"Debra Doyle & James MacDonald - Mageworlds 02 - Starpilot's Grave" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Debra)

Prologue; pleyver: flatlands

Darkness had fallen over the city. Light from the streetlamps lay in stark white circles against the
warehouse walls, with pools of blackness falling in between. Overhead, the fixed star of High
Station-PleyverтАЩs giant orbiting spaceport-burned down through the skyglow. No one saw Owen
Rosselin-Metadi pass by like an unheeded thought, skirting the edges of the lamplight and pausing to
catch his breath in the safety of the dark.
He wasnтАЩt sure how long heтАЩd been running. Hours, it felt like-ever since leaving his sister back at
FlorrieтАЩs Place, in an upper room where the acrid stink of blaster fire mingled with the heavier smell of
blood. He didnтАЩt think anybody had followed him out of there; heтАЩd put most of his remaining energy into
staying unseen, and Beka had taken care of the rest.
Owen didnтАЩt like the favor heтАЩd asked from her, that she take on the risk of drawing away the
armed pursuit, and he didnтАЩt particularly like himself for asking it. But Bee was a survivor, the kind who
could fight her way from FlorrieтАЩs to the port quarter and blast off leaving a legend behind her. HeтАЩd seen
that much clearly; far more clearly, in fact, than the outcome of his own business on Pleyver.
Nevertheless, he had lied to her.
Well, not exactly lied. But he had let her think that the datachip heтАЩd given her, packed with
information from the locked comp-files of Flatlands Investment, Ltd., was unique. HeтАЩd never mentioned
the other datachip, the one that heтАЩd come to Pleyver to obtain. The information on the second chip
belonged to Errec Ransome, Master of the AdeptsтАЩ Guild-or it would if Owen lived long enough to
deliver it.
Maybe I should have given it to Bee.
Owen shook his head. HeтАЩd briefly considered asking her, but the presence of her copilot had
killed that idea. The slight, grey-haired man she called the Professor gave Beka an unquestioning
loyalty-that much Owen had perceived without any difficulty-but it was a loyalty that would put Beka first
and the AdeptsтАЩ Guild a far-distant second.
No, it was better to let the two of them go their own way. From the look of things, Beka had
kept her promise to distract the ordinary hired help, the ones who did their fighting with blasters and
energy lances. Dodging the others should have been easy, if only he hadnтАЩt been so stupid as to get
caught once already tonight . . .

Owen had shown up outside the portside branch office of Flatlands Investment, Ltd., just before
dusk. HeтАЩd hoped to get there earlier, but intercepting Beka at the spaceport and convincing her to
abandon her own designs on the companyтАЩs data banks had taken longer than heтАЩd anticipated.
Beka wanted revenge, plain and simple: revenge on whoever had planned their motherтАЩs
assassination and revenge on whoever had paid for it. SheтАЩd get it, too; Bee in pursuit of a goal had a
straightforward single-mindedness that made a starshipтАЩs jump-run to hyperspace look like a sightseeing
trip. But that same trait could make her dangerous to be around if your purposes and hers happened to
diverge. Owen didnтАЩt think that the GuildтАЩs interest in FIL was going to put him in BekaтАЩs way, but he
didnтАЩt want to chance it.
Besides, he reflected as he approached the grey, slab-sided FIL Building, it was easier for one
person to work unnoticed than for two. He could slip in, get enough from the files to satisfy Master
Ransome and his sister both, and slip out again before Bee was through eating dinner.
The front door of the building was secured by an electronic ID-scan. Owen palmed the lockplate
like any authorized visitor. Inside the mechanism, the electric current flowed through its appointed paths
and channels as the door made ready to reject the identification. Then, without changing his expression or
his physical posture, Owen reached out, using the skills that for more than ten years had made him Errec
RansomeтАЩs most valued-and most valuable-apprentice.
The flow of electrons altered its course. The lock clicked quietly and the door slid open.
A stranger waited in the unlit lobby, a thin, hunched man in the plain garb of a low-level office