"W. Michael Gear - Forbidden Borders 1 - Requiem for The Conqueror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gear W Michael)

And what if I have to face him again? What if I have to look into his eyes?
Speak to him? Staffa ground his teeth and balled his fists. Then I shall do so
as a master to a servant. Yes, Praetor, the roles will be reversed this time.
Except Staffa couldn't stifle the quake of fear deep in his gut.
The comm near Captain Theophilos Marston's ear buzzed, followed by, "Sir, we
have a security alert from the
planet. Something's gone wrong, with the computers down there."
He jerked a rheumy eye open and sat up on his sleeping pallet while the last
skeins of his dream of the beautiful amber-eyed woman slipped away. "What the
hell do you mean, something's wrong with the computers? On the planet?
What does that have to do with us?"
"Uh, sir, it's something wrong with the security system. Alarms are going off
all over the planet. It started with one or two here and there. When personnel
checked them out, they couldn't find anything wrong. Now the whole planet's
ringing with alarm klaxons. It's mass confusion."
Marston rubbed his face and shook his head. "I suppose the deep space buoys
are involved?"
"Yes, sir. That's why we thought it necessary to wake you, sir."
"Great, just great. Thought the system was supposed to be foolproof."
By the time he'd dressed, grabbed a cup of stassa, and made it to the bridge,
pandemonium reigned. Officers shouted into their headsets, bridge status
monitors flickered on and off or displayed static-ridden snow.
"What the hell's this?" Marston demanded, waving his stassa cup before him.
"Planetary systems, sir," his watch officer told him.
Marston met his watch officer's worried eyes and dropped into the command
chair. "Shut that down. Cut the downlink. Isolate us. I want ship's systems
only. Whatever's gone wrong down there is their problem. Rotted Gods, this is
no time for a software failure. I want ship's eyes to the sky."
A subtle panic stole through Marston's heart as he watched the bridge monitors
firm up with solid images. The deep space scanners probed out into the vacuum,
mass detectors providing fuzzy images that slowly solidified into patterns
depicting solar wind, occasional vessels headed outbound, and the usual
clutter that orbited Myklene.
"Nothing incoming," the weapons control officer called.
Marston squinted up at the monitors and the clear sky they indicated. "Why is
this happening now? It just doesn't make sense. By the Rotted Gods, if the
Star Butcher chose this moment to strike, we'd be just about defenseless. What
happened down there? They let some idiot loose with an idea, or what?"
"I guess it started with security." The watch officer twirled the gold braid
that hung down from her epaulets. "You know how it is. One computer's hooked
to another. We'd just better hope this Star Butcher scare is exactly that. It
will take hours to sort this mess out."
"Relax, people," the intelligence officer called from his station. "We know
the Sassans are preparing for war, but they're still weeks away from
operational readiness. Not even Staff a would move before the Sassans were
ready. Sassa II would throw a fit if his troops weren't included on the first
strike. He'd have Staffa's head for it."
Marston tried to blink the cobwebs of exhaustion out of his weary brain. Would
he? If Staffa wanted to strike first, what would the Sassan God-Emperor do
about it? What could he do? Throw a tantrum? Blast the Lord Commander with a