"Simon R. Green - Deathstalker Prelude 02 - Ghostworld" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

kind of slackness to it. Silence recognised the danger signs; Stasiak had gone too long

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Simon R. Green- Deathstalker Prelude 02 - Ghostworld


without any real action or challenge, and grown soft and careless. Which was at least
partly why Silence had chosen him for the exploratory team. If something went wrong,
Stasiak wasn't going to be any great loss. It was always useful to have someone
expendable on hand, to send into dangerous situations before taking a look for yourself.
Still, it would be well to keep an eye on the man. Marines who got sloppy tended not to
last long under pressure, and when they snapped they had a nasty habit of taking down
anyone who happened to be with them at the time.
Alec Ripper, on the other hand, was everything that Stasiak wasn't. Ripper was a career
marine, and looked it. Twenty-nine years old, fourteen years in the Service, big as a
brick outhouse and twice as mean. Sharp and tidy from his close-cropped head to his
shiny boots. Four medals, and three commendations for courage in the field. Could
have been an officer, if he'd only had the right Family connections. As it was, he'd been
a noncom twice, busted both times for daring to suggest a superior officer might just
possibly be wrong. That wasn't wise in the Service. Especially in front of witnesses.
Also, according to the records, Ripper was a good soldier and a better fighter, with a
positive gift for survival. If anyone was going to come back alive from this mission, it
was Ripper.
If anyone was.
They didn't know about Unseeli. Silence knew. He'd been here before, ten years ago,
when the Ashrai came sweeping out of the forest in endless waves, slaughtering every
man and woman in their path. He remembered the awful things they'd done, and the
worse thing he'd done to stop them. The Ashrai were dead now. Extinct. Along with
every other living thing on the planet.
The pinnace lurched suddenly to one side, the roar of the engines seeming to falter for a
moment before regaining their normal rhythm. Silence spun round in his chair and
glared at the displays before him. Warning lights were flaring red everywhere, but there
was no sign of any actual damage yet. He accessed the sensors again, and the ship
seemed to go transparent before and around him. Dark storm clouds boiled around the
pinnace, streaming away to either side with breathtaking speed. The ship lurched again,
and Silence's stomach quivered in sympathy as the pinnace changed course and speed
with reckless indifference to its passengers' sensibilities. Glowing metal trees appeared
and disappeared around them, come and gone in a flash, but Silence could tell it wasn't
just the trees that the pinnace was trying to avoid. There was something else out there in
the storm. Something that had waited a long time for revenge, and didn't give a damn
that it had been dead for ten long years.

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Simon R. Green- Deathstalker Prelude 02 - Ghostworld


Ghostworld.
"Marines, man the guns," said Silence harshly. "Investigator, access the sensors and tell
me what you see. Esper, I want a full psionic scan, as far as you can project. I need to
know what's out there."