"Peter F. Hamilton - Fallen Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

sideward until he wound up in Strategic Planning, a glorified errand boy for
artificial sentience programs running resource-allocation software.
"What the hell did you want to ask me you couldn't say it down at the base?"
"I want an assignment for my platoon," Lawrence said. "You can get it for me."
"What kind of assignment?"
"One on Thallspring."
Colin swigged from his beer tin. When he spoke his voice was low, guilty.
"Who said anything about Thallspring?"
"It's where we're going for our next asset realization." On cue, another flight of
TVL88s swept low over the town; with their rotors running out of stealth mode
the noise was enough to rattle the corrugated roof. All eyes flicked upward as
they drowned conversation. "Come on, Colin, you're not going to pull the
bullshit need-to-know routine on me, are you? Who the hell can warn the poor
bastards we're invading them? They're twenty-three light-years away.
Everybody on the base knows where we're goingтАФmost of Cairns, too."
"Okay, okay. What do you want?"
"A posting to the Memu Bay task force."
"Never heard of it."
"Not surprised. Crappy little marine and bioindustry zone, about four and a
half thousand kilometers from the capital. I was stationed there last time."
"Ah." Colin relaxed his grip on the beer tin as he started to work out angles.
"What's there?"
"Z-B will take the biochemicals and engineering products; that's all that's on
the asset list. Anything else... well, it leaves scope for some private realization. If
you're an enterprising kind of guy."
"Shit, Lawrence, I thought you were a straighter arrow than me. What
happened to getting a big enough stake to qualify for starship officer?"
"Nearly twenty years, and I've made sergeant. I got that because Ntoko never
made it back from Santa Chico."
"Christ, Santa fucking Chico. I forgot you were on that one." Colin shook his
head at the memory. Modern historians were comparing Santa Chico to
Napoleon's invasion of Russia. "Okay, I get you posted to Memu Bay. What do I
see?"
"Ten percent."
"A good figure. Of what?"
"Of whatever's there."
"Don't tell me you've found the final episode of Fleas on the Horizon?"
"That's Flight: Horizon. But no; no such luck." Lawrence's face remained
impassive.
"I got to trust you, huh?"
"You got to trust me."
"I think I can manage that."
"There's more. I need you at Durrell, the capital, in the Logistics Division.
You'll have to arrange secure transport for us afterward, probably a medevacтАФ
but I'll leave that to you. Find a pilot who won't ask questions about lifting our
cargo into orbit."
"Find one who would." Colin grinned. "Bent bastards."
"He has to be on the level with me. I will not be ripped off. Understand? Not
with this."
Colin's humor faded as he saw how much dark anger there was in his old