"Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

It grabbed the man's neck from behind and pulled his head off like an old blossom. The body shuddered
and gurgled and crapped. It eased the body down to the ground and set the head between its legs.

Nice touch. Thanks.

It picked up the man's rifle and bent the barrel into a right angle. It lay the weapon down quietly and
stood silent for several minutes.

Then three other shadows came from the woods, and they all converged on a small wooden hut. The
walls were beaten-down aluminum cans nailed to planks; the roof was cheap glued plastic.

It pulled the door off and an irrelevant alarm sounded as it switched on a headlight brighter than the sun.
Six people on cots, recoiling.

"—Do not resist," it boomed in Spanish. "—You are prisoners of war and will be treated according to
the terms of the Geneva Convention."

“Mierda.” A man scooped up a shaped charge and threw it at the light. The tearing-paper sound was
softer than the sound of the man's body bursting. A split second later, it swatted the bomb like an insect
and the explosion blew down the front wall of the building and flattened all the occupants with
concussion.

The black figure considered its left hand. Only the thumb and first finger worked, and the wrist made a
noise when it rotated.

Good reflexes. Oh, shut up.

The other three shapes turned on sunlights and pulled off the building's roof and knocked down the
remaining walls.

The people inside looked dead, bloody and still. The machines began to check them, though, and a
young woman suddenly rolled over and raised the laser rifle she'd been concealing. She aimed it at the
one with the broken hand and did manage to raise a puff of smoke from its chest before she was
shredded.

The one checking the bodies hadn't even looked up. "No good," it said. "All dead. No tunnels. No exotic
weapons I can find."

"Well, we got some stuff for Unit Eight." They turned off their lights and sped off simultaneously, in
four different directions.

The one with the bad hand moved about a quarter-mile and stopped to inspect the damage with a dim

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infrared light. It beat the hand against its side a few times. Still, only the two digits worked.