"Smith, E E Doc - D'alembert 09 - Omicron Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

"Sounds like you intend to stage a pretty showy crash," Yvette said. "How are we going to walk away from it?"
"By not being in the ship at the time, of course," Lady A said scornfully, turning back to her controls.
For the next several minutes there was too much action to allow conversation. The H-16 accelerated along its course and sped out from behind the cover of Omicron's moon once more. Much to their relief, the team found no reception committee waiting for them, just a vast ocean of empty space between themselves and the planet. As they zoomed back toward Omicron, though, Fortier announced several more small ships coming up to intercept them.
Without the attitude units there was little the H-16 could do to dodge the oncoming vessels. Instead, Lady A set her controls for maximum acceleration and charged right into the teeth of the enemy attack. The shields were gone, and a direct hit would mean the end of the mission, but they had no other choice-moving slower would only make them an easier target.
The ship's lack of evasive action made the gunners' work that much easier. Jules and Yvette each scored a hit on one of the enemy's fighters, and the rest of the attack force backed off a little more cautiously to see what the result of this suicidal charge might be. They had obviously not been in contact with their comrades on the other side of the moon, so they could not know the H-16's attitude controls were out. They thought this was merely another tactical maneuver, and they waited to see what would come of it.
The H-16 hit the upper reaches of Omicron's atmosphere and kept on going in at top speed. It would have been the rankest suicide to charge directly down through the air; the ship would have burned up in a flash like a bright meteor. Instead, their course was a steep downward spiral: Their rate of descent was carefully calculated to keep the friction temperature on the hull within the metal's tolerable limits. They zoomed past the enemy ships who were still expecting them to make some tricky move. Realizing they'd been outmaneuvered, the remaining ships took off in pursuit behind the descending H-16.
Lady A set the preprogrammed course into the ship's autopilot and turned to face the rest of her crew. "The time has come for us to depart," she said. "Follow me."
Ivanov and Tatiana obediently unstrapped themselves from their acceleration couches and walked after their boss. Still somewhat mystified, Jules, Yvette, and Fortier followed suit. They knew Lady A was not the suicidal sort, and she had told them she always believed in having some escape route planned. They would have to trust her sense of self-preservation to save them as well.
The H-16 made occasional random acceleration changes to avoid being hit by enemy fire, and this made walking through the ship's corridors difficult. Just when a step seemed secure, the ship would lurch and throw everyone off balance. The crew had to make sure they had a firm grip on some handhold before making the next tentative step forward, or risk being tossed about the hallways.
Following Lady A's lead, they climbed awkwardly toward the rear of the ship to a special compartment she opened up for them. "Here we have our escape module," she said almost cheerily. "We'll leave the ship in this."
"Won't the enemy just see us separating and send some of the fighters after the module?" Fortier asked.
"The landing spot I picked has heavy cloud cover, so they probably won't spot us visually. As far as most standard sensors go, this craft is invisible. It's made almost entirely of nonmetallic materials-glass, ceramics, wood, and various plastics-so most of the detectors humans use wouldn't notice it. There's only tiny traces of metal in a receiver screen, not enough to register. Of course, if these are aliens and use radically different instruments we could be in trouble, but I doubt it; everything we've seen so far is at least comparable to our own technology."
"How did you make a nonmetallic engine?" Yvette wondered.
"I didn't," Lady A replied with mounting impatience. "This module doesn't have an engine-that's one less way it could be detected." She held up one hand to forestall the next obvious question. "And no, we won't drop like a rock. In atmosphere, this module acts like a glider. Now stop questioning and get inside."
The escape module had not been built to hold this many people comfortably. There was one pilot seat, which Lady A took for herself, and a benchlike rim in a semicircle behind it for the other five people to crowd onto as best they could. Ivanov, the last person in, sealed the module behind them and gave his boss the signal that everything was ready.
On an instrument board below the cockpit window, Lady A watched the monitor screen to check their progress. As she'd told them, the H-16 was rapidly approaching a dense cloud bank on its furious descent to the surface of Omicron. She waited patiently until the proper moment and then, the instant they hit the clouds, she pulled back on a lever in front of her.
The lever released a catch that held the glider in place within the ship's hold. Instantly a hatch sprang open in front of them and a series of springs propelled the module at great speed out the hole and away from the falling ship. For better or worse, they were now irrevocably committed to the planet Omicron.
The change in their environment was startling. One moment they were in the hold of a ship, the next they were gliding free in the air. The gray-white of the clouds came whipping by them, and there was a sudden drop in both temperature and air pressure. Even with so many bodies pressed closely together, the chill of a stormcloud in the upper atmosphere permeated the glider's insulation and soaked through to their bones.
The egg-shaped module shared the H-16's downward speed at the time of separation, and for several seconds they plummeted through the clouds toward the hard ground below. Then, just as they broke through the cloud cover, Lady A pulled back on a second lever and a set of wings unfolded from the body of the egg beneath them. Their little craft shook and shivered as it caught the violent air currents below the clouds.
They were in the middle of a driving rainstorm. Even though they were on the daytime side of the planet, the thick layer of clouds above them obscured the sun and made the sky gray and leaden. Now that they were below the clouds they were pelted by hard droplets of rain and a bit of hail that had not dissolved at this altitude. The rain streaked the windshield and obscured visibility so badly that Lady A had to ask Tatiana to work the wipers manually from a lever inside the cockpit.
The day was so dark they could barely see the ground, spread out below them like a shadowy diorama. They were over farm country that looked completely untouched by the enemy invasion. Large rectangular fields covered the terrain like a patchwork quilt in differing shades of yellow, green, and brown. The land was mostly flat, with a few gently rolling hills off in the distance. The tranquility of the scene, even through the driving rain, seemed to belie the dire circumstances in which Omicron now found itself.
The enemy fighters continued down after the H-16; none of them peeled off to follow the glider, so Lady A's ruse seemed to have worked. On the dashboard receiver, cameras from the ship transmitted images of its final moments.
A beam from one of the enemy vessels lashed out and touched the H-16's hull. It would not ordinarily have been a fatal blow but Lady A, wanting to leave no evidence of their escape from the ship, had rigged the H-16 to self-destruct the instant it was hit by enemy fire. The scene on the glider's monitor suddenly went dark as the ship exploded in a thunderous blast of white-hot vapor.
The glider's passengers, though, had little time to contemplate such matters-they were too busy holding on for their lives. The violent air currents that comprised the rainstorm rattled the tiny craft with teeth-jarring intensity. Shearing winds threatened to rip the glider apart at any moment; the glider bucked, rolled, and pitched worse than any roller-coaster.
Even with her superhuman strength, Lady A had to fight to maintain control of the glider. The craft rolled over completely several times, and the mechanized controls seemed to have a will of their own. The five passengers behind the pilot's seat were buffeted back and forth against the walls and each other till they were thoroughly sore. Still the glider kept falling at a rate that seemed far too fast for the passengers' comfort.
Jules and Yvette exchanged worried glances. Had Lady A's vanity led her into taking a gamble even she couldn't pull off? Seated behind her as they were they couldn't watch the expressions on her face, but her body posture seemed as unyielding as ever as she struggled with the balky controls. Not for the first time the agents regretted placing their lives in her hands.
At last, when they were barely half a kilometer above ground level, the storm relaxed its grip. The rain eased slightly from a downpour to a monotonous beat against the glider's body and the winds, while still harsh, were manageable by a skilled pilot-which Lady A certainly was.
Ivanov pointed to starboard. "Town at two o'clock," he called.
They could all see a small cluster of buildings just on the horizon indicating one of the villages they knew should be in this area. Lady A saw it and nodded, then veered the craft slightly to port. Her reasoning was clear; they didn't want to bring the glider down too close to the town because they might be seen and the enemy could be alerted once again to their presence. As distasteful as it was, they would have to land somewhere in open countryside and walk into the village.
They circled the area for a while, riding the unpredictable winds, until Lady A found a site that pleased her. She wanted something smooth and open to provide an easy landing field, yet close enough to shelter that they could cover up their glider and camouflage it from aerial inspection. They didn't want some enemy pilot spotting the vehicle by accident; the longer they remained undetected, the better their chances of succeeding in their mission.
At last they found what they wanted: A broad open field in which to land, bordered by an orchard in which the small glider could safely be hidden from aerial view. There was always a chance it would be discovered by someone on the ground, but they didn't have the tools to bury it. At least their craft would not be in casual sight.
They spiraled in for a landing, watching the land flow beneath them like a kaleidoscope. As they came lower the buffeting by the rain and the crosswinds increased once more, but Lady A handled the controls with an expert touch and kept them on an even course. Jules found himself looking at her with regret that she was such a cold, vicious person-she had so many skills and talents that could be put to use in better ways than scheming to overthrow the Empire.
On their final approach, Lady A released the landing gear and the wheels came down and locked into place. The whole group braced themselves as they came flashing through the field at a speed that seemed far too great, while Lady A lowered the flaps to give them as much braking power as she could.
The little craft bumped and jounced its way through the rows of crops and over the uneven ground. A wheel on the port side hit a pothole and threatened to spill them over, but Lady A quickly countered by turning the wheel into the new direction, veering their course and heading them straight for the trees. The glider finally rolled to a stop twenty meters from the edge of the orchard, and everyone breathed a great sigh of relief.
Lady A pulled back on the lever to fold the wings into the escape module's body once more, at the same time releasing the catch that held the canopy in place. The top of the egg sprang back, and the people inside got their first whiffs of the clean, cold air of the Omicron rainstorm.
Despite the downpour they were all eager to get out of the cramped confines of the tiny cabin. Within a very few seconds they were all soaked to the skin, wet hair plastered to their heads; even the normally majestic Lady A could not overcome the ravages of the weather-she looked as much like a drowned rat as the rest of them.
Before doing anything else, they had the task of pushing their glider into the orchard. The module was surprisingly light, but the uneven ground made pushing it a laborious chore, even for all six of them. Lady A was the only one not puffing by the time they finally had the craft hidden some distance within the orchard-but then, being in a robot body, she didn't need to breathe at all.
For the first time since encountering the enemy fighters, they had a chance to review their situation critically. With the loss of the H-16 they were stranded indefinitely on Omicron, a planet dominated, if not controlled, by enemy forces. They had only the clothes on their bodies and the equipment they'd brought with them to use in fighting the unknown menace. They were cold and wet and didn't know exactly where they were. As the beginning for an important mission, this was not exactly the most propitious.
CHAPTER 6
Capture
At Jules's command, the team set out in the direction of the town they'd seen from the air. They stayed inside the orchard as long as possible to take advantage of the trees' cover, but after only half a kilometer the orchard ended. They would have to walk the rest of the way to the town under open sky in full view of any invaders who might fly over. Jules thought briefly of waiting until dark, but decided against it. Speed was more important here, and the sooner they reached the town and started finding out what had happened, the better their mission would go. If anyone spotted them from the air, there was no way to tell they weren't ordinary citizens of Omicron.
The chill arid the rain made them feel miserable. They had dressed for stealth, not for warmth or comfort, and they were regretting that decision. Their hair was stringy and wet, dripping down their noses and cheeks; their breath formed small clouds of steam in front of them. Each step became an effort, as they had to lift their feet out of the mud and step right back into it again. Fortunately they were all wearing boots to keep their feet reasonably well insulated, but the constant slogging in addition to the generally dreary climate only depressed their spirits more.
Tatiana, with her delicate metabolism, was affected worse than the rest of them. Her body was wracked by a continual series of shivers, and even though she tried her best to keep quiet Jules could hear her teeth chattering a couple of meters away. His chivalrous instincts came to the fore, even though Tatiana was associated with Lady A's conspiracy; he wished he had some sort of cape or other garment to cover her and protect her from the worst of the rain. But he was dressed no better than she was, and could do nothing to help her.
The only one not affected by the weather was Lady A. Her normally elegant hair was as stringy as everyone else's and her clothes were just as soggy, but that hardly mattered. Jules presumed she had some sensors in her skin to inform her of its condition, but in a robot body she could ignore external discomfort. She walked through the muddy fields with her normal proud posture, head erect and back straight. She slowed her pace to match her companions, but it was clear she could have outdistanced all of them had she chosen to.
After about an hour's walking the rain finally stopped and the late afternoon sun broke through the clouds for a few moments. They found a wooden fence to rest on, and Jules called a temporary halt to their march. They regained their breath and rested their legs while Lady A stood by, aloof and barely tolerant of her comrades' physical infirmities.
"I'd like to reach the town before nightfall," she said after a few minutes' silence. "I can see perfectly well in the dark, but the rest of you would be handicapped if we ran into any trouble. Besides, we might find a place to dry off. I prefer not to look like a soggy sponge."
"How are you feeling, Tatiana?" Jules asked. The young woman was their weakest link and it was she, not Lady A, who would have to set the pace. As Lady A herself had said, Tatiana was the most important member of their group and Jules was going to make sure she wasn't pushed beyond her limits.
"I can go on," Tatiana said, making a show of bravery.
"Don't let her bully you," Jules added. "We can take as long as you need."
"I'll be smooth, really," the woman insisted.