"Mike Moscoe - The First Casualty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moscoe Mike)

"This is Major Henderson at battalion. What have you got
for me?" So the battalion CO was lurking on their command
channel, or had an alert on it. Considering all the lurking and
alerts Lek had rigged through me brigade's net, Mary had no
complaint.

She shut up; let the young officer talk to the man. Only
when the wait stretched and started to bend did she speak.
"Our infrared sensors have picked up the colonials coming
around Eimo Four. We don't have an ETA on them," she
said, though she suspected Lek did by now. No need telling
management what they didn't want to hear from dumb
worker bees.

"Brigade finally risked a radar sweep about the time the
bandits went behind the gas giant," battalion drawled.
"I'll pass this report along. Colonials are right on sched-
ule."

Which was not what the command net had been saying
for the last fifteen hours. Lek had warned Mary not to be-
lieve the official word from HQ. She'd learned long ago not
to trust what a foreman said. The old electronic wizard had
been passing along to Mary and the rest of the unemployed
miners the straight dope,

Battalion signed off; the young LT found his voice.

THE FIRST CASUALTY • 3

"Sergeant, what the hell is going on here? We've got to
talk."

What the sergeant had going on here was her own usual
go at making everyone happy, to give the LT what he
wanted, and the rest of the platoon what they wanted. What
Mary wanted was to be light-years away from all this with a
beer in one hand and a warm hunk on her shoulder. But
today, nobody was getting what they wanted. With a sigh,
Mary got ready for a long talk.

Captain Anderson, commander, 97th Defense Brigade,
frowned at his screen- "Since when does a leg infantry pla-
toon have infrared sensors that good? Not that I'm com-
plaining, but..."

His XO, Commander Inez Umboto, grinned at the dis-
play, showing no sign of surprise. "Half the troops of that
platoon are out-of-work miners. Remember the complaints
you fielded from several mine administrators about missing