"Michael A. Stackpole - BattleTech - Mechwarrior - Dark Age 01 - Ghost War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stackpole Michael A)

eighteen hours straight, and I’d not been near a bed for about double that time and a razor triple it. I did
have a clean shirt on, but the jeans and work boots could have starred in their own ads for miracle
cleaning products.

Or public service spots about toxic waste and hazmat dumping.

We’d been up in the forest, harvesting old growth, and having to pour on the diesel to clear a swath
before noon. The local courts had issued a restraining order pending the review of some endangered
species protection action filed by the People and Divergent Species Union. PADSU was the political arm
of the militant Gaia Guerrilla Front, which viewed the use of any tool against the earth or anything on it as
an assault that needed avenging. While they preached a sort of Luddite,
return-to-nature-and-embrace-peace philosophy, they were pretty good at wielding high explosives and
other weapons in attacking the forestry and mining industries on Helen.

Rusty, over by the pool table, sucked beer from a bottle. “What do you mean you don’t believe
PADSU and the GGF are behind the collapse of the communications grid? Good Lord, Pep, it’s
obvious. They hate technology, and that was huge technology. It goes down, they crawl out of the
woodwork and begin really going to town on us. One and one is two.”

Pep, who earned her nickname by being small and quick, pointed her pool cue at him as if it were a
rapier. “Problem is, you ain’t got one to add to one. The grid goes down, The Republic gets divided into
its various worlds. No news flows, so The Republic can’t react. Folks get fearful, opportunists take over
and groups like the GGF pop up. PADSU’s been around forever, always protesting and things, but
peacefully. Now that the Knights of The Republic can’t figure out where to tromp with big BattleMech
feet, the GGF forms up and starts getting nasty.”

“Not like the old days. They’d never have done that in the old days.” Keira-san glanced over from the
table where he sat watching a Tri-Vid program. It was a rerun of some ’Mech battle on Solaris. Looked
like turn-of-the-century stuff to me, with some kid who was supposed to be the next Kai
Allard-Liao—which every fighter there wanted to be, of course, and every fighter there got billed as until
the next Kai-wannabe flamed his butt. And in the nine years since Kai Allard-Liao died fighting for The
Republic in the Capellan Confederation, every titleholder dedicated his title to Kai’s memory—though
not one of them got out into the real universe and put his butt on the line fighting for something other than
a market share of audience.

Pep brought her cue around in a slash that passed bare centimeters over Keira-san’s brush-cut scalp.
“What do you know of the old days? Ain’t a one of us here wasn’t born in The Republic era. Devlin
Stone helped put down the Word of Blake attacks, then disarmed folks and established peace. In the old
days, as you put it, the local lordlings would have been out in their own personal BattleMechs, shooting
up the peasants, then claiming they were putting down a rebellion. Check any history of the time before
and after Stone, and you’ll see how good The Republic Peace has been for everyone. And will continue
to be once ComStar gets planets talking to each other again.”
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




Keira-san slumped down in his chair and focused his attention on a fight he’d seen dozens of times
before. The biggest tragedy of his life had been the lack of new Solaris fights since the grid’s collapse.
The finer points of how a lack of communication between planets was creating pressures that were