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

“Yes, sir. I’ve got ... oh, three clicks to go, maybe. Then I’m just another pile of junk standing on the sand.” He turned
to look at his superior officer, the black hawk crest rampant.
Storm considered the dilemma. He had his orders, and knew what his orders told him. Clean out Sector Five, and then
stand by to get picked up. The last of Sector Five ranged in front of him. They could ration out the most important
refills for Bilosky once they got where they were going. “We’ll be picked up by then.”
“Or the Thraks will have us picked out.”
Storm didn’t answer for a moment. He was asking a man with little or no power reserves showing on his gauges to go
on into battle, in a suit, in full battle mode. Red didn’t come up on the gauges until the suit was down to the last ten
percent of its resources. That ten percent would carry him less than an hour in full attack mode. Not that it made any
difference to a Knight. Jack sighed. “We’re on a wild goose chase, Bilosky. You’ll make it.”
“Right, sir.” A grim noise. “Better than having my suit crack open like an egg and havin’ a berserker pop out, right,
lieutenant?”
That sent a cold chill down Storm’s back. He didn’t like his troopers repeating ghoulish rumors. “Bilosky, I don’t want
rumors like that bandied around. You hear?”
“Yes, sir.” Then reluctantly, “It ain’t no rumor, lieutenant. I saw it happen once.”
“Forget it!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Going back on open air. And watch your mouth.” He watched as the other lumbered back into position. Then,
abruptly, Jack dialed in his command line and watched as the miniscule screen lit up, his only link with the warship
orbiting far overhead. The watch at the console, alerted by the static of their long range com lines, swung around. The
navy blue uniform strained over his bullish figure. He looked into the lens, his nostrils flaring. The squared chin was
cleft and it deepened in anger. A laser burn along one side of his hairline gave him a lopsided widow’s peak.
“Commander Winton here. You’re violating radio silence, soldier. What’s the meaning of this? Identify yourself.”
“I’m Battalion First Lieutenant,” he said.
“Where’s our pullout? We were dropped in here five days ago.”
“You’re under orders, lieutenant. Get in there and fight. Any further communication and I’ll have you up for court
martial.”
“Court martial? Is that the best you can do? We’re dying down here, commander. And we’re dying all alone.”
The line and screen went dead with a hiss. Suddenly aware of his own vulnerability, Storm pushed his right arm back
into his sleeve and chinned the field switch back on. His suit made an awkward swagger, then settled into a distance
eating stride. Fighting wars would be a hell of a lot easier if you could be sure who the enemy was.
Bilosky and Sarge and who knows who else were talking about berserkers now. The unease it filled him with he could
do without. He squinted through the tinted face plate at the alien sun. Strange worlds, strange people, and even
stranger enemies. Right now he’d rather wade through a nest of Thraks than try to wade through the rumors
surrounding the Milots and their berserkers.
There was no denying the rumors though. The Milots, who had summoned Dominion forces to fight for them against
the Thraks, those same low-tech Milots who ran the repair centers and provided the war backup, were as despicable
and treacherous as the Thraks Storm had enlisted to wipe out. And there were too many stories about altered suits ...
suits that swallowed a man up and spawned instead some kind of lizard-beastman who was a fighting automaton, a
berserker. Rumor had it the Milots were putting eggs into the suits, and the heat and sweat of the suit wearer hatched
those eggs and then the parasitic creature devoured its host and burst forth—
He told himself that the Milots had a strange sense of humor. What Bilosky thought he’d seen, whatever every
trooper who repeated the gossip thought they were talking about, was probably a prank played at a local tavern.
Knights always took a certain amount of ribbing from the locals, until seen in action, waging the “Pure” war.
Ahead of him, the dunes wavered, sending up a spray of sand. His intercom burst into sound.
“Thraks at two o’clock, lieutenant!”
Storm set his mouth into a grim smile. Now here was an enemy he could deal with. He eyed his gauges to make sure all
his systems were ready, and swung about.
Thraks were insects, in the same way jackals were primates or ordinary sow bugs were crustaceans. They were equally
at home upright or on all fours, due to the sloping of their backs. Jack set himself, watching them boil up out of the