"Stephen Goldin - The Eternity Brigade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldin Stephen)

Winning and losing were merely opposite sides of the same coin, and he'd
lived with pain and deprivation so long they were as much a part of him as
his left arm. Even death itself was scant respite; he had probably died
hundreds of times by now, though fortunately the resurrection process
spared him the memories of those incidents.

The room they were in was large and drafty, brightly lit with a diffuse
glow from walls, floor and ceiling. There were many doors to both the left
and right, while the entire front wall was a holographic screen. The screen
was filled with symbols and lines, a surrealistic map of some place Hawker
couldn't even guess at. The symbols made no sense, but they rarely did, to
him. Hawker was no strategist or tactician. He was a fighter.

A sergeant stood before the troops. It was an alien, tall and
barrel-chested with arms looking powerful enough to tear a man in half. It
wore an unfamiliar uniform, with insignia Hawker couldn't identify, but
there was no mistaking that it was a sergeant. Even though the title of
sergeant had disappeared centuries ago, along with all the other rankings
as Hawker had first known them, the role of a sergeant remained
unchanged. Someone had to goad the fighters, instruct them, lead them
into battle. Titles could change, beings could change, but sergeants went
on forever.

Even as Hawker was looking about himself, sizing up the situation, the
sergeant barked an order in some language Hawker did not understand.
There was no mistaking the command, though. The entire room snapped
to attention.

The sergeant looked them over with the same air of disdain sergeants
have always affected. Then, when he was satisfied that the troops were in
hand, he lectured them in the same incomprehensible tongue he'd first
spoken. Hawker stood there, naked and cold and progressively more
annoyed at the bureaucratic fuck-up that created this farcical situation.
The troops weren't even separated according to language, and no
translator sets had been provided! Hawker had taken hypno implants of at
least two dozen languages at various times, and this one still did not fall
within any of them. The situation in this war must be very bad indeed for
high command to screw up this badly. The sergeant spoke for twenty
minutes, making frequent references to the holographic map behind him.
Sometimes he spoke matter-of-factly, sometimes in a bellow of
exhortation. Hawker stood in place like a good soldier, listening to every
incomprehensible word and not even bothering to make sense out of it.
He'd long ago given up on that. War never made sense; you just blundered
through it any way you could.

During the sergeant's speech, the ground continued to shake. The
enemy bombardment, if that was what it was, grew closer. Neither the
sergeant nor the troops took any notice of it, but there was plenty of
commotion outside the doors on either side of the briefing room. Running
footsteps, shouts, practically an odor of panic seeping in under the cracks.