"John Ringo - The Legacy of the Aldenata 5 - The Hero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

The assembly room of the Deep Reconnaissance Team was as utilitarian and sere as the team itself.
The walls, floor and ceiling were a matte-gray unmarked plasteel, blank of lockers, tables or any other
appurtenances of human existence. There were two doors on opposite walls, both made of heavy
plasteel like a bank vault. The materials were as much a matter of safety as security; power packs and
ammunition bins did get damaged, and accidents happen. And when accidents happen with the power
packs, catastrophic was the mildest word possible.
Nobody wanted the accidents to happen to the troops, either. But better to lose a DRT than a
base. Or, at least, that was the opinion of the rest of the base.
Ferret was the first one in the room, carrying a snubby punch gun. Four others followed with
grav-guns and assorted personal weapons that were officially unauthorized, but few people were inclined
to dispute their right to carry them. Pulsers predominated. There was an extra grenade launcher and a
couple of large-caliber pistols also. Dagger came in last, easily swinging his sniper-spec gauss rifle.
They were bantering as they entered, Ferret laughing at Thor for taking on Dagger in a shoot-out.
"What, you thinking of trying out for the Olympics?" He laughed again as Thor winced.
Thor's account was lighter by five hundred credits. He'd beensure that with standard weapons he
could outshoot Dagger. After all, the sniper's rifle was a hideously expensive and custom piece of
equipment that took hours of tuning to set up properly. He would be chagrined at the outcome for days,
and could expect to hear it bandied about forever.
Dagger had used a standard grav-rifle, as requested, to put ten rounds in the X ring at five hundred
meters as fast as he could pull the trigger, then ten more at a thousand meters nearly as fast. He'd had
one flyer at that range, just out of the five and into the four ring. He'd barely taken time to aim, it seemed,
and had turned and left the firing line the moment his last round was fired, before any tally showed on the
screen. His features hadn't moved until he heard about the flyer, and then had sneered in disgust at
himself. The man was inhumanly accurate. It showed in his movements. They were fast but smooth and
with never a clumsy bump. Sniping involved stalking as well as shooting, and he was as good at both
skills as humans came.
Thor winced again as the rest chuckled. Finally, Gun Doll chimed, "Okay, this is getting boring,"
and they took the hint and changed subjects.
Dagger still didn't say anything about it as Ferret hit a switch and a set of tables and seats extruded
out of the floor. They were sterile gray, just like everything else. Gun Doll eased her lanky frame up
against the wall and hit a switch with her elbowтАФas her hands still cradled a bulky assault cannonтАФand
throbbing music came from all sides. It was one of the abrasive dance tunes she liked, but the volume
was quiet enough to prevent complaints. Holograms on the wall flared up, too, displaying unit murals.
One of them showed a garish swath of destruction, smashed hovertanks, bent rocket howitzers, crushed
combat bots. It started on the left at an insertion pod and terminated on the right at a huge, chiseled
NCO wearing the black beret of a DRT commando. His caricature had a heavy grav-gun in his hands,
an automatic grenade launcher over one shoulder, a light mortar over the other, knives and hatchets all
over his combat harness and a teddy bear sticking out of one pocket. It was captioned, "Excuse me, just
passing through." Another showed a drop gone horribly wrong with shattered combat armor scattered
all over it, smashed shuttles, artillery still splashing rings of dirt and small killer bots swarming
everywhere. At the center was a guy wearing major's tabs, tapping on a long-range communicator.
Caption: "I love it when a plan comes together." At that, the artwork was tame compared to pieces that
drifted around the nets and were posted on screens here and there, many of them making light of the
acronym DRT . . . "Dead Right There." Or sometimes, DRTTT: Dead Right There, There and There. Or
the DiRTies. Though few people would say that to one in a bar, unless they werevery good friends.
Masochism was the prime requirement for recon in nasty territory, so DRTs could take a lot of damage.
They could also dish out their share and a bit more.
The chat dulled slightly as they start laying out their weapons and stripping them down for cleaning.
The team was filthy with mud, sweat, grime and assorted shredded greenery; the weapons were merely
dirty from use. Good troops took care of their weapons because their lives depended on them. Between