"K. D. Wentworth - Black On Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wentworth K D)

He threw back his head, and with a roar that shook him down to the depths of his soul, thrust his fist
high into the air.



Chapter One
Heyoka Blackeagle stepped out of the shuttle's conditioned air into a hot buffeting wind. Airborne sand
ticked against the metal transport and Anktan's arid, red-orange landscape swept before him out into a
series of low, green-carpeted mountains in the distance. In the foreground, a shallow, meandering river
bordered the rudimentary landing pad which was all the Danzig Research Station needed. The river
evidently changed course in times of flood and a nearby dry channel was choked with rust-colored sand.
More sand extended back from the river's current banks, then trailed off into desert hardpan.

The dry air was thinner than humans liked, redolent of sun-baked rock and dust and sand. A faint road
of sorts led from the landing pad to the station in the distance, both recent developments. Although
Heyoka had viewed innumerable pictures and holos of this region without ever being able to recognize
anything, he had hoped a smell, or perhaps some long-forgotten sound, such as the shrill of the wind, or
the murmur of the river against its banks, would invoke a buried sense-memory and bring his lost past
back to him.

But he had no sense that he had walked here before, as the wind ruffled his fur, only the same emptiness
he had known all his life. His earliest memories were still the stink of flek slave pens and the throb of the
neuronic whip burns across his emaciated ribs. Of the mother who had borne him, or the species to
which he belonged, he remembered nothing.

His partner, Mitsu, emerged from the shuttle, blinking against the light, and touched his arm, the pink of
her human fingers contrasting sharply with the silken black of his outer coat. "SoтАФwhat do you think?"
She studied the sand-dusted tarmac. "Anything look familiar?"

His nostrils flared as he drank in the hot dry breeze, rich with the scent of a thousand mysterious things
he had never smelled before. "No." He shaped the human word without difficulty on his narrow hrinnti
tongue, although the skill had cost him many hours of practice in his youth.

Releasing his arm, the wiry black-haired woman trudged heavily down the sloping walkway in the 1.12
Standard gravity, bowed under the weight of her duffel bag. "It doesn't make senseтАФwhy would a pilot
risk his license just to steal a single juvenile from a Grade Seven Culture?"

Grade SevenтАФtoo primitive and aggressive for assimilation into Confederation culture. He brushed a
strand of mane out of his face, then flexed his claws, studying the savage three-inch points that gave him a
fierce edge in hand-to-hand combat. He had struggled his whole life against the wild, unnamedotherness
within him, a being too violent to live among humans, who had only found expression on the battlefields of
the Confederation's enemies. He had crossed the stars to understand these claws.

A group of mounted figures approached across the cracked hardpan. Mitsu dragged a sleeve across her
damp forehead. "What do you suppose they want?"

"What I want." He watched as the riders drew close enough to be seen as six distinct figures, each clad
in a different color. "To know who and what I am." He hooked his top thumbs in the loops of his empty
weapons belt and stepped off the walkway. His right leg still moved stiffly, a lingering legacy of the