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

low concrete building, five meters on the side
parallel to the dam beneath itтАФand narrower in
the other dimension. On top, facing inward to the
plaza, was an ornate, larger than life, crucifix.

Tyi hesitated, uncertain as to which way to walk
around the building. He'd expected somebody from
his unit to be waiting here on the mainland if not
at the spaceport itself. He was feeling alone again.
The raucous babble of locals setting up sales kiosks
on the plaza increased his sense of isolation.

"Either way," Desoix said, putting a hand on
the other man's shoulderтАФin comradeship as well
as direction. "This is just the mechanical room for
the locksтАФexceptтАФ"

Desoix leaned over so that his lips were almost
touching Tyi's ear and said, "Except that it's the
altar of Christ the Redeemer, if you ask anybody
here. I really put my foot in it when I tried to get
permission to site one of my guns on it. Would've
been a perfect place to cover the sea approaches,
but it seems that they'd rather die here than have
their cross moved.

"Of course," the UDB officer added, a profes-
sional who didn't want another professional to think
that he'd done a bad job of placing his guns, "I
found an all-right spot on a demolition site just
east of here."

Desoix nodded toward the thronged steps at the
eastern end of the plaza. "Not quite the arc of fire,
but nothing we can't cover from the other guns.
Especially now we've got Number Five back."

In the time it had taken the hovercar to navi -
gate from the spaceport to the mainland, a city of
small shops had sprung up in the plaza. Tyi couldn't
imagine the development could be orderlyтАФbut it
was, at least to the extent that a field of clover has
order, because the individual plants respond to
general stimuli that force them into patterns.

There were city police present, obvious from
their peaked caps, green uniforms, and needle
stunners worn on white cross-belts . . . but they
were not organizing the ranks of kiosks. Men and
women in capes were doing that; and after a glance