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

The thing ripped chunks out of Lyle’s seat as it pulled him from the chair. Blood sprayed as its
clawed hands punctured his shoulders. It opened its mouth and a rod shot out, so fast Barton could
hardly see it. The rod buried itself in Lyle’s head like his skull was putty. Blood and brain tissue
splashed. Lyle screamed in total terror.
The cutter, still under acceleration, headed directly toward the radioactive hulk in front of it.
The monster jerked that hellish thing from Lyle’s skull. It made a sucking sound, like a foot
pulled out of mud. The creature turned toward Barton.
Barton drew breath to scream, but the sound never came out—
At that instant the cutter smashed into the scuttled freighter—
—and the bomb the probe had set went off.
Both ships were destroyed in the explosion. Virtually everything was shattered into tiny bits that
spiraled in a long loop toward Sol.
Everything except the blue box.

Wilks stared at the screen as it washed white.
Amazing how well the blue boxes were armored, to survive even a close atomic blast like that.
He looked at the guard bot. “Okay, I’ve seen it.”
“Let’s go,” the bot said.
They were alone in a conference room in MIL-COM HQ. Wilks stood, and the bot led the
way. If he’d had a gun, he would have shot the bot and tried to run. Yeah. Right.
As they walked along the corridor, Wilks put it together. So this was why they’d never kicked
him out of the Corps. It was only a matter of time before humans stumbled across the aliens again.
They hadn’t wanted to believe him about what had happened on Rim, but the truth machines
wouldn’t let them off the hook that easy. The brain strainers had pulled it out of him, and the Corps
never threw anything away that might be useful someday.
His belly clenched around a cold knot, like somebody had jammed a blade of liquid nitrogen
into his guts. The bomb on Rim hadn’t gotten them all. The military found itself in need of an expert
on these things and Corporal Wilks was what it had. Probably didn’t make them very happy, but
they would make do.
He wasn’t looking forward to this meeting. It certainly wasn’t going to do him any good. Not at
all.
 3
Salvaje’s place was almost directly under the huge reactor shield for the Southern Hemisphere
Power Grid Switching Station. The PGSS field was big enough so it sometimes created its own
weather. Mostly that was rain. Day and night, steady, unrelieved, dreary-as-shit rain. The building
was eon-plas prefab, proof against the more or less constant downpour, a dull gray material that
blended in against a sky the color of melted lead. It was a good place to hide. Nobody came here
unless they had a reason, even the ground police avoided the rain when they could.
Pindar the holotech splashed through puddles, ankle deep despite the drainage pumps’
attempts to clear the water. If Salvaje didn’t have so much spare money he was willing to part with,
Pindar would have avoided this scum hole. The building walls were thick with mold, even the
retardant paint couldn’t stop it, and there were rumors that you could catch a mutant strain of flu here
that would kill you before you could get to a medic—which wouldn’t help anyhow because even
recombinant antivirals couldn’t touch the stuff. Nice.
The door slid open on creaky runners as Pindar walked up the incline to Salvaje’s place.
“You’re late,” came the ghostly voice from within.
Pindar stepped inside, stripped off the osmotic rainfilm that kept him dry, dropped the torn bits
of spiderweb-thin plastic onto the floor. “Yeah, well, between my day job and this shit, it’s lucky I
can find time to sleep.”
“I care nothing for your sleep. I pay well.”