"Mike Moscoe - BattleTech - MechWarrior - Dark Age 09 - Patriot's Stand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moscoe Mike)

Then he realized the truth.

The tank had charged into a section of the valley that wasn’t there. What had looked like solid ground a
second ago vanished as the hover turbines sent woven grass mats flying. The tank hung in thin air for a
second, like some cartoon critter Loren might have laughed at when he was four.

But this was not a cartoon, and L. J. was a detachment commander, and a hovertank may hover a few
centimeters above the ground but not over the middle of a deep gully. The tank’s nose dropped. It smashed
head-on into the dirt bank ahead of it, then flipped over, coming to rest with a screech of tearing metal and
ripping armor. For a moment longer the blowers kept working, sending a cloud of dirt shooting into the sky
as if to mark for all to see the resting place of this armored marvel.

“Damn,” L. J. breathed. They’d never get that tank out without a retriever, and this detachment was
budgeted on a shoestring. Maintenance truck, yes. Retriever, not on your life.

Then he felt the thud of bullets hammering into his ’Mech’s knee.

“Damn!” he repeated, turning his attention back where it belonged. Slugs ricocheted wildly, but here and
there a tiny bit of armor went with them. That ’Mech MOD on his front had some sort of multibarrel gun, and
while its slugs might be tiny, it was enthusiastically sending them his way. Slightly off to the right of that
tormentor, a second ’Mech MOD with an infrared signature stood up. Then things really got hot.

A river of fire curved toward L. J. It fell short, not even showing on his temp readout. He started to chuckle
at these poor jokers’ attempts, then swallowed it.

The fire might have landed short, but it hit a clump of those green shrubs with yellow flowers, and they
caught fire like an open gas tank. The morning calm was gone, and the wind now drove the fire right at him.
Maybe it’s time to be somewhere else. L. J. turned away from Sergeant Godfrey’s mess, snapped off four
salvos of short-range missiles to encourage the locals to mind their own business, and aimed himself at a bit
of good level ground well away from the yellow-and-green fire hazard.

The jump was good, right up until the landing.

His entire ’Mech groaned as the gyros struggled to balance him on just his left leg. He overrode the gyros
and let his ’Mech settle, left leg bent almost double, right leg deep in a hole that woven mats had concealed a
moment earlier.

L. J. tapped his mike. “All hands, watch your footing. This plain is pockmarked with traps.”

“Nowhe tells me,” came Godfrey’s dry drawl.

L. J. ignored him and concentrated on his own problem. The enemy right was running; Godfrey’s shots had
put fear in them. Webrunner was herding the left up the hill. Still, the locals were making good use of folds in
the land, and stopping to return fire with single-shot SRMs and two of those dinky miniguns.

L. J. snapped off another volley of SRMs in the general direction of the center of his opposition and got his
leg out of the hole. Limping off to the right, he eyed his tormentors.

His first salvo made gravel out of the rock that the minigun was hiding behind. The fire-throwing ’Mech and
the infantry were retreating but still firing as they backpedaled. The minigun slashed out at him from behind a