"Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 6 - Change of Command" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

file:///F|/rah/Elizabeth%20Moon/Moon,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Serrano%20Legacy%2006%20-%20Change%20Of%20Command.txt

CHAPTER ONE
CASTLE ROCK


Newscast: "Today the Speaker of the Table of Ministers and the Grand Council of the Familias
Regnant was assassinated while en route from the shuttleport to the Palace. His close friend and
legal advisor, Kevil Mahoney, was seriously injured and is now undergoing emergency treatment in a
secure medical facility. Three security personnel also died. Speaker Thornbuckle's youngest
daughter, travelling in a separate conveyance, was not injured, but is now in protective custody.
. . ."




BREITIS MEDICAL PAVILION


Kevil was aware of disturbing dreams, and tried to fight his way to consciousness. He felt stiff,
as if he'd been in the same position too long, and somewhere in the distance someone hurt quite
badly. Red and pink swirls slid past his vision; when he blinked, nothing happened but the
addition of ugly green smears to the swirls. He thought he heard something, butтАФlike the vague
shapes that teased his eyesтАФthe sounds were curiously unhelpful, blunt and unformed.

He struggled harder, and finally made out a voice, speaking some arcane language he didn't know.
What was a sub-cue something-or-other? What was an ivy line? His fogged mind tried to show him a
picture of ivy leaves lined up in a row.

"тАФneed complete rejuv, if he lives that longтАФ" came suddenly, with silvery clarity.

Ice, then fire, washed through him; he never knew if it was something they did, or his body's
response to what he heard. His eyes opened to see a pale blur; he struggled to get his mouth open,
then realized it was open, wedged with some instrument.

"Lie still," someone said. "Close your eyes."

He was in no mood to take orders. He gagged on the thing in his mouth, and someone slid it out.

"What happened?" he croaked, in a voice he didn't recognize but felt in his painful throat.

Memory returned in that moment, even as he asked. Even as the people he could not yet see
hesitated, he knew what had happened.

He and Bunny in the ground car. Bunny's face, taut and lined for so many months, finally relaxing.
They had been chatting about the continuing problems resulting from the Morelline's pharmaceutical
plant on Patchcock, the rising price of rejuvenations and the political implicationsтАФ

And then the white flare of some weapon, and Bunny's face disappearing into a mess of red and pink
and grayтАФ