"Lichtenberg,.Jacqueline.-.Dushau.Trilogy.02.-.Farfetch.(V1.0)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

By the glow of those blood-red sparks and the faint emergency lights Krinata Zavaronne could see a small puddle of her own red blood spreading to mix with the deep purple blood of the warm Dushau body she sprawled against. Dying.
No! Not dead yet! We survived the crash!
Driven by sharp urgency, she fought for consciousness, fastening on the nonhuman rhythm of Dushau breathing, groping for the scintillating thrill of the curious psychic resonance she'd once shared with two Dushau.
But her eyes drooped shut, and she slipped back into darkness, swept into what seemed only a dream.
Dazzling sand dunes marched away into the mauve-hazed distance. An unforgiving copper fireball of a sun beat from the bare magenta sky. A small metal sliver lay half buried. in a large dune. She became every grain of sand in the desert. She Хwas the metal sliver, and the sky and sun, air and sand, balanced in ecstasy, celebrating within herself, the perfection of the Celestial Artist.
Then, subtly, the vision changed.
Death baked the hollow sliver and the protoplasm within. The huge dune ached to swallow the sliver and heal the wound the foreign thing had made in it.
In the far distance a sinister dirty haze smeared the horizon. A vibration in the sands identified it even as vision expanded to encompass it: sandstorm.

But it was veering away from the metal sliver. The rage of the dune, which was herself yet separate from her, reached out and dragged the scouring menace toward the helpless sliver that was also herself, anticipating a vicious satisfaction, a healing triumph. For a moment she fed all her energies into the dune's effort to cleanse itself, and the hissing, seething wind that moved mountains swerved toward the sliver.
Within the turbulent wall of sand, a face appearedЧa Dushau woman, young, elegant, bitterly hostile. The face withered with illness before her eyes, becoming suddenly familiar. It was the face she'd seen on the viewscreen as she'd fired on the Emperor's flagship, Desdinda's face, come to life to wreak her sworn vengeance.
Krinata squirmed and wrenched and beat free of the nightmare, pursued by the rising howl of the anguished winds, a howl of betrayal. "How could you!"
The keening wail of storm faded to the electronic sound of the computer's agony. She put one hand to her forehead and found a bruised slash. Head injury. That explains it. The helpless fear and rage had nothing to do with her real self. Already the details of the nightmare were gone.
She wiped blood from one eyelid and focused her eyes on the whirling kaleidoscope of colored shapesЧdie bridge monitor displays and control stations of Ephemeral Truth. It all began to come back to her. They had outraced the Allegiancy Empire's Squadron, found this system, and crash-landed the orbit-only ship. And we made it!
She pulled herself up, holding her breath against the pain in head and ribs, and found the bleeding gash on her arm. Gripping the pressure point of her left elbow with her right thumb, she twisted free of the torn crash webbingЧmeant only for Cassrians, not strong enough to hold a humanЧ

and staggered to the mangled console that had been her station during their mad flight across the galaxy.
The answer to her inquiry about this planet was still etched faintly into the screen, mocking her. THE DUSHAU
OLIAT TEAM, RAICHMAT, DECLARES FOURTH PLANET OF XB333291MS NOT FIT FOR HABITATION, COMMERCIAL EXPLOITATION, OR DOME COLONIES. SYSTEM FILE CLOSED.
Clinging to the warped edge of the console, she turned to look at the only other person on the bridge, Jindigar. He had lied; this was no safe-haven. He'd surely known that. Centuries ago he'd been a member of Raichmat, the exploring team that had evaluated the planet. But he had told her the planet was marginally habitable and had never been reported because it was not commercially useful. So, according to Jindigar, this official record did not even exist.
As the shock of betrayal swept through her, she had to fight off a dizzy wave of deja vu.
The computer's wails became barely articulate pleas for relief. It was a Sentient computer, a half-protoplasmic brain plugged into the ship's circuits. He had named himself Arlai, and had been her friend. But clearly they'd never repair him now. Tears in her eyes, Krinata turned to tug loose Arlai's power cable. Put him out of his misery.
The blood on her hands made her grip slippery, and as she struggled to perform the act of mercy, she didn't hear Jindigar gain his feet. She gasped as his warm, finely napped skin brushed her. He gripped her wrist with his seven-fingered, nailless hand, stopping her. "Not yet," he said.
She desisted. It was his ship, and Arlai his oldest friend.
Limping, blood flowing from a ragged hole in his thigh, he climbed the tilted deck to the astrogator's station, which he had been covering for their dive into atmosphere. In a velvety voice as midnight-deep as his eyes, he crooned to

his computer as he worked the controls. "Arlai, I'm sorry. You did your best. I must ask one last service, then I'll give you peace. PleaseЧwe must know."
Through his agony the computer responded, "Serving."
"Thank you, Arlai. Can you show me your previous displayЧthe one just before we entered atmosphere?"
"This is the best I can do. Too many circuits out."
The screen before Jindigar flashed. Krinata scrambled up the canted deck to look around the tall Dushau's elbow. Despite the blurs on the screen, she identified the stellar array that had been on their rear viewscreen for days. But near the edge of one blur there was a new symbolЧa massive hyperdrive traceЧthe Allegiancy Squadron!
"We didn't outrun them!" she groaned. A single ship had traced them as they fled the Emperor's flagship and had called the Squadron in on them. They had crossed the galaxy in short dashes to elude the Squadron and had finally lost them just before entering this system.
But they'd known the Squadron would search every system in the quadrant for any trace of them. So they had voted to try for a landing, Arlai insisting he could get the ship and its cargo of colonization materials down safely, though Ephemeral Truth would never make orbit again. When she accused Arlai of volunteering for a suicide mission, he had pointed out that he'd meet a worse end left helpless in orbit.
Arlai had planned for his passengers to take to the landers while Arlai brought the ship in empty, but while they were loading, Jindigar had suddenly called them to strap in and had Arlai take the ship down immediately.
Krinata had been looking for a good colony site when she'd found the official report on the planet. Before, she'd only studied Arlai's other files on the place, coded under the name Phanphihy, confirming Jindigar's statements. If Jindigar had lied to her, if she'd been wrong about him, it

was way too late to change her mind. The crimes against the Allegiancy Empire they had committed together had already condemned her to be executed with him. Х "Arlai," whispered Jindigar, "can you show us any sort of scan of this planetary system?"
"Atmosphere distorts, andЧ"
"Anything, Arlai," begged Jindigar.
The monitor cleared and another view sketched across it, one corner of the screen whited out by the planet's sun, for they were on the dayside. The rest was a blurring haze that shifted as Arlai struggled to find functional sensors and circuits. But the hyperdrive trace still showed clearly at the bottom of the screen. "Jindigar," said Arlai, "I'm sure. The Squadron is still thereЧand I think they're changing course in this direction." Numbers appeared on the screen. "There's the data. You'll have to plot it. I can't."
Jindigar's head drooped as he leaned on stiffened arms, a very human posture of dejection. "They will search every asteroid in this system until they find us."
"Their instruments will find this ship," she agreed, "but I doubt if they have anything that can locate thirty-one protoplasmic beings on a planet this size."
Arlai interjected, "Eighteen living protoplasmic beingsЧ
that I can discern. So many sensories out "
'If it was a livable planet, we'd have a chance," she accused bitterly, grieving for the dead she'd hardly known.
Jindigar twisted his head to focus his midnight eyes on her. The Dushau face was so humanoid, despite its short nap of dark indigo, large midnight eyes, and nearly bridge-less nose, that she believed she could read his expression: excitement and a revivification her words had given him.
"Of course it's livable. I told you that!"
She pointed to the other screen that still held the faint impression of the Raichmat team's report. She knew how

those reports were generated because that had been her job.