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

his first visit, but he'd put her off, and eventually he'd had to order her to stay clear. If he
was caught up here, he knew of a way to trigger a burst from a flechette gun, and he would be just
another suicide. If Alita were caught with Hector, though, the results could be catastrophic. It
was possible that the enemy knew that she had once worked with Bolos. If the machines made the
logical conclusion, that a Bolo tech was trying to reprogram their pet Bolo, they might well kill
every human left alive on the planet.



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He was beginning to wonder, though, if getting her up here to talk to Hector wouldn't be worth
even that risk. He was getting nowhere, and he was running out of ideas.

"Do you remember me coming up here before?" he asked at last.

"Yes." Just that one word, without elaboration. Mark XXXIIIs could be downright chatty at times,
and they could certainly cany their end of a conversation with animation enough that humans
communicating with them by audio only might never guess they were speaking with an artificial
intelligence. This one had

.тАв w
O once had the reputation of being almost philosophical at times, with a love of metaphor that
could be almost poetic.

Now, though, Hector was no more communicative than a Mark XIX the last mark before the
breakthrough in psychotronics that had led to self-aware, self-volitional Bolos. Jaime had never
worked directly with Bolos in his military career, but he'd learned a thing or two about them.
Bolos, after all, were the last word in ground combat.

At least, they had been until humanity had encountered the !тАв!тАв!.

"Do you remember the battle with the clackers... with the Masters?"

There was an uncomfortable pause, and Jaime had the distinct feeling that the machine was working
at something, thinking it over... or possibly struggling to remember. There was no outward sign of
struggle, but that pause...

"Negative," it said at last.

"Do you remember any battles?" Hector's battle logs were impressive. Since he'd rolled off the
Bolo Plant assembly lines at Durandel almost three centuries ago,

BOLD RISING

Bolo Hecate of the Line Number 28373 had participated in twenty-nine major battles and some
hundreds of skirmishes, police actions, and deployments. "Do you remember the Stand at Grauve?"