"Timothy Zahn - Blackcollar 2 - The Backlash Mission" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission


Timothy Zahn


BLACKCOLLAR:
THE BACKLASH MISSION

For Uncle TimmyтАФ
Who locked up the mountain and then gave me the key.




Prologue
The wind coming northward over Ralston Buttes had been increasing steadily throughout the night,
shifting gradually around toward the west with the promise of bad weather coming in behind it.
Lying flat on his belly beneath one of the surrounding pine trees, Lonato Kanai listened as the
branches scratched at his flexarmor battle-hood and peered through the gloom at the darkened
mansion directly ahead. In an hourтАФmaybe soonerтАФthe storm would arrive, drenching the whole
Denver plateau and turning the slope he was on into fairly obnoxious mud. But long before that
happened Kanai and his fellow blackcollars would be on their way home. It had taken them six
hours to crawl through the last hundred meters of forest, but now all the early-warning motion
sensors were behind them and the target lay open ahead.

Reasonably open, anyway. There were still the roof-mounted chain guns and hedge mines, their
infrared and ultrasonic autotarget systems waiting only for the intruders to move away from the
waving tree branches and onto the elaborately sculpted lawn. And, of course, inside the mansion
itself would be a dozen or more armed men.

Reaching to his left forearm, Kanai unlimbered the collapsed sniper's slingshot strapped there and
unfolded it, setting the brace against his arm and slipping a tiny lead sphere into the pouch. He'd
barely managed to make marksman rating during the war, but thirty years of practice had honed his
skills considerably. The nearest ultrasonic projectorтАФa small tripartite hornтАФwas nestled under the
eave, just barely visible in the cloud-reflected lights of Denver over the hills to the east. Eyes on the
projector, peripheral vision and other senses alert, Kanai eased his elbows into a less uncomfortable
position and waited for the signal.

It wasn't long in coming. Abruptly, the tingler on his right wrist came to life, tapping the dots and

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Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission


dashes of blackcollar combat code into two sections of skin: attack.

Even through the whistling wind Kanai heard the crack as his lead shot drilled its way deep into the
ultrasonic projector. Quickly he set up his second shot as the sounds of other freshly ruined sensors
reached him. Ahead, the side door that was their target was suddenly rimmed in red warning lights.