"Michael A. Stackpole - Dark Conspiracy 02 - Evil Ascending" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stackpole Michael A)

retribution.
I was put into stasis to fight himтАФand themтАФto prevent
his exacting revenge. I was to forge myself into a tool that
would end his campaign of terror and domination. She
pressed her fingertips against the soft cloth lining the
stasis capsule and sought in it the peace she had known
before the scream. I am not ready.
From the heart of the laughter came a new emotion. It
shocked and hurt her, but she automatically shunted the
pain away as the defenses she had prepared dealt with the
assault. Once she broke through the wall of physical
discomfort, she saw and smelled and felt and heard and
tasted and sensed him and his thoughts. She had trouble
following his mental processes, for though he had one
purpose and one goal, it seemed as if billions of minds
spoke in unison with his. Like listening for one lone flute
in a concert of all the worlds' orchestras, she caught
tantalizing fragments of his musings, then slowly puzzled
them together.
She consciously overrode the physical lethargy im-
posed by the stasis capsule and let herself smile. Here he
is called Fiddleback, a name in which he revels for its
irony and infamy. He has agents hereтАФmany agents. But
there are those who oppose him. Someone turned one of
his agents, his favorite, against him. That pet has joined
forces with the opposition against him, but Fiddleback
has no fear. There is a trap. He will consume his enemies
in this trap, and take away a greater prize in doing so.
The monstrous confidence in Fiddleback's thoughts
threatened to swamp her like a tidal wave. Another
.00001 LMUs rack themselves up on her chronometric
display along with an increase in Fiddleback's certainty
that he would succeed. That sent another jolt through her,
and the metallic taste of fear flooded her mouth.
I am not ready! Part of her brain screamed as her right
index finger flexed and moved upward. Lifting it felt like
moving the mountain beneath which she had been buried.
Had she waited until 4.978831 LMUs had passed, the
stasis capsule would have opened by itself and prepared
her for a return to a world where time flowed unabated.
Part of her very much wanted to wait for that eventuality,
but something in Fiddleback's palpable egotism told her
that to wait was to awaken in a world he had made his own.
Millimeter by millimeter her finger rose until it finally
met resistance. For a half-second, she felt she could not
depress the switch enough to free herself. She let the
energy that her claustrophobic panic freed flow into her
finger. It stiffened, and she heard a faint click.
The hiss of musty air flowing into the capsule buried
that sound. Dim light encircled her as the top half of the