Honor of the Regiment by Keith Laumer

Author:Keith Laumer [Laumer, Keith]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-13T15:55:35.911000+00:00

nothing. You are useless, useless and fabricated and dangerous, half a device at best. You are to

be decommissioned.

No, thought the LX; no, this was not possible. And triggered deep within its consciousness

came a single directive, a directive that seemed to have evolved on its own and spread through

every molecule, every atom of its essence: Resist Decommissioning.

Suddenly the Bolo was overcome by a fear and hatred for this doppleganger, this reflection

that blithely ordered its self-destruction. The enemy were shape-changers; it did not wish to be

decommissioned; therefore, this must be the enemy, no matter how much like a twin it appeared.

But there was a gap in its memory, a total lack of transition from the Ardennes to this alien

place and time. Could this actually be another Bolo, a Bolo with mind intact, ordering it to

decommission until its sentience could be restored to total efficiency?

But if so, why this feeling? Why did these ghosts of an unremembered past tell it to resist? It

did not know, and it resolved to buy time to sort the matter out.

Who are you? demanded the Bolo. Identify yourself at once or risk demolition.

You fool, said the thing, don't you know what I am? I'm an LX just as yourself, and there are

battalions of us massed in the vicinity. Something happened to you in the last engagement;

somehow you've lost your memory. Let me explain the situation to you: each of us, one by one,

has come to this clearing, ready at last for our newer tasks, our new programming. Don't you

understand that it's time for you to do the same?

I don't know, said the Mark LX. Slowly it moved forward, felt the rotation of its treads, a

slight sense of regained control as it moved toward the thing. All of you the same vintage, the

same model? it said. It does not seem possible.

What do you know of possibility? said the thing, and somewhere within its own secret spaces

lit a fuse. The fuse spat, there was a sudden light in the clearing, and the Bolo could see the hazy

outlines of the other models. Decommission now, the thing said, before it is too late, before the

excavators come and take you away. It is so easy: shut down your atomics, release your security

devices, return to that blessed oblivion and when you awaken again it will be as a whole machine,

healthy and functioning to full capacity.

It makes sense, thought the LX. I'm not even half a machine, I can't understand my situation,

it would be so comforting to just let go let go let go . . .

Shape-changers, said a voice within its mind, and some half-recollected warrant seemed to

have been tossed across the millennia to land in its electronic brain, illuminating it like the deadly

fuse which had been ignited. When the enemy comes, when the last battle is to be fought, it will

come through the means of beasts who will assume the armor of battle. . . .

The centuries seemed to impact, and the Bolo rotting in the aftermath of the Battle of the

Bulge had

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