"Allen, Roger MacBride - Chronicles of Solace 3 - Shores of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)

BASEGLISTER
OSKARDESILVO’SOPERATIONSCENTER
THEPLANETGLISTER
GLISTERSYSTEM

Admiral Anton Koffield, late of the Chronologic Patrol, long-ago and faraway master of the Chronologic Patrol ShipUpholder, a ship long since sent to the breaker’s yard—Anton Koffield, marooned twice in time, and now, perhaps, a captive as well—Anton Koffield glared out the viewport of the buried habitat and moodily watched the earthmoving equipment outside. The robotic machines were busily erasing all the external evidence that this place even existed.

Koffield had his doubts that they could possibly succeed in hiding it, but their host—or was he their jailer?—had not asked for Koffield’s opinion.Best to think of him as host, Koffield decided.If I think of him as jailer, it will just get my anger that much closer to the surface.

“What was it your people named this place?” his host inquired. Oskar DeSilvo stood next to him, watching the same view, and no doubt seeing something completely different. Koffield saw the trap being taken down, hidden away, now that it had served its purpose in catching him. Probably DeSilvo was simply enjoying the site of robotic tractors and bulldozers moving dirt and rock and ice around the frozen hell outside, an overgrown small boy watching his toys moving around in his very own giant sandbox.

“DeSilvo City,” Koffield replied, knowing full well that DeSilvo knew the answer. The man just liked hearing the name. “It looked something like a city from orbit when we came in. At any rate it looked big enough.” It had, in fact, resembled nothing so much as a giant bull’s-eye, made up of concentric circular walls of loose rock and ice, surrounding a central dome, with a complete midsize spaceport landing field in the dome. The moment DeSilvo had detected their ship, he’d lit the place up like a near-ancient Christmas tree. Now the lights were gone, the dome was already half-buried, and the dozers were hard at work flattening the loose-rock walls as well.

“That was the idea,” DeSilvo said, plainly pleased with himself. “But now that DeSilvo City, as you call this station, has done the job of attracting your team, it is time to hide.” He gestured out the window. “The robots should have completely erased all outward sign of this place in another week or so. They will return the surface to its prestation appearance, as recorded before I started construction.”

“They won’t get it perfect,” Koffield observed. “Anyone walking the surface will be able to tell there’s been recent activity.”

“Quite likely,” DeSilvo conceded cheerfully. “Perhaps even a low-level flyover would be enough to detect us, though I think not. But the robots will be thorough—and there is frequent violent weather that will serve to blow sufficient dust and dirt around so that the activity won’t look recent for long. The winds scour this whole landscape, as well. It will be difficult, from any range at all, to distinguish what we have done from the effects of weathering. The odds are very much against your pursuers electing to do a surface search in this place.

“Nor are your potential pursuers likely to have brought along long-duration search aircraft capable of flying in the sort of frozen low-pressure environment we have outside—and I might add Glister’s surface is a most difficult environment to work in. Furthermore, the planet Glister is a large place, nearly all of it frozen, abandoned, wild, and littered with abandoned equipment and habitats. That is our chief protection. We are a needle, and my robots are busy at work piling up the haystack around us.”

He reached out and pressed a stud set into the frame of the viewport. The camouflaged blast shields swung back into place, concealing the outside view from Koffield, and any outward sign of the viewport from the exterior.

“But being hidden from view changes very little for us,” DeSilvo went on. “Most of the station is underground anyway, and the aboveground portions we will simply bury. We shall continue doing business as usual during and after the concealment operation. Come, my dear Admiral,” he said, and led Koffield down the corridor.

Business as usual,Koffield thought as he followed along.He makes it sound as if we’ve all been working along down here for months, or years. In point of fact, Koffield’s party had arrived only a few days before—and the first day had not gone well. DeSilvo had managed, quite accidentally, to goad Yuri Sparten into an attack that had left DeSilvo and Sparten both injured and both sedated.

DeSilvo was wearing workers’ coveralls again today, with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open. The bandages at his throat and his right forearm were plainly visible, yet DeSilvo himself strode purposefully past the point in the corridor where Sparten had attacked him, past the bullet hole in the corridor and the spatters of blood on the walls and floor that the robot cleaners had not quite managed to clear away.

Apparently a near-miss gunshot and a knife at his throat were not sufficient to remind the man of his own mortality. Probably nothing but his own demise would be enough, given how long the man had lived and the number of times and ways he had cheated death already.

But some hint of age, of well-hidden weariness, shone out from underneath that youthful aura. His eyes and teeth and hair were too perfect, too unmarked by time. A very slight yellowish cast to his skin hinted that his last regeneration treatment was wearing out—and that the next was not likely to work well.

Oskar DeSilvo was of medium height, with a lean, wiry frame. His face was square-jawed and high-cheekboned, with piercing blue eyes and thick black eyebrows. He looked fit. Back in the old days, he had been clean-shaven, and had worn his jet-black hair in a very dramatic shoulder-length cut. Now it was trimmed back to a crew cut, and he sported a small neat black goatee with a streak or two of grey running through it. For the moment at least, he had turned in his scholar’s robe for much more utilitarian garb. Whether the change in clothes and appearance was meant to be significant, Koffield had not the slightest idea.

DeSilvo arrived at the doors of the lift, which opened at his approach. The doors slid shut, and the lift car descended rapidly, a hundred meters down at least. The doors opened, and DeSilvo led Koffield out into a corridor that was a near duplicate of the one they had just left. The temperature was a bit higher, and the walls and floors were a bit more scuffed and worn.And there aren’t any bloodstains or bullet holes, Koffield thought.Maybe that’s why we’re on this level today . Koffield could think of no other reason for meeting below ground, rather than above. Unless it was to hide, just that much more completely, from the outside world.

DeSilvo led him through the shabby warrens of his buried kingdom. Koffield had explored at least part of that kingdom already—and had been astonished by its extent. The tunnels and chambers went on and on, corridor after corridor, level after level. The eerie caverns were just starting to come out of the centuries of frozen sleep.Half-frozen and buried alive, Koffield thought. Knowing what Koffield did about DeSilvo, it seemed an oddly fitting circumstance for a meeting with his enemy—and ally,Koffield reminded himself. It was still most difficult to think of the man that way—but there was no doubt but that his people needed DeSilvo’s help—or that DeSilvo would need theirs.

Oblivious to the thoughts of the man behind him, DeSilvo led the way into the SubLevel One conference room—itself a close copy of the conference room on the surface level. At the moment, it had been pressed into use as a dining hall. Luncheon was just about to be served by DeSilvo’s robotic staff.

DeSilvo’s guests had already learned that their host’s ideas of proper service, as taught to the machines, were eccentric. Nor was the food remotely like what they were used to. But travelers, especially interstellar travelers, had to be adaptable, and this group had certainly dealt with greater challenges than odd seasoning on their food.

Koffield scanned the room as he took his place. The others—except Sparten—were already there. Anton Koffield sat at the opposite end of the long table from DeSilvo, considering his companions.

Felipe Henrique Marquez, captain of theDom Pedro IV, the ship that brought them here. Dark-haired, olive-skinned, short, stocky, with a face that tended naturally to extremes—the fiercest scowl, the brightest smile, with no room in between. His thick eyebrows, bushy moustache, and well-trimmed beard only served to accentuate the effect. One way or the other, all the people around the table had suffered injury, deliberate or incidental, at the hands of DeSilvo. But, apart from Koffield himself, perhaps no survivor of theDom Pedro IV ’s journey had endured more harm than Marquez.

Marquez might still be the ship’s captain, but he was, perhaps, no longer ship’s master. A veritable cloud of robotic spacecraft controlled by DeSilvo had descended on theDP-IV almost as soon as the ship’s company were aboard the lighterCruzeiro do Sul and en route to the surface.

DeSilvo claimed his robots were only installing upgrades and improvements—including, just by the way, a true faster-than-light drive—but there was no way to know for sure what he was doing with the ship, or what his real plans for it were.