"Modesitt, L E - The Parafaith War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

He lowered his reflexes back to one notch above normal and crouched on his side of the turner blade, almost hyperventilating in an effort to relieve his oxygen debt, feeling both his overloaded suit and body straining.
"Shit . . ." he muttered. No system defenses, and who knew how many revs left. He could barely see the revs, and only if they moved. He was running through a stan's worth of oxygen in half that time by upping his metabolism to stay alive.
He remained concealed, but could hear nothing through the suit's limited "ears."
He'd killed at least four revs, maybe six-but what had happened to the rest?
Slowly he eased around the turner blade and headed for the lock to the garage. As he expected, the big door had been blown open. One rev body lay sprawled by the door, visible only where a slash across the suit had turned back the armored and insulated fabric-probably caused by door shrapnel.
Peering from behind the heavy plastcrete pylon at the flat ground around the station, he saw nothing moving. Outside, the badlands looked the same, and so did the one side of the single reclamation tower in his vision Field. What was different were the dozen bodies and the fragments of composite armor strewn beneath the station walls.
Trystin stood, chest heaving. He wasn't thinking clearly, not at all, a sign of fatigue, and who knew what else. Fatigue? Idiot! He mentally tripped his reflexes and metabolism down to normal, and stood shaking. Step-up meant burning more energy, and he'd been in enhanced-reflex status for all too long. He almost slumped into a heap as fatigue washed over him.
He swallowed nearly all the Sustain in the suit's helmet Х nipple, ignoring the chills and cold jolt he felt as it hit his guts.
How long he waited, he wasn't sure, not until he checked his implant. With no movement for nearly a half stan, he doubted there were any revs left.
Then, picking up one heavy foot after another, he turned and headed back through the useless lock door to the tech section, and the emergency transmitter.
At the end of the corridor were two more bodies. One was a rev with the shoulder of his suit burned away; the other was Ryla.
"Shit - - ." Trystin swallowed; he was supposed to protect the tech.
He stepped slowly inside the tech section. The system console looked almost normal-the gray plastic dull as ever-except for the dead lights and the corner with the hole large enough for him to insert a gauntleted hand.
He levered open the shielded cover to the emergency transmitter, and the light winked green. With his implant working for short distances, he linked with the simple circuits.
"Perimeter Control, this is East Red Three, from Lieutenant Desoll. Station East Red Three is down. System is red. No station integrity. Rev attack neutralized-"
"Desoll, Major Alessandro here. How many revs? What's your status?"
"I'm in armor using the emergency transmitter. There were two to three squads with backpacked heavy weapons. They've got new shielding, and you can only see them on the fringe scanner frequencies and only at about a third of a kay. The vehicle-door shield jammed, and some blew their way in. Ryla-the tech-killed one, but they got him. I got six or so after I got in armor." "Is the station secure?" "It looks that way, but they blew a hole in the system controller. So I don't know for sure. And their suits make them almost impossible to see." "Do you want to hole up?"
"That's negative. You can't tell what's happening in the bolthole."
"Can you try to use a scooter to get to East Red Two?" "That's affirmative."
"If the scooter isn't operational, let us know." "Stet. East Red Three out." He off-linked and looked back around the tech office. Trystin had no real choices. Hanging on at the station for a tech cleanup team that could be days wasn't a choice, not really, not with all the damaged stations on both perimeters. He'd head for East Red Two, slightly closer than East Red Four.
He shook his head and looked at the slug thrower, then walked down the corridor and up the stairs to the cabinet. He extracted all the spare clips, putting a full one in the rifle and carrying the others, before heading back down. Standing around a dead station doing nothing wasn't exactly brilliant.
Then again, riding an unarmored scooter north for sixty kays wasn't exactly brilliant either-assuming he had a working scooter.
Both scooters were untouched, and the fuel cells and motors on both checked out. Trystin took number two because it had full tanks, and stuffed two additional oxygen tanks inside with the spare clips. He took both ration kits from the scooter he was leaving. Although eating in armor was a pain, what was even less desirable was handling other metabolic processes.
After loading and checking the scooter, he hurried back to the emergency transmitter, still carrying the rifle. He looked down at Ryla's body, and the open eyes. Finally, he went back into the workroom and found some plastic sheeting and slowly wrapped the tech's figure into the plastic, then laid him out on the long workbench. What else he could do, he didn't know, since the scooter would be cramped. After that, he turned to the emergency transmitter.
"East Red Two, this is East Red Three." "Trystin, interrogative you headed our way?" "That's affirm. Me and my little scooter." "We'll be watching." "Stet. East Red Three out."
He closed off the transmitter and walked back to the loaded scooter, settling himself in the driver's seat and plugging his armor into the scooter's oxygen tank. He leaned the rifle where he could reach it almost instantly- at an angle across the narrow passenger seat. With a last look around the garage, he eased the vehicle through the ruined door. Once clear of the station, he followed the depressed and flattened ground of the shuttle track westward.
As he drove west, past where the turners had processed the soil, a darker earth had been mixed through the reddish surface cover and reset by the turners. Even so, Trystin could see the faint trace of the creepers beginning to grow over the combined mosaic of red and brown.
With each kay he headed westward, the low blue-green mottled creepers that looked like a cross between lichen and kudzu grew thicker, with less ground between the creepers and darker soil around them. As the bioengineered creepers grew, they slowly released the oxygen once bound into the soil eons ago. Already the free oxygen in the air was approaching five percent, but the total pressure was still half T-norm. Sometimes, looking westward across the creepered plains, he could almost see the gas rising. On a bright day around Klyseen, the gas from the most active creeper clusters cast wavering shadows.
The four-wheeled scooter bounced and jolted, without the air cushion of a shuttle or transport, and Trystin jolted and bounced with it. Scooters were not designed for long distance travel. He also had to keep the scooter on the hard-packed soil of the track. If he bounced into the fine and gritty soil where the creepers grew, the scooter could easily dig in wheel-deep. More than a few turners had literally buried themselves in patches of ultra Fine soil and sand.
By the time Trystin reached the north-south shuttle track and turned north toward East Red Two, the creepers grew almost calf-high in places.
As he drove, he continued to scan the terrain, now mostly mottled blue and green. The constant movement reminded him how much harder it was to check everything visually. His neck would be sore by the time he reached East Red Two. Even more sore, he corrected himself.
The scooter continued to bounce northward, and Trystin continued to scan the terrain, seeing only the endless kays of blue-green.
In time-after two uncomfortable stops, and four standard hours, he finally eased the scooter to a halt at the intersection of two shuttle tracks.
After looking at the track eastward and checking the small plot on the scooter console, Trystin turned the scooter toward Quentar's station and linked to the scooter comm. "East Red Two, this is East Red Three."
There was no response. Trystin shook his head. The scooter comms were supposed to be good for more than thirty kays on open terrain. He couldn't have been more than Five from East Red Two. Had the tanks all been full on the scooter he took because the comm system wasn't that good?
As he headed eastward, the creepers became lower and more scattered.
After the scooter had covered another kay Or so, and he could see most of the reclamation towers, Trystin tried the comm again. "East Red Two, this is East Red Three. I'm about three kays south. " Nothing.
He tried the helmet comm, with no results, and the scooter rolled on toward East Red Two.
"Approaching scooter. . . if that's you, Trystin. . . make a left turn, then a right, then a left back on your original heading. Then stop for a moment-the same number of times as your call number."
Trystin followed Quentar's directions, with three quick stops, trying not to mangle either creepers or the scooter, before resuming his course toward the station. He kept trying the comm intermittently. Then he began trying the helmet link. At about a kay, he got a response. "You're coming in weak, Trystin." "That's helmet comm. I can read you, but the scooter transmitter's shot." "Revvie casualty?"
"Negative. Maintenance casualty, I think." "Talk about it later. Natsugi is waiting for you." "Stet."
Trystin guided the scooter toward the station. As he neared the garage entrance, both shields and door opened-in sequence. Trystin wondered if he or Ryla should have lowered the shields to East Red Three earlier. If he had, then maybe Ryla could have had time to repair the shield mechanism. Then again, maybe not. If the shield could have been repaired, they'd both paid for that oversight, Ryla far more than Trystin. He swallowed again. It had still been his responsibility. Natsugi waited at the vehicle door, a heavy rifle aimed at the scooter. He kept it aimed at Trystin until Trystin un-helmeted inside the station. "Lieutenant Desoll, Natsugi."
"Pleased to meet you, ser." Natsugi didn't look convinced, but Trystin had encountered the problem before-he looked like too many revs.
"Maybe you could help, Natsugi." Trystin tried not to lean against the wall, but the armor was heavy, and he was exhausted. "The revs got Ryla. I couldn't bring his body, but I wrapped him in sheeting and laid him out on the tech table. If you could let someone know . . ." "I'll see what I can do." "Thank you. Quentar up in the center?" "Yes, ser."
Trystin slowly walked up the stairs. Quentar waved as he saw the other lieutenant and motioned to the hard chair next to the command seat. Trystin sat on the hard chair and took a deep breath.
East Red Two smelled like weedgrass and ammonia, but not so strongly as his station had.
"So what happened?" Quentar's eyes remained glazed, indicating that his attention was on his screens.
"A lot of revs, with heavy backpacked weapons, with really good visual and heat shields that kept them off scanner until they were within a couple hundred meters. The lower vehicle-door shield jammed. A bunch of them got past the gattlings and rockets and blew their way in. Ryla got one; I got six, I think, but they got him."
"You're lucky to be alive. According to PerCon, you had all six squads targeting you."
"I used a lot of rockets and almost all the gattlings. They still beat the armor to shreds." "Our super high-tech composite boron plastic armor?" "The same stuff."