"Charles Ingrid - The Sand Wars 06 - Challenge Met" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ingrid Charles)

wheeling it toward the operating lab.

His breath tickled her ear. "Get… the observation tape."

"I will, but why—"

"Get the tape before… Baadluster. It wasn't necessary…" Jack took a
shallow, wheezing breath. "It wasn't necessary for Denaro to take Jonathan.
He did… to make sure I'd follow. The tape will tell me… where. Fair fight…
Thraks did the worse damage." With a trembling effort, he closed his fingers
over her hand. "Understand? Nothing's going to stop us now."

"Yes." Amber loped now, to keep pace with the gurney and the medics,
unable to bend close enough to talk with Jack. The lab doors opened and the
medics tore Jack's hand away from her. She stood for long minutes as the
doors shut in front of her, cradling her right hand until long after Jack's
blood dried on her skin.

Then she realized Jack had given her something to do, and she hurried to
take care of it before someone else beat her to the tape. It was nothing to get
the tape… it took a few minutes to rig the system as though it had
malfunctioned or perhaps Denaro had tampered with it to explain the
absence of any recording on the blank tape she substituted.



Seeing him in the healing crèche was little better than being left outside
the operating bay. Sealed off, all she could see was his face. The rest of him
was swaddled in medical equipment and a reconstruction matrix. A bright
flush of fever mottled an otherwise too pale complexion. There was no rise
and fall of his chest from breathing, under the matrix and in cold sleep, there
could be none. Vandover shadowed her, but she refused to let his presence
warn her off. He could be dead, she thought uneasily, and the bastard's
enjoying watching me wait.

Vandover dropped a hand to her shoulder. She squelched the flinch of
reaction.

"Because of his injuries," the man in black said softly, "he'll be under for
two weeks instead of several days. The doctors asked me to tell you."

Baadluster was used to being the bearer of bad news. She could tell this
revelation did not particularly distress him.

"Whatever it takes," Amber said tonelessly. He stood beside her a few
moments longer, then withdrew and went about his imperial business. She
waited until she was certain he was gone before she let the tears brimming
in her eyes fall upon her face. She wished she could share Jack's triumph,
but Vandover's continued presence set off the alarms of her faded intuition.
The mind-loop was out of her hands and in those of their uneasy allies. Jack