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

away the way the cityscape must have done at Evenfall, and I abruptly lost interest in
anything except screaming.

Water was lapping gently somewhere just below me when I next woke up, and gentle
sunlight warmed my face and arms. Someone must have removed the shrapnel-shredded
remains of my combat jacket and left me with the sleeveless Wedge T-shirt. I moved one
hand and my fingertips brushed age-smoothed wooden boards, also warm. The sunlight made
dancing patterns on the insides of my eyelids.
There was no pain.
I sat up, feeling better than I had in months. I was stretched out on a small, simply-made
jetty that extended a dozen metres or so out into what appeared to be a fjord or sea loch. Low,
rounded mountains bounded the water on either side and fluffy white clouds scudded
unconcernedly overhead. Further out in the loch a family of seals poked their heads above the
water and regarded me gravely.
My body was the same Afro-Caribbean combat sleeve I'd been wearing on the Northern
rim assault, undamaged and unscarred.
So.
Footsteps scraped on the boards behind me. I jerked my head sideways, hands lifting
reflexively into an embryonic guard. Way behind the reflex came the confirming thought that
in the real world no one could have got that close without my sleeve's proximity sense
kicking in.
'Takeshi Kovacs,' said the uniformed woman standing over me, getting the soft slavic 'ch'
at the end of the name correct. 'Welcome to the recuperation stack.'
'Very nice.' I climbed to my feet, ignoring the offered hand. 'Am I still aboard the hospital?'
The woman shook her head and pushed long, riotous copper-coloured hair back from her
angular face. 'Your sleeve is still in intensive care, but your current consciousness has been
digitally freighted to Wedge One Storage until you are ready to be physically revived.'
I looked around and turned my face upward to the sun again. It rains a lot on the Northern
Rim. 'And where is Wedge One Storage? Or is that classified?'
'I'm afraid it is.'
'How did I guess?'
'Your dealings with the Protectorate have doubtless acquainted you with тАФ '
'Skip it. I was being rhetorical.' I already had a pretty good idea where the virtual format
was located. Standard practice in a planetary war situation is to fling a handful of low-albedo
sneak stations into crazy elliptical orbits way out and hope none of the local military traffic
stumbles on them. The odds are pretty good in favour of no one ever finding you. Space, as
textbooks are given to saying, is big.
'What ratio are you running all this on?'
'Real time equivalence,' said the woman promptly. 'Though I can speed it up if you prefer.'
The thought of having my no doubt short-lived convalescence stretched out here by a
factor of anything up to about three hundred was tempting, but if I was going to be dragged
back to the fighting some time soon in real time, it was probably better not to lose the edge.
Added to which, I wasn't sure that Wedge Command would let me do too much stretching. A
couple of months pottering around, hermit-like, in this much natural beauty was bound to
have a detrimental effect on one's enthusiasm for wholesale slaughter.
'There is accommodation,' said the woman, pointing, 'for your use. Please request
modifications if you would like them.'
I followed the line of her arm to where a glass and wood two-storey structure stood
beneath gull-winged eaves on the edge of the long shingle beach.
'Looks fine.' Vague tendrils of sexual interest squirmed around in me. 'Are you supposed to