"Wil McCarthy - To Crush the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

"I can't understand your prattle, old man," says Zuq.

"Maybe you should shut up," Natan suggests.

And in spite of everything, Bruno finds his neck growing warm, for no one has spoken to him like that
since his earliest days at Tamra's court, and rarely then. Even the megalomaniac Marlon Sykes had been
polite--often deferential--toward his fellow declarant-philander. Well, usually.

He waves a hand at the yellow uniforms, and in his best professorial tone he advises, "Overconfidence is
the chief failing of elites, boy. The robots will have no trouble finding you in these canary suits."

"We don't hide from our enemies," says Zuq. "Our enemies hide from us. That's not overconfidence, it's
psychology. And my rank is тАШsquad leader,' not тАШboy.' This is Deceant Natan."

"Well," says Bruno, "тАШold man' isn't my rank, either. I won't invoke ancient titles that mean nothing here,
but I was fighting robots when the Queendom itself was young."

And so he was. They'd made him king for it! But the Dolceti's point is taken nonetheless: he isn't a king
here, nor a soldier, nor even a guest. If anything, he's a sort of commandeered munition, hauled from the
mothballs of history and pressed back into service. He can't really imagine what knowledge Radmer
thinks he possesses, to turn the tide of this war. His Royal Override has already failed to halt the enemy's
advances, though in fairness to Radmer it did give them pause. They do carry within them some vague
memory of the old allegiances.

Bruno raises the binoculars again, and sees to his mild surprise that Lyman's Olders have already
engaged the enemy, with Radmer and the canary-colored Dolceti not far behind. The robots fight
well--they fight perfectly, with the fluidity of dancers and the cool precision of clockwork. Their swords
flash in elaborate sweeping arcs, as if spelling out glyphs in the afternoon air. But oddly enough, the
Dolceti are faster. And the Olders are certainly more cunning, and anyway the robots are--for
once!--badly outnumbered.

One of them manages to raise an antenna--the robotic equivalent of a scream for help--but it's quickly
cut down by the swords of human beings. The mast is a telescoping wand of impervium, theoretically
unbreakable, but it isn't all one piece, and everyone seems to know where to hack, where the vulnerable
joints are. Meanwhile, the box on the robot's head explodes in a hail of metal bullets. The other robots
are down just as quickly, and the only casualty Bruno can see is a single Dolceti guard, holding her throat
while a spray of blood jets between her fingers, turning her yellow tunic bright red. She looks calm, but
she'll be dead within the minute.

And Bruno takes this as a bad omen indeed, for if twenty robots can strike a blow against the elite guard
of this world's strongest nation--with Queendom technology assisting, no less!--then what will happen
when the robots return in their hundreds of thousands? In their millions? Radmer has been right all along:
without a miracle, the city of Timoch doesn't stand a chance.

Damn Conrad Mursk anyway, he can't help thinking. This isn't the first time the boy has swept into
Bruno's life, turning everything on its head. Even in the days of the Queendom, Mursk had always had an
uncanny talent for trouble.

book one