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

people, three chairs. Two of the chairs were occupied. In one was a full bird colonel, wearing
interior regulations. No combat medals, a desk pilot. He’d be the MI officer in charge. There was an
oxymoron, “military intelligence.”
The other man was in civilian garb, and he had the look. Wilks would bet a month’s pay this
guy was a t-bag—Terran Intelligency Agency. Any odds anybody wanted.
“At ease, marine,” the colonel said. Wilks wasn’t aware that he’d been at attention. Old habits
die hard.
Wilks noticed that the colonel, his name tag said “Stephens,” kept his hands behind his back.
Like maybe he was afraid to touch him.
Not so the civilian. He extended one hand. “Corporal Wilks.”
Wilks kept his own hand down. Shake with one of these guys and you might need finger grafts.
The civilian nodded, withdrawing his offer of a handshake.
“You saw the recording,” Stephens said.
“I saw it.”
“What did you think?”
“I thought the guardsmen were lucky they got blown to atoms when they did.”
The colonel and the civilian exchanged quick glances. “This is, ah, Mr.… Orona,” Stephens
said.
Yeah, right, and I’m King George the Second, Wilks thought.
“You ran into these things before, didn’t you?” the one they called Orona said.
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about it.”
 “What can I tell you that you don’t already know? You’ve seen the recordings of my
“examination,” haven’t you?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“Maybe I don’t want to tell it to you.”
Stephens glared at him. “Give the man the story, marine. That’s an order.”
Wilks almost laughed. Or what? You’ll toss me in the brig? That’s exactly where I’d rather be
than here. But if they wanted him to talk, they could pry it out of him, the military had dope that could
make a crowbar sing opera. He shrugged.
“All right. I was part of a unit sent to check on a colony on Rim. We’d lost contact with them.
We found one survivor, a little girl named Billie. Everybody else had been slaughtered by some kind
of alien. Same thing that got the guardsmen.
“One of them got onto the lander when it dusted off. Killed the pilot, crashed it. There were
twelve of us in the squad, stuck on the ground. I was the only one who got out, me and the little girl.
They shipped her off to live with relatives on Ferro, after they wiped her memory. She was a good
kid, considering all the shit she saw. We spent some time awake on the ship before we climbed into
the deep freezers. I liked her. She was tough.
“Later I heard there was another nest of the things somewhere, killed another colony.
Supposedly a marine and a couple civilians got away from that one, too.
“When I got back, the medics patched me up, then took my brain apart. Only thing was, all of
a sudden nobody wanted to know from aliens eating colonists and laying eggs in them. It got buried.
Top secret, total wipe like the kid if I opened my mouth. That was more than a dozen years ago.
“That’s it. End of story.”
“You got a bad attitude, Wilks,” Stephens said.
Orona smiled. “Colonel, do you suppose I might have a word with the corporal alone?”
After a moment Stephens nodded. “All right. I’ll talk to you later,”
He left the room.
Orona smiled. “Now we can talk freely.”
Wilks laughed. “What? Do I have ‘stupid’ tattooed on my forehead? If there isn’t a battery of