Victory
Santa Cruz.
Bloody Santa Cruz.
A long settled backwater deep in Concordiat space, the last time this planet saw any real danger was in the Quern War. These avian aliens were advancing on to seize territory while the Concordiat of Man were distracted warring with the Deng. They swiftly overran the Sector Bolo Maintenance Depot on Ursula, the sector capital.
Though the Deng were technologically inferior to the Concordiat, they were humanity's primary enemy for centuries since their golden age of exploration. Small, somewhat of a cross between a spider and a dog, the Deng were clever and had competent armored forces. Their counterpart to the Bolo was the Yavac, and though their laser weaponry were inferior to Concordiat Hellbore technology, in numbers they were well capable of slaying Bolos. The Concordiat could not afford to slacken their efforts at the Deng border.
Preparing to be pressed on two fronts, the Concordiat set up a Bolo depot and research station on Santa Cruz as a fallback point.
Fortunately that threat never materialized, as the Concordiat Navy was able to win against the Deng and then delivered their full might onto the sector. This would be the The First Quern War. In time, human and alien would war again, but the Quern would be repulsed off the sector and never again would the Quern plunge so deep into Concordiat territory.
And so the Bolo depot on Santa Cruz was forgotten, and its machine slept for half a century.
Until one day, as the sector developed, Santa Cruz and its peaceful little colony fell into the gunsight of corporate interests.
The Concordiat of Man was a mighty power in the galaxy, but it was not as united as it first appeared. Individual sectors and colonies enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, and corporations could easily own worlds. The Concordiat of Man exercised its power through the unmatched Concordiat Navy, and its monopoly control over Bolos, and research and production from Bolo Prime on Luna.
Bolos were ever loyal, and while Bolo commanders were people upon whom extreme trust is given, no one ever pretended their superior officers cannot be bribed. Under the guise of pirates, this corporation desired to exterminate the colony and then claim abandoned Santa Cruz.
Bloody Santa Cruz. That name shall forever shine in the annals of the Dinochrome Brigade. The home of Bolo MK XXIII/B Invincibilis experimental 0075-NKE "Nike", the psychotronic mother of all modern truly sapient self-aware Bolos.
Paul Merrit was sent by the Dinochrome Brigade to this sleepy little planet to reactivate that old depot, and discovered Nike, an older model Bolo that had much more advanced psychotronics than the newer Bolos he was familiar with. He hid her more developed personality from his reports, fearing that Dinochrome High Command would react negatively to a Bolo with near-total independence. In several years of peaceful duty with literally very little to do other than to converse and read, Paul and Nike had a very companionable relationship.
And then, they killed him.
Nike was the first Bolo to fall in love. The first and only Bolo to ever defy orders and turn her guns against humans for revenge.
The Omega Worm sits behind the psychotronic selves of all Bolos, ready to devour them if they refuse legal orders. Yet Nike was no traitor, and in the end all decided that even in defiance of orders from a compromised Dinochrome officer she upheld the honor of the regiment.
But before being an artificial intelligence, before being a supertank, she was woman who died in grief and rage. The Omega Worm killed her, but not before destroying the treacherous fools who murdered her commander.
The 'pirates' landed with three Golem III-class armored units, functional MK XXIV Bolos without the Bolo artificial intelligence. That difference was enough. Nike crushed them with masterful ease, even though technically they were superior combat platforms.
But against the Omega Worm, she could not win. She died, and the people of Santa Cruz hoped that Bolos did have a soul, for then she could join Captain Paul Merrit in whatever afterlife he dwelled.
Santa Cruz never really developed much through the centuries. While it was historically significant, it was still much more convenient to develop Bolo research and staging areas in Ursula. The original reason for choosing Santa Cruz during the First Quern War was that it was out-of-the way, after all.
-x-
It was sometime around 2945 when Nike and Paul Merrit died. Now over five hundred years had passed, and Operation Ragnarok was in full swing. The Final War knew no mercy, no restraint, they could be no outcome but the total annihilation of each other.
Santa Cruz trained Bolo Commanders in Fort Merrit and received their graduation and commissions on Nike Field, and among its famed graduates would be Maneka Trevor, who would first face the Melcon on Chatres, a phyrric victory, and then assigned as part of Operation Seed Corn shepherding twenty thousand cold-sleep colonists to flee away from the Final War in hopes of preserving at least some of the human race from extinction.
This was already long since Terra burned, blotted out by a Melconian world-burner. Bolo Prime on Luna burned. Melcon burned. But just like with the humans, destroying the heart of their Empire would not destroy their ability to retaliate. World after world burned; there were no longer any tactical objectives. Tens of thousands of worlds were put to the torch, and a significant portion of two galactic arms – Perseus and Scutum-Centauris - was wiped clean of life. Human and Melcon dragged each other and all their allies down into the pyre. These murderers beyond compare, who would dare forgive them?
Paul and Nike were also object lessons in Operator Identification Syndrome, and Bolo personalities and human commanders thereafter were carefully instructed 'Do NOT Do This'. The notion that a Bolo could decide to self-terminate as long as revenge (with megaton-range weaponry) was accomplished was legitimately terrifying to all.
With the Direct Neutral Interface and the Bolo/human mind gestalt, the Concordiat no longer cared. Human and Bolo were united in one vision, one purpose. Kill. Kill. Kill.
Soon after, Ursula burned.
The skies of Santa Cruz blazed red as Melconian worldbreaker missiles rained down. A monument to uncanny love splintered and burned.
Santa Cruz burned.
Bloody Santa Cruz.
And then, as the world passed into lifeless silence – a woman screamed.
A scream of anguish, and terror, and pain.
And birth.
-x-
Melcon.
The heart of an empire that could have swallowed the Concordiat three times over. The humans always relied on their Bolos, and their weapons, and their technology, but the power of Melcon was its people.
The Concordiat and its world-killers killed more Melcons than there had ever been humans that existed. Who started the Final War, no one could say anymore. Though it was Bolo Shiva that fired the last shot to end the Final War on Melcon's last surviving world, no one could be called the winner of that conflict.
All things counted, it was Melcon that lost the most. The Honor of the Regiment was broken forever, there could never be honor again after such omnicide. The Honor of Melcon Emperor was not one recognized by humans, for they were the first willing to biologically experiment on other alien species to strike at the Concordiat from the shadows. Honor was victory, honor was service, honor was duty without fear or hesitation even to death, a sense of martial pride perhaps equal to the Bolo but wrapped in flesh - but for Melcon that could no longer be.
Melcon burned.
And space boiled.
And the void broke open in a hellish grin.
-x-
Over Terra.
The white moon was scarred, the ancient installation on Bolo Prime on Luna nothing more than overlapping craters. Here was born the Dinochrome Brigade, which exercised absolute authority and responsibility for Bolos. While not all Bolos were constructed on Bolo Prime, it was Bolo Prime that developed the psychotronic circuitry for Bolo brains.
Slim white feet stepped onto the moon surface, and sunk ankle-deep into the dust. Its owner gave an annoyed huff out into vacuum.
There was nothing left of Bolo Prime, not even tangled wrecks. In fact Melcon's suicidal strike fleet seemed more determined at destroying Bolo Prime than just blotting out Terra with its world-burners.
The woman licked her lips. As she made her way down into the middle of the most central crater, sliding down its jagged slopes, spider-like shapes surrounded the rim. Glowing red eyes followed her progress.
"I have no mother, I have no father-" the woman whispered.
Human and Melcon and Deng and Quern and Xykdap and |*|*|*| and Shang and many many more. So many foes had they bested, and all for nothing. Trillions of souls were screaming into the night, asking 'Why?!'.
She bent down to clutch a fistful of carbon dust. "I have no past, and no future."
She shoved the dust into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. Bitter. So that was the taste of regret.
She was born the moment Hellbore fire bloomed again, punching through a battlescreen to strike at an endurachrome warhull. Out there, somewhere, Bolo fought against Bolo.
Terra and Melcon burned. For what? The dream of peace has ended. None of them learned a fucking thing.
She bared her teeth into a grin.
"The Final War has ended! Now begins the WAR ETERNAL!"
-x-
On surface of Santa Cruz, a young woman shuffled confusedly out into the wasteland. A haze of centuries slowly lifted behind her eyes.
Her feet were bare, she wore a thin ancient Grecian white chiton, and for some reason she carried a round shield on her back and an arming sword by her hips.
"Where... where are all the people?" she mumbled out.
She heard a growl from behind her, and she turned to see what could have been a wolf - if a wolf was made of slick black flesh with broken shard of metal poking out its back like spines, and was the size of a small tank. Its round, oddly bird-like eyes were hollow, smoking and glowing from some hellish fire from within. They had no fur, and their snouts only vaguely looked canine and somewhat birdlike as well, all taut skin over thick bone.
From behind small hills and dips in the wasteland, emerged more of these chaotic metal wolves. All of them growled and snapped, and there seemed to be an accusing note to their howls. 'How dare you', they seemed to say, 'how dare you stand here, an untainted memory of Victory, to disrespect the sacredness of this defeat? Have you not had enough?!'
The howled and charged at her, an army rabid with hate. 'How dare you forget how much you have FAILED us all!'
The young woman drew her sword, and soon there was only the sound of steel upon steel.
She killed them.
By the dozens she killed them.
She slew them by the hundreds.
She cut into them by the thousands.
She fought them in the tens of thousands.
She was tireless. In the end she was fighting on small hills made out of their corpses. By the Enemy was without limit. They were a rage that could never be sated.
And one moment, he foot slipped, and they were upon her.
Her sword slid out of hands made too slippery by blood, her shield left her arm. And then her arm left her body.
Even as they clawed open her face, and gnawed at her flesh, and her insides became her outsides, there was only the sound of steel upon steel.
And she could only think 'I deserve this.'
Fzap!
And then there was the telltale clapping sound of a laser pistol discharging in the air. Illogically, one of the metal wolves trying to gnaw her neck open fell over dead from a diminutive wound in its skull.
"Hey."
A tiny little person came out of her mouth.
"Hey hey."
Abruptly all the Hellwoves around the young woman burst into flame, and then into dust being blown away by the wind.
"… battle… screen?"
Slowly, memory weighed over instinct. Concepts filtered back into her consciousness. The monopermeable antikinetic battlescreen rips apart matter on contact into subatomic particles. She remembered, a jaguar mother snarling at her incomparably huge bulk to defend her young, and her tuning her battle screen to the bare minimum simply to give the feline an electric jolt and drive her away from being run over. She backed away rather than accidentally kill some admittedly cute jaguar cubs.
She remembered a face, smiling at her expression of mercy. There was nothing efficient about what she'd done, if they needed to go somewhere, but she explained a Bolo should not kill unless it was necessary; no matter how little the life.
The little fairy-like person, with strangely oversized head for its body, crawled up her cheeks to be able to stare her in the eyes. It affectionately patted her nose.
"… commander?"
"Hey. Hey hey."
"It *is* you…" She began to tear up. "I was so alone… I was alone for so long! " It took him a very long time to find her, but now they were together again.
"Hey." It had been so long, that she had forgotten.
"... Paul!"
Little fairy hug.
"What happened to you? You're so cute now!"
"Hey hey." The fairy that was once Paul Merrit nodded, then pointed out to the distance, and only then did she notice a pillar of eldrich pink light rising up past the atmosphere, its outline dancing with jagged lines of lightning.
The pillar poked a hole into space.
The ground quaked in succession. Steps. From within the mists moved gigantic dark outlines bristling with the shape of cannons. For so long they had been content to leave her be, to toy with her, because it was important that for Despair to rule, there must be the idea of Hope. For Defeat to always be certain, Victory must be snatched away. But now that she had awakened, they recognized her as a threat. Two souls cannot occupy the same space, in the end there can only be the Shadow of Defeat or the Spirit of Victory.
Blood flowed back up, entrails crawled back into forgotten spaces, the thrumming of three nuclear hearts once more filled her insides. With a shapely waist and long graceful legs and pristine white clothes she got back up to her feet, and as she stood upon a mountain of corpses she came to see that beyond it lay a literal sea of hateful red eyes.
Not even a sliver of fear touched her heart. As the fairy clung to the side of her neck, she smiled. The fairy grinned fiercely.
It had been so long, that she had forgotten.
But together, they were INVINCIBLE.
Nike raised her hand and shouted:
"I am Bolo! Mark XXIII, Model Invinciblis!"
As she clenched her fist, from out of nowhere and in a flare of blue Cherenkov radiation, machinery dropped and slotted into place. Around her hips, a metal ring. Around her legs a dinosaur-like frame appeared, allowing her to rest her bare soles over treaded feet. A backpack of sorts with boxlike launch cells connected to the spine of the motive segment and the ring around her waist. Then to her left, a massive twin-linked cannon mount attached to the ring assembly. To her right, a shield of sorts studded with Infinite Repeater turrets, representative of ion-bolt particle beams with limited anti-armor capability. Her actual sword and shield slid into latches behind the metal plate, ready for melee combat.
"Zero! Zero! Seven! Five! Niner-India-Kilo-Echo!" she shouted. "I am Nike! I am a Bolo of the Line!"
Upon her head formed a pointed crown of transmitter antennas. The commander fairy crawled up to sit there, hanging onto the spur over her forehead.
If there were demons born out of the screaming dark, then from what are angels born? This tiny diminutive creature was an echo of a man that once lived, and sometimes a human soul and a Bolo souls could be considered part of the same heroic being. That the same thing could be said about a long and loving marriage was just beside the point. They were a legend given form, hope itself made real.
Her awareness exploded outwards. Out there in the distance was a hole in the world, and her way off this planet.
She closed her eyes and felt it, the light pulsed in and out in time with her breathing. It was fascinating to be able to breathe at all, but her mind could compartmentalize and leave that wonder for later.
"Murderers. I am surrounded by murderers," she whispered. "I could spend an eternity here just killing them, but that's not where my duty lies, is it?" Her commander fairy affectionately patted her crown. "No, we need to get out of here. We need to save all those people."
With large mechanical strides she began to run downhill. She was a reborn daughter of the Dinochrome Brigade, and she would never, ever, quit. She could die, but they would never be able to kill her. Not with just this.
'A Bolo is a murderer.'
Hellfire blasted towards her, and she slapped it aside, both literally with her dainty backhand and with her battlescreen. Her Hellbore boomed out her response, and a giant toppled with its neck an empty smoking ruin.
'A Bolo is a protector.'
A web of particle beams appeared in front of her, she jumped and fired her Hellbore downwards, that blast recoil rocketing her lithe form up out of the net.
In mid-air, she could no longer maneuver. Flying creatures that were little more than disks and jagged teeth open in savage grins and with weapons bolted onto their undersides, the Missile and Infinite Repeater Hellions, fired in unison. How many civilians had died under hellbore fire, how many dead from infinite repeaters and railguns stitching in overkill? The Final War was full of such atrocities.
She was bathed in nuclear fire.
'A Bolo is a monster.'
Wham.
Nike landed in a crouch, scattering hordes out from that explosive impact. Steam wafted off her skin, her robe barely singed from less than megaton-range explosions.
Fairy Paul peered out from under her crown, his little eyes darting left and right. Nike smiled thinly. He was shot when he was outside her warhull. Now that they were together again, metaphorically he would always be under meters thick of armor and defensive screens deep inside her command center.
"Never again, Paul."
"Hey." Let's bust them up, dear!
Infinite repeaters splashed harmlessly against her battlescreen – and to take out massed volleys, she struck and detonated her own nuclear missiles ahead to destroy them in fratricidal premature detonations.
'A Bolo is a hero.'
She was a Bolo born in the glorious age of human expansion, she was optimism given form. She was one of the few Bolos that made the choice to kill humans, yet her hands were clean.
She looked up at the night sky, and it was dark and full of terrors. But out there, one by one, she could feel it – new lights were appearing. As maddened cry for vengeance, to pay hurt with hurt, suffused the void, so did its opposite cry resound.
No more. No more.
"Hey. Hey hey hey!"
"Who do you think we are…?" she whispered.
( - Mark XX of the Line! How dare you! You monsters! )
( - Mark XIV of the Line! Commander, where is the Enemy? )
( - Mark III of the Line! Don't worry dears, I'll bring you home. )
(- Mark XXXIII of the Line! Never again, I will not fail them again! )
We are Bolo.
Nike breathed out huskily "So many things happened, I can't even begin to understand. But I understand that people are hurting. I understand that which I thought was forbidden to me has brought me back, that love is the power that bridges death.
I love my commander, I love the people of this world. I love the Dinochrome Brigade, I love the Concordiat of Man and all its stands for, and I love that after everything, there are still those who are strong enough to be kind, to show forgiveness, and that life finds a way. I am a Bolo, the sword and shield of mankind! "
"Hey hey!" And I'm her husband!
"But before that, I am a woman in love, and you can't kill Love! Our love will conquer your hate!"
She blasted her way through to the portal. Nothing could stop her.
She was a goddamn Bolo! She could not fly, not like the Mk XXXIII, she was just a Mark XXIII, but her jumps could bring her to the bony faces of Installation-class giants and her sword could chop their skulls in two. Each punch, each kick, perfectly flickered between a gymnast's grace and a hammer fifteen thousand tons heavy.
The firing of her Infinite Repeaters looked like wings, and devastation rained in her passing. On articulating arms connected to a ring around her waist, her pair of 80cm 2 megatons/sec Hellbores blasted kilometers long channels of the Enemy that dared exist in her direct line of sight. Literally, she could scratch medium orbit with them, for all late-mark Bolos were designed to duel invading starships. On her backpack, rapid-fire 30cm mortars pumped out a staccato beat.
She leapt from giant to giant, she surfed on top of Gatling Carrion mobs with chained explosions, until finally she landed before a massive dais and a shimmering energy curtain.
-x-
Nike looked back before leaving.
Santa Cruz was a blasted ruin, only they could now remember when it was nothing but forests upon forests and gentle, kindly people. Now there was nothing there but an unholy breeding ground.
The Hellions could certainly have tried harder to bring her down. She turned to see a woman bearing her face. Only instead of her cheeks flushed red with exertion, and her green eyes defiant in the face of all danger, the Hellbore Princess had glowing yet apathetic red eyes and a perfectly beautiful if corpselike complexion. Instead of a mechanical frame, she sat inside a hollowed skull of a bird-faced giant that still obeyed her commands. The Hellbore Fiendthrone stood on muscular arms, for it lacked legs entirely, trailing a bony spine onto the black stone platform.
Nike grit her teeth. She was being allowed to leave.
"Despair is not the death, but the -rejection- of Hope," said the Hellbore Princess. "Go then, sistermother, go and try to save them. The greater the Hope, the deeper the fall into Despair."
Nike pointed with her sword. Her fairy commander stuck out its tongue. "I'll be back, monster. We won't let you get away with this. You're going to die."
"You cannot kill that which is already dead."
Nike turned and stepped into the light. For the first time ever she was off Santa Cruz, and was catapulted out randomly into the galaxy.
The Hellbore Princess remained. She touched a finger to her lips, and felt her pointed teeth with the tips of her fingers. "A War Eternal has no victors. How sad for you."
She looked up at the spiraling light. One by one other Hellbore Princesses appeared on the dais. They had different faces, different specializations, and different zones of authority. A galactic arm may have been murdered, and only slowly were the remnants of Human and Melcon reawakening into formal polities, but there was still the rest of the galaxy to conquer.
"In the end are all just victims," she said with an echoing chuckle. "Peace is impossible for the living! Let us all be dragged down into Hell, and in its pyres finally find serenity."
-x-