"Kay Kenyon - Tropic of Creation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenyon Kay)

ruined ship Fury, presumed lost in action. Or now, it would seem, just lost.

"So they've been here recently," Eli said, walking with Marzano toward the hexadron. It was half buried,
like all the others, in the soil. Maybe it was good they went armed.

"Recent enough," Marzano said. "They used this place for something. Training, maybe?" She squinted at
the small vessel before them.

Corporal Willem wiped a small section of hull clean of dust. "Like it's right off the assembly line, sir."

When Willem said sir, he looked at Captain Marzano, instead of Captain Dammond, a slight that Eli
ignored for now. He saved his object lessons for bigger lapses.

Marzano's crew didn't like him snooping around the crashed Fury looking for signs of cowardice. Hell,
he didn't like it. But Marzano herself was pushing hardest for a thorough search, urging Eli to inspect and
document every ship system, mangled or not.

There were things in her favor. Even if she could have repaired the giant fighting ship, it had no launch
capacity from the ground. She had pulled off a minor miracle just negotiating an atmospheric entry and
controlled crash-landing. So she wanted a clean bill of health exonerating her of sabotage, not an
ambiguous report that would dog her careerтАж and by God, he would give her that respect. It wasn't as
though he had better things to do. Here he was, thirty-seven years old, a captain of the Sixth Trans-port
DivisionтАФadvancement prospects slim to noneтАФ with a grimy kettle of a ship and a crew that said his
name like a wad of spit shot out. He wouldn't wish that fate on anyone, least of all Luce Marzano.

" 'Spose there's ahtra bodies in this one, sir?" Willem asked.

"That's what we'll find out," Eli answered.

Willem's eyes were flat. He hadn't been talking to Eli Dammond, and probably didn't like being answered
by an alpha captain who wore the blue of Transport while better men wore the brown of battle.

From the exposed section of the vessel, Eli could see the ship was a miniature of an ahtran warship, at
least in its shape, with six sides, sloping slightly toward the top. The craft, like the others Marzano's crew
had found in the vicinity, was big enough for two ahtra, maybe three in a tight squeeze. The intriguing
difference with this particular hexadron was that beneath a coating of dirt, it might be of recent
originтАФmight even be in working order.

Since his arrival here Eli had seen several of them, and like Marzano, he took them to be landing craft.
But they found no vestige of the late enemy, no electromagnetic sig-nature as they scanned the planet.
Nothing odd about finding implements of war strewn about, Eli admitted. Half of known space was
littered with skeletons of me-tal and bone from thirty years of mayhem. Except here there was no sign of
battle. Add to that, some of these craft were oldтАФweathered, time-battered carcasses slumping to ruin.
And some were newer.

It was as though ahtra had been coming here for hun-dreds of years. By twos and threes.

A slap of wind came out of nowhere and grazed sweat from their faces, cooling their skin just when they
felt they might see flesh split open from the heat. Turning into the breeze, Eli scanned the horizon where
puffs of clouds massed like sudsтАФa rare sight, Marzano commented. She'd had crew set out basins