Podstrony
|
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Bodmods Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics, makes one helluva battle suit, but Krupp We arm business so they can do business Industries makes some
top-of-the-line antipersonnel missiles. One of them followed me down. I spent a fraction of a second wishing I had a suit with more offensive weaponry, realized it was a waste of time,
and launched a decoy.
The decoy was the size and shape of a pocket stylus and had been programed to radiate heat, radio, and radar signals identical to those emitted by my battle suit. My onboard
computer dumped ninety per cent power and waited to see what would happen. The missile bought it, chased the decoy, and exploded.
Thus freed, I entered the battle sim, checked to make sure that my team had held its own, and searched for my target. He or she was busy pushing a deactivated M-dog suit up
the seam between Daw s team and mine. They might have been trying to fool us, or shield themselves from attack, or who knows what. My battle sim informed me that the suit belonged
to Private Kim, a tough little troop who d been brought up in the lower levels of the London Urboplex, and played folk songs on the harmonica.
Using Kim s body as a shield pissed me off, and I fed the T-head s coordinates to one of our free-floating missile racks. They had been ejected at the same time we were, and
mounted four missiles each. I knew the rack would draw fire the moment I launched, so there was no point in conserving ordnance. I put two missiles on the tool head, one on a blip I
wasn t sure of, and one on T-12 s antenna farm. I knew the strikers would destroy the fourth missile long before it reached the asteroid s surface, but knew the effort would cost them two
or three missiles. Missiles they wouldn t be able to launch at me or my team.
I gave the order to fire. The missiles left the launcher and made dotted lines across my sim. Both the tool head and what remained of Kim s body vanished in a cartoonlike ball
of flame. The enemy suit, a ridiculous-looking stick figure, disappeared a fraction of a second later. The launch rack, plus the last two missiles it had fired, were destroyed moments after
that.
I switched to the big picture. The first thing that jumped out at me was that most of the strikers were dead. They were pretty good for amateurs, but we were pros, and that
makes a difference. Or so the company hopes. Most of their suits, or what was left of their suits, had started the long, slow drift to nowhere. But five or six of the bastards had taken
refuge behind a large chunk of free-floating rock. I saw a missile explode against the boulder s outer surface and push it towards the asteroid beyond. The tool heads answered with a
crew-served laser cannon, and the battle continued.
I frowned. The team should have bypassed the rock rats and pushed for the asteroid itself. Daw s squad was damned near there. I checked, saw the gunny s light had gone out,
and understood what had happened. The gunny was dead, and it was payback time. I chinned the mike.
M-dog to M-dog team. Break, I repeat, break. You know the objective. Take it. That s an order. Over.
Sergeant Habib had filled the gap left by the gunny& or had tried to. He knew things were out of hand and said so.
M-dog five to M-dog one. Sorry, sir. Breaking now. Over.
The battle sim took twenty cubic miles of space and compressed it to a single 3-D image. I saw the team break, re-form, and arrow towards the target. It looked as if they were
inches apart, but at least a half-mile separated them.
I switched freq s, called the Loot, and applied full power. The team would land on T-12 s surface in nine, maybe ten, minutes. I wanted to arrive at the same time they did. The
Loot had survived, so far anyway, and sounded solid.
Dodger-one to M-dog one. Shoot.
I have five or six bad guys hiding behind a rock. Over.
Roger that, M-dog one. Light the rock. Over.
I checked to make sure my team was clear, lit the rock on my sim and knew the Loot had it too. The response came right away.
She came out of the sun, fed the strikers a missile, and pulled out with a pair of surface-to-air (SAM) missiles hot on her tail. I wanted to watch, wanted to see her escape, but
kept my eyes focused on the target. The Loot s ship-to-ship ordnance was a hundred times larger than the little squirts we used, and the explosion was bright enough to darken my visor.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkskarol.keep.pl
|
