"Tom Kratman - Carerra 2 - Carnifex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kratman Tom)

certain they were unrelated, Jiminez being frightfully handsome and McNamara . . . . well, the best one
could say of him was that he looked his part, the quintessential grizzled sergeant major, his face heavily
lined and never exactly lovely.
Lourdes and Ruqaya, on the other hand, might have been sisters, or at least close cousins. Both were tall
and slender. Both had amazingly large and melting brown eyes. Skin color? About the same. Faces?
Different, of course, yet each was in the range of symmetrical attractiveness that tended to resemble.
However, whereas Mac and Jimenez had shared the same thought, the woman's thoughts were only
somewhat related. For Lourdes: Poor Patricio. For Ruqaya: Poor Lourdes; having to share her man
with a dead woman.


"Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me."

Carrera gripped one of his disgustingly small, distressing soft, and nauseatingly dainty hands around a
tall tumbler of scotch and drank deeply. For the things I do, he thought, and the things I allow to be
done, somehow I doubt that the Lord will abide with me.



33/10/462 AC, Hildegard von Mises, Sea of Sind

The conex inside the ship rang with the helpless shrieks. It practically reverberated with them. The
conex, soundproofed, also kept in the stench of voided bowels and bladders, and the iron-coppery stink
of blood.
You wouldn't think one man could scream that much, especially with the tongue
protector installed, mused Achmed al Mahamda, the chief of interrogations. Mahamda, quite
unperturbed, casually munched a Terra Novan olive, the fruit of an odd palm with green trunk and gray
fronds. The olive, itself, was gray and about plum sized. Its taste was similar to, but slightly more
astringent than an Old Earth olive. Mahamda loved them, as did many of his people.
He put the olive down and wrinkled his nose as the victim, Fadeel al Nizal, lost sphincter control. The
assistant applying electricity to Fadeel's genitalia looked over at Mahamda. Should we clean him up
before we continue? This is pretty vile.
Genial seeming, a little fat, andтАФappearances notwithstandingтАФutterly ruthless,
Mahamda had been an interrogator for the secret police, or Mukhabbarat, of the old regime in Sumer.
When that one had been tossed out the year before by a coalition led by the Federated States of
Columbia, Mahamda had gone into hiding. Eventually, one of Sada's people had found him and offered
him a jobтАФwith a raise, no less, and protection from the Coalition forces searching for himтАФworking
for some of the infidels. He'd had to give his family as hostages but, since he'd only gone back to work
to ensure they were fed, this seemed not unreasonable.
Mahamda shook his head at the assistant's unvoiced question. His look said, If you want to work in this
line, you're going to have to learn to accept foul smells.


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 - Chapter 1

Shrugging you're the boss, the assistant turned a dial to increase the juice. Impossible as it might have
seemed, Fadeel's screaming actually increased. His eyes seemed ready to burst from his head as his teeth
ground against the rubber bit installed in his mouth to keep him from biting off his own tongue.