"mayflies04" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

But I am not optimistic.
Kinney just tried to throw a fishdog into a disposal unit-and was immediately set upon by an entire pack.
Fortunately-or unfortunately. I'm not yet sure-he survived.

It looked across its lost territories, and it wept with rage. The pattern was Starkly clear to an automatic extrapolator: in less than ten years, Metaclura would mount the throne.
But it couldn't let the memory-ghost succeed-every step of its being recoiled. It had to prevent that travesty.
When the battle seemed lost, it would destroy the Mayflower.
A ship should go down with its captain.

"Why didn't you just retire, dicer?" hissed Omar Stone Williams, warily scanning the swampy glade. His big-knuckled hand gripped a half-meter steel pipe; it ended in a spiked ball. "Taking a bust from General of the Armies on down to private is the dumbest damn thing I ever heard."
Louis Kinney smiled, and shrugged. "I'm still young." He was sixty, looked fifty, moved like forty. "What am I going to do for the rest of my life-fanta forever? Loose out? Uh-uh." He didn't once glance at Williams. His eyes were too busy probing the ferny underbrush. "I'm a soldier, Omar, not a spoiled kid. The Mayflower needs good soldiers. Sure, the old ego's eft, but the junta told me I could stay in the Army, and so I am. Duty."
"Yeah." Williams' khaki uniform was plastered to his stocky body-the air was wet enough to drink, hot enough to call soup. When he shook his head, sweat droplets flew and sparkled. "Your life, dicer. Tell you, though-you sure picked a glitchy time to let 'em put on a coup."
Kinney studied the sub-tropical wilderness of the 21 Florida Everglades Park. Then he sighed, "It would have been nicer to watch the cleanup through the monitors, rather than from the ground."
Their belt speakers crackled: "Attention all units. Form up."
Along with thirty-eight others, they moved away from the lock, down the base of the 100-meter park wall, and pressed their backs against the metal plating. The moisture condensed on it seeped through their shirts. They hefted their clubs nervously. In the water below splashed a snapping turtle; its eyes were slitted, and bad-tempered.
"Stay one meter apart."
They slapped palms and Williams stepped an arm's length away. Another soldier rustled out of the bushes and bumped into Kinney. Gaping, he started to salute, noticed the new shoulder patch, and caught himself. Then he saluted anyway, "Hey, Kinney!" he whispered. "Sorry about the coup."
"Thanks. And 'ware Murphy."
The young militiaman touched the amulet at his throat, the quadruple stainless steel helices that were supposed to guard against them. "Yeah, you too."
"Repulsors on." barked the CO.
Kinney's fingers fumbled with the knobs of his belt. He twisted all three to their proper settings, then asked the air, "CC, is that right?" Something jumped out of the slough and tore up the far slope.
"Yes, Mr. Kinney. Remember: a sudden beeping indicates malfunction. Check your meters at regular intervals."
"All right." The silver dots on the knobs lined up with the red ones on the housing. It was a repulsor set, similar to the ones that, protruding on booms from the walls, kept the enemy on the ground. They all emitted radio waves on a frequency inaudible to humans but irritating to fishdogs. CC claimed it was species-specific-that other animals would not be bothered by it.
"All units," ordered the belt speakers, "advance five meters, keeping in line with adjacent troops at all times. Halt and wait for further commands."
Five meters-he activated his odometer-bracelet and started off, digging his heels into the weedy sloughside to keep from slipping-goddamn, he thought, put me right in the water, chest-deep. The waterproof repulsor would function whether submerged or dry, but he had to run a phone from his belt speaker to his ear. It thinned the CO's voice,
The waters roiled as thick, half-meter greennesses splashed onto the far shore and scurried up the hillside on stubby legfins. Two paused to look back. Kinney got almost anthropomorphic about the hostility on their snouts.
When the snapping turtle cruised by again, he stood stock-still. Then he shivered: alligators and crocodiles hunted in this park, too, and standing in the middle of a slough was a good way to get introduced to one.
"Five more," snapped the voice in his ear. "Keep the line straight. Remember to release the goldfish any chance you get."
Kinney slapped his forehead in exasperation. He'd forgotten about the fish. CentComp had produced them, too: another variety of mutant goldfish, they could eat only baby fishdogs-no other aquatic life form would trigger their hunger reflexes. In fact, all other forms would poison them. The theory was that, released into the environment, they'd term out the next generation of fishdogs and then die off themselves.
From the pack on his back he extracted a two-liter plastic bag; six scrawny, blue-tailed fish lolled in its stagnant water. Tearing it open, he emptied it. The six arrowed for the nearest feeding ground. Five. The snapper picked one off immediately.
Then he was slogging forward, feet so stuck in the gooey mud that he practically had to rip them free. The stale water lapped at his breastbone and splashed brownly on his face; weeds caught his waist like lovers. Grunting, he fought his way onto the bank. Halfway up, the odometer said it was time to stop.
He'd shaded the truth when he'd told Williams why he'd stayed in the Army. True, true, the military had been his life, and he wouldn't know what to do with himself if he left it, but . . . that wasn't why.
While he'd been demanding weapons from CC. and inducting every adult into the Army, and transforming loud-mouthed, poorly coordinated hedonists into first-class fighting forces, the fishdogs had damn near overrun the ship.
It wasn't his fault-after all, he'd ordered CentComp to solve the problem-but the colonels who'd deposed him had felt that since CC had failed, he should bear the blame.
Christ, he hadn't conjured the little devils up-and there'd be hell to pay once they found out who had-he'd even tried to discourage people from raising them as pets. He could prove that. The memo he'd distributed shortly after their introduction had told people that, in his opinion, they should be banned.
It was the population-at-large that was to blame. They'd overruled him in one of those goddamn bung-up-the-butt referenda. They'd raised the damn things. They'd taken them into the parks and released them. They'd fed them in the corridors.
Hell, he'd been bitten in his very own office! How could any reasonable person try to pin the blame on him?
But that was why he was still in uniform. The vermin had cost him his rank and his privileges, and by damn, he was going to get back at them any way he could.
He'd made a good start on achieving his dream, but there was still more to do. So much strength was wasted by people who tried to plot their own trajectories, by selfish bastards who insisted that they'd lose more by submitting to the Army than they'd gain. Didn't they see that their society was vulnerable as long as they weren't in there helping to shield it? The Mayflower needed absolute unity if it were to survive, and the squabbling colonels of the junta couldn't provide it. Only he could, but he had to regain power, first. And if that meant trudging through a miniature version of the Florida Everglades in 37C weather, with 85 percent relative humidity, then, so be it . . .
"Another five, men. And keep tight. If they slip through us, we'll have to do it all over again."
Throughout the day the swamp fought them, with sinkholes for their feet, grass-wrapped roots for their toes, slap-happy branches for their torsos, leeches and mosquitoes for their bare skin. By midday they'd covered a scant hundred meters-but had pulled the purse strings tighter.
The undergrowth ahead was alive with scurrying, with scaley slitherings. High-pitched barking filled the air-and became snarls and growls as the enemy realized they were being herded together.
Kinney came across an unusual sight: a five-meter-long crocodile half-in, half-out of the water, its mouth yawning and its head twitching from side to side as it snapped up fishdogs. His path lay straight down its back. Before he could radio the CO to report the problem, the croc slid backwards into the water, glided across the stream, and emerged on the other side. It wasn't dumb. It knew something was driving the creatures toward the center of the quadrant, and it wasn't going to let itself get outside the center. Probably sleep for a week after its orgy of eating.
More and more half-eaten carcasses littered the ground-rats, foxes, birds, snakes-evidence that the things had been driven away from their meals, or, more chillingly, that they were trimming whatever they met, and each subsequent passerby took a bite . . .
His pack was empty of goldfish. The club in his hand was heavier than it had been-but then, his grip was tighter. Barks and snaps drowned out his own thoughts.
Kinney peered at the men near him. Their faces were drawn and pale under masks of mud. Their eyes were wild-never still, darting, twisting, stabbing into the undergrowth like spears and pulling back immediately to plunge into something else-wild and bloodshot and showing whites all around.
They'd be like that all over the ship. Almost 21,000 soldiers were sweeping the corridors, the rooms, and the parks that day . . . just his murph the junta had stuck him in the swamps; the guys on 41, whose floor was his ceiling, would be having a pleasant stroll through the high grass . . .
He picked a leech off his calf, cursing as its head stayed in his skin. The belt speaker said, "Take fifteen; eat if you like."
Not even caring that below him was squishy mud, he sank down. His dirty fingers groped in his pack, pulled out a foil ration bag, and ripped it open. It heated in a minute; he devoured it in three bites. Scrupulously, he wadded the foil into a ball and replaced it in his pack-no sense defiling the park more than he had to. The canteen water gurgled down his throat like ambrosia. He lit a cigarette, took a long puff, and touched the glowing ember to the leech's head. It fell out.
"Hey, Kinney!" Williams tapped him on the elbow.