Dragon's Teeth (50 page)

Larry and I wrote this for the Keith Laumer
Bolo
anthology, but it stands pretty well alone. All you have to know is that Bolos are fairly unstoppable, self-aware, intelligent tanks.

Operation Desert Fox

Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon

Siegfried O’Harrigan’s name had sometimes caused confusion, although the Service tended to be color-blind. He was black, slight of build and descended from a woman whose African tribal name had been long since lost to her descendants.

He wore both Caucasian names—Siegfried and O’Harrigan—as badges of high honor, however, as had all of that lady’s descendants. Many times, although it might have been politically correct to do so, Siegfried’s ancestors had resisted changing their name to something more ethnic. Their name was a gift—and not a badge of servitude to anyone. One did not return a gift, especially not one steeped in the love of ancestors . . . .

Siegfried had heard the story many times as a child, and had never tired of it. The tale was the modern equivalent of a fairy-tale, it had been so very unlikely.
O’Harrigan
had been the name of an Irish-born engineer, fresh off the boat himself, who had seen Siegfried’s many-times-great grandmother and her infant son being herded down the gangplank and straight to the Richmond Virginia slave market. She had been, perhaps, thirteen years old when the Arab slave traders had stolen her. That she had survived the journey at all was a miracle. And she was the very first thing that O’Harrigan set eyes on as he stepped onto the dock in this new land of freedom.

The irony had not been lost on him. Sick and frightened, the woman had locked eyes with Sean O’Harrigan for a single instant, but that instant had been enough.

They had shared neither language nor race, but perhaps Sean had seen in her eyes the antithesis of everything he had come to America to find.
His
people had suffered virtual slavery at the hands of the English landlords; he knew what slavery felt like. He was outraged, and felt that he had to do
something.
He could not save all the slaves offloaded this day—but he could help these two.

He had followed the traders to the market and bought the woman and her child “off the coffle,” paying for them before they could be put up on the auction block, before they could even be warehoused. He fed them, cared for them until they were strong, and then put them on
another
boat, this time as passengers, before the woman could learn much more than his name. The rest the O’Harrigans learned later, from Sean’s letters, long after.

The boat was headed back to Africa, to the newly founded nation of Liberia, whose very name meant “land of liberty,” a place of hope for freed slaves.” Life there would not be easy for them, but it would not be a life spent in chains, suffering at the whims of men who called themselves “Master.”

Thereafter, the woman and her children wore the name of O’Harrigan proudly, in memory of the stranger’s kindness—as many other citizens of the newly formed nation would wear the names of those who had freed them.

No, the O’Harrigans would not change their name for any turn of politics. Respect earned was infinitely more powerful than any messages beaten into someone by whips or media.

And as for the name “Siegfried”—that was also in memory of a stranger’s kindness; this time a member of Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Another random act of kindness, this time from a first lieutenant who had seen to it that a captured black man with the name O’Harrigan was correctly identified as Liberian and not as American. He had then seen to it that John O’Harrigan was treated well and released.

John had named his first-born son for that German, because the young lieutenant had no children of his own. The tradition and the story that went with it had continued down the generations, joining that of Sean O’Harrigan. Siegfried’s people remembered their debts of honor.

Siegfried O’Harrigan’s name was at violent odds with his appearance. He was neither blond and tall, nor short and red-haired—and in fact, he was not Caucasian at all.

In this much, he matched the colonists of Bachman’s World, most of whom were of East Indian and Pakistani descent. In every other way, he was totally unlike them.

He had been in the military for most of his life, and had planned to stay in. He was happy in uniform, and for many of the colonists here, that was a totally foreign concept.

Both of those stories of his ancestors were in his mind as he stood, travel-weary and yet excited, before a massive piece of the machinery of war, a glorious hulk of purpose-built design. It was larger than a good many of the buildings of this far-off colony at the edges of human space.

Bachman’s World. A poor colony known only for its single export of a medicinal desert plant, it was not a place likely to attract a tourist trade. Those who came here left because life was even harder in the slums of Calcutta, or the perpetually typhoon-swept mud-flats of Bangladesh. They were farmers, who grew vast acreages of the “saje” for export, and irrigated just enough land to feed themselves. A hot, dry wind blew sand into the tight curls of his hair and stirred the short sleeves of his desert-khaki uniform. It occurred to him that he could not have chosen a more appropriate setting for what was likely to prove a life-long exile, considering his hobby—his obsession. And yet, it was an exile he had chosen willingly, even eagerly.

This behemoth, this juggernaut, this mountain of gleaming metal, was a Bolo. Now, it was
his
Bolo, his partner. A partner whose workings he knew intimately . . . and whose thought processes suited his so uniquely that there might not be a similar match in all the Galaxy.

RML-1138.
Outmoded now, and facing retirement—which, for a Bolo, meant
deactivation.

Extinction, in other words. Bolos were more than “super tanks,” more than war machines, for they were inhabited by some of the finest AIs in human space. When a Bolo was “retired,” so was the AI. Permanently.

There were those, even now, who were lobbying for AI rights, who equated deactivation with murder. They were opposed by any number of special-interest groups, beginning with religionists, who objected to the notion than anything housed in a “body” of electronic circuitry could be considered “human” enough to “murder.” No matter which side won, nothing would occur soon enough to save this particular Bolo.

Siegfried had also faced retirement, for the same reason.
Outmoded.
He had specialized in weapons-systems repair, the specific, delicate tracking and targeting systems.

Which were now outmoded, out-of-date;
he
had been deemed too old to retrain. He had been facing an uncertain future, relegated to some dead-end job with no chance for promotion, or more likely, given an “early-out” option. He had applied for a transfer, listing, in desperation, everything that might give him an edge somewhere. On the advice of his superiors, he had included his background and his hobby of military strategy of the pre-Atomic period.

And to his utter amazement, it had been that background and hobby that had attracted the attention of someone in the Reserves, someone who had been looking to make a most particular match . . .

The wind died; no one with any sense moved outside during the heat of midday. The port might have been deserted, but for a lone motor running somewhere in the distance.

The Bolo was utterly silent, but Siegfried knew that he—
he,
not
it
—was watching him, examining him with a myriad of sophisticated instruments. By now, he probably even knew how many fillings were in his mouth, how many grommets in his desert boots. He had already passed judgment on Siegfried’s service record, but there was this final confrontation to face, before the partnership could be declared a reality.

He cleared his throat, delicately. Now came the moment of truth. It was time to find out if what one administrator in the Reserves—and one human facing early-out and a future of desperate scrabbling for employment—thought was the perfect match really
would
prove to be the salvation of that human and this huge marvel of machinery and circuits.

Siegfried’s hobby was the key—desert warfare, tactics, and most of all, the history and thought of one particular desert commander.

Erwin Rommel.
The “Desert Fox,” the man his greatest rival had termed “the last chivalrous knight.” Siegfried knew everything there was to know about the great tank commander. He had fought and refought every campaign Rommel had ever commanded, and his admiration for the man whose life had briefly touched on that of his own ancestor’s had never faded, nor had his fascination with the man and his genius.

And there was at least one other being in the universe whose fascination with the Desert Fox matched Siegfried’s. This being; the intelligence resident in this particular Bolo, the Bolo that called
himself
“Rommel.” Most, if not all, Bolos acquired a name or nickname based on their designations—LNE became “Lenny,” or “KKR” became “Kicker.” Whether this Bolo had been fascinated by the Desert Fox because of his designation, or had noticed the resemblance of “RML” to “Rommel” because of his fascination, it didn’t much matter. Rommel was as much an expert on his namesake as Siegfried was.

Like Siegfried, RML-1138 was scheduled for early-out, but unlike Siegfried, the Reserves offered him a reprieve. The Reserves didn’t usually take or need Bolos; for one thing, they were dreadfully expensive. A Reserve unit could requisition a great deal of equipment for the cost of one Bolo. For another, the close partnership required between Bolo and operator precluded use of Bolos in situations where the partnerships would not last past the exercise of the moment. Nor were Bolo partners often “retired” to the Reserves.

And not too many Bolos were available to the Reserves. Retirement for both Bolo and operator was usually permanent, and as often as not, was in the front lines.

But luck (good or ill, it remained to be seen) was with Rommel; he had lost his partner to a deadly virus, he had not seen much in the way of combat, and he was in near-new condition.

And Bachman’s World wanted a Reserve battalion. They could not field their own—every able-bodied human here was a farmer or engaged in the export trade. A substantial percentage of the population was of some form of pacifistic religion that precluded bearing arms—Janist, Buddhist, some forms of Hindu.

Bachman’s World was
entitled
to a Reserve force; it was their right under the law to have an on-planet defense force supplied by the regular military. Just because Bachman’s World was back of beyond of nowhere, and even the most conservative of military planners thought their insistence on having such a force in place to be paranoid in the extreme, that did not negate their right to have it. Their charter was clear. The law was on their side.

Sending them a Reserve battalion would be expensive in the extreme, in terms of maintaining that battalion. The soldiers would be full-timers, on full pay. There was no base—it would have to be built. There was no equipment—that would all have to be imported.

That was when one solitary bean-counting accountant at High Command came up with the answer that would satisfy the letter of the law, yet save the military considerable expense.

The law had been written stipulating, not numbers of personnel and equipment, but a monetary amount. That unknown accountant had determined that the amount so stipulated, meant to be the equivalent value of an infantry battalion, exactly equaled the worth of one Bolo and its operator.

The records search was on.

Enter one Reserve officer, searching for a Bolo in good condition, about to be “retired,” with no current operator-partner—

—and someone to match him, familiar with at least the rudiments of mech-warfare, the insides of a Bolo, and willing to be exiled for the rest of his life.

Finding RML-1138, called “Rommel,” and Siegfried O’Harrigan, hobbyist military historian.

The government of Bachman’s World was less than pleased with the response to their demand, but there was little they could do besides protest. Rommel was shipped to Bachman’s World first; Siegfried was given a crash course in Bolo operation. He followed on the first regularly scheduled freighter as soon as his training was over. If, for whatever reason, the pairing did not work, he would leave on the same freighter that brought him.