"Jody Lynn Nye - Medecine Show" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nye Jody Lynn)

their lives constricted her. She was used to being open and friendly with everyone she met, and wanted
her son and daughter, and any future children she might have, to grow up the same way. Her deepest
fears were not for herself, but for them.
"How are you doing back there?" Gershom's voice asked over the intercom.
"I take this as a personal insult," Shona shouted over the whining of hull plates. "I was just about to
download my mail for the first time since we went incommunicado! More than four months' worth!"
At her bravado Gershom let out a bark of laughter that ended in a whoop. The ship lurched to one side,
and Shona watched bolts of light shoot past their port hull.
He thought it was funny, but it was true. Shona felt personally frustrated, since she was normally a
voluble corre-spondent. She'd pleaded with her many friends not to send news too frequently and only at
random intervals, to throw off anyone who might be monitoring her comm number while they were
stuck in one place. They knew she wouldn't be messaging back until she was safely back in clear space.
There might be fifty communications from her friends and relatives stacked up and waiting, out of reach.
She'd been planning to wallow in the news, enjoy a good natter by proxy with people she hadn't heard
from in ages, tell them at glorious leisure what had been going on with her, what Lani had said, how
Alex had grown, and then this anonymous brute of a scout ship had appeared out of nowhere to delay
the pleasure she'd been denying herself for security's sake. For four months they'd been completely
circumspect. One careless moment, and here they were running for their lives again. She willed all her
strength to Gershom, hoping that they could outrun the assassins one more time.
The other scout had a canny helmsman. Gershom managed to stay level with the stranger, but could
never maneuver to a vantage point that would let him go on the offensive. That first defensive shot with
the asteroid sonic probe had alerted the other ship that the Sibyl was not completely helpless, so it paced
him carefully. Still, Gershom had the advantage of experience. Guiding a scout ship might be less
hazardous now, but Shona could still remember some of the tales he'd told her while she was still in med
school. One was about a pack of rival traders making orbit all at the same time over newly established
colonies. The survivor got the trading contract. Probably the settlers were afraid to say no to a bully who
could drive away or kill all the competition. Gershom had managed to live through that time; he could
make it through this.
She knew what kind of weapons rough traders tended to pack aboard their ships: crude mining lasers,
sonar probes like their own, frictionless magnetic charges loaded with explosives that were as much a
danger to the attacker as the one attacked. Their pursuer's armament was sophisticated, and probably
new. She guessed he must be a professional, like a bounty hunter.

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 Jody Lynn Nye - Medicine Show


Her head spun as the ship twisted under her. The hull plates groaned and shrieked with the strain. On the
screen, the would-be assassin spiraled away. Gershom had pulled the Sibyl
into a controlled maneuver that threatened to pull them apart, but it got them down and away from the
other snip's guns. They slowed, hang-gliding on a simple vector, waiting. The enemy craft, after a
momentary pause for surprise, followed the same looping, graceful whirl, aiming to come level, but it
had fallen into Gershom's trap. As soon as the ship's belly turned toward their viewscreens, its plates
started shuddering. Even a thou-sand klicks away, Shona could tell they were in trouble. With a brilliant
shot, Gershom had hit them in the sensitive joins between the engine housing and the scout's main body.
The Sibyl kicked into motion again, turning and twisting to follow the attacker, now turned prey,
pummeling it with the crude sonic beam. Laser shots from the other ship went wide, lancing away into
space.
Suddenly the enemy ship seemed to remember it should be the dominant player in the confrontation, and
thrust over its central axis to face the Sibyl directly, training its lasers to burn and destroy. But by the