"David Weber - Fifth Imperium 02 - The Armageddon Inheritance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

few extra day parts soaking in the habitat's swamp sections, that should have been his own affair.

And would have been, he thought gloomily, if he hadn't brought this damned cold with him. Ah,
well! It would wear itself out, and a few more tours would give him a credit balance fit to attract
the finest dam. Not to mention the glamour which clung to spacefarers in groundlings' eyes, and
тАФ

An alarm squealed, and Alheer va-Chanak's sensory cluster snapped back to his instruments. All
three eyes irised wide in disbelief as the impossible readings registered.

"Kreegor take it, look at that!" Roghar gasped beside him, but va-Chanak was already stabbing
at the communications console.

More of the immense shipsтАФninety dinar long if they were a harтАФappeared out of nowhere,
materializing like fen fey from the nothingness of space. Scores of themтАФhundreds!

Roghar babbled away about first-contacts and alien life forms beside him, but even as he gabbled,
the copilot was spinning the extractor ship and aligning the main engines to kill velocity for
rendezvous. Va-Chanak left him to it, and his own mind burned with conflicting impulses.
Disbelief. Awe. Wonder and delight that the Mersakah were not alone. Horror that it had been left
to him to play ambassador to the future which had suddenly arrived. Concern lest their visitors
misinterpret his fumbling efforts. Visions of immortalityтАФand how the dams would react to this
тАФ/

He was still punching up his communications gear when the closest Achuultani starship blew his
vessel out of existence.

The shattered wreckage tumbled away, and the Achuultani settled into their formation.
Normal-space drives woke, and the mammoth cylinders swept in-system, arrowing towards the
planet of Mers at twenty-eight percent of light-speed while their missile sections prepped their
weapons.

Chapter Four

The endless, twenty-meter-wide column of lightning fascinated him. It wasn't really lightning, but that was
how Vlad Chernikov thought of it, though the center of any Terran lightning bolt would be a dead zone
beside its titanic density. The force field which channeled it also silenced it and muted its terrible
brilliance, but Vlad had received his implants. His sensors felt it, like a tide race of fire, even through the
field, and it awed him.

He turned away, folding his hands behind him as he crossed the huge chamber at Dahak's heart. Only
Command One and Two were as well protected, for this was the source of Dahak's magic. The starship
boasted three hundred and twelve fusion power plants, but though he could move and fight upon the
wings of their power, he required more than that to outspeed light itself.

This howling chain of power was that more. It was Dahak's core tap, a tremendous, immaterial funnel
that reached deep into hyperspace, connecting the ship to a dimension of vastly higher energy states. It
dragged that limitless power in, focused and refined it, and directed it into the megaton mass of his
Enchanach Drive.