"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Endgame (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора

watching the outer perimeter. After three hours of
recon, I was starting to regret being so nice and
burning Rumplestiltskin's mortal coil, setting free his
soul. "If that bastard lied to meЧ"
"You'll what?" came Arlene's radio voice in my ear.
"Resurrect him and kill him again?"
"Maybe we should resurrect the Freds on the ship.
Whoops, don't correct me; I just figured out how
stupid that suggestion was." I managed to catch her
while she was inhaling, or else she would have quickly
snorted that the Freds on the ship knew even less
about the Newbies than weЧwe had already killed
them before we left for Fredworld, a hundred and
sixty years before the Newbies landed!
The weirdness of the place was starting to get to me.
I kept seeing ghosts in my peripheral vision, but there
was nothing when I whipped around with the motion
detector. "Damn that Rumplestiltskin! He swore they
were still here!"
"Maybe he just meant they were here when he
died?"
I paused a long time. "Arlene, if that's all he meant,
then we're in deep, deep trouble. I don't think you
realize how deep."
"I don't get you. If we can't find them, we jump
back in the ship and return toЧto Earth." She didn't
say it, but I knew she was thinking to a dead, loveless
Earth with no Albert Gallatin.
"A.S., if we don't find the Newbies, I can almost
guarantee they're going to find us. They'll find Earth.
We were almost wiped out by the Freds. We barely
hung on, and only because we evolved so much faster
than they, we were so much more flexibleЧbecause
they underestimated us! What the hell do you think
would happen to humanity if the Newbies found us
next?"
"Jesus. I didn't thinkЧ"
"And if they can go from stone plows and oxen
toЧto this in just two hundred years, where are they
going to be just ten years from now? What if they
don't find us for fifty years, or a hundred years? Jesus
and Mary, Arlene; they would be gods."
She was silent; I heard only my own breath. I
almost considered asking her to switch to hot-mike,
so I could hear her breathing as well, but I couldn't
afford to lose control now, not when I had troops
depending on me. Above all else, I had to demon-
strate competence and confidence.
"Fly," she said at last, "I don't like this. I'm getting
scared." She wrapped her arms around her chest and