"E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 9 - The Omicron Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

target. Tatiana, of course, would have to be part of the assault, since she was the only one who could tell
them when they'd found what they wanted. Since the real fighting would be in the building, and since
Tatiana needed to be protected at all costs, Lady A insisted that the two best people in the group should
accompany the translator—namely Jules and herself. That left Fortier and Ivanov to create the diversion at
the slave camp.
 Their biggest problem would be coordination. It would do no good to have the diversion occur
prematurely and have all the excitement be over by the time Jules and his party were in position to storm
the building. Yet there was only one copter, and Fortier and Ivanov needed it to roust the slave camp.
Jules, Tatiana and Lady A would have to trek overland to the landing field and then wait for the aliens to
run out and defend the slave camp. Jules gave a conservative estimate of five hours for them to
accomplish the trek; after that time, the other two men were to make their raid on the camp. It would still
be dark then, and Jules's group could afford to wait around until the diversion started. Without radio
communications between the two parties, this was the only way to handle the timing.

While Jules's party set off on their journey back to the landing site, Fortier and Ivanov had hours
of time on their hands. They spent some of it fashioning the explosives they'd brought with them into
crude bombs, then checked their guns and their equipment over several times. Finally, at the appointed
hour, they took off in the copter back toward the slave camp.

The aliens had not bothered to light the area very much, as all the work was done in daylight and
the slaves slept peacefully at night. The camp was hard to find in the dark, but the two men were aided by
the light of Omicron's moon, which was in its final quarter phase. With Fortier at the controls, the copter
and its small crew threw caution to the wind and swooped in low over the camp.

Ivanov played the role of bombardier, dropping their homemade explosive devices out the copter's
hatch onto the ground below. The bombs hit empty patches of ground around the inflated barracks
buildings, but the noise and the concussions they produced were more than satisfactory to start a panic.

Many of the people in the camp had lived through the alien bombardment of just a few days
before; the horror of death raining from the skies was still fresh in their memories. At the first sounds and
flashes from the exploding bombs, they sat up in their pallets, shaking with terror. As the blasts continued,
wave upon wave, they panicked. Screaming in fright, they ran from the buildings. They'd seen what
happened to people trapped in the rubble of falling masonry, and they wanted to be out under open skies
to minimize the danger. Fear of what the aliens might do to them took second place to the emergency of
the moment. Within seconds, the once quiet camp was filled with running, yelling people.

The alien response was only slightly slower. From a single building at one end of the compound, a
troop of alien figures poured out like ants to defend a stepped-on nest. They had blaster-like weapons
drawn, and were firing wildly into the air even before they knew what their target was, hoping that some
random shot might disable their still unseen adversary.

Fortier dodged his craft in and out of the blaster fire as best he could. The copterbus was a big,
lumbering vehicle, much slower to respond to controls than were the fast military copters Fortier was used
to piloting; by the same token, it was heavier and more durably constructed. The aliens below were armed
only with handheld blasters. A beam occasionally hit its mark but, unless some vital spot got hit, a few
burns on the metal sides would not bring down the big copterbus.

Ironically, Fortier and Ivanov found themselves handicapped by their own success. They'd had
their pick, at first, of places to drop their bombs, but as more and more of the captives were racing
frantically around in the compound there were fewer places to safely explode a charge without hurting the