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

suit hummed faintly as he climbed into it and began the laborious process of sealing up.
He attached only the contacts he had to for operation. He wouldn’t have time to fight back— no, all Jack wanted to do
was to live. He had one chance to make it. His helmet snapped into place.
The ceiling blew off the compound. Orange light flared in, wrapping around him like a maelstrom. The suit was baffled,
but stayed upright. Jack paid no attention as he connected the last of the wires, and the holograph came on,
whispering smoothly.
He’d kept it well oiled and powered all these months, in spite of his fear of it. He still feared it, but he feared dying
worse.
The firestorm caught up the last of the compound, whipping it up from around him, and Jack stood in the clear. In the
orange glow of the burn-off, the golden eye of the Star Gate had turned to an eerie blue. Jack ran toward it, loping
easily, the power vault of the suit giving him the ability to move over the terrain even as it charred and buckled under
him.
He looked up, once, his sensors dulling the fire, and he caught sight of the tremendous warship cruising overhead, its
reentry shields still glowing. He couldn’t identify it.
The cannon mouth swung around. Jack ducked his head and put all his resources into a last leap. He flung his arms
forward and jumped, diving headfirst into the blue curtain of the Star Gate.
It wrapped around him, still dormant, hugged him, brought him to a stop. Jack rolled over and looked back out the
Gate. Red and orange fire, in sheets, rippled across the verdant tracts of the Ataract forest—over all of Claron. He had
only a second to ask himself why, when the energy blacklash hit—and the Star Gate activated, blowing him through
and beyond.


Chapter 3


There is always a kid in Basic who ignores the drill sarge when he says, “Don’t ask.” Always. It’s a universal law, like
gravity. Even when you don’t really want to know the answer, there’s always some jerk to ask the question.
“What if the drop tubes misfire and instead of going planetside, we get put out beyond the orbit?”
Someone in the back row had snickered, saying quietly, “What if you put your ass in your helmet instead of your
head?”
But the D.I. had ignored all of them, his baggy brown eyes sweeping over them with contempt. “Don’t ask,” he
answered. “You don’t want to know.”
“Yeah, but—what if,” the kid persisted. “I mean, your suit’s got air—it’s insulated and it can pressurize. You got
communications, water— you could make it, couldn’t you? Until you got picked up? It’s battle armor, right, but it
could double for a deepspace suit temporarily, right?”
“You don’t wanna know,” the sarge repeated, wearily.
But this kid that asks these questions, it’s also a universal law that he just doesn’t shut up until he gets his
answer—or fifty laps.
In Storm’s case, the kid in Basic got fifty laps. But as he looked out his face plate, doing a slow tumble, he thought ...
now I know, Sarge. And the answer is yes ... your suit’ll hold. Not forever. Probably not until you get picked up and
especially not if someone is hanging around to shoot holes in it, but yeah—the suit will hold.
Probably longer than your mind will.
And he did another slow roll through black velvet space, praying the tinting on the face plate would block out the
starlight, saving his sight for another day. Beyond him, the golden eye of the Star Gate stared back, an unwinking
deity which, after having punted him this far, was dormant once again.
He didn’t even feel like calculating the time he might have left. The thought was too morbid and, Jack added to himself,
he’d probably been on borrowed time since he waded into that pit of Thraks nearly twenty years ago. So much for the
borrowed time theory. So what he did do was cautiously, supremely cautiously, for every wave of the suit’s limbs sent
him veering in another direction, take the time to finish hooking himself up, weapons and all.
His cameras scanned and he saw that he was drifting in open space, but that he might not necessarily drift for