"Centauri, Arrival" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Sid)

A Rover, unattended, sitting idle near the skirmishers. And as she moved toward it she heard the shattering above her head and then felt a coolness across her back. She reached back, craning her arm to touchЕglass. Her mind rebelled, imaging the darts cutting into her, past her spine, daggers aimed to the heart of her childЕ
The child that was coming.
She staggered forward to the rover and climbed in. She pounded the navscreen, entering random coordinates into the autopilot. The rover lurched forward and she saw a Believer go down under it. Then the rover shot around the periphery of the base and into the tongues of rich red xenofungus that licked the edges of the base.
The xenofungus throbbed with life, agitated at all the violence, perhaps. She could feel its thoughtprobes in her mind, causing the world to waver and jolt around her. She had no resistance. She felt a madness overtake her, like colored lights resolving into hypnotic patterns, all bathed in red.
She felt her child coming. And as the roverТs wheels hung up in the fungus and flipped, casting her out and into the arms of Planet, she felt her child coming strong.
A child of Planet.


Centauri: Arrival, Episode 8

"We must know who the father is." Lady Deirdre lifted one hand and gestured coolly at the trembling woman who stood before her. The woman, Reanna, had a face that seemed as fragile as glass, and Deirdre could see her eyes tear up.
"I am not sure. I can not tell you, Lady. A soldierЕ"
"There is no genetic match to any of our citizens on record," Deirdre continued. Reanna turned her head and her eyes defocused, as if she were hearing a strange sound. Deirdre could hear nothing. "Zakharov has provided me with the Settlement's genetic records. Of course, he wants to know, just like all of us, who thisЕchildЕis that leads these troops against him."
"I don't know who he is," said Reanna. "But I know why you and the others want him." Deirdre could not help staringЕReanna's hands shook so much they appeared sometimes as a pale blur. "The child has something, a small piece, of what you all want."
Deirdre arched a narrow brow. "And what is that?"
"The resonance. A piece of the resonance."
"Resonance?" Deirdre shook her head and turned away from Reanna, walking lightly to the large windows that looked out over Planet's surface. "What is resonance? What does that have to do with anything?" She turned back to Reanna. "Explain yourself."
"This child has taken a piece of Planet, a chunk of its flesh."
"You mean the structure?"
Reanna's head snapped around again, and she pushed her blonde hair away to touch one of her ears. "Not its structure. Not flesh, but spirit. There is somethingЕout thereЕthat wants it all backЕall of Planet back."
Deirdre stared at Reanna. She had the certainty of madness. "Who wants it? This child?"
"No. HeЕmy sonЕis only a byproduct. The being or beings that wants itЕtheir voice is all around us. The thing they want cries out to them."

Episode 8, part 2

Chairman Domai lifted one hand and stopped his troops on the ridge overlooking the Alien Temple. Behind him two hundred men and women came to a stop, their eyes focused woodenly ahead.
Domai, leader of the Free Drones, surveyed the land below. Zakharov had erected a low barrier around the Alien Temple, and guards patrolled at regular intervals. The guards held powerful laser weapons with finely-tuned sighting mechanisms, and they wore powered armor. Domai had approached the temple through the xenofungus, but he would not be surprised if Zakharov's scanners had already pinpointed his approach.
Domai did not have the complex weapons or technology of Zakharov, or the cunning of the Data Angels. But he had his Drones, the working outcast of Planet, stubborn and nearly impervious to pain. He looked at his own strong hands, and imagined them closing around a Talent's throat.
Strong hands and an iron will. It had brought him far. And as Domai watched, he rememberedЕ

Episode 8, part 3

Domai sat at the edge of his bunk, staring at his hands. The lights remained dim, as Central required, and all of the other drones slept their dreamless slumber.
But Domai could not sleep. He sat in the low-ceilinged Drone Barracks room on the edge of his narrow metal bunk and stared at his hands, hands cut and scratched from hard labor. And as he stared, slowlyЕthoughtsЕbegan to form, swirling and gathering in the cavern of his mind. Thoughts of a different time, of rich smells and fluid speech, debates and drinking, and the feel of fine cloth on his arms, and people saluting him. Dim memories, slipping away from him, behind a wall of thick fog.
The fog of poisonous yellow gas, and blackness. People grabbing at him, his mind screaming in horror, but he could not speakЕhis tongue remained thick and useless. And later as the blue-suited medical techs pulled him from the tangle he tried to speak, but his thoughts would not form, as of lost in a vast dark maze.
His hands. A Talent had been crushed by a falling support yesterday. Domai had found the man and stood over him as blood leaked from under flesh and metal. Urgent thoughts sparked in Domai's brain, but his muscles stayed heavy and noncommittal. Domai could onlyЕstare.
He stared at the Talent's hands, which were not different from Domai's hands, except for the thickness. And the fear in the man's wide black eyes ads he lay bleeding under the metal was not so different from Domai's fear when the psych whips struck his back, except perhaps that Domai's fear was slower to rise, and thus more manageable.
He looked at the walls around him. This space, cramped and dark, seemed so small and stifling under the dim yellow lights of the buzzing glowlamps.
A buzzer sounded, harsh and jagged. The full lights came up, bright in his eyes. A metal door clanged open, and fifty Drones rose from their bunks. Domai stood with them.

Episode 8, part 4

Domai watched the overseers in the mess hall. He stared at the menacing blue figures that lurked at the room's edges, pacing along the length of the plain metal curve of corrugated metal that made up the Drone Mess.
One of the seated drones, Kohai, turned his head slowly and reached out to take a nutrient stick off of his neighbor's tray. Kohai was big and dull-eyed, a drone full of spite and bitterness, and had two huge fists and a strong back from working on the skyfarm assembly line. But his neighbor, Pankol, was not small either.
The wise man sets pride aside in favor of accomplishment. Now where had that come from, leaping into Domai's brain?
Pankol reached out and put Kohai's hand in a crushing grip. The two Drones stood slowly, dull gray eyes staring into each other, smoldering. Pankol lifted his tray and smashed it into Kohai's left cheekbone; the Drones' thoughts were slow but once engaged their actions were swift. Now the two were at it, Kohai hooking bony fingers into Pankol's throat muscles.
It's going to take at least four of the overseers to break this one up, thought Domai, and then he felt an unusual thrill, the thrill of recognition, as he looked around at all the dull-eyed but ferociously sturdy drone workers around him. It would take two of them to stop only one of us.
He looked at all of the dull eyes, turned to watch the two combatants tear apart the metal mess table as they fought. The watching Drones did not move, but Domai could see vague thoughts forming behind black eyes. And the eyes grew blacker as overseers moved in to pound the two Drones into submission.
Two DronesЕPankol and Kohai. They have names.
Domai stood. In some deep part of his brain the image flashed of a noble man dressed in silk rising to give a toast on ravaged Earth. And that man's hands were the hands of a leader.