"Steve Perry - The Man Who Never Missed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

In a second, he was through the door and out, locking it with his thumbprint.
He scuttled to the shadows next to the wall of the Jade Flower and flattened
himself against the cool plastcrete. He would stay in the shadows for this
one. He took a deep breath and moved off, feeling the Reflex dance in his
muscles.

The T-plex was brightly lit, a half-dozen big HT lamps overlapping their pools
of daytime around the building. It was standard Confed architecture, squat and
ugly, a prefab block of expanded hardfoam with carved door and windows. Right
now, whoever was on electronic watch would be getting signals from Khadaji's
confounder and—if they were awake—wondering what the Doppler ghosts were
fuzzing the screen. The confounder was the best the Confed could produce—it
wasn't even issued to these troops it was so new—and Khadaji had paid a small
fortune for it less than a year ago. It was unlikely the simadam running the
scopes would know what the problem was.

The lights were something else, of course. The quad did have image
intensification equipment equal to his own. With spookeyes lit, the quad could
see an area framed only in starlight as if it were a bright afternodn.
Shorting the lights out, therefore, should not be to his advantage.

Khadaji grinned. The problem with the military mind was that it tended to be
logical only to a point that satisfied it, but no further. The way to
out-think the military was to carry its logic one step past.

He hooked a simple timer-and-popper against the unshielded transformer and set
the delay for twenty seconds. He scurried back, keeping to the shadows, until
he was in front of the T-plex. The quad was alert and prowling; no virgins,
these—they were crack troopers, all Sub-Lojts chosen for skill to form this
special unit. The woman on the other side of the door they guarded—visible
through the hard plastic window—was a Sub-Befalhavare, one of ten on planet.
She commanded a thousand troopers and was, therefore, a valuable person. The
Confed had done one intelligent thing with its military and that had been to
clean up the old-style ranks found on most worlds. The organization had been
streamlined for ground troops: four troopers made a quad, commanded by a
Sub-Lojt; twenty-five quads formed a centplex, with a Lojtnant running the
show; ten centplexes overseen by a Sub-Befalhavare made a ten-kay unit; and
the commander of ten thousand troopers was a full Befalhavare. That was the
size of the unit on Greaves, a ten kay. The next rank was a Systems Marshal,
an Over-Befalhavare, then the Supreme Commander of Confederation Ground Forces
Himself. Only five ranks between a line trooper and the S.C.

There was a loud pop and the HT lamps began to fade. Khadaji slid his
spookeyes down and flicked them on at minimum, but kept his eyes closed. The
intensified light of the dying lamps flashed brilliantly at his closed eyes.

He heard one of the quad yell, "Amplifiers on!"

Good. He was counting on their training. These four would be ready for the