"David Drake - Fortress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

themselves," continued Kennedy through the squeal of hydraulic rammers seating the shells of the next
salvo. Clicks of static from command transmissions cut across the broadcast band, but Kelly was used to
building sense from messages far more shattered and in a variety of languages beyond English. He was
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good at that - at languages - and his fingertips again tried to wiggle the magazine of his rifle, making sure it
was locked firmly into the receiver.

"Space is both a challenge - " said the President as Kelly's hearing returned after the muzzle blasts of the
howitzers which were more akin to physical punishment than to noise. " - Now also the unbreachable
shield of freedom and the spear of retribution which cannot be blunted by treacherous attack as our
land-based weapons might be."

The breechblock of a fifty-caliber machinegun clanged from the far side of the firebase as the weapon
was charged, freezing time and Tom Kelly's soul. Only the sounds of the howitzers reloading and
traversing their turrets slightly followed, however. Nothing Kelly had seen in ninety-seven days in the field
suggested the hogs were going to hit anything useful, but their thunderous discharges made waiting for an
attack easier than it would have been with only the stars for company.

"My detailed proposals ..." said the radio before the words disintegrated into a hiss like frying bacon -
louder than the voice levels had been, so it couldn't be the French dry cells giving out. . . .

"Fuckin' A!" snarled Chief Warrant Officer Platt as he ducked out the rear hatch of the command
vehicle. He, the intercept team's commander, was a corpulent man who wore two fighting knives on his
barracks belt and carried the ear of a Druse guerrilla tissue-wrapped in a watch case. "We're getting
jammed across all bands! What the fuck is this?"

Something with a fluctuating glow deep in the violet and presumably ultraviolet was crossing the sky very
high up and very swiftly. A word or two, " - dominance -- " crept through a momentary pause in the
static before the howitzers, linked by wire to the Tactical Operations Center, fired again.

"Commie recon satellite," Platt muttered, his eyes following Kelly's to the bead shimmering so far above
the surface of dust, buffeted by hot, gray strokes of howitzer propellant. "You know those bastards're
targeting us down to the last square meter!"

Tom Kelly reached for the tuning dial of the radio with the hand which was not sweating on the grip of
his rifle. Anybody who could come within a hundred yards of a point target, using a bombardment rocket
aimed by adjusting a homemade bipod under the front of the launching tube, ought to be running the US
space program instead of a Druse artillery company. The hell with the satellite - assuming that's what it
was. If the rag-heads could jam the whole electromagnetic spectrum like that, there were worse
problems than Radio Research teams becoming as useless as tits on a boar. . . .

" - domestic front," said the radio just as Kelly's fingers touched it, "the curse of racial injustice calls for -
"

Tom Kelly never did hear the rest of that speech because just as normal reception resumed, a
one-twenty-two howled over the berm and exploded near a tank-recovery vehicle. It was the first of the