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

Things were not going well at all.

None of that was Hawker's concern. His only job was to fight, and it
didn't matter whether his side won or lost. The fighting was all that
counted, and it would continue to the end of time. The merry-go-round
wouldn't stop, and there was no way to get off.

His briefing finished, the sergeant dismissed the troops. Those who had
understood him turned to the left and began filing out the doors on that
side. Those who hadn'tтАФand Hawker was far from the only oneтАФ followed
the others' example. No one spoke much until they were through the door,
out of the sergeant's immediate sight. Then a flood of babble broke loose.
 "Anyone here speak English?" Hawker yelled into the general din. When
there was no response he asked again, then worked his way down through
the list of other languages he spoke with some degree of comprehension.
Finally, when he had worked his way down to Vandik, he got an answer.
"Here."

Hawker and his answerer kept shouting at each other in Vandik,
closing the gap between them by fighting the crush of confusion on all
sides, until they finally drew together. Hawker found himself confronting a
female humanoid who came barely to his shoulders. She, too, was naked,
but covered with a yellow-green downy fur. Hawker tried to remember the
name of her race, but found he couldn't. They had been enemies at one
time in the distant past, but had long since become allies.

"Could you understand what he said?" Hawker asked in his imperfect
Vandik.

The female answered in an accent so thick he could barely make out
what she said. Her grammatical structure, too, seemed
strangledтАФalthough his knowledge of Vandik was centuries old and God
only knew what had happened to the language in the interim.

"Is civil war," she said. "Is being this town fighting on all sides around.
Bunker is this in which we are. Is will be fighting up top. Is must for us to
hold off fighting for six hours. Is reinforcements will be coming at then. Is
now for us to go get uniforms and weapons. This way."

Sorting through her speech, Hawker translated freely that they were
currently in a bunker beneath a besieged town during a civil war. They
had to fight a holding action until reinforcements could
arriveтАФhopefullyтАФsix hours from now. That might explain a lot about the
desperate atmosphere within the bunker and the slipshod conditions of
the resurrection.

Hawker followed his tiny compatriot to the supply line, where uniforms
were being doled out by laconic quartermasters. When his turn came, the
being in charge gave him no more than a quick glance and reached behind
him onto a shelf. He thrust the uniform and mess kit into Hawker's face