"Iron Sunrise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

IMPACT: T plus 1392 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes

Wednesday hid under the desk, heart pounding with terror, clutching a stubby cylinder. She’d seen the body of the customs officer stuffed inside the darkened kitchen; realized he was dead, like the handwritten instructions in the diplomatic pouch said. Now the thing that did it was coming for her, and she wished -

There was a scratching click of claws on polycellulose flooring. I don’t want to be here, she prayed, fingers slipping around the sweat-lubed cylinder. This isn’t happening to me! She could see the hellhound outside, imagining it in her mind’s eye: jaws like diamond saw blades, wide-set eyes glowing with the overspill from its phased-array lidar. She could see the small, vicious gun implanted in its hollow skull, its brains governed by a set of embedded computers to override its Doberman instincts. Fist-sized overlapping bald patches, psoriatic skin thickening over diamond mesh armor. It could smell her fear. She’d read the papers in the strong room, realized how important they must be, and pushed the door ajar, thinking to leave — yanked it shut barely ahead of the snarl and the leap. Acrid smoke had curled up from the hinges as she scrambled into the ductwork, fled like a black-clad spider into the service axis and through the pressurized cargo tunnel and the shadows of the almost-empty dock, panting and crying as she went. Always hearing a scrabble of diamond-tipped claws on the floor behind her. I don’t exist. You can’t smell me!

Herman — as usual, when she needed him most — wasn’t talking.

The dog could smell her — or smell someone. She’d tabbed into a public term and watched the dog, or one of its cousins, stalk across the loading bay like the spectral, elongated shadow of a wolf — something born in frozen forests beneath a midnight sun, evolved to lope across the cyborg-infested tundra of an alien world. It had glanced at the hidden camera with glowing eyes, a glow that spun into static as it locked on and fired. It could sneeze nerve gas and shit land mines, if you believed her kid brother Jerm’s cheap third-person scripted arc-ventures; a product of a more sophisticated technosphere than Moscow’s, its muscles didn’t run on anything as primitive as actin/myosin contraction, and its bones were built for leverage — a hellhound running at full power hissed like a primitive locomotive, dissipating waste heat as steam hot enough to scald anyone who got too close.

She raised the riot cartridge, fingers tightening on the trigger switch, and pointed it at the doorway. Dim shadow of legs, too many legs. They paused, and the shadow swung across the wall, homing in. She squished down on the trigger and the canister kicked back at her hands as a terrible clatter rushed towards her and the air in front turned black. No, blue: like the dead man’s tongue, lying there. The paper said all but one copy of the data cartridge containing the customs transfer log were to be destroyed, and anyone who knew was to die. A tenuous aerogel foam bubbled and farted, rushing out into a ballooning mass as the dog lunged forward, teeth snapping, making a soft growling sound deep in its throat. It thumped against her feet in a soap-bubble cocoon, the growl turning into a deafening moaning howl of frustration.

Shuddering, Wednesday shuffled backward, pushing the heavy desk over as she stood up. She looked around wildly. The dog’s hind legs scrabbled at the floor, driving it after her. She could see a glow of rage in its eyes as it struggled with the sticky antipersonnel foam. “Good doggie,” she said vacuously, backing away, wondering inanely if she should hit it. But no, if a hellhound thought you had won, it would blow itself up, wouldn’t it? They always did that in the arc-ventures -

Something cold and wet stubbed itself against the back of her neck, and snuffled damply. She sagged, her knees and stomach turning to sacks of ice water; paw-fingers like bone clamped tight on her shoulders, holding her upright. Her eyelid monitor flickered, then died as the lights came up. The hound on the floor seemed to grin up at her — no, past her. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly human, a deep gravelly growl converging from three directions. “Victoria Strowger, this is emergency police pack four-alpha. By order of Captain Mannheim, superintending evacuation process for Old Newfoundland, we are placing you under arrest. You will return with us to the main hub traffic bay to await uplift. I must caution you that any resistance you offer may be dealt with using weapons of nonlethal intent. Running back aboard this habitat was a senseless waste of police time.” Two of the voices fell silent, but a third continued: “And while we’re about it, why were you running away?”