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

with pain, horribly distended toward the deck. Color
had long since disappeared, and even the black and
white images I could still see narrowed to a tunnel of
light. Blurry outlines bent and twisted under the
force. Again, the ship skewed, spun out of control
until Sears and Roebuck regained control. How the
hell were they flying the ship? Were there even any
control surfaces left?
We shoved through the last two rubber collars; I
almost died in the second when my bulk stuck fast,
and I couldn't breathe for the clingy seal across my
mouth and nose. Arlene saved my life then, reaching
back into the bottleneck, somehow mustering the
strength to drag me forward by my hair a meter,
clearing the rubber from my face. At last, we lay on
the floor of Nav Room One, broken and bleeding
from nose and ears, unable to see, hugging the deck
like drunks at the end of a spree.
I heard sounds above the shredding of the ship
behind us, wordsЧSears and Roebuck saying some-
thing. Desperately, I focused. "BeingЧshot." They
gasped. "Shot at downЧdefenders shootingЧship
breaking into partЧloosing controlling."
Shot? Shot at? What the hell was this outrage? It
was just too much, on top of the agony of reentry, to
have to put up with this weaponry BS as well! "KillЧ
bastards," I wheezed. Ho, fat chance; more likely, we
would all die before the ship even hit the groundЧ
blown apart by relentless defenders with particle-
beam cannons.
I passed out, only for a moment; I woke to hear
Sears and Roebuck repeating over and over, "Dirt
alert! Dirt alert!" I opened my eyes, focused just long
enough to see the ground rushing up like a freight
train, then went limp and dark again. I composed my
epitaph: Goodbye, cruel alien world.
Sears and Roebuck must have flared out at the last
moment, for I felt the nose rise majestically. Then the
remaining tail section of the Fred ship, whatever was
left, struck the ground with particular savagery, and
the ship slammed belly-first into what turned out to
be silica sand. A miracle that proved my faithЧhad it
been granite or water, we would have been atomized.
We were still traveling at least mach four when we
painted the desert, and we plowed a twenty-seven-
kilometer furrow across the surface of the planet,
kicking up sandy rooster tails taller than the Buchan-
an Building in the forty seconds it took us to slide to a
stop.
When the landing was over, we lay on the deck