"Janat Kagan - Hellspark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kagan Janet)

Here and there, she eased her way through crowds of merrymakers overspilling from waterfront
taverns onto the wharf. Her captain’s baldric brought her a spate of invitations which she reluctantly
turned down or set aside for another time. Twice, laughing, she pulled stray hands from the pouch slung
at her hip. “Clumsy doesn’t honor Veschke,” she chided the would-be thieves.
Twenty minutes later, Maggy turned her away from the Rim and into the narrow, dimly lit streets of
the Old Quarter.
Tocohl did not slow her pace. One of the minor pleasures of having first-class equipment, Tocohl
thought, was that she needn’t worry about stubbing her toes on cobblestones. She might trip and crack
her head, for her hood lay softly cowled about her neck, but if her toe struck stone the 2nd skin would
spread the impact to absorb it and spare her the bruises.
She reached an unlit square, and Maggy said abruptly, (Trouble.)
Tocohl stopped. In the starlight, she could see only the constricted alleyways and the cramped stone
houses and shops typical of Sheveschke.
Across the square, a solitary figure—a fisher, to judge from his rough-woven clothing and the
pronged knife thrust into his belt—lounged against a stone doorpost. He straightened and whistled shrilly
but made no move toward her.
(What trouble, Maggy?) she asked.
(Three people fighting in the alley.) Maggy pointed to the pitch-black opening to the right of the
whistler.
(Push my vision two points,) said Tocohl, and the scene brightened and sharpened. Around the
edges of the spectacles, Tocohl’s peripheral vision darkened in contrast. It was as if she looked down a
tunnel of light, the end of which was whatever object she focused on.
Three dim figures clashed in the alleyway. Two were Sheveschkemen and, like the whistler, wore
fishers’ garb. The third was undoubtably an off-worlder; over the sheen of her 2nd skin she was dressed
in a combination of styles from several different planets—what Hellsparks called worlds’ motley. Not
Hellspark, for she wore no baldric. Tourist, then.
She fought well, outnumbered as she was, but her movements were slow and broad. Drunk, thought
Tocohl, her timing’s off—and that’s the standard surveyor’s 2nd skin, not much help in a brawl. She’s
going to lose this fight.
Tocohl didn’t much like the odds. (I’m going to pull rank, Maggy: watch my back.) Unclasping her
moss cloak, she let it drift gently to the ground.
Few people in the Extremities would argue with a Hellspark captain on whose good will their
interstellar trade depended, but Tocohl took the elementary precaution nonetheless. The deceptively
simple action exposed all of the sensors in her 2nd skin but those still covered by her captain’s baldric,
and Maggy could work around those easily enough.
She started across the cobbled square heading for the alleyway.
But the whistler stepped forward to meet her. His knife flashed upward in a swift, glittering arc.
Tocohl had no time to be surprised: she shrugged gracefully and the blade missed its mark. Before he
could recover sufficiently to thrust at her a second time, she slammed her edged hand into his wrist and
the knife jarred away, clanging on the cobbles.
The Sheveschkemen called a warning to his companions and backed away from the mouth of the
alley, scrambling after the knife. Tocohl had no intention of letting him rearm. She followed—with two
long strides and a lightning kick that took him squarely in the chest just as he bent for the knife.
Her 2nd skin absorbed the impact. Tocohl felt only a mild twanging sensation from foot to thigh but
the whistler slammed against the brick wall, cracked his head, and crumpled forward, unconscious.
Tocohl’s back tingled. (Roll!) said Maggy, and a sandbag blow struck across her shoulders. But for
Maggy’s warning, Tocohl would have been thrown off balance. Instead, she somersaulted and twisted,
came up back to the wall to face a second assailant.
This one too held a knife, but he stared at his weapon dumbly. With Maggy to see it coming, the
force that would have enabled the knife to pierce her had been transferred instead along the warp and