"Steve Perry - Aliens vs Predator - 1 - Prey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

 Chapter 1

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, I still think you're full of
crap."

Scott smiled to take a little of the sting out, but not that much. They'd
dropped out of hyperspace a week back, were running on the new and improved
gravity drives, and the old argument had been lit and burning almost since the
crew left the sleep chambers. The others were working the plant or attending
to ship routine and the two pilots were alone in the control module, staring
into the blackness of the Big Deep. Still a few weeks out from their next
port, but it was starting to look like a few years.

Tom, whose still-short dark hair had been cropped to his skull before he'd
gone into the sleep chamber, was up on his soapbox again, looking kind of like
a military-college freshman in free-speak alley.

Scott stroked his blond beard and waited for the reply he knew was coming.
Around them, the stale ship air smelled like a gym locker.

Tom didn't miss a beat. "Sure, I'm full of crap. Me and everybody else. But
I'm telling you, the bill is gonna come due sooner or later. You can't just
keep raping virgin planets, stripping them of everything valuable, and leaving
the hulks behind."

"I don't recall that I stuck my dick into the dirt anywhere lately," Scott
said.

"You know what I mean."
 "No, I don't. The Lector, in case you fell asleep during the orientation
session, is a tug. We're towing a half-full barge with about fifteen million
tons of rendered fish and animal products and the processor that did it to
collect more meat on the hoof from the poor suckers on Ryushi, a bunch of
shit-kicker cowboys-no, not even cows, they're rhynth boys living on a
middle-of-nowhere planet."

"Scott-"

"And," he continued, ignoring Tom, "and the barge, this ship, the cowboys,
and you and me are all owned body and soul by the Corp. Talk to old man
Chigusa with your raping-the-environment complaints."

"Jesus, you are so damned close-minded-whoa!"

Scott waved his hands over the controls, trying to get a fix on the blip.
Here in the middle of the Big Deep, where there was nothing but their vessel
and occasional hydrogen atoms to bounce off it, something had just shot past
them so fast it wasn't even a blur. And gaining speed like a bitch, too. Okay,
yeah, it was a couple hundred klicks away, but out here, that was almost a
sideswipe.