"Timothy Zahn - Cobra 1 - Cobra" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Cobra

corridor, sir. I thought this room was closer than it was."

"I see." Bai gave him a long, chilly look. "Punctuality, Viljo, is a mark of a good soldier—and if you
plan to be a Cobra it's going to be an absolute necessity. But even more important are honesty and
integrity in front of your teammates. Specifically, it means that when you crusk up, you damn well
better not try to push the blame onto someone else. Got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right. Now come up here; I need an assistant for this next demonstration."

Swallowing visibly, Viljo unglued himself from the floor and threaded his way through the chairs to
the dais. "What I showed you a minute ago," Bai said, once again addressing the entire room, "was
essentially a party trick, though with some obvious military applications. This, now, I think you'll
find along more practical lines."

From his tunic, he produced two metal disks, each ten centimeters in diameter with a small black
inset in the center. "Hold the one in your left hand sideways," Bai instructed Viljo, "and when I give
the word, throw the other toward the back of the room."

Mendro had meantime gone to one of the room's back corners. Taking a few steps off to the side, Bai
checked positions and bent his knees slightly. "All right: now."

Viljo lofted the disk toward the door. Behind him, Jonny sensed Mendro's leap and catch, and an
instant later the disk was shooting back toward Bai. In a smooth motion that was again too fast to
follow, Bai fell to the side, out of the disk's path... and as he rolled again to one knee, two needles of
light flashed in opposite directions from his outstretched hands. Viljo's surprised yelp was almost
covered up by the crash of the flying disk against the wall.

"Good," Bai said briskly, getting to his feet and heading over to retrieve the first disk. "Viljo, show
them yours."

Even from his distance Jonny could see the small hole just barely off-center through the black inset.
"Impressive, um?" Bai said, stepping back up on the dais and presenting the other target. "Of course,
you can't always expect the enemy to hold still for you."

This shot hadn't been nearly as clean. Only the very edge of the black showed the laser's mark, and
when the light hit it right Jonny could see that the adjacent metal was rippled with the heat. Still, it
was an impressive performance—especially as Jonny had no idea where Bai had been hiding his
weapons.

Or where they were now, for that matter.

"That gives you an idea of what a Cobra can do," Mendro said, returning to the front of the room and
sending Viljo back to find a seat. "Now I'd like to show you a little of the nuts and bolts involved."
Retrieving the comboard, he keyed in an instruction, and a full-sized image of a man appeared

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