"The intruder machine is attempting to create a power core overload," Hectors voice said quietly in Jaime's ear. "I recommend both haste and efficiency in your attack."
Haste and efficiency? That was a pairing humans could rarely manage. He shifted his aim back to the main body of the thing, ignoring the hot blood and burning on his face, ignoring the pain as another tentacle slashed at his left arm. With a sudden puff of foul-smelling vapor, the power gun burned through the tough metal, and the close-packed wiring and circuitry inside the gray shell burst into flame.
And in another twitching, snake-writhing couple of seconds, the thing was dead.
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Jaime returned to the Battle Center, limping a little with the injury to his leg. Alita looked up as he came in. "My God. Another one?"
"A couple of them, in fact," he said, returning the power gun to its locker. "I think one was a kind of guard. I wish I knew for sure that we'd gotten them all."
"Hector?" Alita called, addressing the center of the room. "Are there any more enemy machines on board?"
"Not that I am aware of," the Bolo replied. "If!б!б! machines were present but dormant I would have no way of detecting them. However, my internal structure appears secure for the moment." One of the Bole's Hellbores fired again as if to punctuate the statement, a ringing, thumping concussion.
"What's your status?" Jaime asked. He was worried that he or the !*!*! parasite might have damaged Hectors control circuitry somehow.
"Power output now at twenty-three point three five percent and rising," the machine replied. "It will take several minutes to bring my fusion plants to full operation, but I appear to have full and nominal control of all systems."
A flash from the view dome caught his eye, and Jaime stepped closer to the command chair, looking up. The sky overhead had grown hazy, the horizon in every direction almost completely obscured by* fog. At first, he thought there'd been a failure of some sort in the viewing dome electronics. The dazzling, violet-white flash of a Hellbore discharge stabbing skyward, accompanied by ringing thunder, made him rethink his first guess.
Steam. Celeste's harbor must be growing hot from the heat released by each fusion bolt, hot enough that vapor was rising around the Bolo like a cloud.
He wondered if Hector was having trouble targeting
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the incoming projectiles, then decided that he wouldn't be firing unless he had a good lock.
Another flash lit the compartment, a blue-white star dropping from the zenith, so bright that even with the dome electronics stopping down the light to bearable levels, it cast rapidly moving shadows. It streaked down the right side of the dome, drawing a contrail in its wake, then vanishing with a sharp pulse of light somewhere beyond the fog.
So. Some !*!*! meteors were getting past the Hector's defensive fire ... or, more likely, fragments of larger boulders the Bolo had already nailed were leaking through.
The barrage continued, though Hector's return fire seemed to be slower now, the shots more widely spaced. Jaime thought the Bolo must be trying to conserve its ammunition; the machine couldn't have had time to manufacture more than a handful of cryo-H Hellbore rounds.
And what the heU happens to us, he wondered, when Hector runs out of ammo? As near as he could figure it, either the !"!*! barrage would smash Hector and the camp and every living creature within a hundred kilometers of Celeste Bay... or the clackers would move in as soon as they knew that Hector had been neutralized.
And neither prospect seemed particularly pleasant.
The situation is fast growing desperate. I have been in action for ten minutes, twenty-eight point five seconds and, so far, have vaporized or deflected all incoming Enemy projectiles. However, at my current rate of fire, I wiUhave exhausted att ammunition within another two minutes. 1 have been manufacturing additional cryo-H Hettbore rounds at the same time, but the process cannot be hurried and creates fresh slivers at a slower rate than even my current, slow and measured rate of fire.
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