"Walter Jon Williams - Dread Empire's Fall 02 - The Sundering" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

SEVENTEEN

Cousin Marcia gave birth to a boy two days afterтАж

EIGHTEEN



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...d%20Empire's%20Fall%2002%20-%20The%20Sundering.html (3 of 324)23-2-2006 20:21:28
 Williams, Walter Jon - [Dead Empire's Fall 02] - The Sundering

By the time they arrived in their own home areaтАж




PROLOGUE

Warrant Officer Severin avoided the glances of his crew. He had led them into this misery, and now he
was unable to lead them out.

The cockpit window of the lifeboat was covered in frost, delicate white clusters of frozen spears that
reflected the red light of the Maw, the supernova ejecta that formed a giant scarlet ring which dominated
the Protipanu system. The lifeboat was grappled to the nickel-iron asteroid 302948745AF, which was
receding from the Protipanu 2 wormhole gate, and from the enemy fleet that guarded it.

The problem was that 302948745AF wasnтАЩt receding nearly fast enough. If Severin ordered the lifeboat
away from the asteroid, heтАЩd be detected by the ten enemy warships in the system and either captured or
destroyed. But if he did nothing, he and his crew would run out of food, or possibly even die of cold.

At the time, his plan had seemed the height of cleverness and high strategic thought. He had been in
command of the Protipanu 2 wormhole relay station when Captain Martinez of theCorona, fleeing a
Naxid squadron, reported that the rebels would enter the system within a matter of hours. Severin had
first of all used a trick of physics to physically move Wormhole 2, which caused the pursuing Naxids to
miss their target and to spend months of frenzied deceleration trying to claw their way back into the
system. Perhaps Severin had been rendered overconfident by this success, because heтАЩd then talked his
crew of six into remaining in the system as observers, grappling their lifeboat to the asteroid in order to
keep watch on the enemy forces and report their location to any loyalist fleet that might jump through
the wormhole to do battle.

Only no loyalist fleet had arrived. That therewere loyalist fleets was proven by the fact that the Naxid
enemy remained in the barren system, barring the most direct route from the capital, Zanshaa, to Third
Fleet headquarters at Felarus. If the rebels had won the war, they surely would have left by now, gone to
somewhere more usefulтАжinstead they made a lazy orbit around the Protipanu brown dwarf, and had
filled the system with a bewildering array of decoys designed to mislead any force coming to engage
them.

And so Severin remained grappled to his rock, and his crew with him. The lifeboatтАЩs systems were
powered down to avoid enemy sensors spotting a heat signature, and the crew wore several layers of