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

section of the Outward Bounds that wasn’t supposed to be there.
Jack laughed at himself. He disconnected the linkage, and returned it to recording. The skimmer coughed once.
Below him, crudely dug out ground rippled in the air discharge from the skimmer. Jack descended and turned the
transport off as he recognized the field he’d dug. Small, twisted green snoots of malt edged upward, and he grinned as
he crouched down to examine it. He’d conned Samson Breweries out of a sackful of seed, and here was his reward,
already pushing up to meet the sun. He tickled a shoot. He hadn’t entirely lost his green thumb, he guessed, though
only the gods knew what would happen when the boomrats found this patch. He’d grown it for them, though.
A sharp pebble skimmed the air, slashing into his shoulder. Jack yelped with the sting and straightened up, looking
around.
The horde of boomrats looked back, shoulder to shoulder, their beady, flint-colored eyes staring, the adults stretched
to their utmost height on their skinny hind legs. One of them gripped a stone in his front paw.
“I’ll be damned,” Jack muttered. He took a step away from the malt patch, and watched as the thirty-strong pack of
boomrats shifted warily with him. He pointed. “This is for you, guys— but if you chew it down to the nubs now, you
won’t have anything left for the winter, or to go to seed for next year.”
Scarface, the leader, showed his fangs.
Jack backed up, toward the skimmer. He wasn’t worried about one or even two boomrats, but a pack could chew him
up a little. He held his hands up in the air even as he wondered if they’d thrown the stone at him. Tool implementation?
He’d have to make a note as soon as he got out of here.
As he backed up, Scarface seemed to relax. His tawny body dropped to all fours and he ran at Storm, and stopped,
chittering. His rodent muzzle worked, then he spit something out at the man’s booted feet. Then, warily, the boomrat
backed up and rejoined his pack.
A shiny green stone, covered with spittle from the creature’s mouth pouches, shone up at Storm. He bent over and
picked it up, and wiped it off. It was not anything of import, except it was something pretty and shiny. Jack
dropped it into this pouch.
“I take it this is a thank you for the malt. You’re welcome—but—“ Jack hesitated as he swung aboard the skimmer.
“Don’t do anything rash like taking over the planet, okay? I could be in a lot of trouble for this.”
Muzzles and whiskers quivered uncomprehendingly as he kicked the skimmer back into operation and headed for the
fringe of the Ataract.
He woke sweating. His pulse pounded in his ears like war drums, and he lay still in the darkness of the room, waiting
for his hearing to go back to normal. He wiped the palms of his hands across his T-shirt. As usual, he couldn’t
remember what he’d been dreaming, just that he’d been suffocating—
Jack swung off the bed. He went to the faintly glowing panel of the computer terminal and activated it. Something was
wrong. Not just his life or his psyche, which was always abnormal, but something was wrong with Claron. He feared it.
The screen fired to life under his fingers, but he heard the noise before the tracking came up, and he flinched, looking
upward, seeing only the ceiling, but knowing what he heard outside. Blips and streaks across the tracking field
confirmed it.
Claron was under siege.
Jack bolted for the doorframe. He looked outside, to the barely lightening sky, and heard the rumble. He cursed, even
as his heart took an awkward leap in his chest. The sky over the mines took on a violent, orange glow.

“Holy Knights,” Storm muttered and froze, unable to look away.

He was watching a planet burn.

He heard the reentry rumble and knew that the warships were headed his way.
Fumbling, he lunged back at the terminal and transmitted a message along the computer lines. Then he stopped. There
was no way of knowing if anyone was there to receive his warning.
Dull thunder spoke overhead. He had no time left. The very air crackled with the heat, the heat of the weaponry being
unleashed on unsuspecting, undeserving Claron. He had one chance left. He stripped off his shirt.
Jack pulled open the storage locker and jerked open the seams of the battle armor. He didn’t have time to think. The