"Modesitt, L E - The Parafaith War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

Again, the circuit went blank, and Trystin felt shut out as the major began to recall his team, and as the cargo-bay doors were closed and sealed, and the troopers reboarded the carrier.
Even before the carrier was reloaded, the three gray tech shuttles settled onto their braced fan skirts outside the station's vehicle door, and a handful of techs scurried into the dead station.
The last of the revs' weapons went into the carrier's forward bay, and the cargo-bay doors closed.
"Tech team confirms that the station will be up in a couple of stans. They'd like your input on priorities." "I'd better be going." Trystin stood. "We're off to the western perimeter. There's another crew of revs down, and reports that they brought some sort of EDI/radar-transparent carrier with them." The major shook his head. "Seems like there's always something new."
Trystin unplugged and headed down the three steps. "I appreciate the transport and help."
"That's what we're here for. You station guards are stretched pretty thin for all your fancy hardware." The helmet bobbed in a nod. "Luck, Lieutenant."
"Thanks." Trystin stepped back onto the red and brown soil outside East Red Three.
7
". . . there being a god, that god must be worshiped. Worship means raising the god above the individual, and liturgies often make the point that the individual is less than nothing compared to the deity. If this be done, then, when the god is invoked, the individual has so little worth that he or she may be sacrificed for the needs of the god. . . .
"And who speaks for the god? If all people do, then no one does, and there is no god. If the people accept a priesthood, or the equivalent, then those priests exercise whatever power that god's believers grant that god over them, and that elite may cause an individual to be worth less, to be exiled, or even to die or be killed. Yet such powers do not come from a deity.
"In modern history and science, never has there been a verified occasion of a god appearing or demonstrating the powers ascribed throughout history to deities. Always, there is a prophet who speaks for the god. Why cannot the god speak? If a god is omnipotent, then the god can speak. If he cannot, then that god is not omnipotent. Often, the prophets say that a god will only speak to the chosen, the worthy.
"Should a people accept a god who is either too powerless to speak, or too devious or too skeptical to appear? Or a god who will only accept those who swallow a faith laid out by a prophet who merely claims that deity exists-without proof? Yet people have done so, and have granted enormous powers to those who speak for god.
"More ironically, as technologies have advanced, men and women have gained powers once ascribed to deities, yet deistic faiths always claim greater powers for their deities and appear to seek equally great controls over their followers, over those followers' finances, and at times even over their sexual habits and private lives . . . and many people have accepted such controls, even with enthusiasm. ..."
The Eco-Tech Dialogues Prologue
8
The perimeter station still smelled, not only of ammonia and weedgrass, but of oil, hot plastic, and burned insulation. Trystin coughed and wiped his nose. His eyes burned at the corners, and his hip remained sore from the bruise he'd gotten half falling down the emergency ladder.
He swallowed the last of the Sustain and cleared his throat. Then, for the second time, he called up the message that had been waiting for him when the station had come back on-line.
"Glad to hear you made it. Also glad it was you and not me. Ulteena."
Short and uncuddly, but nice to know that someone paid attention, even if he'd never met Lieutenant Ulteena Freyer. But a message wasn't enough. He needed to talk to someone, preferably someone female and sympathetic.
With a slow breath, he linked into the audio pubnet and tried Ezildya. She'd been out of her office earlier. "Fernaldoi."
"Ezildya, this is Trystin. I'll be in Klyseen on sevenday afternoon...."
"And the wandering Service officer wants a warm and willing companion? With so little notice?"
"The Service officer is the one who had six squads of revs tear down his station a few days ago. I've been somewhat preoccupied with survival." He tried to keep his tone light.
"That was your station we had to cannibalize everything to put back together?"
"It wasn't that bad-just armor and more armor and about thirty percent of the main system console."
"Oh . . . you were number four. We didn't have that much left. . . ." "Sorry I called."
"Trystin . . . it's been a long eightday." "I know you had a long eightday. Me-1 had a wonderful time. I really enjoyed going fifty kays in armor on a scooter with no comm, almost as much as I enjoyed having my tech killed and my station blown open." There was a long silence. "I am sorry, Trystin. Was it that bad?" "If you're free on sevenday, I'll give you the details." As he talked, he flicked across the screens again, trying to ensure that he wasn't missing anything. There wasn't a flat prohibition on his using the pubnet, but it wasn't something he should drag out, either. "I could take off a little early. Say seventeen hundred?" "At your place?" "That would be best." "Thanks. I'll see you then. I've got to go." "You on-line?" "Of course."
"Trystin . . ." There was a sigh. "I'll see you sevenday." Ezildya's sigh confirmed her displeasure at his calling on fluty, but Trystin was tired of the unspoken restrictions of duty. He was more than a little tired of all the unspoken constraints that seemed to fill life-don't question this; don't ask about that-especially if you were a Service officer on a perimeter line.
After his own sigh, Trystin ran through everything again-screens, maintenance, power, and station-keeping. Nothing had changed, and even the trend-analysis screens didn't show anything, although the cloud buildups over the eastern badlands' hills registered heavier than usual. The perimeter lines were clear, and the turners, some kays south, continued to turn and process soil for creeper seeding. The turbine fans were generating forty percent of the load, and the organonutrient levels were down to twelve percent.
Trystin flicked off another reminder to supply, but all he got was the programmed acknowledgment.
"Lieutenant Desoll, ser?" The voice was that of Hisin, Ryla's replacement.
"Yes?" Trystin asked, half wondering if Hisin's rapid replacement of poor dead Ryla signified that Service personnel were as expendable as revvie missionaries. He pushed the thought away.
"I'm going to have to go off-line. The damned turners for the precrackers have jammed up. That means taking the scooter out."
Trystin zeroed in on the lower left screen, the satellite plot. There! "I make them about eight kays south and about a kay inside the line. Is that where you have them?"
"Yes, ser. Be a good stan 'fore I'm back, and that's without trouble. "
"Check in if it's going to take longer, and take scooter one. The comm's shot on number two."
"The one they brought back from East Red Two, ser? It looks to be in better shape than number one, especially the tanks."
"That's the way it looks, Hisin. That's why I used it. That's also how I found out the comm was shot." Trystin shook his head. He'd totally forgotten to tell the tech about the faulty comm. "That's my fault. I didn't report it-1 couldn't because the net was down, and I forgot to log it once we got things back together."
"Stet, ser. Once I get the turners working, if I can, I'll look into it. I appreciate the information. I'd hate to get out there with no comm." "I didn't much care for it, either." "You actually neutralized six squads of revs, ser?" "I didn't count. Cleanup squad told me I got a few. A lot of it was luck. I couldn't sense much with their new insulated suits." "Bastards." "Yeah." "Going off-line, ser." "Stet."
Trystin checked the entire maintenance line, code by code and signal by signal. While all the major systems were functioning, a number of less critical areas were still awaiting maintenance action. The lower rear inside door to Block A was still jammed, and the replacement door to cell three in Block B still hadn't come in. Neither could be replaced without a new frame, and both doors and frames were back-ordered out of Klyseen central depot with no estimated delivery date. Surely a door frame, even a heavy-duty sector control station door frame, couldn't be that hard to fabricate? Could it?
He shook his head. While the tech team had been effective in restoring armor, station integrity, and weapons systems, internal items not necessary for the operation and defense of the station had a lower priority, and supplies were low after PerCon had been forced to rebuild nearly totally the three stations on the western perimeter.
His hip was still sore, and somehow itched. He started to massage it gently, then stopped. The massage just re-' minded him more of the soreness.
Hhhstttt. . . craccckkkk!!! The storm over the badlands discharged somewhere east of the tower, close enough that the First wave of the static knifed through the implant before the system's overload breakers cut in. Trystin's eyes watered even more, and he sneezed. "Shit. Friggin' stormlash." Was he getting more and more sensitized to stormlash, or was it just fatigue? Would the medical screening coming up the day before endday discover he was sensitized? What did medical screening have to do with the Farhkans? Who knew much about them, except that they were remarkably humanoid beings living in toward Galactic center who had been around a long time, and who had demonstrated, with rather convincing firepower, a few centuries earlier, that their desire to be left alone except through formal contacts was something that had to be respected.
The Eco-Tech Coalition had only lost one ship- officially. The revs had lost almost a hundred ships-and a major outlying Temple, along with a good portion of New Salem-before they had gotten the idea. The Farhkans had demonstrated close to total ability to annihilate the entire heavens of the Revenants of the Prophet before the revs had gotten the message.
Would the Eco-Tech Coalition have to do the same to stop the waves of revvie ships? He sighed. That wasn't his problem, and he doubted that the Coalition had either the ability or the will to wipe out entire systems. Still, he wished they'd do something, rather than just have perimeter officers like him sitting and waiting and reacting. Someday, he might not react quickly enough. Once the Coalition and the revs had been allies against the Immortals . . . but that had been a long time ago- before the Farhkans.
He frowned, realizing that he'd never really seen a Farhkan, not in person. According to the holos, they had pale gray skin and dark iron-gray hair that was short and bristly over their entire body, except around their mouth and single nostril. They had two red eyes and teeth that looked like greenish crystals which framed a double-hinged mouth.
With the rising wind, he reset the breakers and went back on-line to check the power screen, pleased to see that the fans were generating nearly sixty-five percent of the ambient load. So long as the winds held, the drain on organonutrient for the fuel cells would remain low. Cling!
"All PerCon Stations. DefCon visual plot indicates two paragliders on entry envelopes. Paragliders are new beta class. Probable landfall coordinates follow. Full alert on perimeter stations. DefCon Two. DefCon Two . . ."
Trystin checked the coordinates. The probable landfall was beyond the western perimeter line, and the revs didn't miss by the width of the entire central plains-not by fifteen hundred kays. Not so far.
New beta-class paragliders! Now the revs were bringing down heavy equipment, and that equipment came off troids that had been launched from Orum or somewhere nearly twenty years earlier. What else had they developed that would be coming in the months and years ahead? He pursed his lips-better just to worry about the days ahead. Someone else could worry about the years.