they

of fluid he drank. His hands were shaking and every muscle in his neck and shoulders were cramped from hunching over the boards.
Rommel was battered and had lost several external sensors and one of his guns. But the moment that the mother-ship vanished, he had only one thought.
He manually dropped control of every mech from Rommel’s systems, and waited, praying, for his old friend to “come back.”
But nothing happened—other than the obvious things that any AI would do, restoring all the comfort-support and life-support functions, and beginning damage checks and some self-repair.
Rommel was gone.
His throat closed; his stomach knotted. But—
It wasn’t tested. That doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Once more, his hands moved over the keyboard, with another twenty command-strings, telling that little memory-module in the heart of his Bolo to initiate full restoration. He hadn’t thought he had water to spare for tears—yet there they were, burning their way down his cheeks.

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