"Jerry Pournelle & Roland Green - Janissaries 3 - Storms of Victory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

"I don't suppose I can talk you into taking us with you." Les shook his head.
"No. You wouldn't want me to." He wasn't smiling.
"Try me."
"You wouldn't. What would you do? Go to the authorities? Tell them you
were kidnapped by a flying saucer and taken across light-years to another
planet just so you could grow drugs?"
"Well, that would have the great merit of being trueтАФ"
"And the serious demerit that no one would believe you," Les said. "It would
be worse if someone did. Either way you'd irritate the High Commission,
make a deadly enemy of Inspector Agzaral, and spend the rest of your life
dodging us. No, my friend, you do not want to be returned to Earth."
"What ifтАФsuppose we promise to lay low? Never tell what happened to us?"
"No," Les said.
"Yeah, well I suppose you can't believe usтАФ"
"Even if I did, I couldn't hide the fact that I took you back to Earth. I could
probably hide it from the Commission, but not from Agzaral. I don't know
what he'd do about it, but I don't want to find out." Les sipped at his wine.
"There's another reason. You may be safer on Tran."
"What? Come off it! This planet is coming apart! It's going to be fried by a
rogue sun, the ice caps melt, coasts under water, migrations sparking wars
everywhere, and your Shalnuksi friends are probably going to bomb the
survivors back to the Stone Age anywayтАФand you sayтАФ"
"I say it may be safer than Earth," Les repeated. "Things happen so fast. Atom
bombs. Space travel. Big colliding beam accelerators. Huge lasers. Leave
things alone and pretty soon Earth will have real space travel. There are
factions on the Commission that don't want that."
"And they'd really bomb Earth?"
"I don't know. They could."
"You said Earth is the breeding ground forтАФfor wild humans."
"Wild. Not like me," Les agreed. "Not slaves."
"Slave soldiers. Janissaries."
"I'm not a soldier," Les said. "But yes, that's as good a description as any."
"And you run the whole damned empireтАФ"
"It's not an empire."
"Confederation. But humans run it. You have all the military power, but
you're still slaves. It doesn't make sense."
"Put that way, maybe not. But you don't have to make sense of it. Lay off,
Rick. Just lay off."
"Lay off. Look, I have to know. Are they going to bomb Earth? Us? Both?"
Les shook his head. "Rick, I don't know. I don't understand Federation
politics. Agzaral may know what's going on. He claims to. But he hasn't told
me."
"You haven't told me much, either," Rick said.
"I know. Look at it my way. It's all the Shalnuksis need, to find out Tran
natives are discussing Federation politics! They'd sure know who told you."
"How will they find out?"
"The next time one of their ships comes here they'll see changes. More water
mills. Your semaphore towers. They just might pick up some locals for
questioning. One of your mercs. You, even. They're pretty lazy. They
probably won't. But they could."