"Mercedes Lackey - A Tail Of Two Skittys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

longer than usual. And her tail seemed to be a lot longer than he rememberedтАФ

Never mind that, get moving! he scolded himself, trying to recall where they'd
set up all the coms and if any of them were translight. SKitty whisked ahead
of him, around a corner; when he caught up with her, she was already at work
on the tangle-field generator in front of another door.

Practice must have made perfect; she got the field down just before he reached
the doorway, and shot down the hall like a streak of black lightning. Dick
stopped; inside was someone lying down on a cot, arm over her dark mahogany
head. Erica!

"Erica!" he hissed at her. She sat bolt upright, wincing as she did so, and he
felt a twinge of sympathy. A stun-migraine was no picnic.

She saw who was at the door, saw at the same moment that there was no
tangle-field shimmer between them, and was on her feet and out in a fraction
of a second. "How?" she demanded, scanning the corridor and finding it as
curiously empty as Dick had.

"SKitty took the generator offline," he said. "She got yours, too, and she
headed off that wayтАФ" He pointed towards the heart of the building. "Do you
remember where the translight coms are?"

"Eyeah," she said. "In the basement, if we can get there. That's the emergency
unit and I don't think they know we've got it."

She cocked her head to one side, as if she had suddenly heard something. He
strained his earsтАФand there was a clamor, off in the distance beyond the walls
of the building. It sounded as if several people were chasing something. But
it couldn't have been SKitty; she was still in the building.

"It sounds like they're busy," Erica said, and grinned. "Let's go while we
have the chance!"

But before they reached the basement com room, they were joined by most of the
crew of the Brightwing, some of whom had armed themselves with whatever might
serve as a weapon. All of them told the same story, about how the shipscat had
taken down their tangle-fields and fled. Once in the basement of the
buildingтАФafter scattering the multiple nests of kreshta that had moved right
inтАФthe Com Officer took over while the rest of them found whatever they could
to make a barricade and Dick related what he had learned and what his surmises
were. Power controls were all down here; there would be no way short of
blowing the building up for the TriStar goons to cut power to the com. Now all
they needed was timeтАФtime to get their message out, and wait for the Patrol to
answer.

But time just might be in very short supply, Dick told himself as he grabbed a
sheet of reflective insulation to use as a crude stun-shield. And as if in
answer to that, just as the Com Officer got the link warmed up and began to