"Robert F. Young - L'Arc de Jeanne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

L'Arc de Jeanne
Infantry Unit No. 97 of Drop XVI had landed on the north bank of Le Fleuve d'Abondance and
deployed along the base of the alluvial slope that gave access to the Provencal. Plateau. Once the 97th
gained a foothold on the plateau, the fall of Fleur du Sud, the key city of Ciel Bleu's southern
hemisphere, would be assured.
The commander of the 97th, jubilant over the success of his part of the Drop, radioed his position to
the GGS Ambussadress, the orbiting flagship from which O'Riordan the Reorganizer was supervising the
first phase of the tenth and final campaign of the so-called Second Civil War. O'Riordan was delighted
over the news and ordered that the city be taken at once. Soon, he reflected, Ciel Bleu would be as
helpless as the nine other secessionist planet-states and the omnipotence toward which he had directed
his political sights six years ago on Earth when he destroyed the nucleus of the religio-political
Psycho-Phenomenalist Church and established the Galaxi-Government would be his.
Strafe rifles at ready, the 97th started up the alluvial slope. Blue beret-like helmets were set at jaunty
angles; crimson battle-fatigues took on the hue of blood in the morning sunlight. The season was spring
and-a brisk wind was blowing out of the south. It was inconceivable that Fleur du Sud could muster
sufficient forces to defend itself.
Nevertheless, when the 97th breasted the slope, it found itself confronted by an army of defenders.
But it was a ragged army indeed, and even distance could not hide the fact that it was comprised
primarily of old men, housewives, and boys. Earlier that morning, the main contingent of Drop XVI had
landed far to the north, decoying the troops that had been stationed near Fleur du Sud away from the
city. The battle appeared to be in the bag.
The 97th girded itself and prepared to charge. And then the ragged ranks of the defenders parted
and a figure mounted on a magnificent black stallion rode through, and advanced across the plateau. The
figure was that of a girlтАФa girl clad in shining white armor and carrying a shining bow in her left hand and
a shining arrow in her right. Her head was bare and her light-brown hair streamed behind her in the
morning wind. Her face, white and blurred by distance, was like a flower.
The 97th paused. It consisted of veterans of nine planetary wars, and yet whispers rustled through its
ranks like frightened leaves.
Two hundred meters from the beginning of the slope, the black stallion came to a stop. The girl fitted
her shining arrow to her shining bow and drew the bowstring back. In the dead silence the bowstring
sang, and the arrow stabbed into the sky. Up, up it soared into the nonpareil blue, to pause, finally, high
above the 97th. But it did not fall back down to Earth. Instead, it became a bolt of blue-bright lightning.
Thunder sounded then, and the sky above the slope grew as dark as death. It began to rain.
The rest of the sky remained a serene and cloudless blue, and sunlight lay upon the plateau like
golden grain.
The rain intensified. It came down in sheets; in torrents. It became a wall of falling water. The 97th's
officers screamed to their men to charge, but the men were already mired in mud up to their ankles. The
edge of the plateau gave way, and the whole slope began to slide.
Desperately, the 97th tried to fight its way to safety, but it was part of a river of mud nowтАФa
vindictive merciless river in which the men could only flounder as it bore them ineluctably into the swollen
waters of another riverтАФLe Fleuve d'Abondance. Officers, noncoms, privatesтАФall suffered the same
ignominious fate; but Le Fleuve d'Abondance, even in a swollen state, was anything but a raging torrent,
and all gained the safety of the opposite shore.
They lined up like bedraggled rats along the bank and counted their blessings and their dry cigarettes.
The commander radioed a description of the debacleтАФand its authoressтАФto the orbiting
Ambassadress; then he withdrew his men behind a nearby ridge, deployed them, and smoked a damp
cigarette while he awaited instructions from O'Riordan.
O'Riordan was no stranger to history. He spotted the analogy right away, and it was the analogy as
much as the threat of the meteorological warfare that gave him pause. He knew what a modern Maid of
Orleans could do for the relatively primitive people of Ciel BleuтАФknew that even without a weapon that