"Continuing Time - 04 - The AI War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

Sid Bittan, Captain of the Vatsayama, had met them at the airlock; she stood in
the hatch to the infirmary after Trent’s scalesuit had been removed, a slim,
attractive woman with white hair cut down to fuzz, and watched a medbot tape
Trent’s ribs. “I’d space the bastard.”
“That’s not fair,” Trent objected. “I always end up playing the Good Cop. It’s
boring.”
Reverend Andy snorted. “They wouldn’t let Gandhi play the Bad Cop either, okay?
It’s not my fault you keep telling people violence is sinful. And they keep
listening to you,” he added pointedly.
“Let’s play Bad Cop/Anti-Christ,” Trent suggested.
Reverend Andy grinned at him. “Okay. I love playing the Anti-Christ.”
“I’d space him,” Captain Bittan repeated.

Standing in the Vatsayama’s brig a meter away from the assassin, wearing
magslips over his bare feet, with his pressure suit removed and his broken ribs
taped, Trent said, “So what’s your name?”
The assassin, sitting on the cot in the Vatsayama’s brig, stared mutely ahead.
He looked American Indian; no beard, and long black hair tied in a ponytail. He
was only a few centimeters shorter than Trent, Trent guessed, 190 centimeters or
so—tall for a downsider—and roughly Trent’s age, too, that indeterminate period
between twenty-five and first regeneration. He had been taken out of his suit
and had his hands snaked behind his back. Aside from that the SpaceFarers hadn’t
touched him. Vomit smeared his chin and chest; the smell of it overwhelmed the
small brig.
Trent said, “You broke my ribs, you know that?”
The assassin flashed an abrupt exhausted grin. “I was trying to kill you. I’d
say you got off light.”
“Do you know how many times this has happened to me?” Trent demanded. “Murderers
breaking my ribs? Three. Counting this one, I mean, only two if you don’t count
this one.”
“I guess you’re counting it,” said the assassin.
“You bet I am,” Trent said darkly. “The only thing you get points for is that
we’re in the Belt.”
The assassin looked at Reverend Andy, floating in the brig doorway just behind
Trent, and said, “Does he always talk like this?”
“He means,” Reverend Andy explained, “that if you had broken his ribs under
gravity they would be hurting more right now, and then he would be angrier at
you.” He looked at Trent. “But the second time you got your ribs broken was
escaping from Luna, right? It was the mass driver that broke them. Not a
murderer at all.”
“No,” Trent corrected him, “it was Mohammed Vance. He pumped about twenty rounds
out of an autoshot at me right before the mass driver shot me off Luna. So the
first time it was Melissa du Bois kicking me when I wasn’t looking, and then it
was Mohammed Vance shooting me while I watched him.”
“Oh.”
“And now this guy,” Trent said. He turned back to the assassin. “The third
rib-breaking murderer,” he concluded. “So what’s your name, anyway?”
“Chuck,” the man said after a pause.
“Chuck what?”
“Smith.”