"Richard Hatch - Battlestar Galactica 5 - Paradis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hatch Richard)

The Viper flew on, a lonely piece of advanced technology speeding
across the surface of a pristine, sleeping planet. Against the face of the
planet the immense battlestars were specks, slowly joined by a host of
smaller metallic containers carrying the last remnants of humanity.

They had escaped from an enemy that lived and died by all things
metallic. The Cylons were nothing without their machines and had
become part machine. But human beings could live outside a metal
cocoon. They could walk away from their metal hives and breathe the air
of Paradis, eat the food and drink the water.

To Apollo, freedom was more than a condition of the spirit. It was also
a physical thing. It was about choices. It could also be a place.

What would the natives be like? He had to admit to himself a feeling of
disappointment that there was intelligent native life. But better to
discover and deal with them now than after the Colonials began to live up
to their name by colonizing the planet.

The inhabitants might be primitive by the standards of space
travelers—but to an animal the gulf separating a battlestar from a mud
hut was negligible.

Apollo checked the latitude and longitude that Athena had provided.
Shortly, he saw the settlement in the distance. The small structures had an
elegance of line that was simple and clean. The moment he saw them he
made his decision.

It would be wrong to fly over the village and frighten the natives. That
was not the way to meet a new people. He didn't exactly expect them to
fall down in a swoon and treat the Viper as a chariot from the gods. Apollo
chose not to meet them in that fashion because it would be bad manners.

He landed.

He left the Viper and removed his helm.

It was good to stand in this verdant world without any kind of artificial
life support. Bending down, he picked up a leaf, savoring the fresh odor in
his nostrils and resisting an impulse to put it in his mouth.

The village waited for him over a rise. As his boots crunched twigs and
leaves with every step, he considered again the reasons for his decision.
The Natives were not just pre-high-tech. Neither the battlestar's scans nor
his brief reconnoitering had turned up evidence of any armies.

All indicators suggested peaceful inhabitants.

But he wanted to be certain. In another moment he would make first