"Richard Hatch - Battlestar Galactica 3 - Resurrection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hatch Richard)

THEY PRESSED on through the endless darkness, aiming toward the
light of distant stars and the hope of better days. Hope was fading, and the
stars whose light they followed doubtlessly long ago went nova. They were
steering their lives by things that no longer existed, the light of forgotten
days cast by stars that no longer gave light. No one dared think such
things, of course; that would be too much like admitting defeat.

So, they pressed on, although there were fewer of them to do so, now.

The battle with the Chitain and the Cylons had cost the colonial fleet
terribly, in terms of lives lost and lives ruined. There were very few whole
family units aboard the rag-tag fleet; so many fathers died yahren ago,
during the first Cylon raid, leaving behind women and childrenтАФchildren,
grown now to young manhood and the age of their fathers when they
perished, leaving behind their own women and children. Without fathers,
or mothers, these children grew up wrong, and hard, and fast, and without
much respect for anything or anyone. They were not much better than
urchins, living in corridors and crawlspaces instead of streets and alleys, a
whole subculture that existed, but no one looked at too closely. Some of
these children, those old enough to be inducted, were given the choice by
the council whether they would spend time in the brig for their crimes,
ranging from theft to assault, or be conscripted into the military and
became Warriors. Some disappeared, back into the hidden world of the
poor and neglected; others chose prison, and still others chose the way of
the Warrior.

Theirs was a terrible life; but, for some, it was the only life they had
ever known. For some, it might be the only life they would ever know.

Still, there was some faint, small glimmer of hopeтАФthe chance that the
planet Kirasolia might have once been visited by the Thirteenth Tribe, and
it was toward this distant rumor of a world they journeyed.

They pressed onтАж but more of them began to wonder why.

It isn't fair, Apollo thought. He wasn't the first person to arrive at this
conclusion, nor would he likely be the last. It was a destination everyone
reached, sooner or later: it was simply through a path paved with a matter
of differing events that made the journey short or long.

He looked again at the comatose figure of Starbuck, so still and soтАж
lifeless. It was hardly a word anyone who knew him would have associated
with Starbuck, but that was the word. His external injuries had healed,
sped along their way by the med-berth in which he slept without waking
these past weeks, but the most severe damage was internal.
 Cranial pressure in Starbuck's skull had reached critical dimensions,
necessitating a craniotomy to relieve the fluid build-up before the pressure
squeezing his brain could render irreversible damage. The signs of the
surgery had already healed, but nothing else had changed about
Starbuck's condition. He slept on like a character from some long-ago