"Edward M. Lerner - IV of Iv - A New Order of Things" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lerner Edward M)

Antimatter is extremely dangerous stuff. The United Planets antimatter
production facility—built to stockpile fuel for a nascent interstellar-drive research
project—remains top secret, undisclosed, and hidden on Jupiter’s distant moon
Himalia. Unbeknownst to the UP, patient data mining over decades has revealed
Himalia base’s secret to both Pashwah and T’bck Fwa , the AI trade agent on
Earth for the intelligent species native to Alpha Centauri A.

There is a conspiracy at hand, and it involves T’bck Fwa’s patrons: the
Unity. Twenty years earlier, the Unity’s prototype starship, then named Harmony,
was boarded and captured on its final approach to Barnard’s Star. Harmony’s
rightful crew awoke from suspended animation into K’vithian captivity. Members
of the Unity, whom humans call the Centaurs, are herbivorous, green-furred, land
octopi.

K’choi Gwu , Harmony’s ka, or leader by consensus, surreptitiously
sabotages the shipboard environmental systems. She knows that only a fresh
supply of home-world biochemicals can avert eco-collapse. Reconfiguration of
human chemical plants to mass-synthesize the exotic materials will surely be
expensive. It’s a ruse to justify her feigned reluctant disclosure of a fortune in
InterstellarNet credits hidden deep within the suppressed shipboard AI. Gwu’s
captors believe they reactivated the lobotomized AI just long enough to retrieve the
hidden financial codes, but T’bck Ra successfully hides himself in computers
distributed across the starship. An attempted SOS transmission to T’bck Fwa on
Earth is interrupted before it is completed.

T’bck Fwa already suspects a human/K’vithian conspiracy. His suspicions
grow when he finds biochemicals appropriate for the biosphere of a Unity habitat
being delivered to the Jupiter system. The SOS message fragment from the starship
seems to confirm all his suspicions.

Firh Mashkith , Foremost of clan Arblen Ems and the starship he has
renamed Victorious, has more pressing matters on his mind than a declining
ecosystem. Arblen Ems, once a Great Clan, and hence privy to Pashwah’s
long-ago discovery of the antimatter program at Himalia, had overreached
politically. All other clans had united against them. His people were driven to the
fringes of their solar system and hunted to the brink of extinction. Then, twenty
years ago, a starship had emerged from the outer darkness. It embodied
technology—antimatter and interstellar drive—far beyond the capabilities of any
clan. But Arblen Ems had become too weak to protect its prize....
 Mashkith’s boldness has changed all that. The interstellar drive, however
esoteric in theory, is easy to reproduce. His problem was and remains fuel. The
captured starship carried antimatter for a round trip; the antimatter intended for
the return flight has instead been used to reach human space. He has already sent
a rigged lifeboat back toward Alpha Centauri. The lifeboat radioed a contrived
distress call and then self-destructed, to disguise the piracy and make the Unity
distrust their own technology. If he can now trick the humans into disclosing how
they handle antimatter on very large scales, Arblen Ems alone will have access to
the stars.

Art and Eva have both worked in the secret labs on Himalia, so the