"Ian Douglas - Inheritance Trilogy 1 - Star Strike" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglas Ian)

were seeking out Marines and vehicles, while the counter-clouds roiling off Marine armor and vehicles
sought to neutralize them. The result was a deadly balance; in places, the ground was melting, the rain
hissing into steam.

Almost in front of him, a Marine bounded in for a landing, his combat suit making him seem bulky and
awkward, but the impression was belied by the grace of movement on the suit’s agrav packs. The
Marine touched down lightly, aimed at an unseen target with the massive field-pulse rifle mounted
beneath his right arm, then bounded again.

The armor itself, Garroway saw, was mostly black, but the surface had a shimmering, illusive effect that
rendered it nearly invisible, an illusion due to the nanoflage coating which continually adapted to incoming
light. In places, he saw blue sparks and flashes where enemy nano-D was trying to eat into the suit’s
defenses, but was—so far—being successfully blocked by the suit’s counters.

Neither near-invisibility nor nanotechnic defenses could help this Marine, however. As he grounded
again, something flashed nearby, and the man’s midsection vanished in a flare of blue-white light. Legs
collapsed to one side, head and torso to the others, the arms still, horribly, moving. Garroway thought he
heard a spine-chilling shriek over the link, mercifully cut off as the armored suit died. Rain continued to
drench the hot ruin of the combat suit, steaming in the flare-lit night, and the armor itself, exposed to the
relentless embrace of airborne nano-disassemblers, began to soften, curdle, and dissolve.

The arms had stopped moving. There was a great deal of blood on the ground, however, and slowly
dissolving wet chunks of what might be…

Gods….

Garroway struggled not to be sick. He would not be sick. He wrenched his mental gaze away from the
feed, and stood once more in the Martian night.

“Being a Marine is one of the greatest honors, one of the greatest responsibilities available to the
Commonwealth citizenry,” Warhurst said, his voice still speaking in his mind over the implant link. “But it
is not for everyone. It requires the ultimate commitment. Fortitude. Courage. Character. Commitment to
duty and to fellow Marines. Sometimes, it requires the ultimate sacrifice…for the Commonwealth. For
your brother and sister Marines. For the Corps.

“You’ve all just seen what modern combat is like…what it’s really like, not what the entertainment feeds
would have you believe. Do any of you want to see this thing through?”

Garroway heard others leaving the line; he didn’t know how many. He also heard someone retching off
to his left.

After a long pause, Warhurst nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Get ’em out of here.”

With a whine, the agrav shuttle at Garroway’s back lifted into the Martian night. He felt the flutter of wind
as it passed overhead, and he watched its drive field grow brighter as it accelerated back to orbit, back
to the Arean Rings that stretched now across the zenith like a slender, taut-pulled thread of pure silver.
“You maggots,” Warhurst growled, his former tough-DI persona slowly re-emerging, “you mudworms
are even more stupid than I was led to believe. All right. Show’s over. Like I said earlier, from this point
on, you are mine. I personally am going to eat you alive, chew you up, and spit your worthless carcasses
out on these sands.