Roses Are Red, Bolos Are Blue _I awaken from stand-by mode as a human being enters my zone of attention. From the hardware clock that is part of my survival center I discover that it has been approximately 375.51902 years since I had been ordered to stand down._ _Before the human had taken the second step closer to me I have run all of the nominal diagnostics and find that the autonomous maintenance systems have kept up with the ravages of time by working through my spares kits. I am, at this moment, at 25.93% of combat capability because my fusion plant is off-line. I send the command to the power manager system which initiates the fusion start-up._ _Using my optical sensors I study this human being. It has been such a long time without human companionship and I knew the sensation in my circuits as a feeling of need of company._ _Despite the desire for company I also know that I can only accept orders from an accredited commander. Extra heuristic circuits kick in and express anticipation._ _Starting up even just one fusion bottle within a Mk XXXIc Bolo like myself is not going to be missed by a human being this close to me. That it was an auxiliary plant and would be used to prime the three main bottles didn't mean it was stealthy. This human being paused._ _I studied this human. I could recognize the uniform as resembling that of the Dinochrome Brigade though I have been aware that the uniform has tended to evolve over time. My visitor was also recognizably female._ _My anti-personnel defense systems came on-line just before my infinite repeaters reporting readiness to turn any interloper into a puff of smoke and one of the small turrets rotated silently to confront my visitor and I turned on my voder:_ "Please identify yourself." _I watched the human figure closely. She smiled._ "I am Lila Andresdotter, your new commander, Jackie. Please acknowledge key code 'for a good time, call someone else'." _My circuits seem to sizzle as this correct recognition code routed through my various circuits and, before bonding, I ask her_ "Are you my new commander?" _I had closely studied my masters and the conflicts they felt given their biological basis. I'd also had ample opportunities to study human mating, too, and identified the feeling running through my circuits when she said_ "Yes, I am your new commander" _as akin to a human's sexual climax._ _Having a human commander again made me feel whole._ ---------------------------------------------------- It is perhaps strange that the humans who do feel the most anxiety when approaching a Bolo are the ones who work most closely with them. As a candidate commander, I'd been sent to work with this ancient unit as my first "command". Unit 30254 JQI of the Line had been in stand-by for a long time yet kept maintained by a set of service systems that should have kept him-- or her, given the voder settings, though Bolos didn't really have a sexual identity-- from suffering any decay in their systems. If 30254 JQI's psychotronics had become senile we would have been warned well before it could go live. Part of my job was to take command prior to bringing in the maintenance crew of humans who would then replenish the spares kits and work to upgrade the secondary weapons systems to far more current standards. There were things I didn't know about JQI, things that no one really understood, at least, not without bringing JQI up and talking to her. Come to think of it, I was getting more and more comfortable thinking of JQI as a "her". I would have a full twenty four hours before the maintenance crew would expect me to give them an all clear. Climbing aboard JQI was when I first felt it. Now I understood the cryptic note the last commander had left for her successor along with the authentication key. I was horny. For the first time in my life the conditioning provided by military discipline in keeping a lid on my sex drive was suddenly weakened. There was something about JQI that was reputed to awaken a human's passion for sexual companionship. By the time I got to the fighting compartment, deep inside of JQI, I was aroused enough to take on any-- if not all-- of the men from the maintenance crew, suddenly looking forward to their arrival. It was there in the fighting compartment that I saw another reason why the previous commander had specified that a woman be designated to command JQI: She had left a bunch of sex toys behind when she'd left to give birth. Toys that only a woman would be able to get the most out of... I was out of my uniform in a flash and impaled on the phallus that had been mounted to the shock frame. Within moments I'd reached my first climax. As I was coming down from my first explosive orgasm, I realized how the toy I had 'tween my nethers was active, moving about to seek my sensitive spots and bringing me quickly to my second climax. The climb was *wonderful*. Hindsight made it clear that JQI's previous commander had obviously made some unauthorized enhancements to her mount that *I* had no way to avoid enjoying. Additionally, I was in no condition to criticize her work, either. JQI's soft voice spoke to me about how much she loved me and that she hoped I would be with her for a long time. Then JQI shocked me. "I hope you have many children, Lila. Many children who can grow up to be commanders. Too many humans die in battle and it's the warriors like you who seem to be growing shorter and shorter in number..." I kept hearing this as I kept coming, over and over again, until I was limp as a rag. The extra appliances on this protective seat, the shock frame, withdrew and the waldoes gently picked me up and placed me on a sleeping pad where I faded into a satiated slumber. You can bet that I sent the all-clear to the maintenance crew. I was damn glad that, of the 50 people, thirty three were men, which meant that there was close to two men for every woman. For a woman from a rather quiet little colony world, I truly learned a lot about sex that I never knew of before. Between the lust inducing properties of an awakened JQI and watching others, I tried a _lot_ of things I'd never thought possible before and found them all surprisingly satisfying. It was a good thing for me-- and the other women, it seemed-- that JQI's effects worked on men as well as women. Of course nothing could get around the refractory time which is the main reason any real work got done. Oh, sure, the work got done; it had to. But I'll admit I was not disappointed or upset with the schedule slip as we all took breaks to fuck. The schedule slippage wasn't intolerable but it was certainly inconvenient, especially when I had to explain the problems to my own commanders. Thankfully they all allowed me time to go to the BOQ and shower and dress in a clean uniform before reporting to them. I had little choice but to explain the truth. The funny thing is that, being away from JQI, with my mind and body clear of arousal, I was so very willing to go back to "my" Bolo... *and* the maintenance team. In hindsight I realized that the other commanders tended to look down on me. Of course, the first military action I went on changed all that. ---------------------------------------------------- _Human forces were fighting a civil war. Again. And I was going into the middle of it with my commander. A commander who was now pregnant._ _The opposition did not have Bolos or any other weapons that could truly threaten me, so my commander and I were sent in alone._ _No one had explained the strategy or _why_ I was being sent to the military headquarters of the enemy. At the same time we were advised to avoid killing _any_ of the enemy._ _So we drove into sight of their headquarters, their small-arms fire unable to do any damage to me. Even the land mines they attempted to use were insufficient to damage me._ _We reached their city and parked, awaiting further orders. Lila, by this time, was again riding the toys my previous commander had installed and hooked up to me. I drove them to keep my commander from over-doing it, making sure that her orgasmic frequency didn't over-stress her pregnant body._ _It is strange how my external pickups were seeing many of the "enemy" stopping near me and entering into sexual congress with each other; I suspected it was not unhelpful that the balance of the sexes were close to even, here._ _Longer ranged pickups were able to see the radius of wild sexual encounters around me to be spreading... and spreading quickly._ _We were ordered out after thirty six hours._ _Lila slept for quite a bit of it but was almost mindlessly fucking an artificial penis during any of the time she was awake. When we withdrew..._ ---------------------------------------------------- It wasn't until we were back at base and I made my tired way to the BOQ to rest and wash up before debriefing that I had a clear enough head to consider what I'd just been through. Yes, I admit to being a little bit distracted from any of the details but I spent a lot of time, once I'd washed up, talking with JQI via my mastoid implant. What was funny was that usually debriefings usually have officers who'd seen action-- well, in my case, more than one kind of action-- reporting to their superiors. In my case it was more a matter of them explaining to me why I'd been ordered to the opposition's capital with JQI. And why I'd been chosen as JQI's commander. And why JQI never had to fire a shot to bring this whole civil war to an end. "Commander, your mission was to undermine the leadership of a particularly insular and repressive religious sect. Across history we get these kinds of repressive regimes that use sexual frustration driven by the demonization of their sex drives to push people in their sway into a war. The instigators project themselves as good and godly people but they usually have little interest in anything more than having personal power. We sent you into a sector where we have been seeing quite a few folks fall for this line of bullshit." I shook my head. "I don't understand what sending JQI and me there did, though..." My CO smirked briefly. "You... and, more especially, JQI, together, blew the heart out of the religious leadership. No matter how much the leadership claimed ascetism, JQI's odd effect on people around it, especially when an energetic female human commander is bonded to it and able to cope with the field's effects without losing their physical and emotional health, makes the effect stronger. We are all aware of JQI's set of unapproved, uh, enhancements, but JQI wages peace better than war." I stared at him. "So what does this mean about my future?" He sat back and laughed. "After proving how well attuned you are as an amplifier and focal point for JQI, we expect you to work together for a long time. We also need to get better metrics on this field that your Bolo projects, first, to manage the selection of missions you will be assigned to. JQI may be officially obsolescent... but, when it comes to keeping a war from ever starting in the first place, there's a lot of future work. So, Commander, I would not worry over your career. We're working out a plan to keep you active... and dropping litters, too. We have also learned that your pregnancy somehow further amplifies the effect of the field. We still don't understand why, but, Commander, it works." All I could do is stare at my CO. "So, Commander, I suggest you get a good night's rest at the BOQ before checking up on the repairs that JQI will likely need, like fixing the paint where the small-arms fire chipped it. Dismissed." ---------------------------------------------------- JQI and I saw a lot of action over the next ten years. My fifteen children were growing up well with their fathers, before I got caught up in a battle with aliens. Both JQI and I survived real battle... but only just. JQI was retired, the cores and personality center brought to a facility where they could *finally* be studied, but the field she projected had somehow weakened with the loss of the rest of her "body". The effect was still there, of course. And, with some of the junior officers, I used it to my own advantage. JQI kept telling me that I wasn't being selfish because I was helping to replenish the stocks of warriors by dropping more litters. I still didn't understand why I was having so many twins. When I finally retired from both the military *and* from child-bearing, I did miss the weapon of love I had had the privilege of commanding.