"Negative."
"Third Sardunar?" Hector had won the Triple Star of Valor for that one, shortly before he'd been shipped to Cloud with the First Armored. The decoration was still there, atop many others, welded to the Honors Ring on his glacis.
"Negative. I have no record of having participated in any combat."
Helplessly, Jaime shook his head. What the machines had done to the human population of Cloud was horrific, enslaving and murdering them on a planetary scale. What they'd done to Hector was horrific on an individual level; somehow, they'd managed to steal the Bolo's very soul, if he had one. Instead of cleanly killing him, they'd robbed him of himself, robbed him of who and what he was.
Well, in a sense, that was what they'd done to the human population as well.
"Hector, run a full diagnostic on yourself, please. Level One. Check your holographic memory and all heuristic acquisition functions, please."
Again, that long hesitation. A Level One diagnostic took something like a third of a second. Unless there was something seriously wrong, the answer should have come back in an instant.
"Diagnostic complete. All operations and systems are nominal."
"Like hell they are." Rising, he walked around to the right side of the Bolo. High overhead, perhaps eight meters off the ground, the dark gray cliff of armor was pocked by a hole, a crater over two meters across just above the right forward track assembly. Something had melted its way through a meter of solid duralloy,
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William H. Keith, Jr.
penetrating battle screens and armor alike with equal ease.
What had the weapon been? What had it done to him?
"Hector, there is a large hole in your armor above your Number Three road wheel. Please run a local diagnostic and describe the damage."
The pause was even longer this time, long enough for Jaime to walk back around to the other side.
"Diagnostic complete. All operations and systems are nominal."
Something, clearly, was interfering with either Hectors autodiagnostics or his memory ... or both. Jaime was up against a wall, as he'd been on each of his earlier visits. Talking to the Bolo was an exercise in highly circularized hypermobility, a great way to get nowhere fast.
There was a whir and a clatter of motion from the Bolo s left-side antipersonnel batteries. The blunt, ugly railgun muzzles pivoted, seeking a target in the near-darkness.
"What is it?" Jaime asked the machine. 'Target approaching from the east," the Bolo replied. "Bearing zero-nine-eight, range one hundred twelve meters."
Jaime moved to a point where he could see back down the eastern slope of the hill. He could make out the slave camp and, further south, the dig, the crater, and the sprawl of the ruined city, but he couldn't see anything that might have triggered the Bolo s threat warnings.
"Are you sure? I don't see a thing." "Affirmative. Bearing zero-nine-seven, range one hundred eight meters, and closing."
The target must be just behind the nearest piles of rubble, down below the crest of the hill. It was dark and he could see nothing but the vague shapes of
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shattered houses, but the Bolo, he knew, could draw on senses extending far beyond merely human scope and reach.
