"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Endgame (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора"I know. I've been avoiding it. I don't like thinking
of how big this damned ship really is." Arlene sounded pensive, even through the radio. "Honey, Sergeant, I've had this burning feelingЧ" "Try penicillin." "I've had this burning feeling that we have to walk this path, walk all the way around what's going to be our world for the next nine weeks, or however long it takes until we finally get ... home." I stared back and forth between the obsidian LZ and the ship door, torn. "You're right." I sighed. "We ought to reconnoiter. Arlene, take point." "Aye-aye, Skipper," she said, voice containing an odd mixture of elation and anxiety. She unslung her RK-150, and I flexed my grip on the old, reliable standard, the Marine-issue M-14, which contrary to the designator was more like an updated Browning automatic rifle than the Micronics series of M-7, -8, -10, and -12. These were heavy-lifting small arms, and the Freds were pretty pathetic when not surrounded by their "demonic" war machines. I don't know what we expected to run into on Fredworld; nothing good, I suspected. I thought about calling Sears and Roebuck and telling them what we were doing, but we were right damned selves. Still feeling that chill on the nape of my neck, I followed Arlene at a safe twenty-five meters. It was hard not to be awestruck next to that ship. It was hard to credit; the Freds could do this, and they couldn't even conquer a low-tech race like humanity! They always taught us at Parris Island that heart and morale mattered more than tanks and air support in combat: look at the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and Bosnia, at the Scythe of Glory in Kefiristan. But this was the first time I really believed that line: we really wanted the fight, and the Freds were unprepared for resistance. The ship was gunmetal gray along most of its flank, except where micrometeorites had scored the surface or punctured it. Thank God for self-sealing architec- ture; at the speeds we traversed the galaxy, cosmic dust sprayed through the ship like bullets through cheese. We reached the aft end and stared up at the single, staggeringly huge thruster. The ship was a ramjet, according to the specs: as it moved at increasing velocity relative to the interstellar hydrogen, an elec- tromagnetic net spread out in front of the boat, |
|
|