"John G. Hemry - Stark's War 3 - Stark's Crusade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hemry John G)

soldiers and crew of the crashed shuttle. But, finally, he prayed, briefly and fervently.

The APC came to a halt near the ambulances clustered around the crash site. Stark checked
the seals on his own battle armor before cracking the APC’s hatch, then pulled himself through
onto the lunar surface.

As always, time seemed to suddenly slow down. Stark dropped slowly, his feet landing
gently yet still puffing up small clouds of fine gray dust. Small rocks littered the landscape
here, interspersed with a few larger boulders, all as jagged as the day they were birthed,
without the smoothing effects of an Earth-like environment to round them off. Figures moved
around the wreck and the ambulances, bounding with odd grace from point to point. Stark’s
HUD automatically tagged the figures, some with medical symbols, some as regular infantry,
and some as wounded. The medics weren’t hard to spot. Unlike the battle armor of the
infantry, the medical personnel wore lighter weight outfits that allowed them to better treat
wounded while still in their suits. Medics weren’t supposed to need armor anyway, since they
weren’t supposed to be shot at. Sometimes the enemy actually abided by that rule. Most of the
time, the medics practiced trying not to get hit while they tended casualties.

Off to one side, a small pile of armored bodies was marked with the ugly symbol that
signified the dead.

Stark moved forward, trying to get involved in the rescue and recovery while
simultaneously staying out of the way of people who were doing their jobs just fine without his
interference. “Doctor Asad. You in charge?”

The figure tagged by his HUD as Asad turned slightly to nod toward Stark. “That’s right.”

“How bad is it?”

It was impossible to shrug in a suit, but somehow Asad managed to mimic the motion.
“Could be worse. You see the dead over there. Not too many. Very few, considering how torn
up this shuttle is. Most of the rest just have the usual abrasions, bruises, broken bones, and
such. No big deal fixing them up.”

Stark took another look at the grouping of the dead, counting them this time, then looking
toward the shredded, crumpled wreck of the shuttle. Only five. Very few is right. Damn miracle
is more like it. “That’s amazing.”
 “Uh huh. Credit the pilot and his crew, I guess. They must have gotten the velocity on that
sucker down quite a bit before it hit.”

“Where are they?” Stark looked around, vainly searching his HUD for anyone tagged as
flight personnel. “The shuttle crew?”

“Where?” Asad nodded again, this time toward the wreck. “In there. The shuttle came to
rest on the crew compartment. We haven’t been able to pry the bodies out, yet. Too busy
taking care of the living. Might need engineers to open it up, anyway.” He paused. “I guess
they didn’t have time to eject the crew compartment. Too bad.”

“They had a chance, Doc. They could’ve ejected.”