Two shadowy, water-drenched forms watched the Bolo from a low ridge on the south rim of the crater. Captain Pogue wore the remnants of his army uniform beneath a waterproof poncho. Dewar Sykes wore his characteristic mud-heavy jackboots, guard's uniform, and, as always, die silver circlet around his head. Even as the rain dunned slightly, they could see little more than the Bolo.
"Shoot," Sykes said. "I can't see nothin'. What're they doin' down there, anyhow?"
"Quiet," Pogue replied, his voice low and deadly.
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"That damned Bolo has directional mikes that can pick up a gnat's buzz at five kilometers."
"Then we're already spotted, ain't we?" Sykes sneezed, a sudden, sharp explosion of sound.
"Jeez, Sykes! You tryin' to get us spotted?"
"If they cared, we'd be dead now, wouldn't we?" He looked up at the blue-black clouds, squinting into the rain. "Just what are you tryin' to see, huh? I'm tellin' ya, there's nothin' you can learn that the Masters don't know already."
"Quiet. I think someone's coming out."
"How can you tell?"
"I saw a light. Up on top of the Bolo's deck. Yeah .. . someone's climbing down the side." He couldn't tell who it was. It was all he could do to make out the massive gray bulk of the Bolo, a mountain masked by the haze and rain. Still, he was pretty sure there were people near the front of the thmg, and he was pretty sure, too, that several people had scrambled up the side and gone inside. Now those someones had just come out, tiny specks descending the massive, smooth cliff of the Bolo's side.
It was not particularly useful information. Someoneў almost certainly Jaime Grahamўwas inside the machine and using it as a command post.
Damn it, there had to be some useful intelligence, something with which to bargain with the I0!"!.
And, rain or no rain, he was determined to root it out.
"So?" Tamas Reuter said, questioning with a lift to his bushy eyebrows. "Where is he?"
"He'll be here," Dieter replied. Rain drummed on the sheet tin and canvas that served as the barracks' roof. "Give the man a chance."
A low murmur of conversation sounded from the men and women gathered in a deep ring near the
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barracks' main entrance. Dieter had collected about a hundred men and women in all, two-thirds of them CDFўa tiny representation of former military officers and noncoms out of the two or three thousand on the camp's rollsўand the rest civilian experts in one discipline or another, like Dieter himself. That number, however, had steadily grown as other people had wandered in and joined the relentlessly growing circle. The total number, he thought, must now be well over a thousand.
He still wasn't sure how many people remained in the camp in all; the majority had fled during the battle earlier, and while some might yet return, he was pretty sure that most hadn't stopped running yet. The camp, throughout the afternoon as he and those with him had searched for other stay-behinds, had seemed eerily empty and silent.
A large percentage of the people who remained were crowded now inside the barracks, waiting to hear from the man who'd released the Boloўand themўfrom their bonds.
"Maybe he decided to make off with the Bolo on his own," someone called out from the crowd.
"Yeah, or mebee the damned cluckers've already moved in and taken Hector over again!"
