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

you know just what you mean to me, old girl."
She slid up to sit cross-legged on the table, staring
around the huge empty mess hall. No officers around,
and no non-coms but me. Why not? "Fly," she said,
"I don't think you know just what Albert meant to
me. MeansЧmeantЧis he dead or alive now?"
"Probably still alive. It's only been about twenty
years or so on Earth ... or will have only been by this
point, when we get back thereЧby which point, it'll
have been two centuries. It's weird; it's confusing; it's
not worth worrying about." I ate another blue square;
they tasted somewhat like ravioliЧcrunchy outside
and stuffed with worms that tasted half like cheese,
half like chocolate cake. It sounds dreadful, but really
it's not bad when you get used to it. A lot better than
the orange squares and gray dumplings, which tasted
like rotten fish. The Fred aliens had truly stomach-
turning tastes, by and large.
"Fly, when I first joined the squadЧyou remember
Gunny Goforth and the William Tell apple on the
head duel?Чyou were my only friend then."
I remembered the incident. Gunnery Sergeant Go-
forth was just being an asshole because he didn't
think women belonged in the CorpsЧnot the Corps
and definitely not the Light Drop Marine Corps
InfantryЧand no way in the nine circles of hell, not
by the livin' Gawd that made him, was Gunnery
Sergeant Harlan E. Goforth ever going to let some
pussy into Fox Company, the machoest, fightingest
company of the whole macho, fighting Light Drop!
He decreed that no gal could join his company
unless she proved herself by letting him shoot an apple
off her head! And Arlene did it! She stood there and let
him take it off with a clean shot from a .30-99 bolt-
action sniper piece. With iron sights, yet.
Then, with a little malicious sneer on her lips, she
calmly tossed a second apple to Goforth and made
him wear the fruit while she did the William Tell bit.
We all loved it; to his credit, the gunny stood tall and
didn't flinch and let her pop it off his dome at fifty
meters. After that, what could the Grand Old Man do
but welcome her to Fox, however reluctantly?
Back in the Freds' mess hall, Arlene continued,
nibbling at her own blue square. "You're still my best
and first, Fly. But Albert was the first man I really
loved. Wilhelm Dodd was the first guy to care about
me that way; but I didn't know what love meant until
... oh Jesus, that sounds really stupid, doesn't it?"
I climbed onto the table myself, and we sat back to
back. I liked feeling her warmth against me. It was