"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Endgame (english)" - читать интересную книгу автораterrible happened on her watch. The first I knew
about it was three hours later, when she shook me awake out of a fitful sleep, where I dreamed we land- ed in a sea that turned out to be one, humongous Newbie circling the planet, waiting to fold us gently in arms like mountains and drag us to a watery grave fifty fathoms down. "Get up, get up, Fly," she said urgently. "Battle stations!" In an eyeblink, I was out of bed, stark naked, with a .40-cal pistol in my hands. "What? Where?" I demanded, looking for the ene- my. We were alone in the room we called the barracks; even Sears and Roebuck were missing, though they'd been there when I went to sleep. "Fly, I screwed the pooch. Real bad." She looked so pale and stricken that I almost reached out to hug her. It wouldn't have been appreciated; there were times she was a friend and times she was a Marine Corps Lance Corporal. "What did you do, Lance?" Her face took on the mask, what we wear when we have to go report a dereliction of duty (our own) to the XO: stone cold and icy white, lips as taut as strings stretched to their breaking point. "Sergeant, I was on watch at 0322; I went to check on the prisoner It took a moment for the intel to sink in. "Gone? What the hell do you mean? Where did he go?" I glanced at my watch, the only thing I wore: 0745. The Newbie had been missing for at least four hours and twenty minutes. "I can't find him, Sarge. I've looked . . . Sears and Roebuck and I have crawled this entire freaking ship up one side and down the other, and we can't find a shred of evidence that he was ever here!" "Where are the Klave?" "They're still looking, but I think if we were going to find the Newbie, we'd have found traces at least by now." She lowered her voice and looked truly ashamed; it was the first time I had ever seen her like that, and I didn't like it. "I think he's, ah, been planning this break for a long, long timeЧweeks, probably." I pulled on my cammies, T-shirt, and jacket while she talked. "God, Arlene, you're asking me to believe that the Newbie sat utterly still without moving for five weeks, just to lull us into a false sense of security! Christ, do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?" "It's what he did, Fly. I just know it." We conducted a rigorous search, but, of course, if |
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