"Bc36" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry & Pournelle)

"Thank you. Enough."
The image faded. Aaron still asked questions and gave orders. Doing as well as I would, and he knows what's here. He'd have been a good officer back when we had wars.

Three skeeters rose from Shangri-La. A fourth, not yet in, would take off as soon as various factions could agree as to what should go aboard.
"I just want to be sure we learn everything we can from here," Cadmann said.
"We have to take it to the bees sometime," Aaron said.
"I know. Cassandra, is there any way we can get an ultrasound map of the inside of that thing? Before we open it up?"
Carlos said, "Cad, I'll go off down the ridge if you'll give me the war specs. Give Cassandra a view from some other directions."
Cadmann pulled the specs off his tired eyes' and handed them over. "Have you got a flashlight?"
"I do," Katya said.
Sylvia said, "Want some company? Yes, Cad, I have a flashlight."
As the three receded, Aaron said, "They must find this stuff pretty dull."
They hate arguments, Cadmann thought. "I love it myself," he said. "Planning a siege. Aaron--"
"I'd go in now."
"I wouldn't even try to take out a wasp's nest at night."
"They'll be torpid," Aaron said.
"We'll wait," Cadmann said.

Unsettling shadows fell through the valley. To Cadmann's tired eyes, the bees were no longer visible as bees, only as swirls of motion. There were more now, streaming back into their nest.
Pterodons, much bigger, still wheeled in sunlight. "Those must stick to the heights," Aaron speculated.
Sylvia said, "And fall to the bees when they get old and sick." She shivered. Cadmann fished a windbreaker out of his pack and helped her into it.
Bigger pterodons yet were converging above. These pterodons had never seen skeeters, and the sight gave them fits. One skeeter wheeled off and began to circle the valley. Three more followed each other down to Beehive Peak.
They unloaded tents and safety domes and crates of electronic gear, as well as tanks of insecticide. He watched a grinning fifteen-year-old lugging a box of thermite grenades.
He was a little alarmed to see someone as young as Carey Lou this close to danger, but he kept his mouth shut. He'd just have to try to ensure that danger was kept to a minimum.
"Everybody carries a safety sack!" he bawled, and there were no disagreements. If Carey Lou dropped his for even a second, he would tan his hide!
His comm card was talking: Trish. "Dammit, I say we attack it tonight. They won't be as active."
"You heard Colonel Weyland," Carlos said. "We can't see well, we don't know what we're up against. It's insane not to wait for daylight--"
"All right. Let's say we wait for daylight," Evan Castaneda said reasonably. "What then? We don't have enough poison to take out one of those things. I think we should postpone the whole thing, go back and cook up about a hundred gallons of nerve gas--"
"We need to study them--"
"We'll study their corpses! These things killed Linda! And Joe--"
"Ah, I think--" Aaron tried to say.
Carey Lou broke in, his thin, reedy voice excited. "Wait a minute. We learned it in school, we used Foo Foo gas on a grendel twenty years ago. Like napalm, right? We can hit 'em with that, like in the movie 'Them'. Drive 'em down into the nest, pump more in the top, and just cook the sonsabitches!"
The group fell silent, awed by the purity of their youngest member's bloodlust. Aaron's face had darkened.
"We appreciate your sentiments," Cadmann said reasonably. "But try to watch the language."
"Oh, yeah," he said sheepishly. "Sorry."
The last skeeter settled near the others. Little Chaka eeled out, turned to help Big Chaka. "There is," said Big Chaka, "definitely another nest at the north end of this valley. Maybe three or four."
"Damn," Cadmann said. "Cassandra, get together with the Chakas and make some maps. We don't want to rile more than one nest at a time. Trish, you still on? How close are we to having those nets? I want to look them over."
"Listen," Big Chaka began. "About your assault. Have you considered--"
"Freeze it. Consider this," Aaron snarled. He had a thermite grenade in hand, and twisted it atop his grendel gun.
Cadmann said, "Hey, kid--"
Aaron fired downslope.

His war specs spoke to Carlos in Cadmann's voice. "Carlos! Katya! Get back here fast! Get to the skeeters!"
"We're nearly back. What--"
Katya gaped down at the mound, her jaw dropping.
"Aaron fired an incendiary into the nest!"
"What? Why?"
Answer came there none. It was the kind of question that can cause strokes.
The beehive's peak erupted like a volcano. Puffs of flame, first, and then swarming points. Thousands of points of fire streaked away like rapid-fire tracer bullets, and exploded in tiny flashes.
Other parts of the mound erupted too. (Katya was sprinting, but Carlos couldn't do that and watch too. Cassandra's record depended on his war specs.) The peak of the beehive was 120 meters distant, but the hive had more exits, more showing every second as fireballs followed by swarms of tracers. One source was only fifty meters downslope, and that next was closer yet.