"Simon R. Green - Deathstalker - 1 - Deathstalker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

"All right, all right. I'm editing the sensors. Happy now?"

"Close as I'll get. And HannahтАФif I ever catch you snooping on my private
moments, I'll perform a lobotomy on your main systems with a shrapnel grenade.
Got it?"

Hannah sniffed once, and broke off contact. Hazel smiled briefly. All the AIs the
Captain could have chosen, and he had to buy a peeping torn. Somehow that was
typical of the Shard and its luck. She looked about her at the long rows of body
banks, huge and blocky, their dull metal sides smeared with frost and caked with
ice. Ugly things, for an ugly business. The AI was quite right; she had no business
in the cargo bay and no authority, either. Not that she gave a damn. Hazel d'Ark
had a long history of not giving a damn, not to mention doing whatever she
happened to feel was necessary and to hell with the consequences. Which was at
least partly why she'd ended up an outlaw and a pirate.

She moved slowly toward the nearest body bank, drawn by a curious mixture of

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Green, Simon R. - Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker (v1.0) (html)


revulsion and fascination. She'd had no illusions about what she was getting into
when she'd signed on board the Shard as a clonelegger, but somehow it was
different up close. The body banks were a source of life and longevity, but the
spotless cargo bay still seemed to reek of death. Most of the lights were out,
conserving energy. Never knew when you might need the extra power to make a
run for it. Cloneleggers were not popular, either with the authorities or those who
had a need for their services.

Hazel walked slowly down the central aisle between the body banks. Visions of
hearts and lungs and kidneys burned brightly in her mind's eye, pulsing with fresh
crimson blood. She was sure they didn't actually look like that, preserved in the
icy cold of the machines, but that was how she thought of them. Her fellow
cloneleggers just referred to them as the merchandise, as casual as any butcher in
a slaughterhouse. She stopped and looked around her, surrounded by hundreds
upon hundreds of human organs and tissues, enough to fill a dozen battlegrounds,
and every one of them worthless. Contaminated beyond saving by a smuggled
virus. That was what you got for making enemies in the clonelegging business.

Not too long before, the Captain had come out ahead in a business deal with the
Boneyard Boys, through his usual mixture of high risk taking and low cunning.
Contracts the Shard had lusted after for years had fallen into their hands as though
by magic. Hazel smiled grimly. They should have known better. Clonelegging
was a cutthroat business. Sometimes literally.

Clonelegging was illegal, a crime punishable by death, but that did nothing to
slow down the flood of people ready and willing to make a living out of death.
Officially, the use of cloned human tissues for transplanting was only allowed to