"Allen, Roger Macbride - Allies And Aliens 1 - Torch Of Honor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)

"Jesus H. Christ! Why?"
"Thought you didn't care about politics."
"Politics, no." Booze, and my guilty friendship toward George loosened my tongue a bit. "But you guys have killed a lot of people here. There'd be a lot more killing if you take on the others."
"Yeah, they have killed a lot...." He grunted to himself and smiled grimly. "And I know what you're thinking, and you play too fair to say it: 'Why do you always talk about it as if it wasn't your work?' " He laughed without any humor behind it, and looked through the wall in the direction of the matter transmitter's receiver. "And what work will we do with that?"
George suddenly seemed very upset, and I remembered just a little too late that I wasn't supposed to be at all concerned about what the Guardians were like. "C'mon," I said. "You guys aren't any worse than other governments have been. Don't be so hard on yourself. Besides, every invention has military potential." Blearily, I thought about what a flaming bastard Darrow was, about how slimily perfect his powers of rationalization were. Then I remembered Darrow was me. Which gave me plenty more to think about. Suddenly I felt like I hadn't bathed in a long time.
George grunted. "There are things ... things you don't know about us."Things all of us know about ourselves, that the Central Guardians have declared state secrets, anyway. If I told you, it would be the firing squad for both of us." He paused. "It isn't just that we fight wars. You're right, everybody does that. But my people have done things.... If you knew what we've made ourselves into, what we allow ourselves to remain-Sometimes I think the war we're really fighting is against our own past. And we're losing." He took a long haul off the bottle. There was something in his tone that made my skin crawl. In that moment, I knew, I knew deep in my gut, that the Guardians had kidnapped my classmates. And I knew that to the Guardians, kidnapping was as nothing, that there was more, and worse. I tried to change the subject. "Look, George, take it easy. We're supposed to be celebrating. We finally finished the job." He smiled faintly. "Yeah, I guess we did." "And it's one hell of a machine, isn't it?" "Hell of one." George noticed I was starting to get a little fuzzy. He slapped me on the back and stood up. "You get into that bed and get some sleep. Lots of work tomorrow."
Lots of hangovers the next day, too. Mine was impressive, anyway. I had been hanging around engineers too long: I felt a strong urge to disassemble my head and fix whatever the hell was the matter with it.
We went on with the work.
Then, one day, tomorrow was the day. I had been fooling with phony circuits for a day and a half by that time. Now it was time to quit stalling. All the gadgets lashed together on Vapaus, all the impressive blinking lights, were in place. Most of George's men were back at other work again. Just George and Heinrichs were still assigned to me.
I closed down the inspection hatch I had been diddling with and sauntered over to one of the guards. "If you would, please get a message to the base commander. Tell him we'll be ready for a demonstration at 2000 hours tomorrow."
"Yes sir!" This was a big moment: the first time any of my guards had called me "sir"-or anything at all, for that matter.
By now, a hundred plans were being put into effect around this world, and in Vapaus. With luck, by the time the League troops arrived, the Guardians' forces would already be half crippled. A host of mysterious flat tires, shorted out engines, strange cases of food poisoning, delays and problems from civilian suppliers, a rash of fires.
The Guardians' intelligence units were going to notice fast. Chances were someone had been picked up and interrogated already, someone who knew more than he should have. Conspiracy is a highly skilled profession, practiced only by amateurs. There was sure to be some warning that something was up.
Would someone make the connection between my bogus machine and the sudden flurry of headaches from a population that had seemed subdued?
Time started to drag toward deep night. I felt alone and afraid.
The remaining guard watched me closely, but allowed me to step through the doors of the hangar and breath in the fresh cleanness of the mild autumn weather.
I looked out to the crystal clear sky, the old familiar stars, seen in strange new places from a different world. Not for the first time, not even for the hundredth, I thought of Joslyn. She was out there, somewhere, and only if I lived would I see her again. That alone was reason for this fight. I thought back to those good days, before the drone came into our lives with its frightful news, and farther back than that, to the days of training, before the Venera. How had I come from all that to this sorry place? How had it come to me to try and break the yoke the Guardians had hung on this world?
I realized that I had never had a choice, that I had had to come. The thought that, even for a moment, back in the comfort of the J.M.'s wardroom, I had thought it might be understandable to cut and run. . . . No. this was my fight, now, by right of duty, honor, and anger. For what they had done to Tempkin's family, if nothing else.
And Joslyn. She was in this fight, too. There was a hell of a reason. If we won, she would be safe.
The fate of a world was more or less in my hands that night, but it was Joslyn I thought of.
I looked at the stars, and loved her with all my heart.
I spotted a portly figure in a greatcoat marching toward me in a studied sort of hurry, leaving a jeep behind him. He walked through a light, and my blood froze. Bradhurst. Intelligence. He walked straight toward me, opened his lipless mouth, with a sort of basilisk's smile, and spoke.
"Good evening, Commander Larson."
Oh my God.
Poker face. Ignore it. You are in it deep! I stood there and looked at him. "Hmmm? Bradhurst? It's me, Darrow. You've got the wrong guy." My heart was pounding so hard I thought I could hear it.
"I have the right man, Commander."
A dead, silent moment passed between us. He stared at me with those vicious, dead eyes and all I wanted to do was run.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm Darrow."
"Of course you are. Come along, anyway." He gestured to the guard that he was taking me for a stroll. "The guard seems to trust you, letting you stand in the open doorway like that."
"No reason not to trust me. Besides, where would I run?"
"Precisely." Bradhurst was enjoying this, a cat playing with a bird who can't get away, letting it try, anyway.
Bradhurst slipped his hands into his pockets and drew out a pair of fine leather gloves. He carefully pulled them onto his fat fingers. "Imagine my position. Thanks to me, a man is put in a place of trust, put in charge of an important new weapon. The weapon is excitingly useful, very tempting. The man's records are satisfactory. Very convenient, isn't it? Especially since this man simply popped out of the woodwork, no explanation of why he was missed before." Bradhurst smiled at me, a hungry gleaming of teeth. "There is, however, a flaw. If something goes wrong, things have gotten out of control to the point where I might be blamed. So I checked. And I checked again. Most slowly. Most carefully. I even check a memory file that includes a listing of the personnel of the League of Planets Survey Service. The records, and the fingerprints, were of interest.
"I don't know how you got here, Larson, but you are here. That machine in there-I don't know what it is, but I know what it isn't. And it isn't here to do the Guardians of Capital any good."
Bradhurst stopped and turned toward me. I thought of running, but he was right. Where could I run?
He glared at me and kept talking. "There seem to be an untoward number of accidents and problems with the locals tonight. I wonder if you know anything about that? But it doesn't matter now. We've walked far enough. We go back now, and tear that machine to pieces-we'll find out what it really is. And then, after we have shredded every single fact from the remains of your brain, you will die."
No matter how long the odds, I had to try to get away in the dark, circle back, try and activate the transmitter early. I had no chance, but I had no choice, either. I shifted my feet to run-
"Don't try to escape, Larson." Suddenly, his voice was as hard and cold as granite in a cave. I backpedaled a bit. I had to try.
He pulled out his sidearm. "I'm warning you-"
A ruby beam sizzled through his neck, slicing through the flesh, and he collapsed against me, gurgling, already dead.
A pair of boots came crunching up, and a dim figure appeared, reholstering a laser. "I had to stop the transmitter. I couldn't let 'em keep killing. I was going to kill you until I heard this guy talk."
George Prigot. He grabbed at the body and pulled it off me, shoving it to the ground. I gulped, blinded for a moment by the splash of blood that had struck me in the face. I looked down at the broad, puffy face. A thin line of blood oozed up from behind its lips. Now the face was as dead as those glassy, murderous eyes.
"He's no loss," George said. He looked at me sharply. "That night we were drinking, I realized Capital isn't a good place. There's a better life in this stinking camp, just being away from Capital and a little nearer to people who used to know peace. I couldn't help it spread, and that machine, what it could do....You really from the League?"
I remembered to breathe, gulped air, let myself go to the shakes. It had been that close. "Yeah. Yeah. Terrance MacKenzie Larson, ROK Navy. The League."
"Good." He prodded the body with the toe of his boot. "What do we do with the body?"
"I don't know."
"Wait a minute. I know a place. Give me a hand." We each grabbed one of Bradhurst's arms and pulled the still-warm body up. We dragged it about 50 yards through the dark to a toolshed. George leaned the body against it, fumbled with a bunch of keys, and opened the lock.
We shoved the body inside. I ran back the way we came and did what I could to scuff up the gravel where the body had bled and where we had dragged it. No one who wasn't looking for blood would find it. I hustled back to find George hiding in the shadows of the toolshed.
"Now. Talk," he said. "What the hell is going to happen when we push that button?"
"Not what. Who. It really is a matter transmitter. The League is beaming 5,000 troops at us."
"My God. Is it going to work?"