"S. M. Stirling - Draka 01 - Marching Through Georgia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

In search of peace, he returned to The Dream. It had come to
him often, these last few years. Sometimes he would be walking
through orchards, on a cool and misty spring morning; cherry
blossoms arched above his head, heavy with scent, over grass
starred with droplets of fog. There was a dog with him, a setter.
Or it might be a study with a fire of applewood, lined with books
with stamped leather spines, windows closed against slow rain…
He had always loved books; loved even the smell and texture of
them, their weight. There was a woman, too: walking beside him
or sitting with her red hair spilling over his knees. A dream built
of memories, things that might have been, things that could
never be.

Abruptly he shook himself free of it. War was full of times
with nothing to do but dream, but this was not one of them.

Most of the others were waiting quietly, with less tension than
he remembered from the first combat drop last
summer—blank-faced, lost in their own thoughts. Occasional
pairs of lovers gripped hands. The old Spartans were right
about that, he thought. It does make for better fighters…
although they'd probably not have approved of a heterosexual
application.

A few felt his gaze, nodded or smiled back. They had been
together a long time, he and they; he had been private, NCO and
officer-candidate in this unit. If this had been a legion of the
Regular Line, they would all have been from the same area, too;
it was High Command policy to keep familiar personnel
together, on the theory that while you might enlist for your
country, you died for your friends. And to keep your pride in
their eyes.

The biggest drop of the war. Two full legions, 1st and 2nd
Airborne, jumping at night into mountain country. Twice the
size of the surprise assault in Sicily last summer, when the
Domination had come into the war. Half again the size of the
lightning strike that had given Fritz the Maikop oil fields intact
last October, right after Moscow fell. Twenty-four thousand of
the Domination's best, leaping into the night, "fangs out and
hair on fire."

He grimaced. He'd been a tetrarch in Sicily, with only
thirty-three troopers to command. A soldier's battle, they'd
called it. Which meant bloody chaos, and relying on the troops
and the regimental officers to pull it out of the can. Still, it had
succeeded, and the parachute chiliarchoi had been built up to
legion size, a tripling of numbers. Lots of promotions, if you
made it at all. And a merciful transfer out once Italy was