"Charles Stross - Escape" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

red- and yellow-striped hatch capping the tunnel. Tiny lights blink around it, cautioning me.

"Yes. You don't want to go through, it's unpressurised right now. Powering up the drones. Check out
with Trotsky; he'll tell you." Lorma stops and listens to a voice that I can't here. "Yeah, back in the
bridge. I've got to go now."

She turns and kicks away towards another door, that opens before her and disgorges some kind of
maintenance robot. I watch, but the drone pays me no attention. I head back for the bridge.

Boris is wrapped in eyefaces, a full helmet bridging his skull for maximum resolution. I wait in the
doorway until he notices at me: "want something?" he asks, pushing up his goggles.
"Talk."

"If you want." I hear something, glance down the tunnel to see someone I don't recognize pulling
themselves into a cabin. More voices. "We're coming through now. Been doing lots of training in the
Dreamtime; we rigged a practice universe, ran through this about eighteen times by cranking up our
timebase to a dozen times faster than normal. I think you can settle back for the raid. Rendezvous is due
in point seven megaseconds, eight days. Drones check out green, Lorma is seeing to the engineering
upgrades now. Our energy budget is stable for the foreseeable future."

"What happened while I was sleeping?"

"The crew of an attack fleet downloaded itself, that's what happened. Pol Pot and Group Two will initiate
distractions as soon as -- well. We're ranging in. The enemy is static at six million klicks right now, a bit
far for any direct work. We can't drop a threat cloud, but there's a bus on standby which will torch off six
big ones to start things cooking when we launch the drones. They're a quarter of a megaton each,
optimized to pump out mostly visible light and a bit of microwaves. We've got four hundred attack
drones, each with a crew of two piloting by secure control channels. The goal is to get as close as we can
before being seen, then make a fast end-run. Virtually everything is disposable except the two-way
upload link to Pascal Dreamtime, and that's going to be totally saturated during the fight."

The fight. I remember boiling streets, mushy under my feet, the scabbed scorched log-like structure of a
charred Dubrovniki on the way out to the RDV. A man trailing his skin in the dirt, sloughed off at the
heels like a dying insect. "When do we go?" I think I sound eager, but actually there's something else
underneath.

"In due course. Tell me, you ever been part of a tiger team, hmm? Ever done a back-door job to test
operational integrity?"

I stare. "You fingered me." Boris recoils. I decide I'm not scaring him enough; he might start taking me for
granted.

"I know you were sent here by some Superbright faction. I don't know what you used to do for them but
I can guess, right? We're not planning anything for you, but an indication of your long term plans would
be appreciated."

"I don't have any," I say calmly. "I want out. I've seen things you wouldn't believe, done some of them
too. All for shit. And now I want out. This was my ticket, Boris, my last little chore. I'm not going to get
in your way whatever you do."