Bolo Brigade by William H Keith

Flamers, maybe. But it looked like a hit from a small-caliber Hellbore. And then there were the others . . ." He stopped, and shuddered.
    "Go on. What did you see?"
    "I can't really describe it. I've never seen the like. Some guys were just torn apart. I mean that literally. Some had been . . . I don't know. Run over. Stomped on. There was blood all over the place."
    He looked shook . . . and for Sam Carver to be shook, it had to be bad. "So what did you do?"
    "Some of the fellas wanted to track the things. I can't say I was all that eager to catch up with whatever had done that, but it looked like they were headed south, toward Camp Olson."
    "Wait a minute. 'Things'?"
    "We saw their tracks, Alexie. Big critters, too. From the looks of it, there were several ships that landed, and landed pretty hard. They must've dropped these things off and took off again, though, 'cause we didn't see any sign of them."
    "How big, Sam?"
    "We measured one print left in soft dirt. It was splayed, like this." He held his hand up, the first and second fingers held together and apart from the third and fourth, in a V-shape. "Measured better'n two meters from the back of the heel to the tip of the toe."
    "An . . . an animal track?"
    He shook his head. "I don't think so. The markings looked, well, artificial. Like the foot had been made of cast flintsteel with ridges, like on the bottom of a sports shoe. No, if I had to guess, Alexie, I'd guess that we're looking for something like a small Bolo on legs."
    "Who? Melconians?" News from the Concordiat was slow to reach the Confederation and often was distorted along the way. Still, the Strathan News Network had been running stories on the trouble brewing with the Melconian Empire for months now.
    "I don't think so," Sam replied. "We've got most of the Concordiat and half the Eastern Arm between us and where those guys are supposed to hang out. I can't believe the Empire'd swing all the way around, something like fifty thousand light years out of the way, to come stomp on us . Especially when their quarrel is with Terra. No, I think this is something else."
    "We'll have to get our Guard unit mobilized right away," she said. "If this is the start of an invasion—"
    "Fitzsimmons didn't sound all that eager to check it out."
    "The Guard works for the government," Alexie said. "Not the other way around. I'd better get on out there, though, and talk to the people."
    "It'll help, Alexie," Sam said quietly, "just knowing that someone in the government doesn't automatically assume that they're all drunk or idiots. I'll tag along, if I can."
    "Ms. Turner!" Sally Vogel, her chief aide, hurried down the passageway behind her. "Ms. Turner!"
    "What is it, Sally?"
    "We've got a vidcast from Camp Olson. I think you'd better see this . . . and Major Fitzsimmons, too."
    "What is it?"
    "They say they're being attacked, ma'am. By things !"
    Alexie felt a cold twist of dread in her gut. "Come on," she said. "Let's go see."
     
    Schaagrasch emerged from the treeline high atop the ridge overlooking the enemy military base. All sixteen pack members had assembled by now, a pair of eights deployed in standard slash-and-feed formation. A million years before, on the sere and sun-baked veldts of Zhanaach, Malach hunter packs had deployed the same way when stalking herds of grelssh or the ponderous but dangerous gr'raa'zhghavescht . Two eights would make the approach. One, the senior pack, would hold back, observing, feinting, distracting, perhaps driving; the other was the kaigho, the fang-slash that cut tendons and crippled the prey. At the proper tactical moment, the senior eight became the cha'igho , the final, disemboweling slash with major claw that brought the prey down, gasping its last.
    It was the same today, for all that the Malach now rode Hunters and battled prey far more deadly, intelligent, and tenacious than any lumbering gr'raa'zhghavescht . Schaagrasch had ordered Chaghna'kraa the Blade-Fanged to