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

“And what about you? You don’t seem worried.” Jack flicked a nail
against his cold glass. The neat scar along his right hand, where the little
finger had been sheared off, ached. It served as a reminder that the frost of
cold sleep could injure, even kill. He wondered what the other volunteer
wanted from him—why Daku had singled him out. Even as Daku had been
assessing him, Jack had been weighing the dark man. This was not a cheap
bar. None of the other trainees had come here. Nor was it a street bar, filled
with mercenaries and other outlaws, or street toughs. Jack looked up,
wondering just how friendly he wanted to become with this potentially
dangerous man. For a moment, he wished he had the Purple with him, but
the commander had agreed their friendship would be off-limits during
Basic. The Owner of the Purple had recommended Jack to Emperor Pepys
himself, and gotten him the appointment to the training program. From
there, Jack’s fate was in his own hands—just exactly where he liked it.

A man walked in the front door of the bar and stood a moment,
half-shadowed. He drew first Jack’s glance, and then Daku’s. Daku’s mouth
quirked. “Just a Walker.” Jack stirred in the booth. The man was armed,
discreetly, but heavily, and that nagged at him.
 Walkers were a radical sect that had sprung from the old Terran religion
called Christianity, and they were dedicated to finding anthropological and
archaeological proof that Jesus Christ went on to walk other worlds. Still,
Jack had never seen an armed one before. The sight tugged at his mind. A
militant Walker would be everybody’s concern. The man spoke softly to the
bartender and then faded into one of the back rooms.

Daku grunted. Then he emptied his glass. “Well, Jack, you’re taking it
coolly. I might almost think you’d been through this before.”

To keep his companion placated, he murmured, “There’s a lot at stake,
but sweating won’t make it happen.” He had no intention of telling the dark
man that he had been through all this before. He wasn’t listed in any of the
Dominion computer records. Nothing existed to designate him as the last
fighting survivor of the Sand Wars on Milos except his battle-scarred
memories, and he intended to keep it that way. It had been twenty years
ago, ancient history to most, but not to him. Not to a man lost in cryogenic
sleep and hooked up to a military debriefing loop, where he relived every
step of the Sand Wars in dreams to which there had been no end—no end to
the point where he’d lost nearly every other memory of another life, of his
existence before he’d become an infantry Knight. He existed now for one
reason and one reason only. Revenge. All he had to do was keep finding the
pieces and putting them together. He hoped this man was one of them.

“That is true,” Daku replied. He lifted his glass and took a long draft of
beer.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw a young woman come into the bar.
She was lithe and graceful, and had the quickness of a street acrobat. Her
tawny hair, wild about her pretty face, and her sleek, dark blue jumpsuit
bespoke her reason for being in a bar this early. She had all the earmarks of