"Steve Perry - Matador 7 - Brother Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

In his own hand, the Sacred Glyph seemed almost to pulse. Cold it was. Cold as death.

Customs was embarrassed. The woman in charge of the peace sealer unit kept shaking her head and
looking away, unable to meet Taz's gaze.

"We've checked and rechecked, Amaniafzsir Bork."

When Taz had arrived on the planet, they'd called her "Po," the more common and somewhat less than
respectful designation used on the streets for cools. That was before they fucked up and lost her pistol,
of course. Now they were falling all over themselves to be polite. Now the customs agent used the
honorific, addressing Taz as "peace officer." In their shoes, she would be real polite, too.

"No one entered or left the vault after lockdown, and the seals were clean when the computer threw the

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bolts. The seal alarm beeped at 2306, but the simadam monitoring assumed it was a computer glitch-he
was at the door station, it was closed, and it's the only way in or out. The vault door is a quarter-meter
squashed-steel-sandwich plate with stun gas inserts and full electronics. It never moved, according to
every alarm system we have and a guard's sworn and verified visual. The walls, floor and ceiling are all
made of ten-centimeter-thick carbonex and there are no signs of tampering with any of them; we've had
them inspected with an electron deepscan. It's impossible that anybody got in there."

Taz pulled her pistol from under her jacket, where it rode comfortably in her orthoflex holster. Held the
weapon pointed up at the ceiling. Waved it a little.

The customs agent colored. Shook her head again, spread her hands and fingers. She had to be thinking
that Taz thought her people were fools or liars. And she wouldn't have been wrong, had not the cools on
Tembo recently found themselves making similar explanations.

Taz holstered the weapon. Whoever this guy was, he was involved with the stuff going on back on
Tembo, she was certain of that. The mysterious deaths, getting past locked doors and alert guards, it had
to tie in.

So far, the local cools hadn't gotten anything out of the guy, either. Hadn't spoken a word.

Galactic regulations made it possible to get a scan, if all the proper legal niceties were observed.
Electropophy and related invasive techniques were easy to abuse, so after the Confed went down,
Republic laws concerning such machineries had been tightened. Careless brain-drain could leave
somebody a mindless husk, and the public should be protected from such things. Taz thought it was a
good idea in principle, but she also wanted whatever this guy knew pried out of him any way it took.
While more than a few felons had swung at or shot at her over the years, it sure didn't endear this guy to
her that he was among them. Besides, he had answers that would help her solve the murders on her
homeworld, she was fairly certain of it.

Taz left the customs office and went out into the sunshine. Almost immediately, Saval arrived to retrieve
her from her meeting. His flitter fanned to a stop at the curb, but didn't settle to the plastcrete, bobbing a
handspan off the road on the air as might a cork on a calm pond. The passenger door gullwinged up.