"John Steakley - Armor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steakley John)

Armor
John Steakley, 1997
Version 1.0, July 8, 2001

He drank alone.

Which was odd since he didn't have trouble with people.
He had always managed to make acquaintances without much
effort. And, despite what had happened, he still liked people.
Recently, he had even grown to miss them again. Yet here he
was, drinking alone.

Maybe I'm just shy, he thought to himself and then laughed
at such a feeble attempt at self-delusion. For he knew what it
was.

From his place at the end of the long bar he examined the
others in the crowded lounge. He recognized a handful from
training. Training was where it had begun. Where he had felt
that odd sensation descending upon him like mist, separating
him from all those thousands of others around him in the
mess hall. It was a dull kind of temporal shock at first, a
reaction reverberating from somewhere deep within him. He
had somehow felt . . . No, he had somehow known that they
all would die.

He shook his head, drained his glass. If be was in the
mood for honesty he would have to admit that his chances
were no better. No better at all....

He paid the credits for a full bottle and then paid the extra
credits to take it out of the lounge. It was strictly against
orders on a battle cruiser to have a bottle in one's personal
possession. But on the night before a drop a lot of things
were possible. And as the hour for the drop grew nearer, he
noticed that his fellows were beginning to take their drinking
more seriously.

Outside the lounge wasn't much better. Lots of bottles had
been smuggled out tonight. The ship wasn't exactly a giant
party, but there were enough get-togethers here and there,
and enough legitimate crew business here and there, to make
it almost impossible to find a quiet place to sit and think.
After awhile he had settled into an idle rhythm of walking,
sipping, smoking, and hunting.

After most of an hour of wandering about the corridors of
the immense ship he found himself standing beside the center
template strut of Drop Bay One. Drop Bay One was the
largest single room in the ship and, since the Terra was the