"Colin Kapp - The Pattern of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kapp Colin)

bloody forehead to sink again into the timorous shadows of a ruined doorway.
'Bron! Bron, for pity's sake, why don't you reply?'
He made no answer. The blood from his forehead trickled down his face and ran salt in his
mouth. Soon the shock and the pain forced him from his reverie and pressed on him a brutal
acceptance of his environment. For the first time he showed an awareness of the holocaust.
He looked outwards across the flickering waste of the tormented city, agony and
comprehension filtering across his torn brow.
'Bron, for God's sake answer.'
The sky flared suddenly green and hideous as the Yagi's beams found and detonated an
unknown arsenal. The blast from the explosion damned the building as a sanctuary, and only
instinct flung him clear. The walls between which he had been sheltering broke apart, and the
door against which he had pressed his back seconds before was buried deep under a
murderous pile of masonry.
'Bron, are you receiving me at all?'
'I hear you.' In clear ground on the square he stopped and forced himself to speak, his
voice ragged with undertones of near-hysteria. 'Where are you? I can hear you, but I can't
see you.'
'Jupiter!' The voice was aghast. 'No! You have to be joking! Six years and a quarter of the
Commando budget were needed to place you where you are ... and now you feign amnesia.
Bron, you have to be joking!'
'I never felt less like joking. I feel sick. Who are you ... if you're not imagination?'
'Steady, Bron, steady! The big blast must have given you concussion. You're in a bad way
by the sound of things. I had to use the semantic trigger to pull you out of that coma. Is
there nothing you remember at all?'
'Nothing. I don't know who I am, or who you are. You seem to be speaking in my head. Am
I having hallucinations?'
'Far from it. This all has a rational explanation. Only your memory is faulty.'
'Where am I?'
'In the city of Ashur on the planet Onaris. It's under attack by Destroyer ships.'
'And you hear me. How do you hear me? Where are you?'
'Jupiter! This gets worse. We don't have time for explanations now. First you have to get
clear of the square and find somewhere to rest. I'll explain later, if your memory doesn't
come back. For the moment you'll have to take what I say on trust.'
'And if I don't?'
'Don't dare me, Bron. There's too much at stake. If you remembered what you were, and
why you were there, you'd know better than to ask the question. Don't make me show you
why.'
Bron pressed his head into his hands for a full half minute, then straightened.
'Very well! I accept that for the moment. What do you want me to do?'
'Move out of the city centre. The damage won't be quite so bad on the perimeter. On the
other side of the square, as you now face it, is a thoroughfare. Follow that until I tell you
where to turn. I'll stay with you.'
Bron shrugged and followed the instruction, fully aware now of the blistering fury which
shrieked out of the sky. The ship above was obviously preparing for a landing, ploughing for
itself a stabilizing furrow deep into the flesh of the city, and savagely eliminating all resistance
in the areas surrounding. The relative absence of population in the attack area suggested that
the atrocity had not been unannounced. A rising scream to the east told of where yet another
spatial dreadnought had decided to make planetfall. Something about the pattern stirred a
thread of memory, but its pursuit eluded him.
Cautiously he picked his way round the edge of the square, finding an unknown talent for