"Keith Laumer - Bolos 6 - Cold Steel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

native to its sun, but had been captured from a passing star. That same orbit made for an
agonizingly hot, wet, and short summer followed by a winter where a good day was merely
unbearable. Both seasons shared only one thing: storms featuring winds over 100 KPH. To which
was added the joy of a thin crust and constant volcanic activity.
The star system was crowded with debris; Thule itself had seventeen moons and the
beginnings of at least one ring. It was generally a good place to avoid when there were so many
more hospitable worlds to colonize. But that wasn't an option. Thule was unique for more than
being the virtual poster world for being barely habitable. Wherever the planet originated, it had
gathered into itself the largest concentration of the rare earth element saganium ever found by
humans among the over 40,000 explored worldsтАФsaganium was the vital trace ingredient in a
newly developed and amazingly resistant duralloy armor. With the Deng Incursion reaching its
destructive climax, mining colonies were en route before the survey team's preliminary report
was even finished printing out. There were just a few details they had missed.
 The Greater Machine

J. Steven York &
Dean Wesley Smith




Chapter One
For the moment it wasn't pouring rain. Jennifer Harom dropped off the last rung of the ladder
onto the damp sand and stretched, glad to be out of the massive pulverizer that towered fifty
meters into the air above her. Her overalls were damp from the sweat and the light breeze felt
good against her skin, cooling her and clearing her head. The jungle greenery pulped by the big
machine had a chlorophyll and vinegar smell, like a Caesar salad.
The ground under her feet shook as the grinder tore into the earth, ultrasonic cannon aimed
downward, tearing sand and gravel apart at a molecular level, turning it into the uniform, black
ore-sand that crunched under her boots. Despite the violence and power of the pulverizer, active
noise dampeners shielded the machine from its own power, reducing the sound to a low rumble,
and incidentally keeping the crew from going deaf. She could have even heard the noises from
the jungle around her, if the machine hadn't frightened away every animal within five kilometers.
Confident that she was safe from the local predators, she scrambled up a nearby bank and
looked back at the big machine, floating on its contra-gravs a few meters above the ground, a
duralloy thundercloud lost down from heaven and pretty damned pissed about it. Behind it a two-
hundred-meter swath of freshly created ore-sand stretched back up the valley, waiting for the
processing machines that followed a kilometer behind. Keeping the beast running, keeping it
from ripping itself apart, was a big job, but her three co-workers were more than capable of
covering for her while she got a little fresh air. Getting out of the control cabin in the middle of a
shift was against the rules, especially while the grinder was in operation, but they all did it.
Staying cramped into that small control cabin for ten hours straight would drive anyone nuts.
Besides, who cared as long as the pulverizer kept tearing up the ground on this godforsaken
planet.
She stepped toward the edge of the jungle. The wide-leafed plants and tall trees towered over
her like a wall. At the moment the grinder was tearing a wide path up a sandbar beside a small
river. When they reached the end of the valley they would turn around and come back down,
cutting another swath beside the one they were working on now, passing the processing machines
somewhere along the way. The pulverizer's downward-pointing sound cannon dug the ground to
a depth of twenty meters and could chew up rocks as if they were cotton candy.