Werehunter (anthology)

they’d be anything worse than an annoyance with only three; the other groups could outflank them. “What if you shut down things in here?” he asked. “Run basic life-support, but nothing fancy. And I could drive—run your weapons’ systems.”

“You could. That would help.” Rommel pondered for a moment. “My calculations are that we can take the required eight of the groups if you also issue battle orders and I simply carry them out. But there is a further problem.”

“Which is?” he asked—although he had the sinking feeling that he knew what the problem was going to be.

“Higher functions. One of the functions I will lose at about the seventh takeover is what you refer to as my personality. A great deal of my ability to maintain a personality is dependent on devoting a substantial percentage of my central processor to that personality. And if it disappears—”

The Bolo paused. Siegfried’s hands clenched on the arms of his chair.

“—it may not return. There is a possibility that the records and algorithms which make up my personality will be written over by comparison files during strategic control calculations.” Again Rommel paused. “Siegfried, this is our duty. I am willing to take that chance.”

Siegfried swallowed, only to find a lump in his throat and his guts in knots. “Are you sure?” he asked gently. “Are you very sure? What you’re talking about is—is a kind of deactivation.”

“I am sure,” Rommel replied firmly. “The Field Marshal would have made the same choice.”

Rommel’s manuals were all on a handheld reader. He had studied them from front to back—wasn’t there something in there? “Hold on a minute—”

He ran through the index, frantically keyword searching. This was a memory function, right? Or at least it was software. The designers didn’t encourage operators to go mucking around in the AI functions . . . what would a computer jock call what he was looking for?

Finally he found it; a tiny section in programmerese, not even listed in the index. He scanned it, quickly, and found the warning that had been the thing that had caught his eye in the first place.

This system has been simulation proven in expected scenarios, but has never been fully field- tested.

What the hell did that mean? He had a guess; this was essentially a full-copy backup of the AI’s processor. He suspected that they had never tested the backup function on an AI with a full personality. There was no way of knowing if the restoration function would actually “restore” a lost personality.

But the backup memory-module in question had its own power-supply, and was protected in the most hardened areas of Rommel’s interior. Nothing was going to destroy it that didn’t slag him and Rommel together, and if “personality” was largely a matter of memory—

It might work. It might not. It was worth trying, even if the backup procedure was fiendishly hard to initiate. They really didn’t want operators mucking around with the AIs.

Twenty command-strings later, a single memory-mod began its simple task; Rommel was back in charge of the fourth group of mechs, and Siegfried had taken over the driving.

He was not as good as Rommel was, but he was better than he had thought.

They took groups five, and six, and it was horrible—listening to Rommel fade away, lose the vitality behind the synthesized voice. If Siegfried hadn’t had his hands full already, literally, it would have been worse.

But with group seven—

That was when he just about lost it, because in reply to one of his voice-commands, instead of a “Got it, Siegfried,” what came over the speakers was the metallic “Affirmative” of a simple voice-activated computer.

All of Rommel’s resources were now devoted to self-defense and control of the armored mechs.

God and my Duty. Siegfried took a deep breath, and began keying in the commands for mass armor deploy­ment.

The ancient commanders were right; from the ground, there was no way of knowing when the moment of truth came. Siegfried only realized they had won when the mother-ship suddenly vanished from orbit, and the remaining AIs went dead. Cutting their losses; there was nothing in any of the equipment that would betray where it came from. Whoever was in charge of the invasion force must have decided that there was no way they would finish the mission before someone, a regularly scheduled freighter or a surprise patrol, discovered what was going on and reported it.

By that time, he had been awake for fifty hours straight; he had put squeeze-bulbs of electrolytic drink near at hand, but he was starving and still thirsty. With the air-conditioning cut out, he must have sweated out every