"Smith, E E Doc - D'alembert 09 - Omicron Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

"One of our party knocked out that tower, and got captured for her efforts," Lady A said imperiously. "Does that sound like we've sold out?"
"Was she with you?" The voice was a little awed; Yvette's stunt had obviously made an impression. After a moment of silence, a door opened downstairs in the house the blaster fire had come from. "Come on in, then. Anyone who'll fight like that is welcome."
The Empire team accepted the invitation and entered the house. Inside, everything looked preposterously normal considering the planet had been brutally invaded and conquered. Modern furniture was spaced judiciously over a hardwood floor with a thick hooked area rug in the center of the room. The only jarring note to the decor was the stack of blaster rifles leaning up against one corner.
There were ten people in the room as the team entered, and more joined them within a few minutes from other parts of the house. Most of them carried blasters tucked inside their belts. There were men and women ranging in ages from early twenties on up. There were no children, but Jules hadn't expected to find any; children would probably have been evacuated to the countryside, far from the scene of any battles.
The strain of the past week was evident in the faces of Omicron's defenders. Even though Omicron was as far from the center of galactic civilization as it could get, it was far from a rough-hewn pioneer world. Life had been reasonably comfortable here until the sudden invasion. Without warning these people had been thrown into a desperate battle for survival, a battle that for many of them had been until now little more difficult than working at a daily job and deciding what to make for dinner. Despite facing a ruthless enemy and overwhelming odds, despite overcoming their ignorance of fighting and military techniques, despite being disorganized and undisciplined, these people had held together and put up a valiant struggle. Every one of them deserved a medal, Jules thought, looking around. It was amazing the heroism even "ordinary" people could find in themselves when the need arose.
One large-boned woman with gray-blond hair, in her mid-forties, was evidently the leader of the ragtag army, even though her well-worn Marine uniform showed only the rank of staff sergeant. "Welcome to the Barswell City Division of the Omicron Liberation Army, such as it is," she said with a tired good humor. "I'm Meg Maguire. Sorry about shooting at you, but we're all a bit on edge these days. It doesn't hurt to be too careful."
"I can see that," Jules said. "You've done miracles just to stay alive, let alone fight back against the enemy." He hesitated just a second before introducing himself, not wanting to mention his real name in front of Lady A. He finally decided on using one of his previous cover names she'd heard before. "I'm Ernst Brecht, and these are my friends-Paul, Aimйe, Ivanov, and Tatiana."
"Glad to meet you," Maguire said. "If you can fight one-tenth as good as your friend, you'll be welcome indeed. That sure was a pretty sight out there, to watch her bring that tower down. Shame they had to drop the gas when they did," she added with a shake of her head. "We sure could have used more like her, but she's gone now."
"Where did they take her?" Jules asked. "What will happen to her?"
"Slave camp, most probably. Nothing we can do about it. Just cut the losses, shore up the barricades, and fight again tomorrow." She spoke with the world-weary expertise of someone who'd spent her life in battle, not just the past week.
Maguire invited the team into the dining room, where she and some of her people sat around the table to exchange information. She offered them a local beverage that tasted like iced coffee with a strong aftertaste of vanilla, and while they were relaxing she filled them in on her background. Lady A had asked about the uniform, and Maguire explained she'd been a sergeant in the Imperial Marines for nearly twenty years before an exotic ear infection on the planet Nampur affected her equilibrium and forced an early retirement. She'd come to Omicron two years ago with a good pension, looking forward to a quiet, orderly existence owning her own sporting supply shop. Until the invasion she'd done pretty well for herself. When the chaos hit, her military training came to the fore. Gradually she built up around her a group of people who would rather fight the enemy than run and hide in the country. There were few real opportunities for battle, since Maguire's people had little transportation and the invaders seldom came into the city. Today's was only the third skirmish, and the first in which anything substantial had been accomplished thanks to Yvette's bold action.
Maguire finished her story and looked expectantly across the table at Jules and Lady A, whom she recognized instinctively as the two leaders of the team. It was obvious she wanted a comparable story about their own background before she'd trust them any further.
Jules wanted to tell her the truth, that they were a team sent by the Empress herself to investigate and report on the Omicron invasion. But he knew he dared not say that. It wasn't that Maguire and her people were untrustworthy; quite the opposite, in fact. But if any of them were captured, as many were this afternoon, they might be interrogated and made to tell about the mission. It would never do to let the enemy know a team of infiltrators was busy behind the front lines, and that the team consisted at the moment of a mere five people with a sixth already in custody.
So instead he made up a story, borrowing heavily on the research he and Yvette had done about Omicron on their way to Nereid. He and his friends were from West Lenton, a city halfway around the globe from Barswell City; they'd been on a camping trip in the Umhall Mountains when the invaders hit, and consequently they didn't know much about what was happening. When they could no longer pick up any commercial broadcasts they got worried and started heading in toward civilization again. They passed a number of people fleeing the cities and heard some strange horror stories, but they were resolved to learn the truth with their own eyes. Today had been their own first encounter with the invaders, and they were suitably impressed.
Lady A sat quietly while Jules talked, letting him make up the story for them all. She knew better than to interrupt, which might introduce some contradictions into his tale. She would trust him to play the hand correctly in this circumstance.
Jules encouraged Meg Maguire to tell them more about the enemy-what sort of machines did they have, what kind of weapons did they use, did they have any weaknesses, did they have a base anywhere and, above all, what did they look like?
The invaders were not human, Maguire assured them of that. Several people had come to Barswell City from the country and from other nearby cities, and they'd seen the creatures emerge from their ships. The reports matched pretty closely to what Lady A had already heard: These alien beings were humanoid in appearance but generally shorter, the tallest being barely a meter and a half high. They had skin that was pale yellow-green and pear-shaped heads with large, hyperthyroid eyes. Their bodies seemed smooth with no body hair-at least none that anyone had seen. They usually wore heavy clothing covering everything except their faces; a few people speculated that meant they came from a warmer climate and were cold even in the temperate regions of Omicron.
Technologically, they seemed to be on a par with the humans. They used energy weapons similar to blasters, and while they used different forms of air and ground transportation, they worked on the same scientific principles as human craft. They had that yellow smoke that acted as an instant sleep gas, much the same as tirascaline, and they apparently had some device capable of jamming subetheric communications over the entire planet because no messages in or out of Omicron had been delivered since the invasion began. The most chilling advantage the aliens had was a ray that seemed to sap a human's will and leave him powerless to resist. "That's how they keep the slave camps in order," Maguire said.
"You mentioned slave camps before," Jules said. "What exactly are they? Where are they located and how do they work?"
"We don't know too much," Maguire explained, "because no one's ever escaped to let us know what happens inside. The only person in our company who's ever seen one was Rajowiscz; he passed it on his way here from Fallstown."
"Can we talk to him?" Fortier asked.
"Unfortunately, no. He was one of the people caught by the yellow smoke a few hours ago; he's probably in the camp himself by now. He said he spied on it from a hill for almost an entire day. The camp is a big compound made up of inflatable tents that might house a few thousand people in cramped conditions. He said he saw hundreds of people being forced to work for the aliens, constructing a series of buildings. It looked to him like they might be making themselves a base of some sort."
"Where was this?" Jules asked.
"About seven hundred and fifty kilometers southeast of here, in the Long River valley. The strange thing was, he said, there weren't any fences around the area, yet no one tried to escape. He saw someone get out of line just once, and the aliens shone some kind of ray on him and he stopped all his resistance immediately. Whatever that thing is, it must be pretty effective."
"Slave labor is a very inefficient work force," Tatiana spoke up. "If these aliens are as technologically advanced as we are, they should have plenty of automated construction equipment to do the job better."
"But the construction equipment and materials would have to be brought here," Lady A pointed out, "whereas the slave labor is already here for the taking. If their invasion force is primarily fighting ships rather than transports, they'd have limited space for bringing in heavy machinery. If they have a ray that makes people their slaves, they know they can count on an unlimited supply of native workers. The cheapness and easy availability would more than offset the comparative inefficiency."
By now it was dinnertime. The army's cooks had provided an evening meal, and the Empire team was invited to join the regulars-an invitation they certainly didn't refuse. The meal was a rough one, prepared under the most adverse of conditions. The bombing of the city had disrupted both water and power; food had to be cooked over an open wood fire, and water had to be brought in with great difficulty from reservoirs outside of town. Still, Maguire's army managed to keep itself going and have enough left over to give its hospitality to strangers.
During the dinner, Maguire made the invitation Jules had been expecting, that the two groups should team up to fight the invaders together. The romantic part of his soul longed to accept the offer; it would be a fine and noble calling to fight for freedom against these heartless tyrannical monsters. At the same time, he knew he had to put his talents to use in a much more important mission, getting information about the invaders back to the Empire so it could wage the larger battle effectively.
It was difficult saying no-not because he didn't want to, but also because, on the surface, he had no overwhelming reason. He couldn't tell Maguire about their mission, and any other excuses sounded weak even to his own ears. He finally ended up telling her that they were looking for family and friends from whom they'd been parted when the invasion began, and they had to find out whether the missing loved ones were still alive and well. Maguire looked skeptical, but accepted Jules's refusal with good grace. She added the invitation for the group to spend the night here in the house, and that was one invitation they could accept.
Tatiana asked whether the army had captured any of the aliens' equipment, and Maguire showed her a few artifacts they had on hand. Tatiana studied the markings on them for a few minutes, then handed them back with a polite thank you. They were not enough to decipher an entire alien language, but they were the first real clues to be stored in her computer-assisted memory for later decoding.
In the morning, with sorry farewells, Jules and his comrades left Maguire's headquarters and set out back toward their car. Along the way they passed the fallen tower in the park, and they paused to examine it more closely now that the fire had finally gone out. In the bright sunlight it looked less alien than it had in yesterday's afternoon shadows.
Twisted tits of metal had been thrown everywhere by the fireball explosion, and it would have taken an army of experts weeks to piece together the way the interior of the passenger disk must have looked. There was no sign whatsoever of the disk's inhabitants-if, indeed, there'd been any-but they found some twisted pieces of paneling that looked as though they might have come from control boards. Tatiana studied them with an experienced eye.
"These symbols are repeated under a number of what look like switches," she pointed out. "They might be the symbols for 'Off' and 'On.' Those other symbols on dials might be numbers. They seem to use colors to indicate meanings, too; see, this panel was divided into five different color stripes, each with its own set of symbols. It's a fascinating problem."
While she was studying the panels, Ivanov made a major discovery: Tucked into a hidden compartment in the wall of the disk was a series of cards. Each card illustrated some diagram that might have been a control, with a long set of writings beneath. The cards were charred about the edges from the heat of the explosion, but being tucked away in a sealed compartment had kept them from being totally destroyed.
Tatiana's eyes widened with delight as Ivanov brought the cards to her. "An instructional manual!" she exclaimed as she glanced quickly through them. "We could hardly ask for anything better."
"If it's like some instruction manuals I've seen," Fortier said, "it'll only make things more complicated. It's hard enough to read them in Empirese."
They found nothing else of value in the wreckage, and walked back to their car. Tatiana was busy studying her instruction cards with rapt attention, and was lost to the rest of the world. For the others, though, a decision was brewing. It was left to Ivanov to broach the question as they neared the car. "Where do we go from here?"
Jules looked at Lady A. "I think we ought to find the Long River valley and see what's happening in that slave camp."
"Your suggestion is no doubt motivated by thoughts of rescuing your partner," she said coolly, "but it's nevertheless a useful one. Maguire said the slaves were being used to build some kind of base. We're more likely to find the information we need visiting that than we are by driving around these deserted cities. I trust you'll keep your priorities straight, though; rescuing Periwinkle is at best of secondary importance compared to the task of gathering intelligence on the enemy's plans."
Jules had his own opinion of Lady A's priorities, but he kept it politely to himself.
CHAPTER 8
Slave Camp
Yvette awoke with a splitting headache and a feeling of total disorientation. The arteries in her neck were throbbing with pain; each pulse brought a new stab to her mind. The world seemed to be spinning around her, and it took a few minutes for her to realize she was lying still on her back on a lumpy surface that turned out to be a pile of other bodies, some of which were starting to move themselves.
She opened her eyes and turned her head, and even that simple action produced a wave of nausea she was barely able to control. She coughed a couple of times, and each cough produced new waves of pain into her head and waves of nausea out from her stomach. She couldn't recall having felt this bad since a bout of nipsum fever she'd had as a teenager. To overcome her sickness, she tried to focus her mind on the world outside herself.
The place she was in was dimly lit, and smelled heavily of many unwashed bodies. The air was warm and stuffy, and there were the sounds of other people breathing, coughing, gagging. At least one person off to the left was experiencing the same nausea she was; there was the sound of retching and the unmistakable odor that only multiplied her own queasiness.
People started moving amid groans of pain, and the floor of this darkened chamber became a writhing mass of humanity. No one quite had the strength to stand, yet, but a few like Yvette were starting to look around them and assess their situation.
Then suddenly a door was opened and the room was filled with the blaze of late afternoon sunlight, blinding in its intensity to eyes that had grown accustomed to the previous darkness. The light only stabbed worse into a head already throbbing with pain, and Yvette blinked back her tears, trying to prepare herself for what might come next.
A couple of figures appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the light. Even though she couldn't make out any of their features, Yvette knew instinctively that they weren't human beings. There was a slight awkwardness to the posture, a slight difference in the ratio of limb-to-body size that set them easily apart in her mind. The heads were a strange shape, and not at all attractive.
One of the beings shouted something at the waking people, a word Yvette couldn't make out. When no one responded, the being fired an energy weapon at the ceiling, flooding the room with even more light and heat. The point was not lost on the people in the room; even as groggy and sick as they were feeling after the effects of the yellow smoke, they scrambled to their feet and faced the door. At a curt gesture from their captor with the gun, they marched out of the room, into the daylight.
They'd been confined in the hold of some kind of transport vehicle, currently situated on open ground. The place around them was a center of feverish activity, people moving about on various errands. To the right and in front were long inflatable buildings, like mylar blimps growing from the ground. They weren't laid out in the usual human grid pattern, but in a strange, alien system that made no immediate sense. A river ran past a few hundred meters to the left, and beyond that, in the distance, was a range of hills. This region had once been meadowland bordered by forest, but the ground had been trampled underfoot by the constant slogging of thousands of feet, and the trees had been cut down and uprooted. The end result was a mostly level stretch of dirt, devoid of any natural character.