"Alastair Reynolds - Spirey And The Queen (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

There'd been a clique of high-ranking officers who believed that the Swirl
war was intrinsically unwinnable. Privy to information not released to the
populace, and able to see through Tiger's Eye's own carefully filtered
internal propaganda, they realised that negotiation - contact - was the
only way out.
"Of course, not everyone agreed. Some of my adversaries wanted us dead
before we even reached the enemy." Wendigo sighed. "Too much in love with
the war's stability - and who can blame them? Life for the average citizen
in Tiger's Eye isn't that bad. We're given a clear goal to fight for, and
the likelihood of any one of us dying in a Royalist attack is small enough
to ignore. The idea that all of that might be about to end after four
hundred years; that we all might have to rethink our roles... well, it
didn't go down too well."
"About as welcome as a fart in a vac-suit, right?"
Wendigo nodded. "I think you understand."
"Go on."
Her expedition - Wendigo and two pilots - had crossed the Swirl
unchallenged. Approaching the Royalist cometary base, they'd expected to
be questioned - perhaps even fired upon - but nothing had happened. When
they entered the stronghold, they understood why.
"Deserted," Wendigo said. "Or we thought so, until we found the
Royalists." She expectorated the word. "Feral, practically. Naked, grubby
subhumans. Their wasps feed them and treat their illnesses, but that's as
far as it goes. They grunt, and they've been toilet-trained, but they're
not quite the military geniuses we've been led to believe. "
"Then..."
"The war is...nothing we thought." Wendigo laughed, but the confines of
her helmet rendered it more like the squawking of a jack-in-the-box. "And
now you wonder why home didn't want us coming back?"

Before Wendigo could explain further, we reached a wider bisecting tunnel,
glowing with its own insipid chlorine-coloured light. Rather than the
meandering bore of the tunnel in which we walked, it was as cleanly cut as
a rifle barrel. In one direction the tunnel was blocked by a bullet-nosed
cylinder, closely modelled on the trains in Tiger's Eye. Seemingly of its
own volition, the train lit up and edged forward, a door puckering open.
"Get in," Wendigo said." And lose the helmet. You won't need it where
we're going. "
Inside I coughed phlegmy ropes of thick from my lungs.
Transitioning between breathing modes isn't pleasant - more so since I'd
breathed nothing but thick for six weeks. But after a few lungfuls of the
train's antiseptic air, the dark blotches around my vision began to
recede.
Wendigo did likewise, only with more dignity.
Yarrow lay on one of the couches, stiff as a statue carved in soap. Her
skin was cyanotic, a single all-enveloping bruise. Pilot skin is a better
vacuum barrier than the usual stuff, and vacuum itself is a far better
insulator against heat loss than air. But where I'd lifted her my gloves
had embossed fingerprints into her flesh. Worse was the broad stripe of
ruined skin down her back and the left side of her tail, where she had