"Simon Hawke - Psychodrome 2 - The Shapechanger Scenario" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

Simon Hawke - Psychodrome 02 - The Shapechanger ScenarioPSYCHODROME 2:
THE SHAPECHANGER SCENARIO
Coyright © 1988 by Simon Hawke.
Ebook ver. 1.0

For Ginjer Buchanan, with thanks

PROLOGUE

It's hard enough being a psycho without having a paranoid looking over your
shoulder all the time. The paranoid's name was Coles-at least, that was the
name
I knew him by. He was good. He was so good, he could insinuate himself into
my
mind without my even knowing he was there. But I was getting better. So far,
I'd
caught him at it twice. The trouble was, I didn't know how many times I
hadn't
caught him at it and that was making me paranoid. Of course, professional
psychos aren't supposed to let things like that bother them. Amateurs
generally
don't last long in the high-risk scenarios of Psychodrome. Most of them quit
after their first round, assuming they survive it. You either learn fast or
you
die. Or perhaps you only go insane. It depends on whether you're dealing with
something that's real or a programmed hallucination. How do you know? Well,
that's just the trouble, you don't. Once the Psychodrome computers start
interfacing with your mind, all sorts of strange things start to happen.
As a pro, I was still fairly new at the game, though after fighting as a
corporate mercenary on an undeveloped planet, being stalked by gangsters of
the
Yakuza in Tokyo, trailed across half the universe by genetically engineered
assassins, and almost eaten by an ambimorph on a quarantined world, the
novelty
was starting to wear a little thin. Not that Coles really gave a damn. You
tend
not to give a damn when you're one of the people who controls things.
And Coles controlled a lot of things. At the moment, he was controlling me in
a
little game that could easily turn deadly and the fact that I had Rudy Breck
as
backup was no small consolation. Breck used to be a major in the Special
Service, or the SS, as they're more commonly called-genetically engineered
commandos, created from a matrix of human and animal genetic material, known
as
hybreeds. Conceived in a Petri dish, raised in a creche, and trained for
mayhem
from the moment they can crawl. Breck had retired from the service to play
Psychodrome professionally. Their loss, my gain. I was starting to lose count
of