"Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - Crown of Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yarbro Chelsea Quinn)

about the man, that she suspected he would not
prove the easy victim her guard-instructors
were.


"Now," said the man.


Tira remained frozen.


Suddenly, the tableau was interrupted when
the door at die other end of the reception cham-
ber burst open, and a young lieutenant
appeared, a squad of twenty jostling in behind
him.
The Treasury men did not wait for the new
arrivals to get organized. Instantly the chamber
was filled with deadly spangles as accelerated
glass beads exploded into walls and malachite
and flesh.


Tira, true to her own training, found herself
crouched beneath her desk, totally helpless, as
others battled to decide her fate. Totally help-
less? Perhaps not. For her twelfth birthday her
father had had installed a fabulously expensive
fantasy simulator in her desk. It had been all the
rage with her crowd for weeks. One stealthy
hand reached up to the keypad set in the mala-
chite.


From the various holographic panels and baf-
fles there sprang forth a steady profusion of
monsters. The first was a quite nasty basilisk, jag-
ged spears flashing from his eyes. Then a trio of
harpies, each with meat dripping from her tal-
ons. A streamlined snail with several leech-like
heads undulated along the polished stone floor
leaving a very believable trail of slime. A were-
jaguar, still human enough to be recognizable,
leaped and growled and spat, threatening every-
one with daggered hands.


Not being idiots, the soldiers recognized holo-
graphic fantasy monsters when they saw them тАФ
but not before drill-honed reflexes had spewed