"Linda Nagata - Vast" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nagata Linda)

Point zero: initiate. A sense kicked in. Something like vision. Not because it emulated sight, but
because it revealed. Himself: Nikko Jiang-Tibayan. An electronic pattern scheduled to manifest at
discrete intervals. Nikko Jiang-Tibayan. He'd been an organic entity once. Not now.
Point one: identify.
Personality suspended on a machine grid: he is the mind of the great ship, Null Boundary. His
memories are many, not all accessible. He's locked much of his past away in proscribed data fields. He
interrogates his remaining inventory, seeking an explanation. It comes in an amalgam of cloudy scents: the
clinging stink of living flesh parasitized by aerobic bacteria. All defenses down. "Don't be sad, my love,"
she whispers. "Whatever the cost, you know we had to try."
He explores no further.
Point two and counting: status check.
A scheduled mood shift floods his pattern with easy confidence. He confirms that Null Boundary
had long ago reached maximum velocity, four-tenths lightspeed. The magnetic scoops have been
deactivated; the solenoids folded to a point piercing the increasingly thick interstellar medium. Duration?
Over two centuries' ship's time have elapsed since Null Boundary left Deception Well.
His past has become unconscionably deep for a man who'd been condemned to die at the age of
thirty standard years. Still, death is never far off.
There are four telescopes mounted on tracks around the ship's hull. When two or more are fixed
on the same object, their optical signals can be combined, creating an effective lens aperture far greater
than any individual scope. At least two lenses are continuously fixed on the alien vessel that has hunted
Null Boundary for 150 years.
It's a Chenzeme courser, an automated warship designed by a race that vanished millions of
years before the human species even came into existence. It first appeared when Null Boundary was less
than fifty years out of Deception Well. Then, it was moving at close to thirty-nine percent lightspeed, on a
course that would take it toward the star cluster called the CommitteeтАФopposite to Null Boundary's
vector. Nikko watches its fleeting image, wondering if it will manage to get past the defenses of the
human settlements there.
Nikko knows little about the Chenzeme, but he knows this much: Their ships are not powered by
conventional physics. The old murderers learned to tap the zero point field, that all-pervasive sea of
energy where particles and antiparticles engage in a continuous dance of creation and annihilation. It's a
deadly talent. With the zero point field to power their ships and guns, each Chenzeme vessel has far more
energy at its command than any human installation. Their gamma ray lasers can burn away the
atmosphere of a living world. Nikko has seen it happen.
A twinge of pain, like the tenderness of a half-forgotten wound, warns him away from memories
he does not want to awaken. It's enough to know the Chenzeme will not be beaten until the frontier
worlds own the zero point technology too.
Yet even for the old murderers, energy does not flow in infinite quantity. To catch Null Boundary,
the courser would need to swing about and accelerateтАФa huge investment of both time and energy that
can gain it only a very tiny prize. So that first time Nikko sees it, he knows it will ignore him to push on
toward the inhabited worlds of the Committee. He has no reason to think he will ever see it again. He
aims the ship's prow at the natural navigation beacon of Alpha Cygni, a white-hot giant star that blazes
against a background of dark molecular cloudsтАФand he pushes on, in the direction called swan, where
the Chenzeme warships seem to originate. He has set out to find their source, and he will not be
distracted. Like a tortured man stumbling vengefully toward his tormenters, he has to know why.
 A century and a quarter later, the courser reappears in Null Boundary's telescopes, approaching
obliquely, far to the stern.
Now it has closed to 21.6 astronomical unitsтАФsome three billion kilometers behind them. It's a
luminous object, agleam with a white light generated by the membrane of philosopher cells that coats its
needle-shaped hull.
Human ships and human worlds were not the original targets of the Chenzeme, but their