"Steve Perry - The Man Who Never Missed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

This part of it was hard, too. Aside from the means, the logistics were
becoming more difficult all the time. In the early days, it had been easy. The
Confed's machine came to rest on Greaves as it had a dozen other peaceful
worlds almost without incident. There were no armies on the world, no
underground brewing among the agios and craftspeople who made up most of the
planet's population. Oh, there had been a few students handing out agitprop,
but nothing of any consequenceтАФuntil ten or twenty troops a day began dropping
with Spasm poisoning. A single message, coded mysteriously into the Garrison
Commander's computer, claimed responsibility in the name of the Shamba Freedom
ForcesтАФquickly shortened to Shamba Scum by the troops-of-the-line.

Khadaji grinned as he ran along the thin path through the forest. That had
been a nice touch, he'd thought, naming the "Freedom Forces" after Lord Thomas
Reserve Shamba, the twenty-second century war hero. It was a joke only Khadaji
could appreciate, though. It came from Sham-ba's answer to a surrender call by
Confed forces who outnumbered him fifty-to-one at the Battle of Mwanamamke in
the Bibi Arusi System:

To the Commander, Confederation Jumptroopers:
Sir:

Fuck you.

We stand until the last man falls.

When the first man fell in the current insurgency, it would be the last man.

Khadaji slowed to a walk when he was a kilometer from the patrol line. He
checked his confounder, to make sure it was operating, bent and stretched his
legs and back, and took several deep breaths. There were three men on the line
in this sector, virgins as near as he could tell. He could have taken them on
the way out, but that might have made it tough to get back into the city. The
Confed military mind was rigid and not particularly bright, but neither was it
completely stupid. The replacements for these three wouldn't be fresh meat,
they'd be vets, more interested in staying ambulatory than proving how well
they'd' absorbed their training.

The first soldier was so easy it made Khadaji sad. He walked to within five
meters without being noticed. The boyтАФhe could have been no older than
twenty-two or threeтАФstood in the shade of a small fir tree. It was not
particularly warm, but he wore class two body gear, and it didn't take much to
heat up the inside of that to sweatpoint. The boy had shifted his goggles up
and his tight hood back, exposing his face and head to the cooler air. If
Khadaji had been an uprank, the boy would have been in trouble.

"Excuse me, which way is Hartman Street?"

The boy turned, surprised. He started to swing the Parker up, but stopped.
What he saw was a tall man in orthoskins, palms supinated, looking harmless.