"Dean Ing - Firefight Y2K" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

just now; it was yesterday.

Anyone recall a novel a decade ago featuring a stealth aircraft with a pixel skin as a cloaking device?
Maybe I got that one right; something like it is now under study for infantry battle dress. I see no reason
why it couldn't work for a fighting pod, whether it rolls, floats, or flies.




MANASPILL
"Keep your head down, Oroles," Thyssa muttered, her face hidden by a fall of chestnut hair.
Cross-legged on the moored raft, his lap full of fishnet, little Oroles had forgot his mending in favor of the
nearby commotion.
Though the lake was a day's ride end-to-end, it was narrow and shallow. Fisher folk of Lyris traversed it
with poled rafts and exchanged rude jokes over the canoe, hewn from an enormous beech, which
brought the Moessian dignitary to Lyrian shores. The boy did not answer his sister until the great dugout
bumped into place at the nearby wharf, made fast by many hands. "Poo," said Oroles, "foreigners are
more fun than mending old Panon's nets. Anyhow, King Bardel doesn't mind me looking."

Thyssa knew that this was so; Lyrians had always regarded their kings with more warmth than awe. Nor
would Boerab, the staunch old war minister who stood at the king's left, mind a boy's curiosity. The
canoe was very fast, but skittish enough to pitch dignity overboard when dignitaries tried to stand. And
what lad could fail to take joy in the sight? Not Oroles!

Yet Thyssa knew also that Minister Dirrach, the shaman standing alert at the young king's right elbow,
would interpret a commoner's grin as dumb insolence. "The shaman minds," she hissed. "Do you want to
lose favor at the castle?"

Grumbling, six-year-old Oroles did as he was told. Thus the boy missed the glance of feral hunger that
Dirrach flicked toward the nubile Thyssa before attending to his perquisites as minister to King Bardel of
Lyris.

Dirrach seemed barely to sway nearer as he spoke behind young Bardel's ear: "The outlander must not
hear you chuckling at his clumsiness, sire," he suggested in a well-oiled baritone.

Bardel, without moving: "But when I can't laugh, it seems funnier."

"Averae of Moess is devious," the shaman replied easily, while others rushed to help the outlander. "If
you think him clumsy, you may falsely think yourself secure."

Bardel gave a grunt of irritation, a sound more mature than his speaking voice. "Dirrach, don't you trust
any body?"

"I have seen duplicity in that one before," Dirrach murmured, and swayed back to prevent further
interchange. Truly enough, he had known Averae before, and had been uneasy when he recognized the
Moessian. Dirrach breathed more easily now that he had slandered the man in advance. Who knew what
crimes the outlander might recall? Then Averae stood on the wharf, and Bardel stepped forward.

Thyssa had not noted the shaman's glance because her attention was on the king. In the two years since
his accession to the Lyrian throne, Bardel had grown into his royal roleтАФindeed, into his father's broad