"Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Backups
Messengers
Irrevocable
EPILOGUE: Homefront



PROLOGUE: WEDNESDAY CHILD

IMPACT: T plus 1392 days. 18 hours, 09 minutes
Wednesday ran through the darkened corridors of the station, her heart pounding. Behind her, unseen yet
sensed as a constant menacing presence, ran her relentless pursuerтАФa dog. The killhound wasn't
supposed to be here: neither was she. Old Newfoundland Four was in the process of final evacuation, the
last ship supposed to have undocked from bay green fourteen minutes agoтАФan icon tattooed on the
inside of her left eye showed her this, time counting negativeтАФheading out for the nearest flat space-
time for the jump to safety. The launch schedule took no notice of tearaway teens, crazed Dresdener
captains with secret orders, and gestapo dogs with murder burning in their gun-sight eyes. She panted
desperately, nerves straining on the edge of panic, lungs burning in the thin, still air. Sixteen years old
and counting, and if she didn't find a way to elude the dog and climb back to the docking hub soonтАФ
She didn't want to be there when the wavefront arrived.
Three-point-six light years away, and almost three-point-six years ago, all two hundred million
inhabitants of a nondescript McWorld called Moscow had died. Moscow, an introverted if not entirely

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 IRON SUNRISE - Charles Stross


rural polity, had been in the midst of political upheavals and a nasty trade dispute with New Dresden,
something boring to do with biodiversity and free trade, engineering agribusiness and exchange rate
controls. Old Newfoundland Four, Portal Station Eleven, was the last remaining sovereign territory of
the Federal Republic of Moscow. They'd hauled down the flag in the hub concourse four hours ago,
sounded the last retreat with a final blare of brass trumpetry, and marched slowly to the docking hub.
Game over, nation dissolved. There'd been a misunderstanding, and Dresdener warships had impounded
a freighter from Moscow. Pistol shots fired across a crowded docking hub. Then someoneтАФto this day,
the successor Dresdener government hotly denied responsibility, even though they'd executed their
predecessors just to be sureтАФhad hit Moscow Prime with a proscribed device.
Wednesday didn't remember Moscow very clearly. Her father was a nitrogen cycle engineer, her mother
a protozoan ecology specialist: they'd lived on the station since she was four, part of the team charged
with keeping the life-support heart of the huge orbital complex pumping away. But now the heart was
still. There was no point in pretending anymore. In less than a day the shock front of Moscow Prime's
funeral pyre would slam past, wreaking havoc with any habitat not shielded by a good thirty meters of
metal and rock. Old Newfie, drifting in stately orbit around a planetless brown dwarf, was simply too
big and too flimsy to weather a supernova storm at a range of just over a parsec.
Wednesday came to a crossroads. She stopped, panting, and tried to orient herself, biting back a wail of
despair. Left, right, up, or down? Sliding down to the habitat levels of the big wheel had been a mistake.
There were elevators and emergency tunnels all the way up to the hub, and all the way down to the
heavy zone. The central post office, traffic control, customs, and bioisolation were all located near the
maintenance core at the hub. But the top of the pressurized wheel rim was sixty meters above her, then
there was another hundred meters of spoke to climb before she could get to the hub, and the dog would
sense her if she used the lifts. There was too much centrifugal force down here, dragging at her like real