"Charles Stross - Love me" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Oshi stared at him. "No. Where's you're point of presence? Here or on Pascal?"

Boris nodded. "Pascal. Light-seconds away. This is a quantum-locked link: no listening in
possible, and you're sleeping by seconds between packets. I got your message. Looks
interesting. I don't know ... it's a question of planning." He looked haunted. "I'll be frank.
You figure that attacker is a dumb robot, and I am inclined to agree. You say there'll be a
broadcast upload coming soon, and it'll be an Ultrabright: well, I guess maybe. But the
rest of it --"

"You've got brains. Why don't you use them?" she snapped, finally giving rein to her
anger at being taken by surprise. "Item! An Ultrabright attacker zaps every unshielded
Expansion processor and carbon-based lifeform in the system. Item: Ultrabrights are
worse than Superbrights for hogging dataflow. They need input or they go insane, like
Anubis. So there's no Ultrabright on board that thing -- it's a dumb attack robot, a
berserker. But here's another item: they need to occupy this system fast, unless they want
it to be retaken by the Superbrights.



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4: Will you still love me ...

"So they must have beamed an Ultrabright out here before the attack began. It's already on
its way, I'll bet, due to arrive real soon. Months, across tens of light-years. But they can't
trust the local Gatecoder -- it might be sabotaged, and then where would the Ultraright be?
We can therefore infer that there's a Gatecoder and a small expansion processor on board
the attack ship -- a kind of lifeboat, takes one Ultrabright in event of emergency. Right?
Which leads to the obvious conclusion --"

Boris froze, grew translucent for a moment.

"You there?" Oshi demanded.

"I'm here." He blinked, solidifying again. Shook his head: "you make sense. But to gamble
everything on hijacking a starship --"

"How else are we going to get out of this rat-trap?"

They stood for a frozen moment, locked in their own thoughts. Oshi paused, helpless,
wishing he'd say something. Anything. She wanted so badly to hear it: to have somebody
else take responsibility. Because then she could begin making plans, and that would take
her mind off the worst question that had begun to trouble her since she had realised that
they might be able to escape: the question of what she could do with her life.

"Whose instincts do you trust?" she asked.

The question hung in the air for long seconds, until she wondered if she'd made a terrible
mistake in asking.

"A long time ago," Boris said slowly, "I made a mistake. I'm still paying for it."