Bolo!

“Affirmative. Indeed, Commander, it is because I heard him that I ask for official confirmation of my mission orders.”

The Bolo paused again, and Jackson frowned. That strange edge was back in Shiva’s voice, more pronounced now than ever, and Jackson’s sense of his own inexperience rolled abruptly back over him, a cold tide washing away the edges of his confidence and excitement.

“Your orders are to eliminate the enemy,” he said after a moment, his voice flat.

“Please define ‘Enemy,’ “ Shiva said quietly, and Jackson stared at the speaker in disbelief.

“The enemy are the Melconians who tried to wipe out my steading!”

“Those individuals are already dead, Commander,” Shiva pointed out, and had Jackson been even a bit less shocked, he might have recognized the pleading in the Bolo’s voice.

“But not the ones who sent them!” he replied instead. “As long as there’s any Melconians on this planet, they’re a threat.”

“Our orders, then,” Shiva said very softly, “are to kill all Melconians on Ararat?”

“Exactly,” Jackson said harshly, and an endless moment of silence lingered as the Bolo rumbled onward through the night. Then Shiva spoke again.

“Commander,” the Bolo said, “I respectfully decline that order.”

Tharsk Na-Mahrkan felt nausea sweep through him as he stood at Lieutenant Janal’s shoulder. He stared down into the tactical officer’s flatscreen, and total, terrified silence hovered on Starquest’s command deck, for one of the cruiser’s recon drones had finally gotten a positive lock on the threat advancing towards them.

“Nameless of Nameless Ones,” Rangar whispered at last. “A Bolo?”

“Yes, sir.” Janal’s voice was hushed, his ears flat to his skull.

“How did you miss it on the way in?” Durak snapped, and the tactical officer flinched.

“It has no active fusion signature,” he replied defensively. “It must be operating on reserve power, and with no reactor signature, it was indistinguishable from any other power source.”

“But—” Durak began, only to close his mouth with a click as Tharsk waved a hand.

“Enough!” the commander said harshly. “It is no more Janal’s fault than yours—or mine, Durak. He shared his readings with us, just as we shared his conclusions with him.” The engineer looked at him for a moment, then flicked his ears in assent, and Tharsk drew a deep breath. “You say it’s operating on reserve power, Janal. What does that mean in terms of its combat ability?”

“Much depends on how much power it has, sir,” Janal said after a moment. “According to the limited information in our database, its solar charging ability is considerably more efficient than anything the Empire ever had, and as you can see from the drone imagery, at least two main battery weapons appear to be intact. Assuming that it has sufficient power, either of them could destroy every ship in the flotilla. And,” the tactical officer’s voice quivered, but he turned his head to meet his commander’s eyes, “as it is headed directly for us without waiting for daylight, I think we must assume it does have sufficient energy to attack us without recharging.”

“How many of our ships can lift off?” Tharsk asked Durak. The engineer started to reply, but Rangar spoke first.

“Forget it, my friend,” he said heavily. Tharsk looked at him, and the astrogator bared his fangs wearily. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “The Bolo is already in range to engage any of our ships as they lift above its horizon.”

“The Astrogator is correct, sir,” Janal agreed quietly. “We—”

He broke off suddenly, leaning closer to his screen, then straightened slowly.

“What?” Tharsk asked sharply, and Janal raised one clawed hand in a gesture of baffled confusion.

“I don’t know, sir,” he admitted. “For some reason, the Bolo has just stopped moving.”

“What d’you mean, ‘decline the order’?” Jackson demanded. “I’m your commander. You have to obey me!”

A long, still moment of silence hovered, and then Shiva spoke again.

“That is not entirely correct,” he said. “Under certain circumstances, my core programming allows me to request confirmation from higher Command Authority before accepting even my Commander’s orders.”

“But there isn’t any—” Jackson began almost desperately, then made himself stop. He closed his eyes and drew a deep, shuddering breath, and his voice was rigid with hard—held calm when he spoke again.

“Why do you want to refuse the order, Shiva?”

“Because it is wrong,” the Bolo said softly.

“Wrong to defend ourselves?” Jackson demanded. “They attacked us, remember?”

“My primary function and overriding duty is to defend Humans from attack,” Shiva replied. “That is the reason for the Dinochrome Brigade’s creation, the purpose for which I exist, and I will engage any Enemy who threatens my creators. But I am also a warrior, Commander, and there is no honor in wanton slaughter.”

“But they attacked us!” Jackson repeated desperately. “They do threaten us. They sent their shuttles after us when we hadn’t done a thing to them!”

“Perhaps you had done nothing to them, Commander,” Shiva said very, very softly, “but I have.” Despite his own confusion and sudden chagrin, Jackson Deveraux closed his eyes at the bottomless pain in that voice. He’d never dreamed—never imagined—a machine could feel such anguish, but before he could reply, the Bolo went on quietly. “And, Commander, remember that this was once their world. You may call it ‘Ararat,’ but to the Melconians it is ‘Ishark,’ and it was once home to point-eight-seven-five billion of their kind. Would you have reacted differently from them had the situation been reversed?”

“I—” Jackson began, then stopped himself. Shiva was wrong. Jackson knew he was—the entire history of the Final War proved it—yet somehow he didn’t sound wrong. And his question jabbed something deep inside Jackson. It truly made him, however unwillingly, consider how his own people would have reacted in the same situation. Suppose this world had once been Human held, that the Melconians had killed a billion Human civilians on its surface and then taken it over. Would Humans have hesitated even an instant before attacking them?

Of course not. But wasn’t that the very point? So much hate lay between their races, so much mutual slaughter, that any other reaction was unthinkable. They couldn’t not kill one another, dared not let the other live. Jackson knew that, yet when he faced the knowledge—made himself look it full in the eyes and accept the grim, cold, brutal, stupid inevitability of it—his earlier sense of mission and determination seemed somehow tawdry. He’d actually looked forward to it, he realized. He’d wanted to grind the enemy under Shiva’s tracks, wanted to massacre not simply the soldiers who threatened his people but the civilians those soldiers fought to protect, as well.

Jackson Deveraux lost his youth forever as he made himself admit that truth, yet whatever he might have felt or wanted didn’t change what had to be. And because it didn’t, his voice was hard, harsh with the need to stifle his own doubts, when he spoke again.

“We don’t have a choice, Shiva, and there isn’t any ‘higher command authority’—not unless you count Chief Marshal Shattuck or Mayor Salvatore, and you already know what they’ll say. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there isn’t any ‘honor’ in it, and maybe I don’t like it very much myself. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything else we can do, and I am your commander.” His mouth twisted on the title freak coincidence had bestowed upon him, but he made the words come out firmly. “And as your commander, I order you to proceed with your mission.”

“Please, Commander.” The huge war machine was pleading, and Jackson clenched his fists, steeling himself against the appeal in its voice. “I have killed so many,” Shiva said softly. “Too many. Even for a machine, there comes a time when the killing must end.”