"Richard Morgan - Broken Angels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morgan Richard)

'Not here, no. The cellular level scanners are built into the ward decks. Maybe when we
can clear some space for you all up there, we'll get round to it.' The hands left me. 'Where's
your bar code?'
'Left temple.'
Someone wiped blood away from the designated area and I vaguely felt the sweep of the
laser scan across my face. A machine chirped approval, and I was left alone. Processed.
For a while I just lay there, content to let the endorphin booster relieve me of both pain and
consciousness, all with the suave alacrity of a butler taking a hat and coat. A small part of me
was wondering whether the body I was wearing was going to be salvageable, or if I'd have to
be re-sleeved. I knew that Carrera's Wedge maintained a handful of small clone banks for its
so-called indispensable staff, and as one of only five ex-Envoys soldiering for Carrera, I
definitely numbered among that particular elite. Unfortunately, indispensability is a double-
edged sword. On the one hand it gets you elite medical treatment, up to and including total
body replacement. On the downside, the only purpose of said treatment is to throw you back
into the fray at the earliest possible opportunity. A plankton-standard grunt whose body was
damaged beyond repair would just get his cortical stack excised from its snug little housing at
the top of the spinal column then slung into a storage canister, where it would probably stay
until the whole war was over. Not an ideal exit, and despite the Wedge's reputation for
looking after their own there was no actual guarantee of re-sleeving, but at times in the
screaming chaos of the last few months that step into stored oblivion had seemed almost
infinitely desirable.
'Colonel. Hey, colonel.'
I wasn't sure if the Envoy conditioning was keeping me awake, or if the voice at my side
had nagged me back to consciousness again. I rolled my head sluggishly to see who was
speaking.
It seemed we were still in the hangar. Lying on the stretcher beside me was a muscular-
looking young man with a shock of wiry black hair and a shrewd intelligence in his features
that even the dazed expression of the endorphin hit could not mask. He was wearing a Wedge
battledress like mine, but it didn't fit him very well and the holes in it didn't seem to
correspond with the holes in him. At his left temple, where the bar code should have been,
there was a convenient blaster burn.
'You talking to me?'
'Yes sir.' He propped himself up on one elbow. They must have dosed him with a lot less
than me. 'Looks like we've really got Kemp on the run down there, doesn't it?'
'That's an interesting point of view.' Visions of 391 platoon being cut to shreds around me
cascaded briefly through my head. 'Where do you think he's going to run to? Bearing in mind
this is his planet, I mean.'
'Uh, I thought тАФ '
'I wouldn't advise that, soldier. Didn't you read your terms of enlistment? Now shut up and
save your breath. You're going to need it.'
'Uh, yes sir.' He was gaping a little, and from the sound of heads turned on nearby
stretchers he wasn't the only one surprised to hear a Carrera's Wedge officer talking this way.
Sanction IV, in common with most wars, had stirred up some heavy-duty feelings.
'And another thing.'
'Colonel?'
'This is a lieutenant's uniform. And Wedge command has no rank of colonel. Try to
remember that.'
Then a freak wave of pain swept in from some mutilated part of my body, dodged through
the grasp of the endorphin bouncers posted at the door of my brain and started hysterically
shrilling its damage report to anyone who'd listen. The smile I had pinned to my face melted