"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Endgame (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора

terrible 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
in sickbay, but he was gone."
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