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

The next morning, her eyes red and her muscles sore and weak, she picked her way through the holocaust site. She went first to what was left of the local transmitting tower where her father had proudly taken up communications duties for the colony. On their arrival here, she had sat with him as he waited for incoming signals, tracked the logs of Hansa ships, took inventory of their existing supplies, and made wish lists to give the cargo traders.
She tried to dredge up even a speck of hope in her heart, but she had seen the explosions. As she dreaded, her father's transmitter hut had been obliterated. There was very little debris for her to sift through, only a few scraps of metal and polymer. She was glad she wouldn't be able to find her father's body, if it was in there.
The intense heat from the weapons bursts had melted the soil itself into glass. It reminded her of the burnt-sugar crust on a fancy crшme br√lщe dessert she'd once shared with her father, after he'd gotten a modest windfall payment for something or other. Orli's eyes stung, and she shook off the memory.
Next she climbed over fallen debris, smearing her hands, arms, and clothes with greasy soot, until she reached the wall that had contained the functioning Klikiss transportal. As expected, the alien machinery had been blasted to rubble. Intentionally. She would never be able to get away from Corribus.
Each time she came upon a new disappointment, another one of her remaining threads of fragile hope snapped.
Finally Orli went to what was left of the structure she and her father had started to call their home. The destruction in the settlement was so tremendous that she could pinpoint the house only by locating known landmarks, counting foundations, and tracing the remnants of paths until she came to a charred pile of collapsed support frames and structural bricks that had been her hut.
She found a few burned scraps of clothing, two cooking pots, and-mercifully-six packets of food that her father had kept to make a special dinner for them one day. Orli tore into the packets and ate the flavored protein. She had not realized how desperately hungry she was.
Under a fallen wall, she found two sealed bags of the preserved giant mushrooms she and her father had farmed on Dremen. Another one of Jan Covitz's get-rich schemes. They had planted the fungi, which quickly grew out of control. When none of the other colonists wanted to eat the gamy-tasting gray flesh, Jan and Orli had been forced to abandon the mushroom farm and grab the lifeline of the Hansa colonization initiative. She had disliked the cold, damp, miserable world . . . but if they'd remained there, despite the hardships, she felt sure that her father would still be alive.
Orli held the bags, feeling the rubbery fungus lumps inside. Her stomach suddenly roiled and heaved, but she clamped her teeth shut and swallowed repeatedly, breathing through her nose, fighting off the nausea. She wanted to be sick, but she had just eaten and didn't dare vomit up what might be her last supplies. She knew she needed to keep the food down, because she required the nutrition to survive. And Orlidid intend to survive.
Pocketing the mushroom packets for later, she pushed herself to keep looking. She did not think about her furry cricket, the innocuous hairy critter she'd kept as a pet, until she found the smashed cage and its dead inhabitant underneath a fallen beam.
It was too much. Again, Orli allowed herself long minutes of unabashed crying, not just for her pet, but for her father, for all the colonists, for the whole obliterated settlement. Eventually her grief turned to sobs of misery-for her lost home, for her loneliness, for the hardships ahead. Suddenly she stopped. There was no one to hear her sorrow, no one to take care of her, and she had nothing to gain by feeling sorry for herself. Instead, the girl made up her mind to scrounge for anything the attacking ships had not destroyed, anything that might help her stay alive.
First she took apart her collapsed house, one brick and one beam at a time. As she rummaged through the wreckage, gathering the few intact items, she was surprised to discover her battered music synthesizer strips. Against all odds, the instrument still functioned and the battery pack retained enough charge for at least another week or two.
She spent the next day going through every burned pile in the town, picking up odds and ends-first-aid kits, a small bowl, more food packets, scraps of metallized cloth, a length of wire-never knowing what might be helpful. Toward evening, she managed to get one of the automated water-pumping stations working again and gulped fresh water greedily. Orli considered going back to the high cliffside chamber, where she could hide if the marauding robots came back, but it was too far away, and she didn't want to be so isolated, though she held out little hope for rescue.
She made her camp in a clearing near her wrecked house, and there she waited day after day. Orli spent the evenings playing mournful tunes on her synthesizer strips. The notes wafted upward like the sad cries of a lonely bird.
Less than a week after Orli started keeping track of time-the first few days were still a blur-a figure walked out of the wilderness of grassy plains.
In the dusk the scarecrowish silhouette marched through the tall whispery pampas, unafraid of the creatures that lurked out there. The man paused and lifted an arm as if to shade his eyes, but didn't seem to see her. He trudged closer, carrying a long stick like an old wizard's staff, using its end to sweep the grass out of his way.
Orli crouched in the ruins, certain that this stranger was some assassin in league with the robots. But then she could tell from his movements, his shape, that the stranger washuman . Another person on this abandoned tomb of a world?
Or did the robot attackers have human collaborators? She shuddered and ducked behind a twisted support frame from a storage hut, unable to imagine how anyone else could have survived the attack. She convinced herself that someone must have spotted her campfire, heard her music, seen her moving. Now he was coming to get her, and she would be killed just like all the others.
But he was just one man-a scrawny old man from the looks of him. She found a thin length of metal she could use as a club. It felt solid enough in her hand. Trying to look as fierce as a bedraggled and red-eyed fourteen-year-old girl could, she lifted the club and stepped out of her hiding place to face the stranger.
She immediately recognized the old hermit Hud Steinman, who had befriended Orli and her father on Rheindic Co before their group of colonists transferred here. Once he'd gotten to the colony, the old man had set off on his own, wanting nothing to do with crowds and small-town politics. Of course! His distant bivouac on the prairies would have kept him far from the attack!
Before she could think what she was doing, Orli shouted and waved, rushing headlong toward the unexpected figure. When she called his name, her cracked voice sounded like a wail. "Mr. Steinman! Mr. Steinman!"
He stopped, stunned at first by the destroyed settlement, and now taken aback by this dervish coming toward him. He propped his staff against the ground and waited for her to reach him. She threw herself into his arms with such vehemence that she almost knocked him over.
"I saw the smoke, saw the big ships," he said, trying to hold her at arm's length. She was filthy, her clothes torn and sooty, her face streaked with dirt and tears. "Tell me what's going on, kid."
"I was exploring the caves at the end of the canyon when the big EDF ships came. They blasted the whole colony-the buildings, the people, the-"
"EDF ships? Are you crazy-"
"I saw them land, and they were full of compies and Klikiss robots. They killed anybody they found." Her voice hitched. "Everybody." She looked over her shoulder. "There's nothing left."
Steinman stared toward the sheltered canyon that had once held a burgeoning Klikiss metropolis, and more recently a fresh new Hansa colony. "You'd better stay with me for the time being, kid. I wasn't looking for company, but you're not a bad sort. And you sure look like you could use some help."
Orli didn't argue with him. They gathered the salvaged supplies she had collected, and then Orli followed the old man out onto the plains of Corribus.

14
QUEEN ESTARRA
After speeches and a gala send-off, the King and Queen waved to the crowds as they boarded a Hansa diplomatic transport to Ildira. Already settled in before the fanfare began, Chairman Wenceslas was at work in his cabin with the door locked, ignoring the show outside. He'd never had any interest in stealing the spotlight; he preferred to work behind the scenes.
Peter hurried Estarra to their own quarters, hoping to avoid the Chairman's notice-though obviously Basil didn't want to be bothered by the royal couple, either.
Without asking permission, Estarra had brought one of the small potted treelings from the Whisper Palace's conservatory. Peter had agreed to help her smuggle it onto the diplomatic transport and hide it in a cabinet in their quarters.
"I brought this one myself from Theroc, when I came to marry you," she explained, stroking the golden scaly-barked stem. "Since we're about to meet the Mage-Imperator, it seems a fine gift for him. You don't mind?"
"Basil won't like losing one of the treelings."
"Nahton is the court green priest, andhe said this wouldn't affect the performance of his duties," she said, sounding bolder than she felt. She had already run through the arguments in her head. "Besides, Sarein is bound to return from Theroc soon. She can bring more treelings with her."
Estarra secured the potted container as their craft began to accelerate out of orbit, escorted by several old-model EDF Manta cruisers. She and Peter both hated to be in such close quarters with the Chairman; they knew what he was capable of. Basil had never denied trying to kill them, and the friction between the Chairman and the King remained unresolved. And she was very nervous that Basil would learn their new secret.
"It's going to be a long trip to Ildira," Estarra said.
Not long ago, she had discovered that she was pregnant, which was cause for both joy and fear. Once she'd quietly confirmed that she was carrying Peter's baby, Estarra had revealed the news to him.
Though the pregnancy was unexpected, she certainly wanted the child, and so did Peter. Basil had imposed birth-control measures on the couple, but no method was entirely reliable, and accidents happened. It wasn't their fault.
But Chairman Wenceslas did not tolerate "accidents"-unless he staged them himself.
As pressures mounted from the hydrogue war, the recalcitrant Hansa colonies, and the outlaw Roamer clans, Basil demonstrated his increasing edginess and irrationality. There was no telling how he might react upon learning the King and Queen were due to have a royal heir, especially one thathe hadn't planned.
"He'll find out sooner or later, but let's keep it a secret for now." Peter had whispered the faint, breathy words in her ear one dark night as they held each other close. "As long as we can. Otherwise Basil has too many options-and not many of them are beneficial to us."
Secrets.She was growing to hate them. Estarra had grown up in the peaceful worldforest on Theroc. She had a close family and many friends among the green priests. She'd never been good at keeping secrets. But now her life, or at least the life of her child, depended on it.
Peter noticed the slight changes in her behavior, her appearance, her appetite. She needed to use the privacy chambers more often and suffered from occasional nausea. The subtle signs were there to indicate a pregnancy. Aboard the diplomatic transport, so close to Basil Wenceslas, she was terrified she would let something slip. The Chairman usually watched everything so closely.
However, as the journey progressed, Basil kept himself wrapped up in business matters, engrossed in the documents and news briefings displayed on his datascreen. For such an expert in political and business matters, the Chairman did not seem to know or care much about personal details.
Peter shocked her when he actually went out of his way to ask Basil to join them for the evening meal. "You're tempting fate," she said to him in an urgent whisper. "Don't call attention to anything!"
But the Chairman predictably brushed aside the invitation, and Peter gave her a knowing smile. In a low voice, he said, "If Ididn't ask him, he might join us unexpectedly. Offering to spend time with Basil is the best way to make sure he leaves us alone."
"You two have a very twisted relationship."