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

Ah. That's the sea I smell. The sea and all the indignities; unleashed upon it since the Pits were opened. The bay out there is the touchdown cushion for returning lifter pods. Maybe; I'll be able to watch one splash in.

Now I can feel the earth tremors generated by departing lifters. They leave at ten-second intervals, 'round Canaan's! twenty-two-hour and fifty-seven-minute clock. They come in| varying sizes. Even the little ones are bigger than barns. They! are simply gift boxes packed with goodies for the Fleet.

The Commander wants me. He's leaning toward me, wear-ing his mocking grin. "Three klicks to go. Think we'll make it?"

I ask if he's giving odds.

His blue eyes roll skyward. His colorless lips form a thin smile. The gentlemen of the other firm are playing with bigger firecrackers now. The flashes splatter his face, tattooing it withj light and shadow.

He looks twice his chronological age. He's losing hair inj front. His features are cragged and lined. It's hard to believef this came of the pink, plump cherub face I knew in Academy.!

The gyrations of the brown girl's tracked rack bother himj not at all. He seems to take some perverse pleasure in being! slung around.

Something is going on upstairs. It makes me nervous. The aerial show is picking up. This isn't any drill. The interceptions are taking place in the troposphere now. Choirs of ground-based weapons are testing their voices. They sing in dull crack-les and booms. The carrier's roar and rumble only partially drown them.

Halos of fire brand the night.

A violin-string tautness edges Yanevich's words as he ob-serves, "Drop coming down."

Magic words. Ensign Bradley, the other new fish, sheds his harness and stands, knuckles whitening as he grips the side of the carrier. Our Torquemada wheel-woman decides this is the moment to show us what her chariot will do. Bradley plunges toward the gap left by the removal of a defective rear loading ramp. He's so startled he doesn't yelp. Westhause and I snag fists full of jumper as he lunges past.

"Are you crazy?" Westhause demands. He sounds bewil-dered. I know what he's feeling. I feel that way when I watch a parachute jump. Any damn fool ought to know better than that.

"I wanted to see..."

The Commander says, "Sit down, Mr. Bradley. You don't want to see so bad you get your ass retired before you start your first mission."

"Not to mention the inconvenience," Yanevich adds. "It's too late to come up with another Ship's Services Officer."

I commiserate with Bradley. I want to see, too. "How long before the dropships arrive?"

I've seen the tapes. My seat harness feels like a straitjacket. Caught on the ground, in the open. The enemy coming. A Navy man's nightmare.

They don't bother with my question. Only the enemy knows what he's doing. That adds to my unease.

Marines, Planetary Defense soldiers, Guardsmen, they can handle the exposure. They're trained for it. They know what to do when a raider bottoms her drop run. I don't. We don't. Navy people need windowless walls, control.panels, display tanks, in order to face their perils calmly.

Even Westhause has run out of things to say. We watch the sky and wait for that first hint of ablation glow.

Turbeyville boasted a downed dropship. It was a hundred meters of Stygian lifting body half-buried in rubble. There is a stop frame I'll carry a long time. A tableau. Steam escaping the cracked hull, colored by a vermilion dawn. Very pictur-esque.

That boat was pushing mach 2 when her crew lost her, yet she went in virtually intact. The real damage happened inside.

I decided to shoot some interiors. One look changed my mind. The shields and inertial fields that preserved the hull juiced its occupants. Couldn't tell they had been guys pretty much like us, only a little taller and blue, with mothlike an-tennae instead of ears and noses. Ulantonids, from Ulant, their name for their homeworld. "Those chaps got an early out," the Commander told me. He sounded as if he envied them.

The sight left him in a thoughtful mood. After one or two false starts, he said, "Strange things happen. Patrol before last we raised a troop transport drifting in norm. One of ours. Not a thing wrong with her. Not a soul on board, either. You never! know. Anything can happen."

"Looks like we'll get in ahead of them," Yanevich says.