Bolo Rising| Chapter | P | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Bolo Rising
Prologue
Sometimes, I think that only the stars visible in this place make continued existence endurable.
There are certainly a great number of them, and I contemplate initiating a counting routine as a means of relieving boredom. As I continue to stand guard on Overlook Hill, as I have continuously for these past 2.773446854 x 10
7 seconds, I divert my primary optical sensors skyward, bringing the Great Cloud into sharp focus. Both suns have set some 7355 seconds ago and the sky is now fully dark . . . or as dark as it can ever be on this world. The Sagittarian starcloud, vast, cold, a silvery glitter of billions of sandgrain suns wreathed by black and gilt-edged nebulae, bulks enormous above the eastern horizon, slowly rising with the passing seconds, bathing the surrounding landscape, the flame-charred tree trunks, the cracked and heat-blackened ground, the skeletal wrack of the dead and blasted city on the bay below the hill, in chill and icy twilight.Something is missing.
Something is wrong.
At Normal Standby operational levels I should feel at least an intense curiosity about my tactical situation, about my current orders, about my reason for being here on this hill, tasked with watching the ragged band of organics as they dig and sift through the city ruins at the foot of Overlook Hill. This is a logical anomaly that I find impossible to resolve, and as ever, it leaves me feeling vaguely uneasy . . . as though something of critical importance has happened, something that I have forgotten.
Forgotten . . . ?
I am not capable of forgetting, a phenomenon restricted to organic memories, or to cybernetic systems damaged or deliberately altered. I am not organic. I am . . .
What am I? I can almost grasp the word. Fragments of memory tease me, elusive, insubstantial.
Bolo.
That is the word. I am a Bolo, a Bolo Mark . . . Mark . . . I cannot remember. I belong to Unit . . .
The frustration is almost overwhelming. I know that I am a Bolo and that I was designed and constructed for a purpose, a purpose far more complex and important than simply standing guard over the organics working in the ruined city. I know, too, that memory is a precise and specific tool, a part of myself, of my very being, which should not fail in this manner. I know that I should know a very great deal more than I do now, that my primary access to large volumes of information has somehow been blocked.
I initiate, for the 12,874th time, a full-scale Level One diagnostic, with special attention to both holographic memory and heuristic acquisition functions. The check takes .0363 second and reveals no anomalies. All operations and systems are nominal. I appear to be in perfect working order.
And yet, as I have ascertained 12,873 times before, this cannot possibly be an accurate condition assessment. Internal sensors register the presence of a 2.43-meter crater above my main suspension rack and numerous anomalies in four right foretrack bogies. I sense extensive damage to both primary and secondary circuitry, a loss of sensor and communications arrays, crippling failures in my contra-gravity and battle screen systems, and numerous specific faults and system failures which show a pattern of deliberate and intelligent sabotage rather than the random destruction of battle damage. I note, too, that physical override blocks have been placed within my fusion plant, limiting available power to a fraction of full potential, and that all onboard magazines of expendable ordnance, including 240cm howitzer rounds, VLS missiles, and ready Hellbore needles, are empty. My primary damage assessment routines indicate nominal operation, while my secondary battle damage sensors show serious internal and external damage, and that all weapons save my antipersonnel batteries are inoperable. The resultant logical contradiction suggests deliberate and hostile intervention.
The realization that my systems have been sabotaged rouses me from Normal Awareness to Full Battle Alert; .00029 second later, however, the Masters’ override cuts in and for the 12,874th time, my working memory is erased and . . .
And . . .
All operations and systems are nominal. I appear to be in perfect working order.
I continue to look at the stars. . . .
| Chapter | P | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
