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

Her eyes rolled wide, then locked on me with renewed venom. She gave the
bayonet a violent twist. "So tell me one thing. That story - bullshit, or
what?"
"I'll tell you," I said. "But first consider this." Before she could react
I reached out and palmed a glowing panel set in the lock wall. The panel
whisked aside, revealing a mushroom-shaped red button. "You know that
story they told about Wendigo, how she lost her arms?"
"You weren't meant to swallow that hero guff, Spirey."
"No? Well get a load of this. My hand's on the emergency pressurisation
control, Quillin. When I hit it, the outer door's going to slide down
quicker than you can blink."
She looked at my hand, then down at her wrist, still attached to my ankle
via the jammed bayonet. Slowly the situation sunk in. "Close the door,
Spirey, and you'll be a leg short."
"And you an arm, Quillin."
"Stalemate, then."
"Not quite. See, which of us is more likely to survive? Me inside, with
all the medical systems aboard this ship, or you all on your lonesome
outside? Frankly, I don't think it's any contest."
Her eyes opened wider. Quillin gave a shriek of anger and entered one
final furious wrestling match with the bayonet.
I managed to laugh. "As for your question, it's true, every word of it."
Then, with all the calm I could muster, I thumbed the control. "Pisser,
isn't it."

I made it, of course.
Several minutes after the closing of the door, demons had lathered a
protective cocoon around the stump and stomach wound. They allowed me no
pain - only a muggy sense of detachment. Enough of my mind remained sharp
to think about my escape - problematic given that the ship still wasn't
fixed.
Eventually I remembered the evac pods.
They were made to kick away from the ship fast, if some quackdrive system
went on the fritz. They had thrusters for that; nothing fancy, but here
they'd serve another purpose. They'd boost me from the splinter, punch me
out of its grav well.
So I did it.
Snuggled into a pod and blew out of the wreck, feeling the gee-load even
within the thick. It didn't last long. On the evac pod's cam I watched the
splinter drop away until it was pebble-sized. The main body of the kinetic
attack was hitting it by then, impacts every ten or so seconds. After a
minute of that the splinter just came apart. Afterwards, there was only a
sooty veil where it had been, and then only the Swirl.
I hoped the Queen had made it. I guess it was within her power to transmit
what counted of herself out to sisters in the halo. If so, there was a
chance for Yarrow as well. I'd find out eventually. Afterwards, I used the
pod's remaining fuel to inject me into a slow elliptical orbit, one that
would graze the halo in a mere fifty or sixty years.
That didn't bother me. I wanted to close my eyes and let the thick nurse
me whole again - and sleep an awful long time.