"Charles Ingrid - The Sand Wars 02 - Lasertown Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ingrid Charles)

The Purple looked away. He stood up and moved to the window,
watching the recruits down below. “Jack may make a mistake he can’t afford
by keeping you.”

The iciness seemed to have reached her chest. Amber swallowed tightly.
“I’ll stay behind if he asks me—but he won’t. Jack needs me in ways you
couldn’t even begin to imagine.” She clenched her teeth, on the brink of
telling this arrogant bastard some of the basis for their being together… such
as her being the only one who could control his maneater of a suit. But she
stopped herself.

The commander did not turn back around. He merely said, “But you will
let me go.”

“If he asks. Which he won’t.” Amber jabbed at a small pool of wetness
that insisted on leaking from one eye. “Now let’s just shut up and see if he
makes the Guard, all right?”

The silver-haired man crossed his arms and said nothing further.

***


Jack wished he could dismiss the prickle of unease that ran up his spine
as he took the elevator down to the parade grounds. Chillingly, he’d noted
that the Purple hadn’t asked who could have been behind the attack or why
if it wasn’t because of Amber. It was the sort of question you didn’t ask
another mercenary. It was axiomatic in the business that you made a few
enemies.

The elevator shussed open in front of him. Jack rubbed the scar of his
missing finger thoughtfully. The tale of his service as a veteran in the Sand
Wars—a war which had been lost when it should have been won—and the
knowledge of the cover-ups surrounding it, and his own survival, when all
others had died, made him a liability. Which was why Jack kept his mouth
shut. It seemed healthier that way.

The sun blasted him as soon as he set foot on the parade ground sands.
A gritty brown sand, unique to Malthen, it clung to his boots and wafted
every time he took a step. If he had a credit for every grain of it he’d ever
brushed out of his suit’s circuits—

A murmur rose on the crowded grounds. “Here come the equipment
racks!”

Jack felt his own heart drum. The suits were being brought back in. What
would he find? Had his own armor survived the testing? Had the
uniqueness of his equipment been discovered—or destroyed—by the
procedure? Jack’s lips went dry.