"Steve Perry - Aliens 01 - Earth Hive" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

Earth Hive
Aliens - 01
Steve Perry
 1
Even inside her bulky E-suit, Billie could feel the cold night bite at her. Sure, the land crawler
blocked most of the icy wind, and they had pulled one of the crawler’s portable heaters and turned it
up full, pretending it was a campfire, but it was still cold. It was the best they could do—there wasn’t
any wood on the planet Ferro, and if there had been they sure as shit wouldn’t be burning it. Wood
was worth more per gram than platinum on this world. How the guys in the vids could chop it up and
waste it was unreal.
The frozen wind howled like some kind of unhappy beast as it blew past the squat form of the
crawler; the song changed to a whistle where it flowed over the tractor’s sharp treads. The sounds
were eerie. Every now and then through a patchy break in the roiling and thick clouds, the stars
gleamed briefly, hard pinpricks against a dead-black curtain, glittering like diamonds caught in a laser
beam. Even without the clouds it would have been dim; Ferro had no moons.
Well, right, so it wasn’t comfortable out here, but at least the three of them weren’t stuck inside
the colony with the do-nothing dweebs, bored half stupid.
“Okay,” Mag said, “what else we s’posed to do here? We ate the RTE rations and sang that
fool song about logs and holes in the bottom of the sea. This is terminal droll, Carly.”
At twelve, Mag was a year younger than Billie and Carly, and she always had a smart crack
about everything.
Billie shivered inside her E-suit. “Yeah, juice brain, what else was on that old disc about
camping?”
“If you two dweebs will shut up, I’ll tell you.”
Mag slapped herself over the heart. “Oh, killer clever,” Mag said. “Got me.”
“They used to tell stories,” Carly said, pretending to ignore her. “Like ghosts and monsters and
shit.”
“Fine,” Mag said. “So, tell us one.”
Carly went off on a ramble about vampires and ghosts and Billie knew she’d pulled it from an
old entcom file. Even so, it was one thing to see the vid in your cube, all warm and well lit, another
thing to hear the story out here a klick away from the Main Building in the dark and cold and all.
Spooky.
Windblown hail spattered briefly, like a handful of gravel tossed at them, but stopped just as
Carly hit the climax of her story.
“—and every year, one of the survivors of that horrible night goes crazy—and now it’s my
turn!”
Mag and Billie both jumped as Carly lunged at them. Then all three began to giggle. “Okay,
Mag, you’re up.”
“Yeah, okay. There was this old witch, see…?” Halfway through Mag’s tale some ice pellets
fell and bounced around. One must have gotten into the heater’s circuits. The unit flashed brightly,
blew its fuse, and died. As the glow faded, the only light they had left was from the stars and the
crawler’s LEDs. The night moved in on them, and the cold and the dark both thickened. All of a
sudden, the Main Building seemed a lot farther than a klick away. More hail showered on them.
Billie shivered, and it wasn’t just from the cold.
“Aw, shit. Look at that. My dad is gonna be pissed we shorted out the aux heater. I’m getting
into the crawler,” Mag said. “Come on, finish your story.” “Forget it. My ears are about to freeze
off.”
“Well, we have to at least let Billie tell one.” Carly nodded at Billie. “Your turn.”
 “I think Mag is right, let’s get in the crawler.”
“Come on, Billie, don’t do a guppy-up on us.” Billie took a deep breath and blew out a cloud