"Takeshi Kovacs - 02 - Broken Angels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morgan Richard)

"I feel fine."

"Of course you do. You're dosed to the eyes with endorphins. When you come down, you're going to find that your left shoulder only has about two-thirds functionality. Oh, and your lungs are still damaged. Scarring from the Guerlain Twenty."

I blinked. "I didn't know they were spraying that stuff."

"No. Apparently nobody did. A triumph of covert assault, they tell me." She gave up, the attempted grimace half formed. Too, too tired. "We cleaned most of it out, ran regrowth bioware through the most obvious areas, and killed the secondary infections. Given a few months of rest, you'd probably make a full recovery. As it isЕ" she shrugged. "Try not to smoke. Get some light exercise. Oh, for fuck's sake."

I tried the light exercise. I walked the hospital's axial deck. Forced air into my scorched lungs. Flexed my shoulder. The whole deck was packed five abreast with injured men and women doing similar things. Some of them, I knew.

"Hey, lieutenant!"

Tony Loemanako, face mostly a mask of shredded flesh pocked with the green tags where the rapid regrowth bios were embedded. Still grinning, but far too much of far too many teeth visible on the left side.

"You made it out, lieutenant! Way to go!"

He turned about in the crowd.

"Hey, Eddie. Kwok. The lieutenant made it."

Kwok Yuen Yee, both eye sockets packed tight with bright orange tissue incubator jelly. An externally-mounted microcam welded to her skull provided videoscan for the interim. Her hands were being regrown on skeletal black carbon fibre. The new tissue looked wet and raw.

"Lieutenant. We thought Ч"

"Lieutenant Kovacs!"

Eddie Munharto, propped up in a mobility suit while the bios regrew his right arm and both legs from the ragged shreds that the smart shrapnel had left.

"Good to see you, lieutenant! See, we're all on the mend. The 391 platoon be back up to kick some Kempist ass in a couple of months, no worries."

Carrera's Wedge combat sleeves are currently supplied by Khumalo Biosystems. State-of-the-art Khumalo combat biotech runs some charming custom extras, notable among them a serotonin shutout system that improves your capacity for mindless violence and minute scrapings of wolf gene that give you added speed and savagery together with an enhanced tendency to pack loyalty that hurts like upwelling tears. Looking at the mangled survivors of the platoon around me, I felt my throat start to ache.

"Man, we tanked them, didn't we?" said Munharto, gesturing flipper-like with his one remaining limb. "Seen the milflash yesterday."

Kwok's microcam swivelled, making minute hydraulic sounds.

"You taking the new 391, sir?"

"I don't Ч"

"Hey, Naki. Where are you, man? It's the lieutenant."

I stayed off the axial deck after that.

Schneider found me the next day, sitting in the officers' convalescent ward, smoking a cigarette and staring out of the viewport. Stupid, but like the doctor said for fuck's sake. Not much point in looking after yourself, if that same self is liable at any moment to have the flesh ripped off its bones by flying steel or corroded beyond repair by chemical fallout.

"Ah, Lieutenant Kovacs."

It took me a moment to place him. People's faces look a lot different under the strain of injury, and besides we'd both been covered in blood. I looked at him over my cigarette, wondering bleakly if this was someone else I'd got shot up wanting to commend me on a battle well fought. Then something in his manner tripped a switch and I remembered the loading bay. Slightly surprised he was still aboard, even more surprised he'd been able to bluff his way in here, I gestured him to sit down.