"Steve Perry - Matador 4 - The Omega Cage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

work. Stark thought. They needn't have worried. Late the previous night he had
inspected it personally, stuck an inducer on it and made sure the plate would do
just what it was supposed to do. Somebody had done a good job; the thing
operated at near capacity, the cobbled circuits controlling the repulsion nearly as
well as in a commercial model. He hadn't been able to find out who from his
informant, but it didn't really matter. If he was one of the escapees, he was
fertilizer; if he was somebody else, Stark would get him sooner or later.

As he waited for the capacitor to build up enough charge to allow the six to hop
the wall, Stark took a deep breath and felt the sweat roll down the furrow over
his spine. The hot breeze wafted the stench of lube and rotting vegetation, and he
was certain he would carry the memory of those smells to his cremation. They
stank as bad as what he was about to order done.

He could have stopped the escape when the fight broke out; he could have
disabled the plate when he had first heard about it; he could have ordered the
sonics instead of the lasers. There were a lot of things he could have done, but to
do so would have shown weakness, and in his position he could not allow even
the faintest crack of compassion to show in his hull. If a man knew he was going
to die by trying to escape, if he felt it deep in his soul, then maybe he would
think twice or ten or a hundred times about trying.

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Escape from the Omega Cage was not allowed.

The Confed officials told him that before, when he was ordered to climb into a
Bender ship and space here. Nobody gets out, you copy, Commander? Nobody
ever has, nobody ever will. That is your job. We need a place to dump them, and
the Cage is it. What you do to them there, we don't want to know. But they don't
get out. Ever.

The dull drone of the plate interrupted his thoughts. He had the camera locked
and tracking, but he could use his own vision to see the six clutching the plastic
rails as the plate lifted up its cargo, sliding along within a meter of the Zonn
wall. Up quickly, cresting the thirty-meter-high alien construct in less than two
seconds. Then they were over, guiding the plate by leaning, free of the Cage.

"Hit the lasers," Stark said softly.




Pig was about to backhand Maro again when he stopped. "Jesus, look at that!"

Maro heard him only dimly through the ringing in his ears. He tried to focus his
eyes, and saw Pig staring out of the port. He raised his head, tasting the saltiness