"Major!" Alita said, holding out her hand. "Give me the gun!"
He glanced at the readout on the casing: point oh two. "It's about dead, I'm afraid. He looked up at the ruin of one of the security lasers. "Makes a great hammer, though."
"There ought to be spares in the equipment lockers." Taking the power gun, she thumbed the power pack release, and the nearly dead unit clattered on the deck. Turning to one of the curved bulkheads nearby, she thumbed a touch pad and a small wall panel slid open, revealing ten more power packs, each set into a charging unit. Taking one down, she snapped it into place. "I'll be right back."
"Where are you going?"
"I used to be Hector's crew chief, remember? That's why you brought me on this outing. I'm heading up to the AI core."
"Do you need help?"
Alita shook her head, then nodded toward Shari. "Just take care of her."
She palmed a touch pad, the Battle Center's door opened, and she was gone. For a long moment, the place was silent.
Then he heard the voice of the Bolo once again. "I... am ... a ... Bolo, Mark XXXIII, Mod HCTof the Dinochrome Brigade. I entered service on 26 June, A.E. 1477 with the Sixth Mobile Starstrike Regiment, the Indomitables, on special deployment with the First Armored Assault Brigade at Cloud, Western Arm, 212th Sagittarian Sector..."
It was, Jaime thought, the strangest battle he'd ever witnessed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The battle grows more desperate, as more and more of the Intruder's assets are brought to bear against my efforts to regain full control of my primary operating system. I am hampered by the need to allot much of my attention to my other selfs attempts to kill the three humans now on board. The Battle Center security lasers are not the only internal defenses I possess.
Fortunately, I have a singular advantage in that 1 am considerably faster than my opponent, who is slowed by the need to translate each operation, command, and memory in my central processors to and from an alien processing language, the basic operating system, I surmise, of the 1*1*1, The same fractional second delay in processing time that enabled me to copy data to File Rising allows me to detect the Enemy's manipulations both of data and of executable commands and take appropriate action.
I am aware of an unusual concentration of /"/*/ machines surrounding me on the hilltop, but there is nothing I can do about that now. They appear to be summoning some large, robotic mechanisms of some sort, but they have not directly retaliated for the
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destruction of one of their numbers earlier. As the struggle within my own consciousness intensifies, I switch off all external sensors to eliminate unnecessary distractions. My single hope is that the human maintenance crew that has entered me has guessed the nature of the problem and is taking steps to eliminate it. There is, at the moment, very little that I can do to help them directly, save counter the Enemy's continuing attempts to kill them.
And as the Enemy intensifies his efforts, I am aware that sooner or later he will succeed, despite everything I can do.
Alita Kyle crawled along the access tube, testing each hand- and foothold as she moved, half expecting another security systemўor a booby trapўto suddenly confront her. There were several internal security systems she was aware of, safeguards against saboteurs or enemy agents getting inside a Bolo and suborning it against its former owners. If nothing else, the Bolo^s security systems could release a few micrograms of neurotox into the air filtration system. A mere two or three thousand molecules of that nerve agent absorbed through the skin was enough to kill any carbon-based life form in seconds; Hector must be blocking die trigger signals for that internal defense system as well. She hoped he was as successful dealing with all of the others.
The tube opened suddenly into a kind of airlock set into a wall of lead and duralloy armor. Beyond was a tall, narrow room, brightly lit, with both long walls covered by access panels to the molecular circuitry packs arrayed bank upon bank upon gleaming bank to either side of her. The room, identified only as Main Memory, was spotlessly clean normally, an environment where technicians donned clean suits for entry and where dust was anathema. The tall,
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