"Camp 84 will be destroyed as well," he told the Ninth Awareness.
"We have many more organics in our control."
"We should evacuate our own from the target area."
"We have many more !*!*! available as well." A thoughtful pause. "However, it might be well to evacuate all machines of level four and higher."
"I will issue the necessary orders."
"It is a great pity that we cannot save the Bolo," the Awareness mused. "Its mechanisms are primitive, but it would have been interesting seeing what we could have done, in time, with its intelligence."
"It would be foolish to give it the opportunity to hamper our operations on this world," DAV replied.
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'The information acquired would not be worth the probable cost to !*!*! in both time and material."
"You are correct, of course. We should pursue the most efficient program."
"We are." DAV completed a series of complex calculations. 'The situation will be resolved in precisely 1.3176 x 104 seconds."
In space, three immense, complex shapes were already accelerating to their new positions.
Shari closed her eyes, rubbing them hard with her hands, then opened them again, taking in the Battle Center, the horseshoe console, the bloodstained command seat, as though she'd not before seen them. Come on, putt yourself together, she thought with bitter self-anger. You knew he was dead. After you found out what was happening to the survivors, you prayed that he was dead.
It was hard, though, because even when she'd been convinced that Jeff Fowler had been killed at Chryse, there'd been uncertainty enough that she'd never really had to grieve. Besides, there'd been grief enough for herself, for all of the humans who'd survived the !*!*! strike, in the Camp.
Rising on unsteady legs, she made her way to the command seat, ducking to get beneath the lower rim of the display dome. She didn't sit down; she couldn't, not there . . . but she clung to the back of the seat and stared at the display, orienting herself.
A number of !"!*! machines were visible, but they seemed to be pulling back, as though aware that their small weapons couldn't touch the armor of this lumbering juggernaut. One flying machine crumpled to her right as she watched, its fuselage smashed by an unseen cloud of hypervelocity flechettes hurled from one of Hector's port-side AP guns.
To the left lay the Camp, a huge and untidy sprawl
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around the ruin of the manufactory. To the left and ahead was the rubble-pocked swamp marking the former heart of Celeste, and the slave pits with their laboring thousands. Directly ahead, the waters of Celeste Bay lapped almost to the foot of Overlook Hill. The Bolo's deck was canted forward at least thirty degrees. It felt as though the huge machine was nosing over the edge of an embankment, picking up speed as it plowed slowly downhill toward the muddy, dark water.
"You . . . you're heading for the bay?" she asked aloud.
"Affirmative, Technician Barstowe," Hector replied. His voice was reassuring in its calm. "I need to take on fresh supplies of water."
She bunked. The Bolo was in the middle of a furious firefight, was probably attracting !0!б! ships and machines from all over the Cloud System, and it was interested in replenishing its fresh water?
She tried to imagine the 32,000-ton behemoth hitting the soft, silt-laden bottom of Celeste's inner harbor. "Won't you get stuck in the mud? We have no idea how deep it is, or how much you'll sink!"
