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

The gatecoder module bulked large against one wall, a black slab of warm ceramic. Oshi
slumped against it. "I didn't know what I was asking for," she said. "Why now?"

"Life's been empty. Too long." Raisa shook her head, support hammock fronds
manipulating muscles that were already decaying, eaten from within by their own
lysosomes. "Do I need to give you a reason? Oh, Oshi, I didn't realise it would be like
this."

"I had thought that maybe," Oshi said brokenly. "You and I --"

There was a carrier-wave whistle from the speech-synth. "Plans!" Raisa said with gentle
derision. "I could see you making plans for us. Do you realise what's happened? I'm here.
I'm still alive. I'll recover, you'll see. Just take a bit of cellular reconstruction. I didn't want
to be alone ... what do you expect?"

Oshi shook her head, limp-necked. "Not this. I've got to get the gatecoder up to the hub,
grow a new placentory. Without it we can't go anywhere. But Rai, there's hope! Boris, the
others -- everyone -- they've uploaded. Anubis is dead and we're going to steal the
Ultrabright ship! I can take you up to the hub. There's room for both of us. Do you want
that?"

Raisa lay amidst the quiet hissing of pumps, silent for seconds as she formulated an
answer.

"Maybe," she said. "But I don't think I can move yet. I'm fixed, here. The tapeworm tried
to get to the gatecoder but I stopped it. I stopped it good ... fed it fugu. I hurt, Oshi, I hurt
everywhere. I can't move. What are you going to do?"

Oshi shrugged angrily. "What can I do? I wanted ..." she caught herself. Raisa closed her
sunken eyes.

"I'll tell you what I was going to do," Oshi said. She licked her lips. Story time. It was a
distraction from her real worries: she didn't have to think about Raisa's condition if she
kept talking. "There's a starship out there. With a small expansion processor, a gatecoder
receiver, and a drive of some kind. It's dumb right now, waiting for an Ultrabright to
arrive by broadcast transmission and tell it what to do. We're going to assemble a fleet of
small ships. The enemy's parked in orbit thirty light seconds away. We don't have portable
expansion processors capable of running an attack, but brains are cheap ... we need to
grow bodies, soldiers to control the attack drones when we get close in. Then when we've
hacked into the berserker we'll take control, set course for the nearest inhabited system.
That's the plan."


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4: Will you still love me ...


Raisa's eyelids snapped open, revealing bloodshot conjunctivae; "take me with you?"

"Oshi's face softened. "You're in danger here. We've got to get you to the hub somehow