"McCay, Bill - Stargate Rebellion" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCay Bill)

had already been instituted there by no less a personage than Ra
himself. From the very beginning of the First Days on Earth, Ra had kept
a mastery of the tools of terror. Thus had he bent the slave
populations to his will. And, if truth were to be told, terror had also
been part of the carrot and the stick which he'd used in leading the
gods. The carrot had been power, of course, and a lifetime extending far
beyond that of an average mortal. But if one should fail the sun god,
if one should displease Rathe punishment was death. And Ra could offer
death in so many unpleasant guises, like a session with his gem that
could turn bones to water. Like it or not, Ra had shepherded his
attendant gods with fear. Hathor smiled. She could do that. On Earth, a
military transport plane took off from Washington. Its interior was not
exactly spartan-after all, there was a senior officer aboard. But
General West was smart enough to fly only on regularly scheduled
jets-and not the only passenger. Other officers of similar rank had
never bothered to learn that simple lesson, and had managed to blight
their careers. A colleague of West's, a head honcho of a European
operation, had once flown from Rome to the U.S. in a huge, unscheduled
Starlifter with only his female aide on board. After being roasted in
newspapers across the country, that unfortunate general had wound up in
charge of counting penguins down in Antarctica. But if he flew by the
rules, nonetheless the general had plenty of room to spread out as the
plane reached its cruising altitude. Which was just as well-his
briefcase was full of reports to be read, and he had to come to a
decision on those contents before the plane landed. West's slightly
jowly face took on the stony aspect of the veteran poker player as he
reviewed the first of a succession of documents stamped TOP SECRET. This
was a technology assessment from the Pentagon big-domes who had
attempted to take one of those blast-lances apart and put it back
together again. Of course, they were careful to cover their scientific
butts, but they were reasonably optimistic. While they did not promise
production-line manufacturing of the weapons in two weeks, they did
offer the opinion that the technology was accessible. West frowned. The
only bottleneck was that the lances, like all the alien high technology
Jack O'Neil and the survivors of the Abydos recon team had reported on,
depended on that quartz-like crystal to work. And the only source of
that crystal on Earth was the StarGate. West idly speculated on how
many blasters they could make if they broke the matter transmitter, or
whatever it was, into small pieces.... That would solve two problems-the
weapons would permanently tilt the balance of power in favor of the U.S.
here on Earth, while dismemberment of the StarGate would close a
profoundly disturbing door on a hostile universe. He went back to
reading, this time switching to the survivors' after-action reports.
Energy weapons, matter transmission, a working starship. Those were just
a few of the technological goodies the recon team had observed on the
other side of the StarGate. On the other hand ... West shuddered as he
went back over Colonel Jack O'Neil's classified report. The StarGate
had almost been used as a delivery system for an amplified atomic bomb,
with a blast big enough to end civilization on this planet. Were the
possible advantages worth the all-too-concrete risks? Of course, O'Neil