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Chapter Text

Daybreak

The Enemy are innumerable. Literally.

My awareness of the battlespace is clouded by both electronic and literal fog. I cannot make a meaningful estimate of their numbers. I simply know that if left unchecked they are more than enough to destroy the city of Landing and its six million people. This is not the sort of battle for which I have been designed.

I am a Bolo, Model XXXIV, of the Resurgent class, Indrani Pattern, R-042-MCL of the Line. The Bolo named "Michelangelo". I am forty thousand tons of duralloy, weapons, and power, built to defeat all possible enemies of Mankind.

For two thousand years that Humanity has been in space, we Bolos have been there, serving as their sword and shield, and not once have we betrayed that trust, not once have we faltered, and not once did we ever quit. We have served them well against the Deng, the Xkydap, the Quern, the Malach, and the Axorc, and many many more other alien opponents, and we grew with them. It is fair to say the human civilization cannot be what it is without the Bolo, as much as they improved us with advances in psychotronics and weapons and defensive technology, so does their society florish with the safety we provide and the benefits of research into energy cores and supercomputing artificial intelligence and all the necessary gravity control required to allow our bulk to function at speed within the gravity well.

But in the dawn of the 30th century we finally faced an alien foe that we could not overcome by sheer machine speed of thought and technological superiority.

The Empire of Melcon, an alien race with a canid appearance, with a strong clan and caste-based society, weapons technology slightly inferior to our own but masters of stealth and bioengineering, a nd with history, territory and industrial might several times stronger than the Concordiat of Man.

This was the Final War, the end of all wars, for in its pursuit both powers were destroyed and their people driven to the very brink of extinction.  As the Melconian Empire blotted out Terra and Bolo Prime on Luna with a world-burner, we too burned Melcon. We called it Plan Ragnarok, and whatever the Melcon name for it, their plan was similarly as thorough and without mercy.

It is the one shame in the annals of the Bolo Brigade that we Bolos became the instruments of mass slaughter, we put to the torch thousands of worlds, and when our world-burners ran out, we Bolos had to manually wipe clean worlds with our Hellbores tuned to sustained fire mode. A megaton-range bolt every .8 seconds could, with grid-like efficiency, could literally erase cities and their populations right off the surface of a planet. We were murderers, slaughterers of the innocent – but the Final War was that sort of war. What we did to them, at Trakhal and Utist, they were doing the same at Chatres, at New Tokyo; it was a war of total annihilation, where the only victory could be the utter destruction of the other. It was a race to see who would run out of worlds first.

I have not personally fought in the Final War, I was built long after, but I imagine the sight would be similar to today. Hellbore fire rain from the heavens, and I strengthen and spread my battlescreen to deflect the inbound storm. Nuclear fireballs bloom in my passing, as I vigorously maneuver, my bulk reacting with inconceivable grace, something massing tens of thousands of tons should not be capable of jinking at over one hundred kilometers an hour. The weapon that thinks, that is mankind's greatest creation. That is the Bolo.

My return fire is sporadic. My objective is not to kill the Enemy. No, there is too many. Somehow they are capable of spoofing my targeting. My main guns, 210-centimeter Hellbores with firepower equivalent to 5.25 megatons of TNT per second, are useless here. Each Bolo could serve as an anti-orbital platform with an effective range of over 35,000 kilometers past high orbit, and my main guns were identical to those carried by battlecruisers, but the Enemy is simply too close to hit or clustering over civilian areas where any attempt to use my Hellbores would lead to mass deaths of the people I exist to protect.

My objective now is merely to survive, to draw their fire, in order that the civilians behind me could live for just that much longer and get to safety inside shelters. As a plasma strike arriving at seventy percent the speed of light brushes through my battle screen and impacts against my warhull, my damage control sensors flare with the equivalent of pain.

My Commander, William Jacks Martini-Hawthorne winces in turn. We share the totality of our existence in the Bolo Direct Neural Interface, combining the logical mind of the Bolo supercomputer with the ineffable intuitive capacities of the human mind, creating something much more than the sum of either.

"Things were supposed to be better. We were supposed to be better!" William hisses. "Not like this… we can't let it end like this!"

-x-

I was built by the Indrani Republic, a society born of Operation Seed Corn, which was an attempt to flee the fighting with a colony population in the hopes that even though Human and Melcon civilization would surely die, at least humanity itself would not go completely extinct. And so we fled, and behind us a trillion souls on tens of thousands of worlds died screaming into the Long Night.

Two hundred years have passed since then. What was merely twenty thousand became millions, became billions, and their industrial infrastructure eventually could build Bolos like me. Sixty-four years ago, the Republic sent out an expedition fleet, to find out if there are any remaining remnants of humanity, if there remained enough of Melcon to keep prosecuting the Final War, and as we set out in a fleet of superdreadnoughts and escorts and whole regiments of Bolos, fifty percent secure in our might and fifty percent apprehensive of what we might find.

We found in our travels murdered world after murdered world. Here, one that showed signs of the atmosphere being ignited by a world-burner, there killed through orbital bombardment, another though the tell-tale signs of ground-level glassing via Hellbores, another through some form of virulent superplague that rotted everything organic,  and some with nothing left to identify if they had ever been owned by Human or Melcon. Shattered hulks of Bolos and their equivalent Melcon Battlers littered the battlefields like massive headstones for the murdered millions.

We found here and there, small communities fearful of the night sky. Some Human, some Melcon, stuck in almost a pre-industrial age, too afraid to light up with life signs that can be seen from orbit or to use radios. There was no discussion whether or not we should destroy the Melcon remnants to finish them off, to prosecute the Final War was entirely in our hands, and to murder the defenseless would tarnish our honor. We left them be. We marked their locations in our maps, and left nothing in our passing that might hint to others there would be survivors there.

They live in terror, but also they live in peace. That was enough, we had no right to disturb them.

Hundreds of lightyears we ventured forth, and found most of the galactic arm a graveyard. It took us three years to cross Perseus Arm, most of that time the crew spent in coldsleep, and jump after jump hundreds of dead worlds became thousands.

The young soldiers of the Republic, ready and eager to find something to test themselves against, found their lust of battle sapped with every dead world. The Final War was not a glorious war. This was the end point of two powers who could not be checked except by each other, two rivals unwilling to allow the other to exist. They were shaken by the proof of just how low their forebears had fallen. The honor of the Dinochrome Brigade was tarnished forever. Human or Melcon, whoever and however far from the Final War they might have been born, if they looked in the mirror they would find a face of a mass murderer.

Buried inside every human, ever Melcon, every Bolo, is that same capacity for genocide.

"The only reason we're out here is to find out if there could still be threats against Indrani. And that's fine! It's all well and good to defend our own!" William's grandfather, Anson Hawthorne, and commander of the Bolo XXIV A-001-SBR "Sabre" of the Line, remarked in his memoirs, "But after all this… do we have a right to call ourselves protectors? To cry out for revenge?! War will not make us better. Such arrogance! My arrogance!

"I've grown up hearing about great-great-grandmother Maneka and Bolo LZY "Lazarus", one Bolo fighting off an entire Melcon combat group, who would have killed us all without mercy. I thought it would be good in itself if we simply had the magnanimity not to destroy any Melcon population we encountered. The Melcon were monsters. But the Concordiat were monsters too.

"Such monstrosity. The Concordiat had at least three thousand worlds, the Melconian Empire had between three to five times that. We're passed Concordiat territory and deep into Melcon territory, and every world we've passed is a burnt-out husk. If there ever was a sin that could taint the souls of all those born after, it is this! We have no right to feel proud about our weapons or our technology anymore.

"Mercy? Mercy, hah! It is nothing to be called the grace of the victor. From now on it should be the basest obligation! For what we have done there can be no forgiveness."

-x-

The one thing we could never defeat –

The one planet against which all the might of Indrani could not avail itself against –

We found, deep inside Melconian space, in the world that was once known as Ishark and now known as Ararat, a Union in which Humans and Melcons lived in peace, even adopted into each other's clans, and though fearing the arrival of some old fragment of Melcon or the Concordiat to crush all that they had slowly, painfully regained, they did not fear to look up at the stars. Like our Republic, they had created an industrial base sufficient to launch interstellar craft, but much inferior due to much more limited colony assets compared to our Operation Seed Corn.

In pitiful numbers they arranged their fleet of small ships in front of ours, one which surely looked like one that was ready to burn worlds. We certainly had the capability for it.

We opened communications, and in my databanks I often refer to that conversation with the Speaker Emeritus of the Union of Ararat's Parliament, Bolo XXXIII/D-1097-SHV, "Shiva". One of the veterans of the Final War, one of the instruments of Plan Ragnarok, personally responsible for burning hundreds of worlds and populations, and also their main architect of peace. A part of us felt that such a killer had no right to still exist, and at the same time utter admiration that even a Bolo could defy its own nature.

Within Ararat we saw the end of the Final War. It was time at last for peace.

Though Indrani and Ararat were very distant from each other, swiftly we entered into an alliance. Ararat must be defended. It is the jewel of the galaxy, it must stand as an example, so that the Final War could truly end. Remnants of Concordiat and Melcon needed their example to be able to put side the hatred and live, even if not as friends, then at least in peace. It was time at last to stop fighting.

Fifty-one years have passed since Contact. Indrani culture too had to confront its own unconscious indoctrination painting all Melcon as evil, and instead had to begin to see Melcon as equally innocent of their ancestor's sins as we were of our sins against the Melcon population. We could not judge them without judging ourselves.

-x-

And now – Ararat.

Ararat is under attack.

For while Humans and Melcon might finally have begun to forgive each other, it is clear the galaxy has not forgiven us.

The sky broke open, at 4:40:04 AM (Perez Local) and from an impossible void poured out what we could only identify as impossible... monsters. Creatures neither machine nor biological, comparatively tiny things that could strike with the force of Bolo-scale weaponry. Creatures formed of hatred and spite made manifest, creatures that could prove that yes, even Bolos had a soul, because even deep in our machine selves we could feel the quivering truth of their boundless burning hate.

A trillion souls crying out in anguish, a trillion souls screaming in pain, a trillion souls crying out –  avenge us! Kill for us! Die for us!

So many of our defenders died in the opening salvo, locked up by that Hateful Truth, paralyzed by the notion that even they, so far removed from their forebears who fought in the Final War, perhaps they even had no right to live and be so pathetically content over the graves of the massacred.

Barely was I able to raise my battle screen.

Ghosts are unscientific. But if ever there was a grudge, a resentment that goes beyond reason and breaking through into reality, it would be the unmatched atrocities committed in the Final War. No, we had little trouble accepting the legitimacy of their arrival. We could only fight to defend the innocents they wanted to murder in service of that all-consuming anger.

Their profane weaponry felt real enough against my battle screen. Fusion plasma beams were deflected, lasers were absorbed, and railgun slugs were shredded into subatomic particles. Buildings, and people, lacking this defensive energy field, how they burned!

That moment we were paralyzed, how many died because of our weakness?! Our arrogance – our reliance on advanced technology, the hubris of believing that anything that dared approach the orbit of Ararat existed only with our permission.

Bolo Shiva was old, and damaged, and sinful, and yet he could still move. He had so many to protect. And the Enemy seemed to take great pleasure in tearing him apart. A Mark XXXIII Bolo such as him was the pinnacle of Concordiat technology, a supertank that could lay waste to a world, thirty-two thousand tons of directed violence with internal contra-grav that could even allow him to  fly  at five hundred kilometers per hour. A member of the horribly experienced world killers of the XLIII Legion, he had not survived the Final War, but even then forty years later reactivated at minimal capabilities with a Bolo's nanite self-repair system.

Yet even without a functioning reactor, a Bolo's hull was capable of leeching energy from sunlight. Over forty years of silence, his capacitors had absorbed enough to power move and fire a Hellbore. That would have been enough to destroy the Melconian transports arriving on Ararat, driven there by their own malfunctioning life support. As a Bolo, it should have been his duty to kill them to ensure that the equally desperate humans who had settled the world some years ago would be safe.

Shiva was the Bolo to fire the last shot of the Final War, and the first to refuse to fire the shot that would re-ignite it.

The Enemy surgically blasted apart his triple 200cm Hellbore turrets, and his Infinite Repeaters were ripped out of their sockets. Swarms of spider-like creatures with slick black chitin and bloody grins poured into the Mk XXXIII Bolo, and popped as his internal disruptor fields tried to protect his inside, but in the end to no avail as they simply swarmed until his capacitors drained.

They peeled apart his durachome armor, and scampered into his command center. They killed his commander, slicing Alice Devereaux into bloody ribbons, and broke through into his personality center. A two meter ball of psychotronics, that is a Bolo. Not its warhull, not its fearsome weapons, but that intelligence so devoted to humanity and the ideals of chivalry.

Bolo Shiva died screaming.

But even in his torturous death, he bought us enough time to rally. Enough time to warn the civilians to enter the shelters. Enough time to wake up and remember – our lives are owed to the living, not the dead.

Enough time for myself and my commander to hope to emulate his sacrifice.

-x-

Colonel Anson Hawthorne also wrote:

"To fight and prevail against insurmountable odds is not romantic. I once thought it would be a glorious way to die in emulation of my great-grandmother and Bolo Lazarus' battle, but I see now that they would prefer never to be heroes at all. They fought because it was their duty. A real soldier hopes that we should never have to be in that situation. A savior cannot exist without those who need to be saved."

Yet every moment I keep them occupied, the fewer weapons are directed at the civilians behind me. My commander and I will die here, there is no hope for us. There is no glory here.

But I am satisfied.

A gigantic creature, approximately one thousand seven hundred tons and with a simian form clambers up the side of my warhull. It lacks legs, but instead pushes forward on a tail made of thick, exposed bones of its spinal column. Its face is a faintly avian bone mask, and its cranium an open bowl. Seated inside its skull is a young woman clad in a tight sheer robe. Her pallor is corpselike, her eyes literally glow red with hate. And on the creature's back, are twinned Hellbore turrets that are now aimed to pierce though the rents in my armor and into my personality center.

"Huh. Pretty. Like some sort of… Hellbore Princess?" murmurs my commander. He lets out a strangled little laugh. "Guess this is it, old boy. See you in the other side."

"It was a pleasure to have known you, commander," I respond.

This is a good death.

Bwongg.

And then, inexplicably, another young woman jumps into our field of view to punch the Hellbore Princess in the face.

And even more inexplicably, instead of the Hellbore Princess falling off out of her perch, the whole beast topples over the side of my warhull.

The new arrival jumps to follow them. She wears an unfamiliar power frame, more akin to industrial loaders than power armor, but on her back are mounted three turrets on articulating barbettes that have the energy signature of 200cm Hellbores.

That young woman is emitting a Bolo IFF.

-x-

-x-

First, I will presume you're familiar with Kantai Collection and the whole concept of spirits of warships incarnated back into human forms to fight Abyssals, and Keith Laumer's Bolos and their role in the Concordiat of Man and the Final War.

Now, just simply turning the whole concept of shipgirls space scifi would work, but oddly enough there is much more reason for the whole demon-undead-ship-thing to exist in the Boloverse than just an echo of WW2 grudges as in Kancolle, because to quote an old post of mine -

However, for all the stories that mankind tells and are inspired by to power the legends, when it comes to Mystery there really isn't going to be as big of an event as the Final War. All the stories of Man, all the stories of Melcon, gone in the nuclear fires that only the Bolo survives. The total erasure of civilizations - all their people, their relics, their histories, their very worlds, forever removed from the face and memory of the galaxy. So what if Gaea is a thing? Bolos have participated in the slaughter of tens of thousands of planets and near a trillion souls!

And then, in the aftermath, the survivors and the alien races that come after, will only be able to speak the name 'Bolo' with dread and wonder. Even future cybernetic races will trace their ancestry to the Bolo. They are Progenitors too.

The distillation of that legend has no choice but to be fucking powerful. In that timeline, every other legend pales in comparison. King Arthur, Gilgamesh, Napoleon, Rommel, Zeus, Thor, etc. - all perished as Terra burned. To the scattered remnants of humanity, these legends would start to lose context ... but the legend of The Bolo that Stopped The War... well, all those thousands of dead worlds still stand as monuments.

Jezzus the level of a Grudge that might leave.

The Final War was a massive, massive campaign of mutual genocide. No one was spared. Trillions died, tens of thousands of worlds were put to the torch, large swaths of a galactic arm were wiped clean of life.

And beyond the Final War... peace, for a time. Though war is inevitable, perhaps for some time they put aside old hatreds, and Human and Melcon slowly walked together on the road to forgiving each other and making penance for the horrors wrought by their ancestors. And with them, their ever-prepared, ever-watchful, ever-faithful guardians, the Bolos.

But the galaxy has not forgotten.

And the screaming dark does not forgive.

Chapter Text

-x-

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.

"Yah yah."

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?"

"Ya. Ya hah."

"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!"

"Ya hey." The fairy that was once Paul Merrit nodded, then pointed out to the distance, and only then did she notice a pillar of eldritch 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."

"Yoh!" 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.

"Yo. Yoh ho ho!"

"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-

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