# Mercs and a Bolo



## adthery (Sep 10, 2009)

Hi!

Can anyone help me? I am looking for a piece of fiction I read online
years ago. It was about a mercenary unit that used fusion powered
tanks and later fought an ancient war-machine (basically a Bolo).

They killed it by using sevral nukes and a orbital kinetic strike. The
piece ended with someone salvaging a chip which housed the AI.

I have looked for it for sevral days now without any luck. I remember
most of the story, but not enough to come up with good keywords
it seems.

I would really appreciate any help in locating this one. It was very good.

Regards

Edit:
This issue has been resolved.


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## Attaman (Sep 10, 2009)

I need a bit more than "Has a Bolo-like tank".  Is it a fanfic?  Actual part of the series?  Something unrelated, but similar to? If unrelated, can you give any details on the rest of the realm?

For those of you unaware of what a Bolo is.


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## Irreverent (Sep 10, 2009)

I'm guessing the Anthro link here is the bipedal canine-like nature of the Melchonians?

I'll move this to The Papermill, where it might get better coverage.


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## adthery (Sep 10, 2009)

As I said, this was years ago, but I think it was a piece of original fiction,
if not, then it was definently inspired by Hammer's Slammers.

The beginning was fairly straight-forward. Local planetary government
hires a merc outfit to deal with rebels. It deals with the crew of a tank
as they conduct operations, including patrol and clearing a village.

I distinctly remember a comment about "Amateurs sometimes do the
darnest things". Apparently the rebels, lacking military training sometimes
pull insane stuff that shouldn't work but does because no-one expects
the opposition to be stupid enough to try it. This part involved suppression
of a possible ATGM launch site.

The tanks themselves were your standard Hammer's Slammers gear,
fusion power, AI, point-defence and a forward looking ground radar
that can find mines. Not to mention the usual multi-spectral sensor suite.

Can't remember if they were hovertanks or if they used tracks.

It had a big gun that was capable of firing nuclear rounds. The fic also
made a big deal of Tactical Data Nets, which the Bolo later hacked and
used to good effect.

The Bolo showed up mid-way through the fic. They never actually said
it, and at the time I wasn't familiar with the word, but looking back the
huge monster tank (think landbattleship) can only be a Bolo. The character's
were not familiar with this piece of military technology and hints were made
that it was "lost tech".

The Merc unit took huge casulties trying to kill the Bolo, hitting it with
Arty, nuclear tank rounds, even a nuclear mine to try a mobility kill,
in the end they launched a ballistic missile (could be more than one) from
the ground which orbited the planet and came down killing the Bolo in
a massive explosion. Think "Project Thor" or "Rods from God".

Suprisingly the Bolo was largly intact - though no longer combat
effective - after getting hit by all this firepower.

At the end one of the Mercs salvage a chip that is hinted as being the
main AI and someone from a large faction (possibly Earth) talks about
paying a large sum of money for the salvage of the Bolo (the local
government refused to pay for all the casulties the Mercs sustained).

Going by the ending I suspect that the author might have planned
a sequel. I hops this helps.


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## adthery (Sep 10, 2009)

Irreverent said:


> I'm guessing the Anthro link here is the bipedal canine-like nature of the Melchonians?
> 
> I'll move this to The Papermill, where it might get better coverage.



Actually, the tank crew and many of the Mercs were Anthro of various types. The
Melconians were not a part of this fic.

It wasn't mentioned why, but seeing as the Bolo was "lost tech" and the highly
experienced Mercs didn't know what it was I suspect that this was quite some
time after the fall of Earth.

Further, as the fic played out from the main characters point of view, it isn't
mentioned if the monster tank actually is a Bolo.

I simply assume that since it can shot down Military grade Com & Spy sats,
has enough fire-power to threaten the Merc Battlewagon away from planetary
orbit, has the ability to shrug off multiple direct hits by nuclear ordinance, and
has a sentient self-aware AI; well, it can't really be anything but a Bolo, can it?


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## adthery (Sep 10, 2009)

Good News! Writing this request for help jogged my memory enough that I
managed to feed google the right sequence of keywords to find the story!

It is called "A Matter of Necessity" by jonwI.

It can be found by going to http://www.furry.de/miavir/stories/titles_m02.html
unfortunantly the links don't work but if you feed the URL of the individual
story into www.archive.org you can still read them.

Thanks Everyone!

Edit:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050308094210/http://www.furnation.com/JonwI/Necessity1.txt
http://web.archive.org/web/20050308094522/http://www.furnation.com/JonwI/Necessity2.txt
http://web.archive.org/web/20050308094933/http://www.furnation.com/JonwI/Necessity3.txt
http://web.archive.org/web/20050308095000/http://www.furnation.com/JonwI/Necessity4.txt


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