"Anderson, Poul - 1985 Flandry 14 - The Game of Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

N. Aquilae moved majestic at the center of Magnusson's command. Her planetoidal size, and the hundreds of live crewfolk as well as thousands of machines that this required, these were not basically for offensive purposesЧalthough she did have the capability of laying waste a world. They were to provide such a host of defensive missiles, projectiles, rays, such a density of shielding fields, that the admiral and his staff would remain alive to make their assessments and give their orders.
Zeta Sagitarii was much less protected. She existed for the purpose of directly killing enemies.
The saying is ancient, that the first casualty of any battle is your own battle plan. Magnusson knew this and allowed for it. He had a general idea of what he hoped to do, but was flexible about it and permitted his captains broad discretion.
Blenkiron, on the other hand, could think of nothing but to hold his armada in standard configuration, as nearly as possible. That did maximize the mutual defense of his ships. When they had reduced the foe sufficiently, the formation was to open up, englobe the survivors, and deal death on them from every quarter. Such was the theory.
Magnusson had lured him to this exact place, and prepared it beforehand. Ships of his lay in orbit about Battle Sun, in normal state, dark, powerplants throttled down to life-support minimumЧvirtually undetectable. The fleet that flaunted itself looked inferior. Blenkiron's should have checked for hidden reserves, but found itself too busy; also, Battle Sun is surrounded by dust and gas, residue of a stillborn planetary system, which complicates surveyance. When Magnusson judged the moment ripe, he ordered the summons.
Abruptly his extra force went into hyper-driveЧrisky, that close to a stellar mass, but their engines were especially well tuned, so losses were lightЧand entered the fray. They did so from all directions, admittedly sparse but nonetheless pouring fire inward while Magnusson's main body drove straight through the opposed formation, loosing every demonic energy in its weapons.
Zeta Sagitarii has been part of this thrust. She takes a hit astern. It is, actually, a near miss, which does not vaporize her; but it wrecks the engine section and sends radiation and red-hot chunks of metal sleeting everywhere else. Or so we postulate. What we know is simply that she was lost.
Blenkiron panicked. He did not fall into gibbering idiocy, but he saw his fleet shattered and knew not what to do. The captain of the flagship, one Tetsuo Ogawa, became a hero by calmly "advising" him. By fits and starts, the Terrans broke off the engagement. For the most part they withdrew in good order. The majority escaped.
They were, however, in no condition to continue the fight. Magnusson had become free to lay his hand on all of Sector Aldebaran.
Zeta Sagitarii drifts off, sublight, a cold and twisted lump. In some intact compartments, capacitors maintain temperature and air renewal. It is not enough. Rescue craft, searching through the flotsam of battle, will not come within detection range of this hulkЧas enormous as the least of reaches is between the starsЧbefore their squadrons must proceed onward. Surviving crew will die of thirst, those who do not go in blood and vomit, of acute radiation poisoning.
We would like to imagine Ensign Kittredge is spared that. Suppose her turret split open under the blast. Exposed to the vacuum of space, she would lose consciousness within thirty seconds. A piece of metal shearing through her heart or her skull would be quicker still.
Admiral Sir Olaf Magnusson's victory became classic in the annals of warfare.
Chapter 9
Diana's visitor surprised her. She had met Cynthians before, as ubiquitous as their species was, but not often, and never this person. For a moment she and he exchanged appraising looks. It was a male, she saw. If he had been wearing much more than a pouch and his silky white fur, she could not have been sure; the secondary sexual characteristics were few. Bipedal, though with arms nearly as long as his legs, he stood about ninety centimeters tall. Toes and the six fingers on either hand were almost equally prehensile. A bushy tail lifted up behind the round head and its pointed ears. Blunt-muzzled and long-whiskered, the face sported a natural blue-gray mask around luminous emerald-hued eyes. His voice was high-pitched, its Anglic clear though apt to come trilling and hissing through the pointed teeth.
"You are milady Crowfeather?" he said. "Permit self-introduction. I hight Shan U of Lulach. Is your Wodenite companion present?"
"No," she replied. "I don't know when he'll be back. What can I do for you?"
"Perhaps it is I who can do you a favor, milady. I have heard your partnership is in search of Ancient relics."
Diana decided this was understandable. She was merely one more human, but Axor inevitably generated gossip. "Well, yes. So far we've drawn blank. The public database screened no thin' for us that looked the least bit promisin'. He went off today to talk with the local priest of his church, in case the padre had heard of anything. I gather the parish takes in a big territory." She smiled wryly. "No doubt the two of them'll go on to every sort of theological shop talk."
"You cannot expect to find much information recorded about a planet when most of its land is wilderness that does not sustain colonists," declared Shan U. "Prospectors, timber cruisers, and other nonscientific explorers have scant incentive to go to the trouble of preparing scientific reports. The geographical separation of communities hinders the dissemination of locally available information." He arched his tail. "Ah, but it may be that I can put you in the way of some clues."
The heart sprang in Diana's breast. "You can? What? How?"
"Peace, I pray you. I am not, myself, qualified to be your guide. I am the captain of a riverboat. It will shortly be departing for Lulach. Now plying the great stream, year after year, one is bound to hear many a tale, and I recollect mentions, now and then, of impressive ruins glimpsed. Rumors about you and, especially, your companion having trickled as far as the waterfront, I thought I should come urge you to seek farther for informants."
"Oh? Where?"
"Why, along the river itself. Lulach alone holds many a merchant who has traveled widely over this planet, many a searcher for natural wealth who has adventured deep into the wildernesses. And beyond LulachЧWell, at any rate, I can convey you that far, and back again afterward if you discover zero there and decide not to range more widely. Would you like to inspect my vessel?"
"Where is it?"
"In the valley, at Paz de la Frontera, the head of navigation."
Diana's consideration was brief. If nothing else, she was sick of the cheap hotel where she and Axor had taken lodgings. At first she had enjoyed wandering around Aurea, seeing what there was to see and, as opportunity offered, asking about inexplicable structures. Now she had used those activities up, and had been sitting boredly in her room watching a teleplay. The latter end of this past couple of weeks had become wearisome.
In fact, she had begun regretting her refusal of Gatto's offer. Her immediate reason for that had been the fact that here she and Axor were on Daedalus; once they left it, they would probably not be able to return for a long time, if ever. Why not stay and investigate as originally planned? She was confident that the commandant would still be willing to arrange berths, if Daedalus turned out to be a blind alleyЧthough while she waited for a ship, she might have trouble fending him off. The past several days had almost brought her to the point of thus swallowing her pride and making her appeal. What a waste of time, when there was that unfinished expedition on Imhotep to start all over again!
Her second reason for staying had, as Gatto guessed, been the desire, against every reasonable hope, to learn what had become of Targovi. As the initial exuberance of freedom damped down, she had more and more felt anger and grief on his behalf gnaw at her. Here was a chance to forget them for a while, and maybe even accomplish something.
"Sure," she caroled. "Just a minute."
Having recorded a message for Axor, she skinned out of her clothes and into brief shorts and skimpy blouse. The lowlands were hot in summer. To her belt she attached purse and knife. She kicked her bare feet into sandals. "Let's go, Joe."
Air traffic was under pettifogging emergency restrictions, but a train system, built in pioneer days, still ran, and a station lay near the hotel. As the car they had boarded whirred up off the ground and started downhill above the guide cable, Diana and Shan U settled into a seat. She took the window side and kept her gaze outward, upon the landscape. Unoffended, he stuffed a pipe with dried leaves that smelled like warm saddle leather when he lit them, and conversed.
"The Highroad River has always been a main artery of travel," he said in answer to a remark of hers. "It should become still more so in the present situation. Roads between the settlements along it range from wretched to nonexistent, and as for flight, why, now the very omnibuses are subject to endless, arbitrary inspections, delays, and other such nuisances. Boats remain free of this. Should you find that you do wish to go to Lulach, my Waterblossom is no speedster, I grant you, but the fare is modest, accommodations are comfortable, food is good, and the leisured pace will enable you to learn much about our planet en routeЧwhich is highly advisable if you would strike into its outback. You will also find yourselves in entertaining company. This trip it includes a live, traveling show."
"What?" asked Diana absently. She was watching the mountains fall away in ridges and steeps that became jungled hills. Clouds loomed ahead, brooding rain; lightning flickered in their depths. The wind of its speed shrilled faintly into the ancient car.
"Another Cynthian, albeit from Catawrayannis rather than the mother world. She brought her tricks, together with a performing beast, to earn her keep while she toured Daedalus, as she had been doing elsewhere. Such restless individuals are frequent in my race."
Wistfulness tugged at Diana. Maybe she could work up an act of her own and take it to the stars?
"Then, abruptly, space traffic, which had been well-nigh unrestricted, was well-nigh banned in and out of Daedalus," Shan U continued. "Poor Wo Lia found herself marooned in Aurea, while events held folk cemented to the newscasts, who might otherwise have come to see her performance. For a while she tried, but was near despair when I chanced to enter Ju Shao's inn, where she was staying."
Diana's attention revived. Ju ShaoЧhadn't she heard that name before? From Targovi? Memory was vague. "What's that?"
"O-ai, a place in the slum quarter, with a miscellaneous clientele, since it is both cheap and tolerant. I suggested to Wo Lia that she invest what remained of her funds in passage with me. People at our ports of call will doubtless be glad to see her show, and in Lulach, amidst her own species, she can find work of some kind to tide her over."
Diana hoped the skipper was not merely a glib salesbeing. Well, she'd inquire among his crew, and if the word was goodЧa riverboat trip should be all kinds of fun.
The train terminated at Central Station in Paz de la Frontera. That was some distance from the river. Diana started walking, under the guidance of Shan U, who skipped along with the gait of an arboreal. Meanwhile she looked around in wonderment.
The air was a steam bath, full of odors rank, smoky, sweet, indescribable. An overcast hung low, but as yet the rain was only an occasional heavy, spattering drop. For a space she threaded through a crowd between drab walls, but then suddenly she was out in the open. Bushes and thorny trees grew well apart across dusty ground. At a distance she spied farmland, food animals grazing on Terran grasses, grainfields a-ripple under a sullen wind. Closer at hand, on every side, were the clusters of habitation. Each group of houses, shops, public buildings had its distinctive styleЧhere faчades square and featureless, surrounding hidden courtyards; there domes and spires; yonder broad expanses of vitryl in metal frames; and on and on. None amounted to more than a few score units, most were less. Spaces between them varied from a roadway to some two hundred meters, but were always clearly that: boundaries, buffers. Traffic was sparse, mainly closed-up groundcars whose riders gave pedestrians wary glances. Children romped outside the settlements, always in distinct clutches. A band of men, in everyday subtropical garb but distinguished by scarlet brassards, tramped around a wooden stockade. Though they bore no firearms, simply knives and staves, they were plainly a kind of militia.
"Events, the upheaval, the uncertainty of everything, have made Paz tense," Shan U observed. "Riots have happened. I will be glad to depart."
Diana nodded. She knew the history of the area, in outline. It had been founded in early Imperial times as a colony of veterans who wished to stay on Daedalus with their families after discharge. Each household received help in establishing itself, especially in converting its grant of land to agricultural usefulness. The practice had continued to this day.
The trouble was, and worsened decade by decade, that the Empire recruited its defenders from an ever more motley set of human societies on Terra's daughter and granddaughter planets. Like tended to settle down with like, and not to get along very well with unlike. The situation might have been happier, given more openings to the outside; but Daedalus, afar in a frontier region, was relatively isolated. Rivalries festered. Nonhumans had long since abandoned any thought of living in Paz.
She remembered her mother quoting a quip of her father's: "The Terran Empire is a huge melting pot. However, what appears to be melting is the pot."
After passing through a couple of hamlets where life seemed to go on about as usual, the road entered one whose walls were mortared stone underneath tile roofs. Nobody else was in sight. Doors stood barred, windows curtained or shuttered. Silence closed in, save for muttering thunder and the spat of raindrops on pavement. Shan U glanced around uneasily. "Best we make haste," he counselled. "This section has suffered an outbreak of lawlessness, and peaceable people have withdrawn till the Navy can send a patrol."
Four men came out of a lane and deployed across the way. They were dirty, unkempt, sour-smelling; beard stubble showed that two had not used any inhibitor for some time. One kept a pistol tucked under his belt, one flourished a club, one carried a knife, while a bola danced in the hands of the fourth.
"Well, well," said the first. "Well, well, well. Just stop where you are, if you please."
Shan U crouched, mewed, bottled his tail.
Chill crawled along Diana's spine. "What do you want?" she demanded.