"Vonda N. McIntyre-Fireflood" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

The humans could move faster down the steep terrain than she could. She was afraid they would get
far enough ahead of her to dig a trench and head her off. If they had enough equipment or construction
explosives, they could surround her, or simply kill her with the shock waves of a shaped charge.
She dug violently, pushing herself forward, feeling the debris of her progress slide over her shoulder
armor and across her back, filling in the tunnel as quickly as she made it. The roots of living trees, springy
and thick, reached down to slow her. She had to dig between and sometimes through them. Their
malleable consistency made them harder to penetrate than solid rock, and more frustrating. Dark's
powerful claws could shatter stone, but they tangled in the roots and she was forced to shred the tough
fibers a few strands at a time. She tired fast, and she was using oxygen far more quickly than she could
take it in underground.
Dark slashed out angrily at a thick root. It crumbled completely in a powdery dust of charcoal. Dark's
momentum, meeting no resistance, twisted her sideways in her narrow tunnel. She was trapped. The
footsteps of the humans caught nearly up to her, and then, inexplicably, stopped. Scrabbling frantically
with her feet and one clawed hand, her left front limb wedged uselessly beneath her, she managed to
loosen and shift the dirt in the small enclosed space. Finally, expecting the humans to start blasting toward
her at any moment, she freed herself.
Despite the ache in her left shoulder, deep under her armor, she increased her pace tremendously. She
was beneath the dead trees now, and the dry porous earth contained only the roots of trees that had
burned from top to deep underground, or roots riddled with insects and decay. Above her, above
ground, the treetrunks lay in an impassable tangle, and that must be why the humans had paused. They
could not trench her now.
Gauging her distance to the basalt flow by the pattern of returning echoes, Dark tunneled through the
last few lengths of earth. She wanted to go under the stone barrier and come up on the other side in
safety. But the echoes proved that she could not. The basalt was much thicker than she had hoped. It
was not a single flow but many, filling a deep-cleft valley the gods only knew how far down. She could
not go under and she did not have time or strength right now to go through.
It was not the naked sheet of stone that would keep the humans from her, but the intangible barrier of
the flyers' boundary. That was what she had to reach. Digging hard, using the last of her stored oxygen,
Dark burst up through the earth at the edge of the lava flow and scrambled out onto the hard surface.
Never graceful at the best of times, she was slow and unwieldy on land. She lumbered forward, panting,
her claws clacking on the rock and scraping great marks across it.
Behind her the humans shouted, as their detectors went off so loudly even Dark could hear them, and
as the humans saw Dark for themselves, some for the first time.
They were very close. They had almost worked their way through the jammed treetrunks, and once
they reached solid ground again they could overtake her. She scrambled on, feeling the weight of her
armor as she never did underground. Its edges dragged along the basalt, gouging it deeply.
Two flyers landed as softly as wind, as milkweed floss, as pollen grains. Dark heard only the rustle of
their wings, and when she looked up from the fissured gray rock, they stood before her, barring her
way.
She was nearly safe: she was just on the boundary, and once she was over it the humans could not
follow. The delicate flyers could not stand up against her if she chose to proceed, but they did not move
to let her pass. She stopped.
Like her, the flyers had huge eyes, to extend the spectrum of their vision. Armored brow ridges and
transparent shields protected Dark's eyes and almost hid them. The flyers' eyes were protected, too, but
with thick black lashes that veiled and revealed them.
"What do you want, little one?" one of the flyers said. Its voice was deep and soft, and it wrapped its
body in iridescent black wings.
"Your help," Dark said. "Sanctuary." Behind her, the humans stopped too. She did not know if they
still had the legal right to take her. Their steel net scraped along the ground, and they moved hesitantly
closer. The black flyer glared, and the human noises ceased. Dark inched forward, but the flyers did not