"Allen, Roger MacBride - Chronicles of Solace 3 - Shores of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)

But, if he wished tohide his secrets in the future, he had toreach the future. The obvious technique would be to put his treasures in hidden storage, put himself in temporal confinement, and simply wait. But his FTL drives would deteriorate if left in untended storage for that long. Besides which, the equipment in question was quite large . . .

He decided to move his treasure out of the Solacian star system, while avoiding the use of the timeshaft-wormhole transport system.

But he then made an errorЧa huge error, with tremendous consequences for all those in the Glistern and Solacian star systems, and perhaps, for all of humanity.



And, for what it was worth, some pretty nasty consequences for a certain Anton Koffield. Consequences that were still being played out. He could see by glancing ahead that this was the part of the story where Dr. Ashdin really took the gloves off. He read through her account thoughtfully, concentrating on WandellaТs analysis.



. . . He chose Glister of the future as the space-time point in which to build his facility, because his projections showed that Glister would have collapsed utterly by then. . . . He would make doubly sure that his treasure was safe from prying eyes if he wrecked the timeshaft wormhole that served Glister.

Part of his fleet of robotic ships he would send direct to Glister without benefit of FTL or wormhole transitЧso-called slowboats. They would travel far below the speed of light, taking decades to make the journey.

Other ships, rigged for FTL travel, would take a shortcut to the futureЧstraight through the wormholes. During that transit, they would track certain parameters of the wormhole with a precision great enough to accomplish his next goal: the destruction of the wormhole. . . .

Dr. DeSilvo claims that his plan assumed that the Chronologic Patrol ShipStandfast would flee the attack and not respond quickly or aggressively enough to stop all of the ships driving for the wormhole. He claims he did not intend to cause harm or casualties as he forced passage of the wormhole. He imagined the guard ship standing off at a safe distance and firing carefully aimed single shots at the attackers. Either he was monstrously incompetent or lying when he says he tried to avoid causing death or injury.

Instead of standing well off from the IntrudersЧas the ships came to be calledЧtheStandfast went straight for them, diving in with all guns blazing, riskingЧand losingЧthe ship and the lives of all aboard in order to try to fulfill her mission. That was just the first of DeSilvoТs miscalculations concerning his wormhole transit plan.

. . . When the Intruders came through the uptime side of the wormhole, they used similar tactics. TheUpholder fought back, taking serious damage herself, her crew suffering many deaths and other casualties.

Three of the Intruders survived the wormhole transit and escaped theUpholder. Each carried a complete set of the information Dr. DeSilvo had diverted.

. . . the three surviving Intruders returned from Glister to the vicinity of Circum Central. Each deployed a pair of drones, then departed, returning their valuable gearЧmainly their FTL drivesЧto Glister.

. . . They continued their attack as if the other ships were not present. TheUpholder, though badly damaged, attempted to stop them . . . TheUpholder, with great skill and luck, managed to destroy two of the drones attacking the wormhole.

. . . Captain Koffield saw he had no choice but to destroy the wormhole. This he attempted to doЧand he spent years believing he had done so, years in which every other person believed he had done it as well. People blamed him for the death of those aboard the convoy ships that were destroyed, for the loss of the relief supplies they were carrying to Glister, even, quite illogically, for the collapse of Glister itself, decades later. In truth, the loss of that convoy probablyextended the planetТs survival time. More people died sooner as a result of the relief convoyТs failure to arrive, leaving fewer mouths to feed in the grim decades that followed.

. . . Captain Koffield was blamed for all of this, and much more . . . The destruction of the wormhole was not his doing; the one surviving Intruder had seized control of the wormhole and wrecked it. It would have been destroyed even if Koffield had abandoned his post and ordered his ship home.

All of Settled Space looked to Captain Koffield and saw blood on his hands. Only Dr. Oskar DeSilvo knew he was not to blameЧand Dr. Oskar DeSilvo said and did nothing.



Not feeling entirely comfortable reading about himself, Koffield moved forward a bit in the text, to where Dr. Ashdin further discussed DeSilvoТs motives. As if anyone could ever know them for sure. If and when the true story of DeSilvoТs career got out, the debate over his motives would never end. But he was interested in what WandellaТs thoughts on the matter might be.



. . . The game was not worth the candle. Even if he dismissed the harm to others from his calculations, the effort and cost needed to fly through, then destroy, the wormhole far exceeds the value Oskar DeSilvo gained from the effort. So why did he do it?

. . . there was one entity, one group, that had more power than he did. The Chronologic Patrol controlled the paths between the stars, controlled the gates that linked past and future.

If DeSilvo, working alone, could defeat or, better yet, humiliate such a powerful organization, then surely that would prove that his own power was still intact. Besides, DeSilvo had already defeated the Patrol once, by finding, penetrating, and robbing the Dark Museum.

But there was a good chance that the Chronologic Patrol was like the lion bitten by the flea: The flea celebrated his victory, but the lion didnТt even know that heТd been bitten. The Chronologic Patrol likely did not know that anyone had so much as found the wreckage of the Dark Museum.