"David Weber - Empire of Man 02 - March to the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

that owed to the fact that the flar-ke so closely resembledтАФphysically at leastтАФthe flar-ta packbeasts
with which the company had become intimately familiar. Flar-ta could be extremely dangerous in threat
situations, but the huge herbivores were scarcely aggressive by nature, and a part of the captain had to
have noted the relative passivity of the flar-ta and transposed it to the flar-ke, at least subconsciously, as
proof that he'd been right to order his troops not to fire. The old Roger probably wouldn't even have
considered that point, but the new one recognized that Pahner had no more taste for admitting he might
have been wrong than anyone else. That was a very natural trait, but one which was an uncomfortable fit
in a man like the captain, who had an acutely developedтАФone might almost say overdevelopedтАФsense
of responsibility. Which was one reason Roger had never brought the matter up again. He'd learned not
only to respect but to admire the Marine, and he was determined to let sleeping dogs lie rather than
sound as if he were defending past actions . . . or trying to rub Pahner's nose in a possible error.
"He's really worried," Roger said diffidently into the fresh silence.
"I know he is," Pahner replied. "He's said often enough that however much they may look like flar-ta
, they're completely different. I just wish I knew exactly how that worked."
"The closest parallel I can think of is probably the Cape buffalo back on Earth, Captain," Roger
offered. "To someone who's not familiar with them, Cape buffaloes look an awful lot like regular water
buffaloes. But water buffaloes aren't aggressive; Cape buffaloes are. In fact, kilo for kilo, they're
probably the most aggressive and dangerous beasts on Terra. I kid you notтАФthere are dozens of
documented cases of Cape buffaloes actually turning the tables and hunting down the game hunters."
"Got it," Pahner said in a completely different tone, and switched to the company frequency.
"Company, listen upтАФ" he began, just in time for the first screams to interrupt him.
***
Kosutic never knew how she survived the first few seconds. The beast that erupted out of the ground
caught Liszez with a tuskhorn and threw the grenadier through the air to land in a sodden, bone-shattered
lump. The Marine didn't even bounce, and the animal couldn't have cared less. It was too busy charging
straight at the sergeant major.
Somehow, she found herself propelled to one side of the beast by a muscle-tearing turn and dive that
landed her on one shoulder, and she'd flipped the selector of the bead rifle to armor piercing even before
she hit the ground.
The tungsten-cored beads penetrated the heavily armored scaled hide which the standard beads
would only have cratered, and the creature screamed in rage. It pivoted on its axis, but the NCO had
other problems to deal withтАФan entire herd of the giant beasts had burst out of the ground and was
stampeding towards the company.
They were very similar in appearance to the packbeasts, but with months of Mardukan experience
behind her, the differences were now obvious to the sergeant major. The flar-ta looked somewhat like a
cross between a triceratops and a horned toad, but the armor on their forequarters was actually fairly
light, their horned head shield did not extend much beyond the neck, and their fore and rear quarters
were more or less balanced. These creatures were larger by at least a thousand kilos each, and their side
armor was thicker than the cross section of a human forearm where it covered the shoulders and heart
region. The head shield extended far enough up and back that a mahout would never have been able to
see over the top, and their forequarters were immensely strong.
The sergeant major avoided a stamp from one of those sequoia-thick legs and spun again to dodge
the flail of a tuskhorn. She straightened and put three more rounds into the head shield, and watched in
disbelief as at least two of them bounced off the unbelievably refractory bone armor.
The corner of her eye caught a flicker that sent her flipping backwards in a maneuver she never could
have made practicing, and the space she'd just been in was overrun by another of the giant horned toads.
She dodged and rolled twice more as the herd thundered past, then flipped the bead rifle to burst and
began hammering the one she'd been battling.
The beast charged at her, and she dodged again. But it had learned the first time and turned with her.
The sergeant major knew she was dead and tried desperately to twist aside but she couldn't quite evade