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

Dwindles into a tiny dot, then vanishes altogether in the cold blackness.

End of script/AV extract. Readers/viewers are once again warned that unauthorized use of this
material may result in severe penalties, per MILCOM stat. reg. 342544-A, Revision II.
 6
Billie sleeps, but it is not rest. In her dreams she is back on Rim. She sees her parents, sees the
inside of the colony that plans to terraform the planet and turn it into paradise. Sees and is happy.
Things blur. Then she sees monsters.
Her life becomes a jumble of hiding, of fear, of waiting for them to find and kill her. She joins
the rats under the floor, her mind and actions turn feral. Survival is all, and it is nothing, likely to stop
at any moment.
She sees Wilks and the others, guns spraying. She hears the noise, feels the terror.
She feels Wilks’s arms around her, feels the vibrations of his weapon as it fires. Watches the
monsters shatter and fall, but knows there are too many of them.
There comes the worst moment, when the hard claws of a monster dig into her, lift her, and it
carries her away to die. Then it falls, chopped off at the knees. Its blood eats smoking, stinking holes
in the floor and it releases her. She doesn’t wait, she scrabbles away before it can catch her again.
The air is full of acrid fumes, the sound of Wilks’s yelling, his gun shooting over and over until it is a
continuous roar. The wounded monster’s claws click on the floor as it drags itself toward Billie.
She screams. The only name that matters now.
“Wilks!”
The only one who can save her.
 7
In the canned-air depths of MILCOM HQ, in the long hall with invisible doors two men
walked: Qrona and Stephens.
“He’s as nuts as an orchard full of filbert trees,” Stephens said. “If we hadn’t needed to keep
him on a leash, we’d have psych-DCed him years ago.”
“True,” Orona said. “But he’s what we’ve got and GENstaff wants him along. You know how
politics works.”
“Yeah, GENstaff thinks he’s some kind of monster killer, but I think he’s a goddamn crew
killer.”
“You wanted a field command. I got you one.”
“Right, carrying Jonah the Jinx into a potentially lethal force combatsit.”
“Let me put it to you like this, Bill,” Orona said. “GENstaff will have an experienced person
onboard this project. The only other marine we know about who has met these things face-to-face
and survived the initial encounter disappeared. The woman and kid he saved also vanished and we
don’t know where they are. The girl Wilks saved is in the bughouse, doped to the gills. There was
also a badly damaged android, but we don’t have a clue as to what happened to it. We’re full of
mystery here. That leaves Wilks.”
“I don’t like it. He’s unstable.”
“I’m not asking you to like it, or like him. I am telling you that GENstaff says this is how it’s
going to be. If you’re tired of being a marine, then you call up GENstaff and tell them you don’t like
it.”
Stephens shook his head.
“He’s been bumped to sergeant and put in charge of loading supplies,” Orona continued.
“How much damage can he do there?”

Colonel Stephens stood in the loading dock of the carrier watching the robots haul gear into the
ship. He stopped a private heading for the hydraulic walkers. “What’s in those crates, marine?”
The man snapped to attention. “Sir, plasma rifles and chargers.”