"SM Stirling - & David Drake - General 03 - The Anvil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

THE GENERAL, Volume Three

David Drake & S. M. Stirling




Contents

CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN


CHAPTER ONE

"Raj!" Thom Poplanich blurted.
Raj Whitehall's mouth quirked. "You sound more shocked this time," he said.
The way you look, I am more shocked, Thom thought, blinking and stretching a little. There was no physical need; his muscles didn't stiffen while Center held him in stasis. But the psychological satisfaction of movement was real enough, in its own way.
The silvered globe in which they stood didn't look different, and the reflection showed Thom himself unchanged -- down to the shaving nick in his chin and the tear in his tweed trousers. A slight, olive-skinned young man in gentleman's hunting clothes, looking a little younger than his twenty-five years. He'd cut his chin before they set out to explore the vast tunnel-catacombs beneath the Governor's Palace in East Residence. The trousers had been torn by a ricocheting pistol-bullet, when the globe closed around them and Raj tried to shoot his way out. Everything was just as it had been when Raj and he first stumbled into the centrum of the being that called itself Sector Command and Control Unit AZ12-bl4-cOOO Mk. XIV
That had been years ago, now.
Raj was the one who'd changed, living in the outer -- the real -- world. That had been obvious on the first visit, two years after their parting. It was much more noticeable this time. They were of an age, but someone meeting them together for the first time would have thought Raj a decade older.
"How long?" Thom said. He was half-afraid of the answer.
"Another year and a half."
Thom's surprise was visible. He's aged that much in so little time? he thought. His friend was a tall man, 190 centimeters, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with a swordsman's thick wrists. There were a few silver hairs in the bowl-cut black curls now, and his gray eyes held no youth at all.
"Well, I've seen the titanosauroid, since," Raj went on.
"Governor Barholm did send you to the Southern Territories?"
Raj nodded; they'd discussed that on the first visit. After Raj's victories against the Colony in the east, he was the natural choice.
"A hard campaign, from the way you look."
"No," Raj said, moistening his lips. "A little nerve-racking sometimes, but I wouldn't call it hard, exactly."
observe, the computer said. The walls around them shivered. The perfect reflection dissolved in smoke, which scudded away --