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

able to hold them. The planning problems went deeper than she could have done anything about. Wasn't
that what Lightfoot had warned her about?

"We'll have to abandon most of our heavy defensive gear at the landing site, then," Soph said. "There's no
way we can get it up into the Maxwells and still get back out with Ripi."

"So what do you suggest?" Kammer had an air of barely controlled patience.

"We'll have to hang on to this airship for longer, let it take us farther up into the Maxwells. There are
some alternate landing spots nearer the target."

Kun silently opened up topo displays of the Maxwells. Peaks thrust up from the floor. Proposed landing
sites glowed yellow-green.

"You rejected those sites earlier," Kammer said.

"They're more dangerous," Kun said. "More exposed.
10 Alexander Jablokov

Soph was right to reject them. Then. But now we don't have the ATVs to take us up from the proposed
airhead, so the situation's different.

' 'Goddammit, how was I supposed to know her ship was going to burn up in the dust cloud?" Kammer
sucked in a breath.

"Kammer, please." Kun almost whispered.

Kammer let the breath out and smiled. Suddenly she was again the competent team leader Soph had
thought she was signing on with.

"All right, enough screwing around. Let's look at the backup sites and get on to busting Ripi out of jail."

The Bgarth biopackage sank down toward the dark landscape of Ishtar. The sky still glowed with light
refracted through the dust cloudsтАФand would for weeks. It was as if a moon had been smeared out
across the stars. By the cloud's vague light, Soph could see the peaks rising up at them.

Most of the team members were asleep, readying themselves for the landing and move toward Ripi's
covert, which was planned to start in fourteen hours. It would still be night then, of course. It would be
night for another two months. At Soph's direction, the team had set up perimeter proximity alarms, as if
they were camped in the forest. They'd had very little time for practice back on Luna, and Soph felt the
lack of actual field exercises keenly. It had taken them forever to lumber around the darkening biological
platform to set up the alarms. Soph was not happy.

Soph's luggage had arranged itself near the platform edge in a broad V, its parasail configuration. Soph
had decided not to depend on the descent gear purchased by Kammer and Kun and had instead
invested her own money in adding air-assault capability to her own luggage. But the damn thing had sat
too long in Lightfoot's house. It had always been his game to modify whatever gear she was setting up.
An airfoil had already grown over the welter of chrome-cornered bags, striped gold and red: Lightfoot's
school colors. The man had no decency.