"Keith Laumer - Bolos 8 - Bolo Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

cluster of needle-slender, steel-jacketed slivers of depleted uranium with a muzzle velocity in
excess of three kilometers per second. Five hundred needle-darts, shotgunned into a human target
at that velocity left very little behind that was recognizably human.

"Halt," the Bolo said as Jaime reached the line, its voice a rich, pleasing tenor with the
distinct overtones and inflections of human speech. "Identify yourself."

He heard the whir of servo motors as the snouts of a hah0 dozen AP weapons tracked his movement,
heard the rising whine of superconductor coils powering up to max. The slightest of electronic
twitches from the behemoth squatting above him on the hilltop, Jaime knew, and his remains would
be splashed across the slope at his back in a brutally unrecognizable smear.

"Major Jaime Graham, First Armored Assault Brigade, Cloud Defense Force," he announced in as clear
a voice as he could muster,

"Present code authorization."

"Authorization Code Tango," he replied. He tried ' to keep the quaver out of his voice. Three-
three-seven Victor Delta niner. Maintenance."

"This unit is not scheduled for standard maintenance," the Bolo said. The words were stiff, and a
bit formal. As human as the voice might sound, there was no mistaking the AI, the machine mind
behind the words.

"Override Security Alpha," Jaime recited. Alita had drilled him in the protocol repeatedly ever
since he'd first dared approach the beast. She'd been Hector's

33 crew chief, part of the team that had kept him running. "Code Delta Echo One-one."

"Advance, Major Graham."

Jaime stepped past that blood-traced perimeter, conscious that the AP railguns continued to track
him as he walked. Carefully, unwilling to make any sudden or surprising moves, he made his way to
the Bolo's prow, close enough that the glacis sloped up and away from him like an eighty-foot
cliff.

"I've come to talk," Jaime told the Bolo.

There was no reply, though he had the impression that the machine was studying him closely. That
fact by itself was interesting. A Mark XXXIII possessed a fully autonomous psychotronic AI and
hyper-heuristic programming; ever since the introduction of the Mark XXIV, Bolos had begun
developing personalities of their own that, at times, could seem struangly, eerily human.

This was the third time that Jaime had made this trip up the hill, and each time he'd come away
with the distinct impression that Hector was shackled somehow, limited in his thoughts, hampered
in the way he expressed himself. It was a little like talking to a child, and a stubborn and not-
too-bright child at that. The Masters were responsible, clearly. But what had they done to the
Bolo's artificial intelligence, and how?

Maybe he should allow Alita to come up here and see what she could learn. She'd volunteered after