"Anderson, Kevin J - Seven Suns 4 - 2005 - Scattered Suns" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

"We will defeat you," Zan'nh said through clenched teeth. "And each murder adds to the list of your crimes."
"My crimes are as nothing. The false Imperator Jora'h will also face judgment for leading the Ildiran people astray."
Privately, Zan'nh transmitted a plea to the other commanders aboard the remaining warliners. He still had not heard from Qul Fan'nh, or Thor'h. "I want solutions, ideas. Does anyone have suggestions?"
When Zan'nh was younger, Adar Kori'nh had led him in military drills using human war-game scenarios to see how Ildirans responded to changed situations. Zan'nh had been promoted because of his innovation. But now viable ideas eluded him. He could not think what to do. "Can we flood the compartment with an anesthetizing gas?"
"We could rig that, Adar," said one of his engineers, "but the airflow modifications would take longer than cutting through the door itself. We're making progress, but not quickly enough. We don't have that long. The Hyrillka Designate is not leaving us the time we need."
"He knows that. It is why he forces the issue at such an impossible pace."
Much too soon, Rusa'h said, "Three minutes have passed again, Adar." He raised his hand. Though Zan'nh begged him to wait, to negotiate, the Designate ordered the murder of a third helpless member of the reception committee.
"What are we to do?" the engineer asked. "We could open the outer hatch and shut down the atmosphere field. That would kill the Designate and his followers, end this standoff-"
Zan'nh interrupted. "And all of the hostages. I'm not willing to accept that solution. Find me another one."
Two of Rusa'h's steely-eyed pleasure mates wrestled a fourth victim forward. In their shapely arms the women held a groggy guard captain who had been hit with two stun-beams. One of the wickedly smiling pleasure mates held her crystal knife to the guard's throat, touching the point to his thick skin.
"Look at this man, Adar," Rusa'h said, sounding very sincere. "You hold his life right now. Your next decision will result in his death, or his freedom."
"I will not accept the blame for this insane behavior!"
"Less than a minute remaining." Rusa'h acted as if he had all the time in the world. "I ask again: Do you surrender your maniple?"
"Tell me what you have done on Hyrillka! Why do you need these warships? The Solar Navy has always defended your planet. What is the purpose of-"
"I would be happy to explain myself later, but I've given you my terms. Your time has run out once again. I will not tolerate your stalling while you search for a way to stop me." He gestured, and the pleasure mate rammed her knife under the guard's chin and up into his brain. He fell without a gasp, his eyes cold even as they dimmed in death.
Another resounding jolt tore through thethism . Zan'nh bit back an outcry as lances of pain shot into his mind.
Unexpectedly, the voice of Prime Designate Thor'h came over the channel. "Uncle, my brother needs a greater incentive. He still does not understand how far we will go."
To his dismay, on the screen Zan'nh saw his brother surrounded by traitorous guards in the command nucleus of Qul Fan'nh's warliner. Around them, splatters of blood and tumbled bodies of soldiers lay on the deck.
He felt sickened. "Thor'h!"
"Take the time to understand, brother-hear what Imperator Rusa'h has to say. Then you will comprehend our motives and see that we are correct."
"Stop killing my crew, and I will consider it."
"The Adar seems to be under the impression that he is able to bargain," Rusa'h said.
"I will demonstrate for him how little bargaining power he has, Imperator." Thor'h turned to the blood-spattered guards. "Open fire as ordered."
Qul Fan'nh's warliner unleashed a merciless volley of kinetic-energy projectiles and energy beams. They slammed into the hull and engines of the nearest warliner. The huge Ildiran warship exploded, flame fronts and deadly decompression slaughtering thousands of crewmembers aboard.
The flash of light blinded Zan'nh, and he reeled backward against the command rail. The deaths played a cacophonous arpeggio of pain on his nervous system, crippling him. The screams through thethism were deafening. A full warliner! Thousands and thousands of innocent sacrifices!
Inside the besieged docking bay, Rusa'h said coldly, "You have three minutes, Adar Zan'nh."

13
ORLI COVITZ
Grieving and forlorn, Orli felt as devastated as the ruins of the Corribus colony. The girl stood by herself in the whistling breezes that picked up as soon as darkness fell. The wind careened along the narrow channel of the main granite-walled canyon, sighing plaintively. It carried the smell of smoke and burned flesh, along with moans that sounded like ghostly screams.
Orli was utterly and completely alone, the only person on an entire planet. Everyone she'd known here was dead, her fellow colonists, the few children her age, even her father. She was the only survivor of the massacre.
The Corribus settlement, once filled with dreams and possibilities, was nothing more than burned wreckage, melted debris strewn around what should have been a place of hard work and hope. Even the ancient Klikiss ruins had been obliterated. She had no place to go. And the images were fresh and raw in her mind.
Wandering off by herself, Orli had spent a day exploring isolated cliffside caves far down the canyon. From her high, safe vantage she remembered looking back toward the human town being constructed on this empty world as part of the Hansa's new transportal colonization initiative.
Without warning, the deadly EDF battleships had swept in, using the Hansa's greatest weapons to blow up the buildings and mow down the colonists. When the ships had landed to see the results of their devastation, black Klikiss robots had filed out accompanied by Soldier compies. Methodically seeking out the few hardy survivors who had managed to find scraps of shelter from the initial onslaught, the merciless robots had killed one after another after another, until everyone was dead.
Too far away to help, terrified for her own life, Orli had only been able to watch. A part of her had wanted to run out and fight the robotic attackers, or at least scream at them-but she was smart enough to keep herself hidden. Orli had huddled, shivering, until the evil machines packed up their EDF ships and flew away, leaving her here. Alone.
Had anyone ever been so stranded? Orli knew the planet was empty except for their tiny settlement. Their group had been the first to come through the transportal doorways and establish a Hansa presence on Corribus. Though she had to check it for herself, Orli assumed the destructive robots had obliterated the transportal too, blocking off all contact from the rest of human civilization. No one could come through to rescue her. No one on the outside even knew of the attack.
On the first night, she found the corner of a fibrous cement wall that had been erected millennia ago by the insectoid Klikiss race. Though blackened and crumbling, it formed a shelter where Orli could hold her knees and put her head down. She trembled as she waited out the night. Fear and ragged nerves prevented her from sleeping. Often she heard frightening, crackling sounds or the slumping collapse of walls as the last fires of the horrific assault nibbled away at the remaining structures. Nothing moved, nothing lived.
Though no one could hear her, she cried for a long while, wiping her nose with grimy knuckles, until she was shaky and weak, her throat raw. Orli had never been a needy person, but now she missed her father terribly. Jan Covitz had loved to make up solutions to every problem, though he managed to implement few of them. He'd had an infectious smile and a warm good cheer. Many people had liked him, but few had ever relied on him.
She wanted to be with her father, wanted him to hold her and rock her to sleep while he spun tales of his bright dreams. He would know what to do.
At that, Orli sighed, and her lips curved upward in a bittersweet smile. No, Jan wouldn't know what to do at all. Left on his own to survive, he might have been worse off than she was. But that didn't matter. Orli wanted him at her side.
"If wishes were horses, girl," her father had often said to her, quoting dusty old wisdom, "then all of us would ride."
In the darkest part of the night, still wide-awake, Orli heard what sounded like whispering voices, quickly muttered comments coming from the rubble of the long-empty Klikiss city. She sprang to her feet and ran out of her meager shelter, stumbling over broken rocks.
"Hello?" she tried to call, but it came out as more of a cough. Too much crying and too much smoke had made her voice raspy. She could barely hear her own hoarse shout. She tried again, gained a little more volume. "Is anybody out there? Anybody?"
Running as fast as she could in the darkness, barely seeing obstacles in the starlight, Orli made her way toward the alien ruins. Pebbles pattered down from the crumbling structures, then a larger stone shifted and clattered to the ground.
Abruptly, a hopeful call withered in her throat. What if it wasn't a survivor she'd heard?What if one of the robots had stayed behind? The deadly machines were efficient murderers-they had demonstrated that quite adequately. They could have left one of their number hidden, an assassin, just to wait for someone like Orli to creep out of a hiding place. And then it would kill her.
Her heart thudded in her chest. Standing frozen in the darkness and feeling completely vulnerable, she waited and waited, afraid even to breathe, intent on any sound. Why had she called out? Stupid girl! She needed to be more cautious. She certainly wouldn't survive long out here if she kept blundering around and expecting things to turn out for the best.
She tried to swallow, but her throat felt as if it were clogged with dusty rags. Inside her head, Orli counted to a hundred, but no further sound came from the ruins. Then another clatter of small stones.
Eventually she decided it was just shifting debris. Nothing emerged from the rubble, no hulking black machine, no sleek and deadly Soldier compy. The only tiny sounds in the night were from small creatures, rodents or insects.
Or hungry predators?
Orli made her way back to the shelter, picked up a rock, and hefted it in her hand to gauge how well it might serve as a weapon. It would have to do. She stared toward the dark horizon, waiting and waiting for the sun to rise. . . .