"I suppose I should have put this thing on sooner," she remarked, and shook her head. "How's it going to look in the history books when they find out I spent the entire battle in a swimsuit?"
"I propose that we simply never tell them you did," Lazarus' voice replied. "It did not, after all, have any negative impact on your performance during that battle."
"No, I suppose not," she said. "On the other hand, if either of us had remembered I had a spare on board, I would have changed into it."
"Unlike humans, I am incapable of forgetting," Lazarus pointed out. "Or, at least, of forgetting by accident. I did not forget in this instance, either. It simply did not occur to me to mention it to you."
"We've been spending too much time together," she told him, smiling crookedly at the visual pickup.
"We're starting to think—and not think—too much alike."
"Perhaps," Lazarus said serenely. "I believe, however, that in this instance we have earned the right to some minor idiosyncrasies on your part."
"Maybe so," she said bleakly, her smile disappearing, "but other people paid even more than you did for this one, Lazarus." She inhaled deeply. "So now that I'm dressed, I suppose it's time to go."
Lazarus said nothing, but she felt him in the back of her brain, still joined through the headset, and the access hatch slid silently open in wordless invitation.
She stepped through it, turned to the internal ladder, and started climbing downwards. It was hard, in some ways, to fully accept, on a visceral level, how badly Lazarus had been damaged. The spaces through which she passed on her way down the ladders were as immaculate, as brightly lit, as ever, and the enviro plant was undamaged. The air was cool, clean, with just a hint of ozone. It was, she reflected, a stark reminder of just how huge a fifteen-thousand-ton vehicle actually was.
But then she reached the bottom of the final ladder, climbed through the belly hatch, and stepped out under Lazarus' huge bulk, and the harsh reality slammed down on her like a hammer.
She was glad she'd finally remembered she had the uniform on board. Dinochrome Brigade battle dress was designed with moments like this in mind, and she could almost feel its sophisticated fabric adjusting itself about her. It wasn't bulletproof, though it did have some antiballistic qualities, but it was an extremely efficient hostile-environment suit. The clear hood deployed upward, snugging itself about her head and face, at the same time the sleeve cuffs extruded the protective gloves. She wasn't quite as well shielded as Major Atwater's armored personnel, but her battle dress was thoroughly up to the task of handling the contamination which even the relatively "clean" weapons used here had left behind.
"Thank God they build Bolos tough," she said fervently.
"A sentiment which I have shared on several occasions now," Lazarus agreed. She heard his voice over her mastoid com implant, and something like a subliminal echo of it through the headset. It was just a bit disorienting, even now, but it was also a sensation she had become accustomed to over the past couple of years. And given how severely Lazarus' forward hull had been damaged, she wasn't about to disconnect until both of them knew his damage control systems truly did have the situation well in hand.
She walked forward, but not as far as she normally would have. The tangled wreckage hanging down over the crippled track shield gave off an unpleasantly high radiation signature even for someone in Brigade uniform. She stepped out from under the Bolo, into its immense shadow, and saw an armored figure with the flashes of a major standing to wait for her.
"Mary Lou," she said quietly over her com.
"Maneka," Atwater replied.
"I'm sorry," Maneka said. "We got back here as quickly as we could, but—"
"Don't say it," Atwater cut her off. "Yeah, we got reamed. I figure fifty-seven percent casualties, three quarters of them fatal. That's the price we paid, and Jesus, it hurt. But you didn't have one damned thing to do with what happened here. You did your job; we did ours, and thanks to the fact that your missiles saved our asses, some of us are still around afterward. And maybe, just maybe, the people who are going to live on this planet a thousand years from now because you did your job, will remember our names and figure we did all right, too. And if they don't," Maneka realized there was an edge of genuine amusement in Atwater's voice, "then screw 'em! 'Cause you, me, my people, and Lazarus—we're damned sure going to remember we did, right?"
"For my part, certainly, Major," Lazarus said over his external speakers, and Atwater snorted a harsh laugh.
"Well, there you are, Maneka! I think we can trust Lazarus to see to it the history books get it straight. I mean, who's going to argue with him?"
"Point taken," Maneka agreed.
"Good! And now, Captain Trevor, if you'd come with me, there are some people who'd like to shake your hand, I believe."
Private Karsha Na-Varsk crouched in his vantage point, staring down at the Human position while his stunned brain tried to come to grips with what had happened.
The Brigade was gone. He himself was almost certainly the last survivor, and he had no idea why he was still alive. He'd provided the information for the initial bombardment's targeting, and he'd tried sniping the Humans from his towering position once the attack actually rolled in. He knew he'd discharged his forward scout's duty well ... for all the good it had done in the end. But his efforts as a sniper had been completely wasted. Even at point-blank range, his power rifle probably wouldn't have managed to inflict any true damage on the Humans' powered armor. He supposed that it was only the sheer volume of fire being exchanged which had kept some Human's armor's sensors from back-plotting his own fire and locating him at the height of the battle, and he'd stopped wasting power taking his futile shots long before the accursed Bolo had completed its slaughter of his comrades. He hadn't known at the time why he'd bothered to stop. Now he did.
"—so they came around that bend about then," Major Atwater told Maneka, waving one armored arm up the valley. "We had our sensors out, but their opening bombardment ..." She shook her head behind the visor of her helmet. "I saw some nasty targeting while I was still a Jarhead, but this was just about the worst. We wouldn't have gotten hurt nearly as bad if they hadn't screwed over our command and control from the get-go. You'd almost think—"
Something punched suddenly into Maneka.
Na-Varsk shouted aloud in triumph as the uniformed figure so far below went down. He tracked it, reacquiring it in his electronic sights, and his eyes were ugly. That Human was almost certainly already dead, but before they managed to find him, he would make absolutely sure.
He laid the bright red dot of his electronic sight on the fallen figure's head and began to squeeze the firing stud.
Mary Lou Atwater was still frozen in shock, her armor splashed with Maneka's blood, when Lazarus' port infinite repeater battery snapped suddenly around. She just had time to realize what was happening when the Bolo opened fire and two thousand square meters of mountainside erupted in flame, smoke, dust, and flying fragments of shattered stone.
"It hurts."
"I know."
She tried to open her eyes, but they refused to obey. She tried to move her arms, but they refused to move.
"Lazarus?" She was vaguely surprised there was so little fear in her mental voice.
"You have been shot," the Lazarus presence said inside her brain.