"Christopher Hinz - Paratwa 03 - The Paratwa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hinz Christopher)

Simultaneously: jaws chomped together, activating her crescent web. Hands slid effortlessly into the side
pouches of her flakjak, whipped out two small knives, energizing them via skin galvanics and palm
pressure.

Multicolored beams leaped from their hilts, tripling in length as she charged forward, her arms extended
outside the crescent web's protective aura: standard attack-posture for a fighter armed with flash
daggers.

Beside Timmy stood the familiar target grid. Susan spun sideways, chopped five times with her right arm,
pivoted one-eighty degrees, leaped sideways, then thrust her left flash dagger straight at the profile of the
dummy's narrow head. The makeshift quintain, crudely cut from a baffle plate of titanium alloy, shredded
into half a dozen pieces. Susan's final thrust burned through the left earlobe of the now-unsupported
head; gravity sent the pieces crashing to the deck.

Her proctor's eyes widened with obvious pleasure; Timmy's massive body seemed to quiver, the folds of
fat dancing in an ecstasy of satisfaction. "Dead center." He chortled, gazing serenely at his handiwork, the
pieces of which now littered the floor of the shuttle's midcompartment.

"I'm glad you're impressed," said Susan, deenergizing the twin daggers and replacing them in the flakjak's
specially designed slip pockets. She maintained the invisible crescent web in its active mode, however,
continuing to protect her body from front and rear attack. Some days, Timmy was full of tricks; it would
not do to release her defenses just yet.

He smiled openly. "You made it look easy. Your piercing technique with the daggers is excellent, but
don't get trapped into using the blades in that specialized way. At four of your last five sessions, your
death-blow was delivered with a thrust."

She shrugged. "It felt right. I assumed this was an enemy with an active web. It would be far more
difficult to slash through the crescent's weak side portals than to administer the blade as I did."

Timmy chewed on that for a moment. Then: "Soon you'll be ready for moving targets."

"I can't wait." She edged her way over to one of the mid-compartment's windows, making sure that she
kept Timmy in peripheral view.

"Where are we?" she asked. They were flying very low across the surface of the planet, probably less
than six hundred feet above the ravaged terrain. Damaged buildings, most of them two- and three-story
concrete structures, stood along the edges of trash-strewn highways. Everything was whipping by
extremely fast; Timmy had the shuttle on automatic, was keeping them at low altitude to lessen their
chances of being spotted by ground-based E-Tech scanners.

Timmy glanced out the window. "We're over some small city in the Carolinas, I imagine. Very soon,
we'll be heading out over the Atlantic, then down across Cuba. We'll stay over water as much as
possible for the remainder of the flight."

Susan nodded, not really knowing where those places were. Earth geography was an arcane subject, to
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