"JAMES LUCENO. SABOTEUR" - читать интересную книгу автора

was years away, and not likely to happen at all if he kept returning his meager
wages to LL by overspending in the company-run stores and squandering what
little remained on gambling and drink.
He had been with LL for almost twenty years, and in that time had managed to
work his way out of the pits into a position of authority. But with that
authority had come more responsibility than he had bargained for, and in the
wake of several recent incidents of industrial sabotage his patience was nearly
spent.
The boxy control station in which Bruit spent the better part of his workdays
looked out on the forest of tors and the shuttle launch and landing zones. To
the station's numerous video display screens came views of repulsorlift
platforms elevating gangs of workers to the gaping mouths of the artificial
caves that dimpled the precipitous faces of the mountains. Elsewhere, the
platform lifting was accomplished with the help of strong-backed beasts, with
massive curving necks and gentle eyes.
The technicians who worked alongside Bruit in the control station were fond of
listening to recorded music, but the music could scarcely be heard over the
unrelenting drone of enormous drilling machines, the low bellowing of the lift
beasts, and the roar of departing shuttles.
The walls of the control station were made of transparisteel, thick as a finger,
whose triple-glazed panels were supposed to keep out the ore dust but never did.
Fine as clay, the resinous dust seeped through the smallest openings and filmed
everything. As hard as he tried, Bruit could never get the stuff off him, not in
water showers or sonic baths. He smelled it everywhere he went, he tasted it in
the food served up in the company restaurants, and sometimes it infiltrated his
dreams. So pervasive was the lommite dust that, from space, Dorvalla appeared to
be girdled by a white band.
Fortunately, everyone within a hundred kilometers of Lommite Limited's operation
was in the same predicament-miners, shopkeepers, the beings who tended the
cantina bars. But what should have been just one big happy lommite family
wasn't. The recurrent incidents of sabotage had fostered an atmosphere of
wariness and distrust, even among laborers who worked shoulder to shoulder in
the pits.
"Group Two shuttles are loaded and ready for launch, Chief," one of the human
technicians reported.
Bruit directed his gaze to the droid-guided, mechanized transports that were
responsible for ferrying the lommite up the gravity well. In high orbit the
payloads were transferred to LL's flotilla of barges, which conveyed the
unrefined ore to manufacturing worlds along the Rimma Trade Route and
occasionally to the distant Core.
"Sound the warning," Bruit said.
The technician flipped a series of switches on the console, and loudspeakers
began to hoot. Miners and maintenance droids moved away from the launch zone.
Bruit looked at the screens that displayed close-up views of the shuttles. He
studied them carefully, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
"Launch zone is vacated," the same technician updated. "Shuttles are standing by
for liftoff."
Bruit nodded. "Issue the go-to."
It was a routine that would be repeated a dozen times before Bruit's workday
concluded, typically long past sunset.