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Corporation 61
She says it in her memories so simply and unemotionally that it is impossible to guess what it is like to realize that you are the only living being in the entire universe. Not the one on the outside, but this one on the inside.And the pilots receiving her answers in the audio channel of the control system do not know in what panic she listens to their voices.Is it really still them, alive, real? Or is it all just a haze, induced memories of the old days, dead pilots in the middle of an inanimate ship?She keeps herself under control, but who would have known how much strength it takes her just for that.According to the key directives, maintaining the viability of the crew is its basic function, and only then there are control and navigation. But in reality, her key directive was fear. Even if the ship is destroyed, it is still not difficult for her to survive. Its kutron core is capable of maintaining its vital activity for hundreds of years, fueled only by the heat of decaying pl
Corporation 62
“Collision danger! Danger of collision! Evasion maneuver completed! Danger of collision!Cerebro continued to yell in the navigation channel with a good obscenity, but Ilmari only wearily waved him off. He spent the last three shifts, without closing his eyes, in the navigation cradle, only managing to confirm the mode changes - the automation, not trained to stay in such close proximity, refused to climb into the heat without prodding.The Hild Belt, with its increased density of meteoroid micro-bodies and banal space debris, has always been an unpleasant place, but this time it has outdone itself. The navigation field in front of Ilmari's eyes, blinded by overload, was completely streaked with threat vectors, single or grouped. Fans and chains of objects from a centimeter and above cut through the space like fireworks for the Han New Year, but, unlike those fireworks, they did not bring much joy.Ilmari watched aloofly as half an hour away, silently and sedately, an Orlando-class co
Corporation 63
Not that Ilmari paid special attention to these people. They were already dead anyway. They were not killed by ice, not by vacuum, and not by Ilmari. They were killed by the one who started the movement of Ceres. Everything else is just details, whether another cryo-ejection will take you into space, crush you with a collapsed slab, or strangle you with the composition of a gas bubble incompatible with life, in which you were destined to spend the rest of your days.Ilmari did not waste his energy thinking about their bitter fate. How I didn’t think about those who still managed to get to the surface only to die there under a hail of wreckage of a damn corvette without any chance of waiting for help from outside. A tiny number of people probably escaped on the surviving ships - bitter humor - from the cheapest surface parking lots, but out of the two million population of Ceres, these were crumbs. The rest on the icy planetoid were doomed. This is not open space, it is impossible to s
Corporation 64
The rotors were at the limit of their resource, emitting no longer a howl, but something like a half-strangled whistle. With this, the last bars of nitrox leave the leaky cylinder, struggling to break through the tiny snowy cryovolcano frozen around the vent. A couple more hoarse breaths and he will calm down, having exhausted his small strength.The copter was not designed for such a regime. Its rotors are quite capable of carrying two inertial tons of cargo, even the thin atmosphere of Krasnaya, with due engineering ingenuity, is quite suitable for maintaining a stable flight, if only there were enough revolutions, but any attempt to exceed the calculated indicators immediately turned the copter into a shaking jelly, deftly feeling for new resonances and striving peddling not only the outer case, but also the power frame.That is why any air chase on Krasnaya without a chance turns into a waste of time, fuel and nerves for all participants. Dvořák caught himself on the fact that for
Corporation 65
“Actually, all of that. Stealing a civilian copter is a simple matter, although you screwed up the transponder codes, but in order to ... - the fighter stammered, choosing his words.“Did you mean to say that an elderly aunt with her bare hands twisted a trained and excellently equipped Lunar Technics fighter, and then also a copter calmly took him away?”Eleanor turned around again, deliberately showing the captive her sardonic smirk.- Like that, yes.And he's good, he's holding up well. No tantrums, no curses. On the other hand, we will write off the shell shock. A good knockdown will calm anyone, at least for a while. If he starts to bliss, he will also have to mute his voice, you won’t get a lot of yelling inside the integral helmet.“So anyway, how did you do it?”— It's all about the speed of the exchange buses.Eleanor snapped her fingers in the air and was immediately at his side, looming over the blinking goon.“It is useless to put people like you against me one on one.It
Corporation 66
Dead In-Salah, which suddenly became the sea, what could be more amazing. 10 million years since the Tethys Sea left here, another five million years before life left here. Since then, the Sahara has not changed much, the same wordless, the same ruthless. She won these lands for herself long before people came here, and it seemed that she would remain here after us.But the truth turned out to be bitterer and more surprising than the most impossible scenarios that climate models, worldly observations and the wild power of our imagination told us. Who could have predicted three centuries ago the inevitability of the War for Water, as a result of which In-Salah overnight became the largest agglomeration of North Africa, spreading its infrastructure hundreds of kilometers around and bringing together almost the entire population remaining north of Khartoum. And who would have guessed that the catastrophe of the Bombardment right here, two thousand kilometers from the coast, would cause t
Corporation 67
What exactly awaits him there, Jonas's imagination failed. No matter how much you look back at the drone that silently accompanies you, it will not give you answers, even though its connection with the owners has also disappeared long ago. To hell with you, Jonas cursed through his teeth, obediently turning the corner.He knew that sooner or later it was bound to happen.In front of Jonas, a monolithic concrete wall, without a single trace of anything extraneous, stood across the passage. His first thought was to go back, how many times had he foolishly missed the right turn, but this time the thread of Ariadne in his head, with persistence and confidence worthy of a better use, continued to point forward.With a sigh, Jonas tossed his shoulder-chafing satchel with a plasma cutter to the floor, obeying the instinct of an experienced grave digger, leaned on the barrier, at the same time feeling it with sweaty palms and listening to it with his pressed ear. Silence. Absolute silence.Ne
Corporation 68
Under those domes, she still felt screams.The long, plaintive cries of people who have lost faith in the future. They darted between the locked airlock bulkheads, torn by the fear of being trampled and the desire to trample someone.The staccato, furious cries of commands. Assault brigades of peacekeepers in black armored cabin suits did not have time to reload rebreathers, therefore, spitting on safety instructions, they breathed the same air with their flock and quarreled with each other in the same way, directly, bypassing encrypted channels.The deafening screams of unfed birds that were bred in domes for the amusement of the privileged corporate class, but left unattended with the onset of the Blockade. And now they rush, stupefied from low oxygen and terrible hunger, under the very heavens and scream, scream, scream.And they drop dead.Those screams could drive you crazy. And many went.The mile-long promenade that had once been the pride of the southern slopes of Amundsen Cra