/they wanted.
She/they continued to trundle leisurely along, but the Melconian formation was shifting. The Enemy's leading battalion of three Surtur Alphas and six Fenrises had begun falling back, accompanied by two of the infantry regiment's battalions and half of the armored regiment's twelve Heimdalls. The second armored battalion, with all six of the Surtur Betas, the other six Heimdalls, and the third infantry battalion, had changed course and begun to move rather more quickly. They were sliding to the south to advance along the one approach route which would bypass the blocking position towards which she/they were headed. That line of approach—the one she/they had designated Route Charlie—wasn't the shortest one, but unless she/they also changed course in the next few minutes, the Melconian units advancing along it would get clear around her/their flank without ever exposing themselves to her/their direct fire. She/they could still loft missiles onto their route, but with only a single Bolo's missile load-out and launchers, it would be virtually impossible to sufficiently saturate a Melconian armored battalion's missile defenses to get through them, and an entire mountainside would block Hellbore fire at their closest approach.
She/they considered the timing. If she/they continued on her/their current heading at current speed, the flanking column would be past any point at which she/they could subsequently intercept it short of Fourth Battalion's position in another twelve minutes. And, if that column got past her/them, worst-case, Fourth Battalion would find itself ground into the mud under the tracks of a full battalion of heavy armored vehicles. Best case, she/they would find themselves trapped in a constricted, mountainous valley between both Dog Boy armored battalions while the Enemy ignored the Fourth to concentrate on killing her/them.
Pity. She/they had rather hoped the Puppies' CO would decide to send all of his mechs around her/their flank. Unfortunately, he'd turned out to be too wary for that.
"Now it begins to retreat!" Ka-Frahkan flapped his ears in frustration. "Nameless Ones! What sort of game is this damned machine playing?!"
The Bolo icon on his display had, indeed, begun to retreat—and at a far higher rate of speed, at that.
But it was too late. Major Julhar Ha-Shan's Second Armored Battalion and Major Thuran Ha-Nashum's Third Infantry were already past it. The Bolo was faster than Ha-Shan's heavies, but it also had much further to go if it wanted to retreat to its militia blocking position before Ha-Shan and Ha-Nashum reached it, and there was no way even a Bolo could catch them now without using the pod in which it But why had it waited so long?
Of course, Na-Lythan's First Armored Battalion and the rest of Colonel Ka-Somal's infantry were also advancing once more, along the route Ka-Frahkan had designated Axis Three, if much more slowly and cautiously than Ha-Shan's battalion. They would have entered the Bolo's engagement range, had it continued to advance on its original course, within another thirty minutes or so. The fight when they reached that point would have been ugly, and Ka-Frahkan was far from certain of what its final outcome would have been, given how the Human machine's individual power and superior technology would have offset his own forces' advantages in tonnage, numbers, and combined firepower. He'd been willing to court the engagement anyway, however, if it would have pinned the Bolo in place while Second Armored got on with the business of destroying the blocking position and advanced upon the colony itself. That was why he'd held First Armored back and sent Ha-Shan ahead. Sa-Thor's heavies were marginally better suited to a direct engagement against the Bolo, and Ha-Shan's additional missile power would make his battalion far more dangerous to the Human settlement once he got past the blocking militia.
But now the accursed Bolo seemed unwilling to give him that engagement ... even though it was self-evidently too late for it to reverse course and intercept Second Armored!
Theslask Ka-Frahkhan glared at his tactical plot and tried not to grind his teeth together as he tried to deduce just what hellish surprise the Bolo and its Human commander were attempting to spring upon him.
Maneka/Lazarus monitored the flanking column's position carefully. It was continuing to advance, and she/they were tempted to continue her/their advance and engage the remainder of the Melconian force head on. Unfortunately, if she/they did, the main Puppy column would engage her/them well before the flanking column reached the decisive point. It was as certain as anything could be that she/they would have taken damage in that engagement, and she/they could not afford to risk that. Not yet. The flanking column had to be dealt with before she/they could accept any reduction in her/their own capabilities.
"Timing," her/their human half thought. "It's all a matter of timing, now."
"It always is," her/their Bolo half replied.
Captain Farka Na-Rohrn felt his spirits rising as Second Armored Battalion thundered eastward behind his Heimdall. He could see the Human Bolo on his tactical display, although there were enough mountains between them to prevent it from seeing him, praise the Nameless Lord! And while Na-Rohrn had never claimed to be a tactical genius, it seemed obvious to him that the Bolo had made a fatal error.
The positions and maximum possible rates of advance indicated on his display made it abundantly clear that there was, quite simply, no possible way for the Bolo to intercept Major Ha-Shan's armor and Major Ha-Nashum's infantry before they wiped out the Human militia positioned to stop them. And after that, there would be nothing between them and the Human colony.
There were only six of them, and she/they had added the rather special warheads they mounted to her/their normal ammunition mix in place of the same number of more conventional warheads over three weeks ago. Now the missiles carrying those warheads erupted from the heavily armored wells of her/their vertical-launch missile system and rose on pillars of flame until they were high enough for their counter-gravity drives to take over. Then the thundering wakes of fire vanished, and the missiles screamed suddenly southeastward at seven times the speed of sound.
"General Ka-Frahkan!" a sensor tech said sharply. "The Bolo has just launched missiles!"
"At us?" Ka-Frahkan demanded, spinning around to face the master tactical plot.
"No, sir," the noncom replied in puzzled tones. "At Colonel Ha-Shan."
"Incoming!" Ha-Shan's sensor operator announced suddenly. "Multiple—six incoming from the Bolo, sir! Mach seven!"
Ha-Shan's eyes instantly found the missile icons on his own display. Even at that velocity, there was plenty of time, he thought as the targeting systems of his armored units' antimissile defenses turned onto the threat bearing. Besides, that was a ridiculously low number of missiles for a target like his. His command Surtur alone could have defeated all of them with ease, Human technology or no. So what was the damned Bolo up to now?