"David Drake - General 02 - The Hammer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
APPENDIX
REGULAR CAVALRY
IRREGULAR CAVALRY
INFANTRY
ARTILLERY
ORGANIZATION
RECRUITMENT, PAY, AND RATIONS
UNIFORM
WEAPONS
NAVAL FORCES




CHAPTER ONE

"Raj?" Thom muttered. Then, slightly shocked: "Raj!"
The two young men stared at each other for a moment. Raj Whitehall felt his
skin ridging in horror; nothing had changed here in nearly two years. Nothing
at all since that moment when Thom Poplanich had frozen into immobility in the
round mirrored room that was the body of the being that called itself Sector
Command and Control Unit AZ12-b14-c000 Mk. XIV. Thom still had the unhealed
shaving nick on his thin olive cheek, the tear in his floppy tweed trousers
made by a ricochet when Raj tried to shoot his way out with his ceremonial
revolver. Whereas for Raj . . . a lifetime. Thom had remained here; Center had
sent Raj Whitehall out to be its agent in the fallen world.
"Raj, you're -- "
"Older. Two years older. Everyone's older except you, Thom," Raj said gently,
forcing calm into his voice.
He had been forcing calm ever since he made himself go down once more into the
catacombs beneath the East Residence. This place was something that did not
belong in the prosaic world, in the one thousand one hundred and fifth year of
the Fall. Forcing himself not to run at the remembered scent, the absolute
neutrality of filtered air, like nothing else in the world . . . The eerie
not-floor that somehow supported him without touching his bootsoles, the
perfect mirror of the walls that reflected one thing and not another. His hand
clutched the grip of his five-shot revolver, not for any good the weapon might
do but for the comfort of the honest iron and wood.
This was where his life had changed twenty months ago; the shock in Thom's
eyes made him aware of it again, that and the fresh-faced youthfulness of the
friend who had been older and wiser and more knowing in the ways of the City.
Raj brought up an image of himself as he had been, and as he was: still tall
and raw-boned, 190 centimeters, broad-shouldered and long-limbed. The brown,
high-cheeked, hook-nosed face was more lined now, and there was something in
the eyes . . . .
"What's happened to me?" Thom asked shakily.
"Nothing. Center is -- "
thom poplanich has had access to all knowledge in the human universe as of the
fall of the Federation, Center said in a slightly waspish mental voice; there