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

Cobra

beside him. "From the outside a Cobra is virtually indistinguishable from any normal civilian.
However, from the inside—" The hologram's exterior faded to a blue skeleton with oddly-shaped
white spots scattered randomly around. "The blue is a ceramic laminae which makes all the major
and most of the minor bones unbreakable, for all practical purposes. That, along with some strategic
ligament strengthening, is half the reason Cee-three Bai was able to pull off those ceiling jumps
without killing himself. The non-laminated areas you can see are there to allow the bone marrow to
continue putting red blood cells into the system." Another touch on the comboard and the piebald
skeleton faded to dull gray, forming a contrast to the small yellow ovoids that appeared at joints all
over the hologram. "Servomotors," Mendro identified them. "The other half of the ceiling jump.
They act as strength multipliers, just like the ones in standard exoskeletons and fighting suits, except
that these are particularly hard to detect. The power supply is a little nuclear goody here—" he
pointed to an asymmetric object situated somewhere in the vicinity of the stomach"—and I'm not
going to explain it because I don't understand it myself. Suffice it to say the thing works and works
well."

Jonny thought back to Bai's incredible jumps and felt his stomach tighten. Servos and bone laminae
were all well and good, but a trick like that could hardly be learned overnight. Either this Cobra
training was going to take months at the minimum, or else Bai was an exceptionally athletic man...
and if there was one thing Jonny knew for certain, it was that he himself hadn't been selected for this
group because of any innate gymnastic abilities. Apparently the Army was getting set for a long,
drawn-out conflict.

On the dais, the hologram had again changed, this time marking several sections in red. "Cobra
offensive and defensive equipment," Mendro said. "Small lasers in the tips of both little fingers, one
of which also contains the discharge electrodes for an arcthrower—capacitor in the body cavity here.
In the left calf is an antiarmor laser; here are the speakers for two different types of sonic weapons;
and up by the eyes and ears are a set of optical and auditory enhancers. Yes—question?"

"Recruit MacDonald, sir," the other said with military correctness, a slight accent burring his words.
"Are these optical enhancers like the targeting lenses of a fighting suit, where you're given a
range/scale image in front of your eyes?"

Mendro shook his head. "That sort of thing is fine for medium- and long-range work, but pretty
useless for the infighting you may have to do. Which brings us to the real key of the whole Cobra
project." The red faded, and inside the skull a green walnut-sized object appeared, situated
apparently directly beneath the brain. From it snaked dozens of slender filaments, most of them
paralleling the spinal column before separating off to go their individual ways. Looking at it, Jonny's
thoughts flashed back to a picture from his old fourth-grade biology text: a diagram showing the
major structures of the human nervous system....

"This," Mendro said, wagging a finger through the green walnut, "is a computer—probably the most
powerful computer of its size ever developed. These optical fibers—" he indicated the filament
network—"run to all the servos and weapons and to a set of kinesthetic sensors implanted directly in
the bone laminae. Your targeting lenses, MacDonald, still require you to do the actual aiming and


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Cobra