"Stephen Goldin - But As A Soldier, For His Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldin Stephen)

Antarctica headed the list. But here he is, and here he will fight. He learns that the United States is fighting China here
over a section of disputed territory. So he is back to fighting Orientals, though on new terrain.
Gary is here also, and they renew their friendship. There is a week of callisthenics, as they get in shape once more.
The atmosphere, Harker notices, is less relaxed than it was the first time, as though people are impatient to get the
resurrectees out and fighting again.
Antarctica, needless to say, has different physical conditions than most of them are used to. They bundle up in
heavy boots and thin, electrically warmed coats and gloves. They wear goggles to protect their eyes. Their weapons
now fire laser beams instead of projectiles; the lack of recoil takes some getting used to. So does the climate. Cold
instead of hot, snow instead of rain, bare plains and snow fields instead of jungles and farms. The terrain under
dispute seems no different to Harker than any of the rest that is free for the taking, but his superiors tell him that this is
what they must have and so this is what he fights for.
After three months of fighting, Harker is wounded. A laser beam grazes his arm, burning flesh down to the bone.
He is taken to a hospital, where they heal the wound quite efficiently – but while they do so, the war comes to an end.
The decision arises again whether to reenlist or leave the service. Many resurrectees opt out before becoming too
estranged from the world. But the slang of the contemporary soldiers is already becoming unrecognisable, and the few
pictures Harker has received of the rest of the ‘modern’ world seem strange and out of phase. After talking it over with
Gary, they both decide on one more try aboard the resurrection express.
There is a new slant to it this time, though. A very experimental program, top-secret, is being worked out whereby,
instead of putting a man in hibernation, they can record his mind as an individual and reconstruct him later when
needed. This will make the system much more manoeuvrable, since they won’t have the problem of transporting
frozen bodies to and from battlegrounds. This method is a bit riskier, since it hasn’t been fully tested yet, but it offers
more advantages in the long run.
Gary and Harker sign up and are duly recorded.

Harker was thrown clear by the explosion, but the other soldier had not been so lucky. The left side of her torso
had been blown away and guts were spilling onto the steaming ground. Harker shook his head to clear it from the
shock, and rolled quickly behind a barely standing section of wall.
It was not nearly so dark now. Energy weapons were being fired, lighting up the countryside with their
multicoloured glows. The drizzle continued steadily, and the mists still steamed up from the ground. Like ghosts,
Harker thought. But he didn’t have much time for thinking. He had a job to do.
There could be no strategy in this type of combat – it was strictly man-to-man, a series of individual battles
where the only winners were those who remained alive. Move cautiously, ever alert, looking for someone with the
other colour armtag. When you see him, shoot immediately, before he can shoot you. If he’s too far out of range,
hurl a grenade. Reduce the number of the enemy to increase your own odds. Stay alive. That was the law here on
this nameless world beneath a green sun.
Harker emerged from one doorway after killing seven of the enemy, onto a main ‘street’ – or what had been one
– of this city. It was now clogged with heaps of rubble from the fallen buildings; stone, cement, steel, plastiglas
jumbled every which way. Among the wreckage were strewn the bodies of thousands of the original inhabitants.
They were not human, but it was impossible for Harker to reconstruct what they had looked like. Many of the
bodies were in pieces, with an unusually short leg lying here, an oddly shaped arm over there, a limbless, headless
torso further on. Some bodies were pinned beneath pieces of debris; others had been hideously mutilated by the
latest advances in war technology.
Harker’s stomach felt no unease at what his eyes were viewing. He had seen scenes like this before, many times,
in countless places throughout the universe. It took him barely a second to absorb the silent tragedy before him,
then he started moving on.
A bolt of energy his hit right calf. He whirled and fired instinctively at his attacker, even as he felt himself
falling.

This new type of resurrection is a sudden, frightening thing, a lightning bolt summoning his soul from the depths
of limbo.