"Bova, Ben - Orion 05 - Orion among the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

I rolled over again and prepared to land in the clearing, working the flight-pack controls on my belt to bring me to a gentle touchdown on the grass. My boots touched the grass, all right, and then kept right on going. I splashed and started sinking.
"It's a swamp!" I yelled into my helmet mike. "Don't touch down. Hover and look for solid ground."
I tried to lift out of the quicksand-thick swamp but my left leg had caught on something. I could hear Sergeant Manfred and some of the troopers calling back and forth:
"Looks like some rocks up there."
"Set down easy, see if it's solid ground."
"Boulders—yaargh!" A scream.
I was trying to pull free of the swamp, ratcheting up the power level of my flight pack slowly because my leg was caught and I did not want to wrench it or pop the tendons in my knee. At the same time I was searching across the open area, watching my troopers as they hovered, searching for a safe landing spot. One of them had screamed. Why?
"Look out! That thing's moving!"
What in the seven levels of hell was going on? And what was my leg caught on? The equipment packs were coming down now, splashing into the swamp like rocks falling in slow motion; sinking out of sight.
"It's alive!"
"Blast it! But don't hit Jerron."
I realized that my leg was not caught on anything. Something had grabbed the leg and was holding on to it. Tightly. Tight enough to bend the armor of my legging. I could feel it squeezing against my calf. Whatever it was, it was trying to pull me down into the grass-choked water.
I cranked the flight-pack power up higher and lifted up out of the swamp with something hanging on to my leg. I looked down and saw a nightmare tangle of tentacles and sharp snapping claws. It was climbing up my leg, trying to crack my armor and get at the meat inside.
Still rising slowly into the night sky, I pulled my pistol from its holster and took careful aim. Don't shoot your own foot off, I warned myself. I thumbed the laser power to low and tried to convince my would-be devourer to let go. It snaked another tentacle toward my wrist, pincer snapping audibly despite the rush of wind whipping past my helmet.
"It's you or me," I said aloud, thumbing the pistol up to half power and slicing off the reaching tentacle. The creature made a growling sound and waved the severed end of its tentacle in the air, spewing dark blood.
Looking down again, I saw its face: a collection of clacking mandibles and glittering eyes, dozens of them. I fired at the eyes, raising the power of my pistol slowly, astounded that the beast—whatever it was—took the punishment for what seemed like an eternity to me. Just as I began to wonder if the laser beam was having any effect on it at all, it gave a howling shriek and dropped away from me.
Suddenly freed of its weight, I shot up even higher into the night sky. I gulped for breath and then started back down.
A full-scale battle was going on below me. I could see laser flashes and hear my troopers yelling and calling back and forth.
"The damned rocks are alive!"
"And hungry!"
"And friggin' hard to kill!"
The entire swamp was filled with carnivorous creatures thrashing, slashing, grabbing at our bodies as if we had been sent by heaven to feed them. My troopers splashed through the soupy water, shooting at the swamp creatures while trying not to hit one another.
And our equipment packs, the components of the transceiver and all our supplies, had sunk out of sight to the bottom of the swamp.
"Full power on the pistols," I called to them on the command frequency. "Whoever's got two hands free, unlimber a rifle and go after them."
Panting, battered, frightened, we finally fought free and made our way into the trees. The ground was firmer there and free of things that wanted to eat us. At least, it seemed that way.
We sprawled on the solid ground, massive trees rising in the darkness all around us, and caught our breaths.
"What the hell were they?"
"Think they come up onto dry land?" asked a worried voice in the darkness.
"They must have been figments of our imaginations," one of the women said, sourly. "The briefing tapes specifically told us that no threatening carnivores have been identified on Lunga."
"The highest form of living creature on planet Lunga," quoted another soldier from the tapes, "is a harmless furry tree-dwelling mammalian about the size of a tree lemur."
"So much for the scientific survey of this planet."
"So much for Intelligence."
"And the friggin' scouts."
"There's no intelligence in Intelligence."
"When's the last time you saw one of those bald guys away from his computer?"
Another of the women grumbled, "But they're so damnably smart about it. You notice they said no carnivores have been identified on the planet."
"Well, I identified a few. My goddamned armor's punched right through. Look at it!"
His chest plate was cracked where one of the tentacled claws had scratched across it. I looked down at my leg, surprised to see blood on my armor. My own, I realized. I had automatically shut down my pain receptors and clamped the blood vessels tight while I was struggling with the creature that had fastened itself to my leg.
"Sergeant," I called, "set up a perimeter and establish guards. I'm going to raise the cargo packs out of that swamp and float them over here. We'll rest here for one hour."
"Yessir," said Manfred.
I dialed the comm frequency of my helmet radio and called for the other squads. One by one they reported in, each of them telling a tale of swamp monsters. Two of the troopers had been killed on one squad. Several others injured.
I called up the map of the area and studied it in the view on my visor.
"We will rendezvous at point A-Six," I told the other squad leaders, picking a spot that seemed high and dry on the contour map. "In two hours. Any questions?"
"One of my men is too banged up to be of any help to us," said a lieutenant. "Can we call for an evacuation lift?"
"Negative," I said. "We bring our wounded with us. And our dead, too."

Chapter 3
While most of the rest of my squad grabbed a precious few minutes of sleep, I went to the edge of the swamp and worked the controls on my belt in an attempt to raise our equipment packs from the bottom of the bog.
One by one, slowly, reluctantly, they came up with big sucking sounds, like someone pulling his boots out of clinging mud. The flight packs worked even under water. I only hoped that their packaging was watertight. Dripping mud and slime, they hovered in the dark night air in response to my command. In the view of my visor's sensors they looked hot red against an eerie yellow-green background.
One of the swamp creatures snaked a tentacle to the nearest of the packs, touched it, decided it was not food and sank back into the ooze. They live in the water, I told myself. They won't come out of the swamp and up onto dry land. I fervently hoped so.