"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 12 - Trouble Magnet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

TroubleMagnet




CHAPTER



1
A most peculiar thing happened to the battleship as it departed the Repler system: initially daunting in size and
form, it proceeded to undergo a kind of reverse metamorphosis, as if a butterfly were turning backward into an
ungainly caterpillar. Intimidating weapons blisters collapsed in upon themselves like so many glistening,
harmless bubbles. Lethal wave-form projectors shrank and slivered. Vast projecting appurtenances shimmied and
vanished like the ominous illusions they were, until the menacing martial shape had imploded completely. In its
place gleamed the far smaller fast-moving footprint of an ordinary cargo carrier approaching changeover. Clearly
not a craft that was part of the impressive fleet component still orbiting the planet that was rapidly receding
behind it, nor one that was likely to attract undue notice.

Visually revamped, externally overhauled, and mechanically face-lifted determinedly downscale, the Teacher
slipped unchallenged into the physically unreasonable but mathematically coherent state known colloquially as
space-plus, whereupon it swiftly left the Commonwealth border system known as Repler not only far behind, but
far beyond it.

тАЬChangeover complete. Exterior appearance modified as per necessity. Proceeding on general Almaggee vector.
Awaiting instructions.тАЭ A pause, then, тАЬResume search?тАЭ

Resume search. Flinx stared out the command port at the splay of distorted stars forward. Resume search for
what? His ship was doubtless referring to the search his friends and mentors Bran Tse-Mallory and the Eint
Truzenzuzex had sent him on. The one he had agreed to undertake provided only that they see to and look after
his injured love Clarity Held back on New Riviera. A simple enough quest request.

All he was being asked to do was search and scour the vast reaches of the largely uninhabited section of the
Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy opposite the Commonwealth, locate and establish contact with an unbelievably
ancient planet-sized weapons platform of the long-extinctтАФexcept for one recently demised individualтАФwar-like
species called the Tar-Aiym, and persuade it to aid in defending all civilization against an immense, undefined
menace steadily accelerating in this direction from a region of space near Bo├╢tes known as the Great Emptiness.
And do this while avoiding the attentions of the increasingly persistent and curious Commonwealth authorities,
the crazed suicidal adherents of the Order of Null who badly wanted him dead, certain elements of the AAnn


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 TroubleMagnet

Empire, and perhaps the isolated Qwarm assassin. All in hopes of saving the galaxy and, with luck, of in a few
years making it to his thirtieth birthday. And maybe, just maybe, finding out who his father was.

He took a deep breath. From her position sprawled across the center of the command console, the minidrag Pip
looked up at him, yawned, and stretched her brilliant pink-and-blue wings without unfurling them. He nodded,
though not particularly at her.