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

"The speed you're going, you may as well start planning Hadden's memorial service. I could fill out the forms and requisition an EDF coffin while I'm waiting for you to finish goofing around."
"We're bringing in a spare tank, Commander, but I don't know if we can get it up the canyon fast enough. We locked it in a cache when we secured this quadrant from Team Jade."
"Commander, I need to abort the exercise! Call in an emergency rescue lift!"
She scowled. "Instead of hitting the panic button-which will never work in areal emergency, dammit!-try some creativity. Find a different way. If his tank is leaking, then seal it!"
"How? We've got nothing but wound sealant in the medpack, and that's not for use in this cold."
"Slather it on anyway! It's designed to hold up against spurting arterial blood; you can bet it'll clog a pinprick in an air tank. And the cold will keep it harder than a metal weld. Should hold at least until you can get that spare tank humped up to you. If that doesn't work, try something else. Solve the problem." She shook her head, grinding her teeth together to calm herself. "Once you stop the leak, he's got enough air inside his suit's reserve bladder to keep him alive for fifteen minutes even if his tank is empty."
"We'll try, Commander!"
As they jabbered to each other, scrambling to fix the leak, Tasia continued, "In the field, you'll have limited resources. You have to know your supplies and equipment and what exactly they do. Just because a purpose isn't listed on the instruction label doesn't mean you can't improvise."
Not surprisingly, by working together they easily saved the kleeb with at least ten minutes to spare. She refused to let them bow out of the exercise, though they wanted to run back to base and lick their wounds after the close call. Team Sapphire lost a lot of ground, and would probably come in dead last in the scoring, but they had learned something . . . for a change.
Out of the loop on Mars, Tasia gleaned whatever information she could about the continuing stupid strikes on clan outposts. Rendezvous gone, even Hurricane Depot . . .
Tasia had been to Hurricane Depot only once, on a flight with Ross when she was twelve. Ross had been assigned to guide a water tanker from Plumas, and took Tasia along to show her the Galaxy. He had even let her do some of the piloting-at twelve she was already rated for most of the ships used around the water mines-but he himself had flown the vessel through the gravitational obstacle course to the stable island between two orbiting rocks.
The Depot had been a marvelous example of Roamer engineering, a bustling trading bazaar and meeting point for all the clans. Tasia had eaten exotic foods there, listened to tall tales from clan traders, seen so many people and strange clothes and traditions that she felt her head would explode. She'd always wanted to go back.
And now, after seizing everything they wanted, the Eddies had simply swatted Hurricane Depot out of its stable point and smashed it like a bug. A show of force. A demonstration of General Lanyan's cold stupidity . . .
After that provocation and show of force, the Hansa seemed frustrated that Speaker Peroni had not simply capitulated. Tasia couldn't believe the bull-in-a-china-shop way the Chairman was handling the entire situation. When she was a young girl, she had heard that the Earth military was a bunch of bullies and thugs. Apparently those stories were accurate.
While on board her Manta, and during R&R stops at EDF bases, she had listened to the Hansa's smear campaign against the "treacherous space gypsies." Many stories implied that the clans were in league with the hydrogues because they had cut off shipments of stardrive fuel "solely to weaken the effectiveness of the Earth Defense Forces"-which was ridiculous in so many different ways she couldn't even count them.
There was no official announcement of the newly declared "war" against the clans, but most of the EDF soldiers knew (and celebrated) the recent provocative actions. Still, much as she hated their screwed-up priorities, the bureaucracy and prejudices, and all the ill-advised things they insisted on doing, the Hansa's powerful military was the only force humanity had that might stand up against the hydrogues.
And she hated the drogues more than anything the EDF had done . . . so far.
Unexpectedly, while she watched the teams wrap up their scheduled exercises, a transmitted request and event summary appeared on the small screen of her suit's text unit. "Roamer outpost captured at Hhrenni, numerous prisoners taken at greenhouse domes. Request assistance/reassignment of Commander Tamblyn to liaise with new Roamer detainees and escort them to Llaro. Her background may be useful."
Appended to the formal request, she saw a single line from Admiral Willis, her Grid 7 commanding officer. "Request approved. But only if Tamblyn wants to do it."
Tasia caught her breath. Another Roamer facility trashed? She tried to remember what sort of settlement had been located at Hhrenni and which clan had run it, but she'd been away from that way of life for so long. Even though her last battle had been a debacle-at Osquivel, where she had lost her lover and friend Robb Brindle-Tasia wished she could be out fighting the enemy. Making sure Roamer prisoners weren't abused might be the next best thing.
"Rest assured, Admiral," she keyed into the response window, "Tamblyn wants to do it."
Here on Mars, her talents were being wasted. She was bored, forced to stay where absolutely nothing was going on. Anyplace had to be better than this.

11
ROBB BRINDLE
Would the nightmare ever stop in this impossible place? He had no way of determining how long he'd been trapped among the hydrogues, but Robb was sure his imprisonment had already lasted more than an eternity. The unbroken tedium was almost as bad as the constant fear. Since he was nominally in charge of the group, he led regular workout sessions and skill games to keep up morale as much as possible and keep their minds and reflexes sharp. None of his fellow captives could guess what the hydrogues meant to do to them. Robb wasn't sure he wanted to know.
"I wish that little compy would come back," he muttered. He had said it countless times before.
"We're on a completely different planet now," said Charles Gomez, whose hangdog expression never changed. "Remember, they evacuated us." His eyes remained fixed on the spongy, sloped floor, rarely meeting the faces of his miserable comrades. Gomez had been captured when hydrogues overran the lumber operations on Boone's Crossing, annihilating several villages that EDF ships could not rescue in time. The drogues had snatched Gomez for their . . . experiments? Their zoo? All the prisoners had similar stories.
"The drogues'll never tell us what that emergency was," Robb said, "or where they took us." All he remembered was a flash of light and a lurching sensation. Then the clouds outside the immense wonderland city were different. Still hellish, but different. "I don't suppose standard POW protocols translate into their language."
Robb hunkered down. His wing commander's uniform was stiff and rumpled from countless weeks without washing or changing. The hydrogue captors provided water and rubbery blocks of "food," and somehow the captives' waste was disposed of from time to time, but the liquid-metal creatures did not seem to comprehend the human need for bathing or clean clothes. The transparent holding chamber reeked, but Robb no longer even noticed the smell.
Though there wasn't much hope they could ever set foot outside their confinement chamber, much less discover a way out of the gas giant's depths, the captives followed the unspoken imperative of survival. But they had few resources and even less information. Some had tried to think of ways to commit suicide, surrendering utterly to despair, but Robb was not one to give up. And he did not give up on his companions, either. He wouldn't admit, not even in the back of his mind, that their chances of getting out of this ordeal were incalculably remote.
Workouts and skill games could not fill up the time between sleep sessions, so with nothing else to do, Robb and his comrades had shared family memories, talked about their lives. By now, they knew each other as intimately as if they had grown up together. One man missed his large family with a crippling misery; another woman grieved that she had never had children. Others apologized for past wrongs they had done to people who would never now hear their regrets.
Robb had already shared the news of how the EDF had mounted a terrific attack on the hydrogues at ringed Osquivel, how he had gone down in an armored encounter vessel in a last attempt at diplomacy-but the hydrogues had seized him, and the EDF attack had begun. There had been explosions . . . and he didn't know what had happened after that.
Most of all, Robb talked about Tasia Tamblyn. Of course she must consider him dead by now; Tasia was a tough girl, not given to believing in silly fairy tales. Everyone here had similar longings for their loved ones.
Outside, multicolored chemical and polymer mists drifted through the bizarre geometric metropolis like tendrils of fog. The amorphous quicksilver hydrogues moved like lumps of molten metal, going about their incomprehensible purposes. One of the captives, Anjea Telton, whistled to alert the captives. A trio of flowing hydrogues was coming toward their curved cell.
"This can't possibly be good," said Gomez. Robb didn't argue with him.
The hydrogues rarely communicated with them, and then only with terse commands. None of the human prisoners could understand what the deep-core alienswanted from them.
Beyond the bubble wall, the three ominous beings rose up and shaped themselves into identical forms they had copied from their first victim, who looked like a Roamer skyminer. Two of them carried the halves of a perfectly transparent shell about the size of a coffin. It was empty.
The deep-core aliens stepped against the curved wall and slowly pushed, easing themselves through the membrane. All the captives shrank away to the opposite side of the chamber, but the hydrogues moved forward. In the confined space, the humans had nowhere to run.
The hydrogues selected one of the prisoners at random, Charles Gomez, and closed in, carrying the opposite halves of the man-sized container. The third hydrogue gestured the other prisoners away. Gomez tried to flee, but could not get around the creatures. The drogues encircled their hapless subject like hunters using nets to capture a specimen.
"What are you doing?" Robb shouted at the aliens. "What do you want with him, or any of us?" The hydrogues went about their business without saying a word, as if simple communication was beneath them.
Robb threw himself forward. "Leave him alone! Leave us all alone!" He closed with the third hydrogue, landing a punch against its quicksilver amorphous body. His fist unexpectedly sank into the shimmering liquid metal.
He let out a shriek as unbearable cold shot through his fingers, hand, and wrist. Staggering back, he withdrew his arm from the quicksilver creature. The skin of his hand crackled with ice, steaming as it began to thaw. Nerve pain continued to scream into his brain, but he couldn't move his fingers. He sank to the floor, nursing his hand.
Robb looked back up in time to see the two halves of the coffin container seal tight, trapping Charles Gomez inside, like a mummy in a sarcophagus. The walls of the container must have been thick, for though the victim thrashed and pounded and shouted, no sounds escaped.
The hydrogues carried the coffin container to the curved wall, where they slowly melted back through. The chamber membrane shimmered and then solidified behind them, allowing none of the external pressure in. Robb cradled his aching hand and joined his fellow captives as they pressed against the transparent wall.
Outside, another group of hydrogues had hauled a much larger object forward, something made by non-hydrogue hands. Despite the horror and confusion around him, Robb's face lit up. "That's my encounter chamber! The hydrogues kept it."
A flood of unreasonable optimism rushed through his brain. "What if they're taking Charles into the diving bell? Maybe they'll pressurize it and let him go."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Anjea Telton.
Robb shook his head, refusing to give up hope. He had experienced too much despair over the past months of being trapped here. But even if the diving bell was shot back up to the clouds-of whatever planet they were inside now-how would Gomez ever get to a human settlement or even another ship?
"They might've arranged some sort of hostage transfer," Robb said. "The military has done it many times before. Maybe the drogues sent another emissary, like the one that killed King Frederick. Maybe they've arranged a cease-fire or peace terms. Maybe-"