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

Strike Force companies were prefixed B, C, or D depending on their
size. C-class units had a nominal strength of one hundred personnel.
C41 had received eight replacements since the last operation, but
Farrell decided not to bring them along on a mission as rough as
Active Cloak looked like being. The replacements were good people
or they wouldn’t have passed Strike Force screening after they
volunteered, but they hadn’t worked with C41 before. There was no
margin here for somebody who misunderstood an order or reacted in
an unexpected way.
The Spooks had a civilian colony of five hundred thousand on
Maxus 377 in addition to the logistics bases that served their military
on fourteen worlds. There was no margin at all when C41 seized the
planet’s main port ahead of the full-scale Unity invasion.
The tripod landing legs touched the ground in sequence. The
freighter rang in three descending notes. “Go!” Farrell shouted,
unheard over the clangs of the bolts shearing. He and a dozen other
strikers shoved at the toppling bulkhead.
They’d landed just before local noon. Sunlight quivered through
heat waves from the port’s white concrete surface. Anti-emitter
missiles launched in snarling cacophony from the freighter’s upper
cargo deck, homing on every operating radio-frequency antenna within
their ten-mile range.
Major Arthur Farrell hit the ground running, headed for the port
administration building with his headquarters group and two squads of
Third Platoon. C41 had begun the invasion.
The rest of the Unity armed forces better follow soon.

The pair of Spooks in the cab of the maintenance vehicle goggled to
see the recently-landed freighter fall apart as they drove past. Sergeant
Guilio Abbado killed them both with a single burst from his stinger
before he jumped to the ground.
“Three-three to the truck!” Abbado shouted. Most of his squad was
already running toward the eight-wheeled vehicle. It slowed but still
coasted forward after the driver died in a spray of coppery blood.
Horgen and Glasebrook leaped aboard, flinging the dead Spooks out of
the way. Horgen managed to turn the vehicle before it plunged into an
open sump, but she couldn’t seem to find the brakes.
One of the Spooks hung out the open door. Abbado kicked the body
the rest of the way to the ground as he climbed into the cab beside Flea
Glasebrook. The other five strikers of Third Squad, Third Platoon
clambered onto the back of the vehicle, shooting at any visible Spook
to keep the enemy’s panic boiling.
Horgen goosed the throttle. She steered east and accelerated without
needing orders.
The truck was a godsend if you believed in God, which Abbado
more or less did. The navy flight crew had landed the captured
freighter on the magnetic mass nearest the port’s northwest corner
according to plan. Abbado could see the sense of that, since the port
garrison’s compound and the administration building were
immediately north of the site and the transient military barracks were