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

"Look, you don't understand!" Jaime called, desperate. "Surely the great !.!.! don't need to kill
him for what he's done!" He pronounced the alien name carefully, as he'd been taught. "!" was a
clucking sound of tongue against molars, made with the lips pulled back in a grimace. "┬░" was the
same sound, but made with the fips pursed for a whistle. The rapid alternation, "I.!.!," was the
only name the aliens used for themselves. All of the others, "clackers," "cluckers," even
"Masters," had been invented by their human slaves.




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BOLD RISING

The Speaker hesitated, and for a moment Jaime thought it was going to answer him. The answer, when
it came, was not in words, however. A lightning bolt, ragged, blue-white and searing, snapped from
the tip of one tentacle and brushed along Jaime's bare left arm. His body spasmed, twisting as
crackling fire convulsed him, knocking him down. He hit the mud with a splat as the floater
drifted past, its contra-grav field prickling.

Rahni turned and started to run, but his bare feet slipped and squelched in the mud as he splashed
for the distant edge of the pit. The big floater accelerated, sprouting two more tentacles as it
moved.

One tentacle slithered out, then snapped like a bullwhip, sparkling in the light as it wrapped
around Rahni's wrist and yanked back hard. Rahni's feet flew out from under him, and he landed
flat on his back with a loud splash.

Thrashing wildly, he tugged at the tentacle, as though trying to drag the floater out of the sky.
The other floaters closed in, tentacles slithering out to embrace the frantically struggling
human. His shriek echoed from the stark, blank walls of the shattered ruins.

Other clackers, including a monstrous three-meter walker on five sliding, blade-edged legs, closed
in swiftly from different directions, breaking up the crowd of milling slaves, isolating and
surrounding the frantically struggling human.

A trusty was there as well, a fat and oily man named Sykes who'd been, it was rumored, a lawyer
before the Great Killing. If so, he'd put his powers of persuasion to good use, convincing the
invaders that he was of more use as an intermediary between the slaves and their Masters than he
was on his hands and knees in a pit. His appearance set him apart from the other humansтАФclothing
more complete than rags and shreds, a clean-shaven face, a shockstick, and a band of dull silver
about his head.

"The rest of you slaves, back to work!" Sykes snapped. He slapped his left palm with the heavy
length of his shockstick. "Fun's over! Get back to work!"

Rahni's screams continued, fading gradually as the floater dragged him out of the pit, carrying
him suspended by a forest of tentacles. They were floating toward the Harvester crouched on the
crater rim in the distance. Its great, black maw was already slowly opening to receive this new