"David Robbins - Blade 12 - Death Master Strike" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robbins David L)

forgive her.

She shouldn't have lied.

They'd been her friends, damn it!

The bitter memories returned in a rush. He recalled the very first
mission the Force had gone on, when Athena had guided them to the
Kingdom of the Spider. She'd been held prisoner there as an unwilling
breeder for seven years before she had escaped and managed to reach
civilization. The Kingdom was located in northern California, in a
secluded valley in the Marble Mountain Wilderness; it had been ruled by a
vile genetic abomination. Although the Force eventually accomplished its
mission and terminated the Spider, a member of the team perished in the
attempt.
 Blade frowned. If only he could have foreseen the future! He might have
been able to prevent some of the tragedies that followed. In a way, he
blamed himself for the outcome. He'd been the one who finally granted
Athena's request to join the unit, although doing so was against his better
judgment.

Why had he let himself be talked into it?

Oh, sure, Athena had trained diligently with the California Ranger
Corps in order to qualify for the Force, but her motives had been all
wrong. Instead of being devoted to the ideal of preserving the Freedom
Federation and safeguarding the remnants of civilization, she'd joined for
a selfish reason; to farther her journalistic career.

Before her capture by the Spider, Athena had been one of the top
newspaperwomen in the Free State of California. She'd been on her way to
Yreka to do a story about a flood when the plane she was in went down
and the Spider took her prisoner. After her escape, she became intensely
determined to make up for all the lost time. Her ticket to wealth and fame,
she believed, lay in joining the Force so she could cover their assignments
firsthand.

Blade had known of her ambition and her plan to do a syndicated
feature on the Force, She'd been honest with him from the very beginning.
And he'd known her lack of experience could well jeopardize her life, not to
mention the lives of her teammates. But he let himself be talked into
accepting the proposal anyway. He shouldтАФ

What was that?

A flicker of movement registered on his peripheral vision, and Blade
glanced up at the boulders. He placed his finger on the M-16's trigger. So
far, ever since the VTOL had deposited them at the base of a low
mountain range to the west, they'd been lucky. There hadn't been a sign of
raiders or mutations. Except for a few lizards, toads, insects, and an