"Clayton Emery - Blood Sacrifice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

Fascinated and sick, Jessup watched an infantryman surrender his prisoner. The soldier
himself then stripped, handed his dog tags to a clerk to be checked against the list, had a
plastic face shield slipped over his head by a tech, was sat in the mouth of the right chute.
The counterpart prisoner was "processed" by hard-handed MPs with stone faces. Men
cried, screamed, begged, stood icy calm: it was all the same to them.

When the head tech signalled, the prisoner was hurled down the left chute while the soldier
slid down the right chute.

A scream echoed from the left.
Jessup sagged. Bullock propped him. "Almost there. No sweat. Take it like a man."

Even anger had deserted the prisoner. "It doesn't matter, I guess. I'd never have lasted
under the new laws. I talk too much. Even spitting on the sidewalk's a capital offense now."
"It's for the best. It's part of a larger plan," Bullock quoted. "Some reds think it's religious.
Sacrifice a sheep and get a super-soldier. And every fourth or fifth man can't even shuck off
the armor. They're bonded, the `chosen'. Soldiers for Earth's manifest destiny."
"It's sick," Jessup gagged. "You're sick, Bulldick."

The infantryman stiffened. "I hated it when you called me that! It made it easier to turn you
in!"

"Shove it up your ass, Bulldick." Jessup's emotions collapsed years into seconds. "I hope
you and your stinking fascist empire and your lobster-soldiers spin into a black hole. I hope
you brave pricks go so far out you bump into something that eats you alive."

"We'll see." Bullock growled. They reached the head of the line, and shoved his prisoner at
the MPs. "But you won't."
Without resisting, Jessup was kicked behind the knees while his manacles were twisted
tight. Two MPs sheared off his clothes like shearing a sheep, then ripped off his dog tags
because he was dead. Iron hands lugged him to the left chute and stripped his manacles.
Whimpering despite his resolve, Jessup glimpsed Bullock, naked but for a face shield,
sliding into the parallel hole. Then he was pitched in.
Jessup banged down hard and slid through blackness rank with sweat and fear. The chute
was slick. He couldn't stop falling, couldn't grab or kick to slow down. The smell of blood, like
sheared copper, stiffened as the space narrowed. Fetid air puffed in his face.

Tumbling, he saw something flicker below his feet. A silver wire, or a laser beam, or a
scalpel.

The last thing Jessup ever saw.
He plunged through a hundred silver streaks and was sliced to ribbons.

&&&&&-----&&&&&
Bullock also tumbled and rolled in darkness. A blob of pitch or tar struck his skin. And
burned. Then another. Hot jots like molten lead splashed his knee, his belly, his back, the
plastic face shield. A hot fiery spray drenched him, and he grayed out from the pain...

Bullock's rump thumped on a cool rubber mattress. He lay in a irregular room distant from
the first. Two technicians wearing gloves helped him rise and face a fogged mirror.