"Axler, James - Deathlands 035 - Skydark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Axler James)

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."
First edition March 1997
ISBN 0-373-62536-7
SKYDARK
Copyright й 1997 by Worldwide Library.
AH rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada MSB 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Printed In U.S.A.
"Iron covered the fields and roads: iron points reflected the rays of the sun. This iron, so hard, was home by a people whose hearts were harder still." ЧFrom Bullfinch's Mythology,
"Legends of Charlemagne,"
attributed to Ogier the Dane, circa 800 A.D.
"From what same clay are both heroes and tyrants made?" ЧFrom Relativism and Reality in Modern Political Thought by Dr. Dorm Tretheway, D.D., Patti Party Press, Sandpoint, Idaho, 1999
THE DEATHLANDS SAGA
This world is their legacy, a worid born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 dial was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.
There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always bangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.
But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endureЧin the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature's bean despite its ruination.
Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.
Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville's own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.
J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan's close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deamlands with the legendary Trader. Doctor Theophflus Tanner: Tom from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn't have imagined.
Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare. Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.
Dean Cawdor: Ryan's young son by Sharona accepts the only worid he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing die promise of tomorrow.
In a world where all was lost, they are humanity's last hope....
Prologue
There was no escape from the nightmare of Death lands after the nuclear holocaust in 2001. Ryan Cawdor understood that, take it or leave it, this was Ms world. He never forgot that no court of law, no army of deliverance, no rescue squad would be there to put things to right-ever.
What population was left existed without laws or moral guidance, other than to obey the savage rules of survival. Nature lay waste, ruined, contaminated, the tragic price humanity paid for the blind worship of science. And there was hardly a steeper price than the kind of severe genetic scrambling that created those mutated humans who were monstrous in body and mind.
Life always meant peril in the Death lands, but the mutants seemed to symbolize the unconscious dread of the disintegration of the species. So they were often targeted for summary execution by the norms, and those mutants who were able and of a like mind energetically returned the favor.
Through this world Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists roamed, with predark wags if a lucky find provided scarce fuel. But even with the wags travel was
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DEATHLANDS
a high risk enterprise, and increasingly the mat-trans units in the redoubts offered the best option for a change of scene or quick exit from a hotspot.
Built before skydark, the redoubts and their mat-trans gateways had endured the nuke barrage because they were entirely self-contained, blast-proofed and powered by their own nuclear reactors.
In the course of dozens of locational jumps with the units, they had come across only a very few people who had discovered the secret of the gateways.
All that was about to change.
And not for the better.
Chapter One
A whisper of chill, stale air crept along the mat-trans chamber's armaglass walls, and with it came a whiff of something sharp and electric. As the raised metallic floor plates began to glow brighter, Ryan Cawdor scanned the faces of his five friends.
Only Krysty returned his gaze, her green eyes steady. Though she held her head high and her long-limbed, statuesque body defiantly erect, he could tell mat deep down she was anxious about the jump: her prehensile, mutant red hair had drawn close to her nape, retracting in response to danger.
The woman's anxiety was understandable. The danger was very real, and close enough to taste.
Mildred Wyeth sat beside Krysty with her eyes shut and her head bowed. The multiple beaded plaits of Mildred's hair swayed slightly as she clenched her hands into fists at her sides, her stocky form tensed as if to absorb a body blow. Whip-lean Jak Lauren stared blankly off in the middle distance; though the expression in his ruby-colored eyes was unreadable, the tendons of his jaws flexed like steel cables under the waxy white of his scarred cheeks. J. B. Dix gripped the brim of his beloved fedora with both hands, twisting it down
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DEATHLANDS
Skydark
11
to seat it more firmly on his head. Behind the Armorer's round, steel-rimmed spectacles, Ryan caught the glimmer of a sardonic smile. What was that old predark saying? When the crapfall really got heavy, it was time to screw on your hat.
Ryan turned to Doc Tanner last. The old man's eyes were tightly closed, his lips moving as he muttered softly to himself. He repeated a short phrase over and over. Under the present circumstances, on the verge of molecular disassembly, any whisper might have been taken for a prayer. Though the phrase Doc was repeating sounded vaguely like a plea for mercy or salvation, it wasn't
The one-eyed man recognized the strange words. Doc, a fountainhead of obscure, dated and often arcane knowledge, had taught Ryan the phrase and its meaning.
Morituri te salutamus.
As Doc had explained, the words were in LatinЧ one of many human languages long dead before the nuke shit hit the fan. Morituri te salutamus was a Roman gladiator's oath to his emperor before entering mortal combat, which signified submission and allegiance to a higher power and an acceptance of one's own fate.
"We who are about to die salute you."