"Gardner Dozois - A Special Kind of Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

semisentients of all ranks), and the caste had never been extremely large
in the first place. The by-laws had demanded that the Combine maintain a
security force, but it had become mostly traditional, with minimum
function, at least among the uncloned higher ranks, almost the last
stronghold of old-fashioned nepotism. That was one of the things that had
favored the Quaestor uprising, and had forced the Combine to take the
unpopular step of impressing large numbers of industrial clones into a
militia. The most junior of these two cadets was very young, even younger
than me. The third man remained inside the van's cab. I could see his face
blurrily through the windfield, kept on against the cold though the van
was no longer in motion.

I waited. I knew the others were maneuvering into position around me.
I also knew what Heynith was waiting for.

The third man jumped down from the high cab. He was older, wore an
officer's hologram: a full executive. He said something to the cadets,
moved a few feet toward the back of the van, started to take a piss. The
column of golden liquid steamed in the cold air.

Heynith whistled.

I rolled to my knees, parted the speargrass at the edge of the cleared
space, swung my gun up. The two cadets started, face muscles tensing into
uncertain fear. The older cadet took an involuntary step forward, still
clutching the atomizer. Ren and Goth chopped him down, firing a stream
of "bullets" into him. The guns made a very loud metallic rattling sound
that jarred the teeth, and fire flashed from the ejector ends. Birds
screamed upward all along the mountain flank. The impact of the bullets
knocked the cadet off his feet, rolled him so that he came to rest
belly-down. The atomizer flew through the air, hit, bounced. The younger
cadet leaped toward the cab, right into my line of fire. I pulled the trigger;
bullets exploded out of the gun. The cadet was kicked backwards, arms
swinging wide, slammed against the side of the cab, jerked upright as I
continued to fire, spun along the van wall and rammed heavily into the
ground. He tottered on one shoulder for a second, then flopped over onto
his back. At the sound of the first shot, the executive had whirledтАФpenis
still dangling from pantaloons, surplus piss spraying wildlyтАФand dodged
for the back of the van, so that Heynith's volley missed and screamed from
the van wall, leaving a long scar. The executive dodged again, crouched,
came up with a biodeth in one hand, and swung right into a single bullet
from Ren just as he began to fire. The impact twirled him in a staggering
circle, his finger still pressing the trigger; the carrier beam splashed
harmlessly from the van wall, traversed as the executive spun, cut a long
swath through the speargrass, the plants shriveling and blackening as the
beam swept over them.

Heynith opened up again before the beam could reach his clump of
grass, sending the executiveтАФsomehow still on his feetтАФlurching past the
end of the van. The biodeth dropped, went out. Heynith kept firing, the