"Alexander Kazantsev. The Destruction of Faena (ГИБЕЛЬ ФАЭНЫ, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

the Blood Guard barracks and died in dreadful agony.
In the meantime, the automatic secretary began compiling a report on
the state of the armed forces after the preparations announced by the
Dictator for a disintegration war. But Yar Jupi switched off the power
supply to the pestilential box in a fury. He had been watching on the screen
the last moments of the expedition's lift-off for Terr, mentally seeing off
his daughter. With his whole being he suffered the parting with her and
squeezed his temples between the palms of his hands until it hurt.
He had seen Mada, with a strange look on her face, run her eyes round
the cosmodrome before she entered the lift-cage, her gaze resting on the
ocean with its white bands of foam on the crests of the waves. She was
followed by a Faetian, evidently one from the other continent.
For a moment, Yar Jupi was troubled at seeing a curly-haired half-breed
so close to his daughter, but then he remembered that she would at least
stay alive. He sighed heavily. He had a feeling that he had stepped on a
steep and slippery surface. He could not keep his footing. And below him
yawned an abyss.
Ave Mar and Mada were looking through the barred lift-cage. The ocean
was expanding and the horizon seemed to be lifting up the clouds. Ave turned
round and saw on the opposite side another ocean, a living one of massed
Faetian heads with their faces upturned to the rocket. As if to symbolise
Faena's overpopulation, they were jammed incredibly close together. A sudden
spasm of yearning clutched at Ave's throat. Would he ever come back again?
But he looked at Mada. They had chosen this course themselves, and let it
not be only the course of their own happiness. Ave still had little
understanding of the true forces driving Faena into war. He only wished with
all his heart that the mysterious planet Terr would prove suitable for
settlement by Faetians and that the danger of a disintegration war would be
over and done with forever. Ave again remembered Kutsi Merc, who had brought
him here, brought him and Mada together and had, in fact, given his life for
their happiness. May his bones rest in peace...
Kutsi Merc's bullet-riddled hump had not been taken to its goal, but
the delayed-action fuse, decaying under the action of the air, was measuring
out the last moments of peace on the planet Faena.

End of Part One


PART TWO


Explosion

Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike, beat them down!
Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!
W. Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet

Chapter One

THE LITTLE WORLD