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

and me were terrified enough as it was. All I know is it began with a mild
agoraphilia; an urge to escape Mouser's flooded confines. Gradually it
phased into claustrophobia, and then became fully-fledged panic, making
Mouser seem as malevolent as a haunted house.
Yarrow ignored her suit, clawing the hull until her fingers spooled blood.
Fight it," I said. "It's just demons triggering our fear centers, trying
to drive us out!"
Of course, knowing so didn't help.
Somehow I stayed still long enough for my suit to slither on. Once sealed,
I purged the tainted thick with the suit's own supply - but I knew it
wasn't going to help much. The phobia already showed that hostile demons
had reached my brain, and now it was even draping itself in a flimsy
logic. Beyond the ship we'd be able to think rationally. It would only
take a few minutes for the thick's own demons to neutralise the invader -
and then we'd be able to reboard. Complete delusion, of course.
But that was the point.

When something like coherent thought returned I was outside.
Nothing but me and the splinter.
The urge to escape was only a background anxiety, a flock of
stomach-butterflies urging me against returning. Was that
demon-manipulated fear or pure common sense? I couldn't tell - but what I
knew was that the splinter seemed to be beckoning me forward, and I didn't
feel like resisting. Sensible, surely: we'd exhausted all conventional
channels of attack against the defector, and now all that remained was to
confront her on the territory she'd staked as her own.
But where was Yarrow?
Suit's alarm chimed. Maybe demons were still subjugating my emotions,
because I didn't react with my normal speed. I just blinked, licked my
lips and stifled a yawn.
"Yeah, what?"
Suit informed me; something massing slightly less than me, two klicks
closer to the splinter, on a slightly different orbit. I knew it was
Yarrow; also that something was wrong. She was drifting. In my blackout
I'd undoubtedly programmed suit to take me down, but Yarrow appeared not
to have done anything except bail out.
I jetted closer. And then saw why she hadn't programmed her suit. Would
have been tricky. She wasn't wearing one.

I hit ice an hour later.
Cradling Yarrow - she wasn't much of a burden, in the splinter's weak
gravity - I took stock. I wasn't ready to mourn her, not just yet. If I
could quickly get her to the medical suite aboard the defector's ship
there was a good chance of revival. But where the hell was the wreck?
Squandering its last reserves of fuel, suit had deposited us in a clearing
among the graveyard of ruined wasps. Half submerged in ice, they looked
like scorched scrap-iron sculptures; phantoms from an entomologist's worst
nightmare. So there'd been a battle here, back when the splinter was just
another drifting lump of ice. Even if the thing was seamed with silicates
or organics, it would not have had any commercial potential to either