"Kristine Smith - Kilian 4 - Contact Imminent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Kristine)

this conspiracy, she was killed, murdered as the transport in which she rode
exploded on takeoff outside the hospital-shrine of Knevget Sheraa.
But killed and dead are two different things. Kilian was saved by a humanish
physician named John Shroud, who refashioned her using idomeni genetic
material. He believed he had inactivated what he considered the undesirable
aspects of that material, but he had not.
As the war drew to its bloody conclusion, Kilian escaped with her life. For
almost twenty years she lived a fugitive existence in the colonies, on the run
from her past, each day growing more aware of the change that had begun to
claim her. Last year, she traveled to the Commonwealth home-world of Earth for
the first time, to the capital of Chicago. There she investigated crimes that
provided her with the links between her past and her future, and revealed to
her the path she was destined to follow as the first of her kind. The first
hybrid.
She lives in Chicago still, working with the idomeni embassy and studying the
ways of a priest with ni Tsecha, whom she calls "inshah." Teacher. Doing that
which she is bound to do, for she is, as ni Tsecha named her, the Kier-shia,
the "toxin," the bringer of pain and change. She is also, as I have said
before, the first.
And I so wish to meet her...
CONTFICT IMMINENT
CHAPTER 1
"Chicago is a cold place. In every way."
Clase, Thalassan Histories, Book I
"Coppelia is a classic tale. In it, a doctor named Coppelius builds a
clockwork doll and tries to give her life." Colonel Niall Pierce sat with his
booted feet propped on the edge of the portable com-array console, hands
folded primly in his lap. "A young couple, Franz and Swanilda, cross his path.
Franz falls in love with the doll, named Coppelia, whom he thinks is a real
girl. Swanilda becomes determined to find out more about this mysterious
beauty who has stolen her lover's heart, and breaks into the doctor's house to
find her." He leaned back, the harsh overhead light washing out his bronze
Service burr to pale brown and casting his features in sharp relief. Narrow.
Angled. The wolf in repose. "And it's a comedy, I'll have you know. Nobody
dies."
"Imagine my amazement." Jani Kilian tucked her hands inside the sleeves of her
field coat and huddled against the curved wall of the prefab bunker. Outside,
freezing rain fellтАФshe could hear it patter on the domed roof. Insets in the
polyfoam wall and floor supplied the heat that made the space bearableтАФshe
pressed against the hard smoothness, soaking up all the warmth she could. "I
thought someone had to keel over every five minutes for an opera to qualify as
a classic."
1
2 Kristine Smith
/
"Coppelia is a ballet, not an opera." Niall tilted his head back and spread
his hands palms up, begging the ceiling for respite. "I told you all about it
at lunch last week, but it appears to have slipped your mind." He turned to
look toward the figure who sat on the floor next to Jani. "Have you ever
attended a ballet, nf Tsecha? Humanish dancing?"