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

arm in defense and the knife buzzed off the Flexalinks angrily. He flexed, bumping Marciane back, shoving him off
balance. The captain came up, a hand gun filling his fist. Regretfully Jack moved his glove, flexed it, and blasted the
man’s head off. As the body slumped to the ground, he said mournfully, “Marciane ... a suit always has reserves. Not
enough to fight a war on, but this wasn’t a war.
He had a split second before Tubs let out a cry of anguish, and both the crew of the Montreal and the hired thugs
rushed him. A laser wash flared up the side of his head. Jack cursed and leaned down to pick up his helmet, the side of
his face in raw agony. Two punks jumped up and he shook them off, like blobs of grease. Short-Jump moved in with an
ugly grin creasing his even uglier face and Jack kicked, sending the hand laser spinning across the alleyway. Beyond,
Tubs hesitated.
It gave Jack the momentary advantage he needed. He was hurt too badly to play around with them, and he could tell
that Marciane’s last swing of the power blade had cut into the suit’s seaming. Little crackles ran up and down his bare
arms inside the armor in useless surges.
If he was going to get out of there, he had to leave now. Using the power vault, he jumped the length of the alley and
took off running.
The crew of the Montreal was left behind, but the street punks Marciane had hired stuck to his heels like his suit
contacts to his bare skin. They harried him as they ran through the near-empty streets, their jeers and signal yells
bouncing off begrimed walls. Jack found himself gasping for breath. He hadn’t run in the suit since Basic. Though life
rangering on Claron had toughened him up, he had yet to regain the peak fitness he’d had before seventeen years of
cold sleep.
The side of his head throbbed. He must have a nasty second or even third degree burn ... and his left suit arm dangled
all but useless, the circuitry shorting out from Marciane’s lucky strike. Maybe not so lucky, for the now-dead captain
had known a lot about armor. It was very possible he hadn’t just nailed the vulnerable shoulder seam accidentally.
Panting, Jack turned the corner and dove down another street. It wasn’t an alleyway, but the buildings leaned so close
together that all vehicular traffic was denied access. One of the punks whooped in triumph. Jack bowled over a
storefront owner who was just sauntering out his doorway to turn on the neons.
The punks gave up trashing him and stormed the unlucky merchant instead, yelling as they poured into the building
and began to loot it. Jack kept on going.
The streets had filled and he slowed to a staggering walk. He kept a tight grip on his helmet as the citizens of the
underbelly of Malthen gave him curious stares and decided he looked lethal enough to leave alone. He hailed a taxi,
but it swept past him as though he wasn’t even there. Jack turned, and caught his reflection in a store facade. The
laser burn had all but closed his right eye. He was dirty and sweating, and grime from the gutter covered the Flexalink
suit. He looked thoroughly untrustworthy. With a grimace, Jack realized that was probably all that was keeping him
alive right now. As soon as he showed his weakness, he’d be pulled down.
A dirty kid in a rag of a jumpsuit brushed against the dangling left arm. Jack flinched away from the bump, but it was
too late. The kid had marked him as crippled. He disappeared in the crowd, but as Jack turned around to look for him,
he saw the kid reappear, talking earnestly to an older boy on the corner. His thick black hair stood up in a brush. The
older boy wore quilted body armor and a set of enamel bracers, and he turned to look at Jack. Their gaze met. The
teenager’s lip moved into a jackal’s snarl.
Jack immediately reversed directions. He’d been made and his life was only as good as his ability to keep moving.
He made the far corner and crossed against the traffic. A blazoned wall proclaimed sleeping cubicles around the corner
“with companion” for one hundred Dominions. Jack pressed against the building, looking for that stiff brush of black
hair following him. It was out of sight at the moment. He dipped into the cubicle company’s entrance.
“One hundred Dominions or plastic,” a heavy-set woman droned, without looking up from her wall screen.
“In my boot,” Jack said breathlessly. “Give me a cubicle and when I get stripped down, it’s in my boot.”
“Fork it over, bud. Do I look like I was born yesterday? In a test tube or something? Show yer money and then you get
in. Otherwise, beat it.” She waved down the wall of doors to the far end of the alley.
Jack pushed down the narrow corridor. The shoulders of his suit brushed the doors on either side. Someone pushed
through a door just as he approached it, and he moaned without meaning to, the collar of the suit rubbing the laser
burn with a jagged edge. The man glared at him.
“Get out of the way.”