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

“Oh, Daddy, slime spiders can’t talk!”
Massey grinned. “No? What about your uncle Chad?”
Maria swatted at him with one hand. “My brother is not a slime spider!” she said. But she
laughed.
“No, that’s true,” her husband said. “He’s only got four limbs, not eight.”
“Go, you’ll be late for work. Here’s your coffee.”
Still smiling, Massey left. Yes. Work.
Nothing was more important than work.
Nothing.
Her teeth glittered like stars. They were so beautiful.
Closer she came, magnificent in her huge glory, black and deadly and purposeful. Her
exoskeleton gleamed darkly as she leaned down toward Billie. Her mouth opened, and the smaller
set of teeth on the inner lips also opened. She was the queen.
I love you, her thoughts came unspoken to Billie. I need you.
Yes, Billie thought.
She was the queen, and she reached for Billie, her clawed hands glistening.
Come and… join with me, the queen said.
Yes, Billie thought. Yes, I will.
Closer the queen came.

Easley and Bueller squatted behind the remains of the shattered building, a waist-level row of
bricks and twisted rebar the only protection against the bunker’s R-O-M gun. It couldn’t see them
but the stupecomp running the gun could probably pick up some heat leakage from their combat
suits, and every now and then it would pop off a couple dozen 30mm AP rounds in their direction.
“Shit,” Bueller said. “Fucker’s got us pinned down!”
“Maybe not,” Easley offered. “The thing’s got service portals aft. I can launch a grenade in the
right spot, it’ll blow the power. Then we got his ass.”
Three rounds of 30mm clipped a couple of centimeters of brick off the top of the wall over
Bueller’s head. He squatted lower. “Damn!”
“Okay, look,” Easley said, “here’s the play. You scoot down about twenty meters, put your
weapon over the wall, and spray that sucker. I’ll circle around behind it and blow it off line while it’s
potting at you.”
Under the kleersteel faceplate of his helmet cover, Bueller frowned. The expression wrinkled
the skintite that reached to his eyes, and the skull of the elite Colonial Marine whack-team embossed
on the tite.
“Unless you got a better idea?” Easley said.
Bueller shook his head. “What the hell. Let’s do it. Gimme a signal when you’re ready to
dance.”
“Copy,” Easley said. His voice was crisp in the helmet’s bonephones. The com was standard
military tightbeam and scrambled, so the geezer in the bunker couldn’t hear them, or even if he could,
he wouldn’t be able to understand what they were saying.
Bueller moved off, keeping low. Every so often the range-of-motion gun would cap off a few
more shots.
Easley lit a low-heat flare and dropped it. With any luck, the gun would think it was a suit leak
and zero in on it. While it was doing that, he would blow that sucker. He moved off. He was good,
one of the Corps’ best, and damned if he was gonna get drilled by some geezer in a lock box.
When he got into position, Easley said, “Do it!”
Thirty meters away, crouched behind a big chunk of rubble that was probably once a house,
Bueller whipped his carbine over the top and triggered it full auto. He waved it back and forth, so the
motion sensors would get it. The sonics would have found it pretty quick anyhow, but he didn’t want