"Charles Ingrid - The Sand Wars 01 - Solar Kill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ingrid Charles)

“Could be. Strikers can be a tough lot.” Short-Jump grinned. He relished a good fight. Opinion aboard the Montreal
used to be that he hoped for a battle injury to give him a free ride into cosmetic surgery. Tubs had given up on that
theory long ago. Strikebusters like Short-Jump made enough money to pay for any kind of surgery. He had decided his
shipmate just liked to bust heads. “I’ll go tell the captain.”
Tubs looked back to his screen, his pop eyes still round with amazement. “Shit,” he muttered to himself excitedly, as he
caught a better view. “That’s no deep suit—that’s battle amor!” He began to plot a fix for the tractor beams.
The captain of the Montreal watched noncomit-tally as the tractor beam hung the armor in midair and the hangar doors
sealed shut. The Flex-alinks glistened like mother-of-pearl in the dingy recesses of the privateer’s hold. The suit hung
quietly, with no sign of life in it. Captain Marciane scratched his thin thatch of brown and gray hair. He’d never seen
battle armor quite like this before—one of the old, elite suits, was his best guess. At his side. Tubs finally babbled to a
halt and scuffed his boots on the decking. Marciane realized his men waited for him to do something. He signaled for
the transparent bulkhead to open. Still eying that suit cautiously, he stepped into the now pressurized hangar.
“Now that’s one oyster I’d hate to shuck,” he murmured to himself.
“Shall I go cut it down, captain?” Tubs blurted.
“No. It might be armed.” He waved the tractor beam off. It unlocked, dumping the armor five feet to the deck abruptly.
It landed with a BOOM that reverberated off the metal walls.
Tubs yelped. “Holy god, captain! If it was armed—“
Marciane silenced him. “Not armed that way. It may be armed against tampering.” He walked a little closer, tilting his
head back. Whoever had worn the suit had been a tall man. “The men who used to wear these things ...” his voice
trailed off.
“What’11 we do with it?” Short-Jump pushed back past the bulkhead into the hangar with them.
“We leave it alone. After we get dirtside, we see what kind of salvage we get from it.” Having seen enough of a legend,
Marciane turned his back on the armor.
Tubs, a skittish man, but good in his field, gave an odd hop, and grabbed the captain’s forearm. “Captain! It moved. I
swear it did.”
Marciane turned around slowly on one heel. He could see no evidence that the suit had so much as twitched. He
grabbed Tubs’ torch from his equipment belt and shone the beam into the darkened face plate, and saw nothing. The
beam etched dark shadows into the half-empty hold. He lowered the torch. “You guys are all on edge—a fighting
edge, and I like that, because that’s what I need to break a strike. We’ll be doing reentry shortly. Get back to your
posts and get ready, because we’re going down burning. I want us to be too hot for th’ line to handle. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.” Tubs’ round, usually florid face paled, but he saluted.
Short-Jump just gave him a flat smile from his ugly face. Marciane nodded briskly.
He turned for one last look back at the bulkhead. “Besides,” he said to himself. “If there had been someone inside
there—he’s either dead, or insane by now, anyhow.”
A dry, rasping voice followed them hollowly. “Would you settle for thirsty?”
The three men froze. Tubs was the first to turn around, but his legs had buckled and dumped him on the deck, where
he quivered, his mouth working uselessly. Only his hand twitched into activity, pointing at the suit.
Short-Jump kneed his companion. “Cut it out, for crissakes. It’s not a ghost, there’s someone in there. Captain,
permission to aid the visitor?”
“Granted.” Marciane wet his lips as the squat, ugly man waded forward, unafraid, to the death suit.
Marciane watched the thirsty man gulp down a second glass of water, then motioned for the two of them to be left
alone in the tiny galley.
The Montreal was a refitted freighter, not a passenger ship, and carried few of the amenities. The captain captured a
chair and wrapped himself around it, eying the sandy-haired young man with the world-weary eyes. He wore
nondescript gray pants, with the many pockets empty sacks, and his torso was bare, except for the tiny crimp marks
where contact sensors had been clipped. Those pinches of flesh smoothed out even as they talked.
“What were you doing out there?”
“Dying and praying, mostly.” The visitor dried his lips on the back of his hand, and Marciane saw the missing little
finger, sliced off neatly at the edge.
“Were you jettisoned? Marooned? Do you know anything about Washington Two?”