"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 2 - Blue Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

the time, and any second in all those minutes could have brought death down on
her. She stood looking up at the dark sky, and waited it out.
Things stopped falling. She had been holding her breath, and she breathed.
Peter had the Red code, and so she called his number and tapped in a patch
attempt, heard only static. But as she was turning down the volume in her
earphones, she caught some garbled half phrases-Peter, describing Red
movements to green forces, or perhaps even to UNTA. Who could then fire
rockets from the cable defense systems down onto them. Yes, that was Peter's
voice, bits of it all cut with static. Calling the shots. Then it was only
static.
At the base of the elevator brief flashes of explosive light transformed the
lower part of the cable from black to silver, then back to black again. Every
alarm inside Arsiaview began ringing or howling. All the smoke whipped away
toward the east end of the tent. Ann got into a north-south alley and leaned
back against the east wall of a building, flat against concrete. No windows on
the alley. Booms, crashes, wind. Then the silence of near airlessness.
She got up and wandered through the tent. Where did one go when people were
being killed? Find your friends if you can. If you can tell who they are.
She collected herself and continued looking for Kasei's group, going to where
Dao had said they would be, and then trying to think where they would go next.
Outside the city was a possibility; but having come inside they might try for
the next tent to the east, try to take them one by one, decompress them, force
everyone below and then move on. She stayed on the street paralleling the tent
wall, jogging along as fast as she could. She was in good shape but this was
ridiculous, she couldn't catch her breath, and she was soaking the inside of
her suit with sweat. The street was deserted, eerily silent and still, so that
it was hard to believe she was in the middle of a battle, and impossible to
believe she would ever find the group for which she was looking.
But there they were. Up ahead, in the streets around one of the triangular
parks-figures in helmets and suits, carrying automatic weapons and mobile
missile launchers, firing at unseen opponents in a building fronted with
chert. The red circles on their arms, Reds-
A blinding flash and she was knocked down. Her ears roared. She was at the
foot of a building, pressed against its polished stone side. Jaspilite: red
jasper and iron oxide, in alternating bands. Pretty. Her back and bottom and
shoulder hurt, and her elbow. But nothing was agonizing. She could move. She
crawled around, looked back to the triangle park. Things were burning in the
wind, the flames little oxygen-starved orange spurts, going out already. The
figures there were cast about like broken dolls, limbs akimbo, in positions no
bones could hold. She got up and ran to the nearest knot of them, drawn by a
familiar gray-haired head that had come free of its helmet. That was Kasei,
only son of John Boone and Hiroko Ai, one side of his jaw bloody, his eyes
open and sightless. He had taken her too seriously. And his opponents not
seriously enough. His pink stone eyetooth lay there exposed by his wound, and
seeing it Ann choked and turned away. The waste. All three of them dead now.
She turned back and crouched, undipped Kasei's wrist-pad. It was likely that
he had a direct access band to the Kakaze, and when she was back in the
shelter of an obsidian building marred by great white shatterstars, she tapped
in the general call code, and said, "This is Ann Clayborne, calling all Reds.
All Reds. Listen, this is Ann Clayborne. The attack on Sheffield has failed.