"McCay, Bill - Stargate Retaliation" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCay Bill)

ship's square-arched entrance. Khonsu tossed away the now useless spool and
twitched up the hood on his drab cloak. He wanted to make sure it covered his
warrior's sidelock and the blue tattoo round his right eye. Othнers of the
fellahin carried blast-lances. He and the other Horus guards blended into the
milling crowd. The first step of their mission had been accomplished. Now, on to
the city of Nagada.
CHAPTER 2
STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

Colonel Jack O'Neil listened as the bedlam outside the hall of the StarGate
began to die down. More guards arrived to bolster the defenses for the
interstellar porнtal, until at last O'Neil felt free to leave with his aide,
Lieutenant Charlton, and a shadow-General West. Armed with rifles and
flashlights, the officers traced the path of the intruders until they reached
the adit now blocked by the hulk of the starship Ra's Eye.
The entrance was blocked not just by the usual barнricade, but by arguing
troops, both American and Abydan. There was more here than just the transition
from tunnel to spaceship. It represented a demarcaнtion line. Within the pyramid
the expedition from Earth held sway. But the derelict vessel had been taken by
an ad hoc force composed mainly of Abydan militiamen. The Abydans had claimed
Ra's Eye by right of conquest-and had pressed their claim by ocнcupying the
ship.
This corridor leading to the outside world had been garrisoned by armed
militiamen and barricaded at each end-from possible attack from the StarGate,
and from the Earther base camp that occupied the rocky plateau which supported
the StarGate pyramid. The militia garrison stood as a tangible symbol of the
tenнsion between the Elders of Abydos and the U.S. govнernment as represented by
General W. O. West.
Right now that tension seemed to have reached nearly flashpoint dimensions. The
sides could be easiнly told. O'Neil's men in desert BDU's confronted militiamen
in brownish homespun robes. The primiнtive clothing clashed with the modern
assault rifles in the militia members' hands, but that contrast was the same
from the Montagnards of Vietnam to the mujahadeen of Afghanistan.
In this case, however, the weapons in some of the Abydans' hands made the modern
assault rifles look primitive. The golden shafts of gleaming quartz looked like
blunt spears. But O'Neil had seen demonнstrations where those blast-lances blew
holes through armor plate. He'd helped capture a few, which he'd sent via the
StarGate back to Earth. The Abydans had many, many more, plundered from the
inoperable spacecraft.
And now they were using the blast-lances to guard that vessel.
As O'Neil pushed to the front of his Marines, the young man in charge of the
Abydans began to berate him.
"You let hawk-heads through to attack us," the young officer accused. "Grabbed
one of my men. Probably killed him."
"Where did they go?" O'Neil demanded. He got a shrug for an answer. "They
disappear into wall. I send out men to look-"
"You don't have enough men to search this whole ship," the colonel said flatly.
The tip of the pyramidal bulk that made up the spacecraft Ra's Eye rose more
than seven hundred feet into the air. Along its base, each of the four sides
measured almost twelve hunнdred feet. Lieutenant Charlton had once calculated