"Ross Richdale - Generation 7" - читать интересную книгу автора (Richdale Ross)

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six


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Chapter One
The wooden fort crouched on a hillside overlooking the snow covered valley could have been in the
American Wild West in the nineteenth century rather than the twenty-third. It could have even have been
Washington or perhaps north of the border in British Columbia, Canada with the towering mountains
stretching across the horizon but was neither.

New Seattle, the fortified village of a little over a thousand humans was so far removed in distance and
time. Except for Jordan Wittenburg and the handful of Generation 4 centenarians, the inhabitants had
forgotten their ancestry. They didn't know the significance of the two flags that blew with equal
prominence from the corners of the fort's four-meter high log walls. One was a light blue with white circle
of symbols around the center, the long forgotten United Nations and the other was merely called The
Stars and Stripes. The history of both had been purposely withheld from Generation 5 eighty years earlier
by an unanimous vote in the Survival of Humanity Protocol.

But the two flags survived to represent the last bastion of humanity on the entire planet of Delpe,
hundreds of light years from their ancestors home of Earth, information also withheld from the younger
generations.

On this 16th day of February 2248, True Time, the inhabitants had more pressing problems on their
minds. A scout had returned with important information. The clickers were already across the
international boundary at the New Colorado River. Over the summer and fall, the lower plains had been
evacuated as the enemy had moved through the human state. Worse, though, were the creatures new
body suits equipped with thermal heating so their cold blood could remain functional in the winter climate
that normally froze them into immobility. It was also believed twenty or more flying females were
assembling behind the front line. This was unusual as these females were normally only used for
reproduction of the species.

The native inhabitants of the planet were only slightly shorter than a human and stood on two legs with the
other four limbs used like human arms. In intelligence, they were equal to the humans but lacked any kind
of morality or conscience to go with it. Old Jordan Wittenburg called them giant ants, another word lost
in antiquity, but to the succeeding generations they were simply clickers because of the sound they
supposedly made when they were annoyed or surprised. Most Generations 6 and 7 could speak