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

Like Wal, Senior Tech Sergeant Alita Kyle had been in the CDF before The Killing, a power systems
technician, and a good one. He'd known her then; she'd been a crew chief for the Bolo. Back then,
of course, she'd been someone Jaime had thought of as an attractive young woman, a potential but
never-realized conquest. The social gulf between officers and enlisted personnel in the CDF
frowned on such liaisons.

Now, her warm but no-nonsense voice was enough to force notions of suicide-by-starvation from his
fuzzy thoughts. Her lean, labor-hardened body roused thoughts not of beauty or sex, but of simple
camaraderie and the service they'd once shared, a precious feeling in this place of nightmare.
Fumbling in the darkness beneath the scattering of stinking rags that were his bed, he found the
cracked, ceramic bowl he called his own, struggled to his feet, and made his way to the chow line.

"Hey, Jaime," another voice called to him as he stepped into the line.

"Hi, Dieter."

Hollinsworth, impossibly scrawny in his mud-plastered nakedness, took his place behind Jaime. He
scratched at the unkempt tangle of his beard. "Saw what you tried t' do out there today, Major.
That was... brave."

"Stupid, you mean."

Dieters teeth showed briefly in his dirty face. "Well, that too. But it's always nice t' know
someone cares."

Eventually, the line snaked up to one of the big, steel troughs from which the slaves' meals were
served. Each person dipped out their measure as they walked past, usually boiled rice or potato
soup or a nameless, sticky gruel. Sometimes there was meat in the stuff.

Many survivors shunned those scraps of meat, for rumor said that it came from harvested humans.
Jaime didn't listen to the rumors, and he didn't look too closely at the meat. Yeah, tonight's
rations might have a few bits of Rahni Singh mixed in, sure, but he simply closed off his thinking
mind and ate it. He'd also eaten cockroaches when he could find them, and rats, and crollygogs,
anything he could catch, anything to add protein to his diet, to keep body and mind intact.

He was interested in the rice, however. Rice was a labor-intensive crop both in the planting and
the harvesting. Machines didn't need food, and the rice meant that someone, somewhere on Cloud was
still growing it. He found a dry spot outside, against the old factory's eastern wall, with Dieter
and Wal to

21 his left and Alita on his right. They ate with their fingers, saying nothing for a long time.
In the east, the looming bulk of Delamar, the larger, inner moon, was slowly crawling into the
sky, almost half full, the lighted portion bowed away from the horizon. Delamar was big and it was
close, less than fifty thousand kilometers out, and its crater-pocked horns spanned a full ten
degrees of sky, the dark side blotting out the shining star-glory beyond. Here and there, diamond
pinpoints of light glowed on Delamar's night side. Once those had been human cities; now,
presumably, the Masters ruled there as they ruled Cloud. One story that continued to filter
through the camp held fervently that Delamar had not been taken, that those cities were still
free, that the remnants of the CDF flew ships from Delamar each night to scoop up a few lucky