"Jerry Pournelle - Falkenberg's Legion 2 - Falkenberg's Legio" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

XVII
XVIII
PART TWO - MERCENARY
 Chronology
1969 Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth's Moon.
1990-2000 Series of treaties between U.S. and Soviet Union creates the CoDominium.
Military research and development outlawed.
1995 Nationalist movements intensify.
1996 French Foreign Legion forms the basic element of the CoDominium Armed
Services.
2004 Alderson Drive perfected at Cal Tech.
2008 First Alderson Drive exploratory ships leave the Solar System.
2010-2100 CoDominium Intelligence Services engage in serious effort to suppress all research
into technologies with military applications. They are aided by zero-growth organizations. Most
scientific research ceases.
2010 Inhabitable planets discovered. Commercial exploitation begins.
2020 First interstellar colonies are founded. The CoDominium Space Navy and Marines
are created, absorbing the original CoDominium Armed Services.
2020 Great Exodus period of colonization begins. First colonists are dissidents,
malcontents, and voluntary adventurers.
2030 Sergei Lermontov is born in Moscow.
2040 Bureau of Relocations begins mass outsystem shipment of involuntary colonists.
2043 John Christian Falkenberg II is born in Rome, Italy.
2060 Nationalistic revival movements continue.
 Prologue
An oily, acrid smell assaulted him, and the noise was incessant. Hundreds of thousands had
passed through the spaceport. Their odor floated through the embarcation hall to blend with the
yammer of the current victims crammed into the enclosure.
The room was long and narrow. White painted concrete walls shut out bright Florida sunshine;
but the walls were dingy with film and dirt that had been smeared about and not removed by the
Bureau of Relocation's convict laborers. Cold luminescent panels glowed brightly above.
The smell and sounds and glare blended with his own fears. He didn't belong here, but no one
would listen. No one wanted to. Anything he said was lost in the brutal totality of shouted orders,
growls of surly trustee guards in their wire pen running the full length of the long hall; screaming
children; the buzz of frightened humanity.
They marched onward, toward the ship that would take them out of the solar system and
toward an unknown fate. A few colonists blustered and argued. Some suppressed rage until it
might be of use. Most were ashen-faced, shuffling forward without visible emotion, beyond fear.
There were red lines painted on the concrete floor, and the colonists stayed carefully inside
them. Even the children had learned to cooperate with BuRelock's guards. The colonists had a
sameness about them: shabbily dressed in Welfare Issue clothing mixed with finery cast off by
taxpayers and gleaned from Reclamation Stores or by begging or from a Welfare District
Mission.
John Christian Falkenberg knew he didn't look much like a typical colonist. He was a gangling
youth, already at fifteen approaching six feet in height and thin because he hadn't yet filled out to
his latest spurt of growth. No one would take him for a man, no matter how hard he tried to act
like one.
A forelock of sand-colored hair fell across his forehead and threatened to blind him, and he
automatically brushed it aside with a nervous gesture. His bearing and posture set him apart from
the others, as did his almost comically serious expression. His clothing was also unusual: it was