"Cook, Glen - Starfishers 00 - Passage At Arms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Now I can feel the earth tremors generated by departing lifters. They leave at ten-second intervals, Тround CanaanТs 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. HeТs leaning toward me, wearing his mocking grin. УThree klicks to go. Think weТll make it?Ф
I ask if heТs 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 with light and shadow.
He looks twice his chronological age. HeТs losing hair in front. His features are cragged and lined. ItТs hard to believe this came of the pink, plump cherub face I knew in Academy.
The gyrations of the brown girlТs tracked rack bother him 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 isnТt any drill. The interceptions are taking place in the troposphere now. Choirs of ground-based weapons are testing their voices. They sing in dull crackles and booms. The carrierТs roar and rumble only partially drown them.
Halos of fire brand the night.
A violin-string tautness edges YanevichТs words as he observes, УDrop coming down.Ф
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. HeТs so startled he doesnТt yelp. Westhause and I snag fists full of jumper as he lunges past.
УAre you crazy?Ф Westhause demands. He sounds bewildered. I know what heТs feeling. I feel that way when I watch a parachute jump. Any damn fool ought to know better than that.
УI wanted to see . . . Ф
The Commander says, УSit down, Mr. Bradley. You donТt want to see so bad you get your ass retired before you start your first mission.Ф
УNot to mention the inconvenience,Ф Yanevich adds. УItТs too late to come up with another ShipТs Services Officer.Ф
I commiserate with Bradley. I want to see, too. УHow long before the dropships arrive?Ф
IТve seen the tapes. My seat harness feels like a straitjacket. Caught on the ground, in the open. The enemy coming. A Navy manТs nightmare.
They donТt bother with my question. Only the enemy knows what heТs doing. That adds to my unease.
Marines, Planetary Defense soldiers, Guardsmen, they can handle the exposure. TheyТre trained for it. They know what to do when a raider bottoms her drop run. I donТt. We donТt. 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 IТll carry a long time. A tableau. Steam escaping the cracked hull, colored by a vermilion dawn. Very picturesque.
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. CouldnТt tell they had been guys pretty much like us, only a little taller and blue, with mothlike antennae instead of ears and noses. Ulantonids, from Ulant, their name for their homeworld. УThose chaps got an early out,Ф 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, УStrange 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.Ф
УLooks like weТll get in ahead of them,Ф Yanevich says.
I check the sky. I canТt fathom the omens heТs reading.
The surface batteries stop clearing their throats and begin singing in earnest. The Commander gives Yanevich a derisive glance. УSeems to be shit flying everywhere, First Officer.Ф
УMake a liar out of me,Ф the Lieutenant growls. He flings a ferocious scowl at the sky.
Eye-searing graser flashes illuminate the rusting bones of once-mighty buildings. In one surreal, black-and-white, line-on-line instant I see an image which captures the sterile essence of this war. I swing my camera up and snap the picture, but too late to nail it.
Way up there, at least three stories, balanced on an I-beam, a couple were making it. Standing up. Holding on to nothing but each other.
The Commander saw them, too. УWeТre on our way.Ф
I try to glimpse his facial response. He wears the same blank mask. УIs that a non sequitur, Commander?Ф
УThat was Chief Holtsnider,Ф Westhause says. How the hell does he know? HeТs sitting facing me. The coupling was going on over his left shoulder. УLeading Energy Gunner. Certifiable maniac. Says a good-bye up there before every mission. A quick, slick patrol if he gets his nuts off. The same for her ship if she gets hers. SheТs a Second Class Fire Control Tech off JohnsonТs Climber.Ф He gives me a sick grin. УYou almost snapped a living legend of the Fleet.Ф
Crew segregation by sex is an unpleasantry unique to the Climbers. I havenТt been womanizing that much in integrated society, but IТm not looking forward to a period of enforced abstinence. ThereТs something about having somebody else cut you off that does things to your mind.
The folks back home donТt hear the disadvantages. The holonets concentrate on swaggering leave-takers and glory stuff that brings in the volunteers.
Climbers are the only Navy ship-type spacing without integrated crews. No other vessel produces pressure like a Climber. Adding the volatile complication of sex is suicidal. They found that out early.
I can understand the reasons. They donТt help me like it any better.
I met Commander Johnson and her officers in Turbeyville. They taught me that, under like pressures, women are as morally destitute as the worst of men, judged by peacetime standards.
What are peacetime standards worth these days? With them and a half-dozen Conmarks you can buy a cup of genuine Old Earth coffee. Price six Conmarks without-on the black market.
The first dropship whips in along the carrierТs backtrail, taking us by surprise. Her sonic wake seizes the vehicle, gives it one tremendous shake, and deafens me momentarily. Somehow the others get their hands to their ears in time. The dropper becomes a glowing deltoid moth depositing her eggs in the sea.
УThereТs some new lifters thatТll need to be built,Ф Westhause says. УLetТs hope what we lost were Citron Fours.Ф
My harness is suddenly a trap. Panic hits me. How can I get away if IТm strapped down?
The Commander touches me gently. His touch has a surprisingly calming effect. УAlmost there. A few hundred meters.Ф
The carrier stops almost immediately. УYouТre a prophet.Ф ItТs a strain, trying to sound settled. That damned open sky mocks our human vulnerability, throwing down great bolts of laughter at our puniness.
A second dropper cracks overhead and leaves her greetings. A lucky ground weapon has bitten a neat round hole from her flank. She trails smoke and glowing fragments. She wobbles. I missed covering my ears again. Yanevich and Bradley help me out of the carrier.
Bradley says, УBad shields on that one.Ф He sounds about two kilometers away. Yanevich nods.
УWonder if theyТll ever get her back up.Ф The First Watch Officer commiserates with fellow professionals.
I stumble several times clambering through the ruins. The boom must have scrambled my equilibrium.
The entrance to the Pits is well hidden. ItТs just another shadow among the piles, a man-sized hole leading into one of warТs middens. The rubble isnТt camouflage. Guards in full combat gear loaf inside, waiting to clear new debris when the last dropship finishes her run, hoping thereТll be no work to do.
We trudge through the poorly lit halls of a deep subbasement. Below them lie the Pits, a mix of limestone cavern and wartime construction far beneath the old city. We have to walk down four long, dead escalators before we find one still working. The constant pounding takes its toll. A series of escalators carries us another three hundred meters into CanaanТs skin.
My duffel, all my worldly possessions, is stuffed into one canvas bag. It masses exactly twenty-five kilos. I had to moan and whine and beg to get the extra ten for cameras and notebooks. The crew-including the Old Man-are allowed only fifteen.