"ab Hugh, Dafydd & Linaweaver, Brad - Doom 04 - Endgame 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (ab Hugh Dafydd)

odd mixture of elation and anxiety. She unslung her
RK-150, and I flexed my grip on the old, reliable
standard, the Marine-issue M-14, which contrary to
the designator was more like an updated Browning
automatic rifle than the Micronics series of M-7, -8,
-10, and -12. These were heavy-lifting small arms, and
the Freds were pretty pathetic when not surrounded
by their "demonic" war machines. I don't know what
we expected to run into on Fredworld; nothing good, I
suspected.
I thought about calling Sears and Roebuck and
telling them what we were doing, but we were right
outside. If they wanted us, they could call their own
damned selves. Still feeling that chill on the nape of
my neck, I followed Arlene at a safe twenty-five
meters.
It was hard not to be awestruck next to that ship. It
was hard to credit; the Freds could do this, and they
couldn't even conquer a low-tech race like humanity!
They always taught us at Parris Island that heart and
morale mattered more than tanks and air support in
combat: look at the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and
Bosnia, at the Scythe of Glory in Kefiristan. But this
was the first time I really believed that line: we really
wanted the fight, and the Freds were unprepared for
resistance.
The ship was gunmetal gray along most of its flank,
except where micrometeorites had scored the surface
or punctured it. Thank God for self-sealing architec-
ture; at the speeds we traversed the galaxy, cosmic
dust sprayed through the ship like bullets through
cheese.
We reached the aft end and stared up at the single,
staggeringly huge thruster. The ship was a ramjet,
according to the specs: as it moved at increasing
velocity relative to the interstellar hydrogen, an elec-
tromagnetic net spread out in front of the boat,
scooping up protons and alpha particles and funnel-
ing them into the "jets," where the heat from direct
conversion of matter to energy turned the hydrogen
into a stream of plasma out the ass-end. No other way
could we accelerate so near the speed of light in only
three or four days.
The thruster at the back looked exactly like a
standpipe. I kid you not; I caught myself looking for
the faucet that would turn on the water. We rounded
the stern and headed for'ard again.
About a kilometer from the stern, we found it—we
found our first, and only, Newbie body. Arlene saw
something and jogged forward; I dropped to one knee