"Peter F. Hamilton - The Reality Dysfunction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

The Reality Dysfunction
Book 1 of Night's Dawn Trilogy
Warner Aspect

Also by the same author

THE NAKED GOD
THE NEUTRONIUM ALCHEMIST
A SECOND CHANCE AT EDEN
THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION.

Copyright @ 1996 by Peter F. Hamilton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Part 1: Emergence
 1

Space outside the attack cruiser Beezling tore open in five places, For a moment anyone looking into the
expanding rents would have received a true glimpse into empty infinity. The pseudofabric structure of the
wormholes was a photonic dead zone, a darkness so profound it seemed to be spilling out to contaminate
the real universe. Then ships were suddenly streaking up out of the gaping termini, accelerating away at
six gees, twisting round on interception trajectories. They were different from the spherical Garissan naval
craft which they had tracked between the stars, graceful, streamlined teardrop shapes. Larger and
dangerously powerful. Alive.
Nestled snugly in the armoured and sealed command capsule at the heart of the Beezling Captain Kyle
Prager was shocked out of a simple astrogration review by a datavised proximity alert from the flight
computer His neural nanonics relayed information from the ship's external sensor clusters directly into his
brain. Out here in the great emptiness of interstellar space starlight wasn't powerful enough to provide an
optical-band return. He was relying on the infrared signature alone, arching smears of pinkness which the
discrimination programs struggled to resolve. Radar pulses were fuzzed and hashed by the ships'
electronic-warfare pods.
The combat programs stored in the memory clusters of his neural nanonics went into primary mode. He
datavised a quick sequence of instructions into the flight computer, desperate for more information.
Trajectories from the five newcomers were computed, appearing as scarlet vector lines curving through
space to line up ominously on the Beezling and her two escort frigates. They were still accelerating, yet
there was no reaction-drive exhaust plume. Kyle Prager's head sank. "Voidhawks, " he said. On the couch
next to him, Tane Ogilie, the Beezling patterning-node officer-. , groaned in dismay. "How did they
know?тАЭ
тАЬConfederation Navy Intelligence is good, " Kyle Prager retorted. "They knew we'd try a direct
retaliation. They must have monitored our naval traffic and followed us. " In his mind a black pressure
was building. He could almost sense the antimatter-confinement chambers inside the Beezling twinkling
like devilish red stars all around him.
Antimatter was the one anathema which was universal throughout the Confederation. No matter what
planet or asteroid settlement you were brought up on, they all condemned it.