"Peter W. Prellwitz - Book 02 - Shards" - читать интересную книгу автора (Prellwitz Peter W)

could see everything in a limited visual range at all levels. When I was first oriented on the effects, I
became very self-conscious that the guys sitting behind me could see all of me. No worry, because it
turns out they could see all of me: each layer of clothing I had on, my skin, internal organs, flesh, bones,
even through to the clothing on the other side of my body. Not exactly the stuff of fantasies. Disquieting
seemed hardly a strong enough word. I had looked only once, and it was more than enough. I now
passed the time with my terminal display, which was hard enough to focus on, with its multi-holophasic
guts visible as well.

Breathing or movement was difficult: imagine being caught in a large sandstorm. But the advantages far
outweighed the discomfort. Properly shielded, a phasing vehicle could travel at high speeds completely
undetected. There were only three known dangers. First was phase unit failure, with pretty abrupt and
final consequences. Second was the inner core of the earth, which while not fatal in and of itself-heat
had no effect on a phased object-did cause problems as the massive density slowed passage down to a
crawl. It might take years to penetrate. And with the glow of the superheated iron core, it could be
blinding for both man and sensors, making navigation impossible.

The third, and most possible danger, was phased mines, such as we used. It had been disastrously proven
that two objects can reside in the тАЬsameтАЭ place at the same time, but three could not. When two objects,
one actively phased and one not, came into contact with each other, nothing occurred. But if two
actively phased objects meet in a third stable object-unless the phasing frequencies were within one ten-
millionth of a hertz-there would be an incredible explosion. So to prevent unauthorized entry, some
facilities were now using phase mines. These small, phased objects were located in a half-sphere pattern
close enough to prevent intrusion but far enough out to not damage the facility they were guarding if
they were set off. And because a military force would obviously lose all surprise appearing outside the
field, a phase-mined facility was safe from secret infiltration. Fortunately, phased mine fields were
difficult, dangerous and expensive to maintain, so there were relatively few of them. We had one only
because of successful raiding.

The target we were advancing on was not mined, but it had a huge advantage defensively: innocent
workers. For as much as we had NATech Supreme's measure, they had ours. We had never wantonly
used force against anybody except armed NATech soldiers. We directed our energies against machinery,
facilities, and data; never flesh and blood, and NATech knew it. So they buried their riping factories and
bio-physical manufacturing facilities and other targets deep inside cities and legitimate work areas.
Ruthless but effective. What made it worse was that most of NATech military forces had no qualms
about opening fire in these populated areas. As a consequence, our mission time was severely limited to

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minimize conflict. We constantly needed to come up with new ways to complete our missions. I had a
couple of ideas for this one. I focused my attention to the fuzzy display, continually blurred by rock.

"Okay, Mike, let's play for a while.тАЭ Having the speed of a sleepy tree sloth, I relied on voice interface.
This was only a small problem: voice interface wasn't the preferred method of access-direct mental
connection was-but it would work. Mike was my virtual partner in the puterverse. I had created him way
back when I was John Wyeth, but only as a high-speed assistant with very rudimentary and artificial
judgment. He didn't even have a form then. He was quite different now, much more real.

"Hiya, Abby! Playtime, huh? Are we finally hitting the Denver ripe facility?"