"Diann Thornley - Ganwold's Child" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thornley Diann)

Rhodes, and M. Shayne Bell, for their long-distance encouragement and moral support.




PROLOGUE

Darcie didn't expect to live.
With the hand she could move enough to reach them, she tore the unit and command patches from her
uniform shirt — left only her nametag, rank, and flight surgeon's insignia. She drew out the chain from
around her neck, yanked off the two crystal pendants hanging with her ID tags, shoved them into the
corner behind her.
"Mama?" The child stirred on her lap, trying to push himself back. "Why are —"
She put a finger to his lips, her other hand cupping his head to prevent its bumping the metal bulkhead.
"Hush, Tris."
She could barely whisper. She sat on the bottom of a locker meant only for a pressure suit — one of
four lockers in the maintenance compartment — with the toddler held snug between her body and her
drawn-up knees.
Outside noises reached her: the roar of engines crescendoing toward thrust into lightskip — the fourth
attempt.
She braced her head back in the corner behind the pressure suit, hugged Tristan to her breast and
locked her teeth.
Clumsy masuki! she thought. They won't have a catch left if they strain the transport to disintegration
first!
Lightskip warning horns screamed through the corridor outside the maintenance compartment; the
vessel shook, groaned. In the turbulence, the child threw up.
Darcie swallowed against her own nausea at the sour smell of it. Wiped his mouth and the front of her
uniform. "Don't cry, little soldier," she whispered. "Here now, hold on to me."
The horns wound down as they had before and she relaxed her brace against the plasmic sensation of
entering lightskip.
She waited what seemed hours in the hot darkness. Her legs grew cramped, then numb from their
position and the toddler's weight on them. She tried to shift a little, to ease them, and pain arced up her
back.
Her thoughts tumbled over each other without any order. She thought of Lujan, her mate, waiting for
them at their destination. Thought of the way he had kissed her good-bye months ago on Topawa.
The locker was growing hotter, almost stifling, despite the slits in its door. She wondered, in an oddly
detached way, how long it would take for her and Tristan to smother. Wondered what Lujan would do
when he learned they were dead.
Her reverie was shattered by the tremor of explosions. Shooting? she wondered. She heard the
transport's minimal weaponry reply, and then footfalls: running, thudding up and down the corridor
beyond her hiding place.
There was another hour's lull before the craft rocked at the impact of electromagnets, shuddered in the
whine of winch cables. She started at volleys of light arms' fire and bootfalls ringing through the passages.
Armored bootfalls this time, not scuffing masuk footsteps.
Catching her lower lip in her teeth, she began to stroke the child's hair.
The maintenance compartment's door slammed open.
 Voices reached her — two or three of them, only meters away — but their words, modulated by their
helmets' electronics, weren't understandable. Boots trod the circumference of the maintenance
compartment. Over her pulse in her ears, she detected an oscillating hum.
She pressed a hand tight over Tristan's mouth and bit off a groan: she had used lifeform sensors before;