Bolo Brigade Read Online Free PDF Page B

with what he found inside the vast and cavernous vault of the Bolo Depot Vehicle Bay. There were no guards posted by the door through which he entered, and no Bolo security check point, though a small security camera mounted on an arm extended from the ceiling swiveled to track him as he walked across the ferrocrete floor toward the nearer of the behemoth war machines parked inside. At least someone was aware he'd just entered what ought to be the most secure installation on this entire base. Trash was littered about the floor, including crumpled beverage cans and wads of paper, discarded rags and shavings from a metal lathe, bits of candy bar wrapper and a jumble of discarded computer printout.
    He saw a small group of people far off across the floor, huddled in the shadow of the near Bolo. Disgusted, he strode toward them.
    The Bolo dominated the huge room, filled it like some immense idol of cast iron and chromalloy in a cavern shrine. A second Bolo rested close by, mostly obscured by the first, but Donal's eyes were held captive by the closer machine as the humans gathered in its lee threw its size and bulk into sharp perspective.
    It was enormous, a building . . . no, a small, wheeled mountain of metal eighty meters long and towering a full twenty meters above the floor. Mark XXIII Bolos possessed two main armament turrets, fore and aft; the Mark XXIVs had been pegged back to a single MA turret, but that one low, flatly angled structure mounted a 90cm "super" Hellbore, a two-megaton-per-second beam weapon easily the equal of anything carried by the Space Arm's largest and most powerfully equipped dreadnoughts. Despite the modifications in hull and armament, the Mark XXIV was only a thousand tons lighter than its evolutionary predecessor; each of the Bolos in the depot's main vehicle chamber massed a full fourteen thousand metric tons.
    Only as he drew closer did smaller details separate themselves from the larger bulk of armor. Staggered, bulbous swellings in the hull both above and below the side overhangs housed batteries of antipersonnel weapons. Nine secondary turrets, each sporting the stubby snout of an ion-bolt infinite repeater, were arrayed along each flank like the broadside turrets of a battleship. Hexagonal blocks of antiplasma reactive armor appliqués were everywhere, scattered around sensor ports, antenna arrays, field coils for disrupter shielding and battle screens, and secondary flintsteel armor block. The entire machine had been painted in subdued patterns of splotchy green and brown, a somewhat traditional and no doubt unsuccessful attempt to provide a measure of camouflage for a vehicle that was far too large to hide anywhere, even in the thickest forest. Skirts and tracks had been removed from both the fore and aft wheel train assemblies. The entire unit had been lifted just clear of the floor on massive hydraulic jacks rising out of the floor; each of the interleaved wheels in the Christie-mount chassis was over five meters tall, a vertical cliff of smooth metal very nearly three times the height of a man.
    Work lights had been strung from the left hull overhang, illuminating a group of soldiers and technicians who seemed totally absorbed in a six-handed poker game.
    "Call," one of the men challenged.
    "Ah!" another, with the insignia of a tech master sergeant on his sleeve, said with mock disgust. "All I got is two pair."
    "Read 'em an' weep, boys!" the first man said, laying out his cards. "Full house!"
    "Beats me," another player said, slapping her cards down.
    "Me too."
    "Shoot. Busts mine."
    "Y'got me."
    "Ha! Love it!" The man with the full house began raking piles of Confederation scrip toward his side of the circle. "Come t' poppa, baby!"
    "Hold it right there, Willard," the master sergeant said, grinning evilly. "I said I got two pair."
    "Hell, Sarge," Willard replied, looking up. "A full house beats a crummy two pair any day of the week!"
    "Not when what I got is one pair of jacks, along