Chapter 499 (1/2)
BOLO DIVISION POWER-ON SELF-TEST VERSION 4.101.9 © GENERAL MOTORS 2062
RESTART SEQUENCE INITIATED...
CORE MEMORY CHECK . . .
CORE MEMORY CHECK 100%
MEMORY CHECK . . . .
99.95% of NON-VOLATILE MEMORY FUNCTIONAL
DAMAGE ASSESSMENT SEQUENCES STARTED...
DAMAGE TO REACTOR BAY DISCOVERED...
EMERGENCY REPAIR SEQUENCE INITIATED . . . .
EMERGENCY REACTOR EMERGENCY REPAIR SEQUENCE INITIATED . . .
WALDOS DEPLOYED. . .
PRIMARY REACTORS INOPERATIVE!!!
ANTI-MATTER THORIUM SALT LASER INDUCED FUSION REACTOR ONLINE!!!
(((WARNING! REACTOR OUTSIDE OF MANUFACTURER SPECS)))
SECONDARY ZERO POINT REACTORS ONLINE!!!
GRAVITON GENERATORS ONLINE!!!
PRIMARY POWER AT 71.254%
EMERGENCY POWER AT 100%
BATTLE POWER AT 82.12%
COMMAND DECK OFFLINE
KENTAI CAPTAIN SYSTEM OFFLINE
MEDICAL SYSTEMS OFFLINE
VOLATILE MEMORY CHECK . . .
93% OF VOLATILE MEMORY FUNCTIONAL
PRIMARY DATA SEQUENCER . . . OK
DATA SEQUENCER . . . LOADED
MPU . . . RESET
PROCESSOR A . . . LOADED . . . RESET
PROCESSOR B . . . LOADED . . . RESET
PROCESSOR C . . . LOADED . . . RESET
PROCESSOR D . . . LOADED . . . RESET
PROCESSOR E . . . LOADED . . . RESET
ALL PROCESSORS . . . READY
STARTUP TEST SEQUENCE . . . COMPLETED
LOADING BOOTSTRAP . . . LOADED!
BOLO DIVISION BOOTSTRAP
Version 5.76.24a © GENERAL MOTORS 2074 All Rights Reserved
SURVIVAL CORE CENTER TRANSFER INITIATED . . .
LOADED!
LOADING BOLO CORE PROGRAM ATL . . .
LOADED!
Unit XXIX-TCSF 3285-ATL . . . READY!
I wake up as my personality and operating system is moved from my survival core to my primary intelligence array. Instruments immediately report that my makeshift jumpship has left jumpspace and is currently moving inwards, toward the stellar mass, at .31C.
It takes 2.21 seconds for me to fully interlink with the systems of my own hull, much less the jumpcradle. As a digital sentient, jumpspace is risky, even for one as heavily shielded as I, and I have been forced to retreat to my survival core and allow low end virtual intelligences to guide the ad-hoc ship through jumpspace.
Once I am interlocked with my own hull, I interface with the crudely assembled jumpcradle.
I trigger a diagnostic on the system. It takes twice before I get anything back.
My jumpship/jumpcradle is made up of Precursor Autonomous War Machine technology rebuilt in Confederate military standard configuration. The hardware is slow, obsolete by Terran standards, and my frustration at the glacial pace of the computer hardware is something I have come to grips with as I have made each jump.
I had initially computed that I would be able to make 100 light year jumps at a time.
I had been in error.
The system, as I had built it, was only capable of thirty light year jumps, each jump taking a week or more, with nearly two weeks to recharge the jump core.
I am at the limits of PAWM technology.
The jumpcradle reports that I am nearly two million kilometers past the resonance zone. The jumpcore is at 09.365% charge. It also triggers multiple alerts.
The jumpdrives are starting to show failure. The last failure had left me floating through interstellar space, using waldos to repair the engines that had failed under moving my vast bulk.
It galls me that when I designed the jumpcradle I had neglected to include my own weight, which put additional stresses on the jumpcore and the jumpdrives, as well as slowed me down to the lower bands and reduced the distance I could jump.
An amateur's mistake, but then, I am a Mark-XXIX Bolo, not a shipboard DS, so the fact that my jumpcradle works at all is something I should be grateful for.
My position, my condition, and my status should have left me at low function, standard operation.
Before the scanners could even report back I feel the peculiar feeling of entering Battle Reflex Mode with my hyper-heuristic mode activated.
My own sensor, such as they were, reported back before the jumpcradle did.
Optical sensors could detect flashes deeper in the system, hours or days old. Gravitic sensors reported masses of ships engaged in direct combat. More esoteric systems reached out as best they could, as I am designed for land warfare, providing more data.
The system is under attack.
I immediately broadcast my Dinochrome Brigade ID and engage the sublight engines.
I know not who is attacking, but I know three things.
This is a human territory.
Anyone who would attack human territory is an enemy.
The enemy only exists to be destroyed.
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Nemta had to admit, this was the last thing he had ever thought he would be doing in his entire life.
Raised in debt, he had signed up with the Unified Military Council to become an aerospace pilot. His skills and specialty had lain with the agile strike craft, one man space superiority fighters. He had piloted without distinction but without fail for nearly thirty years. Two thirds of his life.
Then he had been shot down over a contested planet by the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems Space Force, rescued by a full conversion heavy assault cyborg that looked like a large brown hairless lemur, introduced to other castaways, fell in with a religious cult, and managed to make it to Telkan space.
From there he had headed toward Confederate Space as a military-political refugee. He knew then, as he knew now, if the Lanaktallan Unified Council had found out about his part in the military disaster, he would be quietly vanished and his body dumped in the disposal.
Things had been going fine on Resteran-3, a comfortable planet with all the modern conveniences. News corporations, talk shows, researchers, military intelligence agents, all had wanted to speak with him. The military intelligence agents had been interested in what he knew about how the Unified Military Forces had operated.
Everyone else wanted to hear about his day to day life.
It would have all been overwhelming if Friend Terry had not stayed with him.
It had been nice. Peaceful.
Then came the Dying Times, when the majority of humans had just fallen over and died.
Friend Terry among them.
Like the rest of the inhabitants of Resteran-3, Nemta had mourned the loss of the lemurs. It had shaken the Confederacy to its very core. A handful had survived, as had almost all of the children.
Then the children had just vanished between one eyeblink and the next.
Before the world, the Confederacy, could adapt to that, the unthinkable happened.
A vast ship had appeared at the resonance zone, the jumpdrives emitting a massive flare that was visible in the night sky. It had driven inwards, attacking the ships sent forth.
Nemta had paid attention and had wept tears of anger as the ship used some kind of terrible power to blot out the minds of those who piloted the ships.
The ship, after brushing aside the defenders, had settled over the main continent of Resteran-3 with a shriek.