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

The penalty if a Confederation Navy ship caught them was an immediate death sentence for the captain,
and a one- way ticket on a drop capsule to a penal planet for everyone else on board. There was no choice,
of course, the Beezling needed the fantastic delta-V reserve which only antimatter provided, far superior
to the usual fusion drives of Adamist starships. The Omutan Defence Force ships would be equipped with
antimatter drives. They have it because we have it; we have it because they have it. One of the oldest, and
feeblest, arguments history had produced.
Kyle Prager's shoulder muscles relaxed, an involuntary submission. He'd known and accepted the risk, or
at least told himself and the admirals he did.
It would be quick and painless, and under ordinary circumstances the crew would survive. But he had
orders from the Garissan Admiralty. Nobody was to be allowed access to the Alchemist which the
Beezling was carrying; and certainly not the Edenists crewing the voidhawks: their bitek science was
powerful enough already.
"A distortion field has locked onto us, " Tane Ogilie reported. His voice was strained, high. "We can't
jump clean" For a brief moment Kyle Prager wondered what it would be like to command a voidhawk,
the effortless power and total superiority. It was almost a feeling of envy.
Three of the intercepting ships were cubing round to chase the Beezling while the frigates, Chengo and
Gombari, only rated one pursuer each.
Mother Mary, with that formation they must know what we're carrying. He formed the scuttle code in his
mind, reviewing the procedure before datavising it into the flight computer It was simple enough, shutting
down the safeguards in the main drive's antimatter- confinement chambers, engulfing nearby space with a
nova-blast of light and hard radiation.
I could wait until the voidhawks rendezvoused, take them with us. But the crews are only doing their job.
The flimsy infrared image of the three pursuit craft suddenly increased dramatically, brightening,
expanding. Eight wavering petals of energy opened outwards from each of them, the sharp, glaring tips
moving swiftly away from the centre. Analysis programs cut in; flight vector projections materialised,
linking all twenty-four projectiles to the Beezling with looped laserlike threads of light. The exhaust
plumes were hugely radioactive. Acceleration was hitting forty gees. Antimatter propulsion.
"Combat wasp launch, " Tane Ogilie shouted hoarsely.
"They're not voidhawks, " Kyle Prager said with grim fury. "They're fucking blackhawks. Omuta's hired
blackhawks!" He datavised an evasion manoeuvre order into the flight computer, frantically activating the
Beezling's defence procedures. He'd been almost criminally negligent in not identifying the hostiles as
soon as they emerged. He checked his neural nanonics; elapsed time since their emergence was seven
seconds. Was that really all? Even so, his response had been woefully sloppy in an arena where
milliseconds was the most precious currency. They would pay for that, maybe with their lives.
An acceleration warning blared through the Beezling - audio, optical, and datavise. His crew would be
strapped in, but Mother Mary alone knew what the civilians they carried were doing.
The ship's acceleration built smoothly, and he felt the nanonic membrane supplements in his body
hardening, supporting his internal organs against the gee force, preventing them from being pushed
through his spine, ensuring an undiminished blood supply to his brain, forestalling blackout. Beezling'
shuddered violently as its own volley of combat wasps launched. Acceleration reached eight gees, and
carried on building.
In the BeezlingтАЩs forward crew module, Dr Alkad Mzu had been reviewing the ship's status as it flew
towards their next jump co-ordinate at one and a half gees. Neural nanonics processed the raw data to
provide a composite of the starship's external sensor images, along with flight vector projections. The
picture unfurled behind her retinas, scintillating ghost shadows until she closed her eyelids. Chengo and
Gombari showed as intense streaks of blue-white light, the glare from their drive exhausts overwhelming
the background starfield. It was a tight formation. Chengo was two thousand kilometres away, Gombari
just over three thousand. Alkad knew it took superb astrogation for ships to emerge within five thousand
kilometres of each other after a jump of ten light-years. Garissa had spent a lot of money on equipping its
navy with the best hardware available. Money which could have been better spent at the university, or on