"Stephen Mohan Jr. - Battletech - Echoes of Disgrace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mohan Jr Stephen)

The girl shrugged and said nothing further. She wasn’t really a lit-
tle girl, she was somewhere between twelve and fourteen, though
she’d never volunteered her age and he’d never asked. She was
pretty in the way that only youth can be, shoulder-length blond
hair, hazel eyes, just a girl, but starting to show the shape of the
woman she’d become. Ukawa could never remember what she
called herself: Turner or Tucker or Tanner or some other gaijin
name.
The scrape of stone against stone jerked Ukawa’s attention to-
ward the cell door. A woman stepped inside, a woman Ukawa had
never seen before. She was lovely, skin the color of cream set off
by green eyes and flaming red hair. She was dressed entirely in
black, with no insignia to offer a clue as to who she might be or
what she might want.
And she was young.
Ukawa wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d spent in The House of
the Absent Sun, twenty years or maybe thirty. At first, he’d tried
to keep track of each day by lightly scratching marks in his cell
wall, but the guards beat him for it. Counting days provided a sour
kind of hope and Ukawa had come to realize that hope was the
one thing that would never be permitted here. So he didn’t know
precisely how long he’d been imprisoned, but he did know it had
been many, many years.
So many that this improbably beautiful woman must’ve been a
child when Ukawa had committed the terrible act that had led to
his disgrace.
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Rough morning?”
Ukawa blinked and then remembered he’d just been screaming.
“Iie,” he said and then stopped abruptly because he wasn’t sure
how to address her.
The girl looked up, but said nothing.
“I trust your accommodations are comfortable,” said the woman,
“no complaints?”
Ukawa blinked again, wondering if this woman was real.
Wondering if his endless captivity had finally driven him mad.
“What do you want?” Ukawa asked evenly.
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“I’ve come to offer you a glorious thing Tai-i Ukawa. The chance
to serve the Combine again.”
The little girl frowned.
“I am disgraced,” said Ukawa, skepticism shading his voice.
“Even disgrace may be washed away if you have the will to serve
your Coordinator.”
Ukawa’s throat tightened with emotion. To be made whole again.
In all the years he’d been in The House of the Absent Sun he’d
never for one second stopped dreaming of this moment, even
though he’d never for one second believed it would ever really
come. “What do you want me to do?” he croaked.