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

"Yes. I know it."

"Well, I went down with my quad and got stuck doing guard duty on a secured
perimeter, no perspiration. Then, some fuzzbrain in the malcons got the idea
to try a raid. They sent maybe a hundred against us, armed with sticks and
thero-knives and a few chemical-only slug guns."

The Sub-Lojt paused and took a drink of the new mug of splash. "Stupid," he
said. "Practically unarmed against a quad, none of us virgins. We cut them
down like it was target practice. It was stupid of them, stupid?"

Khadaji sipped his champagne.

"It was not our fault, 'they'd have wiped us, they could have, we were only
doing our jobs. But after it, I went with the medics to check for survivors.
We were using .177s with the harrad load, so there weren't many. But there was
this... girl." He paused and took another swallow of his drink, closing his
eyes as he did. "This girl was maybe thirteen and she was lying there with her
legs shot off from from the middle of the thighs down. And she looked up at me
while the medics were clamping vessels and pumping dorph into her to kill the
pain and I swear I never saw such clear green eyes before or since. And she
smiled and said, 'It's all right. My father is a soldier.' And then she died.
Massive hemo-shock, the medics said."

The Sub-Lojt finished his splash and set the mug down gently. "That was the
bad part. As if it was okay for me to shoot her, because I was a soldier like
her father." He shook his head. "A system that makes people kill children,
it's just not right. If something like that ever comes up again, I don't know
if I could shoot. I haven't seen any of the Shamba Scum, but if I saw a bunch
of kids coming at me waving sticks, I just don't know what I'd do this time.
Can you understand how I might feel like that?"

Khadaji nodded, and stared unseeing at the far wall of the octagon. "Yes," he
said, finally. "I can understand."
Chapter Four

AT ONE-THIRTY, Khadaji went to his rooms. The Reflex was mostly gone, but
there was enough of the drug in his system to keep him awake for a couple of
hours, if he'd let it. Instead, he took three hundred milligrams of
parame-thaqualone—Paco, it was called in the pub—and stretched out on the bed.
There were more potent sleeping medications, but a Paco would sometimes stop
the nightmares that usually went with Reflex. Sometimes.

—twenty-five years old and Sub-Lojt, with a good shot at promotion to full
Lojtnant, if he would sign for another tour this far in advance. A man could
do worse than the military, and six years in the Jumptroops with two
Distinguished Service lines on Nazo and a third for the Kontrau'lega Break
would set him up for a fast track to his own centplex. That's what they told
him and he had no reason to believe any different. As soon as the little scrap
on Maro was done, he could come and see the Old Man's sub and talk fine points