"Alastair Reynolds - Galactic North" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

Luyten 726-8 had been no one's idea of a welcoming destination. No human colonies had
flourished there. All that remained were droves of scavenging machines sent out by various
superpowers. The ship had locked into a scavenger's homing signal, eventually coming within
visual range of the inert comet which the machine had made its home, and which ought to have
been chequered with resupply materials. But when Irravel had been revived from reefersleep, what
she'd found in place of the expected goods were only acres of barren comet.
"Dear God," she'd said. "Do we deserve this?"
Yet, after a few days, despair became steely resolve. The ship couldn't safely travel anywhere
else, so they would have to process the supplies themselves, doing the work of the malfunctioning
surveyor. It would mean stripping the ship just to make the machines to mine and shape the
cometary ice -- years of work by any estimate. That hardly mattered. The detour had already added
years to the mission.
Irravel ordered the rest of her crew -- all 90 of them -- to be warmed, and then delegated tasks,
mostly programming. Servitors were not particularly intelligent outside of their designated
functions. She considered activating the other machines she carried as cargo -- the greenfly
terraformers -- but that cut against all her instincts. Greenfly machines were Von Neumann
breeders, unlike the sterile servitors. They were a hundred times cleverer. She would only consider
using them if the cargo was placed in immediate danger.
"If you won't unleash the greenflies," Markarian said, "at least think about waking the
Conjoiners. There may only be four of them, but we could use their expertise."
"I don't trust them. I never liked the idea of carrying them in the first place. They unsettle me."
"I don't like them either, but I'm willing to bury my prejudices if it means fixing the ship faster."
"Well, that's where we differ. I'm not, so don't raise the subject again."
"Yes," Markarian said, and only when its omission was insolently clear did he bother adding:
"Captain."
Eventually the Conjoiners ceased to be an issue, when the work was clearly under way and
proceeding normally. Most of the crew were able to return to reefersleep. Irravel and Markarian
stayed awake a little longer, and even after they'd gone under, they woke every seven months to
review the status of the works. It began to look as if they would succeed without assistance.
Until the day they were woken out of schedule, and a dark, grapple-shaped ship was almost upon
the comet. Not an interstellar ship, it must have come from somewhere nearby -- probably within
the same halo of comets around Luyten 726-8. Its silence was not encouraging.
"I think they're pirates," Irravel said. "I've heard of one or two other ships going missing near
here, and it was always put down to accident."
"Why did they wait so long?"
"They had no choice. There are billions of comets out here, but they're never less than light-hours
apart. That's a long way if you only have in-system engines. They must have a base somewhere else
to keep watch, maybe light-weeks from here, like a spider with a very wide web."
"What do we do now?"
Irravel gritted her teeth. "Do what anything does when it gets stuck in the middle of a web. Fight
back."
But the Hirondelle's minimal defences only scratched against the enemy ship. Oblivious, it fired
penetrators and winched closer. Dozens of crab-shaped machines swarmed out and dropped below
the comet's horizon, impacting with seismic thuds. After a few minutes, sensors in the furthest
tunnels registered intruders. Only a handful of crew had been woken. They broke guns out of the
armoury -- small arms designed for pacification in the unlikely event of a shipboard riot -- and then
established defensive positions in all the cometary tunnels.
 Nervously now, Irravel and Markarian advanced round the tunnel's bend, cleated shoes
whispering through ice barely more substantial than smoke. They had to keep their suit exhausts
from touching the walls if they didn't want to get blown back by superheated steam. Irravel jumped