This contest, then, will of necessity be primarily a physical one.
Opening all intakes, 2 began filling empty storage tanks. At the same time, I begin cycling small amounts of water through my electrolysis chambers, breaking
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it down, bleeding off the oxygen and directing the hydrogen gas to my cryovats. It will take time to cool and pressurize the hydrogen to a usefitl consistency. I hope that time enough remains for the complex tasks at hand.
The revolt within the slave pits began with the onnishing tidal wave.
"For Gods sake, run!" Dieter screamed, pointing. A wall of water eight meters high was advancing inland, breaking at the harbors edge, tumbling over onto swamp and ruin and thundering across the mud flats toward the laboring slaves. Throughout die entire dig, thousands of slaves had stopped their work momentarily to stand or crouch or kneel in the mud and watch the unfolding drama atop Overlook Hill. Even the overseers, both the turner humans and the unemotional machines, paused to watch as well, and for thirty seconds, not a sound came from the teeming pits.
They watched as the Bolo lumbered forward, its nose ponderously dipping as it moved off the flattened crest of the hill, its vast, double tracks chewing dirt, rock, and the rubble of shattered buildings into exploding plumes of dust. As it picked up speed, it gouged away most of the south face of the hill, and then it slammed into the water raising a white, cascading wall of spray.
The swell followed the splash, a small tidal wave racing across the mud flats, breaking over the shore, fountaining high above each outcropping of rubble or broken wall, tumbling over into the pits. As the humans in the pit turned and ran, struggling inland through the mud, !*!*! machines darted and hovered, loosing bolts of artificial lightning in an attempt to stop the rout.
Their efforts only increased the confusion. The wave, now less than two meters tall, swept across the pits,
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up hapless slaves before it, even knocking !*! guard machines too slow to get out of the way. The water swept about Dieter's hips, most of its force spent now, but with power enough still to buoy him up, knock him down, and carry him along toward the east edge of the pit. Hundreds of men and women were scrambling out of the pit.
Floaters fired bolt after bolt into the crowd, each discharge burning down unprotected humans, but their capacitors were drained after a few shots and they became relatively easy prey. Nearby, five men were grappling with a two-meter !*!"! floater, dragging it down from the sky, pinning its tentacles, then ripping them out of its body. Sparks and electrical discharges crackled weakly across its surface, but they hung on, dragging the thing beneath the water. Another crowd knocked a floater over and pounded it with stones, smashing at it with cement blocks until its smooth surface dented, then split, and its killers could reach in and pull wiring and circuits out by the smoking handful.
In seconds more, every I*1!*! machine in sight was in full retreat. Most of the floaters managed to get away, but the multilegged crawlers, even those not mired down in the incoming tide, were just too slow.
At the edge of the pit, a woman waved a blood-splattered stunstick wrenched from a trusty, rallying a mob, while nearby, a man brandished the skeletal metal arm of a !б!бI stilter with a dead human hand still attached. Both were screaming in mindless rage, their voices joining the growing thunder of the mob rising from the pits.
Scrambling up the muddy slope of the pit, Dieter stared out into tile harbor, where the Bolo rose like a black island from water that reached just above its track housings. Most of the !"!*! machines that had been swarming around it on the hilltop were gone,
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fled or destroyed, but one bulky fl^er was still circling, pecking at the half-submerged giant's armored back with flashes of artificial lightning and hypervelocity exploders. The fliers circles were a little too close, as it turned out. An invisible breath flicked from the Bolo's flank, and one of the flier's jets shredded, then burst into orange flame; trailing smoke, the machine struck the harbor and exploded with a thump and geysering spray.
The Bolo!" Dieter screamed, pointing and waving. "The Bolo! It's with us!"
The people screamed and cheered and shouted their replies, the thunderous cacophony swelling as it echoed from five thousand throats.
The slave revolt of Celeste had begun.
Jaime had just arrived in the computer core center when the deck had tipped wildly, flinging him against one of the bulkheads. For several intense seconds, the compartment jolted and shuddered, tilted at a forty-degree angle, but then it had leveled out a few moments later, and the Bolo now felt like it was at rest.
