"David Drake - Redliners (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Major Arthur Farrell’s bones vibrated to the howls of the generators
braking the captured Kalendru starship to a soft landing in the main
military port of the world Unity planners had labeled Maxus 377. The
engineers hadn’t bothered to jury-rig displays after they gutted the
ship’s hold for the assault force. If the strikers of Company C41
wanted, they could tap visuals from the flight deck onto their helmet
visors and look at the warped-looking Spook structures they would
attack in the next few seconds.
Farrell didn’t bother to watch. Instead he rechecked his stinger. He
wore crossed bandoliers of ammo packs and dangling blast rockets; a
medical kit; two supplementary communication units; two knives—
one of them powered, the other with a shorter fixed blade that could
double as a climbing spike; and a packet of emergency rations. The
integral canteen of Farrell’s back-and-breast armor held two quarts of
water, but he carried an additional three gallons in a backpack. The
weight slowed him and made his armor sag brutally against his
shoulders, but the cost was worth it to him.
When you’re pinned down in the hot sun, thirst is the worst torture.
Worse than the ripping pain of your wound, worse even than the
stench of your friend’s half-burned corpse on the ground beside you.
Art Farrell knew.
 The starship quivered, still twenty feet above the ground though she
was nearly in equilibrium with the field her generators had induced in
the magnetic mass on which she was landing. “Wait for it!” ordered
Captain Broz, C41’s executive officer, over the command channel.
Nadia Broz was following standard operating procedure, but on this
mission there wasn’t any risk that a striker would unass early.
Normally C41 inserted aboard a purpose-built landing vessel. The
hatches opened minutes before contact. For Active Cloak camouflage
rather than speed was the requirement. At touchdown the flight crew
would blow explosive bolts to separate the outer bulkheads from the
skeleton of support members, but until then the freighter’s hold was
sealed like a prison cell.
“Hey, I think I changed my mind,” a striker called over the ship
noises. There was brittle laughter.
Kurt Leinsdorf stood stolidly at Farrell’s shoulder as he always did
during an insertion. On C41’s table of organization, Leinsdorf was a
communications specialist. In reality he was Farrell’s bodyguard, a
huge, strong man who carried a single-shot plasma cannon in addition
to his other weapons and equipment.
“I wanna be a Strike Force ranger . . .” sang Horgen, a Third
Platoon striker. “I wanna live a life of danger . . .”
The starship sank the last few feet like a leaking bladder. Wait for it,
Farrell mouthed, but no sound passed his dry lips.
A locator chart overlaid the upper left quadrant of Farrell’s visor:
seventy-eight green dots, each one a striker. They were crammed too
closely together at the moment for him to count them individually.
Every one was a veteran: not only of combat, but veterans of C41
itself.