"Christopher Rowley - The Battlemaster" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rowley Christopher)

However, the discovery of the Starhammer had brought humanity face-to-face with the terrible reason
for the great machine's existence, the ancient enemy to all other life, the self-termed Gods of
Axone-Neurone.

This complex and largely parasitic lifeform, which had been destroyed by the Starhammer builders in
self-defense, was not yet entirely extinct.

A few fragments persisted. Fortunately interstellar space is so vast and empty that most derelicts from
the ancient space-reefs of war were lost forever in the dark.

And yet, here, there, they offered a terrible threat, like mines waiting to explode upon the unwary.

In this, of course, we see no more than another roll of the cosmic dice. A form of evolutionary wedging
on a galaxy-wide scale. This kind of life, or that; either was possible.

Two thousand years terrestrial standard had passed since the events on Planet Saskatch. Again the
dice tumbled from the cup.

The door to doomsday opened a crack once more and went unnoticed. A bleak unsympathetic light
flashed out to illuminate the worlds of humanity.

It began with a trifling incident, in the barren hills of the Ruinarts, on Planet Wexel in the Scopus cluster.

Here, on the exposed face of some ancient sandstones, an autopick was drilling in search of gypsum
deposits. The bore holes were spaced a couple of meters apart, probing downward toward what on the
satellite mineral maps appeared to be a cave system.

Suddenly there came a harsh screech as the autopick's drill hit something harder than mere rock.

This autopick was a Daiko 400, very durable and somewhat stubborn. It pulled out the drill and
inserted its hammerpick and hammered at the unbreakable thing for a full minute while rock powdered
and blew away in the wind.

Finally it gave up and carefully checked its files. The rock face was a resistant sandstone from the
Upper Karavian, some eighty million years old. The geo-survey showed no evidence of volcanics or
harder rocks. And even the hardest rock would have given way under the hammerpick.

Baffled, the Daiko called for help.

The message was downloaded at Castle Karvur, fifty kilometers to the south. It was studied by the
Karvur Autome, and then left for Count Geezl Karvur's personal attention. The Autome, a programming
masterpiece from the Ienjii Software Period, knew that Count Karvur would be interested.

Eventually the count, a tall, gaunt-faced man in extended mid-life, returned from a rampage on his
estates.

The twin daughters of a tenant in the West Ward had reached sixteen years. They were betrothed, and
the count had made sure to exercise his patronal rights immediately upon their birthday chime. The
weeping parents had been bound and gagged by his guards while Lord Geezl, the patrone of the district,