"Keith Laumer - Bolos 9 - Bolo Strike" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

to help you, you and all your people!"
"We were not aware that we needed help, Mr. Redmond. The gods,
after all, are on our side. All of them!"
A second godflier had arrived from the direction of the city . . . and a
third. As two mounted guard overhead, one touched down a short
distance away. The somas on board were enforcer types, lean, heavily
scaled, and menacing with their leather garments and stunsticks. Their
eerily human faces, weaving atop slender, snake-supple necks, made
Tami queasy. There were human warrior somas as well, hulking, brutish-
looking men with leathery skin, upsweeping, curved horns growing from
their foreheads, and oversized, night-seeing eyes.
"You can't do this!" Redmond screamed. "You need us! You need our
help if you're ever to be free of these monsters!"
"On the contrary," Veejay replied, "it is you who need our help now,
just to stay alive. Please do exactly what the gods tell you, or you may be
injured."
 "I'll see you all in hell first!" Redmond screamed, groping for the
weapon holstered beneath his jacket.
The enforcers started toward them, stunsticks upraised. . . .
Chapter Two
On board the transport Heritas, inbound for Caern, Colonel Streicher
and Major Ramirez settled back on the reclining seats within the
transport's briefing theater and allowed the technicians to adjust their
input helmets and mikes. Only a handful of other shipboard officers
shared the room with them, but when the VR tech touched a screen on
the main console, the theater vanished and they found themselves within
a stadium packed with thousands of uniformed Confederation officers.
Their bodies were still in the theater aboard Heritas, but in their
minds, beneath virtual reality helmets and the needle-slender beams of
light flicking across their retinas, and with low-frequency electromagnetic
beams stimulating the tiny net of cranial implants touching their brains,
they were elsewhere, beneath a green transplas dome on a world
thousands of light years distant from the star system of Sallos. At the
stadium's center, towering above them all, was the richly beribboned and
impressively martial form of Major General Weslen Ricard Moberly.
"We are fighting," he said, his amplified voice booming through the
virtual theater like thunder, "against gods. . . ."
A ripple of amusement danced through the bleachers, seating
alcoves, and tables encircling the General's titanic form.
"At least," the apparition thundered on, "Intelligence informs us that
that is how the Aetryx see themselves.
"In fact, our xenopsychological people suggest that they evolved
socially with an innate worldview that essentially hardwired them to
think of themselves as the masters of the cosmos. It might be a religious
compulsionтАФthink of all the human religions that told their followers
that they were lords of creation. More likely, there's a biological root.
Maybe their ancestors learned to breed domestic animals to fit specific
needs, and they developed from that a philosophy that saw all other life
as tools, as things to be used for their gain, comfort, and safety. We just
don't know.