"Leo Frankowski - Stargard 4 - The Flying Warlord" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

The Flying Warlord


The Flying Warlord

Book 4 of the Adventures of Conrad Starguard

By Leo Frankowski

ISBN: 0-345-32765-9



Prologue
"Whoopee shit!... It's finally happening," she said. "A hundred years of tracking protohuman migration patterns on the African plain and
it's finally over! It feels so good that I almost don't hate your guts anymore!"

"Well, don't get too carried away. You deserved every minute of it for dumping the owner's cousin into the thirteenth century when the
guy didn't even know that time travel existed. And you deserve twice that for getting me messed up in it. Now get your scrawny body in
the box. Time's running short!"

"Eat your heart out! I'll have my old sexy body back, and I'll take bubble baths and while you're eating carrion, I'll gorge for weeks on
lobster thermidor and New York cheesecake and--"

He sealed her into the stasis chamber, then watched the readout over the temporal transport canister count down to zero.

The tone sounded and he opened the canister, pulled out his new subordinate without glancing at him, and started to slide his previous
superior in. It was expensive to hold the canister in 2,548,850 BC, so doctrine was to make the transfer as quickly as possible.

She was almost in when something struck him as being very, very wrong. He took a closer look at the body he had just extracted. He
gagged, retched, and vomited on the floor. Then he switched off his boss's stasis field.

"--Cherries Jubilee! Hey! What the hell is this? What am I still doing here? You're holding up the canister, you ass! Do you realize what
that costs?"

"So the owner has lots of money but you only have the one life. I figured I didn't hate you that goddamn much."

"You're not making any sense; get me out of this time period! I've waited long enough!"

"Anything you say, lady, but take a look at what just came out of the canister and then ask yourself if you really want to get into it."

She stared at him and then at the other stasis chamber.

The body within was shriveled and dried. It was laying on its side, a look of horror on its face. Its fingernails were all ripped off as if the
man had tried to claw his way out before his air was exhausted.

"His stasis field must have failed," he said.