"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 17 - The Carnadyne Horde" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

the outer airlock. Nothing moved. "Jammed," he muttered. "Blow the hatch." The
first mate threw a set of switches. Dull vibrations shook the lifeboat. Before
them, the outer airlock hatch shuddered and flew away. Indigo space beckoned
them beyond the portal. Relatively nearby, a hot B-type star was an eerie blue
flare. "Redshift!" Captain Jarant shouted. He punched in the thrust vector and
took a deep breath. 8 The engines blazed into life, crushing the two men into
the chairs. The airlock shot away from their view and they sped through the
gem-scattered night of deep space. Twilight, really, here so close to
star-crowded Galaxy center. Onboard Black Dawn, SIPACUM registered the motion
of two objects moving away from Abraxis at differing rates. One tumbled at a
constant velocity while the other accelerated radially from the spacer.
Automatically-and without the notice of Tura ak Saiping-the ventral plasma
beamer flared into action. An actinic sphere of energy crossed the gap between
the pirate's spacer and the escape pod in less than an instant. The lifeboat
fragmented, the shards melting in the heat and condensing into soft spheres of
unipolymer plasteel and cyprium. Tura ak Saiping noticed the flash at the edge
of her vision. Her only thought was a fleeting one-that the DS was functioning
normally. She returned to her task. The deaths of the f ather-and-son
partnership called Jarant Pan-Spaceways passed unnoticed in the emptiness
separating the stars. Only lawyers, a few months-standard from now, would
really care whether the Jarants were dead or alive. Tura ak Saiping scanned
the spacer Abraxis with the aid of her cybers. No signs of life onboard. Good,
she mused. One less crew of worms feeding TransGalactic Watch and its secret
masters. She monitored the cybers in their progress through the labyrinthine
passages of Abraxis. Sending three of the machines to the main cargo hold, she
watched the telepresence screens display the goods available for her
choosing. The lights in the cargo hold suddenly flicked off. The temperature
shot up. Tura directed one of the cybers to deactivate the ship's computers
before the lamprey endangered the spacer and its equipment. Once the computers
were inoperative, Abraxis's ma- 9 chinery returned to normal default
functioning-lacking only a crew and .a good portion of its atmosphere. Hatches
still in working condition quietly sealed and the ship attempted to conduct
repairs where possible. The lights returned to the cargo hold and the
temperature returned to spacer normal of 22 degrees.* One of the
cyber-salvagers floated in front of a crate marked with the seal of
TransGalactic Watch. A shipment of TDP anti-glitch devices. Source, the planet
Sekhar. Tura smiled. She'd been on Sekhar only a few months before and had
been unable to procure one of the expensive, bureaucratically controlled
components. The flaining bastard of a burok she'd bribed had taken the stells
and then told her that TGW had backordered enough TDPs to ensure their absence
from the market for almost half a year-ess. She was pleased to discover that a
portion of the shipment had found its way into her hands-or rather her
waldoes. Four for her, the rest for quick and profitable sale. The cyber
grasped the plascrate and maneuvered it out of the cargo hold. She ordered it
to return to Black Dawn and gave her attention to the four remaining
cybers. One drifted through tunnels until it reached the late Captain Jarant's
cabin. Unceremoniously cutting through the hatch, the salvager drifted about
until its sensors detected the captain's safe. Carefully (under Tura ak
Saiping's remote guidance), it drilled through the cyprium plating with its
cutter, a molecular beamer. An alarm wailed. The hatch behind the cyber tried