"Cook, Glen - Passage at Arms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

2 Canaan

I stepped off the courier ship, dropped my gear, looked around. "This is a world at war?"

The courier had dropped us in the middle of a grassy plain that stretched unbroken to every horizon. That vista would have scared the shit out of someone less accustomed to open spaces. I confess to mild wobblies of my own. Service people don't spend much time out of doors.

In the near distance, a vast herd of beef cattle decided we f were harmless and resumed grazing. Shadowing them were a few outriders. Kick out cattle and horsemen and there'd have been no evidence that this was an inhabited world.

"Cowboys? For Christ's sake." They weren't Wild West cowboys, but not that different, either. The nature of a profes-sion often defines its garb and gear.

The courier joined me. "Picturesque, isn't it?"

"After that ride coming in... What the hell was all the jumping about?" A courier boat has no room for observers on its bridge. I'd gone through the approach blind.

"Destroyer. Old scow." He snapped his fingers and grinned. "Shook her like that."

"How come you're such a pale shade, then?" My shipmate of the past few weeks was a black subLieutenant whose main pleasure was the witty ethnic insult. He didn't argue that one. It'd been a tight squeeze.

"They'll be along any minute. Said they were sending some-body."

"Why out here? Why not straight into Turbeyville?" He hadn't revealed his landing plan beforehand.

"We'd have got smoked. Planetary Defense doesn't waste time shitting around with Fleet couriers. They're busy covering the lifter pipe from the Pits. They don't want to hear from home anyhow." He patted the case chained to his wrist. Odd, I thought, that it should be so huge. Suitcase size. Big suitcase. "They'll cuss me for two weeks."

I studied the chain. "Damn. I'll have to cut your hand off now."

"That isn't funny." The poor bastards. They get so paranoid they won't turn their backs on their own mothers.

The chain was long. He put the case down and sat on it. He said, "Just open them baby blues and turn yourself a slow circle, Lieutenant."

I did. The plains. The grass. The cowboys, who showed no interest in the boat.

"What do you see?"

"Not a whole lot."

"You've seen it all. Change your plans. Come on home with me."

"There's more to it than this."

"Well, sure. Trees, mountains, some busted-up cities. Big deal. Look, at those bastards. Hunking around on horses. And they're the lucky ones. They don't live in caves. No boomer drops on cows."

"I fought too hard to get here. I'll see it through."

"Fool." He grinned. "Climbers, yet. Here it comes." He pointed. A skimmer wove a sinuous path across the green, a small, dark boat chopping through a breezy sea.

It rumbled up to us, down wash whipping torn grass against our legs. "Still not too late, Lieutenant. Go hide in the boat."

I smiled my holo-hero smile. "Let's go."