"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 01 - Hammer's Slammers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

they wear black.

"And the people who wear cloaks, black or red,"
Desoix concluded. "Make sure they know you're a
soldier. Because they'd just as soon knock your
head in as that of any policeman or citizenтАФbut
they won't, because they know that killing soldiers
gets expensive fast."

Tyi shook his head. "I'd say I didn't believe it,"
he said with the comfortable superiority of some-
body commenting on foolishness to which he doesn't
subscribe. "But sure, it's no screwier than a lot of
places. People don't need a reason to have prob-
lems, they make their own."

"And they hire us," agreed Desoix.

"Well, they hire us to give 'em more control
over the markets on Two," Tyi said, not quite
arguing. "This time around."

Their vehicle was approaching the plaza. It stood
two meters above the channel, barely eye-height
to the men in the back of the hovercar. A pontoon-
mounted landing stage slid with the tides in a
vertical slot in the center of the dam blocking the
river beneath the plaza; the car slowed as they
approached the stage.

"If they dam the riverтАФ" Tyi started to say,
because he wouldn't have commanded a company
of the Slammers had he not assessed the terrain
about him as a matter of course.

Before Desoix could answer, slotted spillways
opened at either end of the dam and whipped the
channel into froth with gouts of fresh water under
enough pressure to fling it twenty meters from the
concrete. The hovercar, settling as it made its

final approach to the stage, bobbed in the ripples;

the driver must have been cursing the operator
who started to drain the impoundment now in-
stead of a minute later.

"Hydraulics they know about," Desoix com-
mented as their vehicle grounded on the stage
with a blip of its fans and the pontoons rocked