The murmur exploded into the cacophony possible only to a roaring, agitated crowd.
"We can't leave Cloud!" someone cried. "It's our home!"
"The clackers'U burn down any ship leaving this planet the moment it pokes its nose out of the atmosphere!
"That's insane!"
"Yes!" Spratly yelled, seizing on one shouted word among many rising above the background thunder. "It is insane! It's insane to put our trust in the Bolo again! It didn't stop the clackers when they invaded Cloud! It didn't stop them from destroying Chryse! How does Graham expect it to stop them now?"
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The crowd fell silent again, every eye on Jaime as they waited for his reply. Dieter leaned forward, tasting the sweat trickling down his unshaven cheeks and off the comers of his mustache. It was the question everyone in the camp had been wondering about, ever since the day the alien invaders had swooped in from space unchallenged.
Silence ticked on for another five seconds, before Jaime raised his hand to his ear. He wore, Dieter saw, an earplug commlink, with the thread mike extended to rest beside his lips. "Okay, Hector," he said. "You're on."
Amplified feedback squealed from the evening sky outside, so loud that some in the crowd ducked, and everyone looked up.
"Bolo Hecate of the Linel" a vastly amplified voice boomed out. "This is General Spratly! I order you to hold yourfirel"
Every head turned, then, eyes locking onto Spratly's paste-white face.
"Boh Hecate of the Line, I copy" another voice, deeper, calmer, more in control replied. It was the voice, they all knew, of the Bolo. "I now have twenty-eight targets inbound. Nearest now at five-zero-seven-one kilometers, and closing."
"Hold your fire! Power down, damn ttl"
"The incomingforces are already so close that I may not be able to counter an attack against this position effectively."
"There will be no attack. They're friendlies. They've got to be. . ."
"General," a third voice called out, urgent, almost pleading. "This is Captain Fowler, Boh Liaison Officer! I'm in Hector's Battle Center right now, watching that deployment on his screens, and I can tell you that these bogjes are not, repeat notfriendlies!"
"We don't know that, damn it!" Spratly's voice
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William H. Keith, Jr.
countered. "This could be an alien diplomatic initiative of some sort! We have nothing here that they could want! I am not going to start a damned war over a misunderstanding!"
"Sir, I really think you shouldў"
"We do not know who these people are! You and that tin monster are ordered to adhere to the current rules of engagement and stand down! That is a direct order!"
"That," Jaime said in the almost palpable silence that followed, "was a recording of radio communications made between the Bolo, then on station at Chryse Base, and Cloud Military Command Headquarters, at Griffenburg. General Spratly was the officer in charge at the headquarters that afternoon. Am I correct, sir?"
Spratly didn't reply. Jaime pushed ahead. "Hector was ready to raise a defense, an effective defense, against the incoming marauders. The general here ordered him to stand down, and Hector, who is programmed to follow human orders, obeyed, despite the misgivings you all heard. Eight minutes, twenty-one seconds later, a small asteroid slammed into Chryse Base at a velocity of over four hundred kilometers per second. The blastўHector estimates the kinetic energy yield at almost fifty megatonsўannihilated our base at Chryse, and literally flipped a thirty-two-thousand-ton Bolo end over end, effectively knocking him out of the fight with their very first stroke. He landed upside down, which explains how his aft turret got smashed flat, and his battle screens were knocked out. The clackers were able to burn their way in, then, and take over his paraneuronic circuitry. "We ... we think that Captain Fowler was still alive when they reached the Battle Center. They may have used his memories to learn how to circumvent Hector's check-digit and error-scan routines. By the time they had
