"Is it a machine?" He moved closer to the Bolo, hoping that his silhouette was lost against the dark mass of the big machine. If the !*!"! found him here, he could not rely on Hector to protect him. Quite the contrary, in fact. It was distinctly possible that Hector's new masters could order him to squash the human slave crouching in his shadow like a small and insignificant insect.
"Negative. The target is human."
Human! That might mean another suicide, someone coming up to take the Hector Option. It could also be a turner, maybe one who'd seen him slipping out of camp or scrambling out of the sewage trench and who'd decided to follow him. Turners were rewarded by their Masters for such diligence, with better food, diy clothing, and even their choice of bedmates, male or female, from among the slave population.
At least a human opponent would offer surmountable odds. Jaime had no illusions about how a wrestling match with a clacker would end, especially with him as weak as he was now.
"Range eighty-nine meters."
He saw him .. . no, her. It was a woman, tall, slender. Her face, body, and long hair were mud-smeared. She wore more than most of the slaves did nowadays, a ragged pair of cutoffs; there was no silver band on her forehead, though. She was no trusty.
A slave, then, come to find a quick and relatively painless ending to the pain. She kept coming up the slope, stumbling, weaving a little as she walked. She I' faltered when she reached the bloody, sharp-edged ridge delineating the fifty-meter line. Then she squared her shoulders and kept on coming.
"Halt," the Bolo said, and the word was so sudden
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William H. Keith, ]r
that Jaime started at the sound. "Identify yourself."
She kept coming, one bare foot stepping across the ridge of bones and decaying flesh. Jaime heard the power-up whine of the railguns.
"No!" he shouted suddenly, stepping out of the shadows beneath the Bolo. "Weapon release countermanded!"
"What is your authorization?"
Authorization? All he had was the maintenance code Alita had given him, a code to allow humans to approach the monster and live. He prayed he could make it work. "Authorization Code Tango, three-three-seven Victor Delta niner! Maintenance!"
"Inis unit is not scheduled for standard maintenance," die Bolo said.
"Override Security Alpha, Code Delta Echo One-one."
"Identify yourself," the Bolo repeated.
The woman was standing just inside the fifty-meter line, her face pale as she looked from Bolo to human and back again.
"C'mon!" Jaime called to her. "Tell him your name!"
"Sh-Shari Barstowe," she said, with a voice that cracked halfway through.
"Are you with the maintenance team?" the Bolo asked.
When the woman didn't answer, Jaime called to her again. Tell him yes\"
"Y-yes. I am."
"Advance, Technician Barstowe."
