"Gabriel Mesta - StarCraft 02 - Shadow of the Xel'Naga" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mesta Gabriel)

traversing ten- to twenty-klick distances over rough terrain.

The hull of the robo-harvester, once a gleaming cherry red, was now faded, scratched, and pitted. The
engine ran as smoothly as a lullaby, though, and that was all Octavia cared about.

Now she checked the weather scanner and atmospheric-pressure tracker in the robo-harvester's cabin,
but the readings were all wild. тАЬLooks like a bad one tonight.тАЭ

тАЬThey're always bad ones. This is Bhekar Ro, after allтАФwhat do you expect?тАЭ

Octavia shrugged. тАЬI guess it was good enough for Mom and Dad.тАЭBack when they were alive.

She and Lars were the only survivors of their family. Every family among the settlers had lost friends or
relatives. Taming an uncooperative new world was dangerous, rarely rewarding work, always ripe for
tragedy.

But the people here still followed their dreams. These exhausted colonists had left the tight governmental
fences of the Confederacy for the promised land of Bhekar Ro some forty years before. They had sought
independence and a new start, away from the turmoil and constant civil wars among the inner
Confederacy worlds.

The original settlers had wanted nothing more than peace and freedom. They had begun idealistically,
establishing a central town with resources for all the colonists to share, naming it Free Haven, and
dividing farmland equally among the able-bodied workers. But in time the idealism faded as the colonists
endured toil and new hardships on a planet that did not live up to their expectations.

Nobody among the colonists ever suggested going back, thoughтАФespecially not Octavia and Lars Bren.

The lights of Free Haven glowed like a warm, welcoming paradise as the robo-harvester approached. In
the distance Octavia could already hear the storm-warning siren next to the old Missile Turret in the town
plaza, signaling colonists to find shelter. Everyone elseтАФat least the colonists who had common
senseтАФhad already barricaded themselves inside their prefabricated homes to shelter from the storm.

They passed outlying homes and fields, crossed over dry irrigation ditches, and reached the perimeter of
the town, which was laid out in the shape of an octagon. A low perimeter fence encircled the settlement,
but the gates for the main streets had never been closed.

An explosion of sonic thunder roared so close that the robo-harvester rattled. Lars gritted his teeth and
drove onward. Octavia remembered sitting on her father's knee during her childhood, laughing at the
thunder as her family had gathered inside their home, feeling safe. . . .
 Their grandparents had aged rapidly from the rigors of life here and had the dubious distinction of being
the first to be buried in Bhekar Ro's ever-growing cemetery outside Free Haven's octagonal perimeter.
Then, not long after Octavia had turned fifteen, the spore blight had struck.

The sparse crops of mutated triticale-wheat had been afflicted by a tiny black smut on a few of the
kernels. Because food was in short supply, Octavia's mother had set aside the moldy wheat for herself
and her husband, feeding untainted bread to their children. The meager meal had seemed like any other:
rough and tasteless, but nutritious enough to keep them alive.

Octavia remembered that last night so clearly. She had been suffering from one of her occasional