"Keith Laumer - Bolos 8 - Bolo Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

sacrifice.

Jaime slowly sat up, blinking back hot tears. The stupidity, the sheer waste of it all was
sickening. Surely an intelligence as technically advanced as the !.7"! could manufacture eyes,
hands, livers, kidneys, and all of the other organs they periodically harvested from their slaves,
manufacture them to order, mechanical devices better than mere organics. If machines were so
superior to mere organics, what the hell did they need organic body parts for, anyway?

Sykes prodded Jaime's burning, half-numb arm with his shockstick; mercifully, he didn't trigger
it, but the nudge sent fresh agony rippling up Jaime's arm and across his shoulders. "Let's go,
you. Back to work, and thank whatever gods you still have left that the Speaker didn't decide to
fry you... or worse!"

As Jaime dropped back to hands and knees next to Wal, the colonel shook his head. "Jaime, that had
to be one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in my life."

"He didn't... know what... he was doin'," Jaime mumbled.

"Not him. You. Standing up to a Master that way! I thought you had better sense!"

"Couldn't... just let them... take him...." He was having trouble making his lips and tongue work.
The pain was growing worse as the numbness wore

17 off; there was an angry, jagged black stripe on his arm where the flesh had charred, and
blisters were forming around it.




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"Well, there wasn't much you could do about it, was there?" Wal retorted. "Hell, there's not a
damned thing any of us can do. Except die, I suppose. C'mon, Major, start working, or they'll
change their minds and harvest you too."

The use of his former rank, and the whipcrack of command in Wal's voice, dragged Jaime into
compliance. The pain in his arm grew worse, but he ignored it, continuing to harvest the shards of
humanity's civilization on Cloud for Cloud's hew Masters.

Time passed, measured only by the slow crawl of the stars across the sky. Eventually, trusties and
tripod clackers appeared, cutting out small groups of slaves and shepherding them back to the
barracks compound, while fresh slaves were brought in to replace them. Jaime and Wal's group were
led from the pit by Sykes and a dozen other truncheon-wielding humans, who herded them north past
the shattered stumps of the Celestial Towers, through the gap in the power fence, and into the
hole that was home.

They called it the Barracks, but it was both more and less than that. Before the Killing, there'd
been a sprawling manufactory here, a robotic assembly plant housed inside a long, low building the
size of a football field. Half of that building had been swept away by the firestorm; what was