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

even the latest in Bolo technology and six-megatons-per-second firepower had not stood a chance.
Celeste had been flattened by a rock dropped from space, the towers toppled, the arcologies
vaporized in a searing instant of ferrocrete-melting heat, the towers smashed by the crystalsteel-
splintering shockwave. A crater a hundred meters across and twenty deep had been blasted into the
city's heart; the shock had been so great that the very foundations of the city had settled, which
was why the crater was now a lake, and the city square, inundated by water and mud, had still not
drained.

Presumably, the other cities on Cloud all had suffered the same fate, though no one now slaving in
these pits knew for sure. Every person in and near Celeste had died in the attacks; the survivors
were those who had been outside the city when the high-velocity chunk of nickel-iron had lanced
out of a cloudless noon sky. There'd been no warning, no ultimatum, and no chance to coordinate
the entire planetary population. The war, such as it was, had been over within a few days of what
now was called the Great Killing.

The survivors had been offered amnesty by the Masters, the offer transmitted by Speakers, the
strange species of!.!.! floater that could actually communicate in Terran Anglic. The offer had
been irresistible: surrender peacefully to the Masters, and they would not incinerate the
continent... or vivisect the millions of humans already captured. Life, after all, was better than
death on a planetary scale.


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The Masters' definition of "life," however, included slave pits, slow starvation, and random
harvestings. More and more of the survivors were beginning to think they'd made the wrong choice.

Wal returned, his nylon bag empty. Without a word, he dropped to hand and knees and resumed
digging. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, the human slaves continued digging, as a steady
stream of individuals lugged bags filled with the detritus of civilization to the Collector,
emptied them into the machine's yawning maw, then trudged back to their assigned places.

Jaime's fingers touched something slick, and he fished it out, swishing it in the muddy water to
clean it. An exquisite china carving lay in his hand... a ballerina, en pointe, arms raised, her
figure miraculously perfect and unchipped.

Jaime stared at the figure for a long moment... until Wal reached across and plucked her from his
fingers, dropping her into the bag. He was left wondering how the figurine had survived. The
meteor strike and the shockwave that had followed had leveled the entire center of the city, and
moments later the ground as far back from the bay as the city square had been inundated by an
inrushing wall of water. Buildings had shattered and toppled... the ones that hadn't melted
outright. The ballerina must have been blasted from some apartment in one of the city's
arcologies, a knickknack swept from mantelpiece or bureau top and hurled by tornadic winds...
here. How had it survived?

"Why," Jaime asked aloud, his voice a ragged whisper, "are the Masters so damned concerned about
retrieving every scrap of junk?"