"David Drake - Redliners (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

adjacent on the west.
The trouble was 3-3тАЩs objective, the huge maintenance hangar along
the east edge of the field, was almost four hundred yards from the ship.
That was a hell of a long way to run across bare concrete with a
combat load. By the time the exhausted strikers got to the hangar, the
Spooks would have had time to wake up.
They were waking up already. A hundred-foot-wide segment of
hangar door had been open when C41 appeared. It was closing now,
rolling down from the building roof. тАЬDonтАЩt stop!тАЭ Abbado said, not
that there was any likelihood Horgen had planned to.
Abbado hooked his left arm around the frame of the shattered
windshield and sprayed a crackling burst from his stinger across the
shadowed figures moving within the hangar. Two of them flopped to
the ground; one sprang up again and limped out of sight behind his
fellows.
The stingerтАЩs coils accelerated 15-grain projectiles to 10,000 feet per
second. The pellet wasnтАЩt effective beyond 500 yards, but the strikers
carried rockets to handle the occasional distant target. Stingers had the
impact of a grenade on a target at short range. With thousand-round
ammo packs containing both pellets and a fresh power supply, they
were the weapon of choice for the sudden assaults in which C41
specialized.
The truck had a three-man cab, but the three werenтАЩt supposed to be
humans in battle gear. The Kalendru were long-limbed, gray-skinned
humanoids. From a distance they appeared hairless, but if you looked
closely you saw that their skin was covered with fine down.
Kalendru were on average taller, slimmer and significantly quicker
than Terrans. Because Spooks werenтАЩt as strong, their troops carried
lighter, less-powerful weapon loads. A striker learned fast, though, that
if you missed your first shot the Spook was going to get in the second
one.
Horgen had the truck up to forty miles an hour. Immediately ahead
the hangar door closed with a rattle that Abbado hoped meant it was
fairly flimsy. тАЬHang on, boys!тАЭ he said as he pulled himself into the
cab and crossed his arms over his faceshield. тАЬThe partyтАЩs about to
start!тАЭ
They hit the quivering door with a crash louder than the battle going
on all over the spaceport.

Each of the two 16-round cannisters of plasma cartridges weighed a
hair over forty pounds, and there was the weight of the air-cushion
dolly besides. Striker Esther Meyer liked to tell herself she was as
tough as any man in C41, but right at the moment she was glad
Sergeant-Gunner Bloch and Santini, the other loader, had paused to lift
her dolly from the hold instead of leaving her to struggle with it alone.
Meyer could keep moving despite the heat and constriction of her hard
suit as long as anybody, sure; but hefting a full ammo dolly was
largely a matter of mass and peak strength.
Stingers and the 4-pound rockets most strikers slung from their belts
already raked the port area. Fourth Platoon (Heavy Weapons) was the