"Allen Steele - Kronos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

"Mark. Ten ... nine ... eight ..."
 A tattooed hand lingers on a throttle yoke as its companion hovers over a set of toggle switches.

"Seven ... six ..."

A pair of wide blue eyes framed by a Gaelic cross watches the readouts on a comp screen.
"Guidance positive. On course for transorbital insertion."

"Five ... four..."

Another pair of hands flits across a keyboard. Lights flash from red to green. "Main feed valves
closed, central rank offline. Dumping residual core reacrants."

"Three ... two..."

"Heat regulators on, radiation buffers engaged, main tank pressure nominal. All systems copasetic..."

"One ... now, please."

As if choreographed by a stern dance master, hands and AI systems execute a complex fandango that
charms the nuclear beast to bay. A disgruntled tremor runs through the ship as, for the first time in nine
months, the white-hot glow in the exhaust bell quickly diminishes to orange, then red, then fades out
altogether.

"MECO complete."

"Reactor shut down and safe, Captain."

"All systems on standby, sir."

Kinnard floats upward against the straps confining him to his seat. Little more than six hours has
passed since he was brought out of biostasis, just enough time for his body to readjust to even
low-gravity. Now that Intrepid is in free fall, his arms and legs don't ache quite as much. He wants to
sigh with relief, but that would be an inappropriate response. His crew might interpret it as a sign of
weakness.

He glances at the men and women seated at consoles arranged around the circular command deck. In
the company of bio-engineered Superiors, a baseline human is a freak, and not vice-versa. His rib cage
isn't anorexically compact. His arms aren't long and sinewy, the fingers of his hands don't resemble
articulated pencils. His legs aren't double-jointed at the knees and ankles, his toes haven't been expanded
to become a second pair of hands. He has no cerebral implants which allow him to interface with
computers, and his eyes don't look like dark blue chicken eggs with a second set of translucent lids.

When the Navy assigned him command of the Intrepid, Kinnard was informally warned that
Superiors--or "googles," as Admiral Coonts referred to them, when they were alone in his office at River
House--harbored a certain disdain for unmodified Primaries--or "apes," as Superiors often refer to
baseline humans, under equally private circumstances. Superiors are born and bred for space; the first
gene-tailored embryos raised in a secret lab in Mare Tranquilitatis just before the Moon War had come
of age. For them, the cosmos is not a frontier, but a birthright; their origins as egg and sperm donated by