"David Weber - Empire Of Man - 03 - March To The Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

"Prepare to come about on the port tack!" Pentzikis' captain shouted.

"Rig the line into the clamps!" the gun crew chief called. "The damn thing is going to go right under the keel! If the captain's not careful, it'll take us right over on our side!"

"Let that line run!" the ship's captain barked. "Come onto it when we're on tack!"

"Haul away!" the gunner cried. "We're getting slack!"

"Hold on!" Rastar shouted. "The Tor Coll is about to run across the rope!"
* * *

"Contact!" Sergeant Angell called over the company net from Tor Coll 's afterdeck. "Sir, we have solid contact."

"Right," Pahner acknowledged, glancing at the formation. "Have your captain keep falling off to port. I want you to take a heading of nearly due south and try to drag this thing off Sea Skimmer . Sea Foam , take another shot. All units, engage with care. Try to get some rounds on it, but don't hit the other ships."

Hooker's own harpoon gun boomed behind him as the schooner came around to starboard. It wasn't, strictly speaking, proper. The ship with the prince on it should be sailing out of harm's way, not into it. But with the fish pinned, it was probably safe enough.

Tor Collpassed above the thrashing shadow, and a huge white and green waterspout appeared behind the schooner. The depth charges used a combination of a grenade detonator and local blasting powder. Pahner hadn't been sure they would function as intended, but it turned out that they worked just fine. Bilali's very first drop scored a direct hit, and the monster fish flopped a few more times, then drifted gently to the surface, belly-up. Its underside was apparently covered in chromatospores, since it was flickering through a riot of colors when it broke the waves. It rippled a dozen shades of violet, then through the spectrum until it began flickering green, and finally stopped and slowly turned a cream color.

"Get that target longboat alongside Sea Skimmer . Launch all the ships' boats, and let's start recovering survivors. Warrant Officer Dobrescu!"

"Yes, Captain?" a calm tenor replied. Pahner glanced over his shoulder, and saw the speaker standing beside the mainmast while he gazed at the floating monster with an air of almost detached contemplation.

Chief Warrant Officer Dobrescu had been one of DeGlopper 's shuttle pilots. Flying a shuttle was a relatively safe job, although it hadn't quite worked out that was this time around. But in a previous life, he had been a Raider Commando medic, a person trained not only to stabilize a combat casualty, but to repair one if necessary. His accidental inclusion on the trip had been, literally, a lifesaver. A factor he was sometimes at pains to point out, not to mention complain about.

"I want you to prepare to receive casualties. If there are none, or if they're limited, I'll want your input on our little find here."

"Yes, Sir," the medic replied. "Of course, I'm a shuttle pilot, not a xenobiologist, but it looks like a coll fish to me. And that's my professional opinion."
* * *

"It's a coll fish," Captain T'Sool said. Ima Hooker 's captain rubbed his horns, then clapped his hands. "It's impossible, but may the White Lady damn me if it isn't one."

One of the Hooker 's sailor's held up a dripping bag in both true-hands. The oil-filled sac was common to the coll fish, part of its buoyancy system. But in normal-sized ones, the sac was the size of the last joint of a human thumb and filled with what, to Mardukans, was a deadly poison. As it had turned out, that oil was possibly the only substance on the planet that the Marines' nanites packs could convert into the numerous lipid-based vitamins and amino acids the planet's food lacked.

"Well," Kosutic said. "At least we've got plenty of feed for the civan . And that's enough coll oil to keep us for quite a while," she added, gazing at an oil sac that was at least a meter across.

"It's still a net zero," Pahner growled. "We lost an entire ship getting it, along with half of its crew, damned near two full companies of infantry, and three more Marines. I don't like losing troops."

"Neither do I," Kosutic agreed. "And this trip says it all. His Putridness' hand has certainly been over us the whole time."

"What just happened?" Eleanora O'Casey asked, as she climbed up through the main hatch to the deck.
* * *

The prince's chief of staff was the only remaining "civilian" caught on the planet with him. Although none of the shuttle pilots had been as prepared for the conditions here as the Marines, they'd at least had some background in rough conditions survival and a basic military nanite pack. But prior to the crash landing of the shuttles on the backside of the planet, the chief of staff had never set foot outside a city, and her nanitesЧsuch as they wereЧwere designed for a nice, safe, civilized environment.

The "adventure" had had some benefits for her. She was in the best shape she'd ever been in her life. But her stomach, never the most robust, had not taken the journey well, and it was taking the voyage aboard ship even worse. Now the short brunette turned her head from side to side, counting masts.

"Aren't we missing one ship?" she asked.

"Not quite yet," Pahner said dryly. "But it won't be long now." He pointed over the side, to where Sea Skimmer 's shattered hull was beginning its final plunge. "We've discovered what ate the other expeditions," he added.