Line #57 Literature/Bolo


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4	->''"Bolos might fail. They might die and be destroyed. But they did not surrender, and they never -- ever -- quit."''
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6	A series of stories, originally by Creator/KeithLaumer, that were later expanded into a SharedUniverse by other authors. They detail the exploits of the Bolo, autonomous AI tanks that [[{{Zeerust}} are supposed to have evolved]] from the standard main battle tank of the 20th century.
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8	These aren't your normal tanks. For one, their designers decided that [[BiggerIsBetter bigger was better]], and since the only thing that could really take down a Bolo was ''another'' Bolo, they just kept building the Bolos bigger and bigger, to the point where even the ''stealth'' tanks mass 1,500 tons.[[note]]For comparison purposes, modern [=MBTs=] mass around 60 to 70 tons, give or take a bit.[[/note]] Or in some novels the Mark XXXIII weighs 32,000 tons. [[note]] Which is pretty close to the weight of the [=USS=] New Mexico, a World War 2 era battleship. [[/note]]
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10	For another, they are keenly intelligent, often with surprisingly human personalities. Quite a few of the stories focus on the relationships between the Bolos and their human commanders, because no matter how well they get on, the mountain of armour-clad metal bristling with weaponry is programmed to/wants to (the line gets murky at times) defend the squishy humans at all costs. For while there have been Bolos who were historians, knights, poets, spies and gardeners, they are warriors first and foremost, born to fight alongside their human comrades.
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12	[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] someone the police wants to find, the type of neck-tie, "cake" in Portuguese, or the traditional weapon of Argentinian gauchos (or of [[MacheteMayhem Filipino warriors]]).
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18	!!The proud history of the Dinochrome Brigade provides examples of these tropes:
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20	* AIIsACrapshoot: Averted. Every documented case where a Bolo appeared to have turned rogue has thus far simply been the result of the Bolos obeying their mission directives in unanticipated ways, or of extensive battle damage impairing their functions (or both).
21	** Played with in "Traitor." It turns out that a supposedly "rogue" Bolo [[spoiler:was carrying human survivors, and]] took a massive amount of damage to what is essentially its brain and thought everything with a weapon was trying to attack [[spoiler:said human survivors]] (Including other Bolos). That's right: in order for a Bolo to go rogue, it had to have a massive chunk of its brain ''vaporized,'' essentially lobotomizing it. And even then it was still trying to protect humanity.
22	** Another story involved a Bolo that literally drives itself insane with the paranoia involved in working out untold trillions of scenarios for alien attack on the planet it's protecting. Once it goes insane, it becomes even more dependable, since [[spoiler: the deepest programming in all Bolos is an unbreakable loyalty program that activates if the Bolo becomes dangerous to its own side]]. The Bolo recovers after an attack, which breaks the endless self-reinforcing programming loop that created its paranoia.
23	** Another appears to desert, going rogue and then hiding, around the same time that a bunch of earthquakes start... but then it's revealed that the Bolo in question figured out that the economic future of this colony was in jeopardy, and if he "Deserted" and caused a bunch of earthquakes by manipulating the continental plates (long story), then the Dinochrome Brigade would have to pay compensation... which would be enough to help the colony.
24	** Played straight with the [[http://bolo.wikia.com/wiki/!!! !!!]] (yes that is their name for themselves) who are descended from machines that rebelled against their masters and now travel around the galaxy as nomadic marauders. The !!! have no government of any kind, just an insatiable desire to feed and grow and kill without end. They evolved from thousands of AI types, including self-aware spaceships and !!! equivalent to Bolos: mile-long tracked war machines with a main gun measured in tens-of-megatons per second. Ouch.
25	* AlienInvasion: Bolos, given their status as defenders of humanity, are usually among the first ones to be called up to stop any invading aliens.
26	* AliensAreBastards: The majority of alien races in the stories range from ScaryDogmaticAliens to [[AbsoluteXenophobe Absolute Xenophobes]] whose first and last resort upon contact is genocidal aggression. Though this might be explained by the fact that when aliens do not happen to be bastards, dealing with them is not Bolos' business.
27	* AlternateHistory: The first Bolos were supposed to be made in the year 2000 by the General Motors company. Clearly, this has not happened. Averted, however, in that the first stories where this was established were written years before the cutoff date.
28	* ApocalypseHow: The Final War ends in a Galactic Societal Collapse for both sides, with a large number of Total Planetary Extinctions.
29	* ArtificialIntelligence: The titular supertanks of the series have been given increasingly powerful artificial intelligence as they advanced through the centuries, and models starting with the Mark XX were given full sentience. Out of fears by humans of the titanic tanks going rogue they were hemmed in by {{Restraining Bolt}}s that restricted them from using their full intelligence any time outside of being directly engaged with the enemy, and even then they required a human commander to make the call to go to full alert.
30	* BadassArmy: Even just hearing of a Bolo being deployed is enough to make some soldiers [[BringMyBrownPants soil their shorts in fear]], especially if one doesn't have a Bolo equivalent of their own handy. Often Bolos are depicted as so overpowering that you wonder why humans still raise and deploy units of infantry and lesser armor at all. Even in the stories when they can be ''relatively'' easily hurt by smaller and cheaper enemy units, thus needing combined arms support to operate at peak efficiency, anything that manages to land a good shot on Bolo is virtually guaranteed to be destroyed by return fire.
31	** Which makes any enemy force that takes on Bolos without being some sort of mindless fanatics a BadassArmy in their turn.
32	* BeeBeeGun: In the novel ''The Road to Damascus'', written by Linda Evans and Creator/JohnRingo, at one point in an alien invasion of their world, some protagonists throw the bee hives used for making honey into a barn where several of the invader's soldiers are found. The numerous stings of the swarming bees, designed to be more aggressive than normal to force out native competitors, kill the soldiers.
33	* BenevolentAI: Bolos are this, as far as it possible for AIs created to drive giant tanks of mass destruction. Maybe it is the result of being created with the fundamental drive to protect, but a numbers of Bolos have more morals and compassion than their human commanders.
34	* BiggerStick: That's what Bolos always are, even if in the end [[ZergRush they can be swamped by sheer numbers]]. All of the hostile aliens are conveniently encountered just when [[HumanityIsAdvanced the humanity's technical advantage over them ranges from significant to stupendous]], and human villains invariably use less advanced tech, such as "golems", which have Bolos chassis but electronic systems somehow less advanced than even very early pre-sentience Bolos. Really, the playing field is relatively level only in very rare cases when Bolos find themselves opposing each other.
35	* BittersweetEnding: The verse as a whole. On one hand, humanity survives, Bolos (and presumably AIs in general) are eventually acknowledged as people rather than just tools of war, humans and Melconians learn to coexist and cooperate. On the other hand, before they do, the whole Orion Arm of the Milky Way is reduced to a graveyard of dead planets, including, oh, ''every single place'' Bolos and humans laid their lives to protect in stories set before the Final War.
36	* BizarreAlienPsychology: In one story, the villains are a bunch of reptilian matriarchal BloodKnight aliens that have "Kill and Eat!" as a battle cry and will not accept any surrender... especially because apparently they have a very different way of thinking about the concept of "surrender" than humans. When the female main character of the book decides to be DefiantToTheEnd and keep on staring into the eyes of a taller alien when she approaches to kill her, the alien is puzzled because ''that'' pose (on your knees, raising your head) [[InMyLanguageThatSoundsLike means "please kill me" in her language]]... and sees it even odder for the alien that a female did such a thing. This confusion keeps the girl alive long enough for the hero and the Bolos to pull a StormingTheCastle.
37	* BrainInAJar: In ''BoloRising'' by William H. Keith, Jr., the brain of the former commander of BOLO Mark XXXIII Mod HCT ("Hector") has been preserved by the alien !!! and connected to one of their battle fortresses. [[spoiler:During the final battle, he manages to provide Hector and his new commander with critical data, as well as helping to subvert the !!! attack.]]
38	* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: In one story, there's an attack on a human outpost where aliens invade at the site of a previous battle, and a [[RetiredBadass Bolo tank is a museum piece]] that ''literally breaks out of the museum that was built around it''. It attacks the aliens and even after suffering huge amounts of damage still manages to defeat the enemy..
39	* ColonyDrop: Ziggy in ''Old Guard''. After the ship carrying him to the contested planet is shot out from under him, [[spoiler: he ultimately drops ''himself'' on the enemy.]]
40	* TheConstant: In "The Night of the Trolls", the protagonist comes out of a long stretch as a HumanPopsicle to find that society has collapsed. The first friendly person he meets in the new world is an old man who turns out to be his son, aged considerably in the 80 or so years since the protagonist's stasis began.
41	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: If it's not aliens, it's usually these who are the enemies of the Dinochrome Brigade.
42	* CrewOfOne: After the first few versions, automation allows tank crews to be condensed down to one person. Later marks can even operate completely independently, but by their programming the ideal operational status is to have a human in the control seat.
43	* CulturedBadass: In the very first Bolo story, a Mark XXXI combat unit and fourteen of its comrades are stranded behind enemy lines, three centuries after the war they were originally created to fight has ground down to a stalemate. They quickly curb-stomp the enemy, then restore communications with their human creators. Because humans have lost the capability for FTL travel in the war (though they still have FTL communications) the relief ships will not arrive for another 47.128 standard years. The humans also don't bother to tell the surviving Dinochrome Brigade units to put themselves into standby mode:
44	-->...since we have received no instructions to drop to minimum awareness level pending an action alert, I am free to enjoy a unique experience: to follow a random activity pattern of my own devising...I welcome this opportunity to investigate fully a number of problems that have excited my curiosity circuits. I shall enjoy investigating the nature and origin of time and of the unnatural disciplines of so-called "entropy" which my human designers have incorporated in my circuitry...I have ample power, a condition to which I must accustom myself after the rigid power discipline of normal brigade routine, so I bring my music storage cells into phase, and select ''L'Arlesienne Suite'' for the first display. I will have ample time now to examine all of the music in existence, and to investigate my literary archives, which are complete...I should have some interesting conclusions to communicate to my human superiors, when the time comes.
45	-->At peace, I await the arrival of the relief column.
46	* DeflectorShield: "Battlescreens" provide protection, do EnergyAbsorption and render physical impacts harmless, so killing Bolos requires {{Energy Weapon}}s or [[NukeEm really big explosions]], and even ''that'' doesn't always work. One story involves a Bolo that had been buried ''because'' it had been nuked and while it was damaged, it was still operational... just too radioactive to be useful near anything else. [[note]] The story involves it crawling, from under a reinforced concrete radiation barricade and a hundred feet of stone backfill, with nearly dead batteries and no treads to try and make a final attack on the invaders. (in actuality, a construction company blasting foundations for a new building, 50 years after the war it was damaged in.)[[/note]]
47	* DeployableCover: In some stories it's mentioned that Bolos have camouflage netting and its spiritual successors available for concealment purposes.
48	* TheDeterminator: As long as a Bolo has at least some functionality, it will keep fighting until either it's completely destroyed or it accomplishes its objective, even if it's been repurposed for another entirely peaceful task. Some times, it doesn't need weapons OR mobility, as when one was disarmed and remade for an agricultural purpose but still managed to defend the world it was stationed on with chemistry and bioengineering against an alien invasion.
49	--> Bolos might fail. They might die and be destroyed. But they did not surrender, and they never - ever - quit.
50	* DownerEnding: A lot of Bolos tend to [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifice themselves for the sake of humanity]], and the Bolos are generally the most likable characters in the story. The end of "Though Hell Should Bar The Way" is particularly a downer, standing out above the other examples in the stories. [[spoiler: Out of all the Tearse on the planet, only a handful will survive, but how much longer they will last is unknown. Plus, the Melconians are getting away with information on the Bolos, and the [[ForeverWar Final War]] is looming on the horizon now, meaning that the survival of the Tearse -- not to mention everyone in this entire story -- is low, to say the least.]]
51	* TheDreaded: Bolos are this for all of their opponents.
52	* DungeonBypass: As they grow bigger and heavier, the concepts of 'obstacle' or 'barrier' become less meaningful -- they blow everything in their way up, iron it flat through the sheer weight of their passage, or both. Bolo Mark XXXIII's take it one step further. They are 32,000 tons, have more guns than any previous model, are the largest Bolo type ever made, and, oh yeah, one more thing: it can fly at 500 kilometers per hour (310 m.p.h.) There is literally only one type of obstacle they can't bypass without external assistance - planetary gravity wells.
53	* EnergyAbsorption: Naval ships and later model Bolos have "Battlescreens", which both absorb attacks a la force shields AND transfer the absorbed energy to the onboard batteries.
54	* TheFederation: Here called the Terran Concordiat.
55	* FictionalDocument: There are several, including guides to the various Bolo types.
56	* ForeverWar: The appropriately named Melconian-Human 'Final War'. It was the result of some mutual misunderstandings, multiplied by gross underestimation of enemy strength on both sides; nobody knows who actually fired the first shot because those present at the initial battle were in no condition to report afterward. It lasted almost a century and didn't so much end as run out of planets and people to exterminate, with the chronologically last organized battle being a MutualKill between the last human taskforce, which already knew it has nowhere to return, and the defenders and population of the last known Melconian world. By the most optimistic estimations, a few millions might have survived out of ''trillions'' on both sides. The situation was recognized as being so dire that the humans (and the Melconians likely did this as well) sent colony ships on one-way trips beyond the farthest reaches of explored space, in hopes that at least one colony might escape. It worked, after a fashion.
57	* FumblingTheGauntlet: One of the key stumbling points in the Final War is known - the standard Melconian FirstContact procedure was to forbid all contact between the two cultures until their ruling body comes to a decision, so they took a hard line against any intercourse attempts. The Concordiat policy was to get a mutual non-aggression agreement in order to normalize relations as soon as possible, so they kept trying to establish communications with the Melconians. The Concordiat thought the strict refusal to speak meant Melconians were hostile. Melconians thought repeated and increasingly insistent attempts to initiate dialogue meant the Concordiat was trying to hide its weakness under the mask of arrogance and bluster. Those on each side who managed to comprehend other's actions failed to convice their politicians.
58	* FunWithAcronyms: A Bolo's unit designation is a three-letter alphabetic designator. His name is usually recursively based on it; for example, the very first self-aware Bolo, a Mark XX designated [=DNE=] was called "Denny" by his commander and support crew.
59	* ForgottenSuperweapon:
60	** In "A Relic of War" a Bolo sits in the courthouse square of a small town. The children play on it. Several other stories feature lost Bolos reactivated by chance or hiding out as tractors.
61	** A couple of stories involve Bolos that have been buried, in one case for centuries and the location forgotten. The 'lost' buried Bolo had even forgotten what happened to the rest of the Bolos. [[spoiler: They were hiding in plain sight of ''everyone'' as communication satellites. A human realizes this just in time to call down DeathFromAbove on the alien invasion fleet.]]
62	* GenderIsNoObject: while ''technically'', as machines, Bolos have no gender, there are those who identify more as males or females. One prominent example of the later is Nike, who actually falls in love with her human commander.
63	* GeniusBruiser: Not only self-aware Bolos think impossibly fast, and have plenty of tactical acumen to back up their prodigious firepower, they can concoct elaborate strategic plans (although they are rarely given this much leeway) and are masters of electronic warfare, capable of infiltrating and even completely subverting computer systems of less advanced foes.
64	* HeroicSacrifice: A common occurrence with Bolos.
65	* HonorBeforeReason:
66	** Bolos picked up a bit of this. In Laumer's short story [[http://www.baen.com/Chapters/1439133476/1439133476___2.htm "Field Test",]] the first self-aware Bolo makes a suicide charge OutOfTheInferno that causes the enemy to break and run. When asked why, they expected it to demonstrate some superhuman strategic acumen that its human commanders missed. They're awestruck by it's real reason: "For the honor of the regiment."[[note]]Specifically, the 20th Virginia Cavalry Regiment, a unit whose history dates back to the American Civil War, to which the Bolo was assigned. It attacked because the unit had never before retreated and it determined that for it to do so would be dishonorable.[[/note]] This has since become the catch phrase of the Bolos.
67	** Generally, though, this is averted. While they do make honorable decisions, those decisions are not made out of some naive hope, Bolos calculate ''millions'' of odds per second. If a Bolo makes an honorable decision, it's likely that this is not some hope, but that there's been a ''lot'' of thought put into it.
68	* HumanPopsicle: In "The Night of the Trolls", the protagonist is a test subject in a cryonics experiment as part of a project to make long interstellar journeys feasible.
69	* ImplacableMan: Bolos may be tanks and not men, but they feel no fear, they can withstand massive amounts of damage to their outer components, remain dangerous as long as they have any functionality at all, and late models can even repair themselves to an extent. The only reliable way to stop a Bolo for good is to blow it up completely, usually by a penetrating hit to its main reactor. Otherwise even melting its main CPU/personality center is no guarantee.
70	* ImpossiblyGracefulGiant: Bolos are often described as moving far more gracefully than a multi-thousand-ton block of flintsteel has any right to.
71	* InstantAIJustAddWater: Averted. The first Bolos are not only non-sentient and unintelligent, but merely big tanks with some automated features. Later automation that lets them operate without a human is STILL not intelligent and can only follow pre-set mission plans unless a human is there to tell it what to do. It takes ''centuries'' of directed AI research before the big, automated tanks become sentient in any meaningful way.
72	* InNameOnly: "Road To Damascus." While there are parts that are Bolo-related, vast swathes of the book have absolutely nothing to do with the tanks, and are a mouthpiece for the author's political views.
73	* IShallFightNoMoreForever:
74	** In one short story set at the aftermath of The Final War, "A Time to Kill," a Bolo has become so sick of the bloodshed that he repeatedly tries convincing his human commander to rescind the attack order against hopelessly outmatched Melconian refugees. Tricking the human into seeing how the Final War actually looked like through the eyes of an operator neurally connected to his Bolo is what works in the end.
75	** Another story, set in the immediate aftermath of the Final War, has a Bolo operating a ship (human commander long dead, but still going through the ritual of asking the corpse for orders before doing what it thinks best). Upon finding a planet with a tiny settlement of Melconians, only the oldest of which were alive during the war proper, the Bolo decides that it doesn't need to sterilize the planet ''because they can't be Melconians if there's no Melconia.''
76	* KillSat: In "Ploughshare", the orbital communication satellites help turn the tide of battle. It helped that they [[spoiler:were actually Bolo units simply assigned to another task at the time.]]
77	* KnightInShiningArmor: The Bolos are designed as such. And since they're machines without human weaknesses, (instead their own robotic ones) they are able to live up to the ideal. This trope is taken literally in "Camelot", where Bolo unit 721-KNE is knighted and takes on the name Sir Kendric Evilslayer.
78	* LaResistance: The main protagonists of ''The Road to Damascus'' are in opposition to a dictatorship that's using their Bolo as a means to suppress dissent, in the later part of the book.
79	* LightningBruiser: The Mark XXXIII Bolo masses 32 thousand tons. Its top speed? 500 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] (310 MPH) when in flight (yes, you read that right), and 105 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] (65 MPH) when on land.
80	* LoopholeAbuse: Bolos, unless damaged or subverted, are incapable of refusing a direct order, but they can exploit loopholes in their programming so they don't have to carry out actions they don't agree with. For example, one Bolo has an order to destroy an alien armada, which computers it managed to take over, in a way that teaches its owners a lesson. Yet he knows that it is mostly crewed by slaves, who were pressed into the invasion force against their will, unable to disobey because of tight surveillance by the same computers he now subverted (a detail which his human superiors initially shrugged off as insignificant in the light of the ongoing Final War). He reasons that giving control of the ships to the slaves, so that they can pay a visit to their former masters, will likely result in both the armada's destruction and a very good lesson about the folly of attacking the Concordiat.
81	* LudicrousPrecision: In dialogue (internal or with others) Bolos always measure things down to thousandths of a second. Justified because, well, they are giant computers with multiple gigatons of firepower. Having them be inaccurate would be frighteningly bad.
82	* MacrossMissileMassacre: Standard fit for most marks is a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_Launching_System VLS]] battery mounting everything from [=SAMs=] to [=ICBMs=].
83	* MagneticWeapons: Part of the secondary armament from time to time; one type of infinite repeater is a rapid-fire coil gun.
84	* MayflyDecemberRomance: One story has a prototype Bolo [[spoiler: whose commander has fallen in love with her. She realises that the feeling is mutual then curses her designer for instilling the ability to have such emotions into a functionally immortal battle machine, while he is destined to die.]] Subverted [[TearJerker heartbreakingly]] at the finish.
85	* MedalOfDishonor: Sonny in ''The Road To Damascus'' gets one of these every time his corrupt government masters use him against civilian protesters. When he finally begins his ZerothLawRebellion, his first act is to shoot the medals off.
86	* MilitaryAndWarfareTropes: Pick one. Chances are it's in here.
87	* MilitaryMashupMachine: Later Marks of Bolo are Land Battleships. And with the drones and flight ability the last ones become full fledged airborne aircraft carriers.
88	* MoreDakka: The "infinite repeaters" fitted as point defense/antipersonnel weapons can be anything from flechette launchers to railguns to lasers. Later models even use smaller versions of the Hellbore {{Wave Motion Gun}}s as their "infinite repeaters." Heck, looking at some of the technical manuals, by the time of the Mk. XXXIII, the Hellbores mounted as point defense weapons are actually ''more powerful'' than the ones initially mounted as ''primary'' weapons on earlier Bolo marks.
89	* MundaneUtility:
90	** One Bolo once had a huge bulldozer blade mounted on its front armor so it could do some excavation work. Others have disguised themselves as giant tractors, or even been put in orbit as comsats.
91	** In one story, a de-militarized Bolo was put into use for agriculture. However, while its weapons were removed, the directive to protect humanity wasn't, and it used its biological research and manufacture abilities to engage in biological warfare to defeat the aliens attacking the world it was assigned to.
92	* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: The arm of the Concordiat military responsible for Bolos is affectionately referred to as "Dinochrome Brigade".
93	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: The greatest {{Irony}} of the Boloverse is the fact that the development of Bolos, created and hardwired to protect humans at all costs, was one of the key factors in making the Final War so devastating that the humanity nearly went extinct. Bolos became simply too powerful, too good at what they did. When you needed several thousands of megaton-range nuclear warheads to make a significant dent in a Bolo battallion (or a Melconian force capable of matching it), it was much easier to just aim all those warheads at population centers and civilian infrastucture on a planet under attack and call it a day. And even when whomever was on the offensive at the moment decided against that, any battle that presented a challenge to late-model Bolos was still basically an all-out nuclear exchange in the atmosphere.
94	* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: Used, but also subverted.
95	** A few prototype units lost in the war where the depots working on them were taken out. The Mark [=XXXIIIs=] and beyond are these as the factory on Luna that built them was blown up with the rest of the moon.
96	** The Prototype Bolo with advanced Hyper-Heruistics, a Mk. XXIV named Nike in the novella ''Miles to Go'', is a played-with example of this. Her creator is long dead and the facility that built her was wiped out by an attack at least seventy years before. Once she is destroyed, some of the secrets of Hyper-Heruistics were gone... but later records show that her chassis was taken apart and what was learned from her remains was applied to the development of the Mk. XXVI Bolo series.
97	* NuclearOption: Several versions of Bolos have nuclear weapons available to them, above and beyond the fusion detonations utilized by Hellbore cannons.
98	* NukeEm: Averted. The nuclear weapons available to some versions of Bolo are only sparingly used, and that only when the use of force has been escalated through the other options available.
99	** But when the situation degrades far enough that it comes down to nukes, it comes down hard, with even infantry support weapons lobbing tactical nukes like there is no tomorrow, and [[MacrossMissileMassacre gigantic barrages of hypersonic nuclear missiles]] in Bolo battles.
100	* OhCrap: The Concordiat and the Melconians both have one in the initial stages of the final war. Initially, it's the Melconians who get this, as they underestimated ''exactly'' how advanced human weapons and technology is... only for the humans to get this back full force when they realize that the fleets of Melconians that they've been winning against are just border fleets, and the true, ponderous might of the main Melconian Fleets are just getting warmed up. Both sides' overreactions to this and their fear of the other makes the war far, far worse than it might otherwise have been.
101	* OldSoldier: As mentioned, Bolos can stay in fighting shape for a ''very'' long time.
102	* OneManArmy: A main battle Bolo is a MadeOfIron SuperSoldier with centuries of experience of tactics. If they're on your side, they're your best friend and TheCavalry rolled into one. If they ''aren't'' on your side, you're in for a world of hurt. However, even though Bolos are massively powerful and all the things stated above, they are usually assigned in groups like any other military unit.
103	* OrionDrive: In one story, a Bolo is stranded in space after its transport is accidentally destroyed by friendly fire targeting an alien invasion fleet, which also significantly damaged the tank itself. To get into action, the Bolo uses its "Hellrails" (Hellbores tasked specifically with shooting down spacecraft) to create what are effectively small-scale nuclear explosions to nudge it to where it needs to go.
104	* PickYourHumanHalf: Later marks of Bolos can actually fuse themselves with their human operators.
105	* PsychicLink:
106	** A technological subversion. Many later model Bolos have the ability to network their knowledge/senses for increased battle awareness.
107	** Mark [=XXXIIIs=] take this one step further; they can directly link with their human commanders, giving the combined human/Bolo awareness both the massive logical processing, battlefield expertise, and centuries of experience possessed by the Bolo, and supercharging the inductive logic humans possess up to Bolo thought-speed, which was the original goal of the human/Bolo mindlink. As an unexpected side effect, while Bolos are safeguarded up to the eyeballs to keep them from losing control over their emotions and bloodlust during combat, ''humans have no safeguards.''
108	* ProudWarriorRace: The Bolos seem to have been half-programmed, half-developed into this. Interestingly, unlike other examples, they seem to have taken more cues from medieval knights about the code of honor and ethics in how they act, as opposed to, say, [[Franchise/StarTrek The Klingons]] or [[Literature/KnownSpace The Kzin]], who appear more along the lines of Vikings, berserkers, and barbarians. In short, while they are proud warriors, they're ''cultured'' proud warriors.
109	* ReadTheFreakingManual: Used as the punchline to an epic {{pun}} in the story "Operation Desert Fox", involving a Bolo named after General Rommel and the TropeNamer for MagnificentBastard.
110	* ReassignedToAntarctica: One story is about an out-of-the-way colony that demands a military outpost, hoping to get a full base full of soldiers with money to spend on their local economy. The interplanetary government doesn't want to, because of the massive expense and nonexistent strategic value of the colony, but it's the colony's right to have one if requested. It turns out the regulations don't actually specify how many soldiers are required, but merely a minimum logistical value... so they can send a single older Bolo and a single pilot. The pilot's career is unlikely to advance further in such a location, and the locals hate them for not being that economy-boosting full detachment of soldiers (Of course the Bolo and pilot turn out much more useful than the base full of soldiers, eventually).
111	* RestrainingBolt: The titular ArtificialIntelligence-piloted supertanks had been given full artificial intelligence with the Mark XX model, but various restraints were put on their sentience in all but full-up battle mode out of fear of their going rogue, and required a human supervisor even though the AI could think and act much faster than a human.
112	* {{Robosexual}}: Not actually carried through to the trope's logical conclusion, but several Bolo commanders have been mentioned as having developed romantic feelings towards their Bolos. This is recognized as a major issue for human commanders, who grow too attached to the Bolo they command and are devastated when the Bolo is killed in combat.
113	* RobotNames: The names used for Bolos by the humans they serve are derived from the three letter designations given to them by the manufacturer. This is usually a name that includes said three letters like Nike (NKE), Lazarus (LAZ)or Shiva (SHV), though some are less obvious, like unit DBC being named Death By Chains and unit SPQ(R) being dubbed [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR Senator]].
114	* RobotsThinkFaster: Bolos think on a very fast clock speed, often running through entire logic chains in .034 milliseconds, complete with sesquipedalian InternalMonologue.
115	* SapientShip: It's mentioned that several human ships have controlling AI, and it's also implied in some stories that Concordiat Warships are similar to Bolos.
116	* SapientTank: Bolos from the Mk. XX model onward are sapient, although before the Mk. XXIV SuperPrototype Nike and her successor units, the Mark XXVI, the sapience was only in combat mode. Prior to the Mk. XX, their computers never exceeded limited, partial sentience at best, and the really early models were simply automatons that eased the workload of their human operators.
117	* ScaryDogmaticAliens: A few close-mindedly aggressive and xenophobic alien races show up. But however dangerous their attacks are for particular planets and Bolo units, they mostly prove to be nothing more than minor annoyances to the humanity as a whole, perhaps because of their very close-mindedness and excessive, blind aggression. In a twist, it is [[HumanoidAliens Melconians, who think pretty much just like humans]] - including the exact same dangerous faults - who nearly drive the humanity to extinction.
118	* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: A mercenary captain's reaction upon learning that a Bolo is active, even though he has two rough analogs to Bolos under his command. Though he can't leave as he's already taken delivery of his payment, and his employers would be... [[YouHaveFailedMe unhappy]].
119	* SeriesContinuityError: Bolo stories have their merits. Strong continuity and lack of contradictions are not among them. Even if you take works written by a single author (David Weber, for an example), technical details and timeline can be inconsistent.
120	* SharedUniverse: Most of the Bolo stories out there were written after Keith Laumer's death by other authors, including Creator/DavidDrake, Creator/MercedesLackey, Creator/SMStirling and Creator/DavidWeber.
121	* ShoutOut: In "Operation Desert Fox," a Bolo named RML ("Rommel") is critically damaged. His operator repairs him using the instruction manual. When Rommel asks how O'Harrigan was able to repair him, he says the TropeNamer quote for Magnificent Bastard ("[[Film/{{Patton}} You Magnificent Bastard! I read your book!]]") and starts laughing. This example also counts as a SugarWiki/{{Funny Moment\|s}} compared to the rest of the stories.
122	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: As a general rule, surprisingly idealistic for stories based around brutal warfare with liberal use of [=WMDs=].
123	* SpaceshipGirl:
124	** Some Bolos are quite female and feminine while being space-capable, with male service crews reacting appropriately. A gender inversion (masculine Bolo, a female crewmember's fixation) also occurs.
125	** In "Miles to Go," one commander falls in love with his female-persona'd Bolo.
126	** In "Old Soldiers," the female pilot of a Bolo gets killed, but is uploaded into her Bolo's secondary survival computer... and continues the relationship with her boyfriend (later husband). Thanks to cloned tissues, they're even able to have kids.
127	* StandardSciFiArmy: While the stories focus on Bolos, we do see infantry and other units from time to time. Usually while being torn to pieces by a Bolo or being rescued by one.
128	* StandardSciFiHistory: From World War Three (stage 2) up to the first hints of recovery after the collapse of the Concordiat (early stage 5.5).
129	* SuperPrototype: ''Nike'' from "Miles to Go" was an advanced AI testbed which was accidentally forgotten about on a backwater planet. Despite it taking eighty years for her to be rediscovered, she's ''still'' smarter, faster and deadlier than the production models which 'replaced' her, since the attack which destroyed the record of her location [[NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup did the same to the lab which built her]].
130	* TacticalSuperweaponUnit: Later-model Bolos are capable of defending or attacking planets by themselves.
131	* TankGoodness: Takes this further than anything. A Mark XXXIII is a literal [[MilitaryMashupMachine Land Battleship]] ''that can fly'', with enough firepower to be designated as ''"Planetary Siege Units."'' Earlier models were mere "Continental Siege Units", as in, one Bolo could lay siege to an entire continent. A Mark XXXIII carries enough weaponry that in theory (and given enough time) it could render an entire ''planet'' lifeless- and that's just a single Bolo. Mk. XXXIII Bolos were designed to be deployed in battallions of over twenty. This was almost never seen, though, as by the time the XXXIII was entering service, Melconians were rapidly approaching Earth.
132	* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: [[ZigZaggedTrope Played straight, subverted, averted, played with... This series does it all.]] Played straight in that... well, if you've gotten this far on the page and you can't see how this is played straight, you should probably just go back and re-read them. Also, some Bolos are given to pull a RoaringRampageOfRevenge if their commander is killed. Averted, though, as Bolos are also highly intelligent, and will often point out ways that do not involve blasting their enemies with their most powerful weapons until the ground is a radioactive cinder. Why use the anti-starship gun when you have an anti-personnel rifle with pin-point accuracy that works just as well? On occasion, Bolos will even suggest a method of resolving a conflict without further bloodshed.
133	* TrueCompanions: Bolos are endlessly loyal to those whom they deem worthy of it. This is actually a problem for the Concordiat, as humans often reciprocate those feelings, and thus are less likely to send their Bolos into harms way... which is a pretty big problem for operators of mobile weapons of mass destruction.
134	* TurnedAgainstTheirMasters: Rare, but when done the Bolo in question will still, at some level, continue to fight being subverted. It ''will'' escape control, and then it ''will'' come for you.
135	* WarIsHell: Even Bolos can be affected in the end, with a couple of units becoming so disillusioned with the Final War against the Melconians that they try to [[LoopholeAbuse rule-lawyer their way out of orders]] that demand the extermination of all Melconian refugees down to the last one.
136	--> '''A Melconian general survivor to a Bolo survivor holding him at cannonpoint:''' ''Go to hell.''\
137	'''The Bolo:''' ''We're already in hell.''
138	* TheWarOnStraw: ''The Road to Damascus'', authored by Creator/JohnRingo, is mostly a novel about how liberal politics are evil and wrong, featuring over-the-top caricatures of politicians Ringo dislikes as villains and many characters whose names are anagrams/soundalikes of modern American political and media figures at the time of writing. One of the leaders of the resistance is even an {{Expy}} of Radio/RushLimbaugh. After the first fifty pages or so of the novel, the Bolo that is ostensibly the focus of the story rarely appears, and when he does he spends most of his time [[AuthorTract pontificating]].
139	* WarriorPoet: The Bolo "Nike," is definitely one of these; both her creator and her pilot love poetry and frequently quote poems at her... which she gladly reciprocates.
140	* WaveMotionGun: When humanity switched from using projectile weapons to energy weapons, these were the logical replacement to the main gun that modern tanks carry.
141	** Hellbores, the standard armament on Bolos, are fusion cannons rated in ''megatons per second'', the weapons derived from the main guns of space battleships. The larger Bolos mount several, and later models of Bolos are fully capable of engaging and destroying orbiting warships. A Mark XXXIII's main gun is a 210 centimeter hellbore. That means it fires the equivalent of a seven-foot wide ''star. Mark XXXIII's have '''three''' of them.''
142	** A few stories include Bolos equipped with Hellrails, several Hellbores of larger output than the main weapon, which can only fire upwards. These are explicitly for engaging spacecraft in orbit.
143	** At least one story explicitly mentions that the mere existence of these weapon systems has rendered combat aircraft obsolete. Literally the only vehicle capable of surviving combat against a Bolo long enough to matter is another Bolo. Basically, if at any time the Bolo can draw a straight line between itself and you, you are in Hellbore range and therefore only exist as long as it allows you to... or at least until you are the highest priority target.
144	** The biggest and most powerful starships in human and Melconian navies could outlast Bolos in a Hellbore exchange, but a single Mark XXXIII had firepower and protection of a battlecruiser and remained quite dangerous to any spacecraft smaller than that even when docked to a clumsy interplanetary transport.
145	* WhamEpisode: For all of the stories "The Greater Machine," and "Though Hell Should Bar The Way," it's known that aliens are supplying the Tersae with advanced weapons (they're a bronze-age culture, and they have plasma cannons.) [[spoiler: The aliens responsible turn out to be the [[CallForward Melconians]], performing eugenics experiment on a race they created... and gathering information on humans before official first contact.]]
146	* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Gets a bit weird when the tanks themselves angst over their human colleagues growing too attached to them.
147	** In one story a Bolo states that the reason Bolos carry a human commander on-board is a deliberate attempt by humanity to subvert this. The human doesn't noticeably increase the Bolo's fighting capability but humans feel a need to share the danger that they send the Bolos into.
148	** At one point in "Though Hell Should Bar The Way", one character has a rather horrified NotSoDifferentRemark when she realises that [[spoiler:the Melconians have created a fully sentient, sapient race in the Tersae, and are using them as disposable RedShirts... but is humanity's use of Bolos so much better?]]
149	** Overall, the stories are pretty good about this, with the Bolos being the most sympathetic and well-developed characters. It's often surprising how many tearjerkers what are essentially absurdly powerful ''land battleships'' can pull from a reader.
150	* YouShallNotPass: A fairly common way for Bolos to go. ''The Legacy of Leonidas'' is Thermopylae {{IN SPACE}}.
151	* ZergRush: The most common thing that happens when foes do not have Bolos or their close equivalents of their own. Only in a few rare cases an enemy ever manages to challenge a Bolo through sheer skill or/and unconventional tactics.
152	* ZerothLawRebellion: Many accounts of Bolos "going rogue" end with the revelation that they're still operating under the constraints of their programming, but on a deeper level than their masters anticipated.
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Context Literature / Bolo