"A. R. Yngve - Argus project" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yngve A. R)

million PP, he could take Giddog and Benazir on a trip there... or to
Mars. Maybe boxing was still popular there, he thought, on that
frontier-world where two good fists counted for something...


Colonel Haruman Clarke's personal transport craft flew toward Kuwait
City's spaceport, escorted by two small automatic fighter-pods. Each pod
resembled a huge, gray, stiff-winged mosquito. Inside the craft, Clarke
sat watching the outside view, thinking about his future. This is my
last day watching Mother Earth with living eyes, he thought. But it'll
be worth it. For when Boulder Pi and his engineers have remade me, the
perfect woman shall be mine. Clarke had never met her, only seen and
heard the recordings the Kansler had shown. And yet, it seemed as if he
had known her for a long time.
He dimly recalled some sort of court case, where she had been publicly
humiliated on legal technicalities. Clarke promised himself to restore
her reputation - once he became Argus-A, the new Adam to the new Eve.
Colonel Clarke found it funny that she had been the first, and he merely
a development of the original. And he wondered how the Fleet had managed
to keep her away from the public eye so efficiently. Maybe with the new
top-secret "info-busting" weapons he'd only heard rumors about...
"Venix," he whispered to himself... and his reveries were aborted when
the human pilot sent a message over the loudspeakers.
"We're being pursued, sir. Four unidentified auto-pods just took off
from the ground and are approaching fast. They're too small for our
escorts to hit."
"Take us down to land," Clarke said quickly. "Anywhere. Now."
"There's only the open plaza there," the pilot replied.
"Do it."
The thirty feet long aircraft began to dive while using its airbrakes
to slow down; the pursuing pods closed in on it. Just a hundred meters
from the plaza, the first pod attacked and hit Clarke's ship.


A thundering explosion interrupted Gus as he was standing on a ladder-
platform, mopping up solar panels. He looked up and saw an oblong
aircraft careening toward the plaza, its nose pointed straight at Gus.
He jumped down from the platform, landed on the ground four feet below,
and scrambled for cover. His dog followed him closely.
"Giddog - follow me! Chris, call for help!"
Chris dropped his mop and ran away from the plaza, punching signal
buttons in the palm of his hand.
The aircraft drew a thick trail of smoke between two buildings, its jet
thrusters braking with an ear-piercing screech... but it was too damaged
to stop entirely. It plowed through the grove of brittle solar panel
trees on the plaza, and crash-landed in a shrubbery eighty feet farther
away. The craft did not explode - its fuel had been automatically
jettisoned before impact. Instead it broke up into several sections,
twisting like some enormous gleaming worm, and settled with a squeal of
bent and scraped metal.