"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 02 - Cross The Stars (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

and protectedтАФтАЬand it keeps me on my toes besides. I donтАЩt even get bored, what with all the different habitats we
crop. IтАЩd have to say my life is perfect.тАЭ
The man paused. He turned to scan as much of his surroundings as he could see through the broad-leafed, ten-
meter plants that made up the basic vegetation of this spot. A train of colorful, multi-legged creatures chased itself
around one fleshy stem. The joints of the beastsтАЩ exoskeletons clattered softly.
тАЬThe only problem is,тАЭ Slade went on, тАЬits not the life I want to live. And thereтАЩs not a curst thing anybody can do
about that until another ship sets down.тАЭ
 The sucking sound of a tree being pushed up from beneath was overlaid by the scream of the worker caught in the
first pair of pincers.
Slade pumped the fore-end to charge his weapon as he pivoted the butt to his shoulder. The monsterтАЩs emerging
head was toward the back of the file. It curved from the ground, dripping loam from its compound eyes and from the
agate-melded segments of its broad carapace. A workman, streaming blood where the knife-edged pincers entered
his body, was being transferred to the maw that gaped sideways to receive him. Slade had no time to pick his shot
there, however. The real danger lay at the other end of the carnivoreтАЩs rising body.
Along ten meters of the trail, pairs of pincer-tipped legs slashed out of the soil like sprouts in time-lapse. Three
other workmen had been caught and were being swung toward the head end for ingestion. The survivors of the file
screamed and leaped into the jungle. Their burdens tumbled in the air behind them.
At the further end, toward the Citadel, waved the tail and the slim, meter-long cone of the creatureтАЩs sting. Slade
fired at the base of it.
The carnivore lay ambushed on its back beneath the trail. As the pincers struck upward, the tail arched toward its
prey. Large prey would be dispatched by a sting, while numbers of smaller victimsтАФlike the file of laborersтАФwould
be immobilized by sprayed venom even if they had escaped the first thrust of pincers. Now the impact of the bolt
caused the tail to spasm. It drove a stream of chartreuse venom from the sting a moment before it would have been
properly aimed at the work gang.
Slade was turning toward the monsterтАЩs head again even as the jet of poison splattered onto the foliage above. The
ground beside the man was cracked and heaving. A jointed leg as thick as his wrist lashed toward him, pincers
clicking. The carnivore was squirming to turn its body upright.
Slade fired, stepped sideways, and fired twice more in rapid succession. A drop of poison struck his right shoulder
and splashed upward across his neck, ear, and biceps.
The first three bolts from the powergun had shattered the creatureтАЩs armor. The sting hung askew, one of the
foremost pair of legs had been blown from its socket, and the cyan flash of the third round had cratered the curve of
the head shield. The bolts liberated their energy instantaneously, however. Despite the amount of surface damage the
powergun did, no single shot could penetrate to the vitals of this huge, loosely-organized carnivore. SladeтАЩs fourth
round was aimed at the ulcer left by the third. The bolt struck in a gout of vaporizing internal tissue as the poisoned
gunman screamed and dropped his weapon.
Skin was already sloughing where the venom drop had struck. Over the areas of secondary contact the skin was
turning gray and black. Slade slapped his chest injector plate with his left hand because his right arm and side had
gone numb. Leaf mold steamed beneath the hot iridium barrel of the gun he had dropped. The injector dumped
stimulant and anti-allergenic directly into SladeтАЩs anterior vena cava. Under its impact and that of the venom, he
staggered. He fumbled a medicated compress out of the kit at his belt and scrubbed at the damaged area. The fire in
SladeтАЩs blood damped down as the compress debrided, then covered, the swatches where the skin was dead.
Although Slade had not lost consciousness, his conscious mind was surprised to find that he was kneeling beside
his gun. His torso felt as if it swelled and relaxed with every beat of his heart. There had been enough breeze to carry
one droplet of the unaimed venom to him. It had almost been enough to be fatal.
The creature was dying with the noisy lethality of a runaway truck. It hammered its surroundings. The middle part
of its body was still within the trench in which it had lain hidden, while both ends lashed the vegetation above.
Across the trail and the heaving exoskeleton from Slade, a stunned laborer tried to drag himself further into the
jungle. A pincered leg gouged the earth beside him. Slade cursed and tried to leap to the injured workerтАЩs aid.
Slade had forgotten the amount of damage done to his own system by the drugs and counter-drugs that roiled
within him.