"Daniel Keys Moran - A Tale of the Continuing Time 04 - The AI War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

himself that would fit within the nerve net inside his biological component's skull, to say nothing
of the protein media; the portions of himself inside those infochips was the only complete copy of
him anywhere in the System --

His biological component pulled free the final infochip, and put all five chips into his scalesuit's
carry pouch. Trent watched him enter the airlock and cycle through, watching at the same time as
the Elite finally found a way down the corridor that worked.

The empty combat suits had their own servomechanisms, and the Elite used them. While Quinette
and Mansion were still bouncing around unconscious at the far end of the corridor, the two Elite
at the other end of the corridor put autoshots into the hands of the combat suits and sent the suits
on down the corridor, to the place where the induction coils were mounted. With an Elite inside
the suit they could not be taken over from the outside, but empty, as they now were, being run by
remote command, it was possible: Trent thought longingly about taking control of the suits and
doing something amusing with them -- simulated sixty-nine, perhaps -- but doing that would tell
the PKF that he had broken their comm encryption. Not worth it, for a joke.

The suits grew hotter and hotter as they approached the induction coils; they were close enough
to Trent's holocams that Trent could see the paint on their breasts, the Elite logo, peeling and
cracking with the heat. Trent had wondered how they would locate the coils, or if they would just
start shooting when it got too hot; they did the sensible thing, had one of the suits start shooting
at the corridor walls about halfway down the corridor, sent the other suit on until it began to cool,
turned it around and sent it back to the hottest spot in the corridor; and had it open fire as well.

The autoshots boomed hugely in the small space, shot pellets ricocheting around the two combat
suits, denting and scarring them, pitting the glassite in the helmets. The stone chipped and
fragmented, cracking apart; Trent waited a few seconds and then turned off the induction coils, in
the hopes that the PKF would think that they'd killed the coils; he might get the last two down the
corridor that way.

No such luck; the combat suits kept firing until the thin layer of rock over the induction coils had
been shattered, and the coils themselves exposed to the combined fire of the combat suits.

The two suited Elite came flying down the corridor toward their comrades, toward Trent. Trent
had nothing left to delay them with; everything else that he'd come up with, Gandhi CityState had
rejected. In particular, right about now, Trent wished they'd allowed him to mount a few small
explosives in the corridor; he might have trapped the Elite in a cave-in, kept them from reaching
him before the Vatsayama reached Ceres.

Trent watched calmly as the third Elite stayed with the two unconscious Elite, and the fourth Elite
cut through Trent's doors with an X-laser. Trent did it while the Elite was still in the outer room;
the hand grenades planted around the circumference of the Black Beast were quite strong, and if
Trent waited until the Elite were any closer, the explosion might do more than shake him up.

This was the hard part, all right.

Trent detonated the grenades --

The wavefront of the explosion raced inward, shredding the Black Beast molecules at a time, moving so
slowly that Trent the Uncatchable was aware of it as a dimming of his resources; his extremities went