"John Ringo - Sister Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

"The physics is . . . complicated. You know, Pardol is going to be very displeased when he finds those
missing."


"Fuck Pardol. Personally, I wouldn't mind if it sent the bastard into lintatai." The thief fitted the
screwdriver into the tiny hinge.


"Fine, don't listen to me," Michelle sighed, "but don't do it that way. You'll break it. Someone put a lot of
time into that drawer. Why don't you just use the manufacturer's override code?"


"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because it's a hundred random characters of Galactic Standard? What do
you mean I'll break it?"


"Those aren't hinges. They're purely decorative. And breakable. Also alarmed. If you attempt to remove
them the real door will lock somewhat permanently. Besides, the code's not quite random." She rattled
off a string of Galactic syllables with a glibness that made Cally's tongue ache in sympathy.


"How? Nevermind. Could you repeat that again, only slower?" She fiddled with her PDA for a moment,
"Buckley. Give me a Galactic keyboard and pretend to the drawer you're an AID."


"It wanted to tell me. It likes me." Michelle gestured faintly towards the drawer, then began repeating
syllables, pausing briefly after every group of five.
 "The keyboard's rather pointless, you know." The Buckley's conversational tone made Cally twitch a bit,
as did the fact that it was talking again. "I understand Galactic perfectly," it said.


"I told you not to talk."


"Yes, but when you spoke to me directly I presumed you wanted that to override the earlier instruction."


"Buckley, is your emulation up too high again?"


"Of course not," it answered indignantly, "and don't reset it until after the mission. You know it'll all go
wrong without me. Not that it won't anyway." It sounded smug. She hated it when the buckley got smug.
Whenever it was too happy, sure as hell she'd screwed something up somewhere. Michelle reached the
end of the long code, and the door slid open soundlessly as the buckley finished feeding it the correct
characters. Damned if the hinges weren't ornamental, after all. And the inner door was solid plasteel with
very expensive subspace traction locks. If she'd triggered those the thing would have become more or
less a single piece of material.