"Mike Moscoe - Society of Humanity 03 - They Also Serve" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moscoe Mike)

breaking his silence.

"You want to cut ice?" Matt frowned in surprise.
Ray took a deep breath. "I know space. Don't know ship driving. Captain Rodrigo, mind
a broken-down civilian helping?"

"No problem, Colonel," came quickly.
Matt eyed him, doubt and concern balanced against Ray's confused status as passenger
and boss, then turned back to his commlink. "All right, crew. Let's start hacking armor."
Ray blessed Mary for letting him work; exhausted, each night he fell into dreamless
sleep. By the time the ice armor was down to frost, Matt had answers. "We've sliced and
diced our net's code and found a present left over from the war."

"I knew you'd pissed some folks off when I hired you, but this bad?"

"Apparently Admiral Whitebred was gunning for us before we didn't annihilate your
planet. He installed a bug to make sure we didn't survive our first jump without him. So
this whole mess wasn't aimed at you."

"Unless the guys setting up this meeting knew about this little add-on to your netware.
If Whitebred told somebody who told somebody ..." Ray trailed off. "I want to talk to that
guy-"
"You're last in a very long line, Mr. Minister." Whoops! When Matt started Mr.
Ministering Ray, he wanted something. "Right now I need a call from you as owner. As a
general rule, all ships answer all distress calls. This one is three hundred years old. It
could be argued it can wait a bit. We need to find a way home. Still, a base in this system
could help us. You've got the pregnant wife. Which do we do?"
"My wife was a ship driver, Matt. She'd never ignore a distress signal. Hell, she was
sending one a few months back."

"Then, Mr. Minister, we head insystem."

After which we'll find the way home, Ray promised himself. Home before the baby
came.



TWO
 NIKKI MULRONEY WAS hot and off balance helping Daga lug the heavy box she'd
found. She had been their leader for as long as Nikki could remember. Daga was the
adventurous one, the girl who had found more ways to get them all into trouble than the
rest combined. She found stuff in the caves under the hills. Most of her finds were small,
different-colored shiny things, that glowed in the dark. Daga had taken to stringing them
on necklaces or wristbands and giving them to boys. Daga was a lot of fun ... until recently.

The box Nikki and Daga now carried wasn't shiny, and it did not look like it would glow
in the dark. It was heavy. Three feet long and maybe a foot and a half square on its ends,
its covering felt like ceramics. Orange, it had been cold; now it warmed in the summer
morning sun.
Nikki had no idea what it was; that was what they were here to find out. They