"Timothy Zahn - Night Train to Rigel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

that Western Alliance Intelligence hadn't revoked my carry permit when they'd
cashiered me fourteen months earlier.
I was within three steps of the kid when he finally stirred, his half-lidded
eyes opening, his forehead creasing in concentration. "Frank Compton," he said
in a gravelly voice.
It had been a statement, not a question. "That's right," I confirmed. "Do I
know you?"
A half smile touched his lips as he unfolded his arms. I tensed, but both
hands were empty. His left hand dropped limply to his side; his right
floundered a bit and then found its way into his overcoat's side pocket.
It was still there as he slid almost leisurely off the side of the autocab and
crumpled into a heap on the sidewalk, his eyes staring unseeingly into the
night sky.
And with the streetlights now shining more directly on him, I could see that
his coat was wet in half a dozen places.
I dropped to a crouch beside the body and looked around. A kid with this many
holes in him couldn't have traveled very far, and whoever had done this to him
might be waiting to add a second trophy to the evening's hit list. But there
were no loitering pedestrians or suspicious parked vehicles that I could see.
Trying not to think about rooftop assassins with hypersonic rifles and
electronic targeting systems, I turned my attention to the kid himself.
Three of the bloodstains were over the pinprick-sized holes of snoozer loads,
the kind used by police and private security services when they want to stop
someone without using deadly force. The remaining wounds were the much larger
caliber of thudwumpers, the next tier of seriousness in the modern urban
hunter's arsenal.
The tier beyond that would have been military-class shredders. I was just as
glad the attacker hadn't made it to that level.
Carefully, I reached past his limp hand into his overcoat pocket and poked
around. There was nothing there but a thin
plastic folder of the sort used for carrying credit tags or cash sticks. I
pulled it out, angled it toward the marquee light from the New Pallas behind
me, and flipped it open.
There was a single item inside: a shimmery copper-edged ticket for a seat on
Trans-Galactic Quadrail Number 339216, due to depart Terra Station at 7:55
P.M. on December 27, 2084, seven days away. The travel designation was third
class, the seat listed was number twenty-two in car fifteen.
The destination was the Rigel star system and the Earth colony of Yandro.
Yandro, the fourth and final colony in the United Nations Directorate's grand
scheme to turn humanity into a true inter- i stellar species and bring us into
social equality with the eleven genuine empires stretching across the galaxy.
Yandro, a planet that had been a complete and utter drain on Sol's resources
ever since the first colonists had set out ten years ago with the kind of
media whoop usually reserved for pop culture stars.
Yandro, the reason I'd been kicked out of Western Alliance Intelligence in the
first place.
I looked at the dead face still pointed skyward. I have a pretty good memory
for faces, but this one still wasn't ringing any bells. Shifting my attention
back to the ticket, I skipped down to the passenger information section at the
bottom.