"Ringo,.John.-.Posleen.05.-.Cally's.War.-.Cochrane,.Julie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

"Aelool, how are you this afternoon?"
"I'm fine," he offered the ritual greeting. "May I get you some coffee?"
"Yes, please. Black."
The Indowy placed a cup of coffee and a glass of water, with an olive, on the tray. Actually, the coffee was not black. It was a dark brown. And adding fat and nutrient-fortified mammalian sweat did not make it white, but more of a light brown. He had noticed humans tended to exaggerate such things.
They began their chess game. He had whiteЧwhich was, in this case, actually whiteЧso he opened the game. Currently, he was learning the variations on the knight's gambit. As they played, O'Reilly updated him on the current state of Earth operations.
"Worth won't be easy for them to replace. Most of the combat vets around are used to killing Posleen, not fellow humans. Sure, they still have the professionals he recruited and trained, but the Darhel have always tended to rely on data mining and hacking for intelligence more than actual sophont operatives or agents. Their training systems are weak, and any loss hurts."
"I am more concerned about the leak. We need concealment. The plan is very long term, and premature exposure could defeat it."
"Team Isaac has an impressive success rate."
"They had better."


Chapter Four
Charleston, Wednesday, May 15
It was a few minutes before six and the edges of the scattered clouds were a brilliant pink when Cally got off the city bus at the Columbia gate of the Wall. She had her backpack, one rolling suitcase, and had teamed an old pair of cutoff shorts with a T-shirt, complete with garish beach sunset, and a bright yellow Folly Beach visor. She wore an expression of slightly desperate hopefulness as she scanned the vehicles lining up for the morning convoy. She started towards a rather battered white van, but one scowl from the female driving it had her looking for another. Towards the end of the line she spotted a VW van that must have been damn near eighty years old. The tie-dyed patterns painted on the panels showed different degrees of fading, but had also clearly been carefully touched up over the years. The skull with roses coming out of the top was absolutely perfect, as was the lovingly painted legend that she knew even before she got far enough past the other vehicles to see all the words.
Before approaching, she took care of the buckley, turning voice access and response off and running the emulation all the way down to two, tucking it back into her purse. Wouldn't do to have him saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
The driver had long, blond hair and a full mustache and well-combed beard. He was built like a small bear. As she approached, she could detect a faint whiff of oak leaves and patchouli over the salt and fish from the tanks in back. The music from his cube player reached a good way from the open window and his fingers were tapping to the beat on the sill. " . . . gotta tip they're gonna kick the door in again. I'd like to get some sleep before I travel . . ."
"Hey, bitchin' shirt. You surf?" He noticed her as she dragged the suitcase up.
"I've caught a coupla waves here and there. But I usually head out to L.A. for that. For the waves here, I didn't even bring my own board. Didn't have the cash or the time to go out that far this trip."
"Bummer," he sympathized. "Too much of everything's about money, man. But you gotta make a living, so what can you do. You ridin' out on the bus?"
"Well, actually, I was kinda hoping I could find somebody I could hitch a ride with. I spent a little too much and I could afford the ticket, I just, you know, would have to go real light on meals till I got back to campus."
"Oh man, that sucks, say no more." He leaned over and unlocked the passenger side door. "By the way, I'm Reefer. Reefer Jones."
"Marilyn Grant. Thanks, dude." She lugged her suitcase around the front of the car, stowed it behind the passenger seat, tucked her pack in the floorboard under her feet, and got in, carefully not wrinkling her nose at the salty, fishy smell.
"Oh, we've gotta figure out some way to square you with the paperwork," he grimaced apologetically. "Sorry, but my boss can be a pain in the ass about hitchhikers. Hey, I don't suppose you can shoot, can you?"
Cally fumbled in her purse and handed him a very sincere range certification from a local Charleston range, dated a few days ago, rating Marilyn Grant an expert, non-resident.
"I went on a lark. Hadn't shot in years, but my mom made me learn, you know?" she said.
"Yeah, mine too. I think the war like affected that whole generation. But it was okay, I mean, if I ever meet a steel Postie pop-up target, I'll know how to kill it." He laughed and scribbled something on the clipboard. "Okay, I put you down as a freelance guard. The boss'll be cool with that. Lived in Urbs his whole life, came to Charleston for the money, man, old fart is scared to death of Posties." He shrugged, easing the van up in the line that was finally beginning to move. "I've been drivin' this route for five years and there's never been a Postie get close that those guys," he gestured to the machine-gun turret mounted on the top of an eighteen wheeler, "didn't saw in half before it even got close to us."
"Does that happen often?" Her eyes were round.
"Nah." He offered her a stick of gum, popping one in his own mouth. "About every other run. It's a pain in the ass because then the whole convoy has to stop while they take the head for the bounty." He made a gagging gesture. "Well, we usually don't actually stop. They just lose their place in line and we slow down a bit." He gestured to the trucks again. "Every one of those guys has a boma blade tucked away up there, so it doesn't really take any time at all."
They had pulled up to the gate while he was talking, and he handed the guard her range card and his own, showing the guard the Colt .45 by his seat and the second one in the glove box. "The boss won't mind you because the extra shooter drops our convoy fee." He shrugged and took their cards back from the guard, handing her hers and tucking his own back in his wallet.
It took another fifteen minutes for the guards to clear the other vehicles and the group to begin the drive back to real civilization.
"Next stop, Columbia." He cranked the volume on the stereo slightly, glancing at her curiously. "So where are you headed, anyway?"
"Cincy."
"Oh. Well, you can, like, ride the whole way then. That's cool." He looked uncomfortable for a minute. "I'll just have to pretend you got out in Knoxville, when the convoy zone ends."
"Will I get you in trouble?"
He thought a minute and shook his head. "Nah, not really. The boss isn't too bad a guy. If he finds out I'll just tell him it was part of your fee for riding guard from here to Knoxville."
"So what do you haul?" she asked politely, glancing over her shoulder into the back of the van where several packed aquariums bubbled away, air exchanges sticking up several inches above the sealed lids.
"Blue crab. Like, live, you know? Buncha rich dudes in Chicago like their fresh seafood." He shrugged.
"So why you and why not one of them?" She waved at the lines of semis ahead and behind them.
"Oh, like, it's a niche market. They're carrying frozen stuff, and, well, some of 'em have iced down live oysters and clams and stuff. Crabs are just incredibly fussy about live travel. But a little of the right stuff in the water so they aren't too crabby," he grinned, "and you can pack a lot of the little buggers into the tanks."
"So, what, they're too drugged up to rip each other to bits? What's that do to them as food?"
"Basically," he agreed cheerfully. "Like, put 'em in a clean, salt-water tank and in like six hours or so they're clean. And crab valium doesn't really affect humans, anyway, you know?"
She politely ignored that the inner dimensions of the back of the van seemed to her practiced eye to be just a bit smaller than the outside would normally indicate.
Business out of the way, he seemed more inclined to listen to his music than chat. That suited Cally fine. It must have been ten years since she'd had the time or need to take the overland route out of Charleston and she let her eyes glaze over watching the miles and miles of pine forest, punctuated by the occasional burn zone and abat-meadow.
It was only as they approached Columbia a couple of hours later that the now mixed pine and hardwood forests gave way to cleared fields of cows and crops, each field bordered by widely spaced sensor poles.
"I guess the bounties cover the costs of the sensors and the power to run them," she said.
"Those bounty farmers are some strange birds. Get at least half their money off stalking bounties, spend half of that fighting the abat and grat. Real loner kinda dudes. Then there was one of 'em about fifteen years ago went totally off his nut and got caught breeding Posties. It was before my time, but he'd had a Postie God King next to his land. Seems he'd made a deal with it to deliver heads of Postie normals just up from nestlings in exchange for half the take. It was, like, really nasty what they did to him when they caught him."
"How'd they catch him?" she asked politely, since Marilyn wouldn't remember the story.
"He was always delivering twice the bounty of the other guys around him. I guess somebody just got suspicious. Next time the Postie God King made delivery, they had surveillance on him and everything." He stuck a fresh piece of gum in his mouth. "What was real weird was when they traced the Postie back to where it had been living. Man, it was like a freakin' magpie's nest. Tinfoil, polished pennies, chromed bike bars and car parts and stuff, even some gold. The Postie must have been bughouse nuts, too. I mean, what are the odds." He shrugged and they drove on in silence until the convoy began to slow as the front vehicles reached the gate into Columbia Trading Station.
Entry through the gates was much faster than exit from Charleston had been. The Columbia guards obviously wanted to keep the gates open as short a time as possible, admitting the entire convoy and closing the big steel slab behind them before beginning the paperwork.
As he waited his turn to sign in he waved across the large parking lot to a squat building with gas pumps in front of it. One of the tankers in the line had pulled around to the side of the building and was unhooking hoses.