"John Ringo - The Legacy of the Aldenata 3 - When the Devil D" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

CHAPTER 2
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
 DoGeorgia over palm and pineтАФ
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forgetтАФlest we forget!

тАФRudyard Kipling
"Recessional" (1897)



Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III
0755 EDT Saturday September 12, 2009 ad


Mike O'Neal looked down at the smoke shrouded valley where Rochester, New
York, used to be. The embattled city was now flatter than any hurricane could have made
it; the humans were adept at fighting in rubble whereas the horselike Posleen found it
nearly impossible. But that didn't mean it was a human city anymore. Just that two
different species of vermin battled over it.
The rain was misting, a thick, drizzly fog blown in from Lake Ontario. Mike cradled
his helmet in one hand and a grav pistol in the other. Behind him was a distant rumbling
like thunder and on the east side of the Genesee River a curtain of white fire erupted with
the snapping of a million firecrackers. The heights above the former Rochester University
were taking another misdirected barrage.
"These mist covered mountains, are home now for me," he sang, twiddling the pistol
in one hand and watching the fire of the ICM.

"But my home is in the lowlands, and always will be.
Someday you'll return to your valleys and farms.
And you'll no longer burn to be brothers in arms."

Dancing in front of him was a hologram. A tall, lithe brunette in the uniform of a
Fleet lieutenant commander was talking about how to raise a daughter long distance. The
commander was very beautiful, a beauty that had once been an odd contrast to the almost
troglodytic appearance of her famous husband. She also was calmer and wiser in the
ways of people, an anodyne to the often hot-headed man she had married.
What she was not was as lucky as her husband. A fact he never could quite forget.
Another wash of ICM landed and hard on its heels a flight of saucer shapes lifted
into the air and charged west across the river. The Posleen were learning, learning that
terrain obstacles could be crossed with determination and a well led force. He watched
clinically as the hypervelocity missiles and plasma cannons of the God King vehicles
silenced strong points and a force of normals crossed on the makeshift bridge. The
wooden contraption, simple planks lashed to dozens of boats scavenged from all over,
would have been easily destroyed by the artillery fire but, as usual, the artillery
concentrated on the "enemy assembly areas" and "strategic terrain." Not the Posleen
force, without which the terrain would no longer be strategic.