"Alexander Jablokov - Deep Drive" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jablokov Alexander)

"Back about ten meters," Kammer said. "There's a bottleneck amid these egg cases. They'll have to string
out to get through. We can hold. Kun, get your butt into the ship and power up!"

Just like that, the mission was scrubbed.

Kammer yelled and swore and got some of the back people into Kun's shuttle while somehow preventing
a general stampede. She seemed even taller than before. Soph took up her assigned spot, back toward
the bulbous water tug, and her luggage. Kun dove through the shuttle hatch.

The E&Js did indeed get necked down by the arrangement of chrysalises, to be met with determined fire
from the mission team. One of them dropped, to be pulled by one ankle back behind a chrysalis. Kun
hesitated, hatches open, until Kammer screamed at him. Then he buttoned up and hit his side thrusters.
Flames tore above Soph's head. The shuttle rolled slowly, then dropped over the side. Thunder sounded
below as the shuttle's main drive came on.

Soph didn't have time to see whether Kun managed to avoid smashing into the sea below. The team
members who
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Alexander Jablokov

remained had to try to get aboard the water tug and make their own escape.

Shouts came from behind her. Soph turned to see troops rappel down the biopackage's side and swing
in to hit them in the rear.
They must have landed somewhere on the complex control surfaces above, a ticklish operation. For a
brief instant, Soph felt admiration for their daring.

It was all over, A few more of the mission team went down, and the rest of them attempted to surrender.
There was no escape. The E&J troops had cut them off from the tug.

But Kammer was not about to surrender. Not handicapped by the E&Js' fear of destroying any Bgarth
biologicals, she fired straight through the bulging chrysalises to kill whoever was hiding behind them.
Support fluid poured across the floor, filled with the dying shapes of incomprehensible embryos. The
spotlights caught her bright hair, and Soph could hear her laugh above the high crack of small arms fire.

Most of the other team members had surrendered or died, leaving Soph as a holdout. She saw two of
the black-helmeted figures turn toward her, their emerald eyespots glaring.

Soph dove, grabbed at her luggage handles. A burst of fire went through the space she had just
occupied. She pushed her boot toes against the damp floor. Her luggage fell off the edge of the platform,
pulling her after it.

Rushing wind, darkness. She held on to the handles as she fell down at the peaks of the Maxwell
Mountains.

"Tiber, of course, is the key to the problem," Lightfoot said.

"How?" Soph asked.