"Charles Stross - Scratch Monkey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

cease to support them. It even makes a neat debriefing tool, if you have the equipment to
interrogate the brain encoders directly. (Only Distant Intervention, that I know of, is allowed to
play with this kind of kit.)
I make fairly good time; it takes me about fifteen minutes to establish that she is second-sergeant
Mavreen Tor'Jani -- or Tor'Jani Mavreen if you put the family name first as these people seem to
-- and she's attached to one of the Year Zero meat convoys. A piece of luck: the target is on this
continent. Tor'Jani's married -- polyandrous, three husbands -- no children -- just joined this unit
so doesn't have any close friends here -- absolutely perfect. Year Zero Man has been strutting his
bloody stuff for eight years and has conquered half the planet; the next continent over put up a
spirited resistance and is now a steaming charnel house, while his own people have been slightly
more lucky so far. Especially those who collaborate in the process, like this one. Special Action
Teams ... murderers in bulk.
The more I hear the angrier I get. Year Zero Man is a woman this time; a charismatic leader
called Marat Hree, some kind of jumped-up politician who appeared from nowhere and who is
now running the standard course. A nation called the Kingdom of Alpagia was her springboard to
empire. I don't get any more from Mavreen about the Compassionate Mother and Teacher, who is
none of those, but then I don't really need to; she was on escort duty for one of the consignments
to a local slaughterhouse and I might as well tag along for the ride. After a while I stop her in
mid-spiel and ask her who I am. She looks up at me and tenses, and her eyes go wide just before I
break her neck. Then I open my make-up kit and begin to reconstruct my face.
Second sergeant Tor'Jani Mavreen -- or a good likeness thereof -- stumbles out of the jungle half
an hour later, a good hour after the attack on the train. She's dazed, and has a gigantic lump above
her left eye; but for all that she's in better shape than the convoy. (She may even be a little taller,
a trifle heavier than before; but there's a limit to what even nanotech restructuring can achieve in
the way of instant plastic surgery.)
The convoy is an utter shambles. Four carriages are consumed by fire, along with the engine and
seven of the guards: the cacophony from the surviving cargo is deafening, the drowning squeal of
a sackful of kittens amplified a thousandfold. Mavreen grabs forceman Kaidmaan by the shoulder
and demands to know what's going on, who's in charge; Kaidmaan shrugs numbly and looks at
her. "You are," he says vaguely: "everyone else is dead. Brazzia radio'd for help and they said to
wait here."
"Oh great," snarls Mavreen, surveying the wreckage of which she is now -- by default --
commander. "Who else is fighting fit, then?"
"What do you mean?" asks Kaidmaan. "There's me, you --" he looks at her bleeding forehead
dubiously "-- Brazzia, and, uh, Nord's arm is broken. That's it. Everyone else is dead!"
Mavreen shakes him hard. "Listen," she says, "you go to pieces on me and I'll have your balls for
-- " She looks over her shoulder. "What's that?"
He cowers. "They're coming back!"
"Crap." She listens some more. "That's our aerovac, fool. Get the others moving! It's only eighty
leagues to Radiant Progress Base Number Six, we can't leave these cattle here. I want those
wagons unhitched; get us ready to roll as soon as they can get a new engine down here."
Forceman Kaidmaan looks at her strangely, but scrambles to obey.
Mavreen looks at the sky and scowls, murderously angry over the loss of two-thirds of her cargo;
the aerovac team is coming and when Highcom gets to know about the mess that's gone down
here they're going to want to know why, and maybe some negligent eyes are going to get gouged.
She gets a warm, weak feeling at the thought. Already she's formulating her account of the
convoy. Damned partisans ...
Somewhere behind her face I'm grinning with rage.
Aerovac is a zeppelin, not a dragonflyer. A ribbed brown cylinder with bat-wings and carved
wooden gondolas slung below it, it cruises silently above the forest trail. There are human skulls