"Simon R. Green - Deathstalker Prelude 02 - Ghostworld" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

Simon R. Green- Deathstalker Prelude 02 - Ghostworld


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Ghostworld by Simon R. Green

GHOSTWORLD
Inside Base Thirteen, nothing moves. Doors remain closed, elevators are
still, and shadows lie undisturbed. One by one the flickering lights gutter and
go out, and a growing gloom stalks the empty steel corridors. The few
computers remaining on-line mutter querulously to each other in the growing
dark, until finally they fall silent in the night.
In the silence, in the dark, something stirs.



CHAPTER ONE

Something in the Storm
The Darkwind's pinnace fell away from the mother ship, a gleaming silver needle
against the endless night. It hung for a moment above the Rim World called Unseeli,
and then its nose dropped, the engines roared silently, and the pinnace slipped into
Unseeli's churning atmosphere like a knife into a belly. The engines burned bright,
powering the slender ship through the violent storms by sheer brute force. Lightning
flared round the pinnace's hull, and winds gusted viciously from every side, but nothing
swayed the ship from its course. It punched through the roiling clouds with arrogant
ease, dropping like a stone towards the metallic forest below.

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Simon R. Green- Deathstalker Prelude 02 - Ghostworld


Unseeli had no oceans and no mountains, only an endless arid plain covered by a
brightly shining forest stretching from pole to pole. A forest whose colossal metal trees
knew nothing of leaf or bud, autumn or spring. They rose unbending from the grey
earth in the millions, cold and unfeeling, like so many gleaming metal nails. Towering
almost to the edge of the planet's atmosphere in places, the huge trees stood firm and
unyielding against the turbulent storms. Winds whipped viciously around leafless
branches, radiating out from smooth, featureless trunks in needle-sharp spikes. Violet
and azure, gold and silver and brass, the trees reached up into the thunder and lightning
to welcome the falling craft.
Captain John Silence sat slumped in his command chair, watching the sensor display
panels before him. They changed from moment to moment with bewildering speed, far
too fast for him to follow. Which was why the ship's AI was piloting them down and he