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

The last escalator dumps us on a catwalk overlooking a cavern vaster than any dozen stadia.
УThis is chamber six,Ф Westhause says. УThey call it the Big House. There are ten all told, and two more being excavated.Ф
The place is as warm with frenetic activity. There are people everywhere, although most of them are doing nothing. The majority are sleeping, despite the industrial din. Housing remains a low priority in the war effort.
УI thought Luna Command was crowded.Ф
УAlmost a million people down here. They canТt get them to move to the country.Ф
Half a hundred production and packaging lines chug along below us. Their operators work on a dozen tiers of steel grate. The cavern is one vast, insanely huge jungle gym, or perhaps the nest of a species of technological ant. The rattle, clatter, and clang are as dense as the ringing round the anvils of hell. Maybe it was in a place like this that the dwarfs of Norse mythology hammered out their magical weapons and armor.
Jury-rigged from salvaged machinery, ages obsolete, the plant is the least sophisticated one IТve ever seen. Canaan became a fortress world by circumstance, not design. It suffered from a malady known as strategic location. It still hasnТt gotten the hang of the stronghold business.
УThey make small metal and plastic parts here,Ф Westhause explains. УMachined parts, extrusion moldings, castings. Some microchip assemblies. Stuff that canТt be manufactured on TerVeen.Ф
УThis way,Ф the Commander says. УWeТre running late. No time for sight-seeing.Ф
The balcony enters a tunnel. The tunnel leads toward the sea, if I have my bearings. It debouches in a smaller, quieter cavern. УRed tape city,Ф Westhause says. The natives apparently donТt mind the epithet. ThereТs a big new sign proclaiming:
welcome to
red tape city
please do not
eat the natives
ThereТs a list of department titles, each with its pointing arrow. The Commander heads toward Outbound Personnel Processing.
Westhause says, УThe caverns you didnТt see are mainly warehouses, or lifter repair and assembly, or loading facilities. Have to replace our losses.Ф He grins. Why do I get the feeling heТs setting me up? УThe next phase is the dangerous one. No defenses on a lifter but energy screens. CanТt even dodge. Shoots out of the silo like a bullet, right to TerVeen. The other firm always takes a couple potshots.Ф
УThen why have planetside leave? Why not stay on TerVeen?Ф The shuttling to and fro claims lives. It makes no military sense.
УRemember how crazy the Pregnant Dragon was? And that place was just for officers. TerVeen isnТt big enough to take that from three or four squadrons. ItТs psychological. After a patrol people need room to wind down.Ф
УTo get rid of soul pollution?Ф
УYou religious? YouТll get along with Fisherman, sure.Ф
УNo, IТm not.Ф Who is, these days?
The check-in procedure is pleasantly abbreviated. The woman in charge is puzzled by me. She putzes through my orders, points with her pen. I follow the others toward our launch silo where a crowd of men and women are waiting to board the lifter. The presence of officers does nothing to soften the exchange of insults and frank propositions.
The lifter is a dismal thing. One of the old, small ones. The Citron Four type Westhause wants scrubbed. The passenger compartment is starkly functional. It contains nothing but a bio-support system and a hundred acceleration cocoons, each hanging like a sausage in some weird smoking frame, or a new variety of banana that loops between stalks. I prefer couches myself, but that luxury is not to be found aboard a troop transport.
УGo-powered coffin,Ф the Commander says. УThatТs what ground people call the Citron Four.Ф
УShitron Four,Ф Yanevich says.
Westhause explains. Explaining seems to be his purpose in life. Or maybe IТm the only man he knows who listens, and heТs cashing in while his chips are hot. УPlanetary Defense gives all the cover they can, but losses still run one percent. They get their share of personnel lifters. Some months we lose more people here than on patrol.Ф
I consider the obsolete bio-support system, glance at the fitting they implanted in my forearm back in Academy, a thousand years ago. Can this antique really keep my system cleansed and healthy?
УYou and the support system make prayer look attractive.Ф
The Commander chuckles. УThe Big Man wouldnТt be listening. Why should he worry about a gimp-legged war correspondent making a scat fly from one pimple on the universeТs ass to another? HeТs got a big crapshoot going on over in the Sombrero.Ф
УThanks.Ф
УYou asked for it.Ф
УOne of these days IТll learn to keep my balls from overloading my brain.Ф
For the others the launch is routine. Even the first mission people have been up this ladder before, during training. They jack in and turn off. I live out several little eternities. It doesnТt get any easier when our pilot says, УWe punched up through a dropship pair, boys and girls. Should have seen them tap dancing to get out of the way.Ф
My laugh must sound crazy. A dozen nearby cocoons twist. Disembodied faces give me strange, almost compassionate looks. Then their eyes begin closing. WhatТs happening?
The bio-support system, into which we have jacked for the journey, is slipping us mickeys. Curious. Coming in to Canaan I didnТt need a thing.
My lights go out.
I have trouble understanding these people. TheyТve reduced their language to euphemism and their lives to ritual. Their superstitions are marvelous. Their cant is unique. They are so silent and unresponsive that at first glance they appear insensitive.
The opposite is true. The peculiar nature of their service oversensitizes them. They refuse to show it. They are afraid to do so because caring opens chinks in the armor they have forged so their selves can survive.
The boomer drop was rough for me. I could see and hear Death on my backtrail. It was personal. Those droppers were after me.
Navy people seldom see the whites of enemy eyes. Line ships are toe to toe at 100,000 klicks. These men are extending the psychology of distancing.
Climbers sometimes do go in to hand-to-hand range. Close enough to blaze away with small arms if anyone wanted to step outside.
The Climber lexicon is adapted to depersonification, and to de-emotionalizing contact with the enemy. Language often substitutes for physical distance.
These people never fight the enemy. Instead, they compete with the other firm, or any of several similar euphemisms. Common euphemisms for enemy are the boys upstairs (when on Canaan), the gentlemen of the other firm, the traveling salesmen (I suppose because theyТre going from world to world knocking on our doors), and a family of related notions. Nobody gets killed here. They leave the company, do any number of variations on a theme of early retirement, or borrow HecateТs Horse. Nobody knows the etymology of the latter expression.
IТm trying to adopt the cant myself. Protective coloration. I try to be a colloquial chameleon. In a few days IТll sound like a native-and become as nervous as they do when someone speaks without circumlocution.
The Commander says the TerVeen go was a holiday junket. Like taking a ferry across a river. The gentlemen of the other firm were busy covering their dropships.
TerVeen isnТt a genuine moon. ItТs a captive asteroid that has been pushed into a more circular orbit. ItТs 283 kilometers long and an average 100 in diameter. Its shape is roughly that of a fat sausage. It isnТt that huge as asteroids go.
The support system wakened us when the lifter entered TerVeenТs defensive umbrella. ThereТre no viewscreens in our compartment, but IТve seen tapes. The lifter will enter one of the access ports which give the little moonТs surface a Swiss cheese look. The planetoid serves not only as a Climber fleet base, but also as a factory and mine. The human worms inside are devouring its substance. One great big space apple, infested at the heart.
The process began before the war. Someone had the bright idea of hollowing TerVeen and using it as an industrial habitat. When completed, it was supposed to cruise the Canaan system preying on other asteroids. One more dream down the tubes.
The address system begins hurrying us up before everyone is completely awake. I spill out of my cocoon and windmill around, banging into a half-dozen people before I grab something solid. Almost zero gravity. ThereТs no spin on the asteroid. They didnТt warn me.
I donТt get a chance to complain. Yanevich tows me outside, down a ladder, and into an alcove separated from the docking bay by its own airlock. Yanevich will be our First Watch Officer. He checks names against an assignment roster as our people join us. There are a lot of obscene exchanges between our men and the ladies mustering along the way. These boysТ mothers would be shocked by their sonsТ behavior. The mothers of the girls would disown their daughters.