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

who seemed at home in the maelstrom.
He'd apparently picked his target from outside the mass, and he and his mount charged in at full
speed. The impact when the galloping Patty hit the larger beast was a carnal earthquake.
The target squealed in agony as the flar-ta's tuskhorns penetrated its side armor and slammed it
down to its knees. As the sergeant major poured fire into the flar-ke to either side of them, Roger
pumped rounds into the exposed underbelly of Patty's target. Then, using nothing more than words and
thumping heels, he backed the packbeast off its victim and charged back out of the mass to wind up for
another run.
Pahner slapped Aburia, who was driving his own beast, on the back of her head.
"Get us out of here! Try to line us up for a charge!"
"Yes, Sir!"
The corporal goaded the beast into a lumbering run, and dismounted Marines dashed in from either
side as they cantered through the melee. Pahner snatched them up as they came alongside, snapping
orders and passing over his own ammunition.
As he cleared the last embattled pair of behemoths he heard another thunder of flesh headed into the
battle. Roger was back.
***
"I wish the mahouts were here," Berntsen said as he hacked at a ligament.
"Why?" Cathcart asked. The corporal wiped at his face with the shoulder of his uniform. Everything
else was coated in blood.
"They used to do this."
The company had halted in the open area created by the burrowing beasts and set up defenses. With
this much meat around, scavengers were bound to come swarming in, but the unit could go no further.
The casualties had been brutal . . . again.
The friendly Nepalese, Dokkum, who'd taught them all about mountains, would never see New Tibet
again. Ima Hooker would never make another joke about her name. Kameswaran and Cramer, Liszez
and Eijken, the list went on and on.
"Tell you one thing," Cathcart said. "Rogo was right the first time. These motherfuckers are bad
news."
"Yeah," the private admitted, pulling on the heavy skin of the dead beast. "He was right all along."
***
"You were right back on the plateau, Roger," Pahner said, shaking his head over the casualties laid
out inside the perimeter. "These are not packbeasts."
"Like the difference between buffaloes," Roger repeated wearily.
He'd just finished sewing up Patty's wounds, using the kit the mahouts had left and a general antibiotic
provided by Doc Dobrescu. He'd been forced to do the work himself, because no one else could get
near the grumpy beast.
"Cape and water, you mean?" Dobrescu asked, walking up and sitting down on a splintered tree
trunk.
 "You were saying something about them just before it all fell into the crapper," Pahner said. "I'd never
heard of them before."
"You're not from Earth," Roger pointed out. "Of course, most people on Earth never heard of them,
either."
"They have in Africa," Dobrescu said with a bitterly ironic chuckle.
"So what are they?" Pahner asked, sitting down himself.
"They're a ton of mean is what they are," Roger said. "You go out after buffalo, and you take your life
in your hand. If they scent you, they'll swing around behind and sneak up on you. Before you know it,
you're dead."
"I thought buffaloes ate grass."
"That doesn't mean they're friendly," Roger told the captain tiredly. " 'Herbivore' doesn't automatically