"Daniel Keys Moran - A Tale of the Continuing Time 04 - The AI War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

see you at the Board meeting on Mars," and as Reverend Andy opened his mouth again Trent raised his
voice, "You are a fifty-six year old preacher and the Elite will kill you!" Trent yelled into his face, "Go
now!"

He did not wait to see if Reverend Andy was listening to him: he turned and kicked off down the
corridor, heading for the nearest drop shaft that led to the lower levels.

Thirty seconds after Trent's broadcast announcement, it seemed as though half the people in Gandhi
CityState were floating around in the corridors, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Trent wished he had a
gun, just something to wave and point at them: as it was everyone who recognized him, a fair number,
seemed to think that they were entitled to an explanation or a quick chat or something. It was slowing
him down and Trent knew that the PKF Elite would not get the same reception. They'd come ghosting
down the corridors in their armored black combat p-suits, and the Krishnas would just melt out of the
way, and the ones who didn't would die quick. Trent pulled his destroyed p-suit off as he flew down the
corridors, wriggling out of the lower half of the suit, unsealing the upper half and throwing it away, lips
curling in pain as his broken ribs ground together.

Trent's quarters hung off the CityState's main drop shaft, on the third level; the cross-corridor he was in,
leading away from Downlot 104, passed through two pressure seals and then fed directly into the drop
shaft. Trent flew out into the drop shaft, and twenty stories of empty space opened up "beneath" him.
Trent grabbed at a handhold at the edge of the drop shaft --

If Trent had ever been afraid of heights, ten and a half years in space would have cured him of it. The
drop shaft stretched over sixty meters in diameter, cut from the raw stone of Ceres, with entryways to
each of Gandhi CityState's twenty levels opening up onto it. Trent heard screaming from somewhere off
behind him, the unmistakable sizzling of lasers on flesh, and the muffled boom of a repeating autoshot: he
got his legs coiled underneath him, oriented himself on the entrance he needed, three stories below and all
the way across the diameter of the drop shaft, and leaped.

The paint in the drop shaft was darkened after midnight, not to blackness, but to a dim glow far gentler
than during the day; Trent could not see the entryway he needed clearly, and his jump was half
guesswork. He tumbled in mid-air, broken ribs grinding together, like an acrobat, like a SpaceFarer, like
a Belter, and touched the soft landing pad at the Third Level entryway feet first, absorbing the energy of
his jump perfectly.

It was only the fifth or sixth time in the two years he'd lived there that he'd gotten that leap right.

He glanced back and up and all four PKF Elite flew out of the First Level entryway, out into the drop
shaft, in their ebony combat suits, weapons at ready. Trent did not know if they'd seen him; he grabbed
the edge of the Third Level entryway and pulled himself through, manually dogging the emergency airlock
behind him.

Third Level, Corridor C: Corridor C belonged to Trent.

He'd purchased it, made it home, and now he had a chance. There was a limit to what Gandhi CityState
was willing to tolerate from "Gus Allen" -- even with pressure from the SpaceFarers' Collective, which
provided Gandhi CityState with military protection from the Unification -- but with the Collective's help
Trent had pushed them to that limit. For most of the last decade, Trent's bounty had been the highest in
the System; it had climbed from five thousand Credits in August of 2069 to ten million Credits today, in
January of 2080. And in all that time, only a few bounty hunters had even gotten close to Trent. Trent