"Daniel Keys Moran - Lord November" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

"...Janssen? Damn it, Peter, are you there? Peter ... Peter?" After a long moment, Peaceforcer Evans
leaned back in the chair, gazing blankly at the control panel, at the telemetry that still glowed on the
screens before him.
A spacecraft had approached Janssen's slip at five percent of the speed of light--and had come to
rest relative to the slip in less than a minute....
...and had destroyed Janssen's slip thirty seconds later.
Adrienne Gordeau, one of the Ganymean colony's two administrators, was a tall, almost cadaverously
thin Frenchwoman; she could have passed for loonie. She looked at Evans with troubled eyes. "That's
not a human ship, is it?"
Peaceforcer Evans shook his head once, and said quietly, "No, it's not."

From the diary of Father Michael Wellsmith, Friday October 8, 2049. The inscription on the inside
cover is in his sister Jamie's handwriting: "In nomen Patris, et Filius, et spiritus Sancti. For Michael on his
birthday, July 10, 2038."
The entry is:

"Tomorrow the aliens will receive us aboard their ship. My Lord, if You do indeed exist, then hear me
now. There is pain within me.
"I hurt.
"This knowledge of pain is not a new thing, but it is no less easy to bear for its familiarity.
"I hurt.
"I do not think the pain shows. Surely to my people I must seem tranquil; confident in my faith; serene
in the knowledge of my duty. Those who know me well-- Father O'Donnell, my sister Jamie--would see
the uncertainty that has taken me; but with the exception of Bear Corona I am close to no one here, and
Bear is not the sort to whom one unburdens oneself.
"Father Donnelly is at St. Peter's CityState in the Belt, Jamie is on Earth, and there is nobody on
Ganymede to hear my confession.
"In three weeks, my Lord, I will observe the twentieth anniversary of my vows. And I hurt inside and
I have always hurt.
"But until now I had always believed.
"If You do indeed exist, be with me tomorrow."

The voice from the other side of the screen said, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been
twenty-two years since my last confession."
"...Bear?"
"Yeah."
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
"I guess." A dry chuckle came from the other side of the screen. "You've been after me for most of a
year."
"I had hoped for better circumstances."
Silence. "Yeah. Me too." Another chuckle, packed with cynicism. "You better get comfortable. This
is gonna take a while."

Saturday, October 9, 2049:
The colony on Ganymede, like many other colonies throughout human history, exists because of
politics.
By 2049 all but three of the Belt CityStates have declared independence from the Unification of
Earth. The White Russian CityStates are two of them; and St. Peter's is the third. At the moment the
Unification's Space Force lacks the ability to prosecute a successful war against the breakaway