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

command.

"Your first time here?" Desoix asked diffidently.
The third freighter was down. Though steam hissed
away from the vessel with a high-pitched roar, it
was possible to talk again.

Tyi nodded. Either the tide was falling rapidly
or the first two ships had pretty well dried the pad
for later comers. The billows of white mist were
sparse enough that he could still see the city across
the channel: or at any rate, he could see a twenty-
story tower of metal highlights and transparent
walls on one side of the river, and a domed struc-
ture across from it that gleamed goldтАФexcept for
the ornate cross on the pinnacle whose core was
living ruby.

"Not a bad place," Desoix said judiciously. He
looked a few years older than the Slammers offi-
cer, but perhaps it was just that, looks, dark hair
and thin fe atures contrasting with Tyi's broad pale
face and hair so blond that you could hardly see it
when it was cropped as short as it was now.

"The city, I mean," Desoix said, modifying his
earlier comment. "The sticks over on Continent
Two where it looks like the fighting's going to be,
wellтАФthey're the sticks."

He met Tyi's eyes. "I won't apologize for get-
ting a quiet billet this time 'round."

"No need to," Tyi said . . . and they were both
lying, because nobody who knows the difference
brags to a combat soldier about a cushy assign-
ment; and no combat soldier but wishes, some-
where in his heart of hearts, that he'd gotten the
absolutely necessary assignment of protecting the
capital while somebody else led troops into sniper-
filled woodlands and endured the fluorescent drum-
beat of hostile artillery.

But Via! Somebody had to do the job.

Both of them.
"Hey, maybe the next time," Tyi said with a

false smile and a playful tap on the shoulder of the
man who wasn't a stranger any more.